Most nights Draco slept perfectly well in the four-poster beds of the first year boys' Gryffindor Dormitory, but every once in a while there was a night where no matter how long he lay staring at the ceiling or the wall, sleep just wouldn't pull him into its clutches. One of these nights happened just a week or so before the second half of the school year, and he found himself sliding out of his bed and wandering downstairs to the Common Room. He hadn't been expecting anyone else to be down there when he came in, so he stopped short when he saw a lamp lit near an armchair and the fire still blazing, though it was much weaker than it had been four hours previously when he had last been down there, attempting to beat Ron at chess and failing miserably. A small figure sat curled up in the armchair closest to the fireplace, features rather indiscernible in the relative darkness the Common Room was in beside the fact that the figure was obviously rather small and had unruly, somewhat curly, short hair.
"Couldn't sleep either?" The voice coming from the armchair was soft, and even though he recognized who the speaker was immediately, he still jumped slightly at being spoken to. Harry turned his head away from the slowly dying flames in the fireplace and looked over at Draco, an indecipherable glimmer in his green eyes behind his round glasses, which he had on as if he hadn't taken them off to sleep in the first place. Then again, thinking back on it Draco wasn't exactly sure Harry even had fully gone to bed that night, he had simply followed him and Ron up into the dorm-room and changed into his pajamas before sitting down on his bed, not lying down. It hadn't struck the blond that perhaps he hadn't just sat there for a few moments before actually going to bed, but had instead gotten back up when he thought the other two currently in the dorm were asleep and snuck back down to the common room.
"No…" Draco admitted and sighed, stepping towards the sofa beside the armchair Harry was on. "How long have you been down here?" Harry shrugged slightly in response to the question and looked away from Draco again, directing his gaze towards the flickering orange and red flames. His green eyes looked like molten gold in the firelight, as if they had changed into something unusual, but awe-inducing. The lightning shaped scar on his forehead stood out vividly against his skin, small streaks of pale ivory against dark olive, like it had been painted on by a skilled artist.
"Not sure, I didn't really look at the clock before I came down." Harry said after a few seconds of silence and Draco sat down on the couch, leaning against the armrest closest to the armchair the raven-haired boy was curled up on and pulling his legs up onto the cushions beside him. He sat like this often, though he usually had a book propped open or his wand in his hand, small sparks flying from its tip. "Probably a few hours though, judging by how low the fire is." The blond tilted his head to the side slightly and nodded somewhat as he watched the flames crackle and the wood slowly burn and break apart, sending small bursts of tiny golden sparks up into the air.
"Why couldn't you sleep?" Draco asked eventually and once again Harry shrugged in response, not giving the other gryffindor an actual answer. That seemed to be his response when he didn't know what he should stay, or how he should phrase what he meant. The blond certainly had his suspicions on what his words would be if he did speak and sighed in a bit of resignation. "And please tell me you're not still wanting to sneak out look at that mirror, it - "
"I know! And that's not it… not really." Draco looked over at him to see blazing green eyes looking directly into his own, a slightly nervous glimmer shimmering in their depths despite the obvious attempt at hiding it. The look in his eyes confused the young Gryffindor and he found himself tilting his head to the side in confusion for a moment, not fully capable of speaking for some odd reason.
"Then… what is it?" He asked and Harry broke eye-contact, looking down at his hands instead, like maybe they'd give him a way to answer his best friend's question properly. Eventually he just shrugged, for the third time since Draco had come downstairs, and glanced over at him before looking back at the fire with a slightly distant look in his green eyes. Harry seemed to have that look on his face rather often, though it usually came when his parents were mentioned, as if his mind was trying to bring up pictures of them, but only succeeding in pulling him from everything going on as he concentrated subconsciously.
"I don't know exactly. Why couldn't you sleep?" Draco looked down at his own hands which looked even paler than usual against his dark blue pajamas in the front of the fire in the otherwise dark common room. His mind however wasn't focusing on his surroundings anymore, it had gone back to where it had been when he had come downstairs, back in front of that mirror.
"I… You know how I said the mirror we found seems to corrupt you and make you obsessed with it? I can't get it out of my head." That got Harry to turn back to face him, his eyes wide in surprise and shock. He obviously had not been expecting that to be the reason his blond best friend was having difficulty sleeping, which was likely to blame on the fact that he had basically been berating him about said mirror ever since the night he had seen it. Then again, perhaps that was the reason for that. He himself felt drawn to it, and just that feeling of longing that lingered in the back of his mind, despite the fact that he had only glimpsed his reflection in the mirror for a few brief seconds, terrified him in a way he couldn't quite explain.
"Did you see something in it?" The raven-haired boy's voice was soft, and curious, and Draco avoided his piercing emerald gaze, feeling as if it could see his every emotion when he locked eyes with it. The assumption was rather strange, and not possible for Harry seeing as he couldn't do such things, but still the blond kept his silver eyes trained on the flames dancing in the grate of the stone fireplace, casting unusual shadows along the walls. He took a small, slightly shuddering breath and wrung his hands together in his lap for a moment, not immediately answering the question his best friend had asked.
"Yes… I… it's a bit confusing and I'm honestly not completely sure what it means or…" The blond trailed off and let out another shaky breath, leaning further on the corner of the scarlet red couch and wishing he would just sink into the cushions. Harry's gaze continued to bore into him, his green eyes alight with curiosity and confusion behind his round glasses, which reflected Draco's pale face and glinting platinum hair back at him. He opened his mouth to begin asking the question Draco knew he would ask next, but he wasn't given a chance to finish because the blond had already begun answering it. "I… I saw us… and Ron, and Hermione, and… and I think all of our close families. Like, your parents, and Ron's siblings and parents, and Hermione's parents, and… and mine. But… there was something different about all of us… and them. I don't… my parents looked proud of me. Ron's family didn't seem as poor, and… and I… I don't think you had your scar. I don't know what any of it means…"
Harry's eyes grew wider and wider as Draco spoke, his mouth slowly opening in a look of confusion and shock, and his eyebrows knit together like they always did when he was trying to figure something out that he couldn't understand. "I…" The raven-haired boy hesitated