OK, I just want to say I do not own any of the Characters from the Harry Potter universe - except for the little Mary Sue in there, Mali. I am by no-means making any money from this.

I would also like to say thanks to all my friends at #malfoymanor, and to others such as Bleach and The Four. You guys give me the strength I need to go on living everyday.

****

'Well here and now,

Will we ever be again?

Cause I have found, all that shimmers in this world,

Is sure to fade away again.'

'Shimmer' Fuel

****

Dear Diary,

My name is Draco Malfoy. I am 17, and for the past six years have been a student of Hogwarts: School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I have also, for the past six years, been a 'follower' of the Dark Lord Voldemort.

My life, for lack of a better word, sucks. My parents refuse to love each other, and I strongly doubt they feel any love for me. My school grades have been seriously faltering recently, causing me to do relatively well in only my Potions studies, and I continue to spectacularly fail at doing anything remotely close to winning the House Quidditch Cup time after time, which by no means helps my relationship with my sires. So far every long-term relationship I have ever been in has ended with at least one member of the arrangement crying in long volumes afterwards. All I can say is it wasn't me doing the sobbing.

And then, far from my school and family problems, is the situation. Or not so far away, as a matter of fact, seeing as my dear father got me into this whole mess. On one side, is he, spurring me onto victory, and on the other is - Potter. Potter. Blast him. Every where I turn he's waiting for me, waiting and watching for me to slip up and fall flat on my face. Of all the people, I thought at least he could understand my problems.

There he was, an innocent, helpless child who was suddenly hauled up by the scruff of his neck and dumped into a whole new world which he plainly couldn't handle. I saw him there, in Diagon Alley, completely at a loss with the world around him. I watched as he shakily made his way through the Muggle Station, asking people for directions like a lost puppy. And then, I offered myself to him. I asked, asked for his friendship - such a thing a Malfoy had never before done. And why did I do this? Why did I put myself up for rejection? Because I knew he was the only who might feel my pain. No one knows how hard it is for me to live my life, no one knows how it was when I was a boy, how everyone expected me to be perfect; made me perfect. My father, my mother, the Death Eaters.. they all want me to do just what they want, just what their own greedy, selfish, over inflated egos desire.

So, in a way, Potter and I are very similar. He is an orphan; parents killed when he was only a child, brought up in an un-loving time of his life. He was suddenly introduced, out of the blue, into a whole new world he had never known of, where everyone expected so much of him that he couldn't afford to even breathe wrong. Now, even though our childhoods do at first glance look very different, if one takes just a small peek below the surface, they will note an elaborate facade. I was spoilt as a child - far from the bare settings Potter had to endure, I was given everything I desired, treated to the finest foods and most comfortable surroundings. But there was no love, no warmth, within my life. Those days were cold and equally as bleak as his, with strict rules and guidelines. Then, just before I started studying at Hogwarts, my father introduced me to his.. *friends*. And when I say friends I do by no means talk of his mates down the pub. Oh no, these are a very different sort of acquaintance, the type you have to look over your shoulder for, the type you can never turn your back on. These are the Death Eaters. They took me and changed me. Moulded me. Shaped me. They made me fit their whims and ideas, just like everyone before them, and then they broke me.

So when he told me the plan, I was only to pleased to oblige. Albus Dumbledore - sorry, Professor Dumbledore, needed someone, someone on the inside, with direct connections to Voldemort, to help him. And he came to me. For once in my life I was needed - not just wanted, or used because I was conveniently there at the time, but needed because I'm the only one who can possibly do what's needed. When Prof. Snape's role as spy went down the drain due to.. certain circumstances, it was required that a new spy be positioned I the Death Eater circle, one with good links to both the Dark Lord and his most high-ranked officers. And who better than the son of the highest of the high, and the heir to the Dark Throne? Who indeed, to work side by side with his mortal enemy and main cause of pain Harry Potter? Harry bloody Potter - it is so ironic how everything is turning out. I've spent the last of these years coming to terms with the very great possibility that I would one day have to fight, and maybe even kill that boy. The boy who Lived. The boy I... Love?

