AN/Warnings: I'm going to get the responses done first, so I don't forget.
In Response to the Reviewers:
Kaaera: *huggles back* First of all, thanks so much for reviewing! The hints I put in and then yelled about were just me being over dramatic. If I work things out right, you'll be able to go back through the story and go "OH. I see. Unsolvable Riddle wasn't on drugs (well, usually), she sort of knew what she was babbling about."
It's the beauty of my demented mind. It's all clicking up here in this gray matter of mine, I just have to make sure it all works out in the end.
Gabriella: Thank you so much for e-mailing me, you 'inspired' me to get off me lazy arse and type. Heheheh, Lucius and Voldie. Though, he is a bit old for Malfoy, isn't he? :D I'm glad you like this, I always feel all happy and warm and stuff when I get positive reviews.
Sailor Grape: Don't worry, I'm blonde too. My English teacher made fun of me. Heh, don't worry, you're not supposed to get everything yet, but sort of piece it together bit by bit, if I do it right. Most likely, I'll make this one huge plot hole and it will suck us all into oblivion.
Yes, Harry-kins can be brought back to life! It was my dramatic insert of another lame attempt at a sub-plot.
Heh, this story just sort of started as a thought of 'what if Harry had to follow Draco around all day?', and I let my imagination run away with it and it turned into this. It was originally supposed to be a one-shot, but obviously that plan backfired.
Dream27: Merci beaucoup for reviewing! Ehehe, don't make me all embarrassed, I've read way better fanfics that mine. *^__^*
blackunicorn: Thanks a bunch for reviewing! :)
Now, back to the space that I get to ramble.
I'm SO very sorry for making the few people who read this wait. I'm a horrible person.
Harry Potter fan fiction is evil to write. Almost every character's name wants to be spell checked into the strangest words. Gah, I hate trying to edit my fanfics and five million red underlined words come up, and they're all 'Hermione', 'Draco' and 'Malfoy'.
Also, I just noticed that the usually large gaps I use to take up space and make it seem like I wrote more don't appear on FF.net. I'll try to fix this if I'm ever motivated enough to, this chapter should be easier to read.
Watch as I develop characters slowly but surely. We can't have Draco and Harry wanting to jump each other yet. Besides, I don't think Harry could. X3
Short AN today, ne? Anyways, I hope you enjoy another chapter of insanity.
Fais de Beaux Rê ves [Sweet Dreams] : Something Like Fear
Harry forgot to mention Thanksgiving Day, didn't he? Some of the American transfer students charmed a few real turkeys to have a few 'completely random and not selective at all' heads of some staff members and students. Harry found the Snape one so hilarious, he was crying as it attacked Ron across the Hall.
Malfoy was rather annoyed when one with his own face came up and started preening at his human reflection.
"Oh, dear God, this is killing me." Harry clutched at his sides, breathless and pink-cheeked. He realized the irony of his sentence, but couldn't stop laughing.
"Shut the hell up." Malfoy hissed under his breath, before charming the turkey to have a normal head.
Harry covered his mouth with his hand, to muffle his laughter. This hand quickly fell to his chest, as he closed his eyes and inhaled sharply.
Only a dull, throbbing pain. Perhaps he hadn't been getting enough sleep or something. Heartburn, maybe. Not that he ate much.
Draco didn't say anything, but noticed Potter's sudden silence.
---
It was nighttime once again in the boy's side of the Slytherin dorms. Harry sat on the windowsill, so he could have a clear view of what lay beyond Hogwarts.
For one reason or another, he couldn't bring himself to visit the Gryffindor dorms. Seeing Ron, Hermione, Dean, Neville, Ginny…
Crabbe and Goyle were snoring, and Blaise was fast asleep. Those three slept like rocks. Malfoy was supposed to be asleep as well, but Harry was interrupted from his 'very deep thoughts' by the blonde's cold voice.
"Potter, what's it feel like to be dead?" Harry didn't turn to face the blonde, and smiled rather oddly as he looked outside.
"Mostly like being alive. Except it's a bit colder, and…" He put his hand over his heart, or where it was supposed to be. "And I don't have a heartbeat." It had been slightly unnerving the first time it had happened - he had almost forgotten he was dead.
Dead…but how? Why?
His parted lips asked these silent questions, but, as it had been for most of his life, no answers were given to him.
"Oh, right." Came Malfoy's short reply.
There was silence. Now, Draco Malfoy was used to silence, but this silence wasn't the kind that he knew.
It was a hovering silence, and expecting silence. It was poking him in the side, thumping in his head.
"Does it hurt?" The words tumbled out before he could catch them in his throat.
"Of course not-"
"No. Your shoulder." He smirked when Potter's breath caught in his invisible throat.
"Um, sometimes. If I think about being dead - ow." He closed his eyes and breathed, as the 'knife' that was stuck in his chest twisted left and right. "But, how do you know?"
"That's for me to know and you to never find out."
"Git."
"I'll take that as a compliment and move on."
There was more of that damnably annoying silence, and Malfoy coughed.
"Night Potter."
"Hm."
When Draco looked over to where he thought Potter might be sitting, he was surprised to see a black silhouette of the boy, and faint, transparent white wings that seemed much more graceful than that one time in his dream.
Eugh. He had dreamed about Potter, hadn't he?
Saying nothing of Potter's sudden visiblity, he turned over and stuck out his tongue in disgust.
Harry leaned his head against the stone wall that kept him enclosed in the windowsill, and felt his eyelids start to flutter, begging to be closed.
