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Chapter Text

When Ron and Hermione get back from their prefect duties, Harry is slouching on his seat, staring at the passing hills made bright green by the sun. They say something or another to the rest of the group sitting inside. It’s only when Ron turns to Harry, a knowing look in his eyes, and says, “Malfoy’s not doing his duties. He’s just sitting in one of the compartments with the other Slytherins,” that Harry straightens up, interested.

It was difficult telling the truth to his friends that morning, when the name Draco Malfoy appeared on his arm. Harry himself had a barely controllable bout of panic at the soulmark branded on his skin. Though, after a couple of minutes trying to breathe and erase the name with his thumb, a sense of calm resignation washed over him. He shouldn’t have expected his soulmark to be uncomplicated, considering his life's track record so far.

And, as usual when things became too overwhelming for normal reasoning, he found himself waking Ron up so they could go to Hermione’s room and share the news.

He remembers clearly the excitement on their faces to see the newly developed soulmark, the way it changed to apprehension when they noticed Harry was decidedly not smiling, and then the absolute horror when his sleeve was raised.

Because of all that was going on in the beginning of fifth year, when Hermione received her mark saying Ronald Weasley she didn’t tell them straight away. In fact, she waited until Ron’s birthday so they could confirm it together. His friends weren’t dating, exactly, rather they were circling each other like bees around a flower without really knowing how to get on with it. But, despite the awkwardness, at the end of the day their marks had been a reason to celebrate. Nothing at all like Harry’s situation.

After the initial shock, Ron immediately got up and started denying it, sure that Harry was just having him on. Meanwhile, Hermione tilted her head with wide eyes, in that way she did when she discovered the final piece of a puzzle, and remarked an ominous, “Well, it makes sense”. As if Harry hadn’t been completely floored by the name on his arm.

“Does it, really?” Harry remembers asking incredulously.

Hermione shrugged, clearing her throat and trying to appear composed. “Think about it, Harry. Malfoy has been pestering you ever since first year. And you usually play right along with his strange mating dance.”

“Ew, Hermione,” Ron cried, “Don’t say the words ‘Malfoy’ and ‘mating’ in the same breath. I’m gonna throw up in my mouth.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and continued, “I’m just saying, in retrospect he behaved like the typical bully pulling on the pigtails of the girl he fancied. Besides, you two have always been big parts of each other’s lives. Didn’t you tell us he was the first wizard you met?”

Harry mused on that, thinking back to their fateful meeting in Madam Malkin's. He had been so fascinated by everything back then, hungry for this entire new world he didn't know existed. The sudden excitement of seeing another boy his age who was also a wizard, who had known he was a wizard since he was born, had lived in this world and known its secrets, was at first part of what made that day so special, even if the experience had been soured soon after.

Not only was Draco the first wizard his age he met, it was mainly because of him that Harry got into Gryffindor in the first place. Without Malfoy and his little shit attitude showing him what awaited him in Slytherin, there’s no way of knowing whether Harry would have bothered refusing to go to the snake house. Now that Harry stopped to think about it, many events in his life had only happened because of Malfoy being the way he is. He was the one behind the circumstances that led Harry to become seeker. He had been the force behind Harry’s investigation of the Chamber of Secrets, no matter how unknowingly. His actions with Buckbeak, his presence at the World Cup, his participation in the Inquisitorial Squad…

It’s true, Harry blinked surprised. He couldn’t imagine Hogwarts without Malfoy.

Hadn’t he thought precisely that during summer after first year? He had missed Malfoy then.

“Alright, sure,” Ron interrupted his thinking. “Even though it pains me to say this, let’s assume the ferret’s had a childish crush on Harry all this time.” He stopped to make a gagging motion. “That doesn’t mean Harry likes the ferret back! He’s a bloke, for starters.”

“Well,” Hermione said quietly, “That’s something only Harry can disclose about himself.”

Both his friends looked at him. Harry swallowed and raised his hands up in the air. “I mean! I’d never thought about it! I fancied Cho all through last year. I think I’d know if I suddenly started wanting to snog Malfoy.”

“This is the worst conversation we’ve ever had,” Ron groaned.

“Harry, now’s the time to think seriously about it. Would you say you’re attracted to Malfoy?”

“He’s a pointy git!” Ron interrupted, looking half-crazed.

“Of course I’m not! I’d say, the only thing I could maybe see as attractive is his hair or his eyes. Though he did grow into that pointy chin of his,” Harry commented absent-mindedly. “He’s got a strong jawline now that he lost all that baby fat…”

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look and Harry shut up, feeling his cheeks warm all of a sudden. Well, it was true! Malfoy was a pointy git, but he had the regal features to make it work.

“It’s okay, Harry.” Hermione patted his knee consolingly. “This is not something you have to figure out now. Let’s all get used to the idea first, alright?”

Ron had complained some more, and Hermione had tried to talk him into not bothering Harry about it, but his thoughts had already drifted far away, going back to what Hermione first said about Malfoy’s influence in his life.

He looked at his soulmark with different eyes after that. Could it be the wild magic wasn’t trying to play the ultimate prank on him, was instead trying to tell him something he wouldn’t have ever stopped to consider?

But then, Malfoy had been absolutely nasty towards his friends. Had tried to do serious harm to the people in Harry’s life, had relished in it, even. If everything Hermione had said about soulmarks was true, your soulmate was supposed to be the person to make you feel complete, to complement your qualities and diminish your flaws. Sure, soulmarks could change with time, if the person had also changed enough to need someone else entirely. But the soulmark being wrong was definitely unheard of. Did it make any sense for it to be Malfoy?

Harry hadn’t been able to reach a conclusion then, and he continued to be undecided now. The subject was dropped for the remainder of the summer, until the day the trio saw Malfoy in Knockturn Alley. After that, Malfoy had been a topic of discussion so frequently he could tell Ron and Hermione were getting annoyed with him. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t know what was going on, but he could feel something was happening. Malfoy’s birthday was almost two months before Harry's, he definitely knew Harry was his soulmate. Wouldn’t that merit a conversation, at the very least? When Madam Malkin tried to pin his left sleeve back in the shop in front of the trio, had Draco been trying to hide his name? Did his mother know?

All those questions swirled like a hurricane in Harry’s mind, no closer to being answered than they were before. But Ron’s mention of Malfoy now, in the train to Hogwarts, is enough to bring them to the forefront of his thoughts once again.

That’s why, he reasons with himself, he decides to follow Blaise Zabini back to his compartment after the meeting with Slughorn. Though he isn’t fast enough to slip inside with Zabini, he chooses to simply push the door and get in with the cloak still on. Zabini falls on top of Crabbe and Goyle and Harry uses the distraction to quickly hoist himself up into the luggage rack.

He tries his best to control his breathing. For a second, he thought Malfoy was able to see him, but the boy simply snickers over his friends and falls back onto Parkinson’s lap. Zabini sits down with a huff, Crabbe goes back to reading a Wizarding comic and Goyle starts eating from a package of the fancy chocolate Malfoy usually gets from his mother.

Harry shrinks in on himself and lays there uncomfortably, eyes set on Malfoy.

The blond is wearing a white shirt, a grey tie and black slacks tailored to his form, stretching up from the way he’s lying down, revealing a slip of an ankle. Harry doesn’t think he has ever seen Malfoy so casual before. His eyes snap up to Parkinson’s fingers brushing the blond fringe from his forehead, softly and with an ease that speaks of having done this many other times.

Something about that doesn’t agree with Harry. Does Parkinson know Malfoy has Harry’s name on his skin? Would she still act so intimately with him if that were the case? He bites his tongue to keep from grumbling.

Zabini starts telling them about the meeting with Slughorn. Malfoy stays quiet until Neville’s name is mentioned, and then he scoffs.

“He invited Longbottom?!” He sits up suddenly, knocking Parkinson’s hand aside. “Longbottom wouldn’t know a pewter cauldron from a gold one!”

Zabini shrugs. Malfoy rolls his eyes but lays back down, not commenting on the fact that Harry had been there himself. Perhaps he didn’t listen to that part? If Malfoy knew Harry was his soulmate, wouldn’t he want to talk to his friends about it? Even if only to be comforted about what he certainly thought was a tragedy.

“I wonder if Aidan is good at potions,” Parkinson says abruptly, with a dreamy voice. All of the boys in the compartment groan, seemingly done with the subject before Parkinson had the chance to start it.

“Let’s not come back to this again, Pans,” Malfoy utters, annoyed.

“You’re all such killjoys! My soulmate isn’t from Hogwarts, it’s normal to be curious about it!”

“If only we hadn’t heard all of your speculations a hundred times before,” Zabini drawls, resting his cheek on his hand, bored.

“None of our soulmates are from Hogwarts, besides,” mutters Goyle, tilting his head.

“We don’t know that, do we?” Parkinson asks. “Draco hasn’t shown us his soulmark yet.”

All eyes move to Malfoy and Harry sucks in a breath, not daring to blink. Malfoy looks like that entire conversation has managed to give him a headache. He sits up and pinches the bridge of his nose, frowning.

“There’s nothing interesting to show. I don’t know her and I don’t care to.”

Harry knows he’s lying, yet it still fills him with indignation to hear Malfoy talk about it as if it isn’t Harry’s own name on his forearm. As if their five years of rivalry are a mere inconvenience to be hidden.

“Does she have an embarrassing name?” Parkinson cackles. “Nothing like Aidan Priggside, I imagine. Did I tell you there’s a Priggside family line in Ireland? An illustrious line of wizards too.”

“Yes,” they all sigh together.

“Don’t worry, Draco,” Parkinson goes on, as if she didn’t need their input to continue the conversation. “I can help you track down your soulmate.” She lines up her wrist to Malfoy’s arm, making a motion to open his cufflink, and she’s so annoying in that moment that Harry sees red. “Though I know for sure she can’t come from a better family than Aidan.”

“No one gives a damn about Aidan Pigsty or whatever the fuck his name is, Pansy!” Malfoy finally snaps, pushing Parkinson’s wrist away with viciousness.

Everybody is silent after that.

The air inside the compartment suddenly feels fifteen degrees colder, with the boys on Harry's side awkwardly picking at clothes and looking away. Her face reddens with anger, and she crosses her arms, huffing.

The girl throws Malfoy a nasty look that seems to say something Harry has no idea how to decipher. Malfoy grimaces, seemingly regretting his outburst. He looks to Zabini, Crabbe and Goyle with pleading eyes, and the other boys immediately go back to doing the things they were before, as if in a practised dance. Crabbe turns to engage Goyle in a conversation about Quidditch and Zabini picks up a book, leafing through pages aimlessly.

