A/N: Posting this chapter for a friend. You know who you are. ^_^

This story is unbeta'd, so any mistakes you read are my own. :)


And I'll use you as a warning sign

That if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind

And I'll use you as a focal point

So I don't lose sight of what I want

And I've moved further than I thought I could

But I missed you more than I thought I would

Oh, I'll use you as a warning sign

That if you talk enough sense then you'll use your mind

-Amber Run


~8 August 1999~

"Harry..." Tears streamed freely down Ginny's ruddied cheeks. "You're not making any sense."

Harry grimaced and looked at the floor, knotting his hands in the hem of his shirt. He couldn't bear to look at her anymore. The grief on her face was starting to make him sick. "I know."

"People don't—" she choked on a sob. "People don't just break up when they're engaged."

Harry nodded miserably. "I know."

"Our wedding is in seven months!"

"I know—"

"Stop saying that you know!" Ginny cried.

Harry looked up at her again and immediately wished that he hadn't. He was breaking her, slowly but surely. He could see the fragile cracks in her face splitting wider and wider apart. "Ginny..."

"Tell me why!" Ginny screamed, throwing her arms out. "Explain it to me!"

Harry winced, the echoes of his own words coming back in a hard slap.

"Tell me why, Draco!" he had screamed, the sound of his voice filling every inch of Draco's room. "Explain to me what made you think you had the right to take my memories away!"

Harry sucked in a deep, rattling breath. He felt so tired. All he wanted to do was curl up in his bed, pull the covers over his head, and pretend he was somewhere very far away. "Ginny," just saying her name was like swallowing a ball of lead, "it's never been right between us. You know that it's never been right."

"I don't know that!"

Harry frowned, the silence that surrounded them painful in his ears. "So...you're happy then. I make you...happy?"

Ginny stared at him, her blue eyes shining and the muscles in her arms going tense. "Harry, no relationship is ever going to be perfect. But what you and I have...it's good. It's the best I've ever had."

"That doesn't mean that you're happy."

"So that's what this is about then?" Ginny asked bitterly. "Me being happy? This has nothing to do with you?"

Harry blew out a heavy breath. "That's not what I'm saying. Of course it has to do with me! This is about both of us!"

"No, it's not!" Ginny yelled. "You're the one breaking up with me! So don't you dare try to act like this is in any way on me!"

Harry had to bite his tongue to keep his retorts from spilling over. She was right. He knew she was right. But that knowledge did nothing to ease the pain that was slowly spreading through his limbs. How could he explain something like this to her? How could he tell her that he was terrified to look at her and see a glint of red in the blue of her eyes?

"Something...something happened, didn't it." Ginny's voice, which had been a scratching boom just moments ago, had wilted into something cringing and small. "There's someone else, isn't there."

Guilt sprang up Harry's throat so fast that he thought he was going to be sick on it. His whole body felt hot and tight like it was filled with too much air. Distantly, he felt himself nod.

"Shit." A fresh wave of sobs overwhelmed her. She pressed her hand to her forehead as tears streamed down her ruddied cheeks. "Merlin, I can't believe this. I can't believe it. Of all people, I never thought that you'd…"

"Ginny, I never meant to. Honestly, I never did."

Ginny pressed her eyes shut and took a shaky breath. "You need to leave."

Harry felt the ground tilt beneath his feet. His chest felt like it was collapsing in. "Ginny..."

"Get out, Harry!"

Unable to do anything else, Harry turned and left.


"Hey, Tully," Harry mumbled wearily. "Is Draco here?" He sincerely hoped that Draco wasn't up for another round of fighting. He wasn't sure there was anything left in him that was able to fight. Every part of him felt stretched thin and wrung out. He felt like one of the threadbare shirts that he'd gotten from Dudley when he was younger.

"He is not here, Mr. Potter, sir," Tully squeaked out.

Harry blinked, his brain suddenly snapping to attention. "What?"

"The master is not here."

"Where did he go?" Harry asked. "I told him to wait here for me."

"Tully is not knowing where the master went, but Tully can—"

But Harry didn't wait to hear the rest. He swept past the small house-elf, stalking heatedly through the foyer. Distantly, he heard Binky scrambling after him.

"Draco!" Harry's voice boomed off of the marble walls. He'd only ever been to two rooms in this monstrosity of a house and his feet propelled him forward even as his mind swam. Draco had said that he would wait here until Harry returned. "Draco!"

The drawing room was markedly empty, as was Draco's bedroom. Harry's voice echoed down empty halls as he screamed Draco's name at the top of his lungs. Tully attached herself to the hem of his robes, clawing desperately at him as he scoured the halls.

"Mr. Potter cannot be here while the master is out!" Tully screeched. "It is not allowed!"

