I'm Back! I've managed to buy myself a laptop, so I have access to the internet much more easily, which is good news, but took a long time to sort out. I also wanted to make this chapter the best it can be because it's quite important, so I rewrote it several hunred times. Lots of slash in this one. Enjoy! Reviews are lovely - mwah! to reviewers.

The Dark Is Cold

Chapter Nine - Imaginary World

He wasn't going to watch the clock and count the seconds, or even stare out the window to the path up to the gate and he really, definitely, wasn't going to go down and wait for him. He knew exactly how pathetic that would be, because he'd done things like that before in a different life, but he wasn't pathetic any more. Or tried not to be - he thought perhaps he had gone to far the other way and that is failing, just a little. But then, trying to be perfect and failing is what people are all about, and the most telling thing about a person is how they fail.

He knew - he knew that his failures were spectacular.

He went down to the space in the Entrance Hall near the door that nobody ever noticed : it was just a perfectly ordinary piece of wall jutting out from the side, wasn't it? People's eyes glossed over it, and their minds filled in the illusion of bare stone and dusty floor, regardless of what was actually there.

Even if what was really there was Harry Potter, with striking green eyes and stark waxen skin and jet black hair. He had to give them credit for being so insular, so occupied with themselves and whatever marvellously uninteresting things were happening to them that everything else was almost ignored, and filled in with a picture of what they thought it should be. It was all neat and tidy and proper, nice and easy for them to comprehend - they don't know what it's like to have to constantly watch your back when you know that one slip, and you could be dead! It reminded him dreadfully of his Aunt Petunia.

The huge doors opened, and the sound of hundreds of excited students came through them. The students themselves followed in a great food and walked past him, talking and laughing and shouting in a huge din that echoed round the school and removed the sense of it being too quiet. But the image of the crowd seemed to flicker before his eyes, like a movie where you can't help but remember that it isn't real. His pulse began to race - sweat on his forehead slicked his hair and ran down his nose, making his glasses slip. He stood stock still, but in his head, he was running.

More people poured through the doors, and Draco did not come. Reasoning and logic had left long ago, so Harry was walking a knife-edge of instinct and half-conscious thoughts normally repressed. He wanted to run out of the doors, shout for Draco, do anything but stand still while his blood pounded with adrenaline. Some vestige of sanity held him back.

The last of the students trickled through the doors. Harry rested his forehead against the cool stone wall, trying to silence the feverish rushing behind it. He wished fervently to escape from this reality into dreams, or from this dream into reality. He felt as though he was dreaming when a blond-haired figure walked unsteadily into the entrance hall, looking distracted and vaguely unreal. But the stone was rough and lukewarm now against his hot brow, and only his Voldemort-dreamsrealitieswere ever so vivid.

Draco was blank, and looked as if he could not possibly believe the scene that greeted him, but was too far gone to treat it with anything other than vague surprise. Harry stepped out from behind the wall, saying nothing because he couldn't think of anything to say.

"Harry!" Draco walked over to him slowly, carefully, as though he were a mirage who would disappear. "I - I'm back," he said wonderingly.

In some other world, Harry would have smiled.

"Missed you," he said, and it was exactly the tentative way that Draco had imagined him saying it.

"Missed you too," said Draco, trying to sound conversational, or at least indifferent, knowing he had failed and finding himself not caring.

It wasn't true. Harry hadn't missed Draco - to miss someone was to wish they were there, to count the days till you next met, to be depressed when the time apart seemed too long - no. Harry had been ripped into two painful halves, had lain on his bed willing the hours to slip past as they went with agonizing slowness, had thought of him and been reminded of him in every minute, memories and images stalling his mind, revelling in pain and the inability to think a single other thought than that of Draco. No word, no phrase in any language said what Harry meant as he stood, senses overwhelmed, staring at Draco.

Their minds were not organised enough for them to have flexed hundreds of muscles to close the gap of a few paces, so it must have been the physical pull to each other that drew them together in lieu of movement. Draco gave a small sigh as he rested his cheek against Harry's neck and closed his eyes. Harry closed his too and slid his arms around Draco's waist. It might have been a long time, or just a second, that they stayed that way in silence, while everyone else giggled and talked and shouted and caused mayhem with their friends somewhere - corridors, floors and worlds away.

Draco shifted, lifting his head and opening his eyes to look at Harry. Neither of them gave any sort of expression, but it was telling that there was no pain and anger which had previously aged and hardened the lines of their faces. Reaching up to brush away a too-long lock of Draco's hair, Harry realised he had only inches to reach. Inches became fewer - their noses brushed and almost a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. Draco ran a finger down the side of Harry's face, past fluttering eyes and down a flushed cheek, and removed Harry's glasses with his other hand, looking in his eyes with an expression akin to wonder. The angular face in front of Harry softened, as seen by his imperfect vision. He breathed, and felt Draco's invisible lashes brush his face.

