Disclaimer: Harry Potter was created by J.K. Rowling, which I'm sure everyone and their uncle already knows.

Author's Note: Woo! Draco makes his appearance! Everyone loves Draco Malfoy, and if you don't, I will beat you with a stick until you agree. I feel like some bits of this are a bit weak, but it works out alright in the end. Chapter three is in the works too. See yah!

Chapter 2

The Hogwarts Express had always held a magic for Harry that he would never be taught in school. It was release and desire, anticipation and expectation, fondness with a twinge of uncertainty looming about in the back of his mind. Every problem would be forgotten as he sped on his way to his school, his home. It puffed and sighed on the tracks, knowing that all of Harry's hopes rode with it.

This year, Harry had a different idea as he stepped into his compartment with Ron and Hermione. The Express was no longer a vessel of reassurance. It seemed cold and distant. He may have been sitting inside, but Harry felt as though he were merely looking at it from miles away. It seemed angry. Its nostrils shooting up columns of anguish and exhaustion. Its body snaked its way around its course, making it more and more apparent that the place it was carrying Harry to was not one of salvation. The image of riding within a giant serpent made his stomach wrench in terror, a cool layer of sweat and nervousness blanketing his body.

He was suddenly extremely aware of the worried expressions on his friends faces, Hermione's hand on his forehead. He was jolted back to reality, still shaken by his mounting unease. He took hold of the girls' hand and whispered, "Don't worry, I'm fine", in a faint voice.

Hermione seemed relieved to see Harry actually respond; she and Ron had been trying to talk to him for about five minutes with not so much as a nod in reply. She sighed, heaving her tiny shoulders inward.

"So, I take it you haven't heard a single word we said, eh?" Ron said after a moment.

Harry straightened up in his seat and apologized. "Sorry, I was a little distracted..."

Another brief pause.

"Well, you seem better now. That's good. Anyway, we were just talking about summer, all the scatter-brained things Ron did. I really can't believe he managed to curse Crookshanks...", Hermione said, stroking the wad of purple hair that had curled in her lap.

Harry looked in her direction and stared at what looked like a very large, very shabby, very violet wig. A closer inspection revealed a pair of contemptuous eyes, a small pink nose, a mouth and a few whiskers. When Harry recognized it as Hermione's cat, he let out a small laugh.

"I think he would have been rather fetching as a blonde, personally", Harry smirked and awaited the patented peeved expression of Hermione Granger.

"Well, I liked him the way he was", she said quickly, a shrill note of agitation in her voice, her face twisting up, then forming a pout as she gazed at the unfortunate feline.

"Why don't you fix him then?; there must be a counter curse", Harry suggested, already becoming bored with the topic.

"I'm sure she'd like to. The thing is, I don't rightly know how I got the ruddy creature that color in the first place...One minute, the beastly thing is gnawing on my elbow, the next, it's turned purple, scared to bloody hell and back by its own reflection. I guess it was that wandless magic stuff. In any case, I'm not complaining about it," Ron said, folding his hands behind his head, one on top of the other and leaning back into his seat, smiling.

Just then, a familiar platinum-crowned head poked its way into their compartment. Malfoy.

Draco glared down at Harry, his skin around his eyes pinched up as tightly as possible, no doubt wondering if the Boy Who Lived remembered his threat from the previous year.

Harry did. He had been frightened to be in Draco's presence again all summer, although that wasn't because he was afraid that Draco would kill him.

The Slytherin boy had lost his father. Harry felt a painful ache of remorse for him, even if they were enemies. Losing a parent to Azkaban wasn't easy, and Harry knew that Draco's pride would keep him from talking to anyone about it, letting the wound heal. It was hard to feel sorry for your rival, but Harry always had, despite all the taunts and threats. He thought of it like their own unique form of communication, their secret language made up of jeers and snide remarks. But what it translated to was something Harry always smiled and laughed to himself about. He wondered if Draco noticed just how much thought and attention he gave him, even if it was negative. It seemed like he spoke with Malfoy almost as much as Ron sometimes. It developed a kind of closeness, a comfort, an affinity for Draco in Harry's heart. And so it came to be that when Draco was hurt, so was Harry.

