Title: Diary

By: ExquisitelyInked

Summary: Draco's eyes fill with tears as he reads the untidy scrawl that fills the first line of the first page of the diary of Harry Potter.

Rated: T

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Note: Please review. I worked hard on this. I did my best, and now it's edited.

Needlessly comparing himself to his dad because he doesn't know his own value, the fool.

Draco's eyes fill with tears as he reads the untidy scrawl that fills the first line of the first page of the diary of Harry Potter. He doesn't want to cry; he just becomes too sensitive toward anything related to Harry Potter. He takes care not to stand up, because the cubicles are meant to separate people who are sitting; if he stood up his blond head would be prominent amongst all the other Aurors. There are no doors in the cubicles; boxes, merely, to segregate them.

I love him, but I can't tell him, because we're supposed to be enemies even now, even when we're Auror partners, no matter how much I want to rectify the slight mistake of not taking his hand in our first year.

He runs a finger over the writing and remembers. He recollects it in vivid and painful detail. He also remembers the harsh treatment given by the other wizards after the war, the treatment that broke him, that reduced him to almost nothing. Remembers the strings Harry had to pull to free Draco and his mother from the clutches of Azkaban.

Every time he stares at me I forget to breathe. Every time we look at each other I feel like holding him tight to me. I want to kiss him and love him and go to the ends of the earth for him. So what if I hated him during our time at Hogwarts?

Draco wants to shout that he, too, wants to do all that for Harry, but he is in the next office and would hear, and his little theft would be caught. He crouches down.

I love him. Isn't that enough?

Yes, it is, Draco wants to cry, but he keeps quiet as the sounds of mindless humming of a tune Draco doesn't recognize keep reaching his ears from the mouth of Harry Potter. But after a few bars, he identifies the song: "Do You Love Me Still?" by a Muggle English band.

The war is four years gone now; but I don't understand why the wizarding world will not let Draco live it down. They will torture him until he kills himself because it's only more fodder for the journalists to feed on; "Last in the Malfoy line commits suicide due to depression over long-gone war. Death Eater Draco Malfoy, Auror Draco Malfoy."

Draco chokes back a sob, but a tear slides down his face anyway. He never remained the haughty son of an aristocrat that he was in his school years. War changes some things.

I love Draco Malfoy. That is enough. No one has the right to forcefully influence my emotions.

I will not let him be bogged down by the filthy likes of those scavengers, dirty excuses for journalists, harlots like Skeeter. He is mine, and that is carved into stone. If not, what do I have a wand for?

Note: Loads of large stones lying by Shell Cottage. Nick one, carve the sentence, enlarge it, put a Permanent Sticking Charm on it and glue it to the ceiling of the Ministry's main hall.

Draco's hands are shaking. He steadies his fingers, and reads on.

Not even the gossipmongers will be able to break us apart – I will protect him with all that I have, because Draco Malfoy deserves to be given a chance to be happy, and everyone is coming in the way of that chance.

The quiet sound of him breathing next to me, in the cubicle beside mine is the only sound in the world that will calm me down because Draco's alive. If he was depressed I'd know, because then no sound comes at all. He breathes almost too quietly then.

Snide comments that everyone shoots at him—I hear those, and I am prepared to spend my life in Azkaban if all the people that insult him find a very tiny, very uncomfortable space in hell by my wand.

Sometimes his mask slips; he is vulnerable, and I hate to see him like that, because Draco Malfoy is absolutely untouchable. No one can compare to him. He is this perfection that can't be eclipsed, and I want to yell to the world to leave him alone. He suffered too much years back. He does not need more. I've never seen a genuine smile light his face up, never during my school years, neither during Auror training, nor nowadays, when he's around me for the most part of the day.

And at that very moment Draco smiles through his tears.

It's now, that I realize just how susceptible Draco is. Prone to the slightest of insults, because now he has nothing to hide behind. He hated Voldemort just as much as I did, and yet the Dark Mark burned his forearm and his wand pointed at Professor Dumbledore. I want him to trust me. Even if no one is on his side, I will stick to him and let him know that I support him, and maybe that would make all the difference for him. I don't know.

There the only entry in the book ends, signed with nothing except the initials HP. Why only one entry? But Draco doesn't know. But then he wonders if he was meant to find this.

Draco closes the book. Suddenly there is someone at the entrance of his little "office", and Draco looks up to find messy black hair, shining green eyes and round-rimmed spectacles peering at him. 'Have you by any chance seen a small silver journal, Malfoy? It was really important to me,' Harry asks earnestly, face pink. Draco notices this for the first time, and his eyes fill up again. Harry observes this, asking, 'You're crying?' He takes a small step forward, then a larger one as a tear falls.

Then Draco holds up the diary.

Harry falls back in feigned surprise, but then Draco gets up and approaches Harry. He loves how Harry is just a couple of inches taller, because he wants to rise on his tiptoes and wrap his arms around Harry and kiss him forever—and he does exactly that. And Harry kisses back, because there is no way he will deny a single word of what is written in there.

Everyone is staring at the pair of them, abandoning their work, and there are a million flashes of wizard camera lights from Colin Creevey, who somehow managed to pass the Auror training and smuggled his photography items along with him to his workplace, but Harry doesn't care, for at that moment, Draco was safe from the outside world. In Harry's arms.

And Merlin knows how much both needed that.