"Yet, love and hate me too / So, these extremes shall neither office do / Love me, that I may die the gentler way / Hate me, because thy love is too great for me." - John Donne
Draco had his own room. As one of only two eighth-year Slytherin boys, he was an odd one out: there was no room for him and Goyle in any existing Slytherin dormitory, yet it was not worth Conjuring a new one just for two people. So he and Goyle were each given their own rooms. They were nothing like the luxury of the Slytherin common room, being two Transfigured broom cupboards, but they were snug and they were private. McGonagall had been apologetic as she'd explained the predicament to them at the start of the term, but Draco hadn't minded a bit. He'd always been a whore for privacy. And they still, of course, had access to the common room whenever they desired it.
It was to his room that Draco retreated after extracting himself from Pansy after dinner, an effort that had been almost more trouble than it was worth. Almost.
"Draco, darling, it's so early still!" She'd pouted. "Come back to the common room, won't you? We never see you anymore, and you know how the little ones adore you."
"I think you're confusing the past and the present, Pansy," Draco had drawled. "My name isn't worth a damn to Slytherins anymore. And the 'little ones' don't adore me; they're scared of me."
"Only because you insist on scowling and prowling around like you do! Honestly, you're starting to remind me of Professor Snape! But much more gorgeous," she added, batting her eyelashes and tilting her face toward Draco's. Draco rolled his eyes. As if he could be won over by a well-placed fluttering of eyelids and a clumsy compliment. Why did girls view such silly things as acceptable mediums of flirtation? Performed correctly, it was a much more subtle art, in Draco's opinion. "Anyway," she went on, "they would adore you if you were ever around, I'm sure!"
Draco sighed. "Pansy, I have a lot of –"
"– work to do," finished Pansy, imitating his bored drawl. "Yeah, I know. You always have work to do. Look, if you don't want to come to the common room, fine. But can you at least let me come see your room? I don't even know where it is, and I'm dying to see it."
"I don't think that's such a good idea."
"Why not?"
"It's just ..." Why exactly was Draco opposed to this concept? Pansy proposed it at least once a week and Draco always refused. But what was the problem? The whole school, it seemed, already assumed they were going out. "We could get in a lot of trouble if we got caught."
"Filch hardly ever lurks around the dungeons, you know that. He's more terrified of the Bloody Baron than Peeves is. Come on, Draco! It'd be fun, you know it would," she said, in a voice that was as heavy-handed as a wink. Actually, Draco didn't know anything of the sort. But he wasn't about to admit that.
"Maybe so, but it's best not to risk it," he said smoothly. "I can't afford trouble this year, Pansy."
Pansy, perhaps placated by the exposure of the goody-goody tendencies he hid beneath his cool, devil-may-care exterior, had finally relented then. And he'd made a run for it.
Now Draco walked beyond the bare stretch of stone that concealed the Slytherin dormitories, and continued down the hallway. He turned a corner and there, on the right wall, was a pair of small paintings no bigger than a standard piece of parchment. Draco approached the one on the left and whispered, "Malkin's." The painting of an elegant female aristocrat with an ever haughty, bland expression (though Draco swore her eyes always smirked at him), spread out along the wall until it was about the size of a door. Then it went blank and Draco stepped through the wall.
The room inside was plain. There was a four-poster identical to those in the main Slytherin dormitories, a fireplace, a small table Draco used as a desk, an armchair with upholstery worn ragged by time and use, and a dresser. The grey stone walls were bare and windowless. There was also a small bathroom that opened to one side, Draco's favorite feature of the room. He'd always hated administering to his hygiene in the communal bathrooms. Something about the scenario had always made him vaguely uncomfortable, though he wasn't quite sure what it was.
Draco removed his black Hogwarts robe and flung it carelessly to the floor. He pointed his wand at the fireplace and murmured, "Incendio," pausing for a moment in front of the sanguine flames that appeared. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the glass vial. He held it up against the light. The glass caused the liquid within to shine dully, but the potion itself was so dark and opaque that it did not reflect light. It was like a black hole in that way, the only other thing Draco could think of that rejected the flickering attentions of light.