Meanwhile, Harry turns his attention back to Malfoy when he nudges Parkinson’s elbow.

“Fine, I’ll pretend I haven’t heard this all a million times before for the sake of our friendship. Tell me again, what job do you think Aidan Priggside will have?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t bother you with my endless blabbing anymore.”

“C'mon, Pans,” Malfoy sighs, playing with Parkinson's fingers where they're set on her arm.

“No!” The girl turns to Draco suddenly, and that’s when Harry notices her eyes are watering. “First you spend all summer without talking to us, no news about your well-being, nada! And on our first day back together you snap at me like I'm your house-elf?! No, thank you.”

Harry had never seen Malfoy look so chastised before. He’s starting to realise that he didn’t know the Slytherin group nearly as well as he thought he did. Harry’d always had the impression that they operated as a pit of snakes. Treacherous, sharp-tongued, ready to betray one another and bundled together purely for survival.

Certainly they have their own ways of interacting; Harry can’t forget how coordinated the boys were in pretending to be doing something else to give the couple a modicum of privacy. They act as if they’re privy to invisible roles each of them must play, but it doesn’t mean there’s no friendship between them. It’s a side of Malfoy’s life Harry had never seen before, and he finds it's one he’s happy to have discovered.

“Ah, yes,” Malfoy remarks after a moment, in a nonchalant tone, practised. “Speaking of this summer, Mother got the contact of Francine Beauvais, from Madam Beauvais’ Charmed Nail Solutions. Did I mention it already?”

Parkinson raises an eyebrow at him, but Harry can tell her scowl is threatening to break. “You clearly did not.”

Malfoy shrugs briefly, “Must've forgotten it. Well, I was just thinking it would be so very simple to owl her and acquire her limited edition nail lacquer from the summer collection. You know, the one that sold out in two days?”

Parkinson seems to struggle with herself for a couple of seconds and then gives up on the fight, grabbing Malfoy by the upper arm and asking reluctantly, “Really?”

“I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true, would I?”

“How did you know I wanted that?”

“I remember you mentioning it to Daphne, of course.”

“Humph,” Parkinson clears her throat, obviously trying to contain her excitement. “Fine. But if you raise your voice towards me again, I’m hexing you with premature balding.”

The blond imitates a wand movement over his chest. “Curse my heart I won’t.”

“And,” she points a finger to his nose, “you owe my poor Aidan a gift too when we finally meet.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

“I swear, just because you won’t show us—”

“Pansy,” he interrupts her, though he keeps his word on not raising his voice. Harry swears he sees Malfoy glance his way, but it’s too fast to confirm it before he’s turning back to his friend. “I’m not talking about it.”

“There’s Hogwarts,” Zabini remarks, looking out the window, too pointed for it to be a coincidence.

“We’d better get dressed,” Malfoy sighs, standing up.

The others start to put on their robes. Malfoy stretches his back and tilts his head to the side, loosening the grey tie in the process, the tips of his fingers brushing against pale throat. Harry stares transfixed, mouth suddenly dry. Maybe he’ll have a chance to check the soulmark now?

He’s so busy staring at Malfoy he doesn’t notice when Goyle reaches for his trunk and hits him hard on the side of the head. Malfoy looks up at the involuntary gasp of pain he lets out, frowning, and Harry curses himself.

Malfoy changes his tie for the Slytherin one and shrugs on the uniform robes. He can’t help but feel disappointed by that. It was probably the closest he’d ever be to Malfoy taking off his shirt, which he needed to see in order to confirm the name on his arm.

The train slowly comes to a stop. Harry hopes Ron and Hermione will remember to get his things. He can’t leave before the Slytherins and the other compartments will probably be empty by then. Zabini, Crabbe and Goyle all go out one after another. Parkinson stops by the door and extends a hand.

“You go on,” Malfoy says to her, refusing the hand she’s offering. Harry smirks a little. Despite all of her whining, whatever Malfoy is up to, Parkinson is not in the know. That pleases Harry like no tomorrow. “I just want to check something.”

Before he can feel hopeful over being alone with Malfoy and having the perfect opportunity to confront him about the soulmark, he’s being hit with a Petrificus Totalus, falling out of the luggage rack and onto the floor with a painful crash.

He can only stare up when Malfoy approaches and kneels by his side.

The warm feelings budding in his chest vanish immediately at the sight of that familiar sneer. When Malfoy makes that face, all the things Harry began to find handsome in him disappear.

“I thought so,” he says quietly. “I heard Goyle’s trunk hit you. And I thought I saw something white flash through the air after Zabini came back…”

Harry follows with his eyes as Malfoy reaches for him, a hand approaching and hovering in the air near his cheek, though it never touches him. Malfoy swallows and seems to come to a decision, taking his hand back and standing up.

“Stay the fuck away from me, Potter.”

And then he stomps on his face.

It takes Harry another week to confront Malfoy again.

There wasn't an opportunity to tell his friends about the conversation in Malfoy’s compartment the night of the feast, after being saved by Tonks. He did his best to relay the way Malfoy had specifically avoided talking about his soulmate the next morning, how he hadn’t even bothered to curse Harry’s name when Zabini mentioned him being in Slughorn’s meeting.

Despite his attempts to make them see how strange that behaviour was, he only managed to be the object of Hermione’s and Ron’s trademark looks, the ones they threw at him whenever they thought he was being unreasonable, which made Harry more frustrated. It wasn’t usual for Malfoy to not want to pester Harry during the ride to Hogwarts, and it wasn’t usual that, besides making fun of his broken nose to his friends, Malfoy had let him alone in the corridors, no snide comment, no shoving his shoulder or hexing when passing each other; in fact, Harry hadn’t accidentally passed Malfoy at all, almost as if the blond was deliberately avoiding him.

The lecture he got from Hermione for the overt creepiness of waiting to see Malfoy change was so extensive, Harry decided he shouldn’t talk about the subject for awhile, no matter how hard he had defended himself by arguing he just wanted to see his bare arm. Harry intended to give it a rest, focus on his first week of classes and the personal lessons with Dumbledore.

However, the first potion class of the year earlier that day had reinvigorated his investment in Malfoy.

It started when he entered the room with Ron and Hermione behind him and decided to sit by the cauldrons bubbling near the front. When Harry sat down, he was suddenly enveloped by a seductive aroma that immediately relaxed his limbs. It was a mixture of broomstick polish, green apples and a hint of cologne, a combination that made him want to lay down on a bedspread doused with the stuff and never get up.

He closed his eyes and allowed memories to be brought forth, the fruit bowls during breakfast, green apples cut into slices speared with strawberries on toothpicks next to a plate of treacle tart. The Quidditch changing rooms before a game, the smell of polished brooms mixing with the faint cologne coming from someone’s robes, before the Gryffindor team entered the pitch to face—

Harry freezes, back going stiff. It’s specifically the smell of the changing rooms before a game with Slytherin.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a surprise, but it was. It was a sucker punch to the stomach, actually.

As soon as everybody sat down, Harry looked at Malfoy, expecting to see some kind of reaction over the smell coming from the cauldrons, anything that could be used as evidence for his soulmark, expecting the boy to be as affected by their connection as Harry himself felt. But Malfoy looked positively bored, leaning a pale cheek against his hand.

As if a dog denied a bone, Harry’s focus zeroed in on the blond, noticing the smallest of details, from the smart comments he shared with Nott to the hungry look in his eyes when the Felix Felicis was mentioned. Along with his suspicions from the train journey to Hogwarts, all of it contributed to making Harry itch to talk to him.

A chance comes for him during dinner, a couple of hours after their lesson together. The moment Malfoy gets up from the table and leaves the Great Hall, Harry finds an excuse to stand up as well and follow him.

Malfoy is leaving much earlier than expected. Most students are still eating, the corridors between the Great Hall and the Slytherin common room in the dungeons practically empty, which is all the better for Harry. The blond continues in a hurried pace, without Crabbe and Goyle acting as his shadow, those two chose to stay behind for dessert.

Harry quickens his step and finally gets a hold of Malfoy’s forearm, the left one, the one with his name on it. The blond spins in his direction fuming, but with the controlled movements of someone who was expecting this sooner or later.

“Didn’t you hear me back on the train, Potter?” Malfoy asks, eyebrows furrowing in anger. He yanks his arm out of Harry’s grip and hides it behind his back, sneering. “Stay away from me, unless you fancy yourself another broken nose. Who knows, maybe it’ll make your face look decent for once.”

“Why don’t you come at me now that I’ve a wand in my hand, Malfoy.” Harry snaps, “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“You w—” Malfoy starts in a spiteful tone of voice, but then snaps his mouth shut.

He breathes in deeply, clearly holding himself back from whatever reply he wanted to say. It unnerves Harry, to have the blond retreat from the fight. After five years of goading, getting on each other’s nerves, of feeling his blood rush to his head near Malfoy, he doesn’t know what to do with a Malfoy that won’t rise to the provocation. A Malfoy that is indifferent, that won’t deign to look back. It’s that reaction more than anything that pisses Harry off.

Look at me, he wants to say.

“I know your secret.” Harry tries, his one argument for going after the other boy.

Malfoy’s eyes flash with something dangerous.

“You don’t know shit, Potter.”

“Really? Show me, then! Prove me wrong if you are so sure of yourself!”

The blond seems to deflate at that, pursing his lips and taking a step towards the dungeons, the opposite of what Harry intended.

“I don’t have anything to prove to you,” he states neutrally and turns to leave. Harry follows, desperate.

“Did you tell dear old Lucius about having the name of a half-blood on your skin?” Harry calls, his voice echoing in the looming stone walls. “Oh, wait, you’re not allowed to send letters to Azkaban, right?”

It’s the most provoking taunt he can think of, anything that will stop Malfoy from escaping. Malfoy raises a chin to look at him from up his nose.

“I’d return the courtesy of asking if you told your parents, but then again, they’re dead, aren’t they?”

Harry gets so angry he clenches his fist. He doesn't know what other wound he can prod that will continue their argument, that will make the other snap and finally reveal what he’s trying so hard to keep hidden. In the end, he doesn't need to. Malfoy seems to change his mind about avoiding confrontation. He stops mid-turn, looks contemplative for a second, and then levels at Harry the most vile smirk he's ever seen, in such a way that transforms his features completely.

“Even if you did tell them, I wonder if they’d be able to understand. I wonder if the wild magic even gives soulmates to dirty mudbloods like your mother—”

Before he can reconsider it, he grabs the collar of Malfoy’s shirt and slams him against the wall, blood rushing to his head. The other keeps that smug look on his face, as if he won the battle now that Harry’s about to give him a beating.

Ah, Harry muses to himself, looking at those infuriating pink lips, did he truly think he’d be able to win against Malfoy at this game?

