Fic: "The Old, Familiar Fury," H/D, PG-13
Title: The Old, Familiar Fury
Author: belmanoir
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Ron/Pansy
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry and Draco meet again at their ten-year Hogwarts reunion.
Warnings: Spoilers for HBP.
Word Count: 3,298.
Notes: Thanks go to pinkdoom and beachkid, my lovely betas. Happy birthday, Draco!
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. I am not making any money off this.

Draco Malfoy stood at the top of the Astronomy Tower on his twenty-seventh birthday and thought about Dumbledore falling off it in a burst of green light.

Life wasn't supposed to be like this. You were supposed to associate the Astronomy Tower and the Room of Requirement and abandoned girls' bathrooms with snogging and giggling and drinking contraband butterbeer and possibly losing your virginity. Instead, Draco thought of trying to murder the Headmaster, and hopeless hours with the Vanishing Cabinet, and watching a giant gash open in his chest and being sure he was going to die. He wanted to go say hello to Myrtle, but she would look so young now. She would look like a child. He wasn't sure he could deal with that.

"I didn't really expect to see you at our tenth Hogwarts reunion," Potter said from the doorway. Draco knew it was Potter because he would have recognized Potter's voice anywhere. It was a rival thing. Besides, Potter may not have expected to see him, but he had expected to see Potter. How could Potter pass up a chance to show how much better he was doing than everyone else? How he was Witch Weekly's Most Eligible Bachelor five years running, how he was Auror of the Year, how he was number six on the list of England's Top Ten Richest Wizards.

The old, familiar fury rose up inside Draco, and Draco hated Potter. Because he was a grown-up now, and he was supposed to be over this, and he wasn't.

"I didn't want to come," Draco snapped. "Pansy made me."

"I see," Potter said, sounding bitter. "She wanted to show off her perfect boyfriend, huh?"

Draco was a little taken aback---all right, a lot taken aback---at this image of himself, but he covered quickly by rolling his eyes. "Pansy hasn't been my girlfriend since sixth year, Potter," he drawled. "Just as up on the gossip as ever, I see. No, she just didn't want to come alone, because she knew it would be depressing as hell."

"Really?" Potter asked in surprise.

Potter was the most oblivious person on earth. "Not everyone loved school as much as you did, Potter," Draco informed him. "Besides, you might have noticed that some people aren't here?" He almost expected to have to explain that to Potter too.

"No, I meant---" Potter said, and then, softly, "I've wanted to tell you---I'm sorry about Snape."

Draco felt tears sting his eyes. He shouldn't be crying in front of Potter anymore. He was twenty-seven; why wasn't he a grown-up yet? When Draco had been very young, he had thought that when he was older he would be just like his father and mother and always know what to do and what to say. It had taken him a long time to realize that was never going to happen. Even his father, who had always seemed so sure, must have wondered occasionally if he'd said or done the right thing. Before they executed him, he had said--fuck, now Draco really was going to cry. "What are you apologizing for?" he demanded furiously. "Professor Snape didn't throw himself in front of that curse for you. He did it to defeat the Dark Lord!"

"I know," Potter said. "I--look, I'm sorry, this was stupid. I'll leave you alone."

A minute ago, Draco had been desperate for Potter to do exactly that. Now, perversely, it made him angrier. "What did you want, anyway? Couldn't really enjoy yourself unless you were sure I was miserable, is that it?" He wasn't like this anymore, he thought despairingly. He really wasn't. Why was he acting like he was eleven again? Why couldn't he control the way Potter made him feel?

Potter sighed. "Actually, I wanted to wish you a happy birthday."

For a moment Draco was actually speechless. "What?"

"I wanted to wish you a happy birthday," Potter repeated, sounding annoyed now. "It is your birthday, isn't it?"

"Yes, but...but...how did you know that?"

He couldn't really see Potter's face, but he could tell from his voice that he was smiling. Smug bastard. "Come off it, Malfoy. We were archrivals! Of course I know your birthday. I bet you know mine, too."

"Obviously I know yours," Draco said acidly. "It's practically a national holiday. Oh wait, it is a national holiday. Zabini's been pestering me for months to march with Queer Wizarding Britain in the PotterFest '07 fucking parade!"

"Er," Potter said. "Right. Sorry, I forgot." He sounded pleased, the narcissistic sod.

