A/N: Felt inspired to write you some of this. I hope you like it.

EDIT: Returned and changed many things here.

Disclaimer: Credit where credit is due, Jo, my Queen, and to the beautiful bands for my inspiration and their lyrics.

Reviews are like Hermione's knitted elf-hats.

-Tuskface.

1: Everything About You

Malfoy

Draco Malfoy was avoiding thoughts of him.

It was difficult, but achievable. Nights were dark, like his cloak, like his mind; and this helped. But he couldn't be entirely sure whether or not he was trying to hide from himself, too.

He shifted from awake to asleep without any awareness.

Potter

Harry stood in the Room of Requirement, facing the open doors of the broken vanishing cabinet. The Prince's book sat before him. The Gryffindor felt sick to his bones, nausea roiling in his stomach as he stared intently at the Potions textbook. Fighting off tears, he dropped his gaze to his feet.

'I didn't mean to,' he mumbled; although who he was apologising to, he was firmly unsure about (although he had a nagging, horrible suspicion). 'I – I didn't know.'

Running a distressed hand through his hair and grabbing fistfuls of the black locks, Harry suddenly found himself slamming the cabinet door shut, and running the Room, from the pain. The corridors were empty, even though it was only just past seven in the evening. He guessed everyone would be eating. The noise of his shoes against the stone floor was magnified tenfold inside his head, where he felt the beginning of a raging headache. He spat the password at the Fat Lady, who managed to give him a most affronted look before she swung out of view, and he clambered into the Common Room. A couple of Second Years looked up at his entrance from a corner, where they sat with piles of homework. Ignoring them, he took refuge in his dormitory, which, thank heaven, was just as deserted as the rest of the school.

(later)

Harry was laying face-down on his bed.

'Harry?' Ron asked, pulling his friend's bed-curtains back a little.

The black-haired boy made a strangled sound into his pillow.

'Mate, you're gonna suffocate yourself,' the Weasley said, half joking and tugging the pillow out from under his best friend, who rolled over slightly. His green eyes looked almost absent, empty. Ron sobered up a little. 'What's wrong?'

'I - I just... I can't believe...' whispered Harry, swallowing and trailing off. He'd been successfully burying the panic down inside him all this time, but now it was beginning to show in the lines around his mouth and the trembling of his hands. 'How could... How could the Prince write something like that in there? It – it was all so – so harmless, and now – now I - '

'Woah, hold on there a second.' Ron's freckled face looked confused as he perched on Harry's bed. The bespectacled Sixth Year sat up a little. 'You're not actually saying that you feel...guilty? I mean, sure it wasn't the nicest spell there is but, Harry! You absolutely cannot be feeling guilty.'

Harry hesitated, licking his lips with nervous anticipation. For some strange reason his mouth had gone very dry. 'I - '

'No, Harry, just – what are you even thinking?' Ron stood up, eyes wide and mouth in an expression of incredulity. 'No! Fine, you almost killed the slimy git – but think about it – Malfoy has been ruining your life since day one - hell, he broke your nose and left you for dead in the train at the start of this year!'

Harry ignored his friend's exaggerated example.

'How about the time he called Hermione a – a – you-know-what in Second Year? Or him trying to get us expelled the year before that?' Ron gestured wildly, ears going red with anger. 'He got you and Fred and George banned from Quidditch last year, and – and every other bloody time! Look, I'm not saying it right... But really, Harry, he deserved it! You – we – have always hated him!'

The black-haired Gryffindor's face twisted. Everything Ron had said was true. He did hate him. So why could he not shake the guilt that tore at him? He'd never felt like this before; even last year, when Voldemort had been utilising the connection between their minds, and he'd had those horrible, desperate urges to bite, to tear -

'I do hate him, Ron,' he said, voice dead and almost silent. The redhead heaved a sigh of relief, when Harry added, barely a whisper. 'But I still feel like – like I shouldn't have done it.'

Malfoy

Draco stood directly outside the tall wall, looking up at it with grim admiration. His skin seemed grey in the half-light, his eyes sunken. His fingers weren't quite as deft as before as he reached for the wand in his back pocket, assuring himself it was easily within reach. He began to pace. Once, twice, thr -

'Drake,' a simpering voice cooed. 'There you are.'

Pansy sidled up to him, pressing herself up against him and resting her head on his chest so as to look up at him with her pug-like bulging eyes. She fluttered her stumpy eyelashes at him and trailed a hand up his chest to rest over the beginnings of the white-yellow stubble on his jaw.

'Pansy,' Draco replied, stiffly.

'Where are you going, Drake? You said you had to speak to Snape.' Pansy's sharp eyes narrowed slightly and she slid her head up to lie on his shoulder.

'I am...aware of that. But I have business to attend to. And I told you to only call me Draco.' Some of the Slytherin's old sneer snuck back into his thin, pale lips, as he looked down on the girl. His jaw clenched and unclenched several times.

'Please, Draco, then. Come back to the dorms. Half the girls will be out tonight; we'll practically have the dormitory to ourselves.'

A look of disgust crossed his face. Practically? He took a carefully placed step back from Parkinson, and she stumbled forward, only just about managing to retain her balance. Never mind that, he thought, he would always do his utmost to steer well clear of the Sixth Year girls' dorms.

'For the last time, no. Now get out of here before I make you.' Draco was extremely thankful that his shaken psyche didn't come out in his voice, which was cold and hard.

Pansy hid the flash of anger that darted across her features with a pout. The blond boy resisted the urge to gag, while Pansy sniffed pathetically. 'Fine. I'll see you later, then, baby,' she simpered, before reaching up on her tiptoes to give him a wet peck on the cheek and leaving him alone once more.

Draco wiped his cheek with revulsion. He'd never wanted to be in the Room more than now.

(later)

Why?

That single thought revolved around and around Draco's head, like a mosquito, constantly buzzing in the background.

The pain slashed through his mind again, the shock at the blood that was jettisoning itself out of his chest and arms. Now, lying in the cold light of the early morning, he lifted the hem of his school shirt just a little to watch the rising sun's watery rays reflect of the shiny scar tissue. A cold sweat worked its way up the back of the blond's neck.

He'd always taken it as a given that Potter would be wholly good, golden to the core. "The Chosen One". But this – this was different. He couldn't hate him for his fears, or his panicked actions. The malevolence in his tone - they shared a part of them, he knew it. He just wished it didn't have to be this particular trait. The blackness on their souls. A spreading, smoky stain that wound its way around your heart and lungs and pushed its horror deep into your mind. No, no other person knew that better than these two boys.

Draco was afraid. Afraid of failure, afraid of victory. Afraid of knowledge and of ignorance. Afraid of good, afraid of bad. These fears were a constant presence, decaying within him. He tried to keep records of them, the terrors that haunted his waking and sleeping self, but that by no means meant that they were diminished.

So how was it that all of his efforts, in the end, had been futile? He'd never forgotten the parallel universe in which they'd taken the other's hand, in the same way that he'd never really cared about its existence. But imagine that: imagine if Saint Potter had been what was originally thought – a hundred times more powerful than the Dark Lord, and a Malfoy was exactly who he would have wanted to associate himself with. Draco regretted every bad decision, but he never longed. Not until now. He'd hidden the longing, the missing, in a dark recess far behind a front of hatred and sneers and bullying. Yeah, he had hated him.

So how come "had" was the operative word?

Draco woke from his dream temporarily before drifting back into the world of pain and subconscious torture.