Disclaimer: Not my characters.

NB: Slash.

R: For fighting and swearing and for the sex in Chapter 4.

We did end up having the loneliness conversation. Quite by chance, we signed up for the same lab hours in the astronomy tower. Granger had been and gone before I got there and Millie and Pansy had skipped out to sneak into Hogsmeade. I arrived on the roof to find Harry by himself, bent over a telescope. When he looked up, I said, "I realize I appear to be stalking you. Trust me when I tell you, it's an optical illusion."

"No. I, ah… Yeah. It's just… Being on speaking terms with you is extremely weird."

"Yes. Do you mind?"

"Not really. I guess."

I set up facing away from him and avoided his eyes, trying to concentrate on the work that had brought me up there and reminding myself that I had not been lying when I said I wasn't stalking him. When I was finally done, I started to gather my things and heard him clear his throat behind me.

He said, "You are pretty lonely, aren't you?"

I didn't respond, just turned to face him and leaned back against the parapet.

"I guess I can tell because I am too, a little. I mean, what with Ron and Hermione… I haven't really been lonely since…well, since before school."

"Oh." This seemed like a safer topic. "Why were you then?"

"Because my lunatic Muggle relations kept me locked in a closet under the stairs."

"God." I didn't know what to say. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. But later I had some magic revenge."

"Like what?"

"Blew up my aunt. Watched Hagrid turn my cousin into a pig. Actually, before I even knew I was a wizard, I sicced a sixty-foot python on him. So I've vented a little."

"The python. Because you're a Parselmouth?"

"Yeah. I had no idea about that then. We were in a zoo. That's a place where Muggles keep wild animals. It just started talking to me. I thought it was speaking English. That's why I was so surprised during the duel---"

"God, I was so jealous." I felt my body temperature drop just thinking about it. "It literally made me sick." It had, too. Several hours after Harry's revelation broke up Lockhart's little dueling club, my anger and jealousy compounded into such a blistering nausea that I puked my guts up. God, how I hated him. And now I was staring at him. Wonderful. Perhaps infatuation was just a cunning ploy to sidestep all of that corrosive envy. Never underestimate the survival skills of Draco Malfoy. I snorted mirthlessly.

Innocent Harry was watching me blankly. "What? Why?"

"Talking to snakes should be a Slytherin gift. You were always showing me up."

Harry laughed. "I was, wasn't I? You were such a bratty little prince."

It occurred to me that Harry knew much less about me than I knew about him. I hoisted myself onto the wall, and registered, without intent, how easy it would be to drop to my death. Then I looked up and saw the stars pricking a blackness as soft as someone's perfect skin under my blind mouth. My life was a nightmare, but I always kind of loved the world. I said, "When you got here, every triumph you had was a gift from the gods, galleons dropping from the sky. Voluptuous excess. For me, success has always been a bare minimum. Between losing out to you and Granger, I've spent the last six years in existential debt. It's lousy, Harry, being a prince."

"Okay," said Harry, mock-dutifully. "Poor Malfoy."

"No. I'm just pointing out why I'm more screwed up than you are."

"Well, you have been kind of a prick."

I thought about losing to him on the Quidditch field, over and over and over again. I pictured Crouch turning me into a white ferret and slamming me against the hall floor. I remembered collapsing onto the grass coughing up blood after Harry and George Weasley sucker-punched me for insulting their mothers.

I said, "Maybe." But I was thinking that it was mostly just words, that I talked a lot of trash, but rarely threw the first punch. And Harry got away with it because he was so fucking righteous. I could never have swaggered around like that. And his insults were a non-issue. I could just imagine my father's cold eyes on me, disgusted that I had been weak enough to react to a verbal taunt. I didn't want Harry to feel sorry for me and added lightly, "On the other hand, I expect I have more fun."

We weren't facing each other, both still vaguely focused on the night sky, but I could feel him watching me out of the corner of his eye. He said, "You think?" Something in his tone altered my meaning.

"Probably." My voice was a little uneven. Not good. I said, "Look, Potter. I think I'm done up here. I'll see you around." And I left. Looking back on it now, it seems incredibly cowardly, how I was always running away from him.

::

I also ran into him. It wasn't stalking, because I didn't do it with any deliberation or consistency. Instead, periodically and inexorably, I got sucked into his orbit. For his part, he grew less and less likely to push me away.

One day, after a Peeves-related disruption in the Potions classroom forced Snape to keep us waiting in the corridor for twenty minutes, I wandered over to him. Granger and Weasley were all wrapped up in one another and my lot were busy laying wagers on the outcome of a prank that Blaise and Vincent were planning to pull. He looked at me warily. I said, "Hey, Potter."

"Hey, Malfoy." He glanced at the rest of the Slytherins. "What are they doing?"

"Blaise is trying to break up Adrian and Morag. He's sent Adrian three Howlers this week, supposedly from other girls."

"Oh, yeah. I guess I'd noticed that. Is it working?"

