Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter characters, they belong to J.K. Rowling.

A/N: This is a short one-shot I thought up when listening to Jack's Mannequin and this line caught me. Please review!

Sometimes perfection can be, it can be perfect hell.

- Jack's Mannequin

Not for the first time did Harry wonder how he gotten to where he was today. It was a thought that ran through his mind daily now as the anticipated, more like dreaded, day inched closer. After months of thinking, Harry knew it started from the very beginning. If Harry hadn't met Draco Malfoy when he did his fate would have been forever changed. There was the huge possibility that he wouldn't have been sorted in Gryffindor, wouldn't have befriended Ron or Hermione, and a million other possibilities, but there was one thing he knew for sure. He sure as hell wouldn't be engaged to Ginny Weasley and sitting at his engagement party wishing he was drunk so he wouldn't remember the evening the next morning.

Oh sure, Harry knew as soon as Ginny developed a crush on him and that crush continued to last that her family would push for them to be together, Ron included. As an adolescent Harry had wanted a family so bad and when the Weasleys eagerly accepted him he embraced it, but as he grew older he felt the weight of expectation that he never had with the Dursleys begin to fall on his shoulders, as if he didn't have enough high expectations already. It would begin with little comments from Molly on how if only Harry was really part of their family and didn't Ginny look so lovely today?

When Harry had started dating Ginny he realized what a mistake that was and when they had broken up shortly he immediately saw the consequences. The Weasleys became cooler with him and Ron's temper flared more often and all this was occurring while he was trying to hunt down Voldemort and horcruxes. He really didn't see why the family refused to understand that dating Ginny Weasley was not on the top of his priority list at the moment and even after the war was over and he stayed with them this attitude remained. Harry was an emotional mess when the war ended with the many deaths, especially Dumbledore's, the destruction of Hogwarts from the Final Battle, and then the bitterness coming from the Weasleys. He felt guilty about Bill even though it wasn't directly his fault that he had been bitten and also about Fred so he did what he thought would please them because he desperately needed something to grasp on to after everything.

He started dating Ginny again. It took less than a day to realize he had made another huge mistake, but this time it felt harder to get out of because everyone else around him was becoming happier and starting to move on. Everyone except him that was. Life after the war was not turning out how he expected it to be, not that he had any grand expectations to begin with. Ron had decided to join the Auror program and because that's what others around him expected to do he also joined. He hated it. He hated even thinking about the death eaters who were still loose and hated being partnered with some awe struck man two years older than him who had been a Hufflepuff. Weren't Hufflepuffs supposed to run away from the Auror program faster than Harry could shout "Voldemort" anyway?

Somehow, two years later, Harry had gotten so tangled in this life that he felt like wasn't even his as if he was an omniscient viewer and was now engaged to Ginny.

"Hi."

Harry's head jerked at the voice and he inwardly let out a sigh of relief as Hermione sat next to him in the cushioned wicker loveseat in the Weasley's back yard.

"You've been awfully quiet for it being such a big day for you," she told him, her gaze not giving away what she was truly thinking.

Harry's reply was a grunt as he stared moodily out at the backyard. He had to admit that the Weasleys had done a lovely job with the decorations. Twinkling white lights adorned the trees in the early evening dusk while music floated about them. Several people were dancing slowly while others were laughing and exchanging stories.

Too bad Harry wasn't interested in any of the above and had chosen to sit in the corner of the yard trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Ginny had long ago let him be when she determined that he was in one of his "moods" and she then proceeded to pout for an hour until Michael Corner showed up. He thought that rather odd, but he was too busy wallowing in his own self misery to think about it too much.

He sighed, thinking that it was too bad that there wasn't any alcohol at the party or else he would be getting smashed right now.

"You don't seem very happy," she observed.

Harry rolled his eyes and decided to not bother trying to lie to Hermione. If anyone would see right through his bullshit and be understanding it would be her.

"I haven't been for a long time."

"Since the war."

Harry gaped at her, wondering how she had known he had been so unhappy for such a long time.

"How did you know?" he asked.

"Oh Harry," she sighed, patting his leg. "Anyone who really knows you could see."

The words didn't pacify him the slightest bit and it only incensed his already irritable condition.

"Really?" he replied sarcastically with a hint of bitterness. "Then why the fuck has everyone pushed me to do things that I haven't wanted to do if they could see it?"

Hermione didn't rise to the bait and she shook her head, ignoring his outburst.

"I didn't say that they really know you." She sent a pointed look to the crowd before them who didn't even seem to wonder where the groom-to-be was even at. "Why are you doing this to yourself, Harry?"

