Chapter Text
It was a fucking cupboard.
And Harry would’ve been fine, would’ve gladly helped Draco to put their boxes filled with stuff they didn’t really need but wanted to keep nonetheless inside any other room – the attic, the scary basement, even the ‘sex bedroom’, as Draco had dubbed it when they’d been looking around the house for the first time.
Anything, except the fucking cupboard under the stairs.
As soon as he saw the door he’d recoiled, hitting his head on the ceiling on his jump, whilst the heavy box of old Potion journals of Draco hit the floor with a loud thud.
Everything inside Harry screeched to a halt, as if he’d somehow jumped on the emergency break, and when he’d moved away properly that he wasn’t able to touch the door, he just stared.
It’s just a door, he firmly reminded himself. It’s just a wooden door that leads to a simple, small room that just happens to be underneath a set of stairs.
But he couldn’t breathe.
It’s just a room, he thought, feeling as though something was crawling from the inside of his stomach up in his body, making it more and more difficult to focus on logical thought, but it’s a fucking cupboard.
Before he was able to stop himself he let out a whimpering sound – almost a moan and a cry in one, and it was loud, too, echoing through the small hall and up and up and up the stairs and –
Slam. “Harry?” came Draco’s voice from upstairs. “You okay?”
He wanted to yell back, but he couldn’t.
He wasn’t okay.
It was a cupboard under the stairs.
“Harry?” Draco repeated once more.
When Harry didn’t answer, he sighed, and he finally appeared on the top of the stairs. He just looked down for a minute, staring at the box – the journals had slipped out during their fall – and then at Harry, who kept staring at the door as if that might set it on fire.
Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, Draco came thundering down the stairs, jumped over the journals, and wrapped Harry up in his arms.
It was only then that Harry realized he’d been crying.