He finally found himself in the library, and his nerves buzzed as a sour smell filled his nose. Bookshelves, tall and gleaming, rushed past the peripheral of his vision as the smell grew stronger and stronger. Harry rounded a corner, tugging Tully after him, and came to a sudden stop.

The still burning remains of a rolled blunt lay discarded on the floor, a thin stream of smoke curling up from its tip. Harry stooped down and picked it up, his nose scrunching and his eyes tearing from the overwhelming aroma.

"What is this?" Harry asked, jutting the blunt in Tully's face.

Tully leapt back, slapping her hands over her long nose. "You is needing to leave, Mr. Potter." Her voice sounded squished and heady with her nostrils plugged.

"Tell me what this is!" Harry growled, baring his teeth.

Tully gave a frightful squeak, her eyes going wide. "It's the master's medicine."

"Medicine," Harry repeated with a snarl. He snuffed the blunt out on the side of his shoe and pocketed it with a shaking hand. Rage, hot and vapid, filled him so fast his vision swam.

"Mr. Potter—"

"Fine," Harry snapped. "I'm leaving." And he knew exactly where he was going.


The last person that Pansy expected to see when she opened her door was Harry Potter. Much less a wild-eyed, palpably furious Harry Potter. The magic radiating off him was so rancid that she was pretty sure her hair had started to curl the moment she saw him.

"Potter," she said blandly, trying not to move lest it enticed him to strike.

Potter reached into his pocket, and Pansy felt her hand twitch towards her wand. He glared at the movement as he pulled a blunt from his pocket and held it out towards her. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.

Pansy would've almost preferred that he had come back out with a wand. She stared down at the thin roll of paper, her heart pounding and her throat closing in. "Where did you find that?"

"At Draco's house."

Pansy felt herself go tense. Potter had said 'Draco' instead of 'Malfoy'. That was certainly new. "Why were you at his house?"

"That's hardly the point," Potter hissed. "Now do you know what this is or not?"

It was an effort to harden herself against the urge to slam the door in Potter's face, but somehow she managed. Potter showing up on her doorstep inquiring about something that Draco had kept very close to his chest was too enticing of a mystery to remain unsolved. She'd read the papers last summer just like everyone else had but she'd never considered the articles about Draco and Potter to be anything other than idle rumors. However, as last year had progressed there had been certain signs to the contrary, and—being the self-respecting Slytherin she was—if Draco wasn't going to be open about it, she was going to find out her own way. So she opened the door a little wider and stepped aside. "Maybe you'd better come in."

With a poisonous frown, Potter skulked past her. He turned in the entryway and waited for her to close the door before following her into the brightly lit breakfast nook. She gestured for him to sit, which he did, albeit reluctantly.

"How did you know where I live?" Pansy asked as she slid into the chair opposite.

"Draco keeps an address book."

There it was again. 'Draco'. "Of course he does. Obsessive ponce."

Potter set the blunt on the table between them, rolling it under his pointer finger. His bottom lip curled inward as he scowled at it. "What do you know about this, Pansy?"

Pansy shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "I know that it's not a hand-rolled cigarette."

Bright green eyes met her like a furious wave.

"I don't know much," Pansy said with a huff. "From what I noticed, he started getting into that stuff right around the time his mum died."

"From what you noticed?" Potter repeated icily.

"I had a lot going on," Pansy retorted, her temper flaring. "We all did. Over half of our class was put on trial while our parents were being herded off to Azkaban like cattle. Most of us were out of going our minds every time an Auror stepped foot on Hogwarts soil, and Draco was the only one level-headed enough to keep us all together. He carried a lot last year. So what if he needed a little something to take the edge off?"

"So what? Pansy, this stuff could be dangerous!"

"Why would you care if it was dangerous or not?"

"I care because—!" Potter clenched his teeth and looked away. There were bright red splotches on his cheeks and his hair seemed to be alive with static electricity. "Look, I just do, alright?"

"If you're trying to get Draco convicted of something, I won't—"

"It's not like that! I just—" he pushed out a heavy breath. "I knew that he used drugs last year, but...I didn't know it had gotten this bad."

Pansy pursed her lips at him, his words rolling over in her mind. The good thing about Gryffindors was that they were horrible liars. So at least she could be assured that Potter wasn't here because of any residual Ministry business, but that hardly put her at ease. Something wasn't adding up. Or maybe something was and she just wasn't ready to admit it yet.

Potter stared at her with his stupidly expressive eyes, alight and brimming with concern. "I was supposed to meet him at the manor today," he said softly. "But he wasn't there. Instead of him, I found this." He crushed the blunt beneath curled fingers, and the brown powder inside sprinkled out onto the table. "That's not like him. You know it's not."