It was the question that was always on his mind and he himself wasn't quite sure of the answer. How was he supposed to tell one of his closest friends that without them and his adoptive family he would feel lost and abandoned, something he knew all too well from his horrid childhood, but with them he felt miserable and guilty, always trying to meet up to expectations that he didn't want to?

It was the story of his life he realized and for a fleeting moment he wished he never was a wizard. Those thoughts were quickly doused when he thought of Dumbledore, Hogwarts, Sirius, and a myriad of other things. The good outweighed the bad, but sometimes the depressing thoughts overcame Harry and he wished he led a normal life.

"I don't know," Harry answered back morosely. "I don't love Ginny. Not even a tiny bit. Not like that at least."

"I know."

Of course Hermione knew. She probably knew it all along, but kept her mouth shut so Harry wouldn't snap or go off the deep end on her. He knew that Hermione was a good friend, no – a great friend – and he'd taken advantage of that fact and not been the friend she needed back, or so he believed.

"I suppose you know what I should do then."

Hermione smiled at him and for once he desperately wanted someone to tell him what to do in a situation or maybe he just wanted her to say what he wanted to hear.

"And please don't tell me that I should do what I think is best. We see where that's gotten me."

He glanced at the crowd before them and Hermione laughed. Harry's lips quirked at the sound and she took his hand, squeezing it.

"You're right, that's what I usually would say, but in this case I think you need someone verbally supporting you and leading you in the right direction."

"Go on."

"You need to break it off with Ginny," Hermione told him. "I know you're worried about the Weasleys and their support of you and yes, I think they'll be quite upset and angry at first, but they'll get over it. And if not, what's more important? Your happiness or theirs? We both know that answer and I don't think it lies in being engaged to Ginny Weasley or any girl really."

Harry flushed at her words and he sent a quick look around him to see if anyone heard.

"How did you know?" he muttered.

Hermione smiled sadly at him. "After obsessing over a boy all of sixth year and seeing your eyes always wander towards men I think I've clued in on something. And it isn't wrong, Harry. I know what you're thinking."

Harry wondered when Hermione developed the uncanny similarity to Dumbledore in that she seemed to know everything. She was too smart for her own good sometimes, but maybe not since she was helping Harry through his own personal crisis at the moment.

"Some people in the muggle world think that it's an abomination," she continued, "but it isn't and we both know that. And he's changed if that's the part you're worried about."

Harry felt his face grow hotter at the words and he said nothing, letting her speak.

"Go speak to him."

"And tell him what?" Harry muttered. "Oh hello there Malfoy. I just thought I would let you know that I was engaged for about a week, but I broke it off because I fancy you like crazy."

Hermione rolled her eyes before huffing.

"Don't be a prat. I'll have you know he gets his breakfasts on Wednesdays at that little bakery close to Knockturn Alley in Diagon."

"How do you know that?" Harry demanded.

Hermione smirked, a trait that surprised Harry and made him suspicious where she picked it up at.

"Not all of us live in a black and white world."

"Meaning what?"

She sighed and sat back on the wicker loveseat. "After Ron and I broke up you know things were awkward between us and with the Weasleys. They had expectations of us too you know."

Harry suddenly felt guilty at being all consumed with his own problems when he had forgotten about Hermione. Granted, she and Ron had been broken up for over six months now, but the thought of how she had taken it and had regarded the Weasleys never crossed his mind.

"You stop that line of thinking, Harry Potter," she said sternly, eyes narrowed. "I don't want you feeling guilty about Ron or me, alright? Things hadn't been working for a while and it was necessary to end it. Anyway, I met someone at work a couple months ago. We grabbed lunch sometimes until one day he asked me on a date."

"Who?" Harry asked with growing curiosity.

"Blaise Zabini."

"Zabini?" Harry wondered out loud.

Blaise Zabini had never taken sides during the war and had evaded what many former Slytherins had suffered. He remembered Hermione mentioning that he worked in her department at the Ministry, but he never thought about it again.

"Yes," she said with a nod. "He and Malfoy still speak, but apparently Malfoy likes to keep to himself since the war ended."

"Does he work anywhere?"

"I think he works at the apothecary in Diagon."

Harry frowned. "But I've never seen him there." There weren't many times that called for him to visit the apothecary, but every once in a while it was necessary to pick up a healing potion of some sort.

"He works in the back I believe."

He realized what Hermione was saying, that Malfoy wanted to be kept out of sight. After the war ended, even through his own muddled life, he kept tabs on what happened to the Malfoy family. Lucius and Narcissa were to live under house arrest for two years, Lucius spending the first six in Azkaban, and Harry supposed that those two years were nearly up now for Narcissa. The family had to pay heavy fines to the Ministry for their involvement with the Death Eaters, but he knew that his own testimony on behalf of Narcissa and Draco had saved them. Draco on the other hand slipped under the radar and seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth for Harry hadn't heard nor seen him in the two years since the war had ended.

