Listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness

Harry was standing in the empty corridor, looking at the door.

'Just open the door, and go in' he spurred himself. 'Now!' Harry took one step forward and looked at the door handle. 'Maybe he isn't there anyway' he tried to reason with himself.

Harry groaned inwardly and leaned silently forward to rest his forehead against the wood. But what if he was there? Harry had no idea what he was going to say. He didn't even know what he wanted to say, or what he wanted Draco to say to him. Harry was brutally interrupted with his thoughts when he heard talking and footsteps heading his way.

Without thinking he grabbed the door handle and burst into the room slamming the door shut behind him. Draco Malfoy was sitting in his usual place, but with a startled look on his face.

Harry suddenly felt embarrassed and annoyed at the same time. "What?" he demanded aggressively. "Didn't think you would see me here again? Thought that you would throw in some sexual harassment and you could have the space all to yourself?" Now he was feeling even more embarrassed and annoyed. 'I can't believe I just said that.'

"I can't believe you just said that" Draco claimed.

"I was just kidding" Harry muttered in his defense. Suddenly he couldn't look at Draco's face anymore so he just stared at the window. He still didn't know what to say to the slytherin.

"Look" he heard Draco say and turned his attention back to him. "I need to ask you not to tell anyone what happened" Draco said seriously.

Harry nodded absent-mindedly in agreement. He had figured this much himself. He was a little surprised though. Harry had almost expected Draco to try to gain something out of his knowledge of Harry's sexual orientation. He had at least assumed Draco would tantalize him about it. He had never realized a possibility that Draco had been risking something doing what he had done.

Draco wasn't satisfied with Harry's nod. "This is really important to me" he nagged on. "I'm going to marry a pure-blooded girl eventually, and I can't afford to have anybody questioning my sexuality."

"Yes, yes. I won't tell anyone" Harry snapped, annoyed again.

Draco bit down a nasty retort and focused on the book on his lap.

Harry stomped off to his usual place and sat down with a huff. 'Well, that's that, then' he sighed and couldn't quite suppress the feeling of disappointment.

Things went back to 'normal' again between the two of them. They acknowledged each other's presence, but didn't really talk. 'It' was hanging in the air between them. Had Harry had known what 'it' was, he would have called 'it' sexual tension. But Harry didn't know. All he knew was that Draco had started to breath loudly again. Practically hyperventilating really.

But everything had changed, of course. Harry didn't despise Draco anymore. He just couldn't, although he had made an conscious effort. They had a secret between them now, something that was all theirs. And sometimes, when they would pass each other in the hallway, Draco would make the smallest of nods and Harry would feel more connected to him that he did to anyone else around him.

Harry walked in to find the couch empty and stopped dead in his tracks. It was Friday and Draco should have been there already. Draco was always there before him. A uneasy feeling, that he couldn't quite explain, settled into his stomach.

He made his way towards the alcove when he heard clatter from his right. He let a breath out in relief when he saw Draco looking through the contents of an old armoire that had big parts of its glass doors missing.

First Harry thought he should just leave Draco to it, but then decided against it. "What are you doing?" he called out.

Draco looked over his shoulder and then returned his attention to the broken lamp he had in his hand. Harry thought for a moment that Draco was going to ignore him, but then Draco started making his way back to the path, the lamp in hand.

"I think I've realized why this junk is here" Draco said while stepping over a rolled Persian rug that had been ruined with a huge ink stain.

"Oh?" Harry commented, curious. Now that he come to think of it, it was pretty strange there was a room full of broken furniture stashed in the castle.

"I think these are the originals for some of the stuff that has been cloned around the castle" Draco explained his theory.

"Huh?" Harry wasn't following.

Draco dropped himself on the couch. "Articulate, are we?" he tantalized, but continued with his explanation. "When something is broken beyond reparo, it can be cloned if 62 percent of the object is intact."

Harry ignored Draco's taunt and hopped on the uneven desk of drawers opposite the couch. "Why -" He waited a moment for it to stop wobbling. "Why not just buy another or transform something to look like it?" he demanded.

