The Right Handed Writer

[Hiuknowme]

Continued

Harry shook with poorly disguised, silent remorse. Guiltily, he stole a glance at Hermione. He had never told her of the events that happened during his last night in the Room of Requirement. Voice cracking, he began his story:
He had been pacing the halls of the 7th floor corridor, asking for a room to be alone for a bit, where he could release his rage without harming anyone - out of the way of anyone who couldn’t understand his rage. ‘Which would be nobody!’ He added vehemently, but a pale set of doors that blended in with the castle walls had already appeared. Roughly pulling one open, he stormed into the room.
Throwing himself inside with all the dignity and grace of an irritated lion, he tore down the facade over his face that concealed his emotions. His eyes flashed with the violent snarl on his lips. The Room of Requirement quietly summoned a few pieces of elegant furnishing bidden by his unspoken desire to vent his anger. A lovely couch of dark leather adorned by elegant fastenings was quickly set to flames with a wandless Incendio. Hexes and curses flew from his mouth, all of which wandless, most of which wordless. Harry exploded several desks into tiny bits, set several things on fire, froze a few things before shattering them into smaller pieces, even levitated a king sized bed and threw it across the room, where it smashed into splintered pieces of wood. He never used the same spell twice, as a personal rule. When fighting Death Eaters, one had to be as varied and creative with the hexes as possible.
Harry’s fury faded and disappeared with the evidence of his rendezvous with the furniture. The splinters of wood and tufts of stuffing vanished without a trace. A moment later, a long couch appeared, but instead of destroying it, The Boy Who Lived fell into the deep cushions and curled onto his side, energy and magical resources effectively spent. In a similar situation in which he was currently in with ‘Mione, he let loose heartbreaking sobs of grief. He missed Sirius. He wanted the parents had never had, and would never get. He hurt for Cedric's unnecessary death. He repeatedly apologized to Cho, who wasn't even here. Harry cried for anyone and everyone who had lost someone in this merciless war, and for everyone who had risked their lives defending him, a helpless boy who stumbled into traps and bad situations because his lack of foresight and caution. He couldn’t believe how anyone would remain his friend, much less follow him into battle, after everything everyone had gone through to protect him.
A pair of warm, pale arms wrapped around him. He jumped slightly, but did not defend himself. What did it matter if it was an enemy anyway? He was a useless cause to this war. Eyes closed, Harry relinquished himself to whims of a complete stranger, feeling empty and broken. Normally, he would have defended himself, or identified the stranger, but today... He felt as if it didn’t matter. Much to his surprise, the cold tears of the stranger mingled with his own. Quiet and undisturbed, they released their pain together, uncaring if the other would judge or ridicule them in their moment of weakness.
Much later, Harry woke from a slumber he didn’t remember falling into. Groggily, he became aware of his surroundings. Pale arms were wrapped around his waist, firmly holding him to a hard body laying behind. He nearly jumped off of the couch he was lounging on in shock, but managed to contain himself, if only barely. The reason he was here, sleeping on a couch with someone whose identity was currently unknown in what appeared to be the Room of Requirement with the smell of smoke in the air and trails of salt on his cheeks slammed into him harder than a speeding broom. It would be a good idea to know the stranger who was made aware the secret inhibitions and self doubts of the famous Harry Potter, the Golden Boy Who Lived.
Harry braced himself for a nasty surprise- fate always found a way to screw him over- and tried to wring his hands in anxiety, finding them intertwined with someone else’s. He looked down. Slender fingers were knotted with his own, belonging to the man whose arms were around his waist. He thought it was a man, at least, the body on his back seemed to square and hard to be a female. Something shiny glinted at him, and Harry squinted to take another look, realizing that his glasses were crooked on his face. There was a ring was in the shape of a snake swallowing its own tail, with small emeralds dotting the snake’s eyes. Slytherin, then. Harry nearly groaned out loud. His eyes traveled along the pale limbs snaked around him. Hair covered the arm thickly, but was nearly unnoticeable due to its extremely pale nature. ‘A patriotic, pale haired slytherin... Oh!’
Draco Malfoy pulled Harry closer to him in his sleep. Harry nearly recoiled in shock. ‘Merlin’s beard, what deity have I royally pissed off this time?’ Once he woke, Malfoy would probably tell him all about how he could use this as blackmail and force something out of him. Or he wouldn’t even do that, he could just tell the entire Slytherin house that he caught Harry Potter bawling like a baby in the Room of Requirement. Harry could already feel the burn of stares of contempt into his back, and the humiliation that would follow.
The self-proclaimed future death eater muttered something in his sleep. Harry stopped his mental rant to listen, “bloody guilt complex... poor innocent chair... idiot Gryffindor...” The raven haired boy stopped for a moment and softened. Perhaps, this time, Malfoy wasn’t out to get him. ‘Malfoy didn’t say a word to me in... my moment of weakness - neither did he throw jibes, or make himself known to bask in my humiliation. ’ Harry had hardly been the only one crying, either. Malfoy had also witnessed the wide variety of spells that might be turned on him instead of innocent chairs if he dare cross Harry. He turned to gaze at the pale boy. Thin golden locks framed a face that had lost its usual sneer like a shining halo, accentuated by the pale skin,made somewhat rosy with the memory of tears.
Draco began to stir, eyes fluttering slightly. Quickly, Harry pretended to sleep, closing his eyes and washing his face of emotion while the other came to terms with his predicament in a similar way Harry had. He felt him tense for a long moment, then finally relax, clearly coming to the same conclusion.
Later, when they were both honestly awake, they talked. Apologies were exchanged, conclusions reached, and explanations spoken. Draco had simply been walking down the corridor, taking the long way from the Astronomy tower to the dungeons, when the Room of Requirement had simply appeared. He didn’t remember asking for anything, but curiosity, the git, had shoved him inside, only to find Harry Potter throwing hexes and curses like someone had stepped on his tail. Draco had run back to the door (not out of fear, just self preservation, of course) but it had vanished, trapping him inside. Harry didn’t even notice the presence, but luckily, most of the furniture ended up on the other half of the room. No hexes went Draco’s way, so neither did the other boy’s gaze. When The Boy Who Won’t Fucking Die stopped his tirade, and collapsed to the couch, the names murmured under cries of distress stopped him in his tracks. The heir to the Malfoy family and to Voldemort’s reign did something very unusual that day; he risked being cursed to comfort Harry Potter, his school and war rival.