"What do I tell Ginny and the rest of the Weasleys? Oh Merlin, Ron will hate me."

"Harry, stop thinking about what they will think and just do what you want. You deserve to be happy after everything."

She was right and Harry gave a decisive nod. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would tell Ginny that the engagement was off and he would quit his job, then he would take things from there. And on Wednesday he would be going to Diagon Alley, hopefully running into Draco Malfoy on the way.

As Harry walked towards the small bakery that Hermione told him Malfoy – Draco – frequented often he hoped that this would be the start of something new even if Draco wasn't interested.

The day after the engagement party Harry had gone over to the Ministry to quit his auror job before going to the Burrow where he had spoken to Ginny and explained why he was breaking off the engagement. She was furious and had screamed and shouted and that reaction told Harry enough that he knew he was making the right decision. He had long since grown up into an adult due to being forced to deal with and face Voldemort and he needed someone else who held things in a similar light. Ginny was not that person. She still lived in a fantasy world where Harry Potter was the hero and she was the damsel in distress although there was nothing that indicated that position for her.

Ron had flooed Grimmuald Place and had shouted even more; face red and puffing out loud breaths of air, yelling that Harry was making the biggest mistake of his life. Perhaps he shouldn't have told Ron he thought he just avoided the biggest mistake of his life because the redhead erupted and Harry promptly closed the floo off. He hadn't heard from Ron since, and it hurt, but it had only been a few days. If Ron didn't come around then Hermione was right in that they didn't know who he was at all if he and others couldn't see that Harry had been miserable and what he needed was to be happy for once in his life.

And Harry was happy or he was beginning to be. This feeling of smiling for no reason and actually looking forward to the future felt so foreign to him. He was sure that he never felt truly happy since Sirius' death and things from there had plummeted so severely there was no reason to be happy since. Yes, he defeated Voldemort, but there had been no joy or overwhelming sensation of elation, instead he just felt relief and a sense of great loss.

Harry subtly shook his head as he turned down the small alley. He wouldn't let those thoughts ruin his mood right now. In fact he was feeling a tad bit nervous about seeing Draco since he hadn't seen the blonde since after the Battle of Hogwarts and who was to say that Draco didn't still hate him?

As Harry approached the bakery he noticed a platinum blonde head sitting at a table near the window, head bent over something. When Harry entered he refused to look at Draco and he went right to the counter to order. After he received his éclair and coffee he turned and steeled himself for the pending conversation with Draco. The blonde hadn't looked up from the book he was reading and didn't seem to notice that Harry had even walked in. It was only when Harry was standing next to the table did Malfoy recognize there was another person's presence and he looked up from the text he was reading.

His gray eyes widened in surprise before narrowing slightly and becoming guarded.

"Malfoy. Mind if I sit?"

Harry realized it wasn't an ideal greeting and Draco would more than likely tell him to fuck off, punch him, or just leave. There were numerous possibilities in how this meeting could go and Harry hoped it wouldn't be one that took him back to their school days with scathing comments and physical blows.

"I suppose," came the hesitant answer.

Harry bit the inside of his cheek to keep his mouth from splitting into a grin and sat down in the chair opposite of Draco at the small two person table. The blonde had moved his book and tea closer to him, while half of a chocolate croissant sat to the side.

"Thanks. You know I've only been here a couple of times and a friend recently reminded me of it," Harry said.

"It is quite good," was the short reply.

Harry blew on his coffee to cool it, Draco's eyes flickering warily from the cup to Harry before speaking.

"What are you doing here Potter? And I don't mean in the bakery, I mean sitting here, speaking with me."

His fingers clenched tightly around the warm cup before releasing it and dropping them to his lap. Harry had rehearsed this scene in his head several times, but it was as if he could never memorize his lines correctly and it always came out screwed up.

Finally Harry shrugged and decided to go with all out Gryffindor honesty. If Draco decided to dump his tea all over Harry after he was finished then so be it, but at least he would finally be honest about something since the war had ended.

"I wanted to see you. I've been thinking about things a lot lately and realized that I was quite unhappy with my life."

If Draco was shocked or surprised, he didn't show any indication. His face remained impassive and trained on Harry.

"Sometimes I think about what life would have been like if you and I were friends. I'm sure there are a million different scenarios of how things could have ended up, but maybe I would have been more content that way," he explained quietly.

A mother and young boy passed by their table and Harry glanced at them before turning back to Draco.

"I could have made you just as miserable," Draco said evenly. "Imagine if you ended up in Slytherin and befriended everyone there. Voldemort might still exist."

The message conveyed a slew of other things – that Harry may have turned dark, that he could have been killed just by being in Slytherin surrounded by the offspring of prominent death eaters. There were too many things that could have been and never would be.

