"Honestly, it'll be a blessed day when that woman retires and stops slandering everyone in her path. It's like she has nothing better to do."

"She doesn't, but that Skeeter for you. A downright national treasure." Draco hoped that the sarcasm he was putting in was showing through a little. "After the Triwizard, you had a lot of nightmares and would sleepwalk to Hufflepuff's common room entrance. She used to come and fetch you and bring you back. So did I, on occasion when I wasn't able to be seen."

"I did?" Harry voiced confusedly once more in his direction and Draco nodded. "Yeah, you did. You couldn't stop saying Cedric's name in your sleep, nor Voldermort's. You'd talk here and there, but we couldn't really make out anything else except the names. You'd also talk like your parents were still there, given you saw them when you were trapped in that graveyard."

The blonde-haired man sighed. "Eventually it got to the point where you weren't sleeping and Granger had to make several sleeping droughts just so you'd get a couple of hours."

"I still tried though, to keep us together. I tried-" Harry protested and Draco shushed him. "You did try. We still had our meetings together. Some nights when you refused your drought, we'd go and sit up on one of the tower roofs and just talk about nothing."

"It was never about nothing, you laughing was a rare sight. I'm glad I got to see it without all that forced pomp and grandeur behind it." Harry smiled, but then it fell. "Where did the idea to memory charm me into forgetting you come into play?" He hesitated to ask the question, as he felt like it would hurt Draco.

However, he only saw a flicker of emotion on his face when he admitted. "After Sirius died."

Harry was shattered. Beyond it, in fact. While Dumbledore had saved him from the press and ministers that wanted to practically devour him information-wise, he hadn't saved him from the immense guilt he felt from not killing Bellatrix Lestrange to avenge his godfather.

He didn't know how many more people he had to lose to live in some gray area of peace in the world that had taken so much from him. First his parents, then Cedric, then Alastair, now Sirus. His only family other than the Dursley's, who practically weren't family at all, finally wiped out to a degree where he felt all hope was lost.

That worry of losing more people soon turned his thoughts to Draco, once he was finally left alone in his own company. Draco was more important than even his grieving over his godfather, despite the hurt that came along with that fact.

Draco was still alive, but how long would that be before he too would be killed?

Ever since the Order had taken him in, he'd had to very carefully meet with Draco in private when they could and those meetings had been few and far between, usually placed after Snape's Occlumency sessions that left him drained and with a headache that he couldn't shake for days, lest Draco understandingly did his best to lesson it in the short time.

If it wasn't his every move that would get Draco killed, it would be his own father, as being a Death Eater, both former and currently, only had one result to work towards and it wasn't a hopeful one, no matter what his mother or anyone around him would feel or think.

There was also the other side of things where one of the other Death Eaters might go after Draco as well, should his father not go through with it or Voldermort deemed him some kind of problem to be dealt with,a fear that hadn't even occurred to him until now. He really hadn't wanted to make this kind of decision, but the feelings boiling inside him like a brewing cauldron had decided for him, reaching for a nearby piece of paper and pen.

Hopefully, the Ministry wasn't intercepting uncommon looking owls for the time being.

"You owled Hermoine and pleaded with her to somehow disarm me and use the memory charms to wipe you away if things got to that point, which you thought at that time was right then and now. She convinced you not to and said she would if it came to it, but first try and see reason for a while longer before thinking about doing something like that."

"So it didn't happen then?"

"No, thankfully. Somehow your self-sacrificing brain managed to stop you from doing something dumber than normal for once and you put that plan on the back burner for a while till you came up with a different one that didn't involve purging people's minds."

"Let me guess, all the other plans were either too stupid or never going to work?"

"Correct. Given you were staying with the Weasley's, you didn't owl me for almost the whole summer till we saw eachother in Diagon Alley when Father was arrested and I was chaperoning to my mother for the day. I confronted you on the train, however, not there."

Harry knew he couldn't keep avoiding Draco forever. He was a little shook up at seeing him in Diagon heading for Knockturn Alley, but hated himself for the look in his eyes. It was hopefulness, as much as it was fear and a smattering of hurt that made him feel more guilty than he already had hovering over him from everyone else.

While Hermoine and Ron talked out of earshot, Harry quickly donned the Invisibility Cloak and snuck from the Gryffindor carriage through the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw carriages and made it to the top carriages where the Slytherin students were either resting or studying.

Locating Draco quickly, it only took 3 sharp pulls on his suit sleeve to get his attention and seemingly knowing it was him, got up from his seat and headed towards the bathroom, him following behind only to take the cloak off and be aggressively kissed within an inch of his life with his back pressed up against the sink before being let go, breathless.

"Where the hell have you been?!" Draco whisper-yelled at him and Harry shook his head. "I had to be put into protection away from Muggles and so the Ministry and Death Eaters couldn't find me, I wasn't able to send you any owls to tell you I was okay. I'm sorry."

"Well thank you for putting me into a panic." The normally unflustered wizard looked rather irate. "Before yesterday, I wasn't even sure if you had somehow heavily Scourgifyed within an inch of your life and were lying in a cell in Azkaban for perjury."

"Not like they would be able to get to me with the amount of people hovering around me to keep both my sanity and safety in check. I swear it's like they think I'm going to go on a rampage or something like /him/ just because things have happened to me that no normal wizard should have been able to endure, let alone go through in only a few years."

"You have been through a lot." Draco's face came close to his, his pale hands cupping his similarly coloured jaw and cheeks. "Too much. I heard about Black. He was related to my mother. I'm sorry he left you. I know how much he meant to you considering those Muggles you live with that should be strung up by their toes."

"Yeah." Harry sighed, unwilling to continue the subject line about his uncle any longer. If he did, he wasn't sure he'd even be able to get out of this bathroom, let alone off this train, so he just asked Draco what he did that summer (if he did anything) and let him entertain him with stories for the few moments they had together. He wouldn't dare ask Draco about his father either, as he knew that without him around, Draco was a different man and rightly so and he liked that.

Both were so engrossed in conversation that it surprised them when they felt the train slow down and turned their heads suddenly as they heard the stopping whistle of the Hogwarts Express as it started to pull into the station. Turning to him, Draco smiled wryly before nodding. "You should get back to your carriage."

"Yeah, definitely." Harry nodded quickly, picking the cloak up from the toilet seat where he had left it as they stood parallel to each other. "I'll see you later? When I can?"

"You'd better, Potter." Draco glared at him, but with no heat behind it. "I'm in too deep with you now to consider letting you get away from me. You're lucky I don't use a body-bind curse on you one day and keep you as an ornament for myself."

Ron and Hermoine would ask why he was smiling later as they got out of the train once he returned, but he just shrugged. "Just thinking about your mother's cooking, Ron."