UchiSays: Two Reviews Whoo! Still less than I expected, but its better than nothing. So I'm going to post this chapter now since I won't be near a computer again until Monday and I'll like to have chapter 4 posted by then so I don't have to worry about it over Turkey Day Break. So in ohter news... Harry appears in this chapter, but in turn we lose someone else. Only one chapter to go now and it's techincally the epilogue.

Lesson Three: How to Love (...Just A Little Afraid, But...)

Draco found it strange how the little things Blaise Zabini said worked their way into his head and dominated his thoughts. From the first day they had an actual real conversation where Zabini told him to remember it wasn't his fault, to just the previous day when Blaise told him he may like himself better without the masks, Blaise Zabini had made a lasting impression on Draco.

Draco briefly wondered why it took so long for him to find a person of such intellect within his own house. The wondered what would have happened if he'd gotten to know Blaise sooner; had they have been friends from the start would Draco have avoided some of the stupider mistakes he'd made? It occurred to him that Blaise spoke with a knowledge not found in most people their age, as if even though the two of them had lived through the same war Blaise had garnered experience and wisdom befit an adult while Draco retained the wisdom of a child.

As Draco had lay awake in his bed the previous night, trying to avoid the ghosts that haunted his dreams, his thoughts chased around the enigma that is Blaise Zabini. He recalled their previous conversations with penseive like accuracy and dissected every word spoken and ever expression shown by the half-Italian black boy. He noticed for the first time that Blaise had mentioned Potter in their last conversation, and he'd spoken as if he knew more knowledge than he should about the Malfoy/Potter relationship- more knowledge than even Draco himself was privy to. Draco wondered what made Potter's name even come up in the conversation; it was spoken casually once and never mentioned again. Yet Draco felt Zabini had mentioned the Gryffindor on purpose, as if he knew Draco was going to lie awake dissecting the conversation and he wanted Draco to think about Potter. Of course Draco wasn't going to award him that courtesy and quickly pushed the Gryffindor from his mind in favor of continuing analyzing the Zabini Conundrum.

By the time Draco fell asleep, he wasn't any closer to figuring Zabini out, but his mind was much too exhausted to dream so it was worth in the end.

It was now the Sunday before school was to resume and the castle was steadily filling up with it's returning residents. Draco strode out of the castle and across the grounds until he reached the secluded tree where he usually met Zabini. Expecting to be the first to arrive like the previous two days, Draco was surprised to find someone already sitting under the tree. That someone was not Blaise Zabini.

"Malfoy," Potter greeted Draco solemnly.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" Draco asked, standing a few feet from the tree and sending a halfhearted glare at the Gryffindor; with the war over and all its losses counted, Draco just couldn't find it within himself to put actual malice into his old rivalry.

"Blaise sent me," Potter said, his green eyes fell on Draco without actually looking at him. It seemed as if Potter was looking through Draco, or pass him and at something only the brunet could see. It was actually kind of unnerving to Draco to have those Avada Kedavra eyes looking at him without seeing him.

"Why? Zabini said he would be meeting me here, why would he suddenly change his mind and send you instead?" Try as he might, Draco just couldn't get Blaise Zabini figured out. What was it that prompted the black boy to act the way he did?

"Malfoy, Blaise died last night."

Draco froze; he hadn't been expecting that. "How? What happened?" Why was he feeling so concerned about a boy he barely knew.

Potter sighed and leaned back against the tree he sat under; Blaise's tree- the Italian had claimed it as such. "I don't know how well you knew Blaise, but he died the way he always wanted to. He had gotten hit with a pretty bad curse during the final battle and never quite recovered from it. When he, me, and another friend of ours Dean Thomas went into Diagon Alley yesterday to pick up a few things, we bumped into some Death Eaters that had managed to evade capture. Blaise stood between Dean and a nasty curse. By time we got him back here, Madame Pomfrey said there was nothing she could do for him except dose him up with some pain relief potions to make his last half hour peaceful."

"He purposely put himself in the path of a Death Eater's curse for Thomas?" Draco asked rather dumbly; that didn't seem like a Slytherin thing to do. In fact that seemed very Gryffindorish to Draco. There was no such thing as a self-sacrificing Slytherin... or was there; I mean take a look at Draco's mother, hadn't she done the same thing?

