Love Letters

The winter night embraced him as he stepped out into the cold and away from the looming castle whence he came. Above him the full moon shone through a gap in the clouds and snow began to fall clinging to his raven locks and speckling it white like the stars in the sky. He stopped at the edge of the lake the falling flakes melting as they touched the black waters. Looking at the lake surface was to look at the sky above and the snow falling to meet the water created an eternal falling.

Harry breathed out slowly watching his breath billow out and rise to the stars. It was the years first snow and as he stood silent in the dark all others remained safe and warm inside, eating their dinners, talking excitedly about the coming holiday. The phrase that always came to Harry's mind at times like these was, take the time to smell the roses. The first snow fall certainly wasn't a bush of roses but still so beautiful and so many just ignore it as common place. They go along and worry about assignments, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, and time, time, time. Time to get up, breakfast time, time for class, lunchtime, dinnertime, time to do homework, bedtime. Meanwhile they miss the world outside, give it only a passing glance and forget about it, until it's gone they forget about it.

Harry knew that the only reason he noticed was because he knew the uncertainty of his own life. He knew that today might be the day he was killed or tomorrow. No one really knows where Voldemort is, no one knows where he might strike next only that he will strike and for certain Harry Potter would one of the ones to die.

Harry ran his hand through his too long hair, he had preferred to let it grow out rather than let his aunt butcher it and those were really the only two options he had over the summer. He could have Hermione cut his hair for him now but he had become fond of it. It was almost like a testament that he was still alive and that in each new day he could grow, if nothing else, a tiny length of hair. It was his timeline, his reality.

He pushed aside such depressing thoughts and tried to concentrate on falling snow once more. He went to push his glasses up and stopped halfway, dropping his hand. He didn't have glasses anymore he reminded himself silently. Dumbledore had given Harry no choice. He had explained his reasons by saying that in a duel, fight, battle, a wizard who lost his glasses or they were destroyed and couldn't see his enemy or lost precious moments trying to repair them was often a dead wizard and that they couldn't afford to lose him. To Harry, it didn't matter how he explained it, it was still like losing a part of himself that was always there before.

Harry's reminiscing was cut short as he felt something, or rather someone, run into him. He turned slowly to find himself a crumpled figure sitting heavily on the wet ground.

"You should be more careful where you're going in the dark," Harry said lightly, holding out a hand.

The eyes that looked up and met his were of steel and flint, cold and hard and yet still managed to looked shocked and startled by their collision.

Harry perked his eyebrow, "Malfoy, curious to see you out here." he reached down and deftly snatched Draco's hand before the other boy could protest and pulled him to his feet.

Harry then turned away and returned his regard to the lake once more, "It's beautiful isn't it?" he asked softly, expecting either a cutting remark back or to be only talking to himself.

"Yes…" came the faint response.

"May I ask," Harry ventured, as he shifted his gaze from the lake surface to the sky above, "what you are doing out?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Potter." Draco shot back, though it seemed to Harry to be more reflex then something he actually intended to say.

Harry sighed, releasing another cloud of mist into the air, he reached up and absently passing his hand through it, grabbing at nothing as the mist dissipated in the cold air, "I'm here because it's the first snow fall of the year." He turned and looked at Draco, meeting his bemused expression with a wry grin, "It only happens once a year and it's always more beautiful than any after it, especially at night. You have to take the time to smell the roses because one day they may be gone forever and you never know what you had until it's gone."

Harry studied Draco's expression silently, a second passed frozen in time, endless, unbroken and Harry wondered silently what allowed them to talk like this, like acquaintances that could be friends if they were able. But that second shattered and a fleeting expression that Harry couldn't comprehend crossed Draco's face then he bolted, running swiftly back to the safety of the castle walls. His shadow stretched across the lights cast by the castle walls until it disappeared as he was consumed by the castles' ravenous mouth.

Harry began following slowly behind, his cloak was beginning soak through and his hair was now absorbing snowflakes rather than holding them. He felt saddened by Draco's sudden departure, why he couldn't exactly place. It had felt as if they were really connecting, that perhaps they could escape their old animosities and call a truce, to treat each other like equals without fighting constantly. Too much to hope for from one chance meeting, especially with Malfoy. Harry stopped suddenly as a white square of parchment caught his eye, illuminated by the castle light before his feet.

He stooped down and picked it up gingerly, studying it as best as he could in the poor light given by the school and the moon above. He quickly gave up, the light afforded no help and the snow would destroy the parchment before long. He held it under his cloak and hurried his pace to the castle.

Inside Harry sped down the halls, dreadfully aware that if he was caught out at this time of night he would never be let out except for classes and maybe meals. Dumbledore had his reasons and explanations, that it was all for his good, to keep him safe, protect him but when it came down to it they were holding him hostage, like putting tigers in a zoo to save them from extinction. True they are safe but they have lost their freedom. They are controlled and imprisoned, no choices are given to them but are made for them, all for what is best for the animal but what would the tiger want? Not what it needs but what it wants, take away any creature's freewill and you are left with only a hollow shell of what once was. That's what they did to Harry without even realizing it and Harry could do nothing against it. Every passing day it became harder and harder for time to smell the roses because the noose grew tighter and the bars closer spaced. They were killing him themselves.