From their proximity, a sweet smell wafts up between them, the aroma of expensive cologne encompassing the two and making Harry freeze. It’s a flowery scent that reminds Harry of one of the few times he went out with the Dursleys and a nice saleswoman gave him a slip of paper dabbled with the free sample of a terribly expensive perfume. Only, a hundred times more appealing coming from the other boy than the paper he’d kept at his nose that entire night until the smell disappeared.

It’s the smell he got from the Amortentia. Broomstick polish, green apples and this flowery, fancy cologne. The smell left behind in the changing rooms before a Quidditch game. Hermione’s question comes unbidden onto his mind, ‘would you say you’re attracted to him?’

Harry finds himself looking from that mouth down to Malfoy’s jawline, the one he got at some point during fifth year and that had Harry making a double-take at him one morning during breakfast. His unblemished skin, with the exception of a couple of pale freckles spread throughout his cheeks. A slender neck and the sudden memory of Malfoy loosening his tie, fingers scratching lines down a throat.

It occurs to him suddenly, how close they are. Every single point of contact between their bodies feels electrified, from their knees to where Harry’s hand is pressed against his collarbone. When Harry looks back up, Malfoy has a dazed look to him, eyes hooded and molten silver.

He gulps, mouth dry and avid. His eyes subconsciously fall back to Malfoy’s lips, and that’s when the sound of footsteps round the corner echo in the empty corridor. Malfoy seems to snap away from whatever haze he’d found himself in. He widens his eyes, a dose of fear replacing the fuzziness.

The contrast is enough to make Harry’s slacken his hold, and Malfoy takes that opportunity to push him away.

“Leave me alone, Potter!” He gasps, out of breath. “I don’t want anything to do with you!”

With that final scream, he runs away, leaving Harry dumbfounded in the middle of the corridor.

That night, Harry can’t stop thinking about Malfoy.

It’s past midnight, all beds from the Gryffindor dormitory have their curtains drawn and constant snores are heard coming from Ron’s side of the room, but Harry can’t turn his brain off enough to fall asleep.

He replays over and over the moment he pushed Malfoy against the wall, his smug smile, the warmth underneath Harry’s hand and that damned, intoxicating smell.

It seems too ludicrous to believe that Malfoy had been the one to come to his senses first. That Harry had almost, almost…

He casts a quiet Lumos, and picks up the Marauders’ map, whispering the sentence to activate the parchment. After a couple of seconds adjusting his eyes to the brightness, he finally finds the Slytherin dorm in the dungeons. Nobody out of bed, disobeying curfew this early in the school year. The Slytherin part of the castle is less detailed than the other houses, though the layout of the structure is accurate from what little he remembers of their venture in second year.

And there it is, the name Draco Malfoy, static on the bed near the window.

Leaning the map against his knees, he raises the sleeve of his left arm and compares the name on the parchment to the name written on his skin. They’re different of course. The soulmark is always developed in the same handwriting as the person it refers to, while the names on the map are standardised.

He never got around to asking Sirius whose handwriting was used to make the map. It hadn’t occurred to him, didn’t seem like something important.

Was it his father's?

Harry closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath before opening them again and looking upwards, fighting against the tears welling up. Of all things, to be affected by something this silly. It’s just that, it hadn’t seemed urgent then, he thought he’d have more time. For so many things.

Shaking his head, he comes back to the name on his arm, the elegant handwriting curving slightly to the right, as if Malfoy wrote with a tilted quill. The letters are slender but sure. It looks like an actual signature, all official and professional-like.

With a sigh, Harry closes the map and flicks his wand, ending the Lumos charm. It’s late; he should try to sleep, no matter how difficult it is. Though, before he closes his eyes, the image of Malfoy’s reaction when Harry looked at him that evening comes back to bother him, those wide grey eyes pinning him in place.

It hadn’t been just a simple reaction to the possibility of getting caught. No, for a split second, he’d looked proper scared. And Harry needs to figure out why.

Chapter Text

Summer gives way into winter and soon after spring starts to sneak up on the school, the frigid air broken by stretches of uninterrupted sun, the chirps of birds and the flowers blooming, little by little. Yet Harry still doesn't find another chance to speak to Malfoy alone after that first disastrous confrontation. He could feel himself becoming more and more obsessed with figuring everything out, and especially more and more obsessed with having Malfoy acknowledge their bond.

Between the memory sessions with Dumbledore, their sixth year curriculum and paying attention to Malfoy’s every move, Harry feels like the only moment he can rest is when he lays down to sleep at night. And even then, he has to actively fight himself out of checking the Marauder’s map to see if Malfoy is lurking about after hours.

His current, biggest concern is finding a way to convince Slughorn to give him the memory talking about Horcruxes. He can’t afford to disappoint Dumbledore again. Still, as he sits down during breakfast, he automatically looks for Malfoy at the other side of Great Hall, the task of observing the other ingrained in him like muscle memory.

His watch is briefly interrupted by Hermione dropping a thick book onto the table.

She huffs and opens the cover exasperatedly, barely stopping to pile some toast on her plate. Harry and Ron look at each other with raised eyebrows. When she turns over the first page, he can see rows of old student pictures side by side. One of the subjects catches Harry’s eyes and blows him a raspberry.

“Still trying to find out who the prince is?” Harry hazards a guess, cutting up more sausages. He should probably try and keep the smug inflection out of his voice before Hermione decides to lecture him about the book once again.

“Might as well find something to occupy myself with,” she says annoyedly. “I’ve been trying to get Mind Machinations and Memory Manipulation from the library for weeks, but every time I check, the book’s already been borrowed! And I’ve been checking since the beginning of the year!”

“What do you want with a book like that, anyway?” Ron asks, twisting his nose at the name, momentarily distracted from his food.

“It’s supposedly an obscure guide to the hidden techniques of Occlumency. I thought I could take a look at it and see if there’s anything that could help you, Harry,” she tells him gently. “You shouldn’t give up on Occlumency just because the lessons with Snape didn’t work out.”

“Honestly, it's best if you forget that, Hermione.” Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think it will make much of a difference. Occlumency is just not for me.”

“Still,” she sighs. “It’s a matter of principles now. I bet it’s one single person reading the book and they keep asking other students to sign for them…”

She continues grumbling about the misuse of library policies and the inanity of only having one copy of such a requested book. Harry knows she’s mostly speaking to herself by that point, so he turns his attention back to the blond on the other side of the hall.

Malfoy has a full plate in front of him, but seems content to move the food back and forth instead of bringing the fork to his mouth. This is something Harry noticed a couple of weeks ago, Malfoy’s lack of appetite. During all meals the only moments he sees him actually eating something is when Parkinson or Nott engage in conversation with him, and even then it’s clear that he’s doing it just to keep appearances.

He catalogues methodically the lost shine of Malfoy's skin, how sallow it seems, the sickly look reinforced by the dark bruises under his eyes. His hair falls limply onto his forehead, each day less and less carefully tousled and more lifeless.

There’s something else different about him today, though Harry is struggling to figure it out. He concentrates on the other boy, the way his arm rests on the table at the elbow level rather than at the wrist, his hand weak, his slightly tilted face, fringe falling across his eyes, and his lowered shoulders.

He’s slouching, Harry realises suddenly, not sitting all straight and proper like he usually does. Harry doesn’t think he’s ever seen Malfoy slouch in public, only in the privacy of his friends during the train ride in the beginning of the year.

“He’s slouching,” he says out loud automatically. Ron turns to him with a little hum and Harry feels his cheeks warm, already guessing at what his friend is going to think, but he continues anyway, “Malfoy. He's always sat elegant and proper like a little spoiled heir, but now he looks all down and defeated.”

Ron snorts, “It’s probably the stick up his arse keeping him upright at all times.”

“Not today though,” Harry insists, still looking at Malfoy.

“Right,” Ron glances at him, and Harry forces himself to go back to his food, thoughts of Malfoy swirling in his mind.

Ron and Hermione have the apparition test that day, and since Harry’s not old enough yet, he has plenty of time during Potions to think about the Malfoy conundrum. Slughorn asks them to brew him something amusing, but all of his thoughts are focused on what the other boy could be up to.

From the beginning of the school year until now, Malfoy has acted strangely. He has all but retreated into himself, avoiding the groups of people he used to provoke and taunt, notably speaking, Harry and his friends. Despite having always been someone who took care of his appearance, he’s been looking more and more haggard with each passing day, as well as disappearing into the Room of Requirement for long stretches of time.

Harry has entertained the very real possibility that Malfoy is a Death Eater, currently under some sort of mission from Voldemort. His biggest piece of evidence comes from what Snape said that night during the Slug party and from his excursion to Borgin and Burke during the summer. Back then, he showed Borgin his left arm and, as much as Harry's name has influence in the magical world, he can't imagine it being capable of intimidating the shopkeeper into submission. The only explanation for that, as he told Ron and Hermione hundreds of times, would be if he was showing him the Dark Mark instead.

A small part of Harry wants to believe Malfoy wouldn’t cover his soulmark with Voldemort's. He wants to believe Malfoy wouldn't hate Harry so much as to take on the Dark Mark, knowing full well Harry would continue to sport his name all by himself.

Not to mention what it would mean to the two of them. Soulmarks are unanimously accepted to be romantic. They are all about romantic love, attraction and compatibility, which is one of the reasons seeing the name Draco Malfoy left him in such disarray. Could Harry really come to love a person who chose Voldemort's side? A person that’s become his enemy in the most literal sense of the word?

He groans, letting his face fall into his hands.

It's so bloody unfair. It's unfair that Voldemort was able to ruin this as well, to sneak his slimy hands onto one more piece of Harry's life. From the moment he learned about soulmates he'd expected the reveal with a mixture of dread and anticipation. Ron had said that there was no truer affection than the one that came from a soulmate. That, for as long as you were each other’s soulmates, you could trust the bond to be true and unconditional.

Harry had taken a long time to wrap his head around the concept. It’d just seemed too grand. At first he’d spent long late nights thinking about whether he’d truly have a soulmate or not, had spiralled during many dinners with the Dursleys. While being ordered around and treated like dirt under their shoes, something like that really didn’t feel possible.

But the more he saw of soulmates in the magical world, of Arthur and Molly, of the fairy tales Ron used to hear, of the older students at Hogwarts finding their second half, it’d started to sink in. It was possible. He could have it, a soulmark, and it would be all his.

It was supposed to be all his.

Inevitably, the mark arrived and it's not going to go away anytime soon. And the person he'd imagined in his head during the toughest lows of the last few years didn't want anything to do with their bond.

