Okay babe so I did the dorm thing the other way around bc I couldn’t really see how the ENTIRE Gryffindor dorms would be useless and I did see how it would work with the Slytherin dorms so enjoy :DD
Also this is a no voldemort au I guess
“Flooded.” Draco repeats.
“Yes, flooded.” Snape says calmly. “The merepeople are in their mating season, so we have decided it best not to bother them until it is over, in four weeks.”
“Four weeks?” Several students demand. “Where are we supposed to stay?”
“There’s no place big enough to put all of you, so we’ll have to split you up.” Snape says. “First through third years, you’ll be staying with Hufflepuffs. Fourth and fifth years you’ll stay at Ravenclaw tower, and sixth and seventh years you’ll stay with the Gryffindors.”
There are several groans and dissatisfied comments, but no one’s stupid enough to bring them up to Snape directly.
Draco can feel his face heating, and they’re not even there. Fuck, but it had to be the Gryffindors. It could’ve been the Hufflepuffs or the Ravenclaws, Houses where Draco doesn’t have a crush on anyone, but no. Of course it’s the Gryffindors, with Harry Potter and his bloody green eyes and dark hair, who hates Draco. Who Draco doesn’t hate at all.
Honestly, this is going to end with Draco embarrassing himself terribly.
It doesn’t have to be him, he comforts himself lightly. There are a lot of other Gryffindor boys, I probably won’t be in his dorm.
“Four weeks?” Several Gryffindors demand, Ron among them. “We’re supposed to host them for four weeks?”
McGonagall looks over them sternly. “Yes.” The Gryffindors begin to protest, but she continues speaking calmly. “And I expect you all to be on your best behavior. Understood?”
Everyone grumbles their agreement, and Harry groans.
“Wait,” Hermione says, because, of course, she’s the one to think of everything. “Will they be rooming with us?”
A new wave of protests begins even before McGonagall has answered. She pinches the bridge of her nose.
The Gryffindor bedrooms are exactly the same as the Slytherin ones - with the exception that you can see the Black Lake through the Slytherin ones, and these ones are filled with sunlight instead of the murky, filtered sunlight that Draco’s used to - but with three extra beds in each of them, the room’s incredibly cramped.
And of course - of course - Draco not only did get appointed to Potter’s dorm, but he got the bed next to Potter’s. Obviously.
“This is going to be crap.” Blaise says, looking around at the room. The five Gryffindors inside are glaring at them - not that he cares - and Draco sighs. He doesn’t want to be stuck here four weeks. Especially not next to Potter.
“Oh, really?” The Weasel asks, glare narrowing. “Because we were all so excited.”
Draco rolls his eyes and ignores them. He doesn’t know what it is that Blaise hates so much about the Weasel; secretly, he thinks that Blaise has feelings for the git - which Draco thinks is disgusting, because Gryffindors - but he can hardly talk.
He walks over to his bed - Potter is standing next to it, leaning against the poster of his own bed, arms crossed and scowling - and leaves his things in it.
“Nothing to say, Malfoy?” Potter asks with a cocked eyebrow.
Draco lifts an eyebrow back and drawls, “Pointing out everything that is wrong with this isn’t even worth my time, Potter.”
Potter clenches his jaw - and he looks so, so attractive like that, which is part of the reason why Draco enjoys making him angry - and tightens his fists at his sides.
Not angry enough, then, yet, Draco thinks.
The other reason Draco enjoys angering him so much is because Potter gets… physical, in his anger. He grabs the front of Draco’s shirt, or pushes him against the wall, and though Draco will die before he admits to it, it turns him on.
Also it’s entirely too pleasurable to be able to get under Potter’s skin, when no one else seems to be able to.
Potter doesn’t respond, so Draco turns on his heel and walks away.
“Where are you going?” Theo asks as he passes him.
“Anywhere but here,” Draco responds.
Harry doesn’t think about how Malfoy is on the bed next to him. Well, he does, but only because it’s annoying. Of all Slytherins that he could have sleeping at his side, it had to be Malfoy.
