Disclaimer: I own nothing except the plot. Please don't take my little plot away from me, it's all I have! I'm not JKR! bursts into tears

Wow that was a fast update...and this is a long chapter. Actully, all my chapters are shorter than I thought the would be 'cause I keep having to cut out a lot of crap.I quite like this chapter, but it's a bit rambly, and I don't know if you guys (the readers, whoI will worship if they become reviewers) just want mr to cut to the chase.

IMPORTANT STUFF: I'm going on holiday for twoo weeks then another two weeks after a few days back home, so I won't be able to update till August! Which is why this chappie is so early, I wanted to post before I go.

myniephoenix, Rydia and juli2: Thanks! I'm really flattered now - and here ismy 'soon' update.

Review and you will be acknowledged in a list like this!/\

The Dark Is Cold

Chapter Four– Shadow Constant

Draco woke up to white sheets and a headache. The sharply clean smell could only belong to the hospital wing, and he wrinkled his nose. Harry was sitting by him, and he shifted his expression into a question.

"I'm fine," he said, and was greeted with a sceptical raised eyebrow. "What do I look like?" he stopped and thought for a moment. "What am I doing here anyway?"

Harry pushed his glasses up his nose. "You don't remember?"

"I––" Draco frowned a little. "Someone chased them off, I think." He paused, speaking slowly. "It was you, wasn't it? You yelled something."

"Imperturbus Infligo," he murmured.

Draco looked up sharply. "An ordinary shield spell would have done, you know,"

"I was outnumbered and the situation was unpredictable." He said in a sharp monotone. Draco knew not to reply.

Madame Pomfrey bustled in. " Mr Potter, I thought I told you – oh, you're awake, Mr Malfoy." she frowned. "I thought you said it was a strong spell,"

Harry nodded. "Full blackout. I woke him."

"That was dangerous, Mr Potter! However – Mr Malfoy, you can go when––"

She was interrupted by the arrival of two prefects escorting an unconscious boy, followed by a large group of stragglers. Quickly, she moved the boy into a bed. "Everyone OUT. Yes, that means all of you!"

Draco brightened. "I can go now," He hated the Hospital Wing – hated languishing weakly in a sick bed. Throwing off the covers, he sat up. Harry shook his head definitely.

"She said I could." He stared back, his jaw lifted slightly, and stood up, taking a quick breath and clenching his teeth as he did so. Harry looked at him and, seeing the determined way in which he tried to stand up, moved to help him. Draco didn't try to shake him off.

Harry was strong, Draco reflected. Most of Draco's weight was on him, but he walked without awkwardness, matching Draco's pace and gently supporting him.

"Where are we going?"

Harry didn't answer: somewhere different, then. After a time they approached a door, but not one that was familiar to Draco. The door to a broom cupboard, perhaps, or to a storage closet. But Harry led them Draco in, and placed him on a green bed identical to his own.

Draco fell back onto the bed, closing his eyes in relief. Harry looked at him circumspectly, and took out his wand.

"No," said Draco, shaking his head. Then he stopped abruptly. "Don't see why Pomfrey couldn't have done it."

"My unconsciousness spell." Said Harry. Draco didn't bother to nod. It was all the explanation he was going to get. He was comfortable – too comfortable to be asking questions like where the hell am I? He closed his eyes and felt the pull of sleep, unsure of whether or not it was magical.

SSSSSSSSS

Harry sat in the Gryffindor common room, staring at the fire. It flickered merrily in the grate, casting a warm yellow glow over everything in the room, giving it a cosy and friendly feel.

It did not touch Harry. With his black hair and robes and pale skin, he looked like a monochrome photograph, untouched by the colour or life in his surroundings. Only his green eyes revealed that he wasn't a manifestation of shadow.

He wanted to be a invisible; wanted to go unnoticed in a world where he was the most noticeable thing in it. He learnt silence from other people's noise, and he learnt concealment from the shadows whose company he increasingly sought.

Hermione watched, and wondered. Wondered why – why Harry, why it was all so complicated, why things couldn't be the way they used to be, why…everything.

She screamed silently – other whys crossed her mind: why it had to be this way, why it was so unfair, and why she was powerless to do anything about it.

She composed herself. There was no going back. Circumstances had made Harry like this. She wondered what he was thinking, and if the thoughts in his head were as dark as the look on his face. She hated it. Hated giving in; hated the fact that she didn't know all the answers. When she looked at Harry, all she saw was an enigma. Someone so unlike the Harry she'd always known. Something she couldn't write down, analyse and figure out.

What had made Harry into this? A death wouldn't…drive a person like that. Wouldn't change him so totally and completely that his best friends couldn't recognise him. There was something else – there were a lot of other things – but she didn't know. She would never know, because Harry wasn't inclined to tell her, or, in fact, to say anything at all.

