Hi everyone :)
I have returned! And with one-shot! Wooooooo! Haven't written a one-shot for a while but this idea struck with me and, at first, it was going to be a mini-series but then it turned out to be shorter than I predicted so I put it all together into one chapter.
Now, where did the idea for this come from? It's actually stemmed from an original story that I was planning a while ago. The bunnies started to quickly gather and before long, this had gone in one direction while the original went off in a completely different direction. So, I had to write it to get it out of my system and so I can concentrate on other things again as this wouldn't stop bugging me 'til it was down and I could read it instead of just think about it.
Now, I've heard a strange rumour about a Harry Potter book called the Half-Blood Prince in which Dumbledore is killed by Snape. Now, personally, I've never heard of this so you won't find anything to do with this imaginary book in this fic despite this being set in Harry and Draco's sixth year :D
DISCLAIMER: I'd really like it if I owned Harry Potter. In fact, I'd be pretty bloody chuffed if I owned Harry Potter. As it is, I don't own him or any of his friends and enemie they belong to lovely Mrs J K Rowling and various other very rich companies.
Anyways, I'm gonna hush up now so I hope you enjoy the following story :)
The sound of running footsteps, heels clicking on stone flooring. The kind of excitement which made you want to laugh and jump and wrap your arms around another as tightly as possible. The kind that filled you with a startling amount of energy and created a happy mood which nothing could break.
How long had it been? The simple answer was 'too long' but that answer wasn't good enough. How long had it really been? The last time which was the most vivid memory was late last year when he had come with his family to stay for Christmas. But surely there had been a time since then? Over six months couldn't possibly have been right! Had six months really passed? The more it was thought about, the more likely it seemed that it was the case.
Six months; it was too long.
Still running, though running down stairs now. Not exactly something particularly smart or safe to do but caring had been left behind by the window which over-looked the view of the courtyard. All that mattered was getting down there, getting outside, greeting the family who had just arrived and then being seized in the arms of him.
Him, with his long, jet black hair always tied so neatly behind him with a black ribbon. Him, with his sarcastic sense of humour which never failed to bring laughter. Him, who appeared to be so strong but could be so gentle when handling the things he cared about most.
Almost outside now, the front door was in sight. The servant was passed without notice, the Nanny calling for attention to be placed on her was ignored, the mother and father already greeting the visitors were ignored as well when green eyes settled on the form of him. Not two seconds later, he looked up and steel-grey met with emerald-green. Smiles lit two faces brightly and for a moment even breathing was forgotten and there was nothing in the world except for the two of them.
Then, finally, reality returned and it occurred to them both that they were together again and could actually touch. Both started forward at the same time, eyes for only each other. They met with open arms, wrapping each other in themselves as soon as possible.
"Stefan..." A gentle whisper as lips brushed across the head of flowing, red hair.
"Sophitia..."
Harry's eyes flew open in an instant as he woke up, the sleep from before vanishing in an instant. It took him a few minutes to get his thoughts back together and when he did, he gave a light groan and rolled onto his side, closing his eyes again. Stretching his arm out, he nudged the curtains around his bed to the side and peered out. Light was coming in through the window; it was time to get up. So he sat and then stood and then plodded around gathering his school clothes, trying, and failing, to think of anything except the dream he'd just had, the same dream he'd had every night for the past three months.
He supposed he just should've just been thankful that he wasn't dreaming of Voldemort but that was asking too much in his opinion. He hated that dream and the others, which were so much like it, just as much. In fact, he might've even hated them more for the way they made him feel. At least with his Voldemort induced dreams he experience a lot of pain and anger, but that was about it and he was used to those emotions at that point. The other dreams, which he had started to get when he turned sixteen, brought on emotions which were strange and relatively new: love; longing; heart-ache; ecstasy, (with the not so innocent ones); gut-wrenching sadness; despair of the classical kind, or in other words suicide.