What had Potter muttered about the potion today? Something about Romeo and Juliet. Draco decided he would look into it; it sounded potentially intriguing, and Draco disliked the idea of Potter knowing something about Potions that he did not, however peripheral the connection.
Draco positioned the vial on the dresser, then stripped and inserted his lean, pale body into the thick wrappings of his bedcovers, wriggling to get warm. He had a clear view of the vial from his vantage point in bed, and stared at it, transfixed, for a long time before his eyelids began to droop and his head began to swim. He could feel the things of his nightmares gathering in anticipation at the brink between consciousness and unconsciousness, but his body's lust for sleep was too heady to ignore. So he sank deeper into the cocoon of his bed and succumbed.
… & ...
Harry was sitting by the lake, alone, watching the silent ripples of the water as the fingers of the wind teased it. There was an absolute stillness to the silence of the empty lawn, as if the very atoms of the air had ceased to vibrate.
Harry slid a palm across the surface of the lake as if to polish a smudged mirror, but only succeeded in disturbing the peace. A knot of consternation tightened in his chest. Why couldn't he smooth out the wrinkles?
A voice called out to him then, muffled by the stillness. "Harry!" It was familiar. A Weasley voice, Harry was certain. Ron, perhaps? Maybe Ginny, though the voice sounded too masculine.
Harry turned, but there was no one. The lawn remained undisturbed by any other signs of life. There was just Harry.
An opaque fog had descended. Harry felt as if he were lingering beside a forgotten castle of antiquity, vacant for hundreds of years.
"Harry!" called the voice again, closer this time. Harry stood up. He could now see a sort of shape approaching him from inside the fog.
"Ron?" he asked. The mystery Weasley laughed.
"Harry," came his name again. A different voice this time. Older, wiser, and slightly amused. It sounded a lot like Dumbledore ... but that couldn't be, could it?
"How's it going, Harry?" asked the red-headed imp that was emerging from the fog, which thinned the closer he came to Harry.
"Fred?" gasped Harry, his mind limping to catch up to his eyes.
"Well don't look so surprised! I might start to think you're not happy to see me!"
"But – but..."
"I'm glad to see you've returned to Hogwarts, Harry," said the second voice, still disembodied in the fog. A couple seconds later a being in deep blue robes, a long white beard, and half-moon spectacles materialized next to Fred. Dumbledore's eyes twinkled.
"It's my home," Harry heard himself say, as if his mind and the rest of his body were separated by a layer of fog. "Where else would I go?"
Fred and Dumbledore stood only a few yards away from Harry on the damp grass, glowing gently as if some golden light source pulsed within them in the place of a heart. Harry wanted to go to them, but he was rooted to the spot.
"But how are you here?" he asked, bewildered. "Is there anyone else with you?"
In answer, yet another voice called his name. A voice dearer to him than those of his lost parents, because he had gotten the chance to know it, rely on it, before it was lost. The sound of it yanked a chord taut between him and the speaker, a chord of anxious elation so eager and desperate it was almost painful.
"Sirius!" he shouted, his voice ripping from his throat. All at once, he was no longer rooted to the spot. He was running, sprinting through the fog towards the murky shape that was his godfather.
"Harry," replied Sirius, "aren't you a sight for sore eyes."
Harry laughed, a loud sort of yell that was more like a sob.
Harry passed other figures in the mist – Lupin, Tonks, even Colin Creevey who snapped a photo of Harry's mad flight – but he couldn't spare them second glances in his desperation to see his godfather. The figures waved as he passed by.
"Sirius!" he called again in delight as Sirius began to solidify in front of him. He was almost there. "Sirius!"