"Everything you see here are antiques, some of them are one of a kind" Draco explained with an air of expertise. "You can't just skip to Hogsmeade and buy another. And to transform a regular table to look like an antique one... Well, that's just tacky."

"But cloning isn't?" Harry asked confused.

"It is a bit cheap, isn't it?" Draco nodded his agreement. "There is nothing cloned in the Malfoy Manor. Everything you see are originals."

Harry couldn't help but smile at Draco's snooty attitude. Draco was busy looking at the lamp sitting on his lap to notice. Harry decided that the slytherin didn't even realize what he had said.

"I recognized this lamp. I think we have it's clone in the Slytherin common room" Draco motioned to the lamp.

Harry looked at the lamp with more care. It was a beautiful shade of green with a snake carved on the lampstand. Harry recognized it immediately, it had caught his eye before. "Oh yeah" he exclaimed enthusiastically.

Draco looked at him funny and he felt blush rising. He wasn't supposed to know any lamps situated in the Slytherin common room. "Oh..."

"What?" Draco smiled amusedly.

Harry thought that the blonde looked kind of nice right then and decided to tell Draco the truth. "It's really stupid..." he started coyly. Draco only raised an eye brow. "Okay, I'll tell you. Me and Ron, we used Polyjuice Potion and turned ourselves to Grabbe and Goyle. That's how I have seen that lamp before at the Slytherin common room."

Draco looked truly surprised. "What? Did I see you?"

Harry smiled. "Yeah, you talked to us."

"And I didn't notice anything?" Draco was looking like he wasn't sure if he was believing Harry.

"Well, you did say that Ron, or Grabbe actually, no... Ron... was acting strangely... You thought that he was just having bad indigestion" Harry grinned.

"I don't recollect any of this" Draco stated in bewilderment. "Although, Grabbe does have bad indigestion pretty often" he grinned back.

Harry chuckled at the memory. "It was so completely useless..." he admitted.

"Why, what were you trying to accomplish?" Draco asked, curious.

Harry was feeling slightly nervous of Draco's reaction to his answer. "Well, we wanted to know if you were the heir of Slytherin. It was in our second year" he added as an explanation.

A smug expression appeared in Draco's face. "And what did you find?" he demanded.

"That you weren't" Harry answered "And that you didn't know who it was, either."

Draco expression became sour again. "My father had something to do with it, but he wouldn't tell me who it was" he confessed.

"It was Tom Riddle" Harry said, surprised that Draco didn't know this by now.

"Who?" Draco asked in confusion.

"Tom Riddle" Harry repeated. "Voldemort?" he tried. This time Draco looked completely perplexed. "His real name was Tom Marvolo Riddle. Rearrange the letters and you get 'I am Lord Voldemort'. Didn't you know that?" Harry was confused too.

"I didn't know he had a real name" Draco admitted pensively. "I thought he had always been... you know."

"He wanted to loose the name Riddle" Harry explained carefully. "It had been his father's muggle name." He cocked his head to the side and waited for Draco's reaction.

Draco's head snapped up and for the first time that night, Harry saw something mean in Draco's eyes.

"He didn't have a muggle father" Draco said coldly. "He's a pure-blood."

Harry held Draco's gaze and said gently "No, he's a half-blood."

"But he hates muggles, and everyone who has ever been in contact with them" Draco said frowning.

Harry nodded in agreement. "Well, apparently Riddle junior was not too fond of his father" he explained. "He murdered him and his parents after graduating from Hogwarts. After that he went underground." Harry didn't know why he was telling Draco all this. Probably he just wanted to see Draco react to it.

Draco kept quiet for a while. "I thought he was a pure-blood" he finally said.

"I think most Death Eaters do too" Harry said. "Being a half-blood himself, it kinda takes the edge of the whole rid-the-world-of-filthy-muggles thing, doesn't it?"

Draco was already deep in thought, so Harry hopped off the chest of drawers and went to his usual place.

Title of the chapter from Dreams by Fleetwood Mac