A/N: Wanted to dedicate this one toWickedGreene13 who requested it. I hope that I did some justice to your request and you enjoy it, even though it isn't really fluffy. If you want something fluffier, I'd be willing to write another version of this and make it fluffy. :)

Special thanks to everyone who has taken the time to review!

Prompts: (#25) Hugs are the universal medicine. (#524) Silver Light.

In His Arms

~ Year I ~

Tracey Davis was a small, thin, quiet girl with dark auburn hair. Mostly, she kept to herself. Perhaps that was the reason that she never made much of an impression to Harry. In fact, he was quite sure he didn't even notice her in Potion's class, and couldn't tell you where she sat in first year, if he'd ever been asked.

Harry Potter on the other hand was impossible not to notice- not with all the attention given to him by students, and especially not after the way that Snape called him during their first Potions class.

If anyone bothered to ask Tracey her honest opinion... if she could bring herself to give it... she would have said there was nothing exactly about Harry Potter that stood out or made him particularly impressive. Except perhaps his penchant for drawing trouble to himself, and his quite impressive skills on a broom.

But Tracey Davis didn't really care about that and so... Harry Potter was never much on her mind.

~Year II ~

She hadn't exactly expected it. Though perhaps she should have, when considering the tension amongst her House-mates since the attacks started.

Half-blood as she was, if she hadn't already been prone to it, she would have adapted a low-profile.

As it was, having her books knocked out of her hands by Malfoy as he passed by her, quickly followed by a cackling Pansy Parkinson and a smirking Crabbe and Goyle, was annoying. But there was nothing that she could do about it. Not unless she wanted worse retaliation.

Bending down and getting on her knees, Tracey sighed as she stared with annoyance mixed with despair as she saw that her second-hand Charms book, which was already broken at the spine, had cracked, spilling many of it's pages which were now scattered along the corridor.

As she began to quickly scramble to pick up the loose pages lest they get lost as students continued to flow around her, she found herself internally cursing her house-mates and the students who did little more than look at her, or even laugh- not one bothering to help the Slytherin girl simply because of her House.

She was lamenting the fact that she was going to be late to Transfiguration and probably earn herself a detention from McGonagall, when she was startled by the sight of someone kneeling down near her.

Looking up startled, she froze as she found herself staring at one of the most unlikely people to help her, gathering pages in his hands. She was so startled by the sight of Gryffindors' golden-boy bothering to help her, that for several seconds, she did nothing more than stare at the top of his messy head.

"What are you doing?" Tracey blurted, her brows contracting as Harry Potter extended the pages he collected to her. She didn't move to take the pages, because for a moment, she almost felt that some sort of elaborate prank was being played on her and she couldn't help narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

"Helping you," he responded with a look on his face and a tone in his voice, that seemed to implicate that it should have been obvious.

"Why?" Tracey blurted, still not taking the pages.

"Well, because as the heir of Slytherin it only seemed right to help a Slytherin," Harry Potter responded with mild sarcasm, rolling his eyes.

As Tracey slowly took the pages, she couldn't help feeling somewhat guilty- though she roughly pushed it aside, not sure why she should feel guilty when she hadn't done anything wrong.

"You're not the heir," Tracey said, her voice certain and wry, rolling her own eyes.

At that Harry looked at Tracey with his own brows furrowing.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Anyone who's not an idiot would know that," Tracey replied as she finally took the pages of her book and jammed them inside, along with the rest, before getting to her feet. "I have to go," she said suddenly, as she remembered that she was going to be late for Transfiguration and started to walk hastily away, not looking at Potter's expression before stopping several feet away and turning around.

"Thanks... by the way," she said, her cheeks flushing at the idea of being so rude as to not have said it before, but turning hastily away and rushing once more, thinking with a frown as she went that... Harry Potter had actually been nice to her. And how strange it was that a Gryffindor of all people, would be the only person to show any kindness to a Slytherin.

~ Year III ~

Harry wasn't really sure how friendships usually started, never having had many himself.

Hermione and Ron... they'd sort of been thrown to in his life, and ever since taking on that troll together back in first year, there would be no separating them. It wasn't something that had happened gradually and over time, and one day, he suddenly realized that the people he started talking about school or sports to, had somewhere along the way become his friends.