Harry launched himself towards his godfather's open arms, but fell sickeningly forward through the fog instead, stumbling. Immediately his sharp anticipation twisted into a wrenching mess of loss and panic.
"Sirius!" he bellowed. His godfather had slipped backwards into the mist, disappearing as surely as he had behind the veil three years ago. He dissolved completely into the fog, as if he'd never been there at all. Harry's heartbeat in his chest was now the only sound to interrupt the ethereal stillness. "Fred? Dumbledore?"
The fog and the lawn and the lake began to fade into blackness around him. Harry spun wildly, looking for one last glimpse of a familiar face. Then the very ground beneath him disappeared and he was plummeting into an abyss of his own despair.
Harry woke up gasping erratically, yet unable to pull a thread of air into his lungs. As he began to come back to himself, he realized his face was mashed into his pillow, muffling his sobs. He was shaking and felt beaten, throbbing in some secret region deep inside of him where science had not yet penetrated or named.
He was still alone.
… & ...
Draco Malfoy had not felt this rested in a long time, and his unusually buoyant spirits reflected that. The same could not be said for Potter, who rushed into the classroom at the very last moment. On time, but just barely.
Potter looked awful. His features were haggard – the bags under his eyes seemed to be literally sagging under the weight of his exhaustion and were tinged a shadowy grey-blue like someone had smeared them with pencil lead. His skin was wan and pale and loose on his bones. Draco noticed for the first time how fragile Potter looked, like a balloon with the air let out. He looked like a haunted man, a man aged far beyond his eighteen years. Even his hair, that incorrigible hair, seemed weary, hanging limp instead of trying to dance away from his skull at all angles. Why hadn't he noticed this before? Draco wondered. It was as if the bad night's sleep (though nights' was probably more accurate) had robbed Potter of his usual facade of good-humor and exposed him for what he really was: a broken boy.
Draco knew a thing or two about being broken.
Slughorn began a lecture on the properties of wormwood, and Potter sat listlessly, not even pretending to listen as he usually did.
"Potter," Draco whispered, inclining his head ever-so-slightly towards Potter to avoid notice by Slughorn.
Potter turned to him, eyebrows raised in a silent inquisition of, "What?"
"Are you okay?"
Potter breathed in deeply and blinked. "No," he said, letting the air out in a gust, "not really."
Draco didn't know which was more disconcerting – the answer or the honesty. The honesty, he decided. The answer had already been evident even before he'd posed the question.
The minutes ticked by.
"Can anyone tell me what I would get if I combined a powdered root of asphodel with an infusion of wormwood?" prompted Slughorn. Really? Snape taught us this on the first day. Literally.
No one volunteered to answer.
"Anyone? Miss McDonnell, can you enlighten us?"
Upon examination, Miss McDonnell was a small, bouncy-haired Gryffindor who seemed utterly perplexed by hearing her name attached to a teacher's question. Draco turned to see her cheeks flush pink. He also saw Potter glance at the girl and grimace.
"Um," she said, "a potion?" Oh, Merlin. That didn't even deserve an eye roll.
Her partner giggled as if the girl had said something intentionally clever. The girl snuck a glance in Draco's direction, which confused Draco for a moment until he realized she was looking at Potter. Most glances did tend to go towards Potter these days. Unfortunately for her, Potter was looking determinedly toward the front of the classroom, so her gaze collided with Draco's cool stare instead. She looked away.
"A sleeping draught so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death," said Draco lazily, without raising his hand and before Slughorn could recover from the previous answer.
"Correct," said Slughorn. "But I wonder, could you identify what exactly makes this potion different from the one we brewed yesterday – Nocturna Mortem?"
"The effects of the draught are indefinite, revived only by the administration of the antidote, whereas a perfectly brewed Nocturna Mortem will last only proportionally as long as the amount of potion consumed."
