For the thousandth time Harry asked himself why he'd never transferred out of Divination. Maybe it was just as well, because gods knew he could use an hour of sleep instead of mind-crushingly difficult lessons, but bloody HELL it was boring sometimes. Arithmancy was looking frighteningly inviting, even considering the stacks of homework Hermione was always doing for it. And he thought he was developing an allergy to the damned incense; he got a headache the instant he got a whiff of it. Though maybe that was psychosomatic.

Although they'd covered every imaginable method of divining short of sacrificing to demons or digging through goat's entrails (Trelawney tended to go into hysterics at the thought of blood), the class dragged onward. This final year they'd finally left astrology behind, to the overwhelming joy of even Lavender and Parvati, and were currently working on— again— scrying. Right now they were trying to find their 'power stone' by picking spheres and crystals to gaze in from an enormous cabinet stuffed with stones of all kinds, colours and shapes. Harry privately referred to it as Trelawney's pet rock collection.

Ron was trying with amethyst today; he had spread out on the table before him a polished egg, a tumbled pebble, a small chunk of crystals still spread on the matrix, and a huge individual crystal. He grumbled almost inaudibly as he looked at them all glumly. Trelawney jingled by, cooing, "Remember to hold your hands above the stones and open yourself to feel their vibrations! Try to commune with the spirit within the stone!" As she moved on causing swirls in the incense that Harry followed with his eyes dazedly, Ron muttered "The only spirits I want to commune with are in Hogsmeade." Harry snickered and tried to bring his attention back to the assortment of rocks *he'd* picked out today.

Ron was going the route of picking a new type of stone each class and grabbing as many examples of it as he could find in the cabinet. Harry just picked up a handful at random since Trelawney kept insisting that 'each stone has its own personality; one piece of carnelian may not like you, but another piece just like it could be your mineral soulmate' and it didn't seem to matter. He and Ron often spent hours sending the Gryffindor common room into gales of laughter by staging conversations between a wizard on a quest for his mineral soulmate and the various stones he looked at.

This whole thing was painfully absurd. They didn't even get to do much scrying, the whole class was spent just 'trying to build an affinity' with a pile of rocks. On the other hand, as long as they appeared to be doing *something* with the rocks, they could pretty much chat freely, as long as they kept it quiet. Ron had actually fallen asleep on some hematite last week and had gotten away with it by claiming that he was connecting with the stone through his dreams! Despite the dents in his cheek from the hematite, Trelawney had bought it and fluttered excitedly while telling the class that Ron had a 'distinct talent' for 'understanding what the stones need.'

Today Ron was making up bad haikus about Trelawney's fashion sense (or lack thereof)—

rhinestone glasses ugh
heaps of jewellery can't hide
pink and orange don't mix


must come from the trash
clothes even tourists won't buy
oh gods she's batty

—and Harry was idly poking at the handful he'd selected today. A smooth piece of moss agate was interesting enough to look at for a while; he put it aside to try gazing in later. He tried and failed to resist the urge to prance a carved jade pony around the edge of the table while Ron tried not to snicker loudly enough to attract attention.

After a bit he put the horse down. He couldn't actually imagine trying to scry in it anyway, all he'd see was the shape of it. Not that he'd really ever seen anything anyway.

Finally he got around to looking at the only stone he'd picked intentionally; a polished moonstone pendulum, complete with silver chain. He'd been vaguely interested in moonstones, well, technically since he'd first heard of them as a child. They sounded pretty, intriguing; hell, they sounded like the moon, didn't they? Pale and inconstant, ever- changing. Intriguing. He'd never actually seen one, hadn't technically known what one would look like, but he'd seen this in the 'moonstone' section (yes, Trelawney organised her pet rock collection by stone type, then into subcategories based on shape, colour, area collected from, and 'psychic colour vibration.') and had snatched it up, finding its shape appealing. Besides, it was a nice, large, clear example of the stone. He could finally look at one and know what they were really like.

He picked it up by the chain and watched it swing lazily. Not as impressive as he'd hoped, really. Just a pale, white-clearish rock, sort of cloudy; crazed and striated with fractures all through it. Like a half-frozen waterdrop, or the moon through a thin cloud. Pretty enough, he supposed.

It slowly settled into an erratic, elliptic sort of clockwise circle-thing. He watched it spin round and round and —

A flash of promise— blue-green-grey-light.

He seized the not-sphere, rotated it slowly in his hand, examining it from each angle, until there! it was again.

The colour ghosted fitfully across the surface, changing shade and angle every time he tried to pull it back. Silvergrey-BLUE-stormcloud-GREEN- waterdrop-lavender. Beautiful. Inconstant and ephemeral. Absolutely beautiful. All he'd ever dreamt they might be.

He released the pendulum, let it swirl and swing as it wished. They'd covered pendulums a year and a half back; they were pretty damned yes/no. But he wasn't asking a question. He watched the stone itself, waiting for the light to streak over its surface just exactly, seeing the colour variation each time. He suddenly understood what made Trelawney collect pet rocks.