Tracey he felt sure, would say that was because they were all Gryffindors, and therefore had no sense of subtlety, patience or discernment. Throw a dangerous situation at a Gryffindor, and someone to ally themselves with in that moment, and suddenly they thought their comrade for the moment was their friend for life.

Tracey thought it was stupid to become friends with someone, simply because of a life and death situation and to believe in such a person with blind faith. But then... Tracey found it difficult to trust.

Harry wasn't sure, when or how it happened... how one day Tracey was simply the sarcastic and mildly-defensive Slytherin he'd gotten stuck partnered with by Professor Lupin...and the one day someone he considered a friend.

He wasn't sure when he saw more than a guarded, slightly prickly girl who was... much to Hermione's annoyance, very bright and exceedingly good at Defense.

But one day- he was sure it was spring because birds were beginning to chirp outside and the Defense class felt less drafty- he'd looked towards his Defense partner, his eyes crinkling with laughter and a grin on his face and knowing... what he might have one day thought was insulting barb, was just the girl's way of teasing. And that thought her lips were quirked into a lopsided smirk... that her green eyes were sparkling with good-humour.

And oddly... he's somehow become friends with a Slytherin, and as astonishing as that was... he didn't really mind. And while he'd once been incredibly wary and put-off to be paired with a Slytherin for the year, he now found himself glad, disliking the thought that he might have missed out on this.

~Year IV~

Being friends with Tracey, was somehow different than being friends with Ron or even with Hermione.

Sometimes, it felt so strenuous and fragile... like when she couldn't look at him, and wouldn't acknowledge him if there were too many spectators around and made him want to shout at her, calling her unreliable and fickle. Moments where he thought whatever their bond was would shatter like a crystal figurine tipped off a fireplace mantle.

But sometimes, it seemed deeper and unshakeable, like through highs and lows... even in the moments where everyone else fell away... Tracey would always be there. Like an ache, settled deeply in his heart that he would never be free of.

Harry didn't understand it. How a girl with an aversion to letting people too close, how a girl who found affection as foreign as he did... how someone from Slytherin- could become the one person he could depend on to simply... believe him, believe in him.

Somehow, she became someone he was sure he didn't deserve.

"What... are you here to call me a liar and a cheat too?" he could snipe at her, thrusting at her all his anger and bitterness because Ron... Hermione... the entire school believed him to have entered himself in a stupid tournament that might get him killed!

And Tracey merely gave him a patented, Slytherin, deadpan look, that was somehow mocking and exasperating, but also made him flush like he was in the wrong and look away in shame.

"Please Potter," and yeah... that was strange too, and sometimes it made something inside him twist like a jagged splinter in his stomach because it was so distancing, even as she rolled her eyes and brushed her shoulder against him. "I'm not stupid. You'd have to be suicidal or mental to enter the tournament... and you're neither, from what I can tell so far. You're just a magnet for trouble, that's your problem."

And Harry felt breathless as he stared at her, completely stunned.

"You don't believe I entered the tournament?!"

And for a moment, the facade fell away, and she let him see beyond the sneer to something more quiet... more serious... more... open.

"To the people who really know you Harry, who care about you... they know in their hearts you didn't do this, even if their brains or stupid envy makes them think otherwise for the time being. Everyone else... they don't matter," she said once more nudging him and looking away and at her feet for a moment. "For what it's worth... I'll be cheering for you with all my might- with all my heart."

And those whispered words... that admission that sounded so vulnerable to his ears even as she pushed off away from him and started to walk away without looking at him, was better than any hug he might have received to date.

~Year V~

"You're having a rough go of it again, aren't you?" she asks in a tone that is both resigned and exhausted, as they both sat together with their backs to a tree trunk as the wind, which felt nippy, forced them to huddle themselves deeper into their robes and cloaks.

Neither one was sitting on the same side, even as they are hidden away from the view of all others and Harry plucked bitterly at the grass between his legs. Because this was the first time they've managed to get away to talk, because it's harder now to just talk to Tracey with the silent war being waged between their houses while everyone pretends that life is normal. Because it feels like it's always going to be like this... both huddled in on themselves, facing different directions, pretending to all the world that they're not as close as they are... and he misses his friend who seems to get him better than anyone else.

