-title- Adore Through Darkness

-author- Elaria Garnet

-e-mail- elaria_garnet@hotmail.com

-rating- PG-13 (language, and slight sexual innuendo)

-summary- H/D slash.  How do you remember love once you've forgotten it?  Epic romance, with loads of angst.  Prologue only – a more elaborate summary will be coming with the first chapter.

-disclaimer- Draco and Harry and their wonderful world belongs to other people – mostly J. K. Rowling.  This basically means, "They're not mine.  And I'm not getting any money off of them."  Hope that clears up any confusion.

-author notes- This series has been a long time coming…I've been planning it, and writing scenes for months.  Finally, here is the prologue.  First it was beta-ed by Proserpina, and then by Aleena Malfoy, and it looks like she is going to be the beta for the duration of the series!  (Aleena is the author of Thanks to Cedar, phoenix17 and redgold&green from Fiction Alley, who reviewed the prologue-snippet that I posted there.  As a final note, the title is adapted from a line of Jewel's song "Absence of Fear."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Adore Through Darkness

PROLOGUE

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this..."

"NOTHING! Nothing he can do can change this, nothing!!"

"We could write it all down, couldn't we? So we remember?"

"Do you never tire of being the martyr?"

"How could you do that to me?"

"If you think you've even BEGUN to know pain...!"

"Just trying to give myself something to remember you by."

"Better to have loved and lost..."

"Please write it down, please!! And I could read it later, and I know I would believe it!"

"...Than to have never loved at all...?"

"All I care about is waking up in the morning and remembering that I love you!"

"You deserve to rot in hell!"

"You won't be in danger anymore..."

"The very smell of sweat and soap makes me hotter than hell."

"We had it too easy, I guess...and now we're going to have it hard for awhile."

"How could you make me believe he remembered?"

"We haven't always been lovers."

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry..."

"Haven't we?"

"Trite as this sounds...you're the only thing I live for...the only thing worth it..."

"You fucking went and took away the only fucking thing that ever made him happy!!"

"Like some stupid, Muggle fairy tale."

"We go in there it won't be talking we're doing..."

"My turn to be the martyr."

"Kiss me."

"What the hell are you doing? Get your hands off me!"

"Kiss me."

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this..."

"Kiss me."

The boy gasped for air.  Another nightmare.  He sat up in bed, and shudders ran through him, making their way from his dilated pupils, down his spine, and right out through his toes, before beginning all over again. Jumbled sentences punctuated by passionate moans.  Another nightmare.  None of it made sense, the way it was constructed in his mind.  The words faded away soon after he awoke, so that he couldn't remember them long enough to try and make sense of it all.  He brought a hand to his chest, to his heart, and held it, as if to make certain that it was still beating. Yes it was. Another nightmare. When would they end?  Would they end when he died, finally?  Did he despise these nights of passion, of hurt, of loss? Or was he in love with them?

The way he was in love with the boy in the dream?

There was no answer...any except for the salty drops that fell from his face, to splatter against the coverlet -- the inevitable end to another nightmare.

~ ~ ~

Breakfast that morning in the Great Hall was just as loud as usual.  At the end of the Gryffindor table, Harry Potter was listening to Ron and Hermione argue about Ron's study habits -- or lack thereof -- with a bemused smile on his face.

Suddenly, came electricity.

Harry turned around in his chair and peered through the mass of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws.  His gaze wandered around aimlessly before it came to rest on a pair of glittering silver eyes at the Slytherin table.  Electric.

He turned back around to face Hermione and Ron, who had ceased the argument in order to stare at him.  Feeling he owed them sort of explanation, Harry asked in a voice that was half confused and half irritated, "Why is Malfoy staring at me?"

Hermione and Ron shared an odd look.  "How was he staring?" was Hermione's response.

"I dunno..." Harry shrugged and went back to his eggs.  "Just really, really funny.  He's been doing it a lot lately, I've noticed.  Think maybe he has something up his sleeve."

"Or he wants something up his --" Ron didn't have time to finish the sentence before Hermione silenced him with a kick under the table.  "OUCH, Hermione!" the red haired boy bit out.

"You should KNOW better," she hissed.

Ron grumbled something in response before fiercely biting into his biscuit.

Harry watched the exchange, a slight smile on his face.  He'd had to suppress a chuckle at Ron's words, fearing Hermione's wrath.  She'd never been one for crude breakfast table conversation.

Anything to get angry with Ron, the Boy-Who-Lived thought to himself.

And this time he would have laughed outright, only he suddenly felt a tingly feeling race down his spine....  "Ron, Hermione," he began, staring at his eggs and trying to pretend everything was all right.  "He's doing it again.  I can feel it."

"Your back is turned to Malfoy," Hermione insisted.  "Plus there are two tables between us and the Slytherins.  You can't possibly --"

"Hermione, I'm telling you, I can feel it."