"Maybe," Harry said with a shrug. "But that might never have happened. I was supposed to be in Slytherin anyway you know."

This time Draco's gray eyes did widen in surprise.

"I guess I don't really need to ask why you weren't."

Harry smiled and shook his head. "No, not really."

They were silent for some time, neither moving to take a drink or take a bite of their breakfasts.

"You didn't make me miserable," Harry finally said. "Did you irritate and infuriate me to no end? Yes, and I imagine that I did to you too." At Draco's quirk of the lips Harry knew that he was correct. "I actually think we have quite a bit in common."

Draco's fingers were playing with the corner pages of his book and his eyes glanced towards Harry's.

"Besides a penchant for always being in the wrong place at the wrong time and trying to escape death?"

They smiled wryly at one another before Harry nodded.

"Besides those, although I feel like since we've got the serious stuff in common we could find out about the light stuff."

"Like what?"

"Like what you're reading there."

"Oh, this."

Draco held up the book so that he could read the title Potions and Nature: Brewing with the Earth.

"Well, maybe that's something we don't have in common."

Draco laughed and the grin that Harry had been holding back broke through. The sound was unlike anything he had ever heard and he thought that yes, hearing that everyday could make him happy indeed.

"Perhaps not, but I knew that wasn't your forte. Now that éclair on the other hand," said Draco, nodding to the uneaten sweet. "We have that in common. They're my favorite."

"You aren't eating one now."

Draco looked at his croissant and shrugged, a smile still playing on his lips.

"I thought today was a good time to try something new."

"Does it meet your expectations?"

Their eyes met and Harry felt the fluttering in his stomach rise to his throat because suddenly they weren't talking about French pastries anymore.

"It's starting to."

What happened afterward was better than Harry had ever hoped or dreamed of. He and Draco met that Saturday and the following Wednesday at the bakery for breakfast before Harry finally invited Draco over to Grimmuald Place where he made them dinner and they drank a bottle of wine. Draco explained that he worked in the back of the apothecary brewing potions and in his free time he was studying to be a potion's master like Snape once had been. When he asked Harry what he had been doing since the war Harry had been somewhat worried about what Draco would think when he told him about being engaged, but despite his trepidation he explained.

"I guess I shouldn't really be surprised," Draco had said. "It was what everyone expected. You had this supposedly perfect life after the war ended."

"It should have been perfect," replied Harry, tracing his finger around the rim of his wine glass. "I had everything that I used to want. A family of sorts, a fiancé, friends who loved me, and I defeated Voldemort, but it wasn't enough to make me satisfied."

Draco shifted his body more towards Harry on the couch they were sitting on.

"When did you realize?" he asked softly.

"I knew a long time ago, but I wasn't sure how to get out of it. It wasn't until the engagement party and Hermione talked to me that I knew I had to get out of it."

"Sometimes," Draco began, "things aren't meant to be perfect. Maybe almost perfect, but if you have everything you could possibly aspire then what's left to dream of?"

Harry thought about Draco's words and what they meant. One of the happiest times for Harry was when he discovered Sirius was actually his godfather and hadn't betrayed his parents and another was when he found out he was a wizard. The situations both times had been less than ideal. With Sirius he was on Azkaban's Most Wanted list and when he discovered he was a wizard he was still stuck with the Dursleys, but despite everything he never felt more at peace with himself.

"Just look at you," said Draco, interrupting his thoughts. Harry looked up at the blonde who was feigning indifference. "Your hair is a constant mess and your table manners have hardly improved since I last saw them, but you've turned out quite alright."

Harry knew he caught Draco off guard when he leaned forward and kissed the other man on the lips, the taste of dry red wine intermingling between them and when he pulled back he smiled at Draco.

"Yeah, well you're still snarky and have an affinity for potions that's beyond my understanding. I guess I'll just have to deal with it though, won't I?"

It was an invitation that whatever was developing between them was to become something more. If Draco turned him down he would be hurt, there was no question about that, but it wasn't for lack of trying. With Ginny and the Weasleys he had let them take over and he didn't bother to try and fight for what he wanted. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

"Yes," said Draco finally, his pale slender fingers brushing Harry's unruly fringe. "But I think we can deal with those small things, don't you?"

Harry's answer was his arm wrapping around Draco and pulling him closer, sealing what they had with a kiss.

When six months later Draco moved in with him, Harry knew that things would never be perfect. Despite Draco's love of potion making he was horrible at cooking and his meals never turned out quite right and Harry still occasionally wore mismatched socks together, but it was okay. For the first time in a long time Harry was truly happy and he knew that he had made the right decision by going after Draco. With Draco he could achieve as close to perfection as he wanted to be and that was all he could ask for.