Disclaimer: I don't own it…yet.
To my reviewers: Thank you all so much for reviewing, they make me happy!
TheSilverLady:
I can send you emails when I update. But, I strongly suggest becoming a member and putting your favorite authors on your author alert list, and then you automatically get sent an email. Thank you for your review, I am glad you like the story. Have a cookie!
TheUnknownJedi:
BWAHAHAHA! Harry torture is so much fun. There will be some Draco torture later on, and then they will comfort each other. Thanks for reviewing, have a cookie!
InDePeNdAnT-cHiK:
Wow, thanks for all the praise, it's nice to know when somebody thinks I'm really good. You will give me a cookie? Yum…sounds good; here have a cookie for your review.
Kim13:
Of course we are mean to Harry; he's so much fun to torture! I'm glad you like the story. Have a cookie!
Wiccan Pussykat:
I have so much fun writing evil Voldemort, he's one power-hungry dude, I like it. I AM going to hurt Draco, MUAHAHAHA! That's part of what will bring him and Harry closer together. Read my A/N at the bottom, and tell me what you think…I think I like Ron/Hermione too, they will probably get together in the actual books, which is why I like to write it.
I was also laughing on the disturbing kitten plate's line. Sirius; once again he just jumped in with his own ideas…Harry will still feel that dream this chapter! Oh…and I liked Dumbledore's line too. Wow, I'm sorry you don't get to do anything like Lucid Dreaming projects; they were pretty cool to learn about. **notices how I am rubbing it in your face** BWAHAHAHA. **coughs** Anyways, Cola is ok, but I prefer root beer. Yum…anything but coconut flavoring…or grape…too much grape flavoring gives me a headache. How about banana? Yummy! Have another cookie.
Reflective Velvet:
Your first review… scared me, but since I can't figure out how to find the code so I can delete it, I guess it will just have to lurk in my review box. Hehehehe. I am so glad you think I am… 'responsive'… that's what I was going for! I always want to hear my reader's feedback. If they put me on their alert list, but never review…I don't know what parts were their favorites, or why they started reading the story…it saddens me.
If anyone can make me feel guilty about ever abandoning this fic, I am sure it will be you. Why don't you take a Sirius bobble head to go with your Draco one? Have a cookie too!
Usernotavailable:
Harry gets a new power, I think you all will like it, 'cause it doesn't like turn him into a superhuman or anything. Have a cookie! Thanks for your review.
AoiHyou:
If you add me to your author alert list, I won't have to email you; this would be very helpful for me. I will email you for a couple chapters though. There will be Harry/Draco action in the near future, which will also relate to Harry's NDE. Thanks for reviewing, have a cookie!!
Kay's Shekina:
It is always good when Sirius is still alive. Thanks for your review, have a cookie, please!
Tati1:
I'm glad you like it so far. Please keep reading! Have a cookie, too.
Funness:
I've updated, have another cookie! **empties trash can**
DarkBlackDragonessofDeath:
OK, whatever you want to laugh at is fine with me! As long as you are enjoying the story, have a cookie.
Paranoiain2005:
I'm honored that you think my story surpasses the norm. If I am writing, I want it to be original and enjoyable to read. I am trying to follow the story as closely as possible, I'm glad you haven't found anything missing. I will try to make the chapters longer, especially since I won't be updating as frequently as I have for the first eight chapters. Expect one every week. I love long reviews too! Have a cookie, any flavor, and enjoy this chapter.
JiNglebellz:
I'm jealous, I live in Southern California, where it never snows, and the nearest snow is like an hour and a half away. **sobs** I want a snow day too!! Your story is long! I will look at it when I have some time. Of course you can have a cookie! Pick a flavor. Thanks for reviewing.
Serpentsattire:
Speechless? Wow…I feel………. so…………POWERFUL………….bwahahahahahahahah! Have a cookie.
Hey all, sorry this one took a little longer, school is back into full swing after finals, and…it's not pretty. Thanks for your reviews, cookies for all!
Random quote of the chapter:
A fantastic prize to whoever tells me what it means!
