Description: Post OOP, AU. Greatly injured, Harry runs away from the Dursleys. Free from his father, Draco has decided that he's not dark or light, but a nice gray. What happens when Draco and Harry reach an understanding? How will Ron and Hermione, now dating, take it? Not Slash.

Disclaimer: Everything that appears in one of JK Rowling's books is copyright her. Everything that appears in any of the movies is copyright Warner Bros. Anything that isn't in them is mine. If someone wants to use something in their fan fic, it's fine by me, just give a little credit in the disclaimer, eh?

Chapter Three: The Not-So Golden Boy.

Harry put his wand to his temple, concentrated, and brought out a long, silver thread of a memory. Time and time again he kept doing the same thing, chanting almost a mantra of his most miserable memories in his head.

The time I got locked in the cupboard for teleporting myself to the roof. The times Aunt Petunia tried to cut my hair and I grew it back. All the times Dudley used me for a punching bag. My mother and father dying. The dementors third year. Cedrick fourth year. Umbridge fifth year…

Finally, after a good five minutes of silence, Harry beckoned Draco to the pensive, and with only a moment's hesitation, he entered it, Harry right behind him.

"Where are we?" asked Draco. If he didn't know better, he'd say he was in a broom closet or something, except for the cot on the floor and the bits of clothing here and there.

"This is my bedroom until I was eleven," Harry replied. "See, there I am, on the bed." Draco looked over and indeed saw a seven year old Harry sitting on his bed.

"BOY! GET OUT HERE AND COOK BREAKFAST! I HAVE TO PUT THE FINISHING TOUCHES ON DUDDY-KIN'S PROJECT!"

The little boy Harry scrambled from his bed, threw on some clothing, and almost ran out the door. Harry and Draco followed him, and Draco looked behind him.

"You lived in a cupboard?" he asked, faintly nauseated.

"Yeah. I reckon the only reason they didn't keep me in there was because my Hogwarts letter was addressed to it. By the time I came back from my first year, I couldn't fit in it anymore," Harry replied nonchalantly.

"YOU BOY! GET OVER HERE AND COOK THE BACON!" A horse faced woman with blond hair and pale green eyes sat at the kitchen table, working on gluing the last bits and pieces to a model of the solar system made out of candy for that day's science fair.

"Yes Aunt Petunia." Harry replied.

"And you had better not eat any of Dudley's breakfast burn!" she snapped.

"Yes Aunt Petunia."

That woman treats him like a house-elf! Draco thought.

Dudley, a fat pig like boy with blonde hair and watery blue eyes that glinted with cruelty, chose that moment to come barreling into the room, and knock Harry into the stove. Bacon grease splattered onto his hand, and the boy cried out in pain.

"BOY! WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT STANDING IN DUDLEY'S WAY?"

The new voice belonged to a man. Draco gaped at the huge gorilla like man who walked through the door. The man walked right through Draco, and that startled him enough that he missed the sight of Harry flinching.

"I'm sorry Uncle Vernon, I didn't –" Memory-Harry's protest got cut off with a backhand to his face.

"Vernon, wait to discipline the boy until he's finished with Duddy-kin's breakfast," Petunia said. "Dudley! How do you like your project?"

"I wanna eat it!" Dudley said, trying to take a lemon drop off the sun.

"No, Duddikins, you can eat it later. But I got you a bunch of leftovers so you can have those until your project is graded," Petunia said, beaming at her son. Harry was walking around the table, pouring coffee for his Aunt and Uncle, milk for Dudley, and serving all of them the bacon, then the toast and the eggs that he made. Though the family didn't seem to notice, Draco watched as the boy Harry quickly shoved two pieces of bacon that he'd hidden in the pan into his mouth, and munched on them as he started to wash the pan. He did the same thing with the eggs, but when he took the plate off the table with a piece of toast left on it, and shoved it in his mouth, Dudley (who Draco saw had eaten about four eggs, a few pieces of toast, and half of the bacon) noticed and started wailing.

"MUM! He ate the last piece of toast! I WANTED IT!"

Harry paled, and the bus beeped its horn outside.

"We'll discuss this later boy," Vernon growled.