He rubs his eyes with his fists quickly and straightens up on the chair. Even if it's only him, Malfoy and Ernie Macmillan, he should at least try to pretend to pay attention to his potion.

As Slughorn continues to drone on about some exotic ingredient or another, Harry thinks back to Ron and Hermione. He knows his friends are worried about him, perhaps even a little exasperated. Just as he knows this dilemma is consuming his every thought. But he can't help it. It's in his nature to solve mysteries. He's been doing it ever since he got into Hogwarts, and this is just one more way Voldemort is interfering with his Hogwarts year to make it as terrible as possible.

And it's instilled in him, to crave. This yearning has become part of him, a tiny flicker of a flame he's nurtured since he was young and locked inside a cupboard. What his aunt and uncle don't realise is that they've made Harry insatiable. With the snippets of programmes he watched on the telly when Dudley left it on while he went to the bathroom. With the leftovers from lunch that he hoarded when Petunia and Vermont weren't looking. Dudley’s “lost toys” Harry took to put on his shelf, the Hogwarts letters he tried to grab from midair, all the little things he had to salvage and sneak for and earn.

Put it simply, whenever he finds a gap, Harry dives in. He was never able to lower his head to the deprivation they submitted him to.

His eyes find Malfoy at the other end of the room, almost as if instinctively drawn to that spot. The blond looks like he would rather be in a million other places. Or, rather, in one other place. He looks just as bad as this morning, exhausted. Whatever it is he's trying to do, it's going badly.

The fumes from the potion make his hair curl up slightly at the ends, splotches of red forming easily on his pale cheeks. He picks up a discarded book to fan the blushed skin of his neck, and Harry has to force himself to look back at his cauldron.

Put it simply, he wants. And he wants it fully and all-encompassing. Not like the meagre tastes of things from his childhood. All that's left is to find out where that leaves him and Malfoy.

When Ron and Hermione come back to the common room that evening, they come up with an idea on how to get the memory from Slughorn, using the Felix Felicis potion Harry got at the beginning of the year. At first, Harry tries to argue, malformed plans of catching blond Slytherins in the act with varying results, but he understands how important this mission is.

The last thing Harry thinks before taking a sip of the potion is that it's a shame he won't be able to use it to find out what Malfoy is up to. And then he’s swallowing, and the world is becoming sharp and focused, and a buzzing energy picks up under his skin, and he’s standing up.

He goes to Hagrid’s, knows he has to, and chooses a path through the vegetable patch, because it just makes sense, and he picks up Slughorn on the way, why not?, and they walk together until they reach Aragog’s corpse and Slughorn is delivering an eulogy, and Hagrid is crying, and somebody is opening a bottle of elf-made wine, and Harry is bringing up his mom, it always hurts to bring her up, in some tiny corner of his heart, but now’s the perfect time for it and Slughorn is saying he’s not proud of what he’s done and Harry is answering it would be a very noble thing to do, to help, and then suddenly Harry has a phial with a memory in hand.

Mission complete, he thinks, and then he’s walking back to the castle, because, actually, not, he has something else to do, very urgent, very important, he enters the castle, but instead of going to Gryffindor’s towers, he takes a left near the entrance and makes his way to the painting of a bowl of fruit, he tickles the pear, obviously, and the painting becomes a door, through which Harry enters to find most of the house-elves gone, probably to sleep, and only a handful of them standing around, and Harry asks very politely if they could please prepare a meal for him, it’s so very important, and they do, and now Harry has a tray of food and is heading over to the seventh floor.

At some point in the stairs, the potion wears off. It’s so sudden that Harry feels dizzy. He halts in the middle of the stairway, holding a tray of beans on toast. It’s plain to see what Felix was telling him to do, but now that he doesn’t have the potion in his bloodstream anymore, can he truly trust himself to not fuck it up?

Hm. He’s come all the way up here. Might as well.

Harry continues onward, reaching the seventh floor’s left corridor. While he’s walking, he glances at the tray and wonders why Felix made him ask for that dish specifically if he’s supposed to give it to Malfoy. It just seems so… plebeian.

When he reaches the tapestry of Barnabas, the barmy, he sees a slumped figure sitting on the floor, head tilted downwards. It’s either Crabbe or Goyle transformed into a little girl, sleeping. The wall in front of the tapestry is bare, so Harry slips into the shadow in the corner and waits.

He observes the slow rise and fall of the girl's chest, the metal cage with the function of alerting Malfoy laying discarded. Harry’s first thought when he figured out Crabbe and Goyle were polyjuicing themselves into first years was that they were truly too dumb to think for themselves. That’s the only reason that made sense in his mind as to why they followed Malfoy around and did his bidding. Yet, that scene of the Slytherins together on the train comes to mind now, seeing one of them asleep in the middle of the corridor, loyal to a fault. Maybe they’re doing this because they’re worried about Malfoy too. Maybe this is the way they found to keep an eye on their friend, to make sure he’s not pushing himself to a point of no return.

The door of the Room suddenly appears in the hallway. Harry really wishes he hadn’t thought to come without Felix's help, because now he has no idea what to do. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to wait for Malfoy or to force his way inside. If he’s looking for a fight or going for stealth. Before Harry can make the choice, Malfoy quickly steps out and the door disappears again.

So he really is using the room, though for what, Harry doesn’t know.

Malfoy straightens up and dusts his robes, the prefect badge shining. He looks around with stiff shoulders, and then does a double-take when he notices Goyle asleep, immediately relaxing.

“Dunce,” he sighs softly, approaching his friend to wake him up. Before he has the chance, Harry steps out of the shadows. This is it, then. Too late to go inside without being noticed, and there’s no way he’s letting the blond escape when he has him right in front of him.

Malfoy whips around at the sound, flicking his wrist so that his wand descends to his hand. Awfully jumpy, Harry thinks to himself.

With Malfoy facing him, he can take in his appearance. His gaunt face, the slouching shoulders, even worse than at breakfast. He looks terrible and Harry has no idea when was the last time he ate. He certainly didn’t in the morning. That realisation is enough to break Harry’s resolve. He’s holding a tray of food, for fuck’s sake. It’s definitely not a fight Felix was aiming for.

Slowly, as if handling a spooked animal, he gestures with the tray, showing Malfoy he couldn’t hold his wand even if he wanted to.

“I'm not here to fight.”

“Yeah, right,” Draco sneers, standing so rigid he might crack.

“I'm not,” Harry insists. He looks back to the food and resolves that honesty is the best course of action. “I didn’t see you eating today, so I thought… thought you might be hungry.”

Harry wasn’t expecting it to work, but Malfoy freezes briefly and then breathes out, relaxing his posture. He glances at the tray, hesitation still evident on his face.

“I think I haven’t had beans on toast since before I came to Hogwarts,” he says softly.

“Oh?” Harry offers.

Malfoy nods, pocketing his wand. “I used to love it when I was a kid.” As if the words suddenly register in his mind, Malfoy turns a suspicious look at Harry, “How did you know that was my favourite food?”

Harry shrugs. “Lucky guess.”

“Hm.” Malfoy steps closer to Harry, taking the tray from his hands. Without anything to hold, Harry doesn’t really know what to do, and it feels awkward standing there as Malfoy comes closer to the wall and sits, tray on his lap. He really shouldn’t have done this without Felix.

Harry’s about to stammer out an excuse to stay when Malfoy interrupts.

“I can’t possibly eat all this by myself before bed,” he says casually.

“Oh,” Harry says. “Er, maybe have Goyle help you?”

“It’s Crabbe, actually” Malfoy deadpans, “and he’s not going to wake up until morning now, I’ll probably have to carry him. Thank goodness for the polyjuice potion and levitation charms.”

“Oh,” Harry repeats and suddenly feels like a cuckoo clock, his cheeks warming. Malfoy can’t be implying what he thinks he’s implying, can he? “Um, do you… want me to take the rest back to the kitchens?

Malfoy rolls his eyes.

“Sit down, Potter.”

He almost says “oh” again, from surprise, though manages to close his mouth before he makes an even bigger embarrassment of himself. Harry approaches slowly, still unsure of whether this is actually happening or if it’s an after-effect of the Felix Felicis, a drug-induced hallucination. It certainly seems more plausible than Draco Malfoy inviting Harry to eat with him.

They sit side by side, Malfoy fitting the tray on both their legs. On the plate over the tray there are three portions of beans on toast, and the smell coming from it is delicious enough to make his stomach rumble, despite not being that hungry.

“I used to beg the elves to make this for me,” Malfoy says, surprising Harry once more with how friendly he sounds. The hallucination theory is still on the table. Malfoy is opening up one of the serviettes and putting it on his lap. “Mother didn’t allow me to eat in between meals, said it would ruin my appetite. She was right, of course, though it didn’t stop me from whingeing to the elves until they caved.”

Harry tries to think back to first year, to a small Malfoy of that age, smaller even, pouting and stomping his foot until he got his way. He supposes that if he’d got such a mental image before this year, he’d probably see it as just one more instance of Malfoy being a prat. Somehow, he ends up finding it cute instead. The blond used to have very pinchable cheeks, from what he remembers.

“I’ve never eaten beans on toast before.”

“Really?” Malfoy asks, surprised. Then he smirks and says, “Don’t tell me the Boy-who-lived was also forbidden from eating snacks.”

Harry thinks back to his childhood, to preparing the meals yet not being allowed to eat them until after everybody was done, and getting only the scraps anyway. He doesn’t remember ever seeing Dudley eat beans on toast specifically, but, if he had, Harry probably wouldn’t have got any.

“Something like that.”

Malfoy stares at him. Harry tries not to mind, twisting the side of his robes with his hands where they're hidden. They’re quiet for a small moment and then Malfoy clears his throat, “Well, I suppose I must show you how one eats such an exquisite delicacy.”

He picks up his wand again, conjuring a second set of utensils and handing the original one to Harry. Then, before he can do anything, Malfoy starts to cut Harry's toast in smaller pieces with unexpected focus.

“There,” he says, leaning back and doing the same with his own part. He cuts up the third portion of toast and pushes a bigger amount of it to Harry’s side. Harry feels like he might not be able to eat, after all. For some reason, there’s something swelling inside his throat.

He breathes in and then forces himself to pick up the first piece with the fork, he could never waste food after all.

It’s delicious. It tastes homemade and earthy. Malfoy hums, pleased.

“It’s just like the elves at the Manor used to make.”

“Careful, Malfoy,” Harry jokes. “Soon enough you’ll be praising me for my idea.”

“You know what they say, Potter, even a fake seer can guess the rain from time to time.”

Harry huffs at the absurd quote and continues eating. It’s surreal, sitting side by side with Draco Malfoy, their shoulders and elbows brushing every so often, tucking in together without killing each other. But it feels like the best idea Harry’s ever had.