It seemed perfectly natural that Draco close the last few millimeters and press his lips to Harry's. It was perfectly natural, to Harry's mind, that Draco's lips were warm and chapped, and the inside of his mouth hot when he tilted his head slightly and touched Harry's tongue with his. It was perfectly natural, and even vital, that Harry pull Draco closer til their bodies press together, eliciting a quiet intake of breath from both of them.

Then Draco rested his forehead in the crook of Harry's neck, and Harry could hardly see how this could be allowed, that Draco was allowing it and even wanting it. He knew he would have to return to reality in a little while, but right now it didn't matter. Right now he was holding Draco Malfoy, and it was probably the best feeling in the world.

SSSSSSSSS

Ron …worried. He shouldn't: he knew that you were supposed to learn from other people's mistakes - Hermione had proved beyond doubt that it helped no one and hurt herself. Ron tried to comfort her but he thought that she was falling apart too, slowly and less dramatically than Harry, but that didn't mean it was any easier to put her back together again. It only meant that he had another person whom he didn't know how to help, and the feeling of helplessness that had driven Hermione to such guilt was a familiar feeling. He did his best - it was all he could do, and it wasn't nearly enough.

So he had given up worrying about Harry, even if Hermione still couldn't see that it didn't do any good. Harry hadn't spoken two words to her since she had asked about Malfoy. Ron knew, somehow, that there was a lot about Malfoy that he didn't know; Harry knew, Harry was a part of it. Perhaps he wasn't totally blind about his best friend. Perhaps he had known him just a little, or perhaps a small remnant of the Harry he had known lingered.

No, worrying hadn't done Harry any good and yet, Ron thought, here he was. Worrying.

He worried about Ginny. Ginny and her long list of boyfriends; Ginny and her strange little fancies. Harmless little fancies, he had thought, but now she lived mostly in her little dream world, her little game of pretend. Ron thought she was like a small child clinging onto games when it's time to grow up, but she couldn't grow up. Part of her was stuck, mourning for a bit of her lost when Voldemort took her. He worried that she hadn't given up on Harry. She was afraid - terribly, wrenchingly afraid and breaking everything in her not to show it. She clung to the idea of Harry saving her, though Ron didn't know why she felt she couldn't help herself. Harry was her storybook hero come to rescue her, kind and good and strong and brave, when actually he was -

He couldn't finish the thought: there was a mental block somewhere that prevented him from knowing. Perhaps it was a good thing. Thinking any more about what Harry was now, was a path he refused to walk down. It took him places that were far too dark, that only Harry seemed to be able to frequent unscathed. No, he thought. Not unscathed.

Ron doesn't want Ginny to carry out this idea of her going to the ball with Harry. He doesn't want to think about why his sister shouldn't go out with his best friend, someone he trusted - trusts - more than anyone else. Perhaps there is a little comfort in the fact that Ron knows he will not look at her. And perhaps there is not. Ron knows she will ask Harry to the ball, and he will refuse her. Ron knows that her dream world will be shattered, and Harry will not rescue her. Ron knows that it will push her beyond terror, beyond pain and beyond tears to a dead, soulless place.

The place where Harry went. Harry is the strongest person Ron knows, and he could keep going. He was used to that after a lifetime of it, and perhaps he even began to like it there in a twisted way. Ginny would not break into a million pieces - she would go there, too far and perhaps never come back. Perhaps someone would be able to put her together again if she were to break. Perhaps there would have been some hope, someone who knew how to mend broken minds.

No one can bring people back from the places they should never have to go.

Disaster was coming for Ginny; for him, for Harry, for Hermione, for the whole world. And once again, he couldn't do anything about it.

SSSSSSSSS

"Ron! I want to show you something!" She told him, smiling mischievously.

"What is it?"

"Come and see!"

She grasped his arm and pulled him up to her dorm. There was no one else there, and she only told him to turn round for a minute. He turned back round, and she smiled at his sharp intake of breath.

"Isn't it beautiful?" She twirled around to show him a white muslin dress, with a long skirt and gold stitching. It made her look like a princess, or a bride. "I'm going to wear it to the dance - I'm going with Harry." She took his hand and spun round underneath it, dancing and laughing and swishing her skirts.

She looked so happy, and Ron hadn't the heart to break her world of pretend.