Draco's eyes looked out of the pendulum at him for a split second.

He blinked several times, stared.

Waited.

Again.

He snatched the stone in mid-swirl with Seeker reflexes, surveyed the circumference of it with wide eyes. Nothing. Colour with nothing behind it.

Let it go. Draco's eyes glinted out again, snared his with fishhooks till the stone moved out of orbit with the trembling of his hand.

Harry dropped the pendulum with a click of the stone and hiss of the chain on the table. Trelawney was across the room discussing trying to mesh one's aura with that of the stone's spirit with Lavender and Parvati and didn't hear. Even Ron didn't spare him a glance, too busy muttering curses at the chunk of raw amethyst crystals.

He had seen something. Finally. For the first time. He had seen something in a scrying stone.

If you could consider a pendulum a scrying stone. Particularly when it was BEING USED AS A PENDULUM.

He had seen Draco Malfoy's eyes.

He buried his face in his hands, afraid to look or think any longer.

***

It had only gotten worse from that point. His awareness of Malfoy, his beauty, the remembrance of Malfoy's eyes flickering from a swinging crystal, increased every time he saw him. Every time he got away he'd hope that next time seeing the reality would prove his imaginings to be unfounded; every time he'd be staggered by the fact that the reality beat his imaginings hollow.

He'd found other moonstones. They did the same thing to him, no matter what the colour, no matter what the quality. Draco's eyes leapt out at his in almost-imperceptible flickers. He thought it was just imagination by now, but unquestionably, he'd acquired an indelible connection.

Malfoy hadn't been holding up his end of the bargain either when it came to mutual animosity, but by no means could Harry see any especial warmth in his behaviour. There was something…odd…about the way Malfoy was behaving, but it couldn't exactly be considered a burgeoning friendship. Even Crabbe and Goyle seemed taken aback by his apathy, and tended to move away from him, becoming just a hulking pair of sniggers and unfocussed malice in the shadows. Some days Malfoy would flare up in what was almost what he used to be; most days he would fade into something listless and even civil, if you didn't know to look closely for his nasty Slytherin behaviours. Harry often caught him staring off into space with a vacancy, a dullness in his eyes that was utterly unlike him, or at least what Harry'd ever seen him be. He lost weight, which he couldn't afford to lose, his skin and hair lost lustre. Once Harry caught him staring blankly into the surface of his desk with a faintly suffering expression warping his face and noticed blood smeared on his fingers.

Harry watched him all the time, though. Saw the beauty of him even in his dejection, which he hid as soon as he realised someone was watching him.

He didn't dare talk to Ron about the whole thing; Ron was absolute in his hatred of Malfoy, and Harry couldn't fault him considering that Malfoy's sharp tongue hadn't spared Ron at all, until this year, and that didn't make up for all the biting it had done before. He might have brought it up with Hermione, but he felt awkward and foolish after talking to her last year; he was afraid to admit how much worse it had gotten, how obsessive he'd become, how much he imagined he'd seen in someone traditionally unviewable except as an enemy. He was embarrassed for overanalysing every interaction. Harry knew he'd sound like a smitten girl, or like the frighteningly obsessed. And he still couldn't think of admitting that it was Malfoy that he was so desperately drawn to; he hadn't enough experience with being attracted to anyone to say absolutely that he knew his preference was for men, let alone so strongly for men that he wanted even someone who was supposed to be his enemy. Thus far it seemed his preferences entirely were limiting themselves to Malfoy. And he knew even Hermione-the-infinitely-reasonable would be horrified to discover this buried yearning he had was for Malfoy, though she knew he still had a fixation. He held his tongue and hoped the whole thing would blow over.

But it didn't.

And now he carried a choker of moonstones and silver in his pocket all the time, fantasising about how it would bring out the faintest blush of colour in Draco's skin. Wondering if it would appear weighty and clumsy displayed against Draco's fragility. Cursing himself for a damned fool and wishing he could just throw it away, along with this fascination.

But he couldn't.

He asked himself if he could really know what he wanted at 17, know it well enough to risk propositioning someone who, while not exactly an enemy lately, was by no means a friend. Enough to risk alienating his friends, and making himself available as a laughingstock and pariah to the whole school, if Draco turned him down. He wasn't even entirely sure he'd know what to do if Draco didn't turn him down, if he'd find that the reality of touching Draco, kissing him, was unappealing.

No matter how fiercely his logical side argued against it, he found himself coming closer to snapping each day, closer to just saying fuck all and abandoning his self-control and seizing the moment. Or making one. Just getting it over with, one way or another. The uncertainty was driving him mad. Even rejection had to be better than this torment. And hey, there was only the rest of this year to be the school joke, right?

In his saner moments he laughed at himself for an idiot, for playing the moody bastard and getting so sucked into an attraction. But the saner moments came more and more infrequently.