She watched him sit, so, so still. Harry didn't used to sit like that; brooding or staring or thinking, he would never have done it sitting motionless. He wouldn't have blended into the background. He was – had been – always in the foreground, a little awkward and a little shy. Not so cool, so still or so silent.

She watched him get up and leave, and his footsteps made no sound. Who had taught him to walk like that? Like a cat, slow and confident, invisible unless you knew he was there. Fading into the gloom, he didn't need his cloak to go unnoticed.

Hermione looked around, and realised that no one had seen him exit. Perhaps no one had seen him enter, either, and perhaps that was a good thing. She didn't know why he had even come.

SSSSSSSSS

Harry paced the corridor awhile. It was a long ingrained habit, and he almost liked it now. This time, though, he wouldn't find Draco. The sleeping spell wasn't as reliable as a sleeping potion, but Draco was tired enough to slip into natural sleep if it weakened. Harry fell into bed after a while, and slept – actually slept – till early morning. He got up, and resumed his position in the common room with a heavy leather-bound volume. He leafed through it slowly, staring intently as if trying to memorise every word it contained.

Hermione was the first to come down to the common room after him. He didn't look up, but she sat beside him anyway.

"What're you reading?"

He didn't answer. She didn't expect him to, so she peered at the dusty black front cover. From Polyjuice to Veritaserum: A Selective Lysste of the Moste Potente Potions and theyre Uses was its title.

"Isn't that from the restricted section?" she asked tentatively, a little scared and under no illusions as to what 'selective' meant. Harry gave no sign that he had heard, but then she opened her mouth again, and he slammed the book shut, fixing her with an angry stare. She backed off, unsure.

Suddenly he started, then took out his wand and flicked it. A hazy picture began to form in the air, and before Hermione could figure out what it was he waved it away and stalked out.

SSSSSSSSS

Draco moaned sleepily, and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Harry, sitting on a chair that hadn't been there last night and reading a book.

"Harry?"

He looked up, and closed the book.

"Draco,"

Draco knew that Harry never wasted words. That one word said everything a lot better, for he had never been the most eloquent speaker. It said 'Are you all right?' and 'Thank god you're finally awake,' and a host of other things that couldn't be said with words so easily. Words Draco could manage, but feelings were more difficult to reign in, and feelings were too honest to be twisted into untruths for one's own ends.

Draco Malfoy had grown up with words as weapons and with feelings masked, shoved down into the deepest corner of his being where they lurked, and surfaced in nightmares. Terrible things, emotions. Now he felt like a fish out of water, not knowing what to do or what not to say. There was nothing he could hide behind, and he felt naked, stripped of all pretences and left with incontrovertible truth. The truth can be merciless, and Draco found that lies were so much easier…but to be the person he had thought he was, just like his father, was to be alone, and every atom of truth and feeling in him screamed that he did not want that.

Harry was a tangible presence, especially when silent, and most of all he understood what it was like to be alone. Most people thought that Harry was lonely and sad as well as angry, but it wasn't like that.

Wasn't it? Could he really say that Harry was not lonely? For the first time, Draco reflected that Harry might need him. It was a strange thought – so far it had been the other way round; Draco was alone, Harry was there, and Draco felt strangely honoured that Harry had chosen to stay with him. It was silly, because Harry Potter couldn't be lonely, couldn't need anyone. Draco was left wondering what went on in his head – and knew that even given a thousand years, he would not be able to work it out.

Harry waited, then pulled Draco up. He went back to his book as the other boy dressed and brushed his hair. They went to breakfast, but not together. Harry sat in the spot he usually sat in when he actually turned up for a meal, and Draco in his. Both of them knew that 'usual' was changing, although neither of them knew where they might end up.

Draco had a lot of thinking to do, and he could either spend time thinking about Harry and getting precisely Nowhere, or he could turn to introspection, something he was quite good at. He was being changed, he no longer knew who he was. He hated who he had been, but he was still that person, a little. Harry was changing, or maybe circumstances and Harry, and he trusted Harry if not anything else. Harry was Dark, and Draco saw that, and saw him as more of a person than anyone had ever done. He had little idea about anything important, because when all the lies are shattered, all you have is uncertainty and yourself. Draco liked neither, but truth, he knew, couldn't come until later. He didn't want truth now, because the truth hurts, and nobody really wants to hear it, least of all someone who spent his life hiding behind swathes of fabricated lies.

So Draco would be content with uncertainty and a self he didn't know, and Harry. He could be content because Harry was a constant; he had been everyone's constant, but everyone wasn't there anymore and now he was Draco's constant.