Disclaimer: Jk? Not me. I wish. Hogwarts would be ever so slightly different if I were…

Warning: Slash ahoy. Harry's thought about some of this a lot, so it gets a bit graphic. Mind the rating as you go in.

A/N: I'm not completely satisfied with the title. If you think it should be something else, help me out! Thanks.

Feedback: Would be really appreciated. My first attempt at H/D; I'd love to hear what you think.

A side note: 'd like to dedicate this to Kat, for dragging me fully into the wondrous depths of H/D love where before I had merely wandered, kicking my arse into gear to read the DT, being the first person who has seen fanfic completely as I do, and thus making me bounce and shriek and happily concede that we must share a brain or something. Being a slash whore has been better since I stumbled across you. *grins*

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Draco,

So I broke the quill I was using to write this. That was probably a blessing as the letter the rush of ink ruined opened with something ridiculous along the lines of 'Hello'.

We don't say hello, Draco. You may have that first time in Madam Malkin's; that was before you even knew who I was. You even said a sort of 'see you later' then. Strangely optimistic for you. You didn't grace me with a goodbye this time, but I'm hardly surprised. Once you knew my name you just wanted to get to know me because of that. You always were a bit blinded by names. Father, Pureblood, Muggle, Mudblood. Potter…

Anyway, Hermione said that I broke the nib because I was pressing too hard, because I'm angry, and that I should give up writing and use a dictator quill (as I am). I told her she was wrong, which I think we both found difficult to hear, but it's true. I'm not angry. Not anymore. Because I was, you see. I was angry, angry that you could be so narrow minded and stupid again, to leave; but now I just miss you. And I'm tired. I'm tired of waiting and tired of hiding and tired of playing. You stopped playing, you left your pieces on the board and you got up and you – you went away.

And it's colder without you.

Ha, I bet that's got you stumped, even more so than receiving a letter from me. And more than a little pissy, if I'm not mistaken, since I know you work so hard at 'chilling people to the bone' because oh, you're such a bad ass. You think that we see you as some icy breath of air that tells us the truth and raises the hair on our arms or something equally poetic – you're that kind of person, I know you think of yourself that way.

No.

It's colder because you aren't here to make my blood pay attention so that my cheeks burn and my palms crackle and my stomach drops low and pushes embers right into my body until I know even my breath is hot.

I always wondered how you did that, when you are always so cold to me, to everyone, in your voice and how you look at us. And maybe with the others you did chill them - but not with me. Whenever you looked at me you made heat rise; and I don't mean from anger, not like Ron who flushes red before he lashes out at you and yes, actually, that does make me angry; not you – wait. Ok, so this is getting less and less coherent and I should probably start again – no, argh, I didn't mean that!  God, you have to watch what you say around this bloody quill – and yes, do keep writing all this you stupid thing. …Anyway, right…you do make me angry Draco. But it's an anger that wakes me up, makes me burn and live and there's nobody can get me going like you. Nobody I look at like you - although you don't see it.

But mostly, mostly I get angry that I can't react like Ron does. And that I wish I could, almost as much as I wish he'd been able to hold back so you would just get bored and go away and make it easier for me to breathe again. I know you'll go eventually; you need your attention kept.

I could keep it…

No, let's not go there quite yet.

Ron. You make Ron red because you strike out with your words and infuriate him, yes, but his flush is just external, his reaction isn't hot. Not like mine. You fill me, you burn and bite and I feel like I have frostbite from this scalding ice so sculpted and diamond edged and sharp near me and all of it, the stabs of white fire in me and the heat low in my belly, makes whatever you have said worth it. Not that it doesn't still bug me, but it shows me more.

And I know I hate Voldemort, I know his existence makes my blood feel frozen and makes me shake with the deadly HATE I feel for him and what he did but you I cannot hate in that way. In any way, really, save for the fact that when I see you try and close us off from you with sharp words and the same old things, when you try and do what you think would please him, I think that you are so fractured and I hate that. And yet you keep on going though the mirror you think you are reflecting in is so cracked. You can't see the true path of the reflection you try for, the reflection of him.

You are not him.

It makes me want you even more, you know, in wonder if you'd ever do something so much as mask yourself for me. Mask that, that flashing hot and mesmerising self I've seen you be a couple of times, in the air, or when you think no-one is watching – because I do watch – or when you are shocked.

Or a ferret…

But, willing is how I want you, Draco. I'd want you to choose what I want us to have. Make that choice now instead of when you were too young to make any coherent decision - not that you likely were given ones at any age - and the only way I hate you now is because you haven't tried to make it, when I know you could, and because I have only seen you chill, not burning. Not like I want to. Not like I do already, for you.