As much as Harry tried not to think of the dreams, as he hopped into a shower cubicle and the warm water began to rain down on him, he couldn't stop his thoughts from returning there. He had the very distinct feeling that the dreams weren't just normal, everyday, recurring dreams. For one thing, it had been every night for three months and he didn't think that was possible and for another thing, he refused to believe that he, a boy, would dream up such mushy, romantic fantasies. That did beg the question of what he thought they were if they weren't just recurring dream but he always stopped himself thinking about it before he got to answer that.
"Harry?"
...
"Oi Harry?"
...
"HARRY!"
The dark haired boy flinched with a small cry of protest as the loud call of his name stung the ear it had been yelled into and then seemed to echo around inside his head. Once he had recovered somewhat, he whipped his head around and stuck a poisonous glare on the ginger-haired boy sitting beside him at the Gryffindor Table in the Great Hall. "Do you mind!"
"Sorry, but you were miles away, it was the only way I was gonna get your attention." Ron explained with a shrug, not appearing or sounding very sorry at all.
"What do you want then?" Harry sighed, eyes dropping back to his dinner plate as he couldn't be bothered to keep up the bad mood and glare at his best friend any longer.
Ron didn't answer him though, instead choosing to look at him carefully, as though he was trying to figure something out about the dark haired boy. For a few seconds, the stare continued without so much as a word from the Weasley and Harry felt his temper starting to rise again. He lifted his gaze to his friend once more and gave him an angry, pointed look, one that said without speaking, "if this is the reason you yelled in my ear, I'm gonna kick your arse".
"Do you fancy someone?" Ron asked soon after the glare had started.
At those words, Harry's glare vanished in an instant and his eyes widened in surprise. "...What?" He managed to get out.
"You've been acting really out of it lately and it's only just occurred to me but you're acting like you've got a thing for someone. So, out with it, who's the lucky girl?"
Harry's mouth opened and closed a couple of times without word coming before he finally managed to find his voice again. "No, I do not fancy anyone Ron." He said stubbornly, also trying to convince the little part of himself which had been almost pining for someone completely anonymous since the dreams had started.
With the beginning of the dreams came the beginning of what Harry refused to call, but couldn't find any other way to describe, "falling in love". But that was ridiculous because he didn't even know who he was in love with. It was hard to explain. He was pretty sure he was in love, he just didn't know who with.
"Are you sure? Because you really are acting that way. Do you not want me to know?" Ron paused for a moment as a look of horror crossed his face. "It's not a Slytherin is it?"
"Ron, there's no one..." Harry tried to protest.
"Or is it a bloke? Because you know Harry, if you're into blokes, I don't care. In fact, Bill came out to us this summer and although it took me a bit of time to get used to..."
"Ron," Harry interrupted firmly, succeeding in cutting the red-head off. "I do not fancy anyone. I do not fancy a Slytherin, I do not fancy a bloke, nor a girl, nor anything in between." He paused then and sighed before running a hand through his hair. "I've been having dreams is all and they're a bit...Distracting."
"It's not...You-Know-Who, is it?" Ron asked in a whisper, glancing around himself in order to check that no one was listening in on them.
Harry glanced at his best friend, wondering whether he should go with the truth or just allow the boy to go along with the simplest explanation. The real question was did Harry really feel comfortable sharing the dreams with anyone? They were so embarrassing for a boy to have and he wasn't sure how Ron would react to them. Maybe if it had been Hermione who had asked...But that was a moot point as she wasn't even in the Great Hall at that moment, instead she was off doing some sort of prefect thing.
Eventually, Harry made up his mind and gave a small nod. "Yeah." Was all he said and it seemed to be enough to satisfy Ron who immediately shut up about the entire thing. Harry supposed that was another pro of using the lie that it was Voldemort causing trouble; it immediately put Ron off asking any more questions.
Harry stormed through random, dark corridors of Hogwarts in a completely foul mood, heading nowhere in particular, just needing to be moving and making himself do something. He glared at the dark patches on the walls that were the shadowed paintings as though everything bad in the world was their fault alone and he was actually hoping to run into Professor Snape; he was in just the right mood for a good argument.
