The sound of cicadas keeps him up at night, even in winter. A haunting shadow intimately embraces him at all the wrong times like an overzealous lover. He wished to both die and live in Paris, buying hot baguettes off the street and pointlessly tossing the pieces off Le Arc de'Triomphe.

He drifted, he swayed, he found no phrases to match the feelings floating in his head, so he abandoned words as they had abandoned him.

His thoughts had been used up so many times that large ruts were deeply hollowed tracks in his brain…tracks he was stuck on and couldn't escape. Ones that ached so much he dealt with the day by avoiding it. In this manner…summer, winter, fall, Greece, Italy, the Caribbean…he could not escape this emptiness that enigmatically took up so much of his life. He fruitlessly squandered his parents' fortune…he had no one now, and he never would, to bequeath it to.

So caught up was he in his idealized world…so dreamed up and wistfully imagined was it that even the most perfect happiness to anyone else would seem a tremendous disappointment to him.

He wanted everything and nothing…two states he could never have, due to his part and how he knew his future would be.

To him, the present was no gift, yet he had no intentions of ending the exquisite torture that is life…he must just wait, and pass the time, as he had been trying to.

Flashed of memory floated upon the abyss that was his mind, like the glittering wings of a snitch…all the things he used to love…

He didn't have love. He didn't have anything. All he had were whispers and caresses dreamed up…but never had they actually happened.

How can you thrive on memories your imagination has twisted so you don't know what is real and what you've simply wished was real?

He didn't have happiness. He didn't really have anything at all.

But he didn't have nothing…not really.

Because the only time he can forget what happened and didn't happen, and what he doesn't actually have, is when he's thinking of the one person who shouldn't have made him feel anything related to bliss, yet it was the someone who was both the source of his angst and his escape…

Finally, the words came to him.

You took me by surprise. That first time and every time after that. You always have. I don't know why I've said what I've said, but I'm a different person now, and this is a different time.

But even though things have changed, so much…for both of us…one thing hasn't.

I don't know what it is. Your magnetism that draws me in…The way I catch you smiling out of the corner of my eye, even if it isn't at me. The way I can't throw out anything having to do with you…from Daily Prophet clippings to things of mine you've touched…

I'm sorry. Sorry to have known you because now hurts just too much, as I cannot escape imagined encounters with you…the invention of what could have been and what could be. I'm sorry you have known me, as I have played a less than favorable role in your existence…incidentally, a much smaller role than I would have liked…and I have now brought this nearly unbearably situation rotting with discomfort underneath your pristine nose.

I'm tired of drifting…of thinking…of aching. It might not be worth it when it's all said and done and I still don't have anything…Anything to lose…anything to fight for.

I don't believe in fate or destiny, not when there is free will…and therefore choices to be made. But I do believe in magic. How could I not? It defies rules and remains infuriatingly enigmatic, seemingly devoid of common sense and logic. Just like magic, that inhabits our very lives…this is also impossible to fully understand... But Draco, I think I love you.

-- Harry