He came to the portrait leading to his private room that only he and the headmaster can enter, others have to be let in and only on the will of the two previously mentioned. The room had been decorated warmly as if in some desperate effort to make the cage more comfortable. Harry had long ago removed the crimson and gold hangings, charmed the sheets and remaining furniture to various non clashing colors, so long as they were in no way related to the school or the war. The room didn't even have a window, just two chairs before a fireplace, a bed to the wall and a door leading to the privy.

Harry pulled the square of parchment out again and tossed his cloak over the back of one chair. Slumping onto the other chair he began studying the parchment once more. On the front a name was written, though stained and smeared Harry still managed to make it out as his own. He wondered who would write to him and drop it outside? Surly not Draco. Why would he write to Harry? Since the letter was addressed to him, though perhaps never intended to be delivered, he cautiously opened it to the writing inside.

The parchment itself was creased from being read repeatedly and the wrinkled as it the person who had wrote it had intended to throw it away but had retrieved it. One edge was singed black where the writer had once again tried to destroy it by means of fire.

Turning his attention to the script he noted immediately the delicate flowing script and fine edge to the style in which it was written. Harry and only seen one other person write like that and that was Draco Malfoy. He once boasted of his penmanship to Snape's entire class once he had seen Harry's own sloppy excuse for writing, he even had Harry compare it himself when he doubt Draco's boast. The anger and embarrassment at the time had burned the memory into his mind, it was easily recalled and comparisons made between the two writings. Harry concluded that it was indeed Draco's writing and wonder what had persuaded him to write to Harry, why and why he had kept it after trying to destroy it so many times. Was he unable to decide whether to send it and yet unable to destroy it? But what is so powerful that it would affect a person like that?

Then he began to read and this is what that fated letter said-

Every day,

I write you love letters in my mind

But for some reason,

when I'm with you,

I can never find the words

to tell you what's in my heart.

Everyday, I think of you while we're apart

and I discover

Something about you

that makes me love you even more.

But when we're together;

I get so caught up in the moment,

I forget everything

I've been saving up to tell you and today

I want to tell you that,

even though I'm not always good

about sharing my feelings with words,

in my heart I write you

a love letter

every single day.*

Harry was dumbfounded, nothing could have prepared him for the contents of the letter. That was why Draco hadn't sent it, wasn't able to destroy it. The parchment fell from his nerveless fingers, drifting to the floor and glaring up at Harry almost as if to reprimand him. He tried to digest the information, tried to rationalize it, to say that Malfoy had gone mad or simply wished to lure him in but something more, deep within Harry's gut said something else. When ever he tried to turn the contents of the letter against Malfoy he remembered those few minutes at the lake.

Then Draco had been quiet and confused, when he had bolted, had it been a flush of color and embarrassment that had chanced his face before he had sped away? There were other times as well, times when Harry had caught Draco staring at him, but not in hatred, something else. Then, in those looks had it been the love he expressed in the letter?

Another thought invaded Harry's thoughts and forced its way to surface, demanding all attention. Surely he was shocked by the thought that Draco Malfoy loved him but that was because he thought hell would freeze over first. Other than that he wasn't disgusted by it, he felt no additional anger towards Draco, rather he felt all his anger melting away and he found himself searching all his memories for those infrequent unprotected moments that Draco had let out. He then had to search his own feelings.

All Harry's previous relationships had never worked out, all with women, it seemed with most of them when it came down to it he felt nothing for them. They were all women. Would, could it be possible to find a relationship with a…man? Harry had never even considered it before. The idea shocked him but he felt little revulsion. The more he mused about it the more easily it became to imagine it. Draco wasn't unappealing to the eye, quite the opposite, the poor boy was absolutely gorgeous. Women flocked to him like the birds they were and from all appearance and of rumors he had a different girlfriend almost every week and one or more in his bed every night. Lies or a clever cover up?

Harry started, bolting up. Someone was pounding on the portrait outside. He went to the entrance, pausing for a moment before opening the portrait. He knew who was outside, Draco. Who else would come pounding on his portrait this late in the night? No one but the one who wrote that letter and just realized that they had lost it. He opened the portrait and found himself face to face with the very one he expected to find.

Draco's face was flooded with furry and worry, snow clung to him and the knees of his pants were soaked and mud stained. He had gone outside and searched and found nothing. Harry wondered how long it had taken him to think that Harry might have picked it up.

"Come in." Harry said.

Draco did so, swinging around when the portrait slammed shut behind him. Harry walked around to the front of the chair he had been sitting in earlier and picked up the letter from the ground.

"This is what you're looking for isn't it?" Harry held up the letter for Draco to see.

Draco's eyes widened in horror, "You read it?"

Harry nodded as he carefully began refolding it.

"I didn't write it, I found it, its from someone else that had this stupid crush on you, I kept it to blackmail them for it…"

"It's your handwriting, Malfoy." Harry stated flatly, turning away and slipping the letter into the drawer of his beside table. When he turned around Dracos's face was pale and his expression frozen.

Harry walked over to him and led him to a chair, Draco gave not resistance but allowed himself to be directed and when he sat in the chair he covered his face with his hands.

"Did you mean it?" Harry asked softly sitting down in the other chair.

"What do you think!?" Draco snapped angrily, "You weren't supposed to know!" he moaned in dismay.

"Are you afraid of falling in love with me?" Harry asked cautiously.

"No," Draco sighed in defeat, refusing to look Harry in the eye, "I'm not afraid of falling in love with you. I'm just afraid of you not loving me back."

*poem by Renee Duvall