I could make you burn as I do. I've pictured it so much I almost feel it has happened, so it's always a disappointment to have flat, cool gray eyes glance at me in corridors instead of the wide and flickering ones burning into my own, to go with the spot of colour I could bring on your cheekbones not from anger but something else, and the flush flickering to life along the base of your ribcage then licking up as though it were tracing the lines my fingers were to take, heart slamming a fast, hot rhythm through the cream skin of your chest pressed against my own but best, best of all the heat at the head of your cock as I take it in my hand, warm it with my fingers that would spark with my own blood roaring underneath at the same pace I feel yours is thrumming, all just from your presence, and I would hold your heat with mine and make you move and make you moan as I do on my own, make you lick your dry lips and gasp.

Oh yes, Draco.

I think about you.

I think that I could burn it out of you, that I could melt whatever ice thing you have going on in there, in a way that Voldemort or your father can't, because he wouldn't love you, and Lucius doesn't know you like I do.

Stop looking so sour, I do. There are no reasons as to why or how I possibly could, I know that. I just do.

Look, your father is a fucking selfish murdering hypocrite, trying to rid the world of what he doesn't like about himself. And you can shut up your snort there; muggle borns are as much a part of him as purebloods; they're just all part of the magic that he's supposed to be so good at. That makes them part of him.

Well you are me Draco, you are what I don't like about myself, my reflection, except I never tried to be you, as you do with your Father. I just am you. I see that you are selfish pride and intense hatred and vanity and power you seem to have no control of, and I know that I have these things too and if I can love you then I know I'd be stronger. I appreciate that's not going to be the most romantic thing you will have ever heard but it's true, and besides, I think a person who could accept you with all of those things, isn't that a more truthful and stronger and more real love to offer you than one where I would deny them? I know there are things about me that you hate too, but I don't want to change you, I want you as you are to change me. And hey, maybe being with me might give you the opportunity to act in the other ways I know you can, having what you want who will not judge and will give you devotion back, like the devotion you've shown to people who are not worthy - your father, Draco, come on - he's not capable of the love you want! No matter that it is a different type you look for from him, he wouldn't be as good at the protection and pride as me, no-one else would fight or scream or want or know or burn for you as good as me – and see, there we go, there's my vanity.

And I don't care. Not when it comes to you. Especially when you're not here! Christ, I can't see you Draco, I can't hear you I can't get close enough to smell you and know that I could reach out and touch if I were clever enough to think up some way that didn't involve hurting you or doing a Wronskei Feint towards you and 'falling' off my broom so that I land right in your lap.

Not that I've ever planned it, or anything.

You've just- you've become such a part of everything I've seen or smelled or heard or - or things that I have tasted in the air and do you know that when we're in the potions room in Summer and I have deliberately messed up ingredients so that I have to get more from the front and so pass you back and forth, or on the Quidditch pitch when we fly so close together, your sweat smells like dry tinder?

I do wonder if it's just me sometimes, if I just smell myself desperately awaiting you to light me up; but it is understandable I mix us up because you are so much me and so much the one who when I fly with you and when I duel with you or am near you or dream of you is only you and nothing else is there. You're everything I reach for, a thing I want to touch and hold and borrow into myself so that I could be all I could be with you.

Oh I want to touch you, Draco.

I wouldn't try to destroy you, you know. I don't want to change you. I think you know that. I want you with me, because somehow with all these things about you that I loathe, don't get me wrong, I really do, I know that if I accepted you with those things that the rest would be even more beautiful in comparison. Already the tiny flashes I've seen were so…so much that I'm now in this state without you. Even as such an insufferable git you're somehow also the most fragile, strong and glowing spark of haunted power and passion I know, someone that can warm me to an actual temperature instead of the nothing Voldemort inspires. And I don't know why, except that I love you and if you'd leave your father and Voldemort and come back, come to me, I could give you something they could not.

I'd give you yourself; because it is inside me already, awakened in me by realising that my reflection is you. No Mirror of Erised. Just a mirror. And one that holds me as much as I hold it.

So. That's it, really. That's why I wrote and why I'm kind of annoyed my hand is free because I'm now trying NOT to let it creep down to what my own words have stirred, since silencing charms don't mask the fevered movements which make drawn curtains rustle that Seamus seems instinctively to know and enjoy teasing about.

Just come back soon Draco. You can tell yourself it's a chivalrous to help me out, rather than because you're got the same understanding (and hard on) as I have, since I'm going to get marked down in every fucking lesson for not risking picking up a quill if you don't. I don't even have a Quidditch injury to blame for not using my hands, since I haven't been able to play since you left.

I just…

I'm waiting.

Harry.

PS: I've charmed the letter so that you can't burn it, no matter what you decide. It's just too ridiculously ironic to set me on fire in this sense, too - and if nothing else I've said so far did, I hope that drew a real smile from you there, because the last way I want to picture you before I fall asleep having sent Hedwig off with this, is you hard and happy.

Nice way to sum up what I hope for us, I think.