Work Text:
He can’t see Malfoy in the darkness, can’t make out if he too is lying in bed staring up at the ceiling in a mockery of sleep, but he can hear his faint breaths, steady and present just across the room.
“Tell me something no one knows,” Harry whispers.
He can hear the buzz of midnight, the faint call of a loon in the distance, maybe even the lapping waves of the Black Lake against the shore, before he hears an answer.
“I think,” Malfoy says quietly, a wisp of air in the night. “I think I love you.”
And he says it as though it’s not a secret. Not a guilty thing passed between two people in the dead of night, bearing the burden of knowledge—Harry has had enough of secrets. No, Malfoy says it like an admission. Softly spoken, given and received willingly. A gift of trust. He can imagine it falling from Malfoy's lips and into Harry's open palms, small and delicate as he cups it in his hands and holds it to his chest. It's a tender thing, to be nurtured and protected, but not to be hidden away, never to see the light of day. Not a horcrux or a hallow or a boy in a cupboard.
Hearing those three words doesn’t make Harry's shoulders feel any heavier, not the way it did when Ginny had told him before he’d left on his hunt or the way it sometimes does when Hermione says it on bad days, face pinched and concerned. Instead, hearing it from Malfoy makes him feel light. He feels free, and warm, and open.
“Everyone knows I was obsessed with you,” Malfoy continues, heedless of Harry’s racing pulse. “I was so obsessed with you, I did anything for your attention. I was cruel and hateful and petty. It was one of the hardest things to slowly realize that obsession was attraction. I wanted you so much, I hated it. I hated you. But now I know you, and-and I know I’m a coward”—Malfoy’s breath hitches, a knife in the dark. “—but loving you is the easiest thing I've ever done.”
“I don’t think I’m easy to love,” Harry replies after a moment, a barely-there whisper, an admission of his own.
A muffled rustle sounds from Malfoy’s bed and Harry thinks he can see the jut of his chin now or the curve of his cheekbone in the dim moonlight as he turns towards Harry. He can imagine the way Malfoy’s eyes must be staring back, grey and honest and another admission, but of whose Harry isn’t sure.
“You are,” Malfoy says then. Not an admission this time, but a truth. Sure and clear and simply spoken.
Harry closes his eyes against the breadth of it all. Of the ache in his chest, too big for words, too big for the quiet of their shared dorm. It pierces through him, leaving him raw and exposed.
Oh, Harry thinks, holding a palm to his chest, fingers shaking, his heart thudding in his ears. I feel love.
“You aren’t a coward,” Harry says then, because he realizes now the terror of admitting to that—to love, and also because it’s true.
“I am tonight,” Malfoy replies, and Harry can hear his smile. “But I won’t be tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you in the light.”
And this time he says it as though it’s a vow.
Warm all over, Harry bundles into his blankets, listening again to Malfoy’s quiet breaths across the room, and makes a vow of his own.