Note: Hi guys – sorry this is a little later than usual. My laptop decided I'd used it enough, so thanks to that (and the distraction of the Olympics) things are a little behind schedule. The new power cord isn't going to be here for another two weeks, so I'll try and get chapter 5 written and uploaded as soon as I can from another computer. Enjoy!

Also, the same thing is going on for 'To Breathe'. Hopefully the new part of that will be available soon. If you're not following it, you should totally start and tell me if the latest chapter is stupid or not.

Thanks!

Harry has been waiting in Draco's apartment for three days. Three days, and Draco hasn't come back.

Harry has no idea what to do. He's already been all over town. He's even been to Draco's office on several occasions, and either he wasn't there or his assistant told him he was a meeting or unavailable in some way.

"You're the one who broke his 'eart, then, aren't you," Annie said to him as she sat behind her desk the first day he'd come looking, a guarded, somewhat contemptuous look on her shiny face. It was more of a statement, a realization, than a question. "Well, he's not in." She eyed him warily. "And as far as you're concerned, sir, I think I should tell you that he isn't ever going to be in."

Harry had left the office, shattered.

Draco doesn't answer his cell phone, if it even gets a chance to ring. It's like Draco has fallen off the edge of the planet.

He has barely slept since Draco left, nothing more than an hour or two a day on the couch. He refuses to miss Draco, if he comes by. He's waiting like a faithful dog, hoping Draco throws him a bone. But time passes and nothing happens. The door remains closed.

So Harry waits. He's sure Draco will come back eventually; he does this, sometimes, gets upset and leaves. But never for more than a few hours. Three days is more than he can bear; Draco might have done something stupid or gotten hurt or moved from the country. He doesn't know. But Harry didn't mean him any harm. It's just that he doesn't know how to be himself around Draco, beautiful and debonair. Harry feels completely inadequate next to him—he always has. He fucked up, and this time he fucked up quite royally. And even though he knows Draco has no reason to forgive him and that Harry overstepped himself—crossed a line he had no right to cross, a line that's jagged and bold—he hopes, fervently and religiously, that Draco will let him back into his life. Because Harry loves him. Unquestionably, truly, and simply, he loves him. This is the only absolute fact of their relationship, the only constant about Harry's person. This is the only thing about them that makes any sense.

On the morning of the fourth day, Harry finally lets himself sleep a little on the Italian silk couch, his knees bunched up against his chest. He doesn't want to, but he can't fight his body anymore. It literally walks itself to the sofa while his brain wanders in aimless loops somewhere else. He lays down and is out in under thirty seconds.

It's hours before he notices the letter.

—

Draco has been face-down on the giant bed for almost four days. It smells like monogamy and a girl, two things his doesn't, and that helps him forget.

"Draco," she says as she flops down on the bed beside him. "This is getting ridiculous. You have to get up. You need to get out of my bed."
"I don't want to," Draco mumbles into the fat pillow. "Marcus isn't even here."

"Come on. You need to go outside or get some exercise or something." He doesn't move.

"Draco!" she sighs loudly, snatching the pillow from the other side of the bed. She begins to beat him with it until he rolls over, bitter and grumpy.

"Mother Nature is very therapeutic," she says in a tempting tone. "At the very least, you need to move down to the guest bedroom. You need some fresh air, but more than that you need to get out of my bed." Draco glances at the window.

"It's raining," he remarks. She groans in frustration, but he does sit up.

The night after…well, the night he left, Draco didn't go to a club. He didn't even go to a bar. He made a straight beeline for the Parkinson manor, the residence of his best friend and her family. He hadn't even knocked twice before Pansy, fully clothed and wide-awake, had pulled him inside.

Without telling her, she had known with her woman's intuition that it was Harry. He was ever the only one in possession of power strong enough to make Draco like this. It was something nobody else could ever do, not even her, years ago.

It was true. When they were younger, student magicians then, she had loved him. Or she thought she had, anyway: her parents had dreams of Pansy marrying Draco, the perfect pure-blood boy, beautiful and ash-pale, like her. And he seemed like a good person with whom to cast her lot, so she'd gone after him, and he hadn't exactly rejected. Besides, it was expected of them: they would be famous and wealthy and pure, and that was all Pansy believed she needed.

And she had tried to make it work, but when she saw the way Draco looked at Harry, she knew what the veneer of contempt held there hid. What escaped everyone else did not escape her. She hadn't thought it possible: she reviled Harry Potter with the same hot fury that Draco did, and she wanted him to fail almost more than anyone else. She hates him still, but not for the same reasons. She doesn't detest him for who he is, but what he can do: she hates that Harry has the ability to break Draco at whim. But, she understands, if it weren't Harry, it would be someone else, and she would hate that person just as much. Pansy feels like it's her duty to protect her best friend, and she does not like to see his heart handed over so completely to someone she once thought so unworthy.

Both she and Draco have grown up and moved past the prejudices of their parents, finally, though Pansy can't help but feel that old familiar pang in the company of wizards and witches of mixed blood. She never voices it aloud, but it has been engrained in her since childhood. Much like Catholicism, it is not something anyone ever truly overcomes.

