Drarry One Shots

'Only In My Dreams, Potter!' (Part One)

A/N This story has evolved from a request from @kennaroo77 from about six months ago (so it's not quite what was requested but uses the premise). It's taken a long time to write, mostly because this is the second attempt after I didn't like how the first version progressed. However, I have used the request as the backstory to this one shot. Book height characters. Misunderstanding and angst (as requested). No smut.

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Draco was feeling particularly pleased with himself and therefore rather smug. He put his tote bag on the sand and shook out his rainbow-striped towel onto the sun lounger next to a thatched umbrella. He smiled to himself and exhaled as he kicked off his cerise-pink flipflops, unwrapped his sarong, and retrieved a book from his bag. He checked his suntan spells, adjusted his sunglasses, and settled himself onto his lounger. He didn't quite open his book yet, instead Draco lifted his sunglasses on top of his white-blond hair and looked out at the sparkling turquoise sea beyond white sands. The sea rippled softly, no real swell because the island was protected within an atoll and it was a windless day; just a tender whispering of crystal water swishing back and forth across shallow sands beneath a perfect blue sky.

A small smile played at his lips and he sighed in contentment.

Two weeks... two perfect weeks of this, hidden away in the middle of the Indian Ocean somewhere on a remote island as recommended by Pansy. All by himself, with a stack of books from a Muggle bookshop near Pansy's house in London—the sun, the sea, palm trees, without a cloud in the sky or a care in the world.

Life was good.

Especially now Hogwarts was finished; done, dusted, and the ghosts and traumas could be left far behind him, along with the weirdness of his 'eighth' year. He'd achieved five Outstandings in his N.E.W.T.s, including a Valedictory in Potions, his probation period after the war was finished, he'd secured his place on the Healership training course in St Mungo's, and his father's imprisonment had left him a vast fortune to do with it what he wanted. His first real expenditure being this holiday and a simple plan that consisted of gaining a healthy hue to his pale skin, vanishing into his pile of books, drinking a shit load of cocktails, and learning how to snorkel—Muggle style. His immediate future felt as beautifully unencumbered and open and sparkly as the horizon in front of him. And best of all: no one here knew the name Malfoy or what the faded tattoo on his forearm signified. He would be left in peace.

Two perfect weeks.

His fingers glanced over the end of the scars that ran across his chest to his right hip, he was surprisingly fond of them simply because they marked a moment in time, a turning point that was hard to explain to anyone else. He quirked a small smile, always satisfied by feeling them under his fingertips, by knowing they were there, for making it all real, yet being a mark of leaving those times far behind. It reminded him of his seventh year too, when he used to wonder where Potter was and if he was okay, when he finally admitted that he wanted Potter to defeat that bastard. He sighed, he wasn't here to think about Potter or the war or any of that. And particularly not their eighth year.

He looked out at the horizon again and took a deep breath, letting the sea air carry his momentary tension away.

He adjusted the leg of his rather snug turquoise swimming trunks with a twitch of amusement. They didn't leave much to the imagination. Pansy had persuaded him to invest in a new wardrobe especially for the holiday and convinced him to embrace his inner gay without inhibition. He had, indeed, bought with him a suitcase packed with slim-fit t-shirts and shirts all the colours of the rainbow and a selection of flamboyant clothes that he'd never have worn in England. And he felt secure in the knowledge that no one here knew him so the information was unlikely to get back to anyone who might use the information against him. Pansy didn't count, of course. But she was the perfect fag-hag; she had kept his unspoken secret all through school, been the perfect wing-woman in the holidays, and rescued him from his father's probing questions more than once. It was almost a shame she couldn't come with him for these two weeks, apart from he wanted this time to recuperate alone and away from everything and everyone. Plus, she had work commitments already with the Magical Law firm she'd joined so she wasn't going anywhere.