'He didn't let you?'
'What do you take me for?' Draco blazed suddenly. 'Of course he did!'
'Then...?'
'Now I'm supposed to serve. Only - Harry - I don't take orders - it took me a bit to long to work that out though; Order's are for the week and brainless.'
'It's-its not to late though,' said Harry hastily, still wondering whether Draco was still considering suicide. He racked his brains for anything to discourage him. 'I-I have a scare-and apart from some pains now and then-it really-is nothing.'
A ghost of a smile fleeted across Draco's tired face.
'We are both scarred Harry,' said Draco looking over at the fire with such intensity as if Harry were there, and not next to him. 'But there is a difference. You're scarred with love, and I as far from that you could ever get.'
Draco pulled the sleeve of his robe up, revealing the Dark Mark Harry had been dreading.
'We can - you can - tell Dumbledore-he'll-he'll understand.'
Draco's laugh was dry and scathing.
'He's a batty old fool who knows nothing more luck,' he scoffed. 'Pathetic, really.'
Harry, who was still hurting from all the deceit, and lies Dumbledore had told him, did not bother with a defence.
'You think that too, don't you?' said Draco astonished. 'What happened to you to? I thought you believed the best in everyone.'
'I never did,' said Harry perhaps more sharply than he meant. 'You never saw me sit down for a cup of tea with Voldemort and a quick gossip, did you?'
Draco considered this, and the idea seemed almost enough to make him smile.
'I guess,' Harry continued. 'I grew apart from all that crap.'
Draco reached out slowly and tipped Harry's chin up.
'You still look like a child to me,' he smirked.
Harry, who had let Draco's pale hand affect his insides so badly, was stung by that comment; because, well, he felt like a child. He'd been through so much, and still he felt the haunts of childhood behind him, waiting to be experienced.
Harry reached up and took Draco's cold hand slowly.
'A child would not have been through what I have been. Draco, a child is someone who runs away.'
'Once again,' he said coldly. 'I am being discouraged from my ideas. I will, Potter, create another one. I never fancied being doomed to a life of pitiful service. No matter how much you try and keep me alive, we both know death...'
Draco had been leaning so much forwards Harry could feel his hot breath on his lips.
Then Draco's hand tightened painfully.
'Someone's coming.'
Both scrambled to their feet, and Draco cleared out the cauldron filled with half of the ingredients he had used in the poison ('Evanesco') and Harry cleared up the shattered glass. But before the fire was extinguished, a very pale faced looking Professor McGonagall.
'What on earth do you think you two have been doing?' she shrieked. Then even louder -'Have you two been duelling - I don't believe this - and what in Gods name have you done to your wrist?'
Both looked down at their wrists, but it was Harry's wrist that was bleeding from the crushed glass.
'Fifty points from both Gryffindor and Slytherin. This has got to be the most stupid stunt you two have ever pulled!
'Potter, up to the infirmary! Malfoy, get to your dormitory before I deduct anymore points! Now!'
Muttering and swearing under breath, Malfoy took one last fleeting look at Harry. Harry returned the intense glare, and was filled with a hope that Malfoy was not going to brew another potion any time soon.
~*~*~*~
Harry Potter died that night from posion. It was clear he had ingested the poison through his wrist and into the blood. He was killed slowly, and though the death was not fast, the boy did not suffer too much pain.
Malfoy, as an excellent potion brewer, could at least be credited for that, but was found no sooner than a few months later killed at the hands of the same poison.
