Title: Reunion
Author: Dearly Loveless
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Genre: Drama so far
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,613
Status: Incomplete
Disclaimer: Don't own it. Don't sue.
Summary: It's the summer after Dumbledore dies. What is in store for Harry?
Note: I realize that this is not exactly the best starting point, but ... it's a start. And it resembles J.K. Rowling's writing and I love writing like her. So ... please keep on reading. Comments are love! 3
Harry Potter awoke with a start in the late hours of a warm July night in his messy bedroom at number four, Private Drive. His hand had been throbbing painfully and the pain was getting worse by the minute. As he looked down to where his hand lay, he saw that he was clutching his wand so tightly that his knuckles had turned chalk-white.
He stole a glance at the clock, almost as if he was afraid of knowing the time. It was ten minutes to three; he'd been lucky to get two hours of sleep, although he had been haunted by endless dreams of the night Dumbledore had died. The night pained him so much. He felt like he had lost the closest thing he had to a father all over again after Sirius had died. He had been so foolish to trust Snape all these years … he would get his revenge.
But there was still a part of his dream that troubled him the most and it wasn't about neither Dumbledore nor Snape. It was about … Malfoy. He felt every inch of him burst in a flame as he recalled the dream vividly. He had been having more of these disconcerting dreams more and more. Harry Potter just simply didn't understand himself.
He was wondering why he still lived in Private Drive. He hated the Dursleys with a passion, and beside that, he was putting poor innocent people (even if he did hate them) at the risk of being killed. He had to get out.
It took him a while to remember what day it was. July 30th. It would be his birthday tomorrow—or wait. It was already July 31st, wasn't it? At that thought, he sat up in his bed upright, staring into the darkness of his so-called room. He couldn't believe it; this was his departure from the Dursley house forever. He didn't have to come back at all.
Putting on his jeans and a T-shirt, he stuffed his wand in his back pocket and packed his trunk. He was legally an aged wizard. This was the first time in the longest while Harry didn't feel so obligated to his position.
By habit, Harry dragged the trunk out of his room. When his uncle snorted noisily from the master bedroom, Harry recalled that he could use magic outside of school.
"Locomotor trunk!" he muttered, pointing his wand at the worn out trunk. He watched it levitate unceremoniously. At the bottom of the stairs, he gently led his trunk down, hearing a soft thud as it impacted the floor.
Sadly enough, he hadn't passed his Apparition test yet. Not that anyone would care, at the Ministry. The government was busy hiding scandals caused by Voldemort and the Death Eaters from the Muggle community.
Harry sighed and grumbled under his breath as he made his way to the fireplace—his only other means of escape. Floo powder. He had gotten some in the case of emergency from the Weasleys.
He threw a fistful of the lime-colored powder into the fireplace and watched the emerald flames lick up to the sides of the chimney. He felt so detached. He stepped into the fire apathetically, saying, "Diagon Alley!"
In an instant, he was swirling past other chimneys, his heart in his mouth. He realized what he had done was probably not the safest thing in the world. But it's better than taking the Knight Bus, he mused as he held on to his trunk. His trip seemed to be the longest of them all; he felt like centuries were passing right before his eyes, revealing and unfolding events of the past.
His thoughts were interrupted by the painful impact of his body to the hearth of a fireplace in a gloomy pub he recognized as the Leaky Cauldron. The place seemed to be deserted except for Tom, the toothless bartender, wiping the counter with an old rag as he stared somewhere off in space with a vacant stare. He didn't even seem to notice Harry's dramatic entrance.
"Tom?" Harry his own voice coming from somewhere distant. "Do you have a room for me to stay tonight?"
The bartender seemed to snap out of his daze as he looked at Harry, except he wasn't really looking at him—he was looking at his scar. "For Mr. Potter," he said quite warily, "anything is possible."
