Green eyes watched from an alley between two buildings in Diagon Alley as Lucius Malfoy and his son stopped in front of one of the buildings. The elder Malfoy turned sharp eyes on his heir, and hissed out a short statement before entering the shop. The owner of those eyes blinked in shock as he took in the state of Draco Malfoy.
The icy blonde's skin was even paler than it normally was and there was a fine sheen of perspiration on his face. His eyes were slightly unfocused, and the pupils seemed larger than they should have been, despite the noonday sun beating down. The watcher observed the trembling of the boy's limbs, and the way that it was occasionally interrupted by a strong twitch. He knew the symptoms, had suffered them himself: Draco Malfoy had been subjected to the Cruciatus curse.
Harry Potter blinked several times in shock before his mind began functioning again. Malfoy had been under the most painful curse known to wizard-kind. Harry knew that Draco was not a death eater, the visions that Occulmency did nothing to halt told him that at least. So who had cursed the blonde?
'It had to have been his father or mother,' Harry thought. 'No one else would have dared. It wasn't Voldemort, I know that, and the Malfoys would have killed anyone else who would have tried. Certainly, Draco wouldn't be out here, still in pain, if his father didn't want him that way.' Something shifted inside of Harry's mind as his whole worldview changed. The spoiled Slytherin prince was nothing of the sort.
The Boy-Who-Lived snorted softly. 'Is anything in the wizarding world what I was led to believe? Draco's been tortured, I'm on the run from the Order, what's next? Tom in a tutu?'
Watching Draco tremble, Harry made a lightning fast decision. Putting his seeker-reflexes to good use, he snaked out a hand and yanked the blonde into the alleyway. It was a good thing that Malfoy was weakened from the curse, because otherwise Harry would have never been able to shift the larger boy. 'Merlin, he weighs a ton! Would I weigh that much if the fucking Dursley's ever fed me?'
In an instant, Harry had swept Draco's feet out from underneath him and leaned over the Slytherin. "Hello Malfoy," he said, smirking, "having a bad day?"
Draco stared blankly at Harry. "Potter? What? How?" The blonde seemed unable to finish a thought, which worried Harry slightly. If Draco couldn't think, how could he get the boy out of here before the elder Malfoy returned? Harry nearly smacked himself as he remembered the vial of potion in his pocket. It was a post-Cruciatus potion, one he had paid a great deal for the recipe for.
'Idiot,' he snarled at himself. 'As if Draco can even think right now, let alone come up with snappy comebacks.' Harry pulled the vial from his pocket and all but forced the potion down the shaken blonde's throat. "Better now, Malfoy?"
The blonde nodded as the trembling eased. He drew a deep breath, then looked up at his benefactor, "Why, Potter?" he asked.
Harry sighed as he ran a hand through his hair. "Malfoy, I might fight with you at school and I might think you're a git, but I wouldn't leave you suffering. I've had that curse myself, and trust me, I'd have to hate you a lot more than I do to want you to feel that."
"So the golden boy saves the day again. Whoopie! Now go away so he doesn't see you... or worse, ME with you," Draco said.
"Don't be a bigger idiot than you were born to be, Malfoy," Harry said. "What's daddy-dearest going to do to you when he gets out of that shop and you aren't in the agony he wants you in?" The blonde began to snap back, but Harry cut him off. "Don't interrupt. I'm not stupid Draco; if your father didn't want you in that state he could easily have given you the same potion I did. Now, maybe it wasn't a good idea for me to interfere, Merlin knows my hero-complex will kill me one day, but it's done. And that means that you now have a choice."
"Choice, Potter? What in the seven hells are you talking about?" The Malfoy heir's face was growing red with confusion and irritation.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Simple, fool. I already said that I don't hate you enough to see you suffer that, so obviously your choice is to let me help you or not."
"Help me, Potter! How the hell do you think you can help me? My father is going to kill me, and even if you could get Dumbledore to help me, I'm not going to turn into a Gryffindor. I hate Muggles, and I want nothing to do with Mudbloods, even if I don't want to kill them. So how are you going to help me?"
A sharp gleam shined from Harry's eyes. "Who said anything about the old coot? As for your... opinions, they're yours and you have a right to them as long as you aren't hurting anyone else. And I never asked you to become a Gryffindor. I know enough of them already." He would have continued, but Draco cut him off.
"Wait, Potter, you said 'them'. You are a Gryffindor too, remember?" The blonde said, a snarky tone weaving through his voice.
Smirking, Harry restrained a laugh. "Oh, yes. Anyway, that's beside the point. I have an offer for you, Malfoy. You can go back out there, resume your life as it was, or come with me, and be free. So what's it gonna be, slavery or freedom?"