"You must understand the kind of relationship Blaise and Dean had," Potter said, cutting into Draco's thoughts. "They considered themselves brethren in the fact that they had both loved and lost the same person. Blaise lost a lot during the war: his mother, his uncle, his step-father, and Seamus. He didn't want to lose Dean as well, especially since he and Dean needed each other for support."

Draco could accept that. Everyone needed a pillar to lean on sometime; why would Blaise be an exception. Besides, why should Draco care why the other Slytherin acted the way he did? Zabini wasn't Draco's to mourn, they had barely known each other to begin with, and Draco was still mourning his mother so he couldn't bare to mourn another.

"Anyway, Blaise told me he'd been meeting you out here. He told me he'd been talking to you for the past two days. He was upset that he wouldn't be able to make it here for day three, so he sent me instead."

"Why would he do something like that? I'm sure even he knows the two of us can't be within a foot of each other without hexes flying."

"Malfoy, you'd be surprised by all the things Blaise knows. Come have a seat so we can talk."

Draco debated with himself for a while, before finally conceding and taking a seat next to Potter.

Potter didn't say anything for a while as he stared out over the water of the Black Lake. Just when Draco was starting to get impatient, Potter began to speak. "There's a Muggle children's book called The Giving Tree, it's about a friendship between a little boy and a tree. When the boy was small, he would visit the tree everyday and swing from her branches and nap in her shade; the tree looked forward to these visits because they made her feel loved. But as the boy grew, he began visiting the tree less and less, until he stopped all together and the tree felt lonely. One day the boy came back and the tree grew happy, she asked the boy to swing from her branches and nap in her shade like he used to, but the boy said he was too big for such things now. So the tree asked the boy what could she do for him. The tree was so desperate to have the boy back she was willing to do anything. But there always seemed to be years between the boy's visits, and every time he came back he wanted something else from her. And she gave it to him: her leaves to hide in, her apples to sale, her branches to make a home with, her trunk to build a boat; until she was left with nothing but a stump. And every time she gave him another part of her the tree grew happy, because her boy was back and needed her and loved her; but he always left again and she grew lonely. Then one day the boy came back as an old man and the tree said she had nothing left to give him. The boy said all he needed was a place to sit and rest his tired old bones, so the tree offer him her stump to sit on. The boy sat, and the tree grew happy because she had her friend back."

Draco listened to all of this silently, wondering where Potter was going with it. But it seemed Potter was done speaking, and Draco grew irritated. "Touching story and all, Potter, but was there a point to it?"

Potter turned and looked at Draco, his eyes shining with breathtaking intensity. "We are sitting under a Giving Tree, Draco. Only the tree is not the one doing the giving, not exactly that is. Blaise told me he found this tree first year when he was newly Sorted into Slytherin and already sure he wouldn't fit in. He had wanted a place where he could go and be himself without fear of his house-mate's response. This tree offered him shelter and solitude from everything within Hogwarts' walls. This is where he went to just be. Under the shelter of this tree, Blaise found a security he'd always needed and he spent time here just thinking, he said. Occasionally someone else would stumble upon this tree, and the ones that did were always searching for something. Blaise would talk to them, and he realized that for the most part everyone who discovered this tree were searching for the same things. So for three days, Blaise would meet a person here and talk to them, guide them on the path to what they were searching for. Three days, because no one ever returned for a fourth, three was enough. Each day he taught a new lesson-"

"About how to be human?" Draco cut it, remembering what Blaise had said to him the previous day.

At that point, Harry had returned to looking out over the water, but he peered at Draco from the corner of his eye and gave a small nod. "Something of that sort. Each lesson taught two intertwining concepts. Lesson one was always about guilt. Everyone who came here felt guilty about something and their first day here Blaise will nudge them down the path of knowing that the past can't be changed and where to place blame."

"When you're done blaming yourself, remember it's not your fault," Draco said softly, but Potter still heard him and gave another nod.

