Fandom: Harry Potter
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers. No copyright infringement intended.
Title: If I Could Tell You
Characters/Pairing: Draco, Harry/Draco
Rating: G
Word Count: 500 (Precisely! *beams*)
Status: Complete
Summary: In the face of his upcoming marriage, Draco thinks about his life's choices.
Warnings: NONE!
Note: Written for: awdt's prompt — "Time will say nothing but I Told You So." From a poem by W. H Auden. I've stolen quite a bit from this poem. Hence some angsty contemplation. Not my usual style, I was actually kinda playing with it ... so uh ... concrit is most welcome.

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If I Could Tell You

 

Time will say nothing but I told you so, Draco thinks while he stands by the window; his forehead pressed to the glass and arms folded over his chest. He can hear his mother and fiancée discussing lilies, daisies and roses for the wedding, with laughter and happiness in their voices, oblivious to the fact that he's not even listening. He should be laughing with them, but it's hard to laugh when you feel like the walls are closing in on you, threatening to crush you while you wonder why you aren't fighting back.

Draco stares at the yellow leaf as it sways gently on the wind, then lands on the sidewalk, near the sewer drain. It's a sad fate, Draco contemplates, the leaf will fall into the dark sewer and remain trapped there forever until it decays. It has never even had a choice.

The leaf flutters away as a person walks by and its sad destiny is momentarily delayed until the wind blows it back to its grave again. Draco lifts his gaze towards the man whose footsteps have saved the leaf, just as the man pauses when an elderly woman stops him with a greeting. He smiles warmly; the frames of his glasses glimmering, reflecting the light of the dying sun. The sunset paints his skin golden and adds a glow to his dark hair and for some reason Draco finds it painful to look at him.

He looks anyway, thinking it's strange but fitting — that Draco stands here in the dark, confining shop, feeling like he's drowning while Potter is outside in the sun, shimmering like hope and looking like salvation. He wonders if this is how things will be forever. Will Draco be trapped in a loveless marriage, regretting he has never tried to escape? Never even tried to speak with Potter out of fear of rejection and scorn.

Time will say nothing but I told you so, when Potter marries and lives happily ever after with someone else. Draco wonders if he'll get his happily ever after as well, or is his happiness outside of his control, bound to the whims of time just like the solitary leaf is at the mercy of the ruthless wind. If he acts now, walks out, and tells Potter what he has wanted to tell him for a long time, will it change his fate, or is it long overdue?

Potter shakes the woman's hand and walks away, and suddenly Draco's belief in not chasing after what you cannot obtain doesn't seem like prudence anymore, but cowardice.

A gust of wind picks up the leaf and it soars high towards the sky, fluttering as though it's aware of its good fortune. Draco stares at it in envy until he realises that he has been wrong; the leaf's destiny has not been sealed.

His legs shake and his heart beats madly, but Draco takes a deep breath and opens the door.

Perhaps his fate has not been sealed either.

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Fin

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