He can’t sleep - somehow Malfoy’s fault, Harry’s convinced - and he’s frustrated, Merlin knows why.
He lets out an annoyed groan and opens the drapes to his bed to get some air - it was getting suffocating - and looks around the dark dorm. With the extra beds, there’s barely any room to stand, so he doesn’t.
Most of the drapes are closed - Neville always sleeps with his open, because he’s afraid of the shadows through the drapes - but he can see the shadows in them. He’s contemplating grabbing the map and the cloak and walking around - his dad gave it to him in his third year, and the only teacher Harry hadn’t been able to get past with it had been Remus - when there’s a small sound to his left.
He looks over to Malfoy’s bed, frowning lightly.
He can see Malfoy’s shadow in the bed, and he appears to be asleep, so Harry doesn’t know where the sound came from. He’s half convinced he imagined it when there’s another one, and it’s definitely coming from Malfoy’s bed.
Another few sounds, and Harry realizes they’re words. He leans closer to listen better, wondering if Malfoy is speaking to someone.
“No… ‘s not fair… ‘s shiny…” Harry snorts. Somehow the idea of Malfoy sleep-talking is… not entirely disgusting. He’ll die before he admits that, though. “‘So shiny… mmhmm… huggable.”
Malfoy continues muttering, but it’s nonsense, so Harry leans away. The fact that Malfoy’s mumbling about something that’s huggable and shiny is very weird to Harry. He’d been half-convinced that the prick only dreamt up new insults for him.
And though he will never admit it - never - it’s… adorable.
Harry shudders. He never wants to think of Malfoy and adorable in the same context.
Sharing a common room is more complicated than Draco thought it would be. It’s packed, and though him, Blaise, Theo, and Pansy are sitting near the windows, he feels suffocated.
Pansy’s going on about Granger and her hair - or her eyes, or whatever the fuck it is today - while Draco muses about how three of the four of them have crushes on Gryffindors and how ridiculous it is, considering how much they’re supposed to hate the house.
And don’t get him wrong, Draco still hates the house. He thinks they’re a bunch of bloody morons who have hearts bigger than their brains. They’re reckless, and dense, and pathetically passionate about everything.
He also hates that those are a lot of the things he likes about Harry Potter. He’d given up on his crush going away by fourth year, so by now he’s learned to simply… live with it. He catches sight of Potter in the halls and if his brain goes ‘he looks so good today’ or ‘his eyes’, or simply goes entirely blank, he’s learned to wait it out. When he finally gets it working again he insults Potter badly enough that the git will never figure out Draco has a crush on him.
It’s a terrifying discovery when Harry’s in the middle of sneaking out of the dorm to go for a fly and he’s suddenly faced with Draco Malfoy walking towards the common room.
Because the Gryffindor dorms are not the same as the Slytherin dorms, instead of walking towards the door, Malfoy walks straight into the wall. Harry winces in sympathy at the loud sound.
Though he hadn’t gone far the first few nights, sleeping-Malfoy has evidently gotten better at it, because he doesn’t walk into the wall this time. Harry knows that - logically - he should let it be. He doesn’t care where Malfoy goes. If the git ends up falling down the stairs because he thinks he has to go up them, Harry doesn’t mind.
Hogwarts has a lot of stairs, he thinks, chewing on his lower lip.
Fuck, but he already knows what he’s going to do.
Grabbing the cloak and cursing colorfully, he slips out the door and follows Malfoy. He manages to get out of the common room without hurting himself, but when they’re outside, he takes a wrong turn and nearly falls down the stairs.
Harry casts a levitating charm just in time - he’s not going to touch Malfoy because he doesn’t want to wake him - and the prick regains his footing, seemingly okay with the fact that he’s going down the stairs when he meant to go up them.