"Oh... noticed did you? I thought you were too wrapped up with Nott to notice. Has he convinced you yet that I'm just a liar and making everything up?" And he doesn't really know why he brought up Theodore Nott. Why the idea of Tracey spending so much time with the extremely tall, skinny boy she agreed to let take her to the Yule Ball and who became her boyfriend, bothers him so much.

"I'm scared, Harry," she whispers, and the admission causes Harry's head to snap and look at her, but Tracey is staring at her knees, which she is now hugging tightly to her chest as she stares down, her eyes looking suspiciously glassy and something inside Harry twists and breaks. His anger seems to wither. "I... I know... he's back..."

And suddenly Harry is on his knees and in front of Tracey and staring at her.

"What?!" he asks in agitation, staring at her hard. And Tracey looks up at him slowly and gives him a look. A look she's given him many times, silently asking him if he ever uses his brain, but this time she's not teasing or playfully insulting him. This time, there is worry and fear etched on every inch of her.

"Everyone in Slytherin know's, Harry," and she's still whispering, her eyes holding onto him, forcing him into silence while her voice wavers with severity. "There were signs and... people … like Malfoy... like Theo... they all know and everyone else who's not connected directly in my House... we figure it out. And those with any brains... we're scared, Harry. This is war... coming for all of us. Everyone... his followers too... and with war comes death."

And Harry is trying, his mind faltering and sputtering in the attempt to see past the irony that the only students who believe him, who knew and accepted what he knows, are Death Eater spawn... the very ones who it most behooved to keep it under wraps.

"Then why don't you say anything? And how can you be with someone who's dad is a Death Eater?!" And the anger is surging again, and he's glaring at the girl who always understands him, but who always confuses him. Twists him up into knots, like nothing else ever has. A mystery he's not sure he'll ever managed to solve.

"You don't know what it's like for me!" And now her voice is raised too, and there are red splotches on her cheek which are infuriatingly flattering on her milky skin. And Harry almost stumbles back, because Tracey never raises her voice... never loses control of her anger like that. And she isn't done as she gets to her feet, and balls her hands into fists. "I'm a half-blood in a house filled with angry, damaged people who take signs of weakness as excuses to excise their anger! I'm just trying to survive! And Theo isn't like his father! And he's not like Malfoy! He might not be battling dragons, or saving people, or taking on the Dark Lord, but he's brave in his own way and he makes my life easier!"

"What's that supposed to mean, that I make your life difficult?" Harry asks angrily where he stands, looking down at the small, angry girl.

And Tracey looks away then, and Harry knows it's true... that he does make her life difficult, and he's not quite sure why that hurts so much.

"Everyone can't be like you, Harry," Tracey replies, after taking a deep breath and releasing it, visibly deflating and somehow becoming smaller. "We're not all noble, and stupidly brave and have hope that things will turn up right. Most of us are just trying to survive, and find a way to live with ourselves."

Harry can feel a rift, yawning between them. He wants to reach out before that rift becomes a chasm, to hold her hand and forget everything that has been said. But he can't do that, even though his heart is fracturing into pieces, and she'll take them all with her and he doesn't think he'll ever be the same again... because this is the girl that took his hand after the Tournament, and told him that Cedric's death was not his fault. Because this is the girl, who knew he hated the attention, and didn't believe for a nano-second he put his name in the stupid cup. Because this is the girl that cheered for him, because she knew the danger he was in, and she didn't want him to get hurt.

But he can't close the widening gap... he can't bring himself to move, even as he hates himself for being so disenchanted and disappointed. But he can't bring himself to see her side of it.

She looks at him then with sad and knowing eyes, shining with her own disappointment- disappointment that stings him as much as his own- and she nods at him.

"This is always how I knew this would end, you know. Somehow I foolishly... impossibly even, hoped..." she trails off and smiles sadly, looking away, taking a shuddering breath that sounds like she's breaking. "But that was stupid. I know better... I should've just..." and she shakes her head again.

