𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐆𝐨

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐈𝐈

The candles of the chandelier in the common room flickered sporadically as the night deepened. It wasn't busy as usual, perhaps everyone was enjoying the pale moonlight.

Draco liked it quiet, I could tell. He liked being around people, sure. But he liked it awfully quiet.

Scratching quills and the occasional nail biting triggered my scenes away from the much needed sleep. The worn leather of the couch was irritating my exposed neck as I laid down facing the ceiling.

"Can I see what you're drawing?" I asked Draco to keep myself awake. I didn't want to seem rude by falling asleep before him.

"It's you," he said, looking down at his work.

"Can I see?"

He showed me the beige and black page of his sketch pad.

I saw myself in the exact position that I was in right at that moment. Legs stretched out and crossed, neck tilted up on a singular pillow, my palms resting on my chest right above my Astronomy textbook.

"I like it a lot," I breathed.

He mumbled a thanks.

"It looks really artistic you know what I mean?" I said, "Like, it's all scratchy, looks like it could be just one line. Like, it's not perfect."

"You're not perfect."

"Wow, thanks," I said with great sarcasm.

"That's a good thing," he told me, looking up at me now.

"Is it?"

"Well, you're not meant to be perfect. A little rough around the edges."

I let what he told me sink in, all the way through my ears and into the depths of my mind. Farther than even Hermione could reach.

A little rough around the edges.

I liked that. I liked that he viewed me like that.

Of course I wanted to be perfect. Who wouldn't? Who could possibly wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and wish to be everything imperfect?

When I was a kid, a little kid, I used to tell myself that I only had to be content with myself, because love was not something that was achievable in the Dursley home.

Love was just too great an ideal.

But then Hagrid showed up at the door, and all of the sudden, content wasn't good enough either.

I had to be perfect.

I had to save an entire species of the human race all by myself, and everyone expected me to do so with the widest of smiles on my face.

I got expectations I couldn't meet, and dangerous tasks I didn't want to partake in, and a story that wrote itself like Rita Skeeter's Quick-Quotes Quill.

Worst of all, everyone thought I liked it.

"Harry?" a low voice asked me.

"Hm?"

"Lost you for a moment," he said.

"Sorry."

He pierced me with his warning glare.

"Whatever," I waved him off.

"You going to finish that homework of yours?" he gestured to my unfinished worksheets on the arm of the couch.

I sighed, and picked one of them up.

"'Did you know," I began reading, "that the clouds in the centre of the Milky Way smell of Rum, and taste like raspberries?'"

He laughed a little at my impression of Professor Sinistra.

"I can honestly say, I did not."

"Finally!" I joked, "Something I knew that you didn't!"

He shook his head, smiling. "Don't get too caught up in yourself, Harry, I don't even see how someone could confirm that fact."

"Magic?"

He only laughed harder.

"I like your laugh," I said, smiling idiotically.

He stopped laughing. I frowned at him.

"What?" I asked. "It's a compliment."

"And what makes you think that I would need a
compliment, Harry?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "To make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?"

I saw that smile creeping back onto his lips. He kept trying to suppress it, but it was useless. His face looked better with a smile anyways.

I looked back down to my parchment.

"Hear this," I sniggered, "'Uranus is lopsided.'"

Draco burst out into a fit of laughter just as I did, he clutched his abdomen with one hand and covered his mouth in modesty with the other.

We kept laughing for a long time. It felt like years. Years of the long lost laughter.

To be frank, I think that Draco really needed to laugh more than I did. I'm not sure of a time when he'd ever laughed out of anything but torment. It's not like he had any good friends to do so with.

I hoped that meant that he felt comfortable around me, more comfortable than anyone else.

In an obscure, selfish way, I wanted to be the only one to ever hear a laugh like his.

And my name. The way he says my name.

It's not a title, nor a label. It's me. It's just me and him and nothing else.

I liked it that way, and sometimes, I wanted it to stay like that forever. I didn't ever want to leave his side. I didn't ever want to release my arms from around his body. I wanted to hug him, kiss him, fall in love.

Is that all anyone wants? Love?

Forget perfection. Forget contentment. All that goes away when it is replaced by love.

Loving someone else makes it so that you don't have to love yourself. Because if that love is returned, then you have someone to do it for you.

They can see all your flaws, turn them into something divine, and then make you be able to see it as well.

They can reach far into your soul, to the deepest, most darkened and shattered parts, and mend them as if they had always been that way from the start.

They could make you believe that love can heal scars, and bring rest to the weary, and renew life of the dead.

I wanted so bad for him to experience that.

And maybe, just maybe, one day I could feel that too.

I knew for certain that even he could never heal the scar on my forehead.

But I was growing to do that on my own.