But because she and Draco were "meant" to be, she had stuck by him. She'd listened as his cynical and hurtful insults became less and less meaningful. She'd listened as the ice in the tone of Draco's voice melted and the trademark sneer fell into a little half-smile. Soon the abuses, both magical and verbal, he had previously shot at Harry like gunfire had become nothing more than empty motions, and Pansy knew it.

But she never talked to him about it. She didn't want to believe her perfect pure-blooded prince was in love with someone else. And not just someone else; no, Draco had gone and given his heart to Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. As if Harry needed another honor he didn't deserve.

Pansy had been so full of hatred and resentment at the time, for both of them, that she hadn't been able to focus for the rest of the year. She'd lost twenty pounds, too nauseous to eat and hoping, just hoping, if she were more beautiful, Draco would come back to her. She could have revealed them, the stupid little lovebirds. She could have ruined everything for them.

But she didn't.

Firstly, she couldn't bring herself to even speak the words. And Draco could tell she knew, but he never asked her to keep her secret. Even if she'd wanted to—and it certainly would have been easy for Pansy—she wouldn't have been able to accept it, to accept anyone else knowing. But as that year came to a close, she saw in Draco's eyes that it wasn't a choice for him. Something about Harry had transfixed Draco in a way reminiscent of fairy tales. She glimpsed them together here and there, and she could tell they were two men in one; one soul passed between the flesh of them like a secret binding, like a silver harpoon. The sight of it, while it did not exactly please her, reminded her that sometimes, life isn't a plan. Sometimes, the turns it takes lead you somewhere exceptionally astonishing, somewhere that is neither the stuff of thoughts nor nightmares, but altogether new, remarkable, and, often, wonderful.

Pansy gave up on Draco at the end of their sixth year. She stayed with him, superficially, because she believed he wouldn't want anyone to know about Harry. And she wasn't the only one who knew about them: rumors had begun to circulate and people had begun to suspect what was between them. Pansy found herself defending Draco, and even Harry, sometimes. In later years, she would come to coolly accept him as a friend because she could not find it in her to reject someone Draco loved so devotedly.

And soon the time came when she wouldn't have to speak for them at all.

"Pansy," Draco said to her late one night as they studied together, "you don't have to keep up with this. With this show."

"I know," was her reply, said without her even looking up.

"Why?"

"Why? Why do I protect you? Because you're my friend, Draco. I don't like it, and in fact I quite hate it, but I've seen you. Whatever is going on with…him…is your business, and if it makes you happy"—she paused and shrugged a little, eyes still on her work—"then whatever, it's not a big deal."

Draco had stared at her then as if he were seeing her for the first time. She'd done this for him. She hadn't said a word about anything, not to anyone, and he hadn't even asked it of her. She'd stood by him, kept him safe from harm, because he was her friend. This girl he'd been with first to make his parents happy and second because he was afraid, and she had simply let him.

"I want to tell them," he told her. "About Harry." And all she said was,

"Okay."

They have been best friends ever since.

Pansy did eventually find love in the shape of the tall and broad Marcus Bouchier, whom she married upon graduation. He was able to love her in spite of her somewhat numerous faults (and, she felt, in spite of her damnable pug-nose), and their relationship is strong and true. But Marcus works for the Ministry now and travels often, leaving Pansy—who kept her last name to inherit wealth from her parents upon their deaths—and their five-year-old daughter, Evie, at the huge manor.

And as a mother with a young child, Pansy needs her bed back. Draco has been in it, almost deathly still, for the last four days.

"I know you're in a lot of pain, Draco," she says. "I know that. But I have to get some decent sleep. Do you think you can move to one of the spare bedrooms?" He nods slowly, eyes downcast, like a child. She slaps his thigh and sings her praise and practically hoists him down the hall to the other bedroom—finally, she will be able to sleep without his great tragic mass beside her. He slumps down on the tidy bed and she mimics his movement.

"Now," she says quietly, "are you ready to talk about this?"

"I can't believe him," Draco says in something more than a whisper but less than a hiss. "I can't fathom it. Why would he do this? Why now?"

"Harry doesn't generally act rashly. He probably has a reason."

"He can't give a reason for this. There is nothing in the world he could say that would make this any more fucking reasonable." A silver bolt flashes behind his still down-cast eyes, like a current through flat water. Pansy finds herself holding his hand.

"What did he say, then?" Silence. A shadow passes her broad face as soon as realization dawns. "You didn't ask him, did you?" she poses slowly. The trademark sneer marls his lips and his eyes roll to the ceiling as he turns his face away from hers.

"Oh, Christ, Draco—really? He somehow got you to let him kiss you, but you didn't even bother to ask him why he wanted to talk to you? I mean, come on. He could have gone somewhere else if he wanted. Whatever he told you was bullshit, you know that—he's got that fancy cloak, he can go anywhere he damn well pleases, no matter what he says. But he didn't: he went to you, Draco. Surely you realized this."

"I…" he sighs as he unfurls on the tightly-made guest bed (nowhere near as cushy as Pansy's colossal California king). "I know." He starts to pull a pillow over his head, and Pansy doesn't stop him.

