Title: Searching for Ghosts

Author: Pers Grayson

Summary: Sixth year brings strange ghosts, hidden rooms, perilous potions projects, and new understandings.

Disclaimer: Thanks so much to JKR for creating this wonderful world for us to play in. She and various publishers own everything.

Author's notes: This is a WIP. Chapters should be posted fairly rapidly - every week or so - as a large part of this story (90,000 words) has already been written and just needs to be polished and editied. It will probably be roughtly 140,000 words when completed. This is slash and will be Harry/Draco eventually. It takes a while to get there.

My thanks to my wonderful betas Parke Ave Pirate and Maerda Erised, and to Alison Brown for Brit-picking.

Prologue: Many Years Later

On a cold, rainy night of the sort which made him forget what it felt like to be warm and dry, Harry Apparated into the alley behind his building. It was darker than he expected – the lamp which normally shone into the depths from the street having burned out – and wetter than it had been outside of Auror headquarters. He'd forgotten to apply a waterproofing charm to his cloak again. He was already soaked through to the bone.

Everything had gone wrong so far tonight. He'd had plans for this evening - good plans, fabulous plans full of hope and promise even - before an emergency had called him into work. Now here he was, soaking wet and feeling his way through a dirty alley as he made his way to the street. The streetlamp flickered back to life as he rounded the corner, but it didn't make him feel any better.

The entrance to his building brought shelter from the rain, but it was nearly as chilly and damp inside as it had been out. Worse still, it stank of mildew and mold and all things rotten. He mounted the stairs, which groaned and creaked as if unwilling to bear his weight, and slowly climbed three flights to his floor, imagining what he'd do once he reached his cold and empty flat.

First he'd take a shower so hot it would burn the skin on his back, and he'd magic the water hot as many times as he needed until his bones no longer felt like they were frozen within him. Then he'd fall into bed, and he just might stay there all day tomorrow. He just might stay there forever with his head under the covers because he was starting to believe that there really wasn't anything worth getting up for.

The third floor hallway was dimly lit and smelled as if Mrs. Creecher's cat had been doing its business on the carpet again. He fumbled to get the key in the keyhole in the dark but dropped it on the carpet. Reluctant to feel around for it, he pulled out his wand and cast a quick Lumos, then retrieved the key and ended the spell before someone could come along to see. He tried for the keyhole again.

At last it opened to warmth and light and blond hair gleaming softly in the glow of the fire. He paused in the doorway surveying the scene as he tried to ascertain if it were real. It felt as if he'd stepped into a dream – a very nice dream.

Draco looked up and smiled at him from his position on the sofa, fingers stilling on the pages of the book in his lap.

"I could get used to this," Harry said, smiling back as he closed the door behind him and hung up his cloak. "I'm sorry about dinner." "

"It's okay. Duty called."

"Duty was a waste of time," said Harry, passing through to the kitchen to make some tea in the hopes that it would ease his shivering. "I spent the whole evening chasing wild geese all over England."

"I spent the whole evening going through your hall cupboard," Draco called in from the living room.

"Sounds thrilling," Harry called back. "I hadn't expected you to stay. I'm very glad you did, but it would have been all right if you hadn't."

Draco followed him into the kitchen, walking over to the window to trace his fingers along the tracks of water running down outside, his face reflected in the dark glass. Harry wasn't used to seeing him this quiet and contemplative, as if he had a lot on his mind, and it made him a bit nervous. Draco hadn't been like this earlier tonight, before Harry had been called in to work.

"Granger stopped by," Draco said at last, his voice tinged with displeasure. "So it wasn't as if I was on my own the whole time, unfortunately."

"She's my best friend," Harry rebuked gently, though it hurt him to say it. He missed Ron the most on nights like this when he could have used a good laugh or a friendly game of cards to pull him back from his melancholy.

"You have terrible taste in friends, Potter."

"You've told me that before," Harry said then winced remembering what had occurred later that horribly confusing night so many years ago. A memory that ancient shouldn't have the power to make Harry blush and cringe like this.

"But I am your friend," Draco said softly, still touching his image in the window. And the words themselves were a reflection of ones he'd spoken years ago, a sentiment turned backwards on itself, pivoted by the removal of a single small word.

Harry smiled at him again, relaxing as some of the tension ran out of his shoulders. "What did Hermione want?"

Draco sighed, turning from the window. He reached into his pocket, digging for a moment, before pulling his hand forth once more. Still he kept his fingers closed over the object, even as he held his hand up for Harry to see, as if reluctant to reveal what lay there. At last he unclenched them to reveal a small, silver ring. Harry felt his heart skip a beat, but he schooled his face not to show it.

"I've been ignoring her owls," Draco explained hesitantly, the ring in his hand seeming to glow with a soft light. "So she wanted to know if you knew where to find me. She was done with this."

"I see," said Harry, carefully keeping his voice neutral. He wanted to ask if Draco planned to start wearing it again, but he was afraid of the answer. He changed the subject instead. "Find anything interesting in my cupboard?" he asked, taking out his wand and tapping the edge of the cup with it.

"Just your photo album. Did you know there was an envelope of pictures of Sirius in the back? I put them in the album for you."

Harry bollixed the warming charm so badly it cracked his teacup.

