golden longings

XXXVI

***

Draco felt like his tongue was impossibly loosened. More than when they had been spiked with Veritaserum.
It felt similar to the way his arms felt when he held a heavy object and then let go. Lighter than usual.

Maybe he had held his tongue for so long that once he let go, it just became too light. Forming words and letting them float out before he could overthink and swallow them back down.

The look on Harry's face, which he was still observing, changed. It looked determined. Accordingly, Harry took a deep breath. And then he spoke.
"I needed to know when I would get to see you again."

Draco wasn't entirely sure what he had expected. Beyond gaining clarity, he didn't even know what the goal of his line of questioning was.
But he knew that the answer he got wasn't the one he had expected. Or the one he had been looking for.
Instead it was an answer that only lead him to more questions. And one that let his heart beat just a little higher again.

Although not as unpleasantly as before. It didn't feel like it was about to break out of his chest anymore. The beats were steady. Just faster than usual, and a little more intense. Or maybe he just felt them more intensely.
He wasn't even sure what the difference was anymore.

"You saw me this morning."
"But not like this. Not in a way where we could talk."
As oppose to his unusually fast heartbeats, he felt like his mind was running exceptionally slow. Whatever Harry was trying to say didn't seem to register with it. His mind refused to read the subtext beyond any of the words being said.

"I think we spoke."
He felt stupid. Like a student that failed to grasp a concept in class and kept repeating the same mistakes and asking the same questions about them.
"Godric, how much do I need to spell it out?"
That wasn't something he would have expected Harry would ever ask him. Even less that it would be justified.

Draco was aware that Harey was trying to spell something out. He just wasn't able to combine the letters into a coherent word. They kept getting mixed up. Or he kept mixing them up.
Either way, he failed to compile whatever it was that Harry was attempting to spell.

And he suspected that it was just as tiring for Harry as it was for him to repeat the process.
But the message kept getting lost in translation.
Ironically they needed to be more clear in what they were trying to say.
Draco almost had to bite back a laugh.
The conversation he had initiated to find some clarity kept stumbling over a lack of clarity.

"Do you mean that you wanted to speak to me in a more private environment?"
The more he asked freely what he wanted to know, the easier it became to voice the questions that scared him. And he had nothing to lose that he didn't already expect.

"You could put it like that. Or you could say that I enjoy spending time with you. Just you."
There was the next statement that made Draco question if maybe there was really a possibility that Harry was flirting with him. And the question became more pressing each time Harry did it. Which was comparatively frequently that night.

"Which begs the question why you enjoy that. And why only past curfew."
That was the most polite way to phrase his question that Draco could think of. And the most discrete one as well.
Even if he had thrown himself down the rabbit hole of questions, there was no need to be uncomfortably direct.

But Harry shook his head.
"Or the question why you are the one always asking, and I'm stuck answering. I think we should reverse the roles."
Draco raised his hands defensively, up to about his chest.
When he let them sink again, he grinned widely.