END OF FLASHBACK

Harry’s tears slowed and eventually stopped. Hermione was looking at him as if he’d grown a second head and it had started singing Celestina Warbek’s latest album off key.
“Harry... you trusted that lout? How can you forget six years of torture and betrayal in one evening?” She actually looked worried for his safety.
“‘Mione, it wasn’t like I was telling him the secrets of the Light side or anything, it was just a tender moment. It wasn’t exactly my best day on the job, either.” He scowled.
“You need to be more careful,” She thought for a moment before continuing, “That’s why you’re so upset? He went back to his selfish, cockroach self even after you two came to a sort of truce?” He merely nodded. Voices from outside the door started to rise in protest. They were probably angry that they couldn’t enter their dorms yet. It had been a while, after all.
Hermione quickly turned to Harry and uttered a few quick cleaning spells. When she was satisfied that he looked presentable, she turned from his bed and canceled the hexes on the door.
“Finite Incantatem.” The girl strode from the dorm with confidence, and answered the boy’s bewildering looks with, “What? Haven’t had a quick shag before?” and sauntered off, leaving whoops in her wake. Harry was quickly bombarded by congratulations and slaps on the back. In truth, he was worried about he would say to Ron.

⇜⇜⇜⇜ ⇝⇝⇝⇝

Draco was a slytherin, a pureblood, and above all else, a Malfoy. None of those qualifications constituted any form of sentimental behavior or public display of emotion or distress of any kind, ever. Yet when Pansy altered the course of his paper ball, thinking she was helping him, to smack Harry in the forehead, his grin faltered. Even more so, when Harry shot back a death glare worthy of You-Know-Who himself, all color faded from his already pale face and dread hovered beyond the edges of his consciousness.
After the achingly long feast was over and students had begun to take their leave, Draco walked with his usual swagger to erase suspicious to the Gryffindor table. Hardly any had were left, mostly people outside of Harry’s year. Picking up the paper ball from where it had ended up on the table. Uncrumpling it, he reread the words he had written earlier in his neatest scrawl;

Room of Requirement. 8 o’clock. See you there.
~DM

‘The bloody gryffindor didn’t have the foresight to even take a closer look at the paper ball, or at my expression, which I’m sure betrayed enough emotion at that moment in time... Dammit! It’s going to take forever to win back his trust.’ He entertained a few different ways of getting back at Pansy, but he knew he couldn’t actually reciprocate. Pansy would recognize his revenge, and know something was wrong and easily trace it back to the only moment he seemed uncomfortable this year. ‘I could, of course, wait an appropriate amount of time, then she probably would have forgotten or wouldn’t see the connection...'
Draco plotted a nasty retaliation for Pansy as he went down the Hall to the Slytherin dorms in the dungeons.

⇜⇜⇜⇜ ⇝⇝⇝⇝

Author's Note: This is my first fanfiction ever. For once, I wholly and completely welcome- no, encourage- constructive criticism, suggestions, and/or input regarding spelling errors, better syntax, character development, storyline, etc.
I do not own Harry Potter as in the book series, the movie series, the characters, or the backstory. I am not making any money off of this, and mean no disrespect to the proper owners and/or JK Rowling.