For some strange, inexplicable reason, Harry couldn't sleep. It wasn't the sort of not being able to sleep which came from waking up as soon as you crawled into bed. Rather, it was the stupid kind where you were exhausted and really wanted to fall asleep but just couldn't. For ages he had tossed and turned and wished to just drop off if only for a little while. Eventually though, he had only succeeded in annoying himself and getting hot and agitated. So, he had given up and decided to take a walk. He hadn't bothered with his invisibility cloak as, as said before, he wouldn't mind getting into a good argument with Snape to vent his frustration.
Turning a corner, Harry saw someone up ahead who, although it wasn't Snape, it was someone who would do just as well for a good fight with; Draco Malfoy. The blonde was dressed in day clothing rather than pyjamas which suggested he hadn't even tried to go to sleep yet. That or he had something against wandering around in his night clothes, unlike Harry. Not that the Gryffindor cared particularly, it was just a bit of a shame that he couldn't comment on the clothing; pyjamas were always easier to make fun of than normal clothes.
As they drew closer to each other, Harry noticed that Malfoy had a smirk on his face, indicating that his presence had no doubt been noticed by the Slytherin. However, when they got to about a metre away from each other, the smirk on the blonde's face vanished at the same time as Harry's heart sped up. They stared at each other, both completely shocked and although the Gryffindor didn't know why his rival was shocked, he was more than aware of what had caused his blood to start racing.
Those eyes, those steel-grey eyes, he had seen them somewhere before, somewhere other than the face of Draco Malfoy. Those eyes that were locked with his own, that he knew could look upon him with a kindness he had never actually seen on the face of the young man in front of him.
Harry's mouth opened of its own accord and before his mind could even properly register it, a single name had passed his lips in barely a whisper:
"Stefan..."
The sound of the carriage moving, wooden wheels rolling along a cobbled street. The kind of excitement which made you want to smile brightly and get up and move around, just to use up some of the energy which had suddenly appeared. The kind that filled you with hope and happiness and made you forget any other problem that might exist in your life.
How long had it been? Far too long, obviously, but specifically, how long had it really been? It had to have been at Christmas when they had gone to join with them in the festivities. Six months then. Six months since they had last spoken to each other, since they had seen each other, touched each other, kissed each other.
Six months; it was too long.
The carriage was still moving along, jolting the four people inside occasionally. For one it passed by with little to no notice. There were more important things to think of rather than the jerky movement. Such as where they were going, and who they would see when they got there. Because there was one main person they were going to see; they were going to see her.
Her, with her long, fiery red hair always allowed to flow behind her loosely, reflecting her passionate and care-free nature. Her, with her wicked sense of humour and beautiful laugh which seemed to fall from her lips like soft, tinkling bells. Her, who appeared to be so small and delicate but could actually put up an impressive physical fight if the occasion called for it.
The carriage finally came to a stop, meaning there were only minutes to go. The females left the carriage first before the men followed on behind. The man and wife of the manor, her parents, were ready and waiting to greet them, going straight to the two adults who had just arrived. For the youngest present, attention was almost immediately focused on the sight of her though. She came running out of the manor, only stopping when she was about a metre away. Not two seconds later, their eyes met, steel-grey capturing emerald-green. Smiles lit two faces brightly and for a moment even breathing was forgotten and there was nothing in the world except for the two of them.
Then, finally, reality returned and it occurred to both of them that they were together again and could actually touch. Both started forward at the same time, eyes for only each other. They met with open arms, wrapping each other in themselves as soon as possible.
"Stefan..." She whispered his name gently as he kissed her hair, and for him it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
"Sophitia..." He returned the whisper, sensing everything she had to offer: her scent; her touch; her voice.
Surely, this had to be Heaven.
Slowly, with no great rush, Draco opened his eyes, greeted with the sight of the canopy of his bed above him. For long moments he just lay there in the stillness and the silence, enjoying the last tendrils of sleep as they gradually left him awake and alert. With a feline grace, he sat up and arched his back, also stretching his arms out behind himself, only relaxing when he got a few satisfying cracks from various bones. After that, he swung his legs over the side of the bed in order to get to his feet and then going to his trunk to retrieve his clothes for the day, his mind going over the dream he had just woken from.