And then she's turning away from him and Harry wants so much to stop her. Her movements seems agonizingly slow, like she wants him to stop her. He can count her steps, as she moves away... and despite his desire, he can't bring himself to go after her even though he knows, that not doing so, signifies the end.

But maybe, he finds himself thinking as he tries to ignore the ache in his chest and the way his throat stings while her shape becomes blurry and indistinguishable, it's better this way.

~Year VI~

He finds himself often watching her, much to his annoyance, though he never sees her look his way.

It hurts every time he looks at her, because it seems so easy for her, to pretend that nothing has changed in her life. To watch her flirt and be playful with Theodore Nott, and never once look at him, making him feel that he's dreamed their entire friendship up in his head, or that it never meant anything to her anyway.

But somehow the time passes. And it gets a bit easier until sometimes, he finds his eyes have drifted to her when his mind is blank.

When Sirius dies... and it's really all his fault... that's the first time Harry really thinks he's going to break and go to Tracey. Because she's the only one whose words every really made a difference to him. Because she's the only friend he seemed to have, every time his world was falling apart, who made him feel it was merely transitory.

But they're not friends anymore, and he's not sure they ever were. He's not sure he ever meant anything to her and he never even told her about Sirius anyway, so what could he even say about it?

It takes a summer for the ache for her words, for her presence, to fade away. Once school starts up again, there is too much else to worry about, to think about Tracey much, what with the fate of the world resting on his shoulders.

He almost thinks he forgets about Tracey... but then he sees her again at Slughorn's party. She's alone, leaning against one of the pillars with her arms behind her back, looking extremely bored but... beautiful, so beautiful, in her shimmering, dark purple dress-robes. And for a moment, it's like he's back in fourth year again, having Tracey's beauty and femininity burned into his eyes and through his sockets and frying his brain- and he almost wishes he'd asked her to the ball instead of Cho, and Parvati...

He almost jumps out of his skin, when her eyes drift to him. The air seems so suspend in his lungs, while his chest is frozen mid-expansion until the ache starts up as he notices the sad glint in her eyes as she looks at him.

For that moment, he knows they were real... that though time has passed that they still care for each other and miss each other.

But just like that, he knows they've hurt each other, and he's not quite sure who looked away first but when he looks up again, she's turned away from him and is hiding herself in Theodore Nott's arms, and all he can see of her is her dwarfed body, and her shiny dark hair as she makes herself as small as possible, her own hands clutching tightly to Nott.

Harry turns away then, his heart aching with the knowledge, that he would have liked one real hug from Tracey. That as much as her words had offered that same consolation, that he wanted the real thing and now all he could do was wonder, how she could hug Nott, but had never hugged him.

~Year VII~

"Tracey's like a silver light... you think it's cold, and that you can never touch it, but all the same it brightens your world," Theodore Nott tells him when Harry grabs him by the robes before he can exit the Great Hall along with the rest of the Slytherins fleeing the castle. And Harry grits his teeth as he glares up at the taller, pale boy, wondering what Tracey ever saw in him, but not really caring because he'd been frantically searching the Great Hall, and he couldn't see her.

"Where is she, Nott?!" Harry grits out, as the boy looks down at him with dead, grey eyes and Harry feels his stomach sinking.

"You don't deserve her... you never could with your Gryffindor rigidity," Theodore remarks, his tone dark and harboring a tendril of deep-seeded loathing.

Harry shakes him and yells, "Where is she?!"

"I don't know! I thought I could protect her... and that her mother being a Lestrange might be enough once her muggle-born father went into hiding, but Rodolphous and Rabastan murdered her mother... I don't know what they did to Tracey! Or if she escaped! Or if she got caught by the snatchers! I don't KNOW!" Theodore shouts back, his voice becoming hysterical and Harry understands because he can't breathe... his heart feels like it's going to burst from his chest. "She didn't come back!"

"Harry," Hermione pleads, trying to pull him away and he stumbles, thinking his knees are going to give out even as Theodore is being dragged away himself. And Harry wants to call him a coward. Wants to yell at him, how could he not do anything to protect Tracey, to save her... to find her!

But then... he'd spent a year running. And as much as he wondered where Tracey was, and hoping she was safely at school, being comforted that being a Slytherin as she was, she had to be somewhat safe, he'd never dreamed she could be lost... or gone.

