~Sounds of Silence~

A/N: This is my break from 'Dark Temptations'. The Mind-block is bigger than expected, but I will try to do my best in updating every other week, as promised. Honestly though, if you have any tips in Volleyball, then tell me how to not make my arms look like they've been whipped with a twig after every practice. People are starting to think me stranger than what I am, so if you have advice, bring it on!

Disclaimer: Harry Potter will never in my whole entire time of being belong to me. Do you honestly think I will be richer than the queen? If anything I'm aiming to be richer than the president! And if he's poorer than the queen, then I will aim for getting more than her. Or try at least.

The song is by Simon and Garfunkel, the sounds of silence. I love that song, but I also like Mrs. Robinson or Feeling Groovy, that always puts me in a happy mood!

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Draco had been sitting in his room, thinking of how to get his mind blank from any kind of thought or emotion.

"Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk to you again," he began singing, a song he had heard a muggle say on the streets, repeating it, word for word, someone who looked familiar. Spring Green Eyes. "Because a vision softly creeping, left it's seeds while I was sleeping."

A strange person, no one had paid attention to, possibly had not even seen, except for him. Draco had seen this stranger, standing there in the rain, repeating those words, people walking by, passing 'through' him.

"And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains," Draco didn't understand a single one of those sentences he had uttered, but still copying him nonetheless. "Within the sounds of silence." And then it clicked. That person reminded him of Harry Potter!

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Harry lay on his bed, uttering his pain through incoherent sentences, writing them in his own secret language, so as what seemed strange to others who read it, made perfect sense to him and the others that ached.

"In restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone," he said, his thoughts blank, a white sheet newly created. "Beneath the halo of a street lamp, I turned my collar to the cold and damp."

He had defeated Lord Voldemort one on one in his sixth year, last year. But when he came out of that battle, he had been changed, others believed slowly going mad. Like a demon did he stagger slowly out of the cold mist swirling about him, his hair a disarray, clothes ripped and him bleeding. Harry didn't know how he survived, but he was sitting here and now, on his bed in Hogwarts, forgetting everything around him.

"When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light that split the night," Harry had been miserable all year. Ron had moved and Hermione was in a muggle Rehab. After what they had done to her, he shuddered at her screams of pain flashing through his memory. A miracle she was still alive.

"And touched the sounds of silence," he uttered through slightly parted lips before falling into a fitful sleep.

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'What's wrong with him?' Draco wondered, assuring himself that it had been Harry he had seen the previous week. He was climbing into bed, thinking about his vacation week and of Harry.

'What else?' came a voice from the back of his head, 'the after-shock of his first kill.'

But why did he care? He loathed Harry for what he was, what he is, for what he will be?

'Do you?' he asked himself, 'do you loathe him for his very existence?'

'No,' Draco answered, 'I can't.'

'Then why?'

'It's because I love him,' he thought, stunned at his own confession to himself.

"And touched the sounds of silence," he sang out into the darkness. "Where the hell did that come from?"

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Everyone had been getting out of Harry's way since he had come back. No one even looked him in the eyes anymore, which suited him fine. He didn't want to be questioned, be gazed at with neither eyes of adoration or horror and least of all sympathy.

Going into potions class, Snape had now returned from him trial as a witness towards all the crimes even the Malfoy family did, not flinching back once at the cold and death-threat glares sent his way like daggers aimed towards his very soul. But he had also been out of Harry's way, if not completely ignoring him.

'But he wasn't there,' Harry thought, 'nobody saw what I had witnessed, what I had done. Damn fog,' he cursed. "And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people maybe more," he began singing under his breath, "people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening." Harry took a breath. He was about to start crying, but couldn't do anything to stop it. He was alone, even kicked out from the Dursleys this summer after saving the world, which even Rita Skeeter gave him reluctant credit for, but they left to stare at white walls for the rest of their lives shortly after term started again. "People writing songs that voices never share. . . and no one dare-" His control snapped and he began sobbing uncontrollably in the middle of class, all the faces turning towards his direction in the very back of the room.

"-Disturb the sounds of silence," a gentle voice finished next to him. Harry looked up to see Draco standing over him, concern clear across his face.

'What the hell does he want?' Harry asked, trying his best to create a glare but only managing a face full of anguish and buried it back into his arms on his desk.