"Not a good sign," Ron muttered into the biscuit.

"How's he looking at me?  Does he look angry, or something?"

Hermione looked over Harry's shoulder, her eyes seeking out the face of the blonde Slytherin.  Harry and Ron knew when she found it, because her gaze immediately -- almost as if in embarrassment -- returned to the plate of food in front of her. 

"He's not angry.  I don't..." she looked up from her eggs and squinted at Harry in a way she usually reserved for unsolved equations.  "If you can feel him staring at you, can't you feel HOW he's staring at you?"    

"Yes --"

"Not a good sign," Ron repeated, with extra emphasis on the "not."

"-- But I can't describe it."

"Want me to look?" his best friend offered, almost eagerly.

"NO!"  The forcefulness of Harry's response shocked all of them…Harry most of all.  "If you turn around, Ron, he'll see you and he'll stop it."

"Don't you want him to stop it, though?"  Ron's voice seemed suddenly strained.

"Yes...no...I mean, I don't know..." Harry looked almost helpless for a minute, and then seemed suddenly to become angry.  "He's only doing this to freak me out.  Maybe so I don't do well in Potions today...or something.  He just wants to make me nervous."  He stood and put his shoulders back, squarely.  "Well, I'm not giving in."

With Ron and Hermione looking on as stunned spectators, he turned around and sought out first the Slytherin table, and then quickly found Draco's face -- and Draco's intense gaze.

Draco looked surprised that Harry had abruptly stopped what he was doing to turn and glare at him.  But the surprise quickly became something different: unyielding boredom seemed to live in his silver stare.  Harry's friends were aware, even if Harry wasn't, of the fact that "boredom" wasn't really supposed to glitter as brightly as it did in Draco's eyes...that "boredom" wasn't supposed to seem almost like a challenge -- or a plea.

If Harry noticed these things, however, he chose to ignore them (just as the rest of the dining hall was ignoring the exchange entirely).  After a few seconds of meeting Draco's glare with one of his own, Harry muttered something under his breath about needing to go to finish some homework.  And then he left the Great Hall.

Was Harry aware that Draco was watching him leave with a look in his eyes that was unlike the one he had shared with the Boy-Who-Lived moments ago?  It was impossible to tell.  Ron and Hermione watched Draco's shoulders, which, under Harry's gaze, had seemed so proud and straight, slump under an invisible burden.  They watched his eyes clench shut in pain.  And then they watched his hand grip the edge of the table, as if without the support he would surely fall to the floor.

Goyle moved, suddenly, and his massive body blocked Draco from view.  From the look on Hermione's face, one would have thought this in itself was a blessing.  Ron caught the relief in her gaze.  "You could have just stopped looking, you know."

She opened her mouth to respond, but only shrugged.  This alarmed Ron, who was not used to anything rendering Hermione silent, and he quickly amended, "Of course it's rather like watching a spell gone wrong, isn't it?  You sort of can't help but look."

Hermione rubbed her temples with her fingers.  "This is a spell gone wrong, Ron – in a way."

"…Morbid fascination and all that."

"And I'll have you know that I am quite above 'morbid fascination,' Ron Weasley," she informed him icily.

Ron looked as if he desperately wanted a response to that one.  Instead, he shook his head and lamented, "I'm so sick and tired of acting clueless.  It's like some kind of freaky role-reversal.  I hate knowing something that Harry doesn't know.  It makes me feel like we're the ones who…"  Ron trailed off and looked around, as if expecting to catch someone listening to their conversation.  Dean and Seamus were a couple of seats away, deeply involved in telling Neville some elaborate joke.  When Ron spoke again, it was in a considerably softer tone.  "Incidentally, Hermione, how was Draco looking at him earlier, I mean, before Harry turned around?"

Hermione blushed.  "You know very well how he was looking at him," she retorted.

Ron sighed.  "He's really got to stop that.  If he keeps it up --"

"It certainly seems that that's what he plans to do."

"But Harry will figure out that something's wrong!  Why is he doing it, Hermione?"  The red haired boy banged his fist on the table in frustration.  "Why?  If he's the one who told us not to tell him in the first place, if he's the one who's insisting that Harry's better off not knowing...."

Hermione sipped her orange juice thoughtfully.  "I think he's sort of caught.  It's like his heart and his pride are in conflict with one another...his heart can't help what it's feeling – and so, he can't help looking at Harry the way he does.  But at the same time, he's too proud to allow himself to be any more vulnerable than he already is.  There's too much at risk, for him."

"He took the chance before," Ron grumbled.

"Yes, well, things were different then."  Hermione's eyes wandered over to the Slytherin table, and then came back to look at Ron sadly.  "When he did, he had someone holding his hand…taking the chance right along with him."

Ron snorted.  "You make it sound so…ugh."