It was only one of many which he'd had over the course of his life, for as long as he could remember. They were a part of his life. Actually, they were a part of his lives because he knew they weren't just sequences of images created by his subconscious. They had actually happened and they had happened to him; they were his past lives. Yes, he'd lived a dozen lives just as a lot of other people around him probably had, though they might not remember them. Draco wasn't sure why he was able to remember his past lives in such detail but it had been something he'd been able to do in all his lives.
Most of the dreams were more like memories, some even going so far as to almost reliving the experiences. And, with those memories, came knowledge. Knowledge about who he was, who he could be and who he would fall in love with. Because for almost every person he had ever been, there had been another standing at his side, supporting him through everything, caring for him, loving him and each time, it was the same soul. But were they soul-mates? Draco doubted it, if only because he didn't believe soul-mates were a reality; there really was no evidence to support the theory after all. However, he did believe that the other soul must have had their destiny intertwined with his in some way because in most of their lives, they had been together in some form and the lives they weren't together in, Draco remembered those had been lives where he had either died young or had remained single throughout.
And so, the question of his current life was simple; would this be another life with 'the other' or not? He had no way of knowing who the other was in this life and so there was no way to search them out. It really was just a matter of waiting. Unfortunately, when it came to some things, Draco Malfoy had never been particularly good at waiting.
"Draco?"
...
"Draco?"
...
"Draco!"
His name came out a long, whiney plea and the blonde wrinkled his nose in distaste at the sound. "Pansy, shut up, I'm trying to ignore you." He murmured to the girl who was sitting next to him at a table in the Slytherin common room.
"But why?" Pansy pouted. "You're not writing an essay like you said you were going to; you haven't moved your quill in the past fifteen minutes."
"I'm thinking of how to phrase my next sentence." Draco lied smoothly. In reality, he was thinking back to his dream that morning.
A long, few minutes of silence passed then and Draco dared to hope that Pansy had accepted his lie and had decided to leave him alone. True, she was staring at him openly but she wasn't speaking and that was the main thing. Unfortunately, that hope and silence didn't last for much longer and Pansy decided to speak again. "All right, who is she?"
"Who's who?" Draco asked distractedly as he reached forward and flipped the page of his text book over idly.
"Who's the tart that's got you so bloody distracted?" The girl demanded with a deep glare.
Draco found he had to lift his gaze to her then, if only to show his pure disbelief at that question. He raised an eyebrow at her. "What makes you think there's a tart?"
"You're ignoring me and it's not even for school work. Maybe if you had bothered to write something down like you said you were going to, but no, your page is completely blank. So c'mon, out with it, who is she?" Pansy demanded. "Is it a Slytherin? Or a Ravenclaw? It better not be a Hufflepuff for her sake or I won't even hesitate to scratch her eyes out!"
Draco was struggling to contain his amusement at watching the girl act like he was her own personal property when he had done nothing to even encourage such behaviour. After a while, he settled on saying five little words which would have so much more impact on the girl beside him than anything else he could say: "Who said it was a girl?"
The young Malfoy wasn't gay, not in the least, nor was he bisexual or even heterosexual. In his opinion, he didn't really have a sexuality because he'd already experienced so much in his past lives. He'd been married as both a man and a woman, he'd had same-sex lovers as both a man and a woman, he'd even experience incest in a couple of lives. It was useless to have a sexuality when you had already learnt so much and realised that love was far more important than physical attraction and therefore being initially attracted to someone's appearance meant very little. Plus, it just wouldn't do to have a preference only to be disappointed upon finding out that 'the other' was of a gender he didn't fancy.
As expected, Pansy looked completely scandalised at those words and she stared at Draco in horror. He merely quirked an eyebrow at her again before returning to his book and bare parchment. A few seconds of silence passed by until Pansy, obviously having enough, gave a frustrated shrill sound before standing quickly and stomping off, catching the attention of several other students in the surrounding area. The blonde watched her go discreetly, once again fighting to keep his amusement in check. It was so fun to torment Pansy in such a way; she was so easy to rile up.
