Self Preservation

Thoughts of Potter, like slow betrayal, creep into the back of Draco's mind, swirling through his other thoughts, covering everything with a heaviness like the damp from the dungeons in early June that clings to his clothes until well after lunch. They leave their scent on everything he thinks, everything he does, and he feels betrayed by his own mind, tainted. He tells himself that they are not what he knows they are, laid out in plain sight in his mind. It is just plain ridiculous that thoughts of Potter could possibly be anything but hatred. Besides, it has always been like this and he has always hated Potter, the same way he has always hated Mudbloods.

Potter is an enemy, an enemy of the Dark Lord, of his father, of himself, and that is the way it should be. There is a balance in that, a rightness in the sneers, the insults, the glares of hatred, and things should be left as they are. The order of the world ought not be messed with. Slytherins stay with Slytherins and Gryffindors with Gryffindors and that is that.

Still the tendrils of unwanted thought seep into every corner of his life, into everything he does, whisper-hissing obsession in his ear as they pass. It has taken years of slow seeping, like water through stone, but they have wound themselves around everything he does. An endless snake, turning, twisting, tightening, threading through every thought, every unconscious action, casting a tint of unnameable color over it all, so that he has to squint and tilt his head to the side to see through it properly. The creep and the change in his mind is so subtle that he doesn't even notice it happening, until one day, grey eyes meet green, by chance, across the Great Hall, with a glare of an entirely different sort, and Draco quickly looks away.

In Potions he sits at a table near the front knowing that Potter and company will head to the back. But, Snape splits up the trio halfway through the double period, whether out of spite or actual punishment Draco doesn't know (he is actively not paying attention to Potter), and sends Potter to the one table that is in front of Draco's, affording him an excellent view as Harry stalks to the front of the room, his over large trousers riding rather too low on his hips, and sets about carefully recopying the ingredients list off the blackboard. Draco is so intent on Potter's hands moving across the parchment and the way his teeth tease his bottom lip as he writes that it takes blood running down his own palm to make him realize that he has just cut his finger and not the roots he is meant to be dicing into perfect cubes.

An accident Draco tells himself. Nothing unusual. The same way that watching Potter out of the corner of his eye as he enters the room is just making sure he know where he is. One must keep tabs on one's enemies after all. There's nothing wrong with that.

And stopping just inside the door of the Potions storeroom and watching Potter from just out of sight, as he stretches to reach a bottle on the top shelf, exposing skin between waistband and shirt, is just self preservation. If he enters the room they will inevitably fight and he's wearing his favorite robes and doesn't want them ruined by Potter's ink stained hands thankyouverymuch.

And always ending up in busy corridors walking in opposite directions and brushing against Potter's shoulder, arm, hand, is just coincidence. There really aren't all that many students at Hogwarts anyway, of course he is going to run into Potter.

It is inevitable.

Just like it's inevitable that the two of them will eventually end up wandering the same deserted corridor at the same late hour on the same cold winter night. Draco will approach Harry like an elegant ghost all silver and black in the dim light. Harry will just stare, and for once Draco won't have a snide comment ready. It will be quiet. So quiet that it will seem that if either of them speaks, if either of them so much as breaths too loudly, it will shatter the world, and it will fall in silver shards around them.

It will shatter their world. The world of sneers and sharp words and sharper glares and hatred so strong that it resonates between them like heat waves in the distance. Hatred so strong that it isn't hatred anymore. They will stand there until the tension is thick in the air, like so much smoke, and they will both move at once. Arm will brush hand, hand will touch shoulder, fingers will trace jaw, minds will scream NO and whisper yes.

Tongue will meet lips, with the soft scuffling of shoes on stone and the rustle of fabric on fabric. Then fabric on skin. Then skin on skin. Hot flesh under cool hands and a gasp as a hand reaches beneath a waistband and this is so wrong it's right and a moan that will shatter the silence. Shatter the world. Draco will see silvergold dance behind his eyes and feel a pain so sharp in his chest that it's not pain anymore. He will think, for a moment, about what he's doing, and who's hands are scrabbling for purchase on his bare back and holy fuck I really want this and the incessant nonononononononono will fade to yes.

It is self preservation.

But, somewhere in there among the other things he tells himself, somewhere deep down in the back of his mind, Draco knows that he hasn't really always hated Potter. That day in Madam Malkin's he didn't hate him. He didn't know him beyond knowing who he was, and really, he doesn't know him now either. He just knows the reflection of the hate-that-might-be-something-else-entirely coming back at him. The reflection of the fear of something unnameable and potentially more dangerous than the Imperious curse to a mind that refuses to admit it thinks about it.

Draco knows that watching Potter is not just making sure he knows where he is. It is that he can't tear his eyes away from him. And that he wants the intensity of that gaze, now fixed on Weasley Granger Finnigan, as he talks emphatically and animatedly with his friends, that he wants that gaze to be fixed on him. And he wants it to stay.

The self preservation is self preservation, yes, but not of the sort that Draco allows himself to think about. It is keeping himself from having to admit that he's not sure if he can trust himself alone in the room with Potter. Not sure he can trust himself not to touch him. He knows that if he touches him it will be all over. Although the that which will be over is not quite what he thinks it will be.

It's not just coincidence that Draco is in the corridors when Potter is. He has found that he's memorized Potter's schedule and makes a point, a mostly subconscious point, to walk down the corridors Potter will be in, no matter how far out of his way it is.

And Draco knows that he should. Just. Stop. watching Potter like that. That his rationalizations that what his is doing is perfectly normal, that he's just waiting for Potter to do something that will give him more ammunition in their petty never ending war of words and glares, that it means nothing, are completely untrue. And, as much as he manages to make himself believe that he will let it go tomorrow, next week, next month, he knows his line of not-really-reasoning would never work on anyone else.

He thinks about these things late at night, when the sky has just started to pale toward dawn and everything seems just a bit unreal. So these thoughts, the thoughts that he has, but doesn't want to have, but can't get rid of, and his sneaking horrible suspicion that he might not hate Potter after all. That he might actually like Potter. All of this is just a bit unreal too, in the silver grey light of not-quite-dawn. He tries to keep the thoughts there, in the dark, in the night, bottled up and safe. It is only safe to really think them at night or something might break. He might break.

Really, though, he doesn't want to stop. He doesn't want to let go. He does enjoy watching Potter. Draco has to restrain himself from running to Potions just to get there before Potter so he can watch him walk into the room. And watching is okay, he just has to remember to keep that glare of hatred fixed on his face. He just has to remember that that lightly tanned skin belongs to someone who put his father in Azkaban. Someone who constantly flouts the rules to the detriment of his house. Someone whose very existence stands against everything he's been taught.

It works, for the most part, until Potter looks up at him and their eyes meet for just a fraction of a second. It feels as if someone is running cold fingers up his spine and Draco shivers. Pansy turns to him in that simpering voice and asks "Are you cold?" and "What's wrong?" and Draco says "Nothing," when really he means everything.