"Not really. Everyone knows he's doing it. But Vince thought it would be pretty funny if Morag walked in on Adrian with a boy, so he got Pansy to make him a romantic delusion potion and they're taking bets on Morag's reaction."

Potter said, without any self-pity, "It must be fun to be a normal student."

"God. Are you serious? Potter, this is the pitiable outcome of severe boredom. Be grateful you have something more dignified to occupy your mind."

"Oh, right, yes. Death and mayhem. Very grateful. Who's the boy?"

I said, extremely deadpan, "Ron Weasley."

"What?" Potter whirled on me, fists clenching, "Malfoy, you fuck---"

"I'm joking, Potter! It was a joke." People were already staring.

"Tell me who it is then," Potter hissed. He was so angry, white-knuckled and ferocious, with a blue vein throbbing in his temple.

I said, very low, so that only he could hear me, "If I were convinced you liked girls, it might have been funny to pick you. But Adrian's kind of good-looking. I didn't want to take the chance." All the rage drained out of him and he took a nervous step back. I smiled malevolently.

He said, without heat, "Stay away from me, Malfoy, you crazy---"

"Mr. Potter!" Snape bellowed. "Ten points from Gryffindor for using profanity in the corridor."

Granger immediately piped up, "But he didn't even---" I was impressed that she had registered this from the latitude of Weasley's tonsils.

"Twenty," said Snape shortly, cutting her off and sweeping back into the classroom. As we filed in behind him, Potter looked at me with a sort of alarmed curiosity. I widened my evil smile amidst the sniggering compliments of my Slytherins as Granger tugged him protectively out of view.

When a wild-eyed Adrian entered the Great Hall at dinner time a few days later, followed by a sheepish, roughed-up Theodore Nott and a baleful Morag, Potter glanced across at me from the Gryffindor table. The next time I saw him, putting things away in the Herbology greenhouse, he gave me a bland look and asked, "Win any money?"

"What?"

"In the Morag stakes."

"Oh. That. Didn't wager."

"I thought it was your idea."

"No. I just said that to piss you off."

"Malfoy. I didn't know you cared."

"Yes, you did. I've spent the majority of my time since we were eleven trying to piss you off."

"Now that you mention it, maybe I have noticed something."

"Am I having any luck?"

He gave me a surprisingly sexy grin. "Less and less."

I rolled my eyes. "For god's sake, Potter. Don't flirt with me."

::

Our exchanges were occasionally philosophical. He was obsessed with figuring out why I had "switched sides." I hadn't of course; I just wanted to lower the body count and Lupin was the only person I could reach who was doing any rescuing.

One day in the broom shed, he accused me of thinking that good was relative.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Without absolute perspective, it's impossible to recognize or perform objectively good acts."

"The whole world and all of history give us perspective."

"We are the world; we have no perspective."

''I guess all that relativism absolves you of responsibility."

"Maybe. I do have one moral conviction."

"What?"

"Killing people is bad."

"That's not a position. That's a truism."

"Hardly. Lots of people don't give a damn. Particularly not in the service of a cause."

"Sometimes sacrifices have to be made."

"That's a little high-handed. I thought you were all about protecting the innocent."

"Everyone who fights in a war knows that some death is inevitable."

"Sometimes people choose to sacrifice themselves. But that's not the same thing."

"What are you getting at? No one wants death."

"Yes, they do. They want the death of the enemy. The desire for victory is essentially impure."

"Not if you're right."

"You can't know that you're right. Because you can't have any perspective."

"You're a disappointingly circular thinker, Malfoy. Since we can't know anything, we may as well not try to know anything. Except for this strangely sentimental and simplistic idea that death is bad." He rolled his eyes.

"Don't knock it, Potter. It's the reason I'm not a Death Eater. It's the reason I'm providing your people with information."

He said quietly, "They're your people, too."

"No, they're not. Don't get confused, Potter. I'm not one of you. I'm just not one of them."

"So why are you helping?"

"I just told you. I don't like death."

::

One night, walking alone by the lake, I found him skipping rocks at the giant squid. I stopped beside him. "Lonely, Potter?"

Harry snapped around and saw that it was me. "Yeah. No. I don't know."

"Weasley off snogging Granger?"

"Pretty much."

"Never would have expected Weasley to get so lucky."

Harry looked at me like I had grown a second head. Presumably because of my years of tormenting Granger for her homeliness and general lack of sex appeal. To be fair, she wasn't half bad by then. But that wasn't what I meant. "Think about it, Potter. Anyone whose passion for homework puts the entire school to shame probably isn't going to enter into a new, ah, recreational pursuit without doing some very thorough research."

He started laughing. "God, Malfoy. No thanks for that suggestive visual."

It felt strangely companionable to be standing there together. I loved it that I had made him laugh.

Then he asked, with careful casualness, "What about you?"

"What about me what?"

"How's your love life?"

"I'm in a lull."

"I guess the field's a little bigger though, when you kind of go either way."

That was interesting. Did Potter kind of go either way? I asked, "Wondering whom I haven't slept with?"

"Short list?"

