Title: "A Tad Nutty"
Author: Manda
Rating: PG
Fandom: Harry Potter
AN: During 'Order of the Phoenix', early school season maybe three or so months in. It ended up a bit longer than 500 words, and since you didn't specify I length I hope you don't mind too much.
Draco shuffled down a hallway in near silence. He had no light because that would cause undo attention if someone were to notice that he was out of bed much too late after hours for any student, even any Prefect. But he had good reason. He's had to go back to the closet outside the Charms class where he'd stowed Mark Evan's box from his Grandmother. He'd been stupid enough to bring it to his class and Draco had been on hand to help the teacher with that disobedience.
And, of course, to reap the rewards.
Which turned out to be a cake and a large selection of new edition wizard playing cards.
The cards were for the most part ones he had with a very, very small selection of ones he'd been looking for. He's just managed to shove the cards in his pocket and opened the cake box, which smelled like a dark, sweet chocolate of some type, when a noise caught his ears.
It was quiet. But constant.
Trying to be even more silent than the noise, he closed the cake box and put his back up against the wall. He pressed his lips together and strained his eye through the darkness even though they'd adjusted at least twenty minutes ago. His heart hammered, filling his ear almost to the point of drowning out the sound. His eyes searched the darkness feverously for any sort of light or reason.
And then the darkness moved. No something in the darkness moved. No not something. Someone. Who was walking quietly and muttering to themselves. And not just anyone someone even, he thought as his lips formed into a sneer.
"I could have your head for this, Potter. And point from your house," his voice suddenly cajoled from the darkness causing the figure to stop and look in his direction. "Just wait till I tell Professor McGonagall. Out of bed, wandering around, after hours."
"Same as you, Malfoy," Harry's voice returned quickly, but there was no bite to his words. In fact it seemed to linger in between his words as though he could really care less that he was having the conversation. Or perhaps like he wasn't really aware it was happening.
And that unnerved Draco. He didn't like not getting a reaction out of people. It made him nervous, antsy and even further annoyed. "I could easily tell her I heard a noise and was following you to find out what dastardly thing you were up to this time."
The other boy ran a hand haphazardly through his hair in the dim blackness around him, his eyes still seeming to be scanning their surroundings as he stopped facing Draco and kept turning and facing different things. "I could have been in Slytherin. The sorting hat told me I could go one way or the other that day."
"Sure it did, Potter," Draco said, finally edging off of the wall but not nearer to the other boy standing in the middle of the hall. He wasn't quite sure he wanted to be within reaching distance of the boy who "funny" things happened near, whether it could ever be proven his fault, even if he wasn't afraid of him. He wasn't. "And muggles can fly."
His response once again didn't seem to even rattle Harry who reached out to touch the other wall trailing his fingers as he walked a few more feet, before looking over his shoulder at Draco through the visible darkness once more. "Do you ever wonder if this is all some big game and we're just pawns being moved around at someone else's leisure? Like we're just the shadows of our parents and this is just the shadow of our parents' original battle? Or like it's all been planned out already? Like a book maybe?"
Draco stared wide-eyed at him, not realized his grip on the cake box had tightened till his hands had almost clenched the sides inward to let his fingertips touch his palms thought cardboard and cake. "You're a tad nutty, aren't you?"
"So the papers say." There was a long pause of silence and then he heard a hiccupped laugh, which got louder, but strangely sounded more life-like than any of the words the boy had uttered at all. But the sound sobered into silence just as fast. "Maybe your right though."
"I am?" Draco stammered, still not sure at all what was going on.
"Yes," Harry said after a second, very drearily, as though he was coming out of a dream almost. His voice more lucid, heavier, and more weighted down by emotions and words he wasn't sharing anymore. "I should go to bed."
It was two minutes before Draco could come up with a quip line to throw back, though by the time the first thirty second had passed Harry had turned around and headed back in the exact direction he's originally come from, leaving Draco alone in the hall feeling utterly confused. What was he talking about? Parent's shadows and written books? He was a nutter.
An utter nutter.
Shaking his head he opened the now bent box and tasted the icing as he walked back to his own bedchambers. And sweet as the icing was, it didn't seem quite satisfying as it was chased through his body by phantom whispers of Harry Potter muttering toward him -not exactly to him- in the darkness.