He did so unwillingly, and black lashes ate emerald eyes.
---
He saw Potter. Fleetingly (that sounded like something from a sappy romance novel), but there all the same. Usually when moonlight was on where he should be. Never during the day. It was like he was only reflecting life - much like the moon only reflected the Sun's light.
Ugh, if he didn't watch his blonde self, he'd end up with the Hufflepuffs composing depressing poetry about Cedric Diggory.
Smirking to himself, Draco Malfoy climbed up the stairs to his Arithmancy class.
---
Christmas came and Christmas went, much like it always did for Draco Malfoy. He got a good amount of money from both of his parents, but he didn't really have anything to spend it on, especially since the students staying for Christmas break weren't allowed to go to Hogsmeade this year.
Christmas came and Christmas went, much unlike it used to for Harry Potter. He had to blink that stinging sensation from his eyes when he saw the Weasley's owl bring four sweaters. After meeting Hermione last summer, Mrs. Weasley had told the Gryffindor girl that she would send her a sweater as well.
But there was only Ron, Ginny and Hermione.
He couldn't look at the unbearable expression that was a mix of total loss and disappointment on Ron's face, and it was evidently being absorbed by Hermione as well. She put her hand on Ron's shoulder, and said words that Harry couldn't hear from the Slytherin table. Ron gave her a half-hearted smile, and nodded.
They were disappointed. In him. Because he left them without a second thought.
But that wasn't his fault. It wasn't. He hadn't been planning to die that day.
Yet that yellow 'H' on a red sweater told him differently, as did the knife in his chest.
---
January was a bore, it was only classes and work for Draco, and following the blonde boy around for Harry, which proved much more dull than he had originally expected.
Malfoy had always just been around when used to walk these halls. He seemed to appear from nowhere, with bored, cold blue eyes and that obnoxious, infuriating smirk.
Malfoy made Hogwarts a little less day-to-day, a little less predictable. Ron's insults always drew smiles from the charcoal haired boy, and Hermione's urge to stop while he was ahead, to not get into fights made her sound motherly, something Harry hadn't ever heard. However, her occasional outbursts, especially at Malfoy, were all the more humorous. She turned into the teenage girl she was supposed to be, not the university student whose main concern was what grade she was going to get. The one time she had gotten an A- had nearly killed her.
Professor Binns had proven to be a bit more interesting now that he had another dead person besides the Hogwarts ghosts and Peeves to talk to.
Harry had figured out that ghosts and poltergeists seemed to be able to see him as well, obviously because they were dead as well. The Bloody Baron was rather disturbing, if not funny in his own way. Nick still had the air of a sad clown, who doesn't mean to be amusing but is anyway.
---
Harry didn't notice as the crisp January days slipped into bitter February. When he awoke once again in Malfoy's room, he was surprised to find the room void of it's usual inhabitant.
"Nah?" Harry mumbled, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
Draco appeared soon afterwards, and Harry was surprised to find his intense blue eyes focused directly on him.
"Oh, Potter. I've been excused from school for the month. Something about family matters. I'll be downstairs." Malfoy's head nodded slightly, as he turned around and walked out of his room.
It was February already? That meant that Malfoy's little family secret would be proving itself this month. He'd almost forgot.
…That sounded rather wrong. Harry shrugged, and sat down on Malfoy's bed.
Echo, Malfoy's cat, wandered into the room, and meowed when she saw Harry. She walked over, before sitting on Harry's lap. He rubbed her head with his knuckles, almost unaware that he was doing so. When he did realize, he simply stared down at the cat, who looked up at him with intelligent eyes, both a sharp green.
"This is all very confusing." The Angel declared, and Echo's only response was to tilt her head slightly. Her purr was almost comforting, but she soon became bored of Harry and jumped off the bed to exit the room.
Deciding to follow suit, Harry wandered downstairs to see what was going on.
He was once again surprised when Narcissa's sharp gray eyes focused on him. They almost instantly unfocused so that she was staring past him. Harry guessed she was just lucky, and shrugged it off.
The exact same thing happened when Lucius walked into the room, his eyes grazing over the exact place Harry was standing.
Harry's eyes were sharp as well, and he noticed as Malfoy shifted uncomfortably in the silence. He never once snuck a look at Harry, and for some reason, he was grateful.
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End of Chapter Notes: My main focus in this chapter was to make all of the characters seem slightly more canon. I think Draco became too bratty again in OotP, and I usually tend to avoid writing him as such. I thought for a little while because I thought J.K. might kill off Draco (that probably would have been the most unexpected character to kill off, since she doesn't have a record of killing the characters that need to be killed), but then again I would have had fun writing angst about it.
Agh, I'm all paranoid about staying in character now. Just tell me that they're a teensy bit like their canon counterparts and I'll love you forever.
Things to look forward to and/or keep in mind:
- Ah, I really like that sweater idea. Maybe I'll make a stand-alone but somehow connected to this one-shot on that concept. If I wasn't so lazy, that is.
-I have Green Day's cover of 'I Fought the Law' stuck in my head. Mm, guess what? Valentine's Day next chapter. If I hadn't been so lazy, I could of gotten this to coincide with the actual day. But these things happen, no? Hopefully, some things will come together next chapter.
- Hahah. Geddit? Echo, Narcissa? Oh, I slay myself. But since cats are usually the first animal connected with witchcraft, I thought it might make sense for them to be able to see the dead. I like Echo now. The only OC I end up creating is a cat. Wow, I'm so talented.
Until next time, peoples.