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
Chapter 9: In Friendship
Previously:
Harry screamed.
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After he had gone to see the headmaster, Draco walked slowly down the hall towards his common room. He knew that Crabbe and Goyle had probably already written their parents about what he had done. Millicent was so scatterbrained she would have forgotten the whole incident by the morning. But Blaise…time to face the music. Draco opened the door to a cacophony of voices, which immediately quieted down when they saw who had entered.
"Guess who has decided to show his double-crossing face…" they jested. "Done making out with Potty then, Malfoy?" The whole common room laughed. By now, word had now spread throughout the dormitories that Malfoy had sided with the Boy-Who-Lived. Draco looked around the room, searching for a friendly face. Millicent stood with her friends all of whom were giving him either fearful glances or hateful glares. Crabbe and Goyle were whispering in the ear of some seventh-years, who were laughing, obviously at Draco's expense. Everyone was against him. Except for one.
Blaise was standing aside in a corner, chewing his bottom lip in thought, which he always did when he had a particularly difficult problem on his mind.
"Hey, Zabini," Draco cautiously approached him, afraid that the one person who he considered his one true friend might also think him a traitor.
"I never thought you really meant it." Blaise whispered. "All that talk…I never thought…"
"Hush… not here." Draco said quickly, "let's go upstairs."
"And miss the end-of-exams celebration?" Blaise joked, a half-smile forming on his face.
"I wouldn't party with these amoebas if you paid me." Draco frowned in Crabbe and Goyle's general direction.
As they started upstairs, Draco suddenly began to remember why he had always thought of Blaise as his closest friend.
He had always envied the kind of admiration that came from your peers when they respected you for who you were, and not who your parents were. Somehow; perhaps because the Malfoy family had always had such a reputation of practicing the Dark Arts on a daily basis, Draco had never experienced true friendship. Before Blaise, all Draco had was his sidekicks, who wouldn't recognize intelligence if it smacked them in the face. Crabbe and Goyle had to be the dimmest creatures in existence. Draco wasn't denying that they were impressive; people looked at his bodyguards and knew who he was. But they didn't know who he was, his personality, likes and dislikes, and his family troubles; he soon realized that he wanted that relationship more than anything. The kind of relationship where two people were so perfectly matched, that they no longer had to compete for attention or a position. They knew each other so well, that they could bounce ideas off each other and receive honest opinions without taking offense. Partners and allies. Draco craved that contact, and when Blaise had offered it to him, he hadn't turned him down.
Their first heated debate had come when Blaise had brought up the Dark Lord and stated blatantly that he would never waste his life serving some power-hungry maniac. Draco, acting on instinct, had seen red, and screamed at Blaise, definitely taking him by surprise. Fortunately for their friendship, Blaise had seen through Draco's hostility, and had simply asked him if that was what he really believed, or what his father had drilled into his mind. Blaise had walked away from that fight, and once Draco had given the matter some real thought, he realized that he had never really formed his own opinion on that topic, he had simply followed mindlessly along.
This realization scared him. How could he have been so adamant about a topic that he knew nothing about? Was he so submissive that he couldn't form his own opinion?
Blaise's voice snapped him back to the present.
"Drake, mate, I don't know what you were thinking." He started nervously, eying the door in case someone was listening in.
"I wasn't thinking." Draco sighed. "I was…I was feeling."
"Feeling?" Blaise muttered incredulously, then mumbled under his breath, "Bloody brilliant, my best mate has lost his common sense, and now he wants to feel things."
"You felt that way too!" Draco cried, "What was happening was wrong!"
"Damnit, Draco! A lot of things are wrong! It doesn't mean I want to get us killed for conspiring against the Dark Lord!" Blaise was now red in the face.
"Don't you dare tell me you are scared of him now?" Draco yelled, raising his arms helplessly, "what the hell was all that shit about forming your own opinions?"
"I don't want to die!" Blaise shouted. "He'll kill us! Your father will kill you!"