After they finish it, Harry drops the knife and fork and sighs, full. Malfoy also drops his utensils, suddenly leaning down playfully until their eyes meet, looking at him with a teasing smile. It makes his eyes crinkle and his face look boyish, all stress and strain for the last few months leaving for a couple of moments.

“Do you want to know a secret?”

Harry breathes in, nodding slowly, unable to take his eyes off him.

“Don’t you dare ever tell my mother,” he jokes. He reaches out and swipes his index finger on the plate, catching the leftover bean sauce. “But I’ve always found this the best way to finish off beans on toast.”

He raises the hand to his mouth and sucks on the fingerprint with an obnoxious slurp. Harry can’t help himself; he starts laughing.

It’s such a ridiculous thing for Malfoy to do it almost comes off as endearing. Malfoy, who in Harry’s head has always behaved like a little prince, snottily looking down from his nose at everybody.

As if activating a defence mechanism, his brain starts to send him memories of Malfoy spitting out the word mudblood in Hermione's face in second year, his air of victory when talking about getting Buckbeak executed, his willing collaboration with Umbridge. His smug face, with those white-blond strands gleaming from the sun. His wide gestures and bright grey eyes whenever he did an impression of some grand happening.

The Malfoy in front of him, who begged house-elves to make him comfort food without his parents knowing. Who secretly eats with his hands, as if it's a very naughty thing to do. Who cut up Harry’s food for him like it was no big deal.

Fuck, what is he doing? It is very possible that he might fall in love with Draco Malfoy.

Malfoy also chuckles with him, but when the noise quietens down again, the look in his eyes is anything but funny. Those eyes are looking at him as though they're seeing something shiny that he can’t touch. Harry doesn’t know what to do with that. If Malfoy tried to touch him now, he’s not sure he’d stop him.

And then Malfoy sighs and stands up, putting the tray to the side. He dusts his robes and reaches a hand out. Harry’s about to take his offer when Malfoy seems to realise what he’s doing and takes the hand back, sneer sliding into place.

The sight of it makes Harry slump back against the wall. Midnight is here, the fantasy is over.

“Well, Potter. It wasn’t completely excruciating reminiscing with you, surprisingly, but I must be going.”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry stands up by himself, trying for a nonchalant stance. “I gotta head to the owlery, I imagine Narcissa won’t mind the late hour if it’s to tell her of her son’s atrocious manners.”

Malfoy tilts his head up, looking at him from up his nose. Harry finds it doesn’t bother him so much when it’s done playfully.

“There’s no evidence. She’ll never believe you.”

Harry looks at the tray on the floor and raises an eyebrow.

“That’s circumstantial, at best. Why, I wouldn't even have to bribe the Wizengamot to ignore it.”

Harry huffs out a laugh. “Whatever you say, Malfoy.”

The other approaches the sleeping Crabbe. He really did stay sleeping all that time, Harry thinks impressed. Malfoy casts a quiet levitating charm and, when the huddled figure of the first year rises, he takes his wrist, pulling him close.

“Good night, Potter. Try not to get indigestion.” He waves a hand, starting the trek back down into the dungeons.

“You too, Malfoy.”

After that day, Harry tries to replicate the success of Felix to no avail. His first instinct is to simply down the rest of the potion in the vial, but Hermione convinces him not to. The Felix Felicis potion is not a guarantee, she tells him repeatedly, it would only work if the conditions for whatever he wanted to achieve were ideal. In the beginning, Harry grudgingly passed down the option of drinking the potion again. However, as the days pass, he starts to see a point to Hermione’s argument.

Harry doesn’t manage to bump into Malfoy at all in the next couple of weeks. In fact, Malfoy seemed to be avoiding Harry even more religiously than before. He turned down Crabbe and Goyle’s guard in the Room’s corridor, possibly to not risk giving away the periods of time he spent there. Harry didn’t see him in the Great Hall anymore, even after spending the entirety of breakfast, lunch and dinner checking each and every person that passed through the doors. He arrives late to the few classes shared between Slytherins and Gryffindors and leaves the fastest out of everyone. Some classes he doesn’t even bother attending. For someone who was once second in grades only to Hermione herself, it’s a big change.

Once, Harry took all the assignments he’d been procrastinating on and sat in front of the Room, determined to catch Malfoy again. He’d sat there for at least four hours. It was during Slytherin Quidditch practice, which Malfoy had dropped months ago, and he’d checked the map beforehand to make sure the blond was in the Room. Harry’d sat there in a fuming sulk, Malfoy’s absence from the team only fueling his frustration even more. The Slytherin games were positively boring without him as seeker.

He sat on the floor until dinner. Not once did Malfoy emerge. Harry left to eat and he never appeared there either. All the anger in Harry’s body deflated into resignation and something he refused to admit as concern.

Well, if Malfoy is determined to avoid Harry, that’ll only make him more unrelenting in his inspection of the map. Gone are the days of a good night's sleep. He obsesses over the little mark labelled Draco Malfoy before bed and then dreams of footsteps leaving ink-splattered prints all over the Gryffindor common room.

It’s only a matter of time before he’s able to talk to Malfoy again.

That day comes a couple of weeks later, a little before dinner. Harry is checking the map purely out of habit rather than hope for success. He doesn’t see Malfoy on the grounds initially, and assumes the boy is inside the Room again, but then that fancy curl of an F catches his attention in the boy’s bathroom on the sixth floor, accompanied by Moaning Myrtle.

Harry stops. This might be his only chance before who-knows-how-long. He turns around and heads towards that bathroom with unwavering focus.

He opens the door quietly. It’s cloudy that day, the white sky bathes the bathroom in a sterile and cold light, slipping through the tall windows behind the sink. That’s where he finds Malfoy, leaning on the white porcelain, light spilling down his back like a cloak.

Harry lets his eyes follow the line of Malfoy’s body. He has both hands spread around him, a dip to his back from where his head is lowered, hip cocked to the side. Harry gulps. His throat is dry, all of a sudden.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Myrtle coos, almost transparent where she’s floating over Malfoy, Harry hadn’t even noticed her. She is reaching her hand, but stops before it can pass over the other boy. "Let me help."

“No one can help me,” he says. Harry startles when he realises Malfoy’s voice is quavering. “I can’t do it, and unless I do it soon, he says he’ll k-kill me. He’ll kill my parents.”

“Who, Draco?” Myrtle asks, both motherly and with morbid fascination at the same time.

Malfoy snorts out a laugh, harsh and loud inside the bathroom’s echoing walls. He sucks in a breath, shaky on its way out. Harry feels frozen to the floor.

“I could… there’s still… still one way to please him… but I can't!” A sob rips out of Malfoy’s throat, as if fighting its way out of his body. His crying sounds physically straining. “What a joke, I can’t even… to save myself, and yet I could never…”

Malfoy opens the faucet and splashes some water on his face, breathing sharply, and then he looks up for the first time since Harry came in, grey eyes meeting green immediately through the sink’s dirty mirror.

There’s no time for Harry to say or do anything. Malfoy’s eyes widen and then he’s turning around, wand in hand, whimpering, “No, no, no, no!” Harry takes a step back. “How many times do I have to tell you?!”

It’s pure instinct that makes him duck when he hears the scream, “Stay away from me!”, avoiding the hex sent his way that blasts the sconce on the wall next to his head.

It’s not a warning shot, Malfoy aimed to hit.

Harry pulls out his wand and tries to cast his own hex, but the other deflects without much difficulty. He tries spell after spell, attacking and deflecting in turns, but nothing he does stops Malfoy, who’s trying to hit Harry with an anger that is almost manic.

What could he use to make Malfoy stop and be forced to listen? Something he hadn’t ever used before, so that he wouldn’t know to block it?

Adrenaline is pumping through his veins, his core hot from the influx of magic. The bathroom around them is the scene of a proper duel, stone rubble and destroyed toilets. Malfoy dodges Harry’s spell once more and takes a step forward, face contorted, and cries, “Crucio—”

“Sectumsempra!”

A gurgled gasp comes out of Malfoy’s lips and then all noise around him stops, fades away into nothing.

Myrtle’s screams, the water spurting from the pipes, the birds outside going back to their nests, it’s like everything’s muffled behind a thick cloth.

The only thing Harry can pay attention to is Malfoy’s body.

Falling backwards, so limp it's inhuman.

Almost like when Sirius died.

No, he thinks wildly. No. It’s not possible.

He’s a red splat on the floor, blood slowly tingeing the puddles.

And Harry can only look, numb from the top of his head till the sole of his feet.

All of a sudden, the world comes back to him. Myrtle is screaming bloody murder in the corridor, his shoes are soaked and squeaking against the stone floor, and Draco groans softly, but loud enough for Harry to hear and run towards him in a mad sprint.

He falls to his knees on Draco’s side, looking at the cuts slashed onto his chest as if done by a sword’s blade. Some of the cuts rise all the way to Draco’s face, and Harry has to cover his mouth to stop from vomiting when he notices one of the cuts neatly opening the left lower eyelid in half.

“No,” he whispers, “I didn’t mean to.”

He doesn’t know what to do, can’t think of any healing spells. What was it that Tonks used in him in the beginning of the year, to heal his nose? What was it, the spell, why can’t he remember it?

His heart feels stuck to his throat.

Will he really be forced to watch Draco die in front of him? Worse yet, move on with the knowledge that he was the one to do it? No, he can’t. He can’t breathe. His mind feels like it’s spinning in circles, what can he do to stop this, why can’t he fucking think?

No, no, will he have to add Draco’s name to the list of people who died because of Harry? Will it be written under the names of his parents, Cedric, Sirius, will it be signed along the dotted line in his neat penmanship, with the fancy curls and tilted letters, the natural consequence of being Harry Potter’s soulmate.

I’m sorry, Harry thinks hysterically, I didn’t mean it. He’s not my enemy. He’s not my enemy.

The door to the bathroom slams open, and Harry barely recognizes Snape standing there like a shadow, before the man is coming inside in hurried steps and pushing him away. The shove is enough to bring Harry back to reality. Snape starts to chant something, softly, almost like a song, waving his wand in sure patterns over Draco’s chest.

Harry goes to Draco’s other side, taking his hand firmly, heartbeat pumping in his throat. The cuts slowly, so slowly, but surely, close. The blood dribbling from each wound reverses and the skin from Draco’s face mends together with a barely visible red line left behind. The wounds in his chest are not so easily fixed, however, and soon comes the time where Snape’s incantation isn’t doing anything anymore. There’s still a narrow gash stretching from Draco’s hip to his collarbone and smaller ones surrounding it, and Harry wants to cry.