"Oh, sweetie," she murmurs quietly, petting him. "Why didn't you let him talk to you? You know he's worrying about you. He'll figure out where you are before long. If there's one goddamn thing Harry fucking Potter can't do, it's to be bothered with himself."

"I don't give a flying rat's ass what he can and can't do, Pansy. I didn't let him talk to me because I don't care what he says. It doesn't make a difference. He did what he did. He left me. He fucking abandoned me. He turned me into a little fucking square, home for dinner every night. He turned me inside out and made me love him, and he left me." A sudden jerk on the bed lets Pansy know Draco is fighting tears. In all their years together, she has only seen him cry once, and then he tried to let the falling rain disguise it.

"He left you because he loved you," is her soft whisper. "You know what he had to go through. He didn't want you to get hurt."

"If he loved me, he would have stayed. I hate what he's done to me. What he's turned me into."

Pansy is silent, still holding Draco's hand as he sobs his soundless sorrow into her expensive pillow. It's a few minutes before he is able to speak again, his small voice muffled by the feather down.

"It's unjust, Pansy. Truly fucking unfair. He shouldn't get to do this to me. Leave and then demand back into my life. That's like trying to attain entry into the Forbidden fucking City. I can't…believe he would even say that to me."

"Say what?"

"Say 'I know you still love me' like it was nothing. Who says shit like that? Goddamn." She finds that wetness is prickling behind her own eyes, threatening to spill over. She had been stoic in her youth, but having a child brought out the maternal in her.

"You know why he said that, Draco."

"Bullshit. I don't know why he does anything."

"He said it," Pansy whispers, "because he knows it's true." Draco's body stiffens on the bed. "You know it, too."

"That is the most"—

"Don't do that, Draco. Don't hold a grudge against him until you know what exactly you're holding it against. Don't hate him for trying to explain, and if you keep denying him the chance, you're going to regret it. You're being ridiculous and stubborn. Harry hasn't exactly acted honorably, but he never does anything without thinking about it. Believe me, he had a reason for coming back. He loves you, Draco. He always has. I don't think anything has happened that could ever change that. You have to let him explain. Go home, Draco, go home and talk to him. Give him another chance." Pansy's voice is full of concern, and she thinks she's gotten through to him when his beautiful face, white and drawn, emerges from behind the pillow and he sits up.

She thinks he's listened to her until she meets his chrome eyes, flickering with lividness and damage. There is no clemency to be found in the barren wasteland looking back at her.

"No," he says flatly. "He had his chance."

Pansy closes her eyes and turns away, inhaling and exhaling slowly. She rises from the bed.

"I have to go out," she explains in a voice drawn tight with irritation. "The nanny will be here for Evie soon so you won't be alone." She makes to exit the room but turns around, her face grave-like and humorless. "I've given you my advice. If you want to be a stubborn ass about this, I can't help you. And if you want to continue to be pissy and wallow in self-pity, to fall in love with your own broken heart, you'll have to find safe haven somewhere else."

She closes the door loudly behind her when she goes.

She doesn't understand, Draco thinks to himself. Harry has no right to do this to me. I have been too hurt to forgive him. He doesn't deserve it. If she knew what this felt like…if she knew that in my dreams I have no heart, no way to feel like this, she wouldn't ask me to forgive him. Only in deepest sleep can I find peace, unattached from life in what could be considered a kind of death. To wake is to know, and to know is to feel, and to feel…to feel is more than I can do. It was stupid of me ever to try. I can't go back there. I can't. If she knew, if she knew…

And then, abruptly, he knew what he had to do to get rid of Harry. A deep breeze of air forms in his chest and moves upward, out of Draco's throat and then his mouth, like progress.

Draco takes the phone out of his pocket. He flips it open and scrolls past the obscene number of calls from the number he refuses to recognize and dials one he keeps in speed-dial.

A woman answers on the second ring.

"Hello, Mrs. Walter," he says smoothly. "Time for a change of scenery."

—

Darkness has fallen when Harry awakens. He has no idea how long he's been asleep, but he feels like it's been too long. Draco might have come by and he was too out of it to notice. Immediately he leaps from the couch and looks around: no change, except for a pile of mail by the front door. Katie must have dropped it off—Draco usually picks up the post on his way in from work, but as he hasn't been here, it must have been stacking up enough that she decided it would be best to just slide it through the brass slot in the door.

Well, Harry can't very well leave it there, so he walks over and picks it up. He doesn't mean to pry. And, technically, he doesn't: as he moves back across the titanic apartment to put the mail on the granite countertop, he notices a peculiar letter.

More peculiarly, it's addressed to Harry Potter.

He recognizes the handwriting immediately and drops the rest of the mail in his hasty attempt to open it. There is no return address. Harry practically annihilates the silky envelope with his large, callused hands, almost ripping the small note that falls out of it, which he catches midair with shaking hands. He reads it; he reads it twice, thrice, four times, and slumps to the couch again, his eyes still on its curt words.

I've sold the apartment.

Get out.