Harry follows him throughout the castle - he has to intervene and turn Malfoy around, levitate him, or outright grab the collar of his shirt to keep him from falling down or knocking into walls - and soon enough he finds himself in the seventh floor corridor. He doesn’t know where Malfoy thinks he’s going - he was muttering a lot about cruppies and warm - but the door he opens happens to be the one to the room of requirement.
When he walks in, the place has a few sofas, a fireplace, and books. A lot of books.
Bloody nerd, he thinks, rolling his eyes fondly.
Malfoy sits on the couch and snuggles into the cushions. It’s…
Not adorable, Harry thinks firmly. Not again.
Malfoy begins muttering about grades and papers that are due - Harry half wonders if Hermione does that - and Harry sighs and sits on the other sofa, settling in for whenever the blond git decides to go back to their room.
It becomes a routine. Harry sleeps lightly, and any sound that alerts him that Malfoy has gotten up wakes him up. He follows the git to the room of requirement again, then to the library, even to the astronomy tower - Malfoy, even asleep, looks confused when he sits down and there’s nothing - evidently not the room he’d meant to end up in - and after he falls on his arse and merely sighs and gets up again, Harry realizes that he’s a deep sleeper. A very deep sleeper.
Harry - because he doesn’t have the time to wait around for when Malfoy decides to go back to their room, and sometimes Malfoy doesn’t even do that, merely falls asleep soundly wherever they are - has taken to carrying Malfoy back to their dorm.
He doesn’t know why, but when he’s holding Malfoy close to his chest and he’s muttering about assorted sweets, face slack and sweet, Harry feels… content.
Of course, Malfoy hasn’t become less of a git when he’s awake, but Harry… doesn’t quite mind it now. It seems impossible to take Malfoy’s insults seriously when Harry’s heard him babble about how much he loves potatoes in his sleep.
So, instead of insulting him back, Harry has passed on to complimenting him.
It makes Malfoy turn red, and Harry doesn’t want to think about why that’s the most satisfying reaction he’s ever gotten out of Malfoy.
Of course, when he discovers that calling Malfoy sweetheart literally turns him scarlet, he begins calling Malfoy that every day.
Both Ron and Hermione seem very confused as to what’s going on.
Harry is, too, if he’s honest, but he’s rolling with it.
“You’re being weird.” Draco snaps outright at Potter.
Potter only raises an eyebrow calmly, not bothering to look up from the book he’s reading.
“Am I, sweetheart?” he asks.
The common room is emtpy - it’s Friday afternoon, and everyone’s watching the Quidditch match - except for them.
“Yes,” Draco huffs. “So cut it out.”
“Cut what out?” Potter asks. He looks up for a moment, and then back down at his book. “You have nice eyes.”
Draco’s entire face burns. “That!” He snaps, ignoring his blush. “Complimenting me. Calling me sweetheart.”
“No?” Potter asks. “Would you prefer love? Darling?”
Draco would very much enjoy to be called that. By Potter, specifically.
“I like that it makes you blush.” Harry says.
Draco’s face gets hotter, and he splutters for a second. “I - you - I - no.”
“No!” Draco says. “I mean no! That’s not what we do!”
“What do we do again?” Potter finally looks up from his book and at Draco, and Draco’s satisfied for a moment, until Potter stands up. He’s not taller than Draco, but he’s broader around the shoulders, and the way he’s staring at him… it makes Draco feel odd. “Argue? Throw insults? I’m finding this to be way more fun, sweetheart.”
And then he presses a kiss to Draco’s nose and leaves.
Draco collapses on the couch.
That night, Harry’s woken because someone draws the drapes of his bed back. He’s about to say something when he realizes it’s Malfoy, and that he’s asleep.
Malfoy crawls into his bed and snuggles close to Harry - Harry freezes, because as much as the flirting was fun when it flustered Malfoy, this is… actually not entirely uncomfortable, he realizes.
He wraps an arm hesitantly around Malfoy - Malfoy lets out a very attractive, satified moan - and Harry groans and slaps a hand to his forehead.
Fuck, he thinks. I like him now, don’t I?
