Things To Do When Your Lover Is Dead
Harry still buys enough for two at the Indian takeaway on the corner. There's no point really, but it keeps him from going in the kitchen, or cooking, or doing anything household-related.
Domesticity is the hallmark of the well-adjusted. It's for couples and happy people.
Harry is neither of those things, except that he knows that he and Draco were good together once.
It's the most important thing he remembers.
And in the long run it might be easier for Harry if Draco were dead. Except he's not.
He simply left because he couldn't take it anymore.
Harry always thought that they were happy.
In the beginning it was beautiful, except it wasn't, and Harry and Draco weren't an ideal couple. They never had been.
Harry was deluded.
He fell in love with an idea of love overcoming all obstacles and that carried him through for a lot longer than anyone suspected. People always thought that Draco had seduced Harry into a life of domestic bliss, but maybe Harry committed the crime. Harry had always wanted to fall in love, and Draco had always hated him. Harry thought that love and hate were so close that they might as well be the same thing. He loved Draco, and Draco loved him. Didn't he?
Now that Harry's alone he often wonders where they went wrong, and yet he never can bring himself to go back to the beginning.
They had fought since day one, and Harry thought that was passion. He thought that's what made them strong, but now he's not sure anymore, and that doubt is worse than anything else he's ever come across.
Because if they weren't in love, then was there ever anything between them?
Harry's had lovers since Draco. He's had boys and men, and he's even had a girl or too. He's been very equal opportunity. Come one come all, it's not as though any of them stay. It's not as though he would actually let any of them stay even if they wanted too, but he's never been as bothered with the Muggle thing as Draco was. Is.
Of course, Draco even got insulted when Muggles found him attractive, but it never bothered Harry.
Harry always took a certain pride in Draco's looks, and the Muggles never knew that Draco was considered beneath Harry. All they ever saw was a beautiful man. That's what Harry saw as well, and maybe that was part of the problem.
Draco was almost an ornament. A trophy on Harry's arm.
To the wizarding world Draco was a symbol of all that Harry had broken and destroyed.
Maybe Draco saw it that way as well.
Perhaps Harry should have asked.
It might have been the complacency that ate them from the outside in.
Harry worked, and Draco did whatever Draco did. He didn't have to do anything at all though, and Harry thought that's what Draco wanted. He thought that that's what made him happy.
Draco was never the people-oriented sort. He didn't want to get on with Harry's friends, and he didn't want to go out on dates. Harry never pushed him. Draco also had no interest in Muggle cinema, but he became rather fascinated with the television in a perverse sort of way.
More than once Harry caught him talking to it as though it would answer him, but looking back on it, maybe Draco was just that starved for attention.
Harry always thought that he made Draco happy. Except that as the months wore on, Draco was home more rather than less, and it was a reverse sort of sign that Harry didn't see.
Towards the end, Harry knew it was coming. Their estrangement was something he could taste in the bitterness of milk that had yet to go sour and food that always seemed either over-cooked or undone.
What Harry tasted was unhappiness. His, Draco's, their unified confusion destroying all the good times and the memories that they had built together. The bad things tainted their flat and made the cat run away.
They had always fought, but when Draco stopped arguing, when he stopped caring, then Harry knew it was only a matter of time.
He should have tried harder, he sees that now.
Harry has a wizarding photograph that was taken shortly after the war ended. Point in fact, it was taken the day they moved in together, and Mordred, wasn't that just a day sent to test them both.
None of the furniture wanted to fit through the door, and somewhere between the Burrow where Harry had been living and the Manor which Draco had all but fled, Draco had lost his wand. To say that he was a bit put out before they started was a slight understatement.
Even after Harry shrank everything to get it through the door, and then Re-Enlarged it, the flat still looked like a tip that had been run through by a mad Hippogriff. The sofa was the only thing that hadn't been ruined in transit, and Harry remembers he made Draco sit on the sofa while he puttered around setting everything to rights.
He had thought it was what Draco wanted. He had thought it was for the best, and then when he was done he had sat down next to an extremely surly man, kissed him on the cheek and been blissfully unaware of the tick in Draco's left eye.
The camera had been sitting on top of the television, and he had bewitched it beforehand to record the start of their life together.
He should have known then.
When the photograph was developed, all Harry had noticed was the glow to his own cheeks and the way Draco's shirt was pulled to one side, showing a nice piece of his collarbone.
He had thought that was all there was to see, and he took it in to work to place on his desk.
One morning, Harry realised that the Draco in the photo wasn't on the sofa anymore.
Harry told himself it was because he had gone off to the loo.
The end didn't come with a bang, just a whimper of Draco's bags by the doorway and key that was on the kitchen table one morning when Harry came out the bathroom after his morning shower.
He should have known - he never liked taking showers in the first place. Harry has always been more of a bath man, except that baths always took forever and Draco had become the sort of man who said baths took up too much water.
There were bills to consider. And maybe if Harry hadn't been so insistent about the bills and sharing. Perhaps if Harry hadn't insisted that everything be equal and let Draco pay for dinner once in a while
Draco once complained that Harry never let him feel like a man. Except it was never about the money.
When Draco left, he said it was because he couldn't give Harry the kind of life he wanted.
Harry had always though that they were together because it was the kind of life that he needed.
Not once did he ever consider the kind of life that Draco needed.
The bills have gotten out of control and Harry can't afford to live alone anymore. He would rather move then take on a lodger though, and maybe it's for the best. Every day he's surrounded by things that Draco has never come back for, and bits and pieces that they picked out together.
The day they chose the flatware in Diagon Alley, Draco said they were as good as married. He had smiled, but his face had been tight, as though the idea pained him.
A divorce would at least have required paperwork, and papers would at least have been proof that there had been something there.
However, in the end, Harry had nothing.
As though Draco had never existed at all.