"How can you forget?" Draco demanded, enraged. "Your speech is going to be projected into every fireplace in the country!"

"Actually, I was thinking of skiving off to Paris," Potter said. "Want to come?"

"Right," Draco said, having passed through anger into sheer disbelief, "because watching Harry Potter trying to pick up American girls in some Parisian nightclub is somehow preferable to going to a Harry Potter-themed parade. Because the point is not to avoid Harry Potter."

"For fuck's sake, Malfoy," Potter said, an edge in his voice, "aren't you over your epic hated of me yet?"

Draco took a deep breath. Then he took a few more. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I am. It's just hard to remember when you're standing there and it's our ten year reunion and you're so bloody successful, and I'm---I'm here with my straight best friend and hiding at the top of the Astronomy Tower so no one asks me what I'm doing these days."

"But you've got your own business and everything," Potter said in surprise.

He didn't bother to ask how Potter knew that. It was becoming clear that Potter was a stalker savant. "Yeah, a repair shop in Knockturn Alley. How prestigious," Draco said savagely. He took another deep breath. "I love the repair shop. It's just not the sort of thing you can brag about at a ten year reunion, you know? Not like being an Auror, or Witch Weekly's Bachelor of the Year." Why was he telling this to Potter?

"But you're good at it," Potter said, frustrated incomprehension clear in his voice. "Mr. Weasley says---" He broke off.

Draco smirked. "Ah yes, the Ministry employee told you how I fixed his second illegal flying automobile twice in six months, did he?"

"God, why are you such a wanker about everything?" Potter demanded. "Yes, he did! And he said you were bloody brilliant at it."

"Don't patronize me, Potter," Draco said tiredly, wishing he were at the shop right now, bright light shining on a device that didn't ask anything of him, that didn't change, that just waited patiently to be understood.

"I'm not," Potter insisted angrily. "I mean, I'm what? An Auror and Bachelor of the Year? Great, fighting evil and being single---the only two things I was ever any good at."

Draco considered laughing uproariously and agreeing. Why had that aspect of Bachelor of the Year five years running never occurred to him? He supposed that at the back of his mind, he had assumed that "bachelor" meant "playboy who saw no need to settle for one woman when a baker's dozen would do just as well." Potter seemed to be suggesting that this was not the case. This mollified Draco to quite an extent. "You were good at Quidditch," he said instead.

Potter smiled.

"What's the problem with getting girls, anyway?" Draco asked. "If you go down there you'll be swarming with women. It'll be just like old times." He remembered that, from sixth year. He remembered being exhausted and miserable and looking like shit, while Potter, tall and golden, walked through the halls with girls accumulating like barnacles on the Giant Squid. Draco had hated school. Why the hell had he let Pansy talk him into coming?

"They're all gossiping about old times," Potter said. "I wasn't here seventh year, I don't remember half the stuff they're talking about. Sixth year is kind of a blur, too. I think I spent most of it investigating your evil schemes. I didn't want to come either. Ron dragged me along; he said it would be fun, I always loved Hogwarts so much. But that's the worst of it. I loved it so much, I felt so safe here, and now everyone's different and some of them are dead, and I don't even remember some of their names, and---it was the safest place in wizarding Britain, and now---it just feels like a place. It's not mine anymore."

Draco was startled by this torrent of words. And he didn't understand. School had been so wretched. Of course, it was different for Gryffindors, he reminded himself. Even so, he couldn't imagine not wanting to go somewhere because you loved it too much. He missed Malfoy Manor every day. If it weren't a pile of rubble, he would go as often as he could, no matter how different it was. If the Weasley twins had bought it and turned it into a prank museum, he would still go. (The Weasley twins were numbers one and two on the list of England's Top Ten Richest Wizards.) "Safest place in wizarding Britain isn't saying much," he pointed out. "Death Eaters infiltrated the school how many times again?"

Potter laughed reluctantly. "I know," he said. "I suppose I meant---" He darted a glance at Draco, and stopped talking.

Draco knew how wrong it felt to turn a corner in the dungeons and know that no matter how many corners he turned, Professor Snape would never be striding towards him in those swoopy black robes, an affectionately venomous remark on his tongue. As hard as it was to imagine, that must be how Potter felt about Dumbledore. Tears pricked his eyes for the thousandth time that night, and Draco wished he had never gone to school at all. Illiteracy couldn't be too bad, could it? "I'm sorry about Dumbledore," he said. "I really am."

