Rewound (Drarry)

I'd Rather Take the Dragon

Harry was growing increasingly less anxious as the First Task approached. He suspected he should feel otherwise - especially considering it was only a day away - but he didn't. He and Draco had now been publicly establishing their not-hatred of one another for almost an entire month, and Harry was already reaping the weight off his shoulders that came with not having to disguise his newfound affection for his 'reluctant' companion.

Draco was still as surly as ever, but Harry couldn't find it within himself to care. Now that Hermione had readily accepted that Draco was no longer an 'arrogant prejudiced airhead'; after Draco had written her a long winded apology for his treatment of her, accompanied by a pristine set of Newt Scamander's 'Fantastic Beasts' novels, Harry was spending time with him far more frequently.

The time he normally would have spent fooling around with Ron, was now spent in the Library with Draco, figuring out ways to fix the timeline before everything fell apart. Once Harry had finally decided to ignore his misgivings about him and had given into his desires to tell Draco absolutely everything about the first timeline, they'd both agreed it would be wise to go about destroying the Horcruxes they currently had access to before the battle of Hogwarts.

There was no need for them to wait around for seventh year to rid themselves of Ravenclaw's Diadem. The locket, the cup and particularly Nagini were not quite so simple. But they could wait. They were still only in fourth year, they had enough time to figure out what to do with the rest before the situation became too dire.

They planned to enter the Chamber of Secrets once again, retrieve an ample supply of fangs and then destroy the diadem in the Room of Requirement. It was decided they would attempt this after the First Task and the Yule Ball, that way they'd have plenty of time before the next stress inducing event would take place.

Despite all Draco's complaints, and intense denial that he felt anything other than a complete tolerance of Harry, Harry knew better. Draco liked hanging out with him. And Harry found that he also liked hanging out with Draco.

He was far more interesting than anyone else he knew. Perhaps this was due to the maturity difference between the two of them and the others in their year, it wasn't as if anyone else was secretly a deeply traumatised seventeen-year-old, but it felt like more than that.

Draco understood him, he treated him differently than everyone else did.

Draco never revered him, or pitied him, or treated him like he was an abandoned bag in a train station emitting a ticking noise. He was just normal around him.

It felt slightly surreal, to have someone who knew him, who actually knew him and all his emotional baggage and trauma and history and panic attacks and just simply didn't care for any of it.

Someone who didn't treat him any different for it.

It was wonderful. Really, Harry wished he and Draco had gotten past all their political, familial, war-related differences seven years earlier, because then they could've just been friends right from the start. They were exceptionally different, but also astoundingly similar all at the same time. They had so much to talk about. They spent an obscene amount of time together doing nothing but talking and yet they still would fill sheets and sheets of parchment sending owls back and forth.

That wasn't even the extent of their friendship either, sure, talking was fun, but Draco could also make Harry laugh. Like, actually, seriously laugh. For all his slightly unpleasant, judgemental tendencies, Draco's humour was not at all at the expense of others. He would make jokes about anything, usually sarcastic and snide; but never cruel- and they were always just hilarious.

Being around Draco was exhilarating in a way Harry had never felt before. Even fighting with him was exciting- although, in fairness it always had been. They would argue back and forth, sometimes over things neither of them could even remember in the end, both too stubborn to admit defeat, until one of them would say something too unserious to keep going and they'd both collapse in fits of laughter. Madam Pince had even thrown them out of the Library for it once, and that had only made it that much funnier.