“This is all I can do,” Snape mutters, though Harry knows the reassurance is not for his ears. “We must go to the hospital wing immediately. With some dittany, we may even avoid scarring.”

Harry swallows down, inching forward when Snape shifts Draco slightly into an upwards position.

“You stay here, Potter,” he says. Harry thought he knew all the ways Snape’s voice could cut into you, but this time he feels the sting of his loathing deeper than ever before. “If you try to escape, know I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

It takes a moment for such nonsensical words to register in his ears.

“Of course I’m leaving the bathroom,” Harry retorts, “I’m going with you to the hospital wing.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough, boy!” Snape hisses. “You’re lucky I don’t strike you down where you stand.”

“I’m his soulmate!” Harry snaps. He drops Draco’s arm only for the time needed to raise his sleeve and show him the name. “I’m coming with, whether you like it or not.”

Snape looks at the soulmark with a haunted expression and then at Harry with furious eyes. “Cover that, you idiot fool,” he spits.

Scouring his mind for any information Hermione’s spouted about soulmates in the past, Harry takes Draco’s hand again.

“Soulmate contact can speed up the healing process.”

“That is conjecture.” Snape hisses through clenched teeth. “It’s never been proven.”

“Are you willing to waste our time debating that, professor?” Harry says venomously.

Snape seems to finally decide it’s not worth trying to convince Harry to stay away. With a snarl, he casts a levitation charm onto Draco’s body and carefully, despite his current mood, brings the boy with him towards the door, Harry’s hand not even once leaving Draco’s.

He thinks he feels a small tightening on his grip, though he doesn’t dare hope for that.

Despite Myrtle's screeching, the corridors of the sixth floor are devoid of students. It's well into dinner now, grey skies darkening into the black stretch of night, and the students are all the way down in the Great Hall, oblivious to the duel that happened in the bathroom. Harry has half a mind to be thankful that there's no one around to see them escorting Draco to Madam Pomfrey. His heart is already tight enough with shame and regret, he doesn't know if he could stand even more of it

They make quick work of transporting Draco to the hospital wing. As soon as Snape slams the doors open, Madam Pomfrey is approaching them, decades of experience as head healer in Hogwarts showing when she quickly brandishes her wand and fires off different diagnostic spells.

“What happened?!”

Snape grunts, holding Draco still under her ministrations. “Children messing with things they shouldn't.”

“Dear goodness!” she cries, gesturing to the inside of the room. “Bring him to the bed, quickly.”

Harry tries to follow, but he is soon pushed away, and the curtain around the bed closed. Snape says something about detention and the poor Gryffindor team, forced to work without their captain, but Harry barely hears it. He couldn’t care less about Snape trying to serve him a lecture or the Quidditch match next Saturday. He can only stare at the closed white curtain and think please. Please, let him heal nicely.

After what feels like hours, Madam Pomfrey steps out. The hospital wing is empty save for the boy they brought, so Harry found himself a spot in one of the vacant beds. She seems surprised to see him there still.

“Dinner is surely over by now, Mr. Potter.

“That’s fine, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry says, feeling his fingers tingling with anxiety. “Is… is he okay? Can I sit with him?”

“He needs rest, Mr. Potter,” She clicks her tongue. “Can I trust you two to be civil to each other enough for him to get it?”

“Yes,” Harry says immediately. “I swear.”

“Very well. I’ll ask the elves to fetch you something to eat.”

She leaves for the partitioned area near the doors, where a small office is set up. Harry approaches the curtained bed hesitantly, trying to prepare himself for whatever he’ll find. When he pulls the curtains open, he breathes out a sigh of relief.

Draco looks much better already. The cuts on his face have healed completely, and his cheeks have regained their slight colour. His chest is bandaged, the medicinal smell of Dittany wafting from the strips of fabric. He’s still wearing his white shirt, Harry can’t help but notice. Of course, if he took the Dark Mark and Snape knows it, he’d demand Pomfrey to leave it on.

Harry steps closer to the bed, pulling a stool along so he can sit. He reaches out and presses an hesitant hand over Draco’s wrist. He doesn’t really know if his touch will help in any meaningful way, had said so simply to annoy Snape into allowing him to come. But, if there’s even a small chance, he’ll gladly grab onto it.

The sleeve is dirty and spotted with dried blood. Harry runs his fingers through the slip of wrist visible, the blue vein a stark contrast on such pale skin. He could open the cufflinks right now, confirm his suspicions as easily as stealing candy from a child, and Draco wouldn’t be any the wiser.

Harry presses his hand firmly on Draco’s covered forearm and breathes in. He won’t do that.

They stay like this for hours. At some point, Madam Pomfrey must have kindled the candles inside the infirmary, the soft yellow glow making Draco’s hair look golden. A bowl of soup has appeared for Harry as well, though three spoonfuls are enough to remind him of how sick his stomach feels at the moment.

He keeps a tight hold around Draco’s forearm, counting heartbeats until he loses himself in the numbers and has to start again.

After the nth time, he looks up and sees Draco watching him.

He looks at Harry’s hand on him. His mouth gives out the tiniest twitch upwards, as if he’s seeing something amusing, and then he turns his head to look away from Harry. It hits him like a physical punch to the gut.

“What are you doing here?” Draco asks hoarsely.

Harry thought he knew what he was going to say when he woke up. Apologise, first and foremost, that’s a given. But how can he even begin to explain the terror he felt when he saw the other fall? There aren’t words in the English language capable of conveying how desperately he’d wished for Draco to survive, how, for one single moment, Harry thought that this was it.

This was the event that’d do him in. Losing Draco Malfoy, against all expectations, would have shattered Harry completely, to a point of no fixing. He already feels like a patchwork of parts trying to function together out of sheer spite on his good days. Most of the time, he’s able to convince himself that he’s succeeding at it, even. And then, he accidentally uses a dark curse on Draco Malfoy, of all people, and becomes intimately aware of just how frayed at the edges he truly is.

Draco’s death would have ripped out the pin holding him together. How can Harry even begin to express that?

Draco turns to look at him with a raised eyebrow, and it’s such a haughty look after all that happened that Harry lets out a breath. “Well?”

“I’m so, so sorry,” he starts simply. He doesn’t know he’ll ever be able to say the rest, but the apology is a must. Not easier. Definitely not easier, which makes it all the more essential. “I swear, I didn’t know what that spell did.”

Harry thinks back to all the times Hermione got on his case about using the book. Even if most of her nagging had been her jealousy of his Potion grades, some of what she said actually warned him precisely about this.

He looks down, ashamed. “Though that’s no excuse.”

A moment of silence.

“Potter, I know your saintly soul wasn’t trying to do this to me on purpose.”

It’s like someone cuts the string holding him upwards. In the next breath, Harry falls forward, touching his forehead to Draco’s thumb, the force of his relief so sudden it almost brings tears to his eyes. “That’s— that’s good.”

He continues holding Draco’s hand to him. Despite the marble-like quality of it, the skin is warm, not cold like he expected.

Minutes later, Draco continues, “So, you’ve apologised. Why are you still here?”

Harry looks at him, taken aback.

“I… I wanted…”

“What,” Draco interrupts firmly. “What did you want, Potter? Because, as much as I make fun of your mental faculties, I know you’re perfectly capable of understanding that there’s a war coming. And I know you know we won’t be on the same side.”

“We’re soulmates—” Harry tries.

“What does it matter!”

Draco’s voice echoes through the room, and Harry panics at the possibility of Madam Pomfrey coming to kick him out. It seems like the blond also regrets his outburst, because he breathes in deeply, getting his bearings.

“What difference does it make? Us, being soulmates?” he continues, a little calmer. “You have your role to play and I have mine.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

Draco is silent. Harry feels completely out of his depth for this conversation. Now that they’ve reached this point, he can admit to himself that a hidden part of him wanted their soulmarks to be a sign. To be proof that there were things the war, Voldemort, couldn’t ruin. He wasn’t naive to believe it, only weary enough to keep a spark of hope alive deep inside.

But now Draco is in front of him, being the pragmatic of the two of them. He’s not his enemy, Harry’s certain of it. After almost watching him bleed out, after almost being responsible for his death, Harry’s never been more certain.

“For years I spent all my time trying to get your attention,” Draco whispers. He’s sunken into the mattress, a tired smudge in the sheets. “And you despised me every step of the way. Now, I’m begging you to ignore me, yet you won’t leave me be, you're stubbornly pursuing this.” He turns to Harry with an amused twitch of his lips. “Has anyone ever told you how infuriating you are, Potter?”

Harry gulps. “I’m certain you have, at least once.”

Draco huffs out a chuckle and then shakes his head. He furrows his eyebrows. “It’s too late. It was too late from the moment we were born. The moment we came into this world as the people we are, it became too late for us.”

“But the mark…” Harry whispers.

“The mark is wrong.” Draco takes his arm from his hand and turns, as best as he’s able, to the other side, hiding from view.

When he thought Draco was about to die in his hands, there’d only been enough time to panic, to feel the white hot burst of fear and desperation clutching at his insides.

Now, Draco’s back to him, Harry feels an empty hopelessness instead. He’s not his enemy, for sure, but he won’t be his soulmate either.

When he finally arrives at the Common Room, everybody has already gone to sleep. Only Ron and Hermione are still up. He can see clearly the path Hermione had been pacing next to the couch. Ron is sitting, but gripping his hands tightly. Harry feels exhausted, all he wants to do is fall onto his bed and try to sleep. He owes his friends an explanation, though.

“Where were you, Harry?” Hermione asks, the first to spot him. Harry sits on the armchair and hides his face in his hands. Whenever he closes his eyes, his mind goes back to that bathroom, Draco’s blood blooming in flowers on the wet floor, the gurgle of a gasp he let out while falling, now echoing through his ears as if playing on the wireless, and then Malfoy’s white back to him in the infirmary, “the mark is wrong”.

Who is he kidding? He won’t be able to sleep at all.

He musters up enough energy to tell his friends what happened. Hermione and Ron listen to it somberly. Hermione doesn’t even try to say “I told you so”, which’d be enough to reveal just how serious the situation is, if he didn’t already know.

“Mate…” Ron mutters, running a hand through his hair. “You shouldn’t have shown Snape the soulmark.”

“Snape wouldn’t dare hurt Draco,” Harry says. His insides twist with a mixture of his deep set hatred of Snape and gratitude for him knowing the counterspell to the curse, being so swift in saving his soulmate. One piece of information comes to mind. “He made an unbreakable vow with Narcissa, remember?”

