Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't ask, don't tell?

A/N: The Tile and each chapter run together I.E. Take a Breath, Then Live the Moment. The POV switches around a little, sorry if this confuses anyone. Oh and, the first part is only significant if I choose to continue after Take a Breath. This is my 2nd HP fiction, and I had the whole idea planned out before the Fifth book came out. So enjoy, and let's hope I can actually finish it!

Take a Breath…

…Then live the moment.

Chapter one (prologue)

Harry could feel his hair being pushed around by the warm breeze. He was standing on a dark field of ashen rock that went on as far as the eye could see. The sky was a deathly black color, but there was a strange haze was peering over the horizon revealing a terrible sight. There was a red river flowing slowly off to his right and bodies, dead bodies, were laying all around. Worst of all, they were dead bodies of the same person, Harry Potter. Strangely undisturbed he peered curiously into the steadily flowing river.

His questions grew once he peered over the bank. There was nothing reflected back, though he thought there should have been. 'What is this?' he thought as he turned around. He lifted one of the many lifeless bodies from the charred earth. The eyes were open, staring at nothing, yet penetrating, expressionless and cold. They reminded Harry of ice. It was plain to see that the stiff person was dead. He hadn't really realized how heavy it was till now. Half sickened, half confused he dropped his own body and watched as it fell into the darkness.

Harry woke with a start, but he didn't sit up, he just rolled over in his four-poster bed. He couldn't clearly remember his dream, only the sensation he had gotten from it. He felt the thin, lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead. It had a tendency to hurt if Voldemort was close or feeling hateful. No, it didn't hurt. 'How weird,' he thought. The unsettling feeling was now overcome by the urge to sleep. He thought about the dream no more as he drifted off into oblivion.

Draco woke up in his dormitory and almost screamed. He could remember his sickening dream! He had been lying on the hard ground looking at a jet-black sky. When he looked to his side he saw himself, lying cold and lifeless. There were dead bodies of him everywhere. He remembered someone picking him, up but didn't see who it was…

He put his left hand on his forehead. It cool, yet he felt feverish. He'd had other dreams similar to this one, but this dream was almost worse somehow.

He sat up, letting the blankets fall freely to his side. He stood up after a moment and picked up his Hogwarts robes. He didn't feel tired any more, but very wide-awake. It wasn't that he was scared to go back to sleep, but since it was almost five in the morning it would have been pointless.

He didn't feel like waking Crabbe or Goyle. They were loud and clunky, and he just wasn't in the mood for company. He also didn't want to attract any attention. Draco wondered why he was still friends with them. Then he remembered the protection they provided. Dismissing any more thoughts of the two boys, he concentrated on avoiding the few teachers that would be out this early in the morning. He wondered for a moment when they slept, since they always seemed busy, teaching or patrolling at night. They probably all had their own catwalk, and took shifts. He had subconsciously learned the patterns, for the easiest way out of the castle, on his many solemn, secluded outings. His memory proved its worth as he swiftly exited through the castle doors.

The morning's cold crispness stabbed Draco's exposed skin like a thousand frozen needles. He drew his Hogwarts robes more tightly around his green, silk pajamas, walking swiftly across the dew-laden grass towards the shadowed forest. Leaning up against a tree he peered out over the lake. It looked colder than death in the vague early morning light. He, of course, did not test this theory. The sight of the smooth lake surface calmed Draco somewhere within his being. He took a really deep breath as if trying to suck up this soothing feeling, but the bitter air still burned his exposed skin, his idea for a stroll seemed worse by the moment. When he could no longer stand the chill, he returned to the castle and made his way to the Slytherin dorm.

Draco headed into the Great Hall, after fixing himself up in his the dormitory. The sky-mirroring ceiling was reflecting the overcast morning, it was lighter outside then it had been earlier. There were only a couple of teachers in the Great Hall now, but Draco knew the other students would be piling in at any moment. Draco, now more formally dressed, ran a hand on his platinum blond hair making sure it laid flat. Draco took his seat at the Slytherin table. Sure enough, as he sat down, groups of people had started to enter the hall. Behind a group of Slytherins, Draco immediately recognized two hard-to-miss boys, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. They took their seats on either side of Draco, who groaned inwardly. He never in his mind thought of Crabbe and Goyle as friends, yet that's what he called them.

Neither Crabbe nor Goyle asked where he'd been earlier that morning, they never did. They never asked questions and they really didn't seem to care. Draco thought they were too stupid at times to string sentences together. He shrugged this thought away and turned to the food filled golden plates in front of him.

More students and teachers were coming into the Great Hall, taking their respective seats. Among them were Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Draco glared at them as they came in, feeling a familiar pitch of anger when he glared at Harry. Draco recalled their first year when he had held out his hand in a request of friendship. Harry had declined his hand, and Draco had hated him for it, his hate growing stronger over the 5 years he had known him. They had become enemies, who fought at every chance they got, and bitter rivals on the Quidditch pitch, and even in some times their classes. Draco was jealous, but not in any apparent way, of being beaten at Quidditch, though he would never admit it, not even to himself.