"Precisely!" exclaimed Slughorn, his extremities wiggling in evident glee. "What you may not know," he said, addressing the class at large, "is that there is a poisonous variation of the draught, wherein there are two human components rather than the usual one: one the aggressor, and one the victim. The aggressor administers half the potion to his intended victim and consumes the other half himself, after adding a single hair from the victim's head. The result, then, is that the potion serves as a link between the two individuals, draining the victim's life force and imbuing it into the aggressor. Though it was no doubt originally composed for dark purposes, it is sometimes used more positively at St. Mungo's between a terminal patient and a redeemable one. Both parties consenting, that is. Now," he said, clapping his hands together conclusively, "I would like you to brew a Draught of Living Death. Take careful notes, as I will be expecting two feet of parchment comparing the procedures, qualities, and uses of the two potions."
There was a general chorus of sighing and moaning from Draco's classmates before they set to work. Draco was only bothered by the time it would take to pen two feet of parchment. The content itself was almost a formality. Other than a bit of research into the poisonous properties of the draught, the rest of the report he could practically write in his sleep. Ironic, that.
Potter got up to fetch the ingredients of his own accord, so Draco busied himself with setting up the cauldron. He glanced around the classroom and saw McDonnell's partner repeat her name sharply several times to get the girl's attention, so preoccupied was she by staring wistfully at ... Draco followed her gaze. Potter. Who was currently bending down to reach the bottom shelf, displaying a backside draped rather elegantly in the black folds of his robes. Draco snorted to himself. Of course.
"McDonnell's staring at you," he said when Potter returned a moment later, dumping the ingredients unceremoniously onto the table.
Potter darted a glance toward the girl then looked quickly back to Draco when he caught her eager gaze, which had followed him from the cupboard back to his desk. "Blast," he muttered, color rising faintly in his cheeks. It was the most animated Draco had seen him all morning.
"You know her?"
"Georgia? Yeah. She tried out for Quidditch," he explained. Draco tried unsuccessfully to swallow a surprised laugh, and even Potter's mouth turned up a little at the corner. "And now she follows me around like, I dunno..."
"A member of your harem of admirers?" concluded Draco archly. "How very celebrity of you."
"A harem, Malfoy? Really, I'd think that was more your thing than mine," Potter retorted, a flicker of life igniting behind his eyes.
"If it were, I'd prefer mine to have a bit more ... brain behind their beauty."
"'Course," Potter agreed, dropping the sardonic tone of their banter, "but it's not like that."
"No?" Draco raised his eyebrows.
"Well, maybe. But I'd rather it wasn't. She just ... she thinks she knows me because I'm the 'hero,' as if that were some kind of character trait. She's enamored with an image she has of me, but that's just it – an image. It's insubstantial. It's like a ghost. No, it's even less than a ghost. It's like looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing what you want most to see and thinking it's real," said Potter in a rush, like he'd been scripting this assessment and was now debuting it on Draco.
"The Mirror of what?" asked Draco, his conscious mind latching on to the most tangible point of confusion within Potter's rant while the rest of his mind tried to absorb the more interesting parts, filing them away for future review.
"Er, never mind," said Potter. "The point is ... well ..."
"That she's an insufferable tart?" said Draco bluntly, smirking.
Potter's eyes crinkled in surprised amusement and a small laugh bubbled up from his throat. "Yeah, exactly."
Draco's answering grin was sly.
"She thinks we're friends or something, but ..." The dubious glance Potter cast in her direction was priceless, "really, she's a dippy nightmare."
"I think she's got a little more than friendship in mind, Potter."
Potter blushed in earnest. "So I've gathered."
"I can't imagine what she sees in you, anyway," Draco teased, retreating back into familiar territory. "Harry Potter: the scrawny, wonky-haired, dim," Potter opened his mouth to argue, so Draco amended, "at Potions, at least," before continuing, "prat hero of the Mudbl—" Draco cut off and frowned.
"What did you just say?" queried Potter, looking more incredulous than aggressive.
"Nothing."