"He'll come back. He always comes back."

"So he's disappeared before then?"

Pursing her lips, Pansy shrugged.

"Pansy," Potter pleaded, "you have to tell me. If he's addicted to this stuff then he needs our help."

"You can't help him, Potter," Pansy said. "I tried. He doesn't want to be helped."

Potter flinched back as if she had just slapped him. "How can you say something like that? You're supposed to be his best friend."

"I am his best friend," Pansy seethed defensively, her hands gripping the edge of her seat. "And maybe he wasn't a bowl of cherries all the time, but we made it through that damn war together and things were supposed to get better after it was over. I did everything I could. Even after I found him—" Pansy choked on the sob that almost escaped her. She swallowed it down and continued, "Even after I found him nearly dead, I gathered up his drugs and that blasted knife and I sent him off to St. Mungo's because that's where I thought he'd be safest. And all he did was throw it back in my face."

Potter stared at her for what felt like a long time. "Do you know where he gets the drugs?"

Pansy blinked and felt a self-righteous heat rise up her neck. "Did nothing I just said to you register?"

"Do you know?"

Pansy let out a shuddering sigh in the face of a belligerence that she couldn't hope to withstand. Something about it reminded her so much of Draco that her heart ached. "I have an idea."


~11 August 1999~

Harry sat slumped in a chair in front of a dying fire, a crumpled letter clenched between his thumb and forefinger. His vision blurred through a thick haze of Firewhiskey as he stared down at the perfect, loopy cursive.

Harry,

You can't possibly imagine how sorry both Ron and I are. We know what we did to you was wrong and that there's no excusing the way we treated you. But Harry, you have to understand that we were never trying to hurt you. We never wanted that.

Please, Harry, just write us back. At least let us know that you're okay.

Please. We're so sorry.

~Hermione and Ron

Harry crumpled the letter in his fist and chucked it into the fire. Light flared through the room as the fire licked over the paper and shriveled it into black ash. He couldn't worry about Ron and Hermione yet—not while Draco was still missing. Harry's head swiveled towards the open window on the far side of the room. Pallid, yellow light from the street lampposts broke through the tepid evening air, unburdened by the graceful flapping of feathers. He still hadn't heard from Draco and he still hadn't been able to find the woman that Pansy had told him about.

It had been three days.


~13 August 1999~

"Mr. Potter!" The man behind the counter goggled at him, his uniformed frame going stiff and his hands clenching around the edge of the desk.

Harry frowned and leaned in towards him, willing the world to stop spinning. He hoped that the man couldn't smell the Firewhiskey that was still burning in the back of his throat. It had been hard enough to navigate his way through the Ministry with a blistering hangover—he didn't need people speculating why he was doing it in a semi-drunken stupor. "I need to report a missing person."

"A missing person?"

"Yes," Harry said. "His name is Draco Malfoy. He's about 180cm, blond hair, grey eyes—"

"Sir," the man interrupted nervously, his pocked cheeks puffing out, "this is the Auror headquarters."

Harry gave the man a particularly affronted look, not currently possessing either enough energy or sense of self-preservation to hide it. "I know that."

The man stared at him, his brown eyes large and vacant. "We don't take...those types of cases here."

"Pardon?" Heat spiked in Harry's stomach before spreading up into his chest.

"I apologize for the inconvenience."

"The inconvenience?" Harry repeated venomously. Magic began curdling in his veins, licking down his arms and tingling at the tips of his fingers.

The man's face went white. "Mr. Potter, sir—"

"I'd like to speak to whoever is in charge here." Harry just barely managed the words between clenched teeth.

"Y—you have to have an appointment—"

"Now." There was a note of finality in Harry's voice that wasn't quite natural. It seemed to echo through the man like an empty cavern and rattle him down to his bones.

"Right away." The man practically leaped back from his desk and disappeared through a narrow door.

A few tense minutes later, a large bodied man with a clean-shaven head and an impressively full mustache appeared in the doorway. He scowled at Harry, his pale brows drawing together. "Care to step into my office, Mr. Potter?" He didn't wait for an answer before turning back around.

Harry huffed as he stepped around the concierge desk and followed the man down a short hallway and into an opulently decorated office. The furniture was plush and gleaming with shades of emerald and gold. The man took a seat behind a massive desk in a leather chair that barely seemed able to contain him. He gestured for Harry to sit.

Harry's eyes flicked down to the nameplate that rested on the end of his desk. It read: Darryl Brown. All of the blood left Harry's face as he glanced back up at Darryl's face. There was no denying the resemblance once he realized it. Darryl was Lavender Brown's father.

