A/N: This chapter was a huge pain in the ass? I admit, I kind of boxed myself into a corner in this one. I had this idea in my head about how to go it, it was supposed to be before Chapter 7 but I pushed it down cause I wanted to lead up to it with hints, and progress Draco's and Harry's relationship first… now I've made this entire trail but just realized that my idea isn't consistent with the Deathly Hallows timeline... So I had to double back, rewrite stuff, and basically just make it work. So if something seems off to you… Well I probably changed it. So sorry, I'm a work in progress. also s/o to the my 2 homophobic reviewers the one with a poem is particularly excellent

Anyway, enough talk, let's get to it.

Chapter 10: The Masked Wizard

Don't fail me now, Gryffindor courage, Harry thought desperately as he grabbed Draco's face and kissed him. Draco let out a small gasp that Harry caught with his lips. He felt hands tentatively inching up his sides, giving him another shot of courage – he traced his tongue along Draco's lips, begging entrance. He yielded and Harry deepened the kiss, his heart thudding against his ears. Holy shit, I'm kissing Draco Malfoy. What am I doing?

"—We shouldn't." Draco gasped, abruptly breaking away.

Harry felt a little bummed at the loss of contact. Draco's face was a deep shade of red, up to his ears.

"Er," Harry panted, "Okay."

"Sorry." Draco said. The room was suddenly thick with tension.

"Okay," Harry repeated, unsure of what to say. "We, uh... don't have to." Draco nodded, refusing to meet his eye.

"Should we… go?" He said, as the Room of Requirement started fading into nothingness.

The two of them walked side by side in the dark hallway in painfully awkward silence. Harry wanted to punch himself in the face. Frantically, he tried to think of a way to save face, to explain what he just had done. So sorry, Malfoy, I thought I was stuck in limbo for an indeterminate amount of time in this limbo with my girlfriend Ginevra, honest mistake, really. We'd been isolated for so long, I hallucinated I was with a cute blonde with unusually smooth skin, no, wait, that's just worse-

"I want to talk about Theo," Draco suddenly blurted out.

I want to talk about me! Harry screamed in his head, but instead went with an oddly high-pitched, overenthusiastic "Sure!"

Draco was thoughtfully silent for a second.

"Theo was the… He was the only, uh… guy."

"Okay… So are you two still…"

"No." Draco shook his head. "I broke it off with him when I had to take the Mark. I needed to protect him… and myself." An image of Ginny popped into Harry's head, and he felt a tinge of guilt creeping under his skin.

"I haven't seen him or spoken to him since the war."

"But… do you want to?"

"I've thought about it on occasion. But I hear he's happy now. And I don't really want him to get involved in all off," he gestured to himself, "this." He glanced at Harry with an apologetic look.

"Oh."

"So, er-" Draco bit his lower lip. "Are you… Have you, uh… been with other, uh…"

"No, I've never even thought about it before," Harry replied quickly, "Until now, that is." He gave Draco a little grin that made him blush all over again. He was a little delighted to realize Draco was still wearing his jacket.

"But aren't you and the Weaselett—Weasley…?"

"Well… Yes, but-" Harry started.

"—SO, we should probably try and get you back home to her, hmm?"

Harry was about to get into his complicated relationship with Ginny, but Draco started walking briskly ahead of him.

"This one?" Draco's voice was strained as he pointed to a plain white door. He entered without waiting for Harry's response.

Harry followed him through the door frame into a musty, pitch black room. Just as he reached for his wand, a voice from across the room whispered "Lumos," and the light revealed a figure donning the Death Eater mask. In the darkness, Harry could make out that they were in a dark cellar. He felt Draco's fingers grasping at his sleeve.

The masked figure waved his wand, searching the cellar. The light from his wand fell on a frail-looking girl, curled up in a corner, shivering.

"Shit," the masked man swore, as he rushed to prop the girl up in a seated position. Harry saw the girl's dirty tear-stained face and realized it was Luna Lovegood.

"Are you alright?" the masked man whispered, pulling out a potion from under his cloak and placing it against Luna's chapped lips. "Drink." She shuddered, but complied.

"It wasn't so bad this time," Luna whispered. "I think she may finally be getting bored with me. The potion helped." The man didn't respond, but waved his wand around the cellar until he found another figure on the ground. Ollivander, Harry suddenly recalled.

"He's fine. She didn't call him." Luna whispered.

Footsteps and voices echoed above them.

"I have to go." The man whispered.

"Thank-" Luna started to say, but the man had already begun to climb up the cellar steps.

So many gears were turning in Harry's mind. He raced after the masked figure, to find Draco, with a frightened, shifty expression on his face, removing his mask and cloak at the landing. He followed Draco into the familiar drawing room, with the purple walls, chandelier, extravagant furniture.

"They say they've got Potter," said Narcissa. "Draco, come here."