Draco sighed lightly as he wandered down a random, dark corridor of Hogwarts in a slightly melancholy mood, heading for no where in particular, just wanting to be doing something. Occasionally, his eyes wandered to the dark patches on the walls that were the shadowed paintings, but they soon moved off again to stare down at the floor beneath his feet forlornly.
He'd had a dream. It was one he'd had before but it was one of the less happy ones. In that life, he had been the eldest son, though youngest child, of a Venitian aristocrat in the last 1600's and the other had been the only daughter of his father's closest friend. They had been engaged to marry and had been very happy about that fact. Unfortunately, that had been one of the least successful lives as the two fathers had a falling out and 'the other' was given to the son of some other aristocrat. She had killed herself, not wanting to be separated from him and not knowing what else to do. The dream Draco had just had, had been a recollection of the moment he had learnt of her suicide and the pain still remained as an all too real aching in his heart.
Lifting his eyes, Draco spotted the form of Harry Potter heading straight towards him and he felt his stomach sink. He really didn't want to have to deal with Potter right at that moment but he doubted he'd be able to get out of it. So, thanking Merlin that he had decided to change out of his pyjamas, he put the usual smirk on his face, ready to force his way through his melancholy in order to put up a decent fight.
As they drew closer to each other, Draco noticed that Potter looked rather angry and he just knew this wasn't going to turn out well. However, when they got to about a metre away from each other, Draco felt his smirk vanish as the dark haired boy's eyes widened. They stared at each other, both completely shocked and Draco instantly knew who he was looking at.
Those eyes, those emerald-green eyes, those eyes that belonged to them, the one he had loved in so many lives before. Those eyes that were locked with his own, that he knew could sparkle with such kindness and joy he had never seen on the face of the boy in front of him.
Draco watched as Potter's mouth opened and a single word passed his mouth: "Stefan..."
He felt his heart freeze but at the same time swell in relief. Before he could even wonder at the situation and consider how to properly handle it, he had stepped forward a few paces, his breathing his own, single word: "Sophita..."
A heavy silence hung in the air of the classroom Harry now found himself in with Draco Malfoy of all people. Or should he say Stefan, the man from his dreams. Only they weren't dreams apparently, they were memories; memories of a past life he had led as a girl, a life where he had fallen in love with the boy Malfoy had once been, a life he had ended himself when he discovered that he, as a girl, was to marry someone else.
Outside, light rain pattered on the window the dark haired boy was sitting beside and somewhere a little off from him, the blonde Slytherin was sitting on the edge of a desk. They hadn't spoken nor looked at each other for several minutes now and Harry began to wonder if agreeing to finding a classroom in order to talk things out was really worth it.
"What are you thinking?" Draco eventually asked quietly.
"I was just wondering if there was any point in agreeing to come here since neither of us are too eager to speak apparently." The dark haired boy replied, continuing to stare out of the window.
"Erm..." The blonde hesitated, clearly not knowing what to say. "Where do you want to start?"
"Well, answer me this; what are we? Like, soul mates or something?"
"I don't think we are but, to tell the truth, I suppose there's always a possibility of it."
Harry shook his head slightly and closed his eyes for a brief second. "This can't be happening, not to us of all people. I mean, you're Slytherin, I'm Gryffindor. Merlin, I'm Harry Potter and you're Draco Malfoy; you'd think Fate would want us to be enemies with the way it arranged everything rather than to be together. You know what I mean Malfoy, we hate each other." He said to the other boy pointedly.
"Hate is such a strong word." Draco murmured, almost to himself.
"What, so now you're denying that you've always hated me?" Harry asked sceptically.
"Like I said, hate is such a strong word." The blonde replied. "I've disliked you a lot, I know that, but have I hated you? I'm not so sure about that. Why, do you hate me?"
"I, uh..." The Gryffindor hesitated. "I-I don't really know. I thought...But now you've said that, I..." He cut off his own stuttering firmly as a determined look graced his face. "It doesn't matter how I feel about you or towards you or whatever because there's just one important fact that we've totally over looked here; I'm not gay."
"Neither am I." Draco shrugged, which was technically true as he had no real preference, before looking to the Gryffindor pointedly. "The real question here isn't whether you fancy me or not, it's asking yourself whether you feel a connection to me, any sort of connection at all."