But it doesn't matter anymore. I don't have to fight him, hurt him. I can carry on pretending I still hate him, and never have to tell him how I feel. I can run away again, like I do so often.

God I'm pathetic.

"Draco, what are you writing?"

Draco was jolted out of his abyss of thoughts by Pansy's voice, bringing her presence to his attention. She was draped sideways over one of the leathery armchairs of the Common Room, her legs dangling, swinging back and forth slightly as she hummed lazily. She raised one immaculately plucked-and-pencilled eyebrow and repeated her question again. "What are you writing?"

"Oh. This." Draco looked back down at the letter. "Nothing, really, just plans for the Quidditch match on Sunday." He rolled up the parchment and slid it into the breast on his robes.

"Hmm." Pansy grunted in acknowledgement and did a sort of tilted nod, then went back to reading her fashion magazine. Draco looked around the common room, spotting Vince and Greg playing a game of exploding snap in the corner to his left, and Blaise drawing some sort of diagrams next to them (no doubt the real plans for Sunday's Quidditch Match). On his right the fire was blazing unusually merrily, and Millicent sat, on an extra-squishy poufle, braiding Mali's long black hair with silver and green ribbons. Mali was a new student who had up until that year been home-tutored by her parents, and on her arrival at Hogwarts, had quickly befriended practically all of the Slytherins (and not to mention half of the other houses to). The only person she really argued with was Draco himself, who she regularly enjoyed taunting to the point of physical violence. But he knew she didn't mean it - she usually made it up to him later that night.

It was at this point she decided to look round, so that Draco found himself face to face with her. "Yes Draco?" She purred, bating her long, heavily mascara-laden eyelashes at him, the purple firelight shining off of her many collars and necklaces. Draco pondered his reply for a moment, and spoke carefully. "Well.. I was just thinking.."

"Yes?" There was a glint at her lips, her tongue piercing sparkling silver and green.

"Why do you bother to braid your hair like that when you can do it with magic so easily?"

Mali bit her lip, but Millicent cut her off before she could answer. "We like doing it this way. It's more fun than just waving a wand, and it gives us time to talk." Mali nodded and pointed over her shoulder to Millicent "What she said."

"But you talk all the time anyway."

There was a large BANG! from the corner as Vince and Greg's game of Exploding Snap came to a conclusion, and a yell of frustration as Blaise's neat Quidditch Diagrams were set aflame by the shower of sparks that accompanied it. Draco turned to see what had happened, whilst Pansy descended into fits of laughter, only to be knocked over in a flurry of pillows as Millicent and Mali launched themselves, screaming and cackling maniacally, at Draco in his moment of vulnerability. The large green armchair he was sitting in tipped backwards, and the group fell in a tumble of limbs and robes to the floor. Draco was halfway through un-tangling his right arm from under Millicent's leg when a sharp pain shot through it. He cringed, yanking it hard from the mass of fabric that held it, and cradled it in his lap. Blaise, who had given up on saving his diagrams, leaned over him, giving his arm a quizzical look. "Hey, I think you've dislocated it D-chan."

Draco cringed again, and scowled slightly at the tall boy above him. "Yeah, I think I figured that out thanks. And don't call me D-chan." He added as an after thought.

"Whatever you say D-chan." Blaise clapped him on shoulder, and stood straight again. "You should go see Madam Pomfrey."

"I'm not going to see her for something this stupid!"

Mali, who had by now found her way out of Pansy's robes, gave Draco a seductive grin. "I could always just pop it back in for you, D-chan."

"No!" Draco stood up, with much effort considering he had a half-Veela giving him suggestive looks, and made his way to the stone steps leading to the rest of the school. "No. I think I'll just let her deal with it, alright?"

"Want us to go with you?" Greg called to him, rubbing the singed area where he had once borne eyebrows.