"You don't know my father!" Draco screamed, picking up his pillow and flinging it across the room, so Blaise had to duck to avoid it. "You don't…you…" Suddenly, all the fight went out of the Slytherin as he slid onto the floor, hot tears filling his eyes.
"I know him from what you've told me." Blaise stated quietly, shuffling closer to his friend. "I know how dedicated he is to the cause."
"Dumbledore knows it too." Draco whispered dejectedly, "He wants to find me summer lodgings."
"Where?" Blaise mumbled, avoiding eye contact.
"Dunno, probably with Professor Snape or something." Draco sighed. The two sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before Blaise took a deep breath, and pledged his loyalty.
"Look, I am always here for you, just please try not to do anything that will kill me; at least not before I find a girlfriend to cry at my funeral." Blaise said. "Deal?"
"You don't have girlfriend yet, Zabini?" Draco asked, adopting an air of shock. "I thought for sure your charm and wit would have someone fancying you."
"Yeah, well, either the charm and wit is in short supply, or the girls are." Blaise frowned thoughtfully. "I don't see you snogging after dark either, Dragon."
"Your pet names for me don't turn me on, Zabini, so stop trying so hard." Draco sighed dramatically, "you're just gonna get yourself hurt."
This time, Blaise threw the pillow.
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Draco and Blaise decided to skip the party completely. They stayed in the dormitories alone half the night, playing chess and gobstones. Blaise had finally declared exhaustion and had fallen asleep over an hour ago. Draco was pacing restlessly across the room, contemplating his future and how long it would take before he could no longer have access to the Malfoy vault at Gringotts. The room suddenly began to spin around him, and a pain-filled voice was screaming in his ear. You helped me once, help me again.
Potter? Was Draco's last thought, before his mind exploded. His agonized screams immediately woke Blaise, who recognized the Cruciatus Curse.
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Blaise's POV:
Someone has to be in the room with us. I looked around in terror, searching for the source. I found nobody, and Draco was writhing in the floor in absolute torture. "Hang on, Draco." I shouted at him, racing towards the door. Flinging it open, I flew down the stairs and into the common room.
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"Jeez, what are you and Malfoy doing up there?" The general population of Slytherins were all wondering what he had done to make the other boy scream like he was losing his mind.
"MOVE!" Blaise screamed in frustration. His housemates parted for him, leaving a space towards the porthole out of the common room. Blaise darted down the hallways towards the infirmary, he ran in panting, only to see the oddest assortment of people congregating in the waiting hall and the hospital wing itself.
He recognized Dumbledore, Lupin and Moody, all of whom were in so much of a panic that they had failed to notice his entrance. Granger and Weasley, two of Potter's friends, were in hysterics in the corner. What the hell is going on? His eyes then wandered over to the anxious form of one Sirius Black.
"SIRIUS BLACK!" he shouted in shock.
This exclamation made twelve heads turn in his direction. The younger three Weasley children yanked out their wands and pointed them at his head. Their parents' eyes widened in surprise. Granger looked like she had when she heard the news that final exams were cancelled, disappointment and regret upon her face. Sirius turned a panicky expression towards Remus, while Dumbledore raised his hands in a placating gesture towards Blaise. "Do not make any assumptions about this, Mr. Zabini." He started, "it can and will all be explained to you later." He stated firmly.
"I couldn't care less what you are doing in here!" Blaise interrupted. "But Draco's in the dormitories, it looks like he's under the Cruciatus Curse."
Madam Pomfrey paled, "not another one." She whispered.
"Help him!" Blaise yelled.
A scream from a bed on the other side of the room drew their attention back to Harry Potter, who had gone slack and motionless.
"Is he…" Blaise asked.
"Alright?" Hermione finished, "I don't know, he was under the Cruciatus, too."
Dumbledore and Pomfrey were at Harry's side, checking his vitals.
"He's stable." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. "I am now going to give him pain relieving potion. But he has to wake up first."
Dumbledore stood next to Harry's bed, wand raised, "Enervate."
Everyone present held their breath as Harry's eyelids fluttered open and he slowly gazed about the room.
"A vision?" Dumbledore asked him quietly. Harry nodded slowly.