Potter didn't say anything. Instead he left the door and stood beside Draco at the edge of the tower. Paradoxically, Draco could see him more clearly away from the light. With only a silhouette to work with, Draco had been imagining Potter of ten years ago. Now he saw that Potter had grown up, too---had grown into himself. His hair was still an unruly thatch of dark curls, but it looked quieter, somehow. The taped-together round lenses that Draco remembered had given way to stylish rectangular frames. His clothes fit, and his open robes flattered his slender Seeker's build. That aggressively square jaw was at once softer and stronger.

Only his scar was exactly as Draco remembered it.

For long moments the tower was quiet. Finally, Potter said lightly, "Besides, I can't dance."

"Still?" Draco asked, leaping gratefully on the change of topic. "I mean, I remember your impression of a stampeding rhinoceros at the Yule Ball, but I assumed you'd have learned since then."

Potter laughed. "No, just as terrible as ever."

"But you play Quidditch," Draco said, genuinely puzzled. "You're coordinated. How can you be a bad dancer?"

"I don't know," Potter said, scowling faintly. "I just am."

Draco had forgotten Potter's scowl. It filled him with an odd mixture of automatic revulsion and nostalgia. "The trick is to look confident," he said.

"That was always your trick, not mine," Potter said.

Draco stared at him. Was Potter not even aware of his own instinctive arrogance? Draco had mastered the art of looking confident because, in the end, he wasn't. He had to fake it. Potter just knew he was better than everyone else---didn't he?

"I'll dance if you'll dance with me," Potter said, abruptly, and stared fiercely at the ground below the tower.

Draco stared harder. Then he drew his wand.

Potter didn't draw his, which irked Draco.

"Lumos," Draco said, and looked at Potter's face in the light. Potter was blushing. "Did you just ask me to dance?" Draco asked carefully.

"I realize we've aged, but you're still a little young to be going deaf," Potter snapped.

Draco didn't say anything.

Potter ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up and look rather more like Draco remembered it. "Why are you so surprised? You had to have noticed I was obsessed with you sixth year. It got to the point where my friends rolled their eyes and told me to shut up at the first mention of your name."

"Yes," Draco said in exasperation, "because you knew I was working for Voldemort."

"Right," Potter said slowly. "That's what I told myself." He sighed. "Believe me, I never spent an entire lunch hour staring at the inside of Snape's wrist hoping his robes would slip a little so I could see his forearm."

Draco blinked. For a moment, he could almost feel the Mark burning as it had in the days before Potter killed the Dark Lord. "But you already knew Snape was Marked," he pointed out, trying to put off the moment when he would actually have to deal with this. "Why would you have to?"

"Malfoy," Potter said in a tight voice, "for six years we always looked for each other first when we entered a room. And then during the war---"

"Because we were rivals," Draco said. "Because we hated each other! Besides," he added, trying to sound detached and ironic, "I'm always the cynosure of all eyes."

"Yeah," Potter said softly. "You are."

"So you're telling me," Draco said, "that our entire epic hatred was repressed sexual attraction?"

Potter smiled a little. It wasn't a smile Draco had ever seen on Potter's face before. If he had to describe it, he'd have called it "fond." "Well, maybe not at first," Potter admitted. "So can I kiss you?"

"Um, okay," Draco said without thinking, and then heard himself and opened his mouth to take it back, but he was distracted by Potter taking off his glasses. "Oh, so you want to kiss me, but you don't want to look at me while you do it?" he demanded.

Potter grinned. "Haven't you ever snogged someone with glasses before?"

"No," Draco said primly. "I have purposely avoided it. People with glasses remind me of you." Which was true. And suddenly Draco was wondering if that tiny feeling of vertigo he got in the pit of his stomach whenever he saw someone push their glasses up their nose, as if he were about to Portkey, was as pure a disgust as he'd always believed.

"You can't snog with glasses on," Potter explained. "They fog up and get greasy and catch on things. Don't worry. I know what you look like." Potter reached out blindly, and traced Draco's jaw with a finger. Then he stepped forward and carefully, very carefully, tilted his head and aligned his mouth with Draco's. Draco held his breath, his wand glowing forgotten in his hand. Then Potter kissed him.