"Apparently not then," Draco commented with raised eyebrows. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just… Yeah," Harry said, mopping up steaming water with a thin towel. It soaked through and burned his hand.

"Come on," said Draco, taking the towel from him and giving him a small push in the direction of the living room. Harry obediently headed over to the sofa and sat down, staring at the album on the coffee table and the corner of the envelope which he could now see poking ominously out from beneath it. It had been a long time since he'd given it any thought. He felt a wave of guilt as he realized that the ancient pain had mostly faded, for that seemed like a betrayal. Then it all came back as if a poorly healed scar had been ripped open to bleed once more.

Draco appeared a moment later and placed a cup of hot tea in his hands.

"You have to move on sometime, you know," he said, sitting down next to Harry.

"I know, and I have. It was just a bit unexpected – I'd nearly forgotten about those pictures."

It was more than that, though. They brought back echoes of pain and guilt and a summer which just wouldn't end. He'd been facing so much then, whipped around by the current of destiny even as he drowned in the flood of his own grief. It had been over and done with for years, but he felt that part of him would never quite escape.

Draco looked at him with concerned disbelief then picked up the photo album, causing Harry's breath to catch in his throat as he braced himself for the expected wave of pain. He was almost disappointed when it didn't come.

"Go on," he said, in answer to the question Draco hadn't asked.

Slowly, so slowly Harry thought it would break him, Draco opened the album and turned to a page near the end.

"I thought this was you at first, before I noticed there wasn't a scar," Draco said, watching James and Sirius and Remus grinning and laughing as they tried to knock each other off their brooms over the familiar background of the Hogwarts quidditch pitch. "Where did you get these?"

"Hagrid sent them," Harry explained. Then he gave a little nervous laugh that originated in remembered pain rather than mirth. "I hated him for it, for just a little while. He Owled them to me just a few weeks after Sirius died, and I couldn't bring myself to open them, not for a full week. The entire time I imagined I could hear Sirius screaming at me, asking what sort of coward I was that I couldn't look him in the face after…" Harry broke off, his voice tight.

"That was your worst summer, wasn't it?" Draco asked. "Even worse than the next one when Dumbledore…"

Harry nodded, still unable to speak.

"Mine too." Draco sighed and flipped to another picture, this one of James and Lilly's wedding. Sirius stood in the forefront tapping at his wineglass with a fork. Harry and Draco couldn't hear it, but the happy couple must have, for they laughed a little and began to kiss.

"Remus told me he spent the entire reception doing that," Harry said, leaning closer in to Draco to better see the picture. "He must have made them kiss about five-hundred times."

"Doesn't look like they were too fussed about it." Draco turned to another picture. "This must be where you got your love of flying."

Harry leaned over and rested his head on Draco's shoulder, too exhausted to deny himself that liberty. "This one's always been my favorite," he said, reverently touching a finger to the edge of the picture which showed his infant self clutched safely in the arms of his godfather, shrieking and squealing in excitement as the broom they rode swooped and dove.

"She never sleeps." Harry pointed to where his mother stood watching from the ground. "All the rest of them sleep at night, sometimes for years at a time even when there's no one to look at them, but she never does. She just watches them like that all the time, even when they're asleep."

"She's worried about you."

Harry sighed and nodded against Draco's shoulder, and Draco pulled his arm up and around to hold Harry's shoulders. They sat there a long time, sharing a warm embrace, listening to the crackle of the fire and the pounding of the rain on the windows and roof as they lingered over the final photograph.

"Déjà vu," Harry broke the silence at last. "This seems so familiar," he whispered, words pouring out of him as if the pressure behind them had been building up a very long time. "I remember how dark it was that night, and how the rain pounded down outside just as it's doing now. It must have been not long before dawn about four days before my sixteenth birthday. I'd kept thinking about that and how Sirius always gave me the best presents and how if I'd only opened the last one… Well, I'd been so angry with myself that earlier that day – the day before, really - I'd thrown a book right through the glass of my window."

Harry paused briefly, giving a shuddering breath and closing his eyes at the memory before continuing. "That night I wasn't angry anymore; it had all burned out. It felt like the world was going to end with that storm, and Sirius wasn't there to save me from it. I could hear him though, I thought, as if he were screaming from the envelope, asking me what sort of coward was I that I couldn't even look him in the face after getting him killed. I imagined that in the pictures he'd be jumping and screaming and waving his fist in silent fury, but when I finally did look he was asleep in all of them."

But he could sense that Draco wasn't really listening to him any more, even as his arm tightened against Harry's shoulders and his hand rubbed soothing circles against the skin of his upper arm. Draco had stiffened against him, as if he'd just been confronted by one of his own ghosts.

"Four days before your birthday," Draco said softly. "It seems so long ago," he added in a very small voice, thin and hoarse as if it had been stretched across the years.

"Centuries, at least," Harry agreed.

Draco turned his head to bury his face in Harry's hair. They sat there a long time, taking comfort in each other as the fire slowly died. After a time, Draco pointed out that it was late and time for him to leave. Still Harry lingered in front of the slowly dying fire, lost in the memories of a summer of guilt and helplessness, at time when the days had been lonely and difficult, and the nights had been unbearable because he'd never even had a chance to say goodbye.

But most of all, he relived a rainy night in Surrey many years before when he'd wished himself dead.

2,212 words