Chapter One
Draco's summer had been bleak. He never thought he would, but he realised how quiet the house was without his father, and he missed him. Draco was shocked at this: he must be in a pretty dark place if he missed the attacks he was bombarded with every waking hour, but they had become the only regular human contact he had had all summer. Ever since his father had been locked up, she had shut everything out, not leaving her room for days and walking round like a ghost. He was especially shocked that that was the first thing he thought after his triumphant moment of restoring his room to how it was before Voldemort returned and expectations to seem upright were heightened. He had returned his story books to their shelves, found some more colourful sheets and done anything he could to hide his ancient wallpaper. Now he was lying on his bed looking at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and started making mental lists: homework he had to complete before September, what he needed to pack for Hogwarts. This normally calmed him down: it was a slow logical act that returned him to reality. But then he began a new one. He sat up, running his hands through his hair. If Draco was going back to Hogwarts, so was he. The person who'd stolen so much from him:
-The House Cup (every year)
-The Snitch (again multiple times)
-His father
-His heart
One person had taken it all, the one person Lucius would never accept, no matter how long Draco waited. The one person he swore would be his worst enemy from the day they entered the Great Hall on their first day at school.
There was an emptiness in his stomach that he knew wouldn't be filled until he got what he wanted. The problem wasn't that he didn't know who had taken his heart. It was that they were an elusive thief, and he had no idea how to catch someone who didn't want spot stop running. The thief was several paces ahead, and every time Draco tried to reach out and grab them, his legs stopped working as his brain woke up, logical and realistic and depressed. It ran through all the reasons he could never reclaim his heart: they clearly liked someone else, might even be taken, had landed his father in Azkaban and were technically his mortal enemy. Draco had to move on. Forget him. But he couldn't.
Harry was unforgettable.
So technically it was Harry's fault that when Voldemort began taking an interest in Draco, who was so overcome with the need for love and some sort of attention, he welcomed the curiosity in a dazed state and before he knew it he was pacing round his room trying to grasp one of the hazy ideas floating round his head. It had been two weeks since he had been given the task that no one, not even Voldemort had completed: sneaking Death Eaters into Hogwarts.
After another week the ideas he had been reaching for had flown out the window. He wished he could join them: he'd spent the last three weeks with the curtains closed pacing his room, reading 'Hogwarts: A History', writing down anything that came into his head and then throwing paper in his overflowing waste-paper bag. His skin hadn't seen the sun in over half a month and was pulling him towards the outdoors and all its distractions. He hadn't eaten or slept in almost a week, and he was slowly losing awareness of his body, his mind, so that all he could feel was that oh-so-familiar emptiness ready to break him in half unless it was filled. Forget loneliness. Forget his stolen heart. Forget morals, beliefs and all the other unattended holes threatening to tear him apart from the inside out. He had to fill the void created by Voldemort.
He had to.