Potter was a terrible kisser. It was all wet sloppiness and tongue and like he was trying to mash his face into Draco's. Draco shoved him away. "Ugh!" he said. "Apparently Girl Weasley's insane over-confidence didn't extend to give the Boy Who Lived pointers on his technique."

Potter's glazed expression gave way to the fieriest blush Draco had ever seen, and since he'd known Potter since he was eleven that was saying something. He stood there, half turned away, his breathing disordered and his skin bright scarlet, and didn't say anything.

Draco sighed and turned off his wandlight. "Come here," he said. "I'll show you how to do it properly." Draco couldn't see Potter's expression anymore, but he stepped forward. Draco reached out and pressed the flat of his hand against Potter's chest. Potter gasped, which was rather gratifying. Draco leaned forward and lightly brushed his lips against Potter's.

Potter tried to leap forward, but Draco pushed against his chest, and he stilled. Draco kissed Potter again, and then again, a little more firmly.

After a bit of that, Potter seemed to be getting the hang of it. His heart beat under Draco's palm, warm and steady and just a little fast. Draco let the tip of his tongue slip into Potter's mouth. Potter sucked on it lightly.

Draco realized that he was extremely turned on.

Which, of course, is when Potter pulled away. Wrenched away, more like. Draco's heart sank. He had a sudden, paranoid fear that Weasley and Granger were going to leap out from the stairwell and mock him.

"Um, I, um," Potter said. "Um. I really want to keep doing this. But I really don't want to do it here."

Draco looked around, and saw again the ring of Death Eaters and the flash of green light. "Yes," he agreed hastily.

"Can you give me light?" Potter asked, and Draco did. Potter put his glasses back on pulled a folded paper out of his pocket. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he muttered, touching his wand to the paper, and suddenly a map of Hogwarts appeared, perfect in every detail, and over it scurried---little footprints, with names next to them.

"Where did you get this?" Draco asked.

"My dad made it," Potter said off-handedly. He gave Draco a sidelong glance and smiled. "I spent a lot of time sixth year following your movements on it."

"That has to be illegal," Draco said, wondering if Potter would let him look at the map to see how it worked. "What are you looking for?"

"An empty classroom," Potter said.

"Oh," Draco said. "Good id---oh my God, Pansy and Weasley?!"

"Where?" Potter said, not sounding particularly horrified.

Draco pointed with a trembling finger at the Quidditch pitch. Where two sets of footprints marked "Pansy Parkinson" and "Ronald Weasley" were standing almost still by one of the goalposts.

"Well," Potter said, "maybe we can double date."

"Double date," Draco repeated blankly. "Have you gone completely mad? No wait, you've always been mad." He tried to imagine double dating with a Weasley. Words failed him. He dragged his eyes away from the map to Potter's face. Potter was watching Draco's expression, clearly trying not to smile.

Draco, somewhat to his surprise, had to fight to keep the corners of his own mouth from turning up. "I thought Granger had Weasley safely locked away where he could never blight the flower of Slytherin womanhood with his freckled touch," he said. "O Rose, thou art sick!" He made a grandly dramatic gesture that somehow ended with his hands on the opening of Potter's robes. Potter smiled wider, looking down at Draco's hands, and it somehow seemed perfectly natural to yank him towards Draco and show him how to kiss some more.

"Hermione is with Oliver Wood now," Potter murmured distractedly against Draco's mouth. "Come on. The classroom under us is free."

###

When Draco Apparated to his and Pansy's hotel room (they couldn't stay at the Hog's Head because Draco couldn't face Madam Rosmerta) early the next morning, Pansy wasn't back yet. The crack of her Apparation woke him around noon. "Er, Draco," she said shamefacedly when she saw him. "Weasley is getting me backstage passes to see Thomas and Finnegan's band at PotterFest. Are you sure you don't want to come?"

"I can't," Draco mumbled, rolling over. "I'm going to Paris with Potter."

Pansy laughed. She sounded happy. "You're still asleep, Draco," she said. "And you're going to be really embarrassed when I remind you about this dream later."

Had it been a dream? Draco considered carefully. It seemed likely, actually.

Then Pansy said, in pleasantly scandalized tones, "Draco, whoever has been sucking on your neck?"

"Not a dream," Draco said contentedly, and went back to sleep.