"He used different methods for different people, but it all pretty much meant the same thing. For you he used that saying since he knew you would need something with obvious meaning, but stated in a way that would make you think. For me he said 'you dishonor your loved one's sacrifices by being a stupid Gryffindor playing the blame game'. Kind of a smack in the face really, but I got his meaning. I personally think the second day is his favorite, because got to insult you and still teach how find your true self and not be afraid to be your true self."

"He told me I walk around as if there's a permanent stick up my arse sucking the fun out of everything," Draco said. "He also said I might like myself better without the masks."

"He went easy on you," Potter got a faraway look on his face and grinned as if lost in memory. "He called me an obsequious prat and said once I'm done being who everyone else wants me to be, I might as well curl up and die since there's no way I'll be able to live as myself, because I don't know myself."

"Kind of harsh," Draco sympathized.

"But it was exactly what I needed to hear. Now the third lesson is the hardest, because it's much more personal than the rest. Lesson three is how to love yourself and how to let others love you. This was exceedingly difficult for me because I was raised with a very low opinion of myself and didn't think I was worthy of love. Blaise said that this lesson would be hard for you as well, because you need to learn the same thing as me. Apparently we're both the type that searches for approval from others and base how we feel about ourselves on whether or not we receive that approval. Love for us has always been conditional- only given if certain standards were met- and the love we need is of the unconditional variety. He also told me that as long as I didn't love myself, I'd always be too blind to see the people out there who already unconditionally loved me, but then he said that I'll never find what there is to love within myself if I didn't know what it was other people already loved about me. Needless to say, I was confused."

Draco could understand being confused at that statement, because it was too confusing to even be considered an oxymoron. Not being able see that others loved you without loving yourself first, but not being able to love yourself without knowing what others loved about you? Could he had stated that in a more confusing manner?

"It took some thinking, but I eventually got it, especially when he said that love is the force that ties both friends and enemies to us. And that love is the topic of every compliment and insult."

That made less sense than the original oxymoron used. He could understand how love tied friends to you and was the topic of every compliment. But enemies and insults came from the opposite emotion. For example, there was no love between Draco and Potter, yet they were enemies. Draco often insulted Harry's glasses, his hair, his scar, his scruffy appearance, and his Gryffindor qualities. Harry's glasses were big and ugly and distracted from the lovely color of Harry's eyes. His hair was a messy bird's nest, that made Draco just want to run his fingers through it in an attempt to tame the mess and better accent Harry's defined facial features. That bloody scar was an ugly reminder to a past better forgotten and marred Harry's otherwise unblemished face. Harry's clothes were barely a step above rags and made Harry look like a lowborn street rat and they were in no way flattering to his Quidditch toned physique. And Harry's Gryffindor foolhardiness and unfaltering loyalty could one day get Harry killed, and if Harry died who else would Draco have to- compliment in attempts to justify his insults.

Potter grinned knowingly at Draco. "Finally caught on I see."

"I never even realized I thought half of those things about you," Draco groaned.

"Trust me, I was pretty shocked when I realized why I insulted you, but what Blaise had said made sense then. I spent the next half hour staring in the mirror, reviewing every insult you ever shot at me in order to find out what you were really trying to say. I actually discovered more than I bargained for with this exercise."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact that while there's a lot about myself for me to love, there's more about you that I love." Draco wasn't sure he'd heard that right. Did Potter just, in some roundabout way, admit to loving him. "There's a reason Blaise sent me to meet you and not someone else," Harry said. "I've loved you for a long time, but never had the courage to just outright admit it. And you don't love yourself, so you can't see how I inadvertently go about showing my feelings to you. Since you don't thinks there's much to love about you, you can't tell that I already do love you."

Draco could only listen numbly at the things Potter said while his mind ran around in circles trying the comprehend the very simple words. Harry Potter loved him.

"Blaise said it literally took a smack in the face from the Irishmen to make him realized he was in love with Seamus. It took me nearly seeing you die by my own wand for me to realize that I wanted you by my side for eternity as more than an annoyance and a rival. It took nearly killing you to make me realize I love you, but I hope just hearing me say it will be enough to make you realize you feel something for me in return."

Draco didn't know what to say in response, so he just stood up and walked away.