"Yes Uncle Vernon," the boy Harry said with a resigned tone as he walked out the door dejectedly behind his cousin.

They hovered in a grey mist as Harry thought about which memory he should show Draco next.

"What happened when you got home?" Draco asked.

"Locked in the cupboard until breakfast the next day," Harry replied. Draco's eyes widened, and the grey mist disappeared again.

Harry, seemingly unchanged, was creeping through his front door. In his hand, Draco noticed, was a paper with a note on it.

"This took place about a week later," the older Harry said. Draco nodded and walked over to see the paper in Harry's hand.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,

I am proud to inform you that Harry's science fair project, the working model of a volcano, has been selected to go on to the finals for the Junior Science Fair. This letter is to inform you that should he win an award, your presence on stage to accept the award with him as his parents is expected.

Congratulations again,

Mrs. Durnin

"Congratulations, I think," Draco said. Harry shook his head.

"Boy! Get over here and start making rolls for dinner," yelled Petunia.

"Yes Aunt Petunia." Harry walked over into the kitchen and put his stuff down on the table.

"Put your things in your cupboard!" she shrieked, before spying the note.

"Yes Aunt Petunia," Harry said again. He tried to grab the letter, but she snatched it away from him. Harry sighed quietly and put his school things in his cupboard before coming back into the kitchen, washing his hands, and beginning the process of making rolls.

"Vernon!" Petunia called, "Look at what Harry has done!"

"There, Potter. Some recognition," Draco sneered.

Neither of the Harrys said anything. Older Harry was stony faced, the younger one looked ready to cry. He began rolling out the dough that his Aunt had let rise earlier, making them into roll-shapes.

"What did the boy do now, Petunia?" Vernon walked into the room, and took the note from his wife's hand. The kitchen was silent as he read over Harry's accomplishment.

"So," he said quietly, his face turning purple, "you had a project for the science fair too, did you?"

"Yes sir."

"When did you work on this? You shirked your chores boy?"

"No sir. I worked on it during recess so I would have time to do all my chores here," Harry replied. His voice was quiet, and was dripping with fear.

"Did you think it would be FUNNY to show Dudley up, eh? How DARE you get into this fair when Dudley only got an honorable mention! He worked much harder than you EVER did!" Vernon roared.

Harry let the memory fade just as Vernon started hitting the boy.

"Now for Hogwarts," he said. Draco didn't know what to say, he merely nodded.

Hogwarts seemed to last forever. In and out of the memories they traveled, and at this point Draco saw himself featured in a bunch of them. It started off with the first day of Potions, a class that showed Draco smirking with his friends while Snape tortured him relentlessly. It traveled through the incident with Norbert, the detention in the woods (again, with Malfoy) and all of the taunts (most of which were instigated by Malfoy). It even went down through the events of him, Ron, and Hermione going after the Philosopher's Stone and the terror that was running through his veins the entire adventure through the obstacles located miles below the school. Then they went into the second year. The miserable summer with the Dursleys came first, including the first encounter with Dobby while he worked for the Malfoys. Next came all the humiliating encounters with Lockhart, with more taunts from Draco in between. Especially featured in this section was the part of the second year when the entire school had believed that Harry was the heir of Slytherin, and was therefore releasing the Basilisk on the student population. It finished with the terror he felt when Ginny was captured, and the even greater terror when Riddle came out of the journal and tried to kill him. Third year was especially painful, as that was the year the dementors came to the school and as most of Harry's painful memories of that year had to deal with the dementors and seeing and hearing the deaths of his parents over and over again Draco saw Harry's eyes close in a bit of a wince. It looked to him like Harry was trying not to cry, and it got even worse once Sirius Black came into the memories. Tears did well up in Harry's eyes, especially when it came to the memory of Sirius offering to take Harry home with him.

"You know, the stuff here at Hogwarts isn't so bad," Malfoy grumbled.

"We're only finishing up my third year Malfoy," Harry replied grimly. "We haven't gotten to the graveyard, or Umbridge…or the Ministry…or this summer…"

As if mentioning them triggered it, Malfoy suddenly found himself next to himself with those 'Potter Stinks' badges. This bit was worse than the normal taunting, as Ron wasn't speaking to Harry either, and Hermione was hanging out with Ron more than Harry. This pretty much left Harry alone against the entire school. Malfoy was surprised to see that the first two tasks were not shown in the pensive, but just as he was going to break and ask about it, he found himself in a grave yard.