"You were about to say 'hero of the Mudbloods,' weren't you? But you stopped."
"So?"
"So ..." Potter cocked his head. "So it's different, that's all."
"A lot of things are different, Potter."
Potter looked at Draco for a moment, those intense eyes of his all the more vibrant for peering out of such an otherwise wan face, then nodded.
They got to work then, and conversation became 'crush this' and 'juice that' and 'pass the knife, will you?' Draco glanced occasionally over at Georgia because it was so amusing to watch her absently stirring the potion and ignoring her partner's increasingly impatient instructions as she stared intently at Potter, as if she could bewitch him simply with the power of her gaze.
Draco inclined his head toward Potter and murmured, "She's still watching you," all the while not taking his eyes off Georgia. Thus, he was perfectly positioned to see the way her eyes narrowed as he spoke quietly to his partner. Hmm.
"She is?"
Draco nodded.
"Bloody hell," Potter sighed.
Draco's mind was working quickly. He wondered ...
Draco scooted closer to Potter and leaned into him slightly as he reached across the desk to pick up a Sopophorous bean instead of just asking Potter to pass it, and let his eyes, which were still holding McDonnell's, sink to half-mast in a universal indication of seduction. The girl's eyes widened. Draco smirked. Ah.
"What are you doing?" asked Potter, the turn of his head toward Draco having the effect of bringing their faces inches apart.
"Picking up this bean," said Draco, his voice oddly quiet.
"Oh." Potter's eyes locked with Draco's and Draco momentarily forgot he was doing this for McDonnell's benefit. Then he realized he was standing still with half his body pressed against Potter's for no apparent reason and stepped backwards. Potter turned back to what he was doing; the side-long glance he gave Draco when he thought Draco wasn't looking was the only indication that he was at all unsettled by what had just occurred.
So Potter's admirer felt threatened by Draco. Did she think Potter was a poof? Or that Draco was? That didn't even bear speculation. Of course she suspected Draco. His father had always bemoaned Draco's effeminate looks, hadn't he? And it was Draco's behavior that had widened her eyes. But Draco had been suspected of far worse things over the years, and the current situation offered too much entertainment value to be resisted. He could mess with Potter and drive the dippy McDonnell mad as well. It was a win-win situation, and, all things considered, Draco wouldn't mind a bit of harmless mischief. No, not at all.
Draco glanced at Potter, who was supposed to be powdering the asphodel, and dropped the knife he was using to slice the valerian roots. "No! Potter! What are you doing?"
"Um, grinding the asphodel?"
"Not like that you're not! You're ... you're squishing it! You're demolishing it! Reducing it to a pulp!" cried Draco.
"Why don't you do it then, if you're such a professional?" Potter's eyes squinted in annoyance.
Draco could have done just that – taken the asphodel from Potter and powdered it himself. But he remembered McDonnell and her widened eyes and decided this was too perfect an opportunity to pass up, even for the sake of a better Potions grade. Slughorn already thought Draco was brilliant; it was only Potter who had to worry about a substandard potion, especially as he would undoubtedly be the one blamed for the deficiencies.
"Here, Potter," Draco said as he moved to stand behind the other boy, reaching his arms around Potter's thin body to commandeer his hands, "like this." Potter was shorter than Draco, so Draco's chin wound up hovering near the hollow intersection of Potter's neck and shoulder, his words whispered right into Potter's ear. With Potter's hands clasped in his own, Draco moved them like a puppeteer, using them to powder the asphodel correctly. "See?"
Potter appeared to be frozen, his only answer the slightly disjointed intake and outtake of his breath.
"Potter?" Draco queried.
Just then, there was an explosion somewhere behind them. Draco dropped Potter's hands and stepped away, turning towards the sound and expecting the familiar sight of Longbottom's shocked, soot-covered face. Instead, it was McDonnell wearing the filthy face mask.
Draco was seized with a surprisingly convulsive fit of laughter. Oh, he was brilliant indeed. Bloody brilliant.