I resent that, Harry thought bitterly. He hated how his name was so wide-spread in the wizarding community more than ever. He despised seeing his own name next to "The Boy Who Live" or "The Chosen One." But at least, it saved him the trouble now; the Ministry of Magic was off his back and he was allowed to do whatever the hell he wished to capture—or in better words kill—Voldemort.
As soon as Tom left him in his assigned room (he noticed it was the same one he had used during the summer before his third year at Hogwarts), Harry sank on his bed with his clothes still on and even his glasses still on his face. He was asleep in an instant, continuing his dreams about Draco Malfoy once more.
"Mr. Potter," Tom said the next morning as Harry walked into the pub. He hadn't had this much sleep in the longest while. "Mr. Potter, an owl flew in here last night. A white one. As you're the only resident here, I thought it might be yours."
Harry hit himself on the forehead. "Hedwig!" he exclaimed. How could he have forgotten her?
The owl hooted in a protesting manner as Harry sat her on his shoulder. "I'm sorry! I just forgot you were out hunting for food..." he trailed off as he saw the small note Hedwig was carrying. Harry's heart sank as he opened the note; he knew owls were still being intercepted, just not by the ministry anymore.
The note written on the yellow parchment was plain and simple, written in a neat handwriting:
Potter, I need your help. I'll meet you at your Godfather's house at 8:30 tonight. If I didn't need your help, I wouldn't be sending this. Please, this is urgent.
Harry goggled at the parchment in his hand, puzzled on who might need his help. He cursed himself for being here. He had, in the first place, decided to go to Grimmauld Place. Call it an intuition or a gut feeling, but Harry had learned from his last six years in Hogwarts that coincidences did not exist; there were only the illusion of coincidences.
"Tom?" he croaked, looking around the bar. "Do you have any Floo Powder handy around here?"
His godfather's house was quiet and morbid, carrying a foreboding feeling which compressed him from all sides. The only way he was convinced that this wasn't some sort of trick from the Death Eaters or Voldemort himself was the fact that Dumbledore was their Secret-Keeper, and now he was dead—for better or for worse.
Harry looked around the kitchen he had appeared in; it seemed like only yesterday when he had used Umbridge's office to come to the same kitchen, only to find Kreacher, the house elf, wearing a sinister smile while telling him that Sirius was in trouble. A combination of rage and insecurity filled Harry's every ounce of existence—if you could call this an existence at all.
He had been a shadow, a mere ghost these past two years. He wouldn't be shocked at all if someone were to tell him he was dead.
It was only 11:00 in the morning; he had time to this mysterious person who had asked for help. Meanwhile, he decided to settle in at the place as it was the safest for him to be in.
Harry could not believe the loneliness that surrounded him wherever he went. He was the Chosen One, and yet, with so much fame and glory, he felt so insignificant. He was insignificant. If there was no prophecy, his entire life would be on a different direction. For the first time in ages, he despised Trelawney for telling the future, if you could call it that. He despised how everything had woven in together to put him in the place of a heroic symbol of his people. Yet, he felt like he was nothing at all. "I do not wish to lead anyone!" he said aloud, forgetting Mrs. Black's portrait.
It took a while to shut her up again, but so many memories, all painful, came back as he heard her voice. He managed to get up the stairs without breaking down, but once he was in the room he and Ron had shared two summers ago, Harry held his head in both hands and started to sob; he did not remember ever crying that much in his life…
At last 8:00 was upon him. Harry waited patiently in the kitchen, as he stared pointlessly to the wall in front of him. He wished, at least, to see Dumbledore so he could clear things up. Though, he knew that was impossible. This was his own battle now.
Suddenly, the crackles of the fire warned him of the entrance of the very person who had written to him. Harry sat up in his wooden chair, curiously—and maybe even anxiously—gaped at the fireplace.
What he saw next, almost made him fall out of his chair; what he saw, he could not apprehend. He gawked at the pale image emerging from the green flames.
"Scared you, Potter?" he smirked as usual, patting away the dust from his robes.
It was Malfoy. Draco Malfoy.