Hello!! Hope you're having a good day today! 😊 I saw you reblogged that post about the drabble challenge with the numbered prompts, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in writing some sort of Harry Potter-related drabble with prompt number 149? 🤗
OH MY GOSH! Thank you @erroneouslygrey!!! Here you go!! It ended up a bit longer than a 100 words (ha ha like I could be that brief) - I hope you like it?! Please keep in mind this is unbetad! I think I got it all in the same tense, at least!
149. We started with one and now we have seven. You have no chill.
When Harry entered the flat, he could hear the sound of voices in the living room and wondered for a moment who Draco had over. He quickly realized it was only the telly. It was Ron who’d cracked the magic to make it work, though Harry couldn’t understand how, even with all the channels available, there was almost never anything to watch, except HGTV.
He did have a fondness for HGTV, he had to admit. Especially, though he’d never admit it except under the pain of torture, that show about the weddings. A Wedding Story. Harry liked that one. No reason, really, he told himself, thinking of the small velvet box hidden in his sock drawer. No reason at all.
Harry glanced into the living room, frowning when he found it empty. There was some American game show on the screen, broadcasting panic and euphoria across the room in equal measures.
Harry shook his head and, dropping his bag on the floor, made his way into the kitchen. There were some signs of life there, pasta boiling merrily on the stove and steaming up the windows, a cheerful chopped salad in the big wooden bowl that Hermione had given them last Christmas on the table. The small countertop tv in here was turned to some solemn talking head, blathering about some national crisis or other. But no Draco.
Harry made his way up the stairs. The TV in the den was turned to a black and white movie, with Godzilla terrorizing… Harry squinted, was that New York? He shook his head again and headed into the bedroom.
The TV in there had some terrifying woman in very short shorts doing some sort of aerobics or possibly having a seizure. It was difficult to tell. Still no Draco.
Harry opened the door to the ensuite. Draco was here, submerged in a mound of bubbles. He’d clearly not been expecting Harry because he was sporting a gorgeous bubble mohawk and a luxurious bubble beard. The tv in here, bolted to the wall and when, exactly, had THAT happened, Harry wondered, was tuned to some music video that had a large number of strikingly attractive young men dancing in the desert? With ballet dancers?
“Draco,” Harry said firmly and Draco gave a winsome smile from behind his beard of bubbles.
“Harry! Light of my life. Joy in my heart. Pain in my ass. You’re home early!”
“No,” Harry was compelled to point out, “I’m actually forty-five minutes late. Draco, we have to talk.”
At these ominous words, Draco sat up and bubbles flew about the room. He frowned, looking genuinely concerned.
“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“It’s just,” Harry ran a hand through his hair, made even more unruly than usual by the high humidity in the bathroom, “Draco. The televisions.”
Draco made a face that somehow managed to convey simultaneously both what on earth are you talking about and okay yeah maybe it’s a bit much.
“Hmmm,” was all he said though and he gave Harry a quizzical look through the frosty pink bubbles.
“It’s just, we have seven, and you have no chill,” Harry said and Draco made his saddest face. “Don’t even do that, I’m immune to your puppy dog eyes.”
Draco made the face even harder, if that was possible, and Harry stared at him, trying to steel his will, but it was no use. He crumbled like a cookie, the way he always did.
“I mean, it’s fine, you know. It’s just, I think it’s enough.”
There was a long pause and then, “I don’t like the silence,” Draco said quietly and Harry stared at him. Draco’s voice was low and serious, at odds with his ridiculous appearance.
“What?”
“I just,” Draco mimicked Harry’s running-hands-through-his-hair gesture and snorted when his fingers came back covered in foam. Pink glittery foam. “It’s too quiet when you’re working these late nights, and I get.” He flushed and looked away. “I get reminded, you know? I don’t like it. I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot.”
Draco shook his head, splashed morosely for a moment and then dipped under the water to haphazardly rinse the bubbles away. He surfaced with a gurgle and pointed at the heated towel rack — nifty charmwork, that — and Harry grabbed a towel and shook it out, ready to wind it around Draco’s slim body as he stood up, bubbles and water streaming off of him.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Harry said finally, wrapping the towel around Draco and pulling him in for a hug, ignoring the bubbles. “What do you mean?”
Draco’s voice was muffled as he answered. “I just get reminded of those nights, you know? Back then. When everyone was out, doing… horrible things and I was home, just waiting. The noise, the voices, even the laugh tracks.” Harry felt him shrug and held on even tighter. “It helps, that’s all.”
“Well,” Harry said, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “Then maybe we need just one more.”
Tugging gently, he guided Draco back into the bedroom and silenced the tv with a flick of his wand. He pushed Draco down to sitting on the bed and went to the dresser, opened his sock drawer. Pulling out the small, velvet box, he turned back to where Draco was watching him, eyes bright in the light from the fireplace. Harry flipped open the box and held it out.
“Just one other thing,” he said, and Draco smiled.