He saw himself in the center of the room, glasses looking tiny on his giant swollen face, tied back-to-back to Ron, Hermione and Dean.

Draco was walking slowly across the room like a funeral march.

"Well, Draco?" Lucius Malfoy asked, a madman's gleam in his eye. "Is it? Is it Harry Potter?"

The older Draco stepped to his side. Harry turned to him and asked, "Did you know it was me?"

"Yes," Draco, replied.

"I can't be sure," lied the other Draco, averting his eyes from Harry's face.

"But look at him carefully, look! Come closer! Draco, if we are the ones who hand Potter over…"

Harry could barely hear Fenrir Greyback and Lucius bicker about taking credit for his capture.

"Why did you lie?"

"I don't know!" the Malfoy from the memory was saying, as he walked away towards the fireplace where his mother stood watching.

Draco smirked and gestured to him. "What he said."

"We had better be certain, Lucius," Narcissa called to her husband, her voice wavering slightly.

"What about the Mudblood, then?" growled Greyback.

Lucius and Narcissa were urging, badgering, practically pleading Draco to identify Hermione and Ron, and he kept giving vague noncommittal answers.

Bellatrix Lestrange then burst into the room. Harry saw the Draco beside him cringe. It was surreal to see the scene unfold as if his soul had been torn from his body and he was watching his life from outside his body. Just as Harry remembered – Lucius and Bellatrix beating each other over who gets to call Voldemort, Bellatrix noticing the sword of Gryffindor, stunning the Snatchers and Greyback. He watched himself, along with Ron, Dean and Griphook, get dragged down to the cellar.

Hermione was shaking with fear as Bellatrix Lestrange circled her.

"Well," she cackled, "Now that it's just us girls… Crucio."

Hermione's scream rang in Harry's ears, causing him actual physical pain. He felt Draco's hand on his shoulder, trying to lead him away.

"I need to see," Harry said, a heaviness crushing his chest.

"Where did you get this sword, mudblood?" She only answered in sobs.

"I'm going to ask you again! Where did you get this sword? Where?"

"We found it – we found it – PLEASE!" Hermione screamed again.

Harry trembled as he watched one of his best friends contort and squirm with pain. He wanted desperately to reach out to her and make it stop.

"You don't need to see it," Draco said gently.

Harry shook his head. "All of this … They all did this for me. This happened because of me."

Draco smiled at him sadly, then turned to look at his mother and father. "Funnily enough, I could say the same."

The rest of the memory happened in a blur – Griphook identified the sword as a fake, Bellatrix summoning Voldemort, Ron and Harry burst in, disarming her. Bellatrix threatening Hermione with a knife. Dobby dropping the chandelier from the ceiling, glass everywhere, Harry wrestling three wands from Draco's hands. Dobby, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Griphook and unfortunately, Bellatrix's knife, disappearing with a loud crack.

Bellatrix shrieked inhumanly as the memory faded away.

The two walked in silence for a while, in the dark hallway of doors, chewing on the memory that they just relived together.

"Draco," Harry wondered. "You were looking up. You saw Dobby on the chandelier, before anyone else noticed. Why didn't you do anything?"

Draco's brow furrowed. "I'm not sure. Maybe I didn't want to win. I made a pretty shite Death Eater."

"That makes three," Harry breathed.

"Huh?" Draco asked.

"The first was when you lied and said you didn't recognize me. The second was the chandelier. The third was… when you disarmed Dumbledore at the Astronomy tower." Draco stared at him quizzically.

As they walked together, he explained about how the Elder Wand didn't work for Voldemort because it didn't recognize him as its true owner, and how at the final battle, Voldemort's killing curse rebounded and ultimately destroyed him.

"So that's three times you saved my arse," He said. "Why?" Draco stopped walking and whirled to face him.

"You pulled me from Fiendfyre," he counted off on his fingers, "You stunned a Death Eater attacking me, you testified at my trial. Then you literally jumped in front of those two Aurors, for me. Why did you do it?"

"I don't know," Harry smiled. "Maybe that's just who we are. Maybe we were just destined to save each other over and over again."

Draco chewed his lip, seemingly in contemplation. He searched his face with shiny, gray eyes, settling on his mouth, and cleared his throat.

"Well, in any case, Potter, you're ahead." He felt cool fingers slide against his neck. "Let me even out the score."

Draco pulled him into a slow, tentative kiss. Harry wrapped his arms around his waist. He didn't understand why this happened, nor could he explain why it felt so… correct. It was like his whole life, he had been thrust into things, situations that he never wanted to be a part of. In his whole life feeling misplaced, only now had he felt like he was where he was supposed to be.

"Well, technically," he murmured against Draco's lips. "Your third one didn't count, you had no idea the Elder Wand would do that. Does that mean I get another kiss?"

He felt the blonde sneer against his mouth and whisper "Arse," before closing the distance between them.