"I knew sleeping…wasn't a …good idea." He smiled weakly. "Voldemort knows… everything." He stressed this to Dumbledore, who nodded understandingly.
"Draco?" Blaise mentioned quietly.
"If my assumptions are correct, Mr. Zabini, then Mr. Malfoy should not be under the curse any longer." Dumbledore smiled at Blaise, "Lead the way."
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Harry had fallen back into a fitful sleep, right before the unconscious Draco had been levitated into the infirmary onto a bed next to the raven-haired Gryffindor. Lupin and Sirius had retired to rooms set aside for them. Tonks and Moody returned to headquarters to inform the other members of the Order of what had taken place that night. The Weasley family, sans Ron, had returned to Grimmauld Place as well. The children had been sent off to their dormitories with explicit instructions no to breathe a word to anybody. Blaise had sworn on his life that he could keep the mysterious occurrences a secret, before Dumbledore had allowed him to return for the night. The Headmaster and Madam Pomfrey were now alone within the infirmary with the two boys.
"You should rest, Poppy, I have this under control now." Dumbledore assured her.
"Very well, Albus," She yawned, "inform me if anything changes."
"I will." Dumbledore smiled at her as she walked out of the hospital wing.
He took a seat next to Harry's bed; to begin what he knew would be a very long night.
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**Pushes for a longer chapter**
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It was a few hours before the torture ended, and Severus Snape was able to stagger away from the hellish sight. Once he reached the edge of the apparition wards, he apparated right away to the boundaries of Hogwarts. One there, he set off the locator on his wand, developed especially for occasions like these, and his last conscious thought was of how much trouble Draco Malfoy was in with his family.
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There were now three people occupying the beds in the hospital wing. They all knew more things than anyone who was currently able to talk, and their experiences were linked in such a way that it was imperative that they woke up soon to explain the situation, before Dumbledore went insane with worry.
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Harry's POV:
I woke to see Dumbledore asleep in a chair next to me; beyond him I could see the slumbering form of Draco Malfoy. If I tilted my head slightly up and to the right, I could see Snape's profile in the opposite bed. Interesting. I mused silently about what their presence meant. I had a fairly good idea that Snape was here because of his involvement last night in Voldemort's revenge for the mind link. Which he had established; the stupid git, if he was going to get upset about feeling my pain, he shouldn't have been in my head! Malfoy, on the other hand…
Oh, Merlin…Had it worked? Some primitive part of my brain, when under so much duress, had remembered Malfoy and identified him as my savior in a recent experience of this curse. I remember asking him for help, right before the vision had ended and sweet relief had come. But he couldn't hear me, it would have been physically impossible! I think…
Nah…Draco was probably here because he had the stomach flu from eating too fast during the end-of-term celebrations. Just because he didn't want to see me dead didn't mean he would care what was happening to me in my dreams. Right?
The subject of Malfoy was now a confusing one. Did he think we could be friends? Why would he save me from certain death with Umbridge, just to have his Master murder me in a few months?
He's not in with Voldemort anymore. I realized with a jolt. He's all alone.
Somehow, the thought of Draco Malfoy alone in the world was almost more than I could bear. How strange. Am I feeling sorry for him? I shook my head to clear my thoughts and noticed that Draco was awake and staring at me curiously.
Potter? Can you hear me, too?
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What do you think of Harry and Draco's new mind link? (It's from the NDE)
Ok, I know it wasn't very long, but this is the typical length of my chapters, and its harder to make them much longer unless I am bursting with ideas. I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless, and I would really appreciate reviews, especially ones answering the question below.
Hey guys! I need your honest opinion, **drum roll**
I am considering sending Draco to the Dursley's with Harry over the summer, at least until they move to Grimmauld Place. I need to know if this is reasonable; I would work it into the story line so it will make sense. (Obviously) This will also give them a chance to grow closer through torture! (I suspect Vernon wouldn't be too happy about two "abnormalities" in his house, he just might…snap…) hehehehehe
;-) tell me what you think, please!! Your opinion counts!