"I don't know what I feel at the moment." Harry sighed quietly.
"That's understandable; you haven't had as long to deal with this as I have."
"How long have you been dealing with this? So to speak."
"For as long as I can remember." Draco admitted. "I've always had these dreams as far as I know and not just ones about our lives as Stefan and Sophitia. We've led other lives together." The blonde revealed with a slight smile.
"Really?" Harry asked, surprised by that.
"Oh yeah, we've kept coming together for at least three thousand years now." The Slytherin told the other boy causing him to raise his eyebrows in surprise. "The earliest memory I've ever recalled is during the time of the Ancient Greeks. We fell in love when we were in our twenties and married soon after. Spent the rest of that life together."
"Wow, we've been going around for quite a long time then." The dark haired boy murmured as he turned his head slightly to look at the other boy across from him. "What other times can you remember?"
"Umm, let's see...Oh, there was the time in the mid-Victorian era when we lived in London together. We were twin sisters in that life, not that we let that get in our way. We ran away from home when we turned thirteen in order to be together and had to work as prostitutes for quite sometime. But we ended up doing quite well for ourselves after a long period of suffering; we got enough money to open our own brothel."
"Nice." Harry said with a wrinkling of his nose.
"At least it meant we didn't have to work the streets ourselves anymore and we had a safe, warm place to sleep every night." Draco reminisced.
"So...Are we together in every life?"
"No, not every one. I can remember a couple where I was alone and remained alone. I was a nun during the Middle Ages in France, I was alone then."
"I wonder what I did during those times?" The Gryffindor mused thoughtfully.
"You might've not been doing anything important. Child death rates were high then; you might've had a streak of bad luck and continued to die during the first few years of your life. Or maybe you served as a soldier in the Crusades at some point and died then." The Slytherin suggested.
Harry sighed lightly then and allowed his head to flop to the side again to stare out at the rain. "I wish I could remember all this."
Draco watched him for a few seconds before he gave a small sigh himself and got to his feet. "Harry," he started, using the other boy's given name for the first time ever. "We can sit here and reminisce until the fairies come home, but that's not going to do anything for the situation we're in now. We need to figure something out."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked with a light frown of confusion, moving his head to look at the blonde again who was now standing beside him.
"I mean, we have to decide what we're going to do."
"What's to decide?"
"Harry, we don't have to be together just because we've discovered each other."
"We don't?"
"No." Draco confirmed with a shake of his head. "We've lived without each other before, we can do it again. We don't have to get into a relationship, and considering our history..." He trailed off, allowing the sentence to hang.
Another silence stretched between them then, both teenagers left with their own thoughts. Eventually, it was Harry who spoke and broke the silence first: "Do you want to try being together?"
"Yes, I'd be willing to try it." Draco admitted in a casual manner, stretching his arms to his side before bringing them behind his back and then leaning against the wall behind him. "After all, it's still essentially the same soul in the both of us and we don't change that much with each incarnation. It's worked before, I reckon it could work again."
"But like you said, our history. Things have hardly been good between us, have they? I mean, this is the first civil conversation I think we've ever had."
"Yet we've had it." The Slytherin pointed out quite rightly. "We're proving right now that it is possible for us to have a conversation which doesn't end up in us yelling at each other."
"Yeah, you're right." Harry agreed with a small smile which, unfortunately, quickly faded. "But we don't know anything about each other, not really."
Draco nodded at that. "True, but we can change that very easily. I don't mind telling you about my life."
"What about mine?"
"You're Harry Potter, I already know you."
"Oh really?" Harry asked with a disbelieving, but easy-going, tone.
"Of course I do, everyone knows you." Draco insisted. Upon seeing the Boy-Who-Lived's sceptical expression, he continued. "All right, okay, I challenge you to tell me one thing, any little thing, about yourself that I don't know."
"Anything?"
"Yep."
"Any little thing?"
"Yes, any little thing at all."
