Moonlit Revelations (A Drarry FanFiction)

Chapter One

   It hadn't taken long for the obsession to creep in again.

Harry wasn't even sure why he'd agreed to come back to school to redo his seventh year – or 'eighth year' as people were calling it. Hermione had signed up no question, and Ron had been happy to go anywhere with her in the blossoming stage of their new romance. Harry guessed he himself had just been craving some normality again, and after helping rebuild the damage inflicted on the building during the battle, he'd felt nostalgic and eager to return to the place he'd thought of as home after a year away.

But now here they were a month in, and Ron had remembered how much he hated homework, and Harry just felt...lost. It was extremely hard to place importance on twelve inches on the properties of wolf's bane with regard to temperament potions, when he had been fighting for his life and living on the run for several whole months. He had a position waiting for him at Auror training, he didn't need this, but he had committed and he felt like he would be letting so many people down if he quit now.

His teachers had a lot of expectations; apparently defeating Voldemort meant he was now automatically supposed to get Os on everything, which Harry could understand in Defence, but really, his Potions experience had helped him diddly squat in the last year.

But then there were the students. If Harry thought the hero worship had been bad before when he was just The Boy Who Lived, now that he was The Chosen One, The Saviour Of The Wizarding World, he could barely move for the adulation he got in the corridors. He felt he couldn't shoo people away though; more often than not they were survivors of the battle and the war wanting to thank him, to talk to him about their experiences. He guessed the attention would probably die down eventually, people would start moving on soon enough, but during the first month or so back it seemed like he was drowning.

He felt so powerless. He couldn't help but feel responsible for everyone he talked to – like if he had just bested Voldemort earlier he could have saved so many people so much grief. He felt he owed them his attention at least, but it was devouring him and stripping him of what wits he had left. He didn't know how many times he could split himself into little bits so he could share himself with everyone who needed it.

He became more and more reliant on his invisibility cloak, waiting until most of the students moved between classes before darting unseen through the relatively deserted corridors. He shied away from large groups, trying to surround himself with his old friends whom he trusted not to bring up difficult subjects or at least attempt to talk about normal, everyday stuff like homework and gossip.

He was still on the outside though, looking in. No one could really understand what he'd been through, even though they thought they did. No one knew what it had been like to talk to the ghosts of his parents, Remus and Sirius as he made his mind up to go to Voldemort and die. No one knew what it was like to actually face death and return, or what it took to at least try to give Tom one more chance at redemption before finally taking his life.

Harry figured it was probably this detached attitude he'd developed that meant he was more inclined to step back and watch people now, rather than get involved. Especially if he was under the protection of his cloak, where people would just be themselves and not be affected by his presence. And maybe that's why it wasn't so hard to spot the unusual behaviour when it began again in a certain blond haired Slytherin.

"I'm telling you, he's up to something shifty."

Hermione rolled her eyes and made a growling noise at the back of her throat. "Really Harry," she cried in exasperation. "Not this again."

Harry refrained from pointing out that the last time he'd thought Draco Malfoy was up to something, he actually was. But he knew that she and Ron had had enough drama and adventure to last a lifetime, and the thought of actively going looking for trouble was mind-boggling to them. So he kept his suspicions to himself after that.

But the thing was, Malfoy was definitely up to something at least a little bit sneaky, and anyone paying him the slightest bit of attention would have been able to spot that. He was always nipping off by himself, and he was extremely quiet in classes. Not particularly dastardly actions in themselves, but because it was Malfoy Harry was much quicker to jump to conclusions.

It had crossed Harry's mind that it must have been hard for him to come back here after the part he'd played in the war. Harry had volunteered to speak on his behalf at his and his mother's trail, honestly believing he'd had no choice but to do what he did whilst he was under the Dark Lord's thumb. It wasn't his fault his father had dragged him into the wrong side of a war, any more than Harry had been dragged in himself.

In truth, it was just one moment each that had made Harry write to the Ministry and ask to be allowed to testify on Draco and Narcissa's behalf. Two lies that had saved Harry's life each time: "I can't be sure?" and "He is dead!"

Maybe for those lies he should have been more forgiving or understanding. After all, for all the appreciation Harry was getting, Malfoy must have been getting almost as much cruelty and anger from those who had lost loved ones at the hands of Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Harry himself couldn't help but grimace every time he looked Malfoy's way, thinking of the Dark Mark lurking beneath his left sleeve, thinking of Fred and Remus and Tonks and Dobby and everybody else he had lost.

Harry argued it was his grief that lead him to falling back into old patterns; it seemed almost natural to start carrying around the Marauders Map again, especially when he was already having to rely so much on his invisibility cloak.