"No thanks, I think I know the way by now." Draco put on a sarcastic 'I'm not that dumb you know' look to show he didn't really mean to be hurtful, and turned, heading up the stairs and out of the common room.

***

Draco yawned, and stretched his newly located arm. He had reached the Medical Wing quickly, and Madam Pomfrey had been able to relatively painlessly click his arm back into place. He slid off of the bed he had sat on, and thanked her. "Just you make sure it doesn't happen again." She told him as he left. "I hate having to do that, the sound it makes is disgusting."

Draco's thoughts were back on the many topics of his letter from earlier that evening, as he walked the cold corridors from the infirmary, and he lingered on Harry's part for a moment. He made his way down the marble staircase to the Entrance Hall and dungeons, and rolled up his sleeve and checked his wristwatch. Even though the watch was a muggle product, he found it useful and easier to read than a wizarding clock, and so wore one around school to keep track of lesson time. The time was 11:53 - much later that Draco had anticipated, and he cursed silently, knowing Filtch would be on the lookout around the Hall for late-night wanderers. He hurried his pace, and was just at the dungeons door when something large crashed into him hard and fast. For the second time in one day, Draco fell backwards to the ground, letting out a punctual yell of obscenities as he did. After a quick moment, Draco regained his composure and looked up, only to be faced by the last person he wanted to see at that moment. Harry Potter.

The raven-haired, emerald eyed boy looked at Draco, and what for one fleeting moment Draco thought might have been happiness at seeing him, he soon put down to his imagination. He stood up, brushing of his robes, and gave Harry his best, most incriminating sneer. "Watch where you're going next time Potter." He growled, and swept past the now fearful looking boy like he wasn't even there, and towards the dungeons.

Harry was still for a moment, halting even his breathing as the long, silky black robes slid over him, but then he breathed again, as if awoken from a deep slumber. He spotted a roll of parchment on the stones before him, and, guessing it must have slipped from Draco's robes as he fell, picked it up and called to him, turning. "Hey! Malfoy, you dropped this!"

But all he got in reply was the slamming of the heavy dungeon door, and Draco was gone. Harry stared for a moment at the parchment in his hand, and then slid it into the breast of his robes, just as Draco had done before him. He got up, still a little shakily from the encounter with the pale, blonde Slytherin, and donned his invisibility cloak once more.

"WHERE IS IT!?"

"Where's what?"

Draco shook out his robes again, and hurled them across the room. He cursed under his breath, and started rummaging through the things in his trunk. Vince sat on the edge of his bed across the round room, and swung his legs idly. "Have you lost something Draco?"

"Yes-I've-lost-something! It was here, I swear.."

"Well.." Greg walked in from the bathroom, drying his short, bristly hair with a towel. "My mom always says, if you've lost somethin', you've gotta think about where you last had it.."

"Thanks Greg, that's really helpful." Draco rolled his eyes and slammed his trunk lid down again, then sat on it. "Look, have any of you seen a roll of parchment around here? Blaise?"

"There are lots or rolls of parchment around here D." The charming boy said, not moving his eyes from his magazine. He was lying flat on his bed, arms straight up, tilting the pages sideways and back and forth. "Hey, Greg, this one looks like your mom!"

"Maybe you dropped it at the Medical Wing?" Vince hopped off of his bed and onto Blaise's. "Wow, she really does look like your mom.."

Draco shook his head, his chin in his palms. "I didn't loose it there, or on the way there."

"What about on the way back? Oi, gimme that here!" There was a scrabbling sound, and Blaise grabbed for his magazine, but Greg now held it firmly out of reach in one monstrous hand, keeping Blaise back with the other.

"No, I couldn't have - Oh god no." Amazingly, Draco went even paler than usual, as the many possibilities dawned on him. "Potter." He thought for a moment of bursting into Potter's dormitories to retrieve his lost letter. "No.. It's to late, I'd get caught."

"What about Potter? Who'd get caught?" But Vincent never got his replies, for Draco had climbed into bed and pulled the curtains around it tight. Things could not possibly get any worse than this.