"Cedric."

Malfoy turned around, and saw a fourteen year old Harry and a seventeen year old Cedric behind him. His eyes widened – this was the moment that most of the school had speculated, that most of the wizarding world had speculated about.

"We need to get out of here!" Harry said in the memory.

"Kill the spare."

Wormtail raised his wand, and the two deadly words were spoken. The green light jetted out of his wand, nailing Cedric in the chest. He slumped, and the pain that went through him at Cedric's death was so thick you could almost see it in the memory. Draco certainly felt it pressing against him from all sides. The feeling didn't fade – in fact, as Voldemort came back, Draco found he was nauseated. The memories didn't stop after that though, next came the summer after words…and then the school year, their fifth year, the year that had just passed.

Umbridge was featured heavily in these memories. The torture of her constant detentions, mostly featuring her forcing Harry to carve the words 'I Will Not Tell Lies' into his own right hands made Draco go a bit pale. He knew she was having fun with him, but he didn't know how badly she'd treated him. Next, he saw Harry's memory of the one quiddich game he'd played that year. Looking at himself, Draco flushed a bit, but it was unnoticed by Harry, who had a glazed look in his eye, even as the memory Umbridge banned him from Quiddich. He saw the day that the DA was disbanded, but seeing it from a different point of view made Draco wonder if that really should have been one of the high points of his year. Then came the memory of the fiasco at the Ministry.

Draco paled even more when he saw his father from Potter's point of view. His mother was right, he was an evil bigot. He watched as Potter saw his friends go down, felt his hope rise when the Order of the Phoenix burst into the room, and saw Harry's world shatter the moment Sirius Black fell through that arch and didn't come out. From there was the battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort, and Draco watched, once again, as Harry escaped from the dark wizard's clutches.

When he was a baby, his first year, his second year, his forth year, and now the fifth year. Five times he's defied the Dark Lord so far. The thought crossed Draco's mind, and an annoying small voice in his head spoke up.

You couldn't defy the Dark Lord five times if your life depended on it.

He was forced to ignore the voice for a moment as the scene flashed again, and Draco found himself in a new room at the Dursley's house.

"Dudley decided to learn how to play the drums and the guitar," Harry said. His voice was shaky and constricted, Draco got the impression he was just on this side of bawling his eyes out. "So Uncle Vernon had the basement soundproofed. But then he somehow got the idea that he could beat the magic out of me. So he added another, small room in the corner. No windows, so Hedwig couldn't get out, and no sound could get out so the neighbors would never know."

The scenes flashed by. Every beating, the time Harry burnt his uncle's hand, the belt, the tying down.

"The Order was supposed to come if I didn't write," Harry continued. "They said they would protect me."

His voice hardened up, and Draco clearly heard the rage underneath it.

"But they DIDN'T! They left me to be beaten again and again, damn near starved again and again. And then, the straw that broke it…the day I escaped…"

Draco watched the scene where his uncle tried to rape him, and gaped when Harry used a wandless stunner.

"That was just wandless magic!" Draco said stupidly.

"Yeah, I think I was only able to use it because I was panicking at the time," Harry replied with a nod. "And that's when I accidentally flooed to Knockturn Alley, crawled out of it, collapsed, and was brought here."

The boys left the pensive, and Harry took a moment to compose himself. He had been crying for Sirius between the beatings all summer, and he would be damned if he let Malfoy see him crying.

"You need to let him go Harry."

Harry looked up in surprise; Malfoy had never called him Harry.

"How the hell would you know?" Harry whispered. He got up, and started walking back to the bedroom.

"My little sister."

Harry stopped, but didn't turn around.

"You don't have a sister, Malfoy."

"Well, not anymore. Come back here and give me a minute with this thing. Or are you not Gryffindor enough to look in a pensive and see someone else's point of view?"

Harry reacted to the comment (which had Gryffindor emphasized as if it was an insult) in just the way he figured Draco hoped he would. He sat down again, and waited patiently for Draco to pull his own memories out of his head.

"My turn."