Feeling all the air leave his lungs, Harry collapsed in an upholstered chair in front of Darryl's desk. Darryl's eyes where a hard, unforgiving version of Lavender's, and they bore into Harry with a relentless ferocity.

"Sir, you have to know that I wouldn't have come here if I didn't think—"

"Let me stop you right there, Mr. Potter," Darryl said, his voice a gravelly rumble. "You are aware that Draco Malfoy was under trial for treason not six months ago?"

Harry rolled his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Yes, but—"

"I can assure you that the evidence stacked against him was steep, and despite the fact that he took the Dark Mark as a minor, there was little doubt among the members of the court that he would be convicted as a Death Eater. I know, I was there."

Harry swallowed.

"In fact, his conviction was all but certain until Shacklebolt received a last minute testimony."

A jolt shook Harry's body at the accusation laced in Darryl's words. Was he talking about his letter?

"He was released with barely a slap on his wrist for his crimes. And now another Death Eater is left walking the streets on my watch." Darryl leaned forward, crossing his hands in front of him. "Now let's not mince words about this, Mr. Potter. I'm well aware of who you are and the service you've done for the wizarding world, but don't for a second think that my gratitude extends to the people responsible for murdering my—" His mouth snapped shut, his lower lip trembling and his cheeks going red.

Tears prickled at the backs of Harry's eyes, though who they were for, he had no idea. He stood abruptly, his knees wobbling as he did so. "Mr. Brown, I never meant—I knew Lavender and she—" Harry's tongue floundered as he watched Darryl's expression transform into something unbreachable. There was a loss there that no words would ever be able to mend, and Harry couldn't help but feel insignificant in the face of it. Without another word, he turned and left, pretending all the while that he couldn't hear the sounds of a father mourning his daughter at his back.


~15 August 1999~

Harry lay on his godfather's threadbare couch in the upstairs study, staring up at the ceiling. It seemed to be spinning. Or maybe he was spinning. Either way he supposed it didn't matter. Draco had been gone for a week and Harry was about out of his mind with worry. Every path he'd tried had resulted in a dead end, and the reality of his own uselessness had quickly overwhelmed him.

He felt somehow simultaneously heavy and empty, as if the emptiness was a weight in itself. His whole body was like a boat caught out at sea, lost in the listless rocking of waves. Everything seemed far away and disconnected. He wasn't even sure what day it was anymore.

The only thing he was sure of was that Draco had been gone for a week.

Harry pressed his eyes shut as his body listed, floating in the dark void. He drifted farther and farther into it, until he was encased—wrapped in cold and constricted by shadow.

Unconsciousness took him slowly, bit by bit, and he sank into it like an anchor, unsure if he wanted to return.


A crash tore him from the dream, his body reeling as reality crashed back into him. Harry sprang up, the empty bottle of Firewhiskey that had been perched on his stomach clattering to the floor. Air filled and left his lungs rapidly as he took in the dark room. It looked too different from the room he'd just been in—the room that had been lit by colored glass and filled with the smell of lilies.

That dream…seeing Draco there…it had felt so real.

The crash sounded again, and Harry launched to his feet, his heart pounding. He stared at the door, his mind still unable to reconcile where he was now and where he'd just been.

Draco had felt so close…

And then Harry was moving, his legs rushing him across the room out to the top of the staircase. Wood creaked as he crashed into the banister, his hands wrapping around the railing and gripping it tight. The flash of blond hair was unmistakable.

"Draco!" The word was torn out of Harry's throat, reopening ancient wounds on the way up.

Harry flung himself down the stairs, his bare feet barely touching ground before they left it again. He threw himself to his knees at Draco's side, his hands reaching out towards his shivering form. He looked like a wounded creature that had just been washed ashore, dripping wet and scared senseless.

"Draco," Harry said again, softer this time. He cupped Draco's jaw, nearly wincing at the frigid temperature of his skin. But it was real. It had to be real. "Draco, I can't believe—are you alright? Where have you been?"

Draco looked at him then, and Harry felt his heart knock against his sternum. It had been a long time since he'd encountered magic that felt like that. Draco opened his mouth, his lower lip trembling as an empty breath spilled over it.

Harry shook his head even as tears prickled at the edges of his vision. "I just had this dream and I though—I swore…"

"Harry…" There was something broken in Draco's voice that plucked at the cords of Harry's conscience. Real or not, Draco needed his help.

"I have you," Harry said, sliding his arms around Draco's body and lifting him off the ground. He was achingly light. Draco's head fell against his collarbone, water dripping from his hair and slipping across Harry's skin. Sighing, Harry gripped him tighter. If this was another dream, then Merlin, let him stay asleep forever. "It's alright, don't worry. Everything is going to be okay. I have you."