"All right then." Harry agreed, shifting so he was sitting facing the blonde. "I grew up in the cupboard under the stairs in my uncle's and aunt's house." The expression on the Slytherin's face was exactly what Harry was going for; shocked and disbelieving. He'd been going for shocked. Draco thought he knew him so well? Draco didn't know him at all.
"I'm sorry, but what?" Draco said, looking completely confused.
"You wanted to hear something about me you didn't know, and that was it. From the time I was given to my uncle and aunt to the time that I started to attend Hogwarts, I slept in the cupboard under the stairs in their house. I was locked in there if I did something "freakish" too." The dark haired boy continued, partly mentally yelling at himself for giving all this information who, until fifteen minutes ago, had been his biggest rival.
"Freakish?"
"My aunt and uncle think that magic and being a wizard is something to be ashamed of. Whenever I showed magical tendencies, I'd be locked in the cupboard and, more often than not, denied food for a couple of days."
Draco stared at the Wizarding world's hero in complete horror. "You can't be serious." The dark haired boy just gave him a pointed look, clearly asking if the other boy really thought he was the sort of person who would lie about something so severe. "That's terrible...I-I had no idea..."
"Not a lot of people do." Harry replied with a shrug, already starting to regret telling the blonde as the intense staring continued.
"But..." Draco began to say but was clearly struggling to get words out properly. "How...How could they? I mean, after what you did! How could they treat you like that?"
"I don't think they really understand what it is I did." The dark haired boy said in a pondering way, having never really considered it before. "Even if they did, I doubt they'd care very much, they'd probably just decide it made me even more of a freak."
"Don't you hate them for that?"
"I don't care about them enough to hate them."
The blonde Slytherin stared at him in amazement for a few seconds before he shook his head and gave a small chuckle. "You are still so much like Sophitia; she couldn't hate anyone either."
"I hate Voldemort." Harry pointed out.
"Oh yeah, but everyone hates Voldemort. Even the people who like Voldemort actually hate him."
"So you're not afraid to call him by his name; didn't see that coming." The Gryffindor admitted.
"What? You thought I was some brainless, Voldemort-loving Death Eater?" Draco asked, quirking an eyebrow in some sort of amusement. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I have absolutely no intention of joining the small-minded, fascist drones of someone who was beaten by a fifteen month old toddler."
"And does your dad know this?"
"He's in Azkaban so I'm gonna say no."
"I see..."
"Does that change things?"
"Yes." Harry admitted, glancing in the blonde's direction. "If you were thinking of becoming a Death Eater, nothing, no matter how much we may have wanted it, would be able to keep us together, there'd just be no way it could possible work. But now, knowing that you don't support Voldemort..." He trailed off awkwardly, not quite ready to verbalise the future.
Draco turned his head to look at Harry when he trailed off and saw that there was a light blush on the Gryffindor's cheeks. The opportunity to tease him about it was almost too good to deny but the Slytherin knew that this new, tentative relationship between them both was too fragile and new to really be able to support such a thing. So, instead, the blush was ignored and Draco turned so he was standing right in front of Harry. "How about we just take it one step at a time?" He suggested with a smile as he held out his right hand.
Harry's eyes flickered from Draco's hand to his face before he suddenly seemed to recognise what the young aristocrat wanted and what he was offering. "That sounds good to me." The dark haired boy agreed as he took Draco's hand and they shook.
They both grinned at each other a little as they let the others' hand go. This obviously wasn't going to be an over-night thing and Draco knew there might be a very good possibility that what he and Harry had might never develop past a close friendship; after all, that had happened to them before in other lives. But there was one thing he was pretty sure of; from that moment on, they were both going to be very big parts of each others' lives. Was it destiny? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just really good sense.
"Hey Harry?" Draco said eventually, his tone curious.
"Hmm?" Harry hummed in reply.
"Can we go see your relatives sometime? I think they're people I'd really like to meet."
End of My Eternal Love.
And that, my friends, was my plot bunny. I hope you enjoyed it. I quite like it though it's not as fluffy as what I usually end up writing. Still no angst though because, let's face it, there's too much angst out there.
Right, I'm off then. Take care everyone and I'll see you all again soon for the multi-chaptered piece I'm still fiddling with :)
Hugs
Dream