Harry walked into the Great Hall with Hermione and Ron, his dream hanging on only by a thread at the edges of his mind. They took their seats.

"I wonder who the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is," Ron said eagerly.

"We have it today," Hermione said looking at the timetable she had received.

"It's right after Care of Magical Creatures. We've got that first today," Harry said, looking over Hermiones shoulder.

On the other side of the room, looked over his own timetable along with Crabbe, Goyle and the rest of the Slytherins. He furrowed his brow.

"Divination this morning…" he smirked awkwardly. He cracked a joke about Professor Trelawney, and the Slytherins around him broke out laughing. This was how it always was.

Ron had seen the fits of laughter starting from Draco's mouth. Ron glared at Draco, "I really hope we don't have Care of Magical Creatures with the Slytherins this year," he grumbled. "It's bad enough we have Potions with them every year."

After everyone subsided at the Slytherin table Draco got to his feet. Immediately, Crabbe and Goyle looked to him for instructions, but he said he needed to use the rest room and that he'd be back, so they waited.

"Yeah, there's absolutely no looking forward to Potions tomorrow," Harry said sounding slightly defeated.

"Harry, don't," Hermione started but Ron suddenly stood up. "Where are you going Ron?" she asked.

"To the bathroom… I hope everyone's ok with that, cause I really got to go," he replied with a grin then turned to leave.

"That's a little too much information," Hermione let out as she went back to her meal.

Ron steadily walked out of the Great Hall. As he turned to head for the bathroom he came face to face with Draco.

"Oh," Ron said his tone cold and hard as steel, "it's you…"

"I feel so important…" Draco said in his casual drawl.

"I really hope you don't, because no one cares about you. Except your mum maybe, but even then I feel sorry for her, any one like that doesn't deser--"

"If you don't shut up, Weasley, I'll curse you right here," he said his name with certain iciness as he glared at Ron. His patience with these useless comments about his mother was growing thinner every second.

"I'd like to see you try," Ron said, returning his glare.

Suddenly Draco realized he had no one to back him up, but he was too angry to care, "I really don't care if I do any real damage. Your friends won't miss you, seeing as you're no use to them anyway. Though, your mum might not have enough money for a proper funeral," Draco retorted, he was trying to get Ron back for his earlier comment about Dracos mom.

Ron was so hopelessly entangled in a sudden thread of rage that everything around him blurred. All he wanted was Malfoy to be destroyed, physically or mentally. His wand lay in his pocket forgotten as he lunged at Draco, punching him in the face.

Draco was too stunned to react in time. He'd expected retaliation, but not physical. The wind was knocked out of him as he was thrown to the floor.

Ron looked down at Draco; he could see a huge bruise forming under his eye where he'd hit him. An intense feeling filled Ron, like liquid fire in his veins. What he'd just done felt good, like glory, and all he needed to do now was finish the job.

Hermione had dismissed her thought as soon as Ron had said he really needed to go, but Harry watched him as he left. And he saw him confront Malfoy. 'Oh no…' he thought, 'this can't be good.' He could sense something bad was going to happen if no one pulled them apart, Draco was too arrogant and Ron too stubborn to leave the situation alone. Harry stood up to make sure nothing would happen, but as he started to make his way there it was too late, Ron had punched Draco.

Before Ron was able to punch Draco again, Harry seized him under the armpits and wrenched him up. This was somewhat of a bad idea on Harry's part, as Ron was now open to attack from Draco, who took the chance and rammed his elbow into Ron's stomach. Ron slumped out of Harry's grasp and crumpled onto the floor. Harry pushed Draco, who was unsteady after his last attack, back down on the ground. Before anything else could happen, Professor McGonagall had strategically placed herself between all three of them.

"That's it!" she yelled. "Weasley, Potter, Malfoy, all of you follow me!"

As she led them down the corridor they glared at each other, Draco with his hand to his face and Ron with both hands on his stomach.

McGonagall stopped them short on route to her office and decided to tell them off where they stood, since now no one was around to hear them.

"I don't care for the reasons behind it, but fighting is never accepted." Her tone was calm but shadowed a sea of anger. "I'll find you later to give detention. I'd give them to you now, but I have a lot of work that needs to be done before class starts. I suggest you all make your way to class. And if I hear that any of you have been fighting again, expulsion might not be out of the question!"

She left down one way, which seemed to be in the direction of Draco's class because he followed behind her without looking back. Ron and Harry looked at each other, both scared and yet relived that they didn't have to deal with McGonagall or Draco right now. So they made their way out to the grounds for Care of Magical Creatures with a sense of overshadowing dread.

End of chapter one