Harry Potter: A New Light

Chapter 1

Harry & Draco

I can tell you a story or two.

Can you handle them?

I don't particularly know, but I will tell you anyway.

The heat had broken in The Leaky Cauldron on that August Saturday morning. It was the summertime in Surrey, and instead of the constant mugginess that filled the rooms, there was a chill.

My sight was blurred from having just emerged from sleep, but I could see him moving around the room. His figure passed in front of the fireplace and became still.

"Mr. Potter." He says.

"Mr. Malfoy." I say back.

He chuckles intimately and climbs into the covers next to me. Then he takes his bed-warm hands down from the broken radiator next to the bed, the one he was using for balance as he situated himself next to me. He lays them freezing on me.

"Blimey!" I mumble, "Wake me later."

But I don't really want him to stop, and he knows this, so he doesn't stop. He runs his hands from my neck to my chest.

Minutes pass, and we are still embracing.

I reach over my head and crack the shutters open wide, bathing him in the light of day.

His features are brought into focus and burned onto my brain: his round, vivid green eyes, his white blonde hair, his athletic build, which when not hidden beneath robes and blazers had carved abs and a defined chest.

"It's almost 8." He says. "My da should be waking soon."

"Soon isn't now." I say. "Come back to bed."

"I want another quilt." He says. "It's cold in here."

"They're in my trunk." I point to it in the corner of the room. "It's locked, but I think the key is in the desk drawer."

"I'll get it." He walks over and opens the drawer, and I hear a little gasp.

He stands there, unmoving.

"Draco?" I ask, lifting my head.

He is looking down, holding something in his hands.

I crawl out of bed with the covers still wrapped around my thin shoulders and walked up behind him, wrapping my arms around his cold, smooth waist.

"I hate this picture, Harry." He takes a breath. "You know I do."

He pulls away from me and looks me in the eye. Then he places my keychain in my hands and goes to sit on the bed.

I look down and can understand his resentment toward the photograph; it is a picture of Ginny Weasley, one that she gave me for Christmas during our third year. She looks beautiful in it she does, holding something she found in her mother's magical herb garden.

The memory of our closeness just weeks ago pains me.

"You still love her?" Draco's voice shakes me out of my reverie. This time there is an edge of coolness to his voice.

I sigh. "I still do, yeah."

This sets him off, and he gets up to leave. My legs are longer than his however, and I am in front of him before he reaches the door.

"You didn't let me finish." I say.

"What more can you have to say?" He spits at me.

"Well, I was going to say that while I still love Ginny, my feelings for her are a thing of the past. I love her like I love Ron and Hermione."

His eyes look away, still pointed and hard, but at least he isn't as angry anymore.

"She is like a sister to me, Draco, a sister. We may have had something a while back, but it's nothing anymore."

"Then why do you still keep her photo?"

"Why do you keep photos of your mum or your da?"

"It's not the same."

"It is the same!" I argue, my voice getting louder, provoked by his unwillingness to look at me. "It's exactly the same. That girl and her family took me in when I had nobody else, at a time in my life that was the scariest and the strangest! Keeping her photo on my keychain is the least I can do to show my respect and gratitude."

He stays quiet, but I am worked up enough to just turn my back and walk over to the window that overlooked a bustling Diagon Alley.

"I'm sorry." He says from the other end of the room.

"What are you sorry for?" I say bitterly.

"I suppose my attitude and my behavior. I shouldn't act like that."

"Aren't you observant?" I say sarcastically.

I feel his cold, thin fingers on my shoulder and I turn around to face him. I gaze at his eyes and his mouth and his lips as he begins talking.

"You are waking up a part of me that I have never known. I've never felt so invincible, but at the same time so vulnerable. There are so many feelings inside of me right now, and there have been since we began talking."

I think months back, when the two of us still could not look at each other in the face without rattling off a curse or a spell. I think back to when I couldn't stomach being in the same room with him. I think back to when I would look at his sharp, sallow face and beg the Goddess to strike me dead.

We were united by a common fear: Lord Voldemort. I had my reasons for fearing him, and so did Draco. He was afraid to end up like his mother and father, whose lives had both been ruined by the countless, disgusting acts of barbaric evil and ruthlessness Voldemort was known for. I was afraid to end up like my parents as well: dead.

"I'm tired of being scared." Draco admitted to me one day after a particularly exhausting day of Quidditch practice. "I just want to feel safe again."

My cold, hard ignorance of him turned to pity, then to sympathy, then to a sense of similarity (we both feared Lord Voldemort, yes?) and then finally, our feelings for each other had been realized.

They say that from darkness comes light.

This is very true.

It took Lord Voldemort, a subhuman, worthless, vile excuse for a human being to unite us, to break apart all of the bonds that both of us had made with others, and to unite us.

We are not to be separated again.

And then we are back in bed, my mouth pressed against his, kissing fiercely. Had we the ability to meld into one person, we would have used it at that moment. Our bodies pressed against each other harder, with more intensity. I run my tongue across his upper body, relishing the crevices and valleys caused by his carved muscles.

I feel him running his hands up and down my back with a fire that I have always appreciated. He cups my shoulders, and moves to my deltoids, and then down to my bare buttocks.

I inhale and drink him in. I let myself go and feel the musculature of his large thighs and of his calves.

"Will we still be able to see each other when school starts?" Draco's voice is tight now, tense. "Will we be able to get this close to one another without anybody finding out?"

I let my arms relax and my head falls down onto his chest. I sigh.

"I'm sorry." He says.

"No, don't apologize." I shake my head, staring blankly at the wall. "I understand your fear."

"Well then?" He asks again. "Answer my question."

"Slytherins and Gryffindors are sworn enemies." I say. "I don't know how this would affect the dynamic that the houses have worked so long to build."

"You're worried about the dynamic between the houses?" He repeats, and I sense that he is getting aggravated again.

But I refuse to hold back the truth.

"Yes. I'm worried about that." I say. "What we have between us would create chaos. We've become the poster children for our houses, Draco."

He stays quiet for a moment, and then he speaks.

"I refuse to give this up because of labels that were given to us six years ago."

I deliberate inwardly.

I think it over.

"You took the words right out of my mouth."

I say this to quell his fears, to calm and soothe him.

I do not know what will happen.

The grandfather clock against the wall began to chime.

It is 8 a.m.

"I must go." Draco says.

It pains me to release him, but I do it anyway, and trust that he will be back in my room tonight.

We return to school in 2 days.

I am scared.

I am nervous.

I am unsure about so many things, right now especially.

I'm only 16 years old, but everything is so hard.

My name is Harry Potter, and you've met me at a very strange time in my life.