"Ash," Georgia stated in shock, her face dilated in a comically exaggerated expression of awe. "Not as good for your skin as steam."
"You are so daft, Georgia," whined her partner, who was clearly not only at wit's end but had jumped off entirely. "If you paid as much sodding attention to your work as you do to ..." The identity of Georgia's misguided attentions was muffled as the partner received a sharp elbow to the stomach, but Draco didn't need to hear it, anyway. He already knew. Oh, did he know. "Ouch, Georgia! Sod it! If you'd been paying any attention at all you wouldn't have knocked the whole bloody vial of Sopophorous beans into the cauldron!"
"Sorry, sorry!" Georgia lamented, "I was startled by something!" she wailed in self-defense. This sent Draco, who had been beginning to calm down, into a second fit of hysterics. He was pretty sure he knew just what had startled McDonnell...
… & ...
The entire Potions class' attention was riveted on Georgia and the drama she was currently the epicenter of, but Harry was staring at Malfoy instead, in complete stupefaction. He had never seen the ever-composed Slytherin laugh like this. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Malfoy laugh, period.
"What the hell is so funny, Malfoy?"
"She made the potion explode!" Malfoy gasped between spasms of laughter. "She made the potion explode because she was so bloody busy ogling you!"
Harry frowned. "It's not that funny."
"Yes it is!" Malfoy chortled. "She almost pissed herself when I touched you, so she knocked those beans into her potion by accident and it exploded!"
"When you ... that's what that was about? You did that on purpose?" cried Harry, indignant. That little around-the-body maneuver of Malfoy's had seriously tampered with his sanity. His body had been almost shivery with the unexpected proximity to what it had independently decided was an attractive male presence, while his mind had been determinedly chanting, "It's Malfoy, it's Malfoy, it's Malfoy," in an effort to keep his body in check. It had been a good thing Malfoy had been moving Harry's hands, really, because Harry hadn't even been able to think straight in the confusion.
Malfoy could only nod, he was so consumed by self-satisfied hilarity. For his part, however, Harry was completely incensed by mortification and couldn't decide whether he wanted to slug Malfoy or kill himself on the spot. He settled for turning coldly away from his hysterical partner and adding the now powdered asphodel to their cauldron.
"Aw, come on, Potter. It's at least a little funny, isn't it?" asked Malfoy, who was finally calm enough to straighten up, though he still had a hand pressed to his side.
"No."
"Honestly, I thought you had a better sense of humor than this. Did Voldemort shove his wand up your arse before he died or something? You were just saying how dippy she is; I thought you'd find this funny."
"Oh, so this was for my benefit, was it?" Harry spun to face Malfoy, who merely raised a single coy eyebrow. "You took advantage of what I told you!" Harry blustered. "You – you deceitful, slimy Slytherin!"
"I prefer cunning," interjected Malfoy, his mouth twitching.
"You tricked me! Into revealing ... things," Harry accused, not sure he'd actually revealed anything compromising, but feeling distinctly used and exposed nonetheless.
"Tricked you, Potter? I hardly needed to bother. You bloody volunteered."
Harry scowled.
"I don't know what you're so worked up about, anyway," Malfoy continued. "All you said was that McDonnell is a daft tart and, let's be honest," He cast a glance at Georgia, who was still dithering and fawning over her aggrieved partner, "I could've worked that much out for myself."
"You git," snarled Harry, unable to express his angry embarrassment any more eloquently than that. It wasn't about what he'd said about Georgia. It was that he couldn't help feeling like Malfoy had known exactly what his little stunt would do to Harry, even though, rationally, he knew that wasn't possible. Still. It was horribly vexing and discomfiting to be reduced to such a state by one's rival, even accidentally.
"You prat," Malfoy shot back casually.
"Bugger off," Harry grumbled, turning back to stir the contents of the simmering cauldron and urging the heat to release its grip on his cheeks.