“It’s not Snape himself who’s the problem, Harry!” Hermione says, “He’s a double agent for the Dark Side and we don’t know his true loyalties. He could tell You-know-who about it, can you imagine what he’d do if he found out Draco is your soulmate?”

When Harry thought all the panic under his skin had calmed, the rug is once more pulled from under his feet. He’ll truly never know what it’s like to live without the imminent threat of losing someone. It'd be funny if it weren't nauseating. He hides his face again.

“Fuck.”

His friends console him, patting his back and asking after Draco’s health. Harry doesn’t even remember what he says, he’s too busy holding down a panic attack.

It’s only when he’s laying down, trying and failing to rest, Draco’s white back flashing through his mind, and the blood, and the gasp, and “the mark is wrong”, that he realises.

If Draco has taken the Dark Mark like Harry suspects, Voldemort already knows.

Chapter Text

Harry makes good on his promise to leave Draco alone after the Sectumsempra incident.

It’s definitely not simple. He had dedicated the majority of the year to learning his every move, studying each twitch of his mouth, thinking about what he could be doing at any given hour of the day. Telling his body and mind, so used to this routine, to stop is almost like trying to stop an addiction. Hermione would roll her eyes at him if he ever said it outloud, but whenever his eyes start to wander to the other side of the Great Hall, forcing them down to the table instead feels like going through abstinence.

That doesn’t mean he stops worrying about the git. He knows that Draco hasn’t given up his task despite his stay at the hospital wing. He continues to waste away and miss classes. But whenever the urge to talk to Draco again creeps up on him, he hears the words “the mark is wrong” whispering through his ears, and then thinks about how Voldemort probably knows, how concerning the things Draco said in the bathroom that day were and the impending threat of death hanging over his soulmate’s head.

Panic is a constant in his heart in those moments.

He continues firm in his resolve, not even consulting the Marauder’s map so as to not cede to the temptation of checking in on Draco. Draco, of course, makes it very easy for him. He doesn’t spare Harry a single look.

A respite to his catastrophizing comes when Dumbledore calls him to his office one day near the end of June. He aches to have something to do, to put his energies to something that can actually make a difference.

While he’s heading to the office, he stumbles across professor Trelawney. Despite his hurry, he stops to help her up and asks about what she was doing. It’s only when she mentions the voice heard inside the Room that Harry feels his limbs freezing in place.

She complains about the celebrating person with a grumble, and Harry, cautious to keep his voice even, asks, “And it sounded happy?”

“Very happy,” she confirmed.

Harry swallows down despite his dry throat, his annoyance at the woman forgotten with the news. Draco has achieved whatever task Voldemort asked of him and that chills him to his very bone. There’s no turning back now. If the blond sees it through to the end, they’ll cross the point of no return. Harry should’ve been prepared for this outcome after all these months, yet something still twists painfully inside of him, deep in his core where he used to keep a tiny flame of hope alive.

He talks to Trewlaney some more, about the prophecy, and then hurries to Dumbledore’s office. They prepare to hunt for the Horcrux. Harry barely has time to give the Felix Felicis to Ron and Hermione while he takes his Invisibility Cloak and then they’re leaving the castle.

The experience in the cave leaves Harry shaken, but they’re able to survive the ordeal and go back. Harry feels strung tight, like he’s run too much and can't catch a breath. And it only gets worse when they arrive at Hogwarts once more and the green skull of the Dark Mark greets them on top of the Astronomy Tower.

They borrow two brooms from Madam Rosmerta and fly up to the highest tower of the castle, Harry’s heart beating like crazy. He can’t stop wondering if his friends are okay, whose death he is about to see and, worst of all, what is Draco’s role in whatever’s going on.

They reach the top of the tower and Harry has his hand on the iron ring of the door when he hears running footsteps from the other side. Dumbledore motions for him to retreat and hide, and Harry does so, taking out his wand.

The door bursts open, someone shouting “Expelliarmus”. Harry feels his body freeze in place near the wall. He looks at Dumbledore in time to see his wand falling to the depths below and realises the headmaster used the brief opening to petrify Harry instead of defend.

Harry turns back to the door and sees Draco.

He stands there frantically. He’s breathing harshly, the green Slytherin tie and robes laying haphazardly over his torso. He looks worse than ever. His blond hair is in disarray and his skin looks sickly, as if he’s about to hurl.

Even so, Harry’s heart beats faster at the sight of him. It’s like a dog wagging its tail in his chest.

Dumbledore starts to goad Draco to tell him his plans and the boy does it easily. He tells him of the Vanishing Cabinet, the poisoned mead, the cursed necklace. He spills his guts about his failures and successes as if they were bile, one moment smiling maniacally under Dumbledore’s concession of his cleverness, the other frowning with crushing desperation.

What seems to be more and more obvious to Harry as the conversation goes on is that Draco doesn’t have the guts to seal the deal. And Dumbledore realises it as well.

“Come over to our side, Draco. You’re not a killer,” the headmaster says.

Draco lets out a manic laugh. “It’s not a matter of choice. If I don’t do as he says, he’ll kill my family!”

Dumbledore is leaning heavily against the iron handrail, but he still manages to stare down the teenager in front of him.

“We can protect you. We could protect your mother, even your father if he so accepts it.”

“How would you protect them?”

“We can transfer your mother to one of the Order’s safe houses. I can place her somewhere under the Fidelius Charm. Your father is secure for now, in Azkaban, but we can come up with a plan to bring him there too.” Dumbledore takes in Draco’s rigid posture with kindness and pity in his eyes. “You’ll always have options.”

Draco gives out a disbelieving snort, though his eyes are wide and there’s nothing funny in the lines of his body. He gulps with some difficulty and his expression, dare Harry say, looks almost considering. He’s eyeing Dumbledore as if the man had just offered him a glass of water after days and days in the desert, but also like the water might just as well be poison.

“Even if I wanted to join your side,” he says after a moment, wonderingly, “Do you really believe he’d just let me go?”

“Ah, yes,” Dumbledore sighs, pained. “Your connection to Harry must make you very valuable to Lord Voldemort indeed.”

Malfoy loses what little remaining colour he had.

Harry doesn’t know how Dumbledore knows. In none of the meetings they had did Harry talk to him about soulmates. He’d tried to make Dumbledore investigate Malfoy, confront him, demand he admit to his plans, but he’d never felt comfortable mentioning the soulmark. Dumbledore hadn’t seemed concerned about Harry’s suspicions either way.

And bringing up Harry’s soulmark when talking about Voldemort, his ambitions, the plans to defeat him, would end up making the mark part of this battle, something to account for, a key piece in some strategy. All things Harry hadn’t wanted it to be.

But then, Harry remembers suddenly, Snape knows. Harry showed it to Snape a couple of weeks ago, after the Sectumsempra incident.

So Voldemort already knows, Draco probably had to reveal it to him when getting the Dark Mark. Dumbledore knows because Snape told him.

If Harry hadn’t been paralysed by the spell, he probably would’ve fallen onto the wall, defeated. There was never really an actual chance for their marks to not be used in this war, was there? No chance of Draco and Harry getting to know each other without the opposite sides looming over them. What Draco said in the Hospital Wing suddenly becomes much more solid in Harry’s head.

“You, my boy,” Dumbledore continues, “are not the first nor will you be the last to have a soulmate from the opposite side of a conflict.”

His words seem to snap Draco back from his panic. Harry can see the beads of sweat running from his hairline to his jaw. He snarls when what Dumbledore said finally registers.

“What do you know about that? What do you care?”

Dumbledore smiles weakly.

“Why, I can tell you I know much about it. After all, my own soulmate used to be Gellert Grindelwald.” Draco sucks in a breath. “So you see, Draco, I do know what you’re going through intimately. And that’s also how I know the path you’re treading can only end in tragedy and heartbreak.”

Draco lets out a gasp. He’s as still as a statue, maintaining the same stance from when he broke into the top of the tower and disarmed Dumbledore. He holds his wand in a commanding manner, has that perfect posture Harry had missed seeing in the last couple of months. But, somehow, he looks wound up tight. Closed off on himself. Even though he’s the one pointing the wand, he looks like a cornered prey animal, lashing out at any person who attempts to help. And Dumbledore, the one cursed and weak from Voldemort’s Horcruxes, the one holding himself up through sheer force of will, looks more formidable than ever.

Harry is sure Draco is extremely aware of the difference in their current positions. That he doesn’t back away even then just goes to show how desperate he feels.

“I’m the one with the wand,” Draco says weakly, in a hopeless attempt to regain control of the situation. “You’re at my mercy.”

“No, my dear boy. It is my mercy that matters now. Mine and of your soulmate.”

That has Draco snapping to attention. “What do you mean?”

“Surely you’re aware they’ll use you to get to him, my boy.”

Draco purses his lips. So far he hasn’t made any verbal indication to confirm his status as Harry’s soulmate. He seems to be fighting himself over finally admitting the bond they have, or pretending, like he did during the whole year, that he has no idea about soulmates and anything peripheral to it. Harry wishes he could lean closer, if only not to miss any of Draco’s minuscule reactions. But he doesn’t need to, Draco lets out a breath and says, “Our bond won’t matter. Potter is smarter than that.”

Harry’s dizzy where he stands.

“Harry is smart, no doubt about it,” Dumbledore says. “But he also would do everything to save the people he loves. And I suspect, considering your efforts this year, that you have this characteristic in common with him.”

Draco looks miserable at that.

“Am I wrong?” Dumbledore asks kindly.

Harry can’t breathe. He’s looking at Draco with unnatural focus, has been since he said, however indirectly, that they are truly soulmates, has uttered the most beautiful words Harry’s ever heard; our bond. That’s the only way he manages to see it, slight as it was:

The lowering of his wand.

The door slams open and a group of hooded figures come inside.

From then on, everything happens too fast to process. The Death Eaters provoke the weakened Dumbledore. Snape arrives soon after. There's a flash of green light. And then Dumbledore falls over the rail to the ground below.

The offer of protection disappears as if a plume of smoke. No one else in this world is aware of the mercy shown to the blond boy in the headmaster's final moments. No one to know Draco had lowered his wand, besides Harry.

Harry is looking straight at Draco as Snape pulls him out of the tower by the collar.

The war has officially begun. Harry and Draco, soulmates, supposed to be each other’s perfect half, on opposite sides.

Days later, after Dumbledore’s funeral and after he had time to think about everything he witnessed in the tower, Draco’s words from the Hospital Wing are a bitter aftertaste in Harry’s mouth. It truly is too late for them.

The dark magic seeping from the house calls to him when he takes a seat in front of the fireplace. He raises a hand to summon Nagini to his side, and she slithers quietly to receive a small pat to the head. The fire is lit, though it does nothing to warm the manor after he's set permanent residence in this mausoleum. The ancient house bends to his magic, just like the rest of the family, despite neither father nor son managing to please him in any way, shape or form.