I may have blushed. To my complete surprise, I said, "I'm actually feeling sort of ashamed of that, right at this very moment." I had no idea why I told him that. All right, maybe I did.

"Why? Don't want me to think you're a big ho?" Maybe he did, too. He snorted. "Okay, Malfoy. I promise to remember you as a virgin."

"I'm not sure that's exactly what I want." My voice was a little thick. I added, more lightly, "Although it charms me that you plan to continue pondering my sex life."

He asked huskily, "Why are you here?"

I turned so we were facing each other, not too far apart. His mouth was right in front of mine, thin and silky looking, dark red in his flushed face. I lifted my hand, almost without meaning to, and when he didn't move, I brushed my thumb along his lower lip. His expression didn't change. I said, "I'm trying to seduce you. If you must know."

"Shut up, Malfoy. No you're not." He licked his lips and looked simultaneously defensive and earnest. "Are you serious?" I let him watch me check him out, and then shrugged and nodded. He asked, "Why?"

"Because you're hot. Obviously. God, Potter, please don't go all girly on me."

"You think I'm hot?"

"Yes." He was. Broad-shouldered and very lean, his rumpled black hair finally long enough to look post-coital rather than cowlicky, his eyes an eerie, acid green. I realized I was staring at him and said, idiotically, "Yeah."

"I'm not going to fall in love with you."

"No. I… What?"

"I mean it."

"Fine, Potter, whatever. I'm not really worried about that right now." But maybe I was because I suddenly wasn't so sure I wanted to be getting tangled up with him. I said, "Actually, I'm going to go," and turned and left him, standing by the lake.

::

I assumed we wouldn't speak again until I needed him, but I was wrong. He wrote to me. The owl arrived the next morning at breakfast. Not his Hedwig, just a school owl with a folded note, my name scrawled on it in a hand I didn't recognize. I received a lot of mail; no one glanced round as I opened it. It said, "D., All right. Yes. H." D. and H. Not M. and P. I could not remember a single occasion on which Harry had used my first name. I looked up to see him already watching me. There was no particular expression on his face. He was crunching on a piece of toast, half-listening to the person rattling on beside him, his eyes carefully vague.

I didn't know what to think. He wanted me, sure, but I didn't take that as seriously as I should have; half the people in school wanted me. And half of those had had me, which infuriated him in a way I didn't understand until much later. He was such an upright good guy; he didn't like muddy boundaries or shades of gray. And promiscuity is basically emotional anarchy. For my part, I already knew I liked him too much. And he was so volatile. I thought that if we got involved, he'd hate me for things I couldn't change and I'd end up with my heart broken.

Standing by the lake that night, I hadn't thought beyond the first seduction. But once he warned me he wouldn't fall in love with me, I felt strangely doomed. Most people exist within a framework of fixed truths, like the girders of a building. Harry's relationship with the world was more fluid, because the world had always tended to bend around him. It should have remained obvious that any truce we struck for sexual purposes would be temporary and mercenary. But Harry didn't follow the rules; he made his own truths. In my case, it took only one sentence for him to turn me from a horny opportunist into a mooning lunatic.

I avoided him for almost two weeks. Then he ambushed me on my way out of Dumbledore's office. My mother had begun to suspect my loyalties and I needed to tell Dumbledore I might be compromised. It's sort of ironic that Harry attacked me on a day when I knew with such absolute clarity that I was doing the right thing.

He was waiting, looking grim and predatory, when I emerged from the moving staircase. I stopped five feet from him. My stomach flipped over in a leisurely, nauseating way.

"Malfoy."

"Hello, Potter."

"What are you doing here?"

"Potter? Have you suffered a blow to the head? We've been over this. As you may recollect, if you concentrate, you're the only person who does know."

"I assumed that was over."

I grinned at him. "God, Potter. You put even my legendary vanity to shame."

Harry flushed and then went chalk white. Half a dozen freckles were suddenly visible across the bridge of his nose. I could see the bones of his knuckles in his clenched fists and the muscle flexing in his jaw. I took a step toward him and then another, thinking how much I wanted to press him up against the wall and suck all that shivering tension out of his body. He watched me walking toward him and said, "What are you doing?"

"Harry," I said, very softly, "You do realize that I sold out just to fuck you." He looked like he might slug me. I kept approaching slowly, adrenaline surging. I murmured, "Since it hasn't worked out, I'm rejoining the Muggle hunt. Lately we've been strangling them. Very satisfying. I'm thinking Granger---"

And then he did slug me. He had a terrific right hook. I must have blacked out because Dumbledore was suddenly leaning over me, pulling out his wand, and saying something to Harry. I couldn't hear very well. I do remember thinking with relief how much better it was to be lying on the stone floor, bleeding copiously from the nose and possibly deaf, than to have been found by Dumbledore, sucking out all of Harry's, er, tension. Dumbledore stopped the blood flow and sent me off to the hospital wing. I nodded, my hearing still a little wonky, and glanced at Harry. He was holding his bloody right fist in his left hand and looking deeply ashamed of himself.

::

A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews are very welcome.