Harry looked at Malfoy's scrunched up expression with an earnest face. He ran his eyes up and down the other boy's body and noticed that he'd gotten taller in the past months, more slender too. He seemed like a sneering adult standing in the doorway of their cowering child's bedroom, glowering over the youth. Harry led his gaze back up to Malfoys and hesitated again before speaking.

"Did you want something?' Harry inquired.

"Yes, I do. I want my father back from that stinking prison. It's your fault he's stuck there, so it's your responsibility to get him out".

"I can't imagine how that could possibly be my fault. After all, I didn't ask him to become a Deatheater and savagely attack me".

"You may as well have with all your bravery and morality, your ceaseless desire to save the day. It's enough to make anyone want to kill you, or at the very least find you an analyst to help overcome that horrible hero complex of yours", Draco laughed in an especially smug fashion, convinced he had the upper hand.

Harry didn't care. Let Draco win. It made no difference. Harry was happy, that perverse kind of happy that always stemmed from bouts with Malfoy. He even dared to crack a smile.

"Yeah, maybe you're right about me. I am sorry about your father though, I hope you're getting on alright. I wouldn't want to lose my sparring partner to irrevocable despair, now would I?", Harry beamed, taking in the way Draco's eyes widened with immense pleasure.

"You know, I'd be so terribly bored without you, Malfoy", Harry added, perhaps a little more sincerely than he had intended.

Draco stood in the doorway, looking like someone just poured a bucket of cold water on his head. Harry had spoken with such sheer....honesty. How fitting of a Gryffindor, always pitying their opponent, he thought.

Bemused and slightly uneasy, no witty lines of retaliation would come to mind, so he just said, "Right...", offhandedly and walked back to his room on the train, where Crabbe and Goyle were stuffing their faces with Chocolate Frogs from the trolley.

Harry, thoroughly pleased with himself for rendering Draco speechless, was now facing an array of remarks from his friends.

"Way to get one up on Malfoy! You almost made me believe that you DID care about that slimeballs dad. While all else fails, confuse the shit out of the opposing side. Maybe I'll try that in Quidditch...", Ron said.

"Harry, you were a little too convincing, I think. You made it sound like you actually enjoy battling it out with Malfoy all the time..." Hermione said seriously, then shook her head at the ludicrous prospect, surprised she had considered it in the first place.

Well, yes, I do. Any kind of interaction is worth it, just to be involved with him in any way at all.

It was something Harry feared might just fall out of his mouth when he opened it one day, astounding everybody, disgusting his roommates, frightening himself.

I love Draco Malfoy.

It was manageable, as long as no one else knew.

If it came out into the open, it would burn and scar Harry with the heat of its reality. He could stand there, heart in his hands and they would blacken in the air, the organ becoming vile and tainted, charring the insides of his palms. It would no longer be his innocent obsession, his silent longing, his satisfaction with what he had now, but unspoken hope for more some day.

It would be the publics topic of interest. It would be printed in a magazine or a newspaper before he could blink. They would make it forbidden and cheap, the sad twisted desires of a poor orphaned boy. No one would know what it meant to him, how essential a thing it was they were ridiculing.

Worst of all, Malfoy would hate him or murder him, or perhaps hate him while murdering him, just for dragging him into it, forcing such embarrassment upon his good name. Any such fate was obviously less than appealing.

Hermione....might understand, the whole compassionate spirit of a woman thing taking the reins and overpowering her disappointment in Harry. Ron would...Ron wouldn't believe him. It would be some huge joke that he thought was made in bad taste.

Despite all this, he had wanted to tell Malfoy, just Malfoy, for a long time. He had a feeling that he wouldn't go around telling people that Harry Potter had a crush on him, if out of respect or just as an attempt to forget the whole thing ever happened.

Harry pulled up and bent his legs, resting his head on his knee caps, folding his arms around his shins, scrunching himself in a mildly uncomfortable little ball in his seat. He just wanted to get off that train, get out of his friends company and climb into his feather bed, pushing everything he thought out of his head to make room for dreams that would fill up the vacancy.