He wants to fall apart. He wants to walk away form the castle and tear the world apart in search for her.

"Harry... Harry you can't think about her now. We'll find her... I promise... But right now, we need you here!" Hermione says, shaking him. "I'm sure she's alive... but we can't do anything for her if we don't fight, Harry!"

Harry nods, and he's not sure how he can get through the night. It's an odd mixture of hopelessness and hopefulness, driving him through the night, pushing him along with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He hopes with all his heart, that Tracey is safe, and that the harder he fights, that he'll find a way to get to her.

But in the deepest corners of his mind he thinks, that if he fails... if he dies... that wouldn't be quite so awful, if she was already gone too.

OO

He finds Tracey, though he can never say that he saved her. She's been in Azkaban for three months and is released amongst the other survivors who were unlucky enough to be carted off to Azkaban.

And though she's painfully thin, and pale, and her hair is matted and her eyes dulled and almost hollow... she's beautiful, and alive and tries so wanly to smile at him when she sees him. And though it's not the way he would have wanted it, she sinks into his arms and clutches him tightly, as if its where she'd always belonged, where she would always end up... like she's been there many times before and as Harry feels the bones in her body as he holds her close and tries to shield her from the rest of the world, he vows to himself to never let her go.

Later, she curls into his side, not letting go for a moment, making her small and sickly frame even smaller as she tries to burrow as deeply as she can into him... so much so that he thinks she's trying to burrow under his skin for safety.

And in a hollow and emotionless voice, that she tells him her story.

How her father went on the run, and they all thought she'd be safer with her mother, who was pureblooded. How the Lestrange brothers... her uncles... murdered her mother and took Tracey while she was asleep, and there had been nothing she could do to save her mother, much less herself. How she'd been kept locked in a room in Malfoy Manor, and for a time pretended to be Imperiused while plotting her escape.

It took her three months to escape... and shockingly to Harry, it had been with her pockets full of Galleons and a wand Draco Malfoy stole from one of the Snatchers, all of which he'd clandestinely managed to sneak to her.

For months, she lived anonymously as just another muggle, always looking over her shoulder and never able to contact anyone for fear that she might be traced, even if she knew where she could find them. She did all right for a time, but then she ran into a Snatcher, who'd been a few years ahead of them and had recognized her as a Hogwarts student- some ex-Ravenclaw.

"I didn't tell them who I really was, I couldn't. It was too risky, and I'd probably be killed and might endanger Draco too, because he helped me escape.

"I gave them a fake name... unfortunately it happened to match one on their list and they carted me off to the Ministry. Obviously, it's pointless to argue with them, so I didn't say anything... I thought if I did I might lose my temper and make things worse. I think they would have snapped my wand and then just thrown me out on the streets, but when they realized the wand I carried had been taken off a Snatcher, they sentenced me to Azkaban."

Harry held her closer as she shuddered at the mention of Azkaban.

Tracey didn't tell him how awful it had been there and Harry didn't ask. He didn't have to, to know and feel guilty for it.

"It isn't your fault, you know," she says quietly into his chest, somehow knowing him in spite of their separation... and all the time lost between.

"I should've been there for you... I shouldn't have-" Harry exclaims with regret and self-loathing, not understanding how the waif of a girl... this shadow of the vibrant witch he'd grown to love... how she could still find strength to try to comfort him after what she's been through.

"It wouldn't have changed anything, Harry. I would still be a half-blood. My mother would still have been considered a blood-traitor. You did everything you could to stop him... and by doing so, you saved me and everyone else..."

For a while, Harry says nothing and merely tightens his hold as he sinks further into the couch.

"I just... wish I could take it all away," Harry says, wishing there was anything he could do, to wipe away the pain of the past year from Tracey's heart and soul.

And impossibly, Tracey merely presses her face closer to his chest.

"Just hold me... that's all I need for now."

And though Harry doesn't know what to expect from the future... doesn't know if he'll ever be able to call Tracey his, or tell her that he loves her... that he's been in love with her for longer than he's realized... he knows that it isn't the time. That for now... this hug is everything they both need.

~FIN~

A/n: Remember to review please! Requests welcome too!