Chapter 2 - Restless
He was going to go insane.
It was an insidious type of insanity, like an itch that he couldn't scratch, a scratch that wouldn't heal. A splinter, somewhere, that he couldn't quite pluck free.
A glimpse of icy pale hair atop a pale face, seen for an instant in the hallway and then lost again.
The feel of hard pale eyes on the back of his neck in the dining hall, until his muscles twitched with the effort not to turn around.
A shoulder brushing against his in the bustle from one class to the next, nothing uncommon, but the lingering scent of spiced soap and cool darkness were always the same.
It was infuriating. It was stalking. And it had been going on for weeks.
"Oh, Harry," Hermione had sighed. "You totally showed him up at the quidditch match. He's just looking for an excuse to get you in trouble."
"It started before the quidditch match," Harry had protested.
Surprisingly, even Ron had seemed unconcerned. "He's just trying to get one up on you, Harry," he'd said over dinner one night. "He's being an ass. Ignore him."
Easier said then done, and Harry was loosing patience.
Joint potions with the Slytherins and Harry couldn't seem to do anything right. His bubbotuber pus spilled. His frog spleen was chopped all wrong. The contents of his cauldron positively refused to boil and no matter what he did the liquid wasn't about to turn the bright golden yellow it was supposed to be, staying instead a sickly orangeish green. Snape had finally walked away in disgust.
And through it all those eyes had been on him, burning into his back relentlessly.
Enough was enough.
He had cleaned up hastily, ducking out of the class the minute it was up before Snape could issue any penalties for his failure. And he was there, at the top of the stairs, waiting when that head of pale hair came into sight, mercifully unaccompanied by it's usualy flanking bodyguards.
Draco only looked vaguely surprised when Harry grabbed at his sleeve, jerking him out of the way against the corridor wall. "Something I can do for you, Potter?" he drawled.
"Yes," Harry spat. "Tell me what the hell game you're playing."
Draco looked pointedly down at where Harry's hand was still gripping his sleeve. "Tag?" he guessed lightly.
Another group of students was coming up the stairs and Harry released him abruptly, dropping his voice. "You know damn well what I mean," he hissed. "You've been doing it for weeks. In the dining hall..."
"Well, I do have to eat," Draco interrupted wryly. Harry ignored him.
"In class, in the halls..."
"Yes, I've been in all those places," Draco replied smoothly, in a tone that said he was humoring his rival. "Just like I always am, just like every student is. Anything wrong with that?"
"When you're stalking me, yes, there is!" Harry snapped.
Draco pursed his lips. "Stalking you," he repeated, disbelieving. "Really, Potter, you've got the most inflated ego. Believing your own publicity now? Why in hell would I bother stalking you?"
"You tell me," Harry demanded.
There was the faintest pause and then Draco shrugged. "Alright," he agreed mildly, making Harry gape at his sudden capitulation. "If you really want to know."
Harry couldn't get his floundering mind to make any words to reply to that. Draco took advantage of his surprise and leaned forward, his whisper falling quietly into the bare space between them, as hissing and venemous as the words of any snake. "I'm *not* stalking you. I wouldn't bother. Why should I? You may be bloody Harry Potter, but you're nobody special. You're nothing. And I don't waste time on nothings. I've got better things to do."
The anger dropped, hot and cold, into the pit of his stomach. "Liar," Harry whispered back, the word frigid on his lips.
Draco drew away, his smile sardonic. "It'd take one to know one, wouldn't it?"
A heartbeat went by, Harry staring as Draco looked calmly back. "You're insane," Harry hissed at last.
Draco tilted his head, a small faded smile touching his lips in an expression that somehow seemed less mocking then before. "No," he said quietly. "I think you'll find that *you're* insane."
The moment, whatever it was, was gone in the next heartbeat. Smug grin firmly in place, Draco shouldered his book bag. "Now, if you'll excuse me from your delusions of grandeur, *some* of us don't want to be late to class," he announced, and swept away.
But his shoulder brushed Harry's as he turned, leaving the scent of dark spice behind him to cling like faded perfume in the folds of the other boy's robe.
-------- Ron --------
He talked to Malfoy, and now he's upset.
He didn't say anything about it. He doesn't have to. It's written all over him, from the scowling glare as he sits staring at the same page of the same chapter of the same book for the second hour in a row to the way he's twisting his quill until the nib is about to break off. He's sulking and simmering until he's about to blow up.
I eeke out another sentance on the report I'm working on, but it only adds two more lines and no matter how big I write it's nowhere near long enough. Harry's only got a few notes scratched out on scrap parchment - we're going to be at this all evening. I turn a page in my textbook, looking for any more material to add. "Malfoy still being an ass?" I ask mildly.
Harry starts, nearly knocking his ink well over. "How'd you know?"
"Weasley intuition," I tell him. "I'm gonna guess you didn't beat him into a pulp inbetween classes - you wouldn't be wound so tight if you had. And we'd be celebrating instead of doing homework."
He grimaces. His emotions are all over his face, all the time - it makes him an awful chess player. "I asked him what he thought he was doing."
"And?"
He tosses his quill down angrily, the feathery end all bent out of shape from his fidgeting. "And nothing," he snapes. "He didn't say anything."
I put my own quill down. Propping my chin in my hand, I just look at him. Harry glares back but I keep looking and after a few minutes he starts glancing away, fidgeting.
"And you *expected* him to?" I ask wryly. "Harry, this is *Malfoy* we're talking about."
He looks sheepish. "I know. Alright." He sighs testily. "Look, when did you start sounding like Hermione?"
I shake my head. "No. Hermione would tell you to leave him alone. My advice? You should have just hit him."
A grudging smile starts to make an appearance. "You're probably right. I'd feel better. He'd feel worse. I'll remember that next time."
"Good." I sigh, picking my quill back up and glaring at my scroll. "Come on. These reports are due tomorrow... we'll be here working on them all night at this rate!"
-------- Draco --------
He's restless. It shows. Not just in the shadows under his eyes at breakfast or the way his hair is more rumpled then usual or the temper that's starting to flare.
No. It's not just lost sleep.
He's really restless. It crackles off him like a static charge and every time I'm near him I can feel it.
He's starting to get the feeling that maybe there's something he doesn't know. But he doesn't know what it is, and he doesn't know where to start looking.
Hush little baby, don't say a word...
The sleeper can sleep a little longer. Just a bit.
Stop trying to control your life and just. Let. Go.
Slide.
Quote from last chapter
"It's only when you've lost everything that you're free to do anything." -- Tyler Durden, Fight Club