"Well, it's the truth, isn't it?" she demanded.  Realizing that she'd spoken loudly, she lowered her voice.  "Are you really going to deny any of it?"

"No.  I mean, there's no use, is there?"  He glared down at the table.  "It's just a hard thing to stomach – Malfoy being capable of emotion.  Malfoy caring."

Now it was Hermione's turn to snort.  "As if the idea is anything new to you, Ron.  One would think, hearing you talk, that this is coming as some sort of sudden revelation."

"It was easier to IGNORE before," Ron shot back.  "Because before, there was Harry.  And now there's not.  Now it's just Malfoy, and by himself he's all depressed and bitter.  Right after it happened, he was walking around with this look on his face, as if someone had just kicked him in the gut, and he couldn't quite get over the shock of it."  He shivered.  "I liked it better then, because now, I'm telling you, he's acting as if he's about to crack.  We're talking total breakdown.  As in, 'I say, better ring up St. Mungo's, Malfoy's finally gone starkers.'"  Hermione opened her mouth to voice an objection (probably on the grounds that Ron should try to be more sympathetic), but he cut her off.  "It's not just Malfoy anymore, though.  He's getting worse and worse, yeah.  But Harry's changing too."  He frowned thoughtfully.  "Because when Malfoy was looking at Harry earlier, that wasn't anything new.  He's always looking at Harry.  You and I know that."

Hermione nodded.

"But…it kinda worries me…."  Ron looked toward the doors that Harry had exited earlier, and then returned to gaze at Hermione.  "Harry never noticed before.  At least, if he did notice before, he never thought it important enough to bring it up in front of us.  But today…well…."

"Now we know for sure that he noticed," Hermione sighed.

The expression on Ron's face seemed almost stricken as the full weight of the realization of what was happening came down on him.  "God, Hermione, without even seeing it for himself!  He just felt Malfoy…he just knew it!  And he even said he could feel how Malfoy was staring!  What – what does it mean??"

Hermione's eyes locked onto Ron's and shared with him a look of determination, weighted down by a kind of weariness.  "It means we're just going to have to work harder," she replied briskly.  "Work harder to figure this mess out."

Ron watched her rise from her seat, and with an exasperated sigh, followed suit.  "Translation: 'We have to go live in the library some more,'" he muttered as they left the Great Hall.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

-end notes- Ah!  Review if the spirit so moves you…or e-mail me (elaria_garnet@hotmail.com) – I'd like to know about your likes and dislikes!

As a side note – actually a rather important note, one I'll be repeating next time – the prologue is sort of a glimpse of the future….  Chapter 1 will take place at least a couple of weeks before the events that just occurred in this, the prologue.  Does that make sense?  To put it bluntly, you could just ignore the prologue (unless you're the kind of person who likes a few hints about what is to come).  Chapter 1 is where the story actually starts.

I know, I know…I get confused thinking about it too.

Thanks for reading!

-edited: October 21, 2002- Wow!  Thanks for all the reviews so far: Rachel, mistykasumi, BabyPufoo, JadeDragon, Marisa, Cosmic, Fanny chan, elfee, Olushka, Sheron and hilaRyB.  I'm going to try to respond to your individual comments when I post Chapter 1!  ::bounce::

I had to edit this chapter for a couple of reasons: I realized after I uploaded it that I left in an unfinished sentence (my very, very big bad) …I'm hoping you all missed it the first time around, but just in case you know what I'm talking about, I went ahead and cut out the unfinished bit altogether – about Harry having a "vague feeling."  It was an addition I tried to make at the last minute to the already-betaed-version…I had trouble making it all flow.  For those wondering, I guess I can express it here without difficulty: when Ron asked Harry if Harry wanted Draco to stop looking at him, Harry was supposed to have the vague feeling that whatever answer he gave Ron was going to be very, very important.  So…yeah.  My bad.

I also wanted to make a few announcements about this series.  Out of all the Harry Potter stuff I'm working on right now, Adore Through Darkness is the one that is furthest along.  I rarely write anything in order, and ATD is no exception.  I write in scenes, depending on my mood.  And currently there are roughly twenty scenes written for this series…just to give you an idea of how far along it is.

I have an account on Fiction Alley (http://www.fictionalley.org) for those wondering…same name: Elaria Garnet.

I hate making deadlines for myself because I'm scared to death that I won't meet them.  I figure, though, that as long as I can find some way to keep in touch with the readers, I can at least assure you that I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth.  So I plan to make announcements and/or post teeny previews of ATD stuff on my ff.net bio page regularly…dated, and everything.  Since I don't yet have the nerve for a Yahoo!group, I figured this is the easiest way.  Not that I think this would be a big deal to everyone.  But I like to imagine there's at least one person out there who is reading this and saying, "Yay!!  ATD previews!  Fun!!"  I gotta dream, ya' know?

So bottom line: always check my ff.net bio for the latest word.

~ Elaria