Title: Drawing

Author: Ceresi

Rating: PG

Summary: Harry and Dean share some quiet moments.

Author's Notes: Happy Christmas, til_midnight!

***

Harry was drawing and Dean was reading.

It was a bit unusual. Usually Dean was drawing and Harry was reading -- but Harry liked to draw sometimes, too, and Dean never read as much as he liked.

They were sprawled in Harry's bed, side by side. Harry's notebook was open and an inch from his nose, his shoulders hunched, his entire demeanor one of determination. Dean was lazily comfortable on his back, book held a safe distance away from his face. How he read like that Harry could never understand.

Dean glanced over idly at one point, prompting Harry to hunch further, amusement gone. He wasn't really ashamed of his drawings, but he knew that they didn't come close to Dean's.

Dean slipped closer, his forehead warm against Harry's arm. "No wonder you have glasses," he mused. "Back away from the paper, there, it's not going anywhere."

Harry backed off a bit. "I get focused."

"Really now." Dean smiled at him.

Harry shrugged wryly and went back to work.

No, his drawings weren't as good as Dean's, but he liked them. Dean's sketches were sparse and beautiful, entire rooms captured in a few lines, light and shadow painted in with sparse scribbles. Dean's portraits were lifelike and simple, real, full of space and touch.

Harry's drawing were cramped and flat. There was detail smushed into the oddest of places -- the carpet, the ceiling, the inside of a fireplace, the cracks on a windowsill. Everything was smeared and riddled with fingerprints. Hermione said it was because he pressed too hard when he was drawing, and she was probably right.

He liked them anyway. They weren't good or pretty. But he liked them.

"I wish you'd let me see your drawing," Dean said a moment later, a little wistfully.

"It's not good," Harry mumbled. "Not like yours."

Dean shrugged. "That's all right," he said.

Harry added another line to the blanket-covered mass that was Ron's empty bed.

"Not right now," he murmured, focused.

Dean watched him, noted the smudge of ink on his nose with amusement, and rolled onto his belly to read his book.

~

Harry slept, curled on his side, mouth slightly open. He had a cold and was breathing through his mouth a lot -- Dean followed Hermione's stern instructions and dabbed Hydrating Potion on Harry's chapped lips every so often, careful not to wake him (and how had she known that they were sleeping together?) until the scent of peppermint lingered sharply (oh, right, it was Hermione).

Dean waited until he was certain that Harry was totally asleep, until his fingers stopped twitching with nightmares and he quit making those worrisome little whimpers.

And then he slid the notebook out from beneath Harry's pillow and opened it.

It was probably a bit devious, looking through Harry's sketchbook when he was sleeping. Harry wouldn't be too happy if he knew. But Dean liked Harry's drawings, complex and sloppy and dark (sort of like Harry), and didn't want to give up looking at them.

He flipped through the older drawings even though he knew them by heart. The first was torn from an old notebook and pasted in -- a sketch from eleven-year-old Harry of the Great Hall.

Unlike the actual hall, it was totally empty, devoid of so much as a single person. But there were piles of food, books, papers, bookbags, even some shoes and gloves, bizarrely enough. Particular detail was lavished upon Dumbledore's and Hagrid's chairs. The Gryffindor table was front and center.

Dean smiled, traced the lines with his fingers (carefully - the ink couldn't be afford to be smeared much more) and flipped a few pages ahead.

Here was a drawing of the Transfigurations classroom, and one of the greenhouses (was that Neville's shadow in the corner?). One was of the Potion's classroom, so full of furious scribbles (Harry's attempt to capture the darkness of the room) that you couldn't make a thing of it. Probably a good thing, that.

Deeper in the notebook was a sketch of the Owlery, with a blobby scribble to cover up what might have been an attempt at Hedwig. Dean wished that Harry hadn't scratched it out. He didn't think it looked that bad. Harry obviously couldn't see the love he put into his own art.

Dean flipped through the rest of the notebook. He'd noticed it before and noticed it again -- there were no people. There were shadows sometimes, but that was it.

He'd at first assumed that it was because Harry didn't think he could draw people well, but sometimes he wondered. Dean knew enough about Harry's childhood to understand why Harry was so . . . quiet, so inside of himself. So many years of being bullied and crushed down. Sometimes he thought that Harry didn't draw people because he didn't like them.

There were only two exceptions -- one of a dozing, mop-headed figure, bent over a roll of parchment and surrounded by books. And another of a blanket-covered lump with it's feet poking from beneath the covers, pajamas an inch too short.

Dean turned to the most recent drawing with a sense of anticipation.

It was a bit like looking through a slightly skewed, black-and-white window to a few hours past. The picture was framed by the sweeping lines of Harry's bed-curtains, soft and elegant. Sunlight splashed through the window and the floor, over the clock on Seamus' bedside. Neville's small collection of Weird and Smelly Plants was left in shadow. Ron's picture of Hermione was a scribble with a gleam of light.

Along the bottom of the picture he could see the edge of Harry's bed and the rumpled bedspread. And . . . were those his hands, wrapped around a book?

He looked closely. He thought they were -- yes, those were his fingers, and that was his scar on his right thumb. Harry had even shaded the difference between the backs of his hands and his palms.

Dean looked at the picture for a moment and smiled briefly to himself. Eventually, he slipped the notebook beneath the Harry's pillow again and grabbed his wand.

"Nox," he whispered. The light went out.

Moonlight trailed in through a gap in the bed-curtains. Dean put his arm around Harry's hip and went to sleep, perhaps slightly happier than he had been before.