Speaking of, he sits patiently, waiting for the boy. It’s been a couple of weeks already since the invasion of Hogwarts, but only now he has the time to deal with him. When the boy finally comes inside, he gestures to the cushion laid down in front of him, a call back to his sixteenth birthday and a mockery of the sense of pride he used to nurture before.

To his credit, Draco sits stiffly, but quietly. The barest of tremors coursing through his thin shoulders. The way the boy is too afraid to look at him fills him at once with annoyance for such cowardice but also amusement over the skittish behaviour.

He allows for the silence to stretch, for the fear to settle over him like mist. He’s in no hurry to relieve him of this long overdue conversation.

“Hello, Draco,” he finally says after a couple of minutes.

“My Lord, you called for me,” the boy answers, voice certainly firmer than he appears. He runs his eyes through the blond, taking note of his gaunt silhouette. A weak Ventus would be enough to send the boy flying to the other side of the room if he wished.

“Yes,” he confirms, “Of course we must talk about whatever happened at the end of June.”

Draco doesn’t speak, doesn’t move at all.

“What were your tasks this year, Draco?” he asks calmly.

“To kill Albus Dumbledore,” the boy recites diligently. “To find a way for Death Eaters to infiltrate the school.”

“And?”

“... to get closer to Harry Potter,” he admits at last.

Ah, yes. To find out any specific weaknesses, sure, but most importantly to become his weakness. To become a taint in Harry Potter’s soft little heart and show him just how much he’s lost and will continue to lose in this feeble attempt to defeat him.

“Did you succeed?”

“Only partially, my Lord.”

“Yes. Your family seems to have the pesky habit of only doing things halfway, doesn't it? You always wanted to follow in your father's footsteps, I imagine.” The mention of the boy’s parents is enough to incite the smallest of flinches. He touches his wand to Draco’s chin and raises his face to meet his eyes. He wants the boy unable to hide from his displeasure, wants him at its mercy. “Who killed Dumbledore, Draco?”

“Professor Snape did, my Lord.”

“And did you get closer to Harry Potter?”

“No, my Lord.”

“Now, Draco,” he starts, slipping the tip of the wand down his skin in a soft caress. The bob of his neck moves in a swallow. Such pale skin, though not greenish like his own. This skin still possesses the glow of live blood rushing underneath. Any bruise, scratch or welt could so easily stain his complexion. “I do wonder why that is, as you specifically told me your devotion would be mine alone, despite that name on your wrist. I remember you being quite eager to serve me. In fact, your failure with this task makes me wonder if you need a reminder of your eagerness that day.”

Nagini slithers over the boy’s knees and wraps around his now slightly trembling form. She looks comfortable curled on top of his lap. She does enjoy the feeling of human warmth pressed against her scales occasionally, when it’s not time for a meal.

“I tried, my Lord” he says slowly, a noteworthy effort of keeping his voice steady, “but he didn’t care for it.”

“I shall be the judge of that.”

His wand goes back to his forehead. The boy seems resigned to it, no flinching this time, body and mind open to receiving whatever he sees fit. Training him for punishment would be easy, he thinks, slightly pleased.

As if moving through lead, he can feel his consciousness penetrating the young mind before him. There’s no resistance, none of the walls that kept him at bay the first time he used the spell. Certainly, the boy learns fast.

He skims over the memories from the school year. From the very beginning, an uneventful train ride to Hogwarts, the first Potions lesson, memory doused with the smell of treacle tart, broomstick polish and clean laundry, stolen glances over the cauldron of Amortentia. Then he moves through more scenes of Draco following Harry Potter, trying to get him to admit to the soulmark on their wrists, in between looking to find a way to fix the cabinet or kill Dumbledore through various means.

Draco standing near Harry Potter during Apparition lessons, trying to talk to him and being ignored or rebuffed. Wishing him good luck before a Quidditch game and taking a hold of his arm, only to be slapped away. Looking at him across the Great Hall, urging the other to meet his gaze. Sending him little things, chocolate bonbons, folded notes in shapes of animals. No response to any of it.

Until a day, near the end, when Draco, close to desperation, takes Harry’s wrist in the middle of an empty corridor. Pulling him close, slipping a piece of paper onto his hand, the darker skin tone contrasting with his, a note he wrote that afternoon that says to meet him in the sixth floor’s bathroom a couple of hours later.

Turning around to see Harry entering the bathroom with a grave expression. Not being able to say a word before a hex is thrown his way. Deflecting and evading the different spells aimed at him until he has no choice but to take his wand out and put a stop to it.

And then falling. Hot blood gushing out of his chest. Pain and burning wounds making his head dizzy.

Looking up from his place on the floor only to see Harry Potter, his piercing green eyes, walking backwards until he flees the bathroom.

The last memory he scans before leaving the muddled mindscape is of a Draco waking up in the hospital wing, alone.

He blinks to the drawing room of Malfoy Manor and the slumped boy panting over his hand. The flashbacks had been perfect in demonstrating his continuous attempts. Draco had tried to get close to Harry Potter and failed in all ways. Harry hadn’t reciprocated any of his approaches, had all but ignored him. No fault could be found in his memories.

He waits for Draco to regain his breath, staring at him fixedly. The boy straightens himself and doesn’t seem to have the strength to continue looking him in the eye.

“Whom are you loyal to?” he asks.

“You, my Lord.”

“Show me.”

Draco methodically opens the cufflinks of his shirt and raises the sleeve over his arm, eyes lowered. He grabs the pale wrist, tightening the grip until the blood vessels around the mark pulse, the snake sliding slowly under the skin like oil.

“Don’t you forget it.”

Draco replies quietly, “I could never, my Lord.”

He drops the arm. “Well, since you’ve only partially succeeded at what I asked of you, you won’t mind repaying your partial failure with punishment, am I correct?”

“O-of course, my Lord.”

Still so young, he thinks, tilting his head. So sensitive. When this child looks down with those scared eyes it makes him want to crush his windpipe, squeeze until life has left him. Take his mother and father and kill them in front of him so he’ll become an empty shell of himself. It’d be so easy the idea loses all interest.

Besides, if he kills the boy’s parents, he’ll have nothing anymore tethering him to the Death Eater’s side. People with nothing to lose can be very dangerous in their own ways, even scaredy little cats.

No matter, he raises his wand. The boy still has his uses. He shall learn to whom he belongs deep in his core, willingly or not.

“Crucio.”

Draco screams.

Harry opens his eyes abruptly and becomes aware of the fact that he can't breathe.

It's like there's a boulder on top of him, crushing his chest and pinning him to the bed, so that he can't even get up and open a window. He lays there, gasping and dizzy with panic for minutes, until the sight of his bedroom in Privet Drive starts to register. Hedwig hoots from her cage, and the sight of her snaps him out of it.

With great effort to calm down, he looks around and begins describing to himself the beige curtains stained with old age, the plain white walls, the pale sky outside the window — it must be the early hours —, all the while repeating in his head that it was just a vision. A vision sent by Voldemort, sure, but a vision nonetheless.

Except simply remembering Draco's forearm marred by that ugly mark where Harry's name should have been and his terrified face is enough to send Harry gasping again. He thinks back to his obsession with seeing Draco's soulmark the last year, just how badly he wanted to take a look at Draco’s arm, how he’d felt like he was going crazy without being able to confirm his suspicions. He never stopped to consider how devastating the truth could be. That not seeing it would have been a blessing in disguise.

He sits up, pushing the scratchy blankets away and rubbing his eyes. Voldemort knew of their connection, of course he did. And now he had his soulmate in his hands to do whatever he pleased. Draco’s final scream before the vision cut off echoes over and over, his horror-struck eyes branded on Harry’s eyelids.

Harry stands up and leaves his bedroom quietly, so as to not wake the Dursleys. His throat is parched, almost as if he’d been the one screaming. Not that it would be the first time the nightmares and visions spilled over to the real world. He goes downstairs towards the kitchen and gets himself a glass of water, drinking all of it in one go.

He sits at the table and lets his head hang. Harry had spent the beginning of summer in a spiral of anger, grief and worry. Of course, after Draco ran away from the Astronomy tower, nobody had seen him again. Not knowing what was happening to him was almost a form of torture itself, yet, now that he did know, he wishes he could go back.

There’s nothing he can do, that’s the worst part. Draco is stuck in that house for the time being. The Manor is Voldemort’s headquarters, there’s no possible rescue mission to get him back. And it hurts even more when Harry remembers the fact that they’d almost succeeded. Draco had lowered his wand. He was going to accept Dumbledore’s offer before the other Death Eaters interrupted.

He could have had Draco safe and sound. Instead he’s getting visions of his torture.

Harry slams the glass on the table with more strength than intended and curses when it shatters. He still can’t use magic outside of Hogwarts, so he gingerly collects the broken pieces and washes his hands.

When he finishes drying his skin with the towel, the scar from Umbridge’s detentions jumps out at him. He holds his own hand, bringing it closer to the light of the morning sun. I must not tell lies.

Something prickles at his brain, one of the scenes Voldemort saw while invading Draco’s mind with Legilimency. He used the spell to see if Draco actually tried to fulfil the tasks he’d received for the school year. One of those being getting closer to Harry. And in one of the scenes he saw, Draco had picked Harry’s wrist and slipped a note into his hand.

But Harry’s hand in that memory didn’t have the scar. In fact, none of the memories Voldemort saw made any sense. They had seemed to depict a Malfoy who was obsessed with approaching Harry, who kept begging to talk to him, to look at him. If anything, I was the one obsessed, he admits to himself with no small amount of embarrassment. He has a pretty good memory, he’s sure he’d remember the soft touches he saw in the vision, the stolen glances…

Unless they’re not real memories. Unless they’re fake.

Harry sits back, stumped.

Draco lied to Voldemort. He told him he tried to get closer to Harry, that Harry was the one who didn’t care for the soulmark. He showed him fake memories of his attempts. There was no scar on his hand because Draco never noticed it in real Harry. Even though Harry had spent the entire year on Draco’s tail, following his every footstep, Draco had repeatedly dismissed him and avoided him. Because of the mission. Because he didn’t want to succeed in Voldemort’s mission.

Harry feels tendrils of something warm unfurling in his chest, mixing with all the worry and anxiety. God, Harry had certainly made it difficult for Draco to fail his mission, didn’t he? But the brilliant bastard managed it. Not only that, Draco made it clear that he couldn’t be used against Harry, because Harry had supposedly no interest in their bond.

Draco’s plan worked, Harry tells himself.

So why does it still feel like they failed?