"Mr. Potter," Snape came over, not a single emotion sketched on his face, but his eyes revealing pure sadness towards him. "Mr. Potter I will have to ask you to go to Madam Pomfreys'," he said, scooting Draco out of the way and taking him by the arm gently, guiding him towards the door. "Who will accompany him?" he asked the class, turning towards them.

Everyone just gave him a blank stare, Neville hiding his face, his shoulders shaking as well but not making it very noticable. "No one shall accompany him?" Snape asked in disbelief. This boy had just saved their lives! He thought in fury, the only person in this damned world that didn't even have the time to grow up!

'Always independent,' Snape now understood why everyone had always tried to guide him through his years. Not to prepare him for the confrontation between him and the dark lord, but because he would never know what childhood meant.

"I'll go with him," Draco volunteered. He knew most of the class was traumatized by the loss of someone they loved, he himself knew the feeling but strangely felt no regret.

Snape eyed him suspiciously, but sensed somewhat that no harm would come Harry's way. "Very well, Mr. Malfoy," he said, but at the mention of the name Harry's whole body tensed up.

Draco was already at his side, his arm around Harry's shoulders in a protecting gesture. 'What?' Harry wanted to object, but couldn't do nothing but have one thought, 'when the hell did he get that tall?' he had to look up slightly to see into his face, silver mist swirling, 'just like that night.'

Harry allowed himself to be led out of the class and into the hallway, taking a secret passage even he hadn't known of with the help of the map. "It's a way I found during third year," Draco explained, seeing the reluctance in Harry, "this is how I got to classes on time."

Harry followed him through the dark stairway, the shadows reflecting like the people he had seen hooded. "Fools, said I, you do not know, silence like a cancer grows," he couldn't help but start singing again, "hear my words that I may teach you, take my arms that I may reach you." He got choked up again and silently tears rolled down his face.

Draco turned around, hearing the sniveling and took Harry in his arms, a gesture that both boys would have openly despised and rejected. But both feeling the power of loss, gave into it and stood there, comforting each other. "But my words, like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the sounds of silence." Draco somehow knew the words, but didn't know wherefrom.

'Something so long ago', he thought, 'uncle?' A face with shaggy black hair came to his mind, a face with blue eyes, but no structure, just the hair framing it. Draco had seen that face so many times, but didn't know wherefrom.

As they started walking again, Draco in the lead, he heard a thump from behind and turned to find Harry had collapsed on the stairs, his cheeks flushed and him panting, not getting air.

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Harry awoke in the Hospital wing, not really remembering what had happened. But when he stared around, he saw Draco and Madam Pomfrey in a serious discussion, often looking in his direction.

Draco was the first to notice he had regained consciousness and hurried over to his bed, relief easily seen on his face.

Madam Pomfrey was behind him, eyeing him warily, and seeming so much older than what she already did. "I have no explanations nor any idea of what happened to you, Mr. Potter," she said in a motherly fashion. "Mr. Malfoy nearly kicked my doors off of their hinges trying to get you into bed," she gave Draco a somewhat amused look, "carrying you up those flights must have been quite an exercise on him."

Harry looked up into Draco's face, his eyes somewhat brimmed red from crying possibly? And his gaze that was normally so cold like a glacier made Harry feel like he were dancing ontop of the sun inside.

"Well then," Madam Pomfrey said, relieved as well to see Harry fine, "I must get the rest of my work finished. Mr. Malfoy, you are excused for the remainder of the time you spend with Mr. Potter." Then she bustled off, humming to herself all the while.

Harry had dreamed of his meeting with Voldemort, of the hooded death eaters and the Dementors behind him. "And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made," those words described very much what he had seen. "And the sign flashed out it's warning-"

"-In the words that it was forming," Draco listened intently upon what Harry was saying, taking his hand and sitting down on his bed next to him.

"And the signs said-'the words of the prophet are written on the subway walls."

"And tenment halls," Draco and Harry gazed each other in the eyes, staring so deeply at what pain the other had concealed for so long, their heads moving closer at the intentness of what they saw. Their lips brushed against each other at those last spoken words, brushed and then taken, held together by something deeper than thought and feeling, no sound heard, no movement seen, as if time frozen within itself. Just them alive, their hearts pulsing and their souls now free from their pain.

~And whispered in the sound of silence

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A/N: Well? I know, probably not as good as 'Dark Temptations,' but my mind needs to wander once in a while for me to continue a story in a really good style so as not to bore people. And besides, this is probably my third songfic, but the first alone. Judge as you wish, I'm spent.