More than Anything

Author's Note: This is a sequel to Anything,
http://hp.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600008312
and will make more sense if you read that first.

It's also a work in progress.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Potter!"

The hissing voice comes out of nowhere, and Harry instinctively reaches for his wand. Then he sees the blond gleam in the darkness.

"Malfoy?"

Malfoy steps forward. Harry thinks, he looks terrible. It’s three days now since – that night – and it doesn’t look like Malfoy’s slept at all since then. There are dark bags under his eyes, and his hair is greasy and unbrushed. And for once, he looks not quite sure of himself.

"I need to talk to you, Potter." There’s an attempt at a sneer on Malfoy’s face but Harry isn’t convinced by it. Malfoy, however astonishing it might seem, is nervous.

"Okay. So talk." Harry sticks his hands in his pockets and leans back on his heels, hoping he looks nonchalent. He has an idea what this is about, but he’ll be damned if he’ll make it easy for Malfoy.

Malfoy looks down at his feet. "About the other night," he says slowly. If he were looking at Harry, he’d see a look of surprise cross his one-time enemy’s face. "You, ahh. You haven’t... I mean, please don’t..."

"I haven’t told anyone, Malfoy. If that’s what you’re worried about."

Malfoy, astonishingly, almost smiles at Harry. "Oh! Good. Er, thanks Potter. Harry. Thanks Harry."

Harry kisses him. It is what he will later come to think of a just one of those "Draco looks cute" moments, and so he leans in to Malfoy and kisses him gently on the mouth.

Malfoy looks astonished. Not displeased, it has to be said, but certainly extremely surprised.

"Potter," he says slowly, "are you – you know?"

"I don’t know," says Harry. "Am I what?"

Malfoy is silent for a moment, as though he’s trying to pluck up the courage to say something very unpleasant. "Are you gay, Potter?"

Harry considers this. Finally, he says, "I like girls".

Malfoy snorts. "You like girls?!" he repeats in a sing-song voice. "You have a couple of snogs with that little ginger... Okay, okay!" He holds up in hands in surrender as the flash of anger shows on Harry’s face. "Okay. But I am."

"You are?"

"Yeah," says Malfoy. Draco, thinks Harry, that’s Draco because for better or worse, some kind of confession is obviously about to happen, though he can’t possibly imagine why Draco would chose him to confess to. But he has. "Yeah," Draco says again, "I’m gay. And I wondered, I mean, since you obviously liked it the other day, Pot-, Harry, but you do like girls, I mean, I’ve seen you with girls and they like you too, I was wondering if you’d found some way to, you know, cure it?"

"Hang on." Harry pushes his fingers through his hair, something he only does these days when he’s very confused. "You think I’m gay? And you think I’ve done some kind of magic to change it or hide it or make it go away?"

"Well, haven’t you?"

"No, I haven’t even – well, no, I won’t say I’ve never thought about it," and why am I telling Draco that, wonders Harry, "but why on earth would you want to change it? It’s just who you are, surely?"

Draco makes a sour, defeated sound that might have been meant to be a laugh. "You want to tell my father that? That his only son is – well, you pick the word, Father seems to prefer ‘one of them’ like he can’t even bear to name it, it’s worse than being a mudblood. You tell him I’ll never be able to continue the family line, that I’ll be the last of the great Malfoy family. That I won’t be doing any of those balls and dinners and parties our sort go in for so much, because I’ll never have a woman to take with me. You try telling my father I like men. And-" he gasped for breath, "it gets worse than that. It’s not even like I’m in love with someone even a little bit suitable, someone young and rich and decent looking like myself – oh come on, Potter! You know I am, let’s not mess about here. If it were Blaise or Theo Nott or even you, at least Mother would have been okay about it eventually, and she might have talked Father round."

Now Harry sees where this is going, and he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to be Draco’s confidant, doesn’t want to hear the next sentence that Draco is about to speak. So he says it for him.

"You’re in love with Snape, aren’t you?"

"Yes," says Draco, looking somewhat deflated, "I’m in love with Snape."

Harry considers him, the strange mixture of pride and embarrassment fighting for possession of the pale face. "Draco, why are you telling me this?"

"Oh Merlin, I almost forgot!" Draco takes a flat, dull silver coin from his pocket. It’s not exactly like anything Harry’s ever seen before, but it does remind him of something. "He told me to give you this," says Draco. "I have one like it." He opens his shirt and Harry sees an identical coin hanging from a silver chain against Draco’s pale skin. "So does Snape. When he touches his, yours feels warm."

"Oh," says Harry, hand poised between reaching for the coin or thrusting back safely into his own pocket. "And when it feels warm, what do you do then?"

Draco looks at him as though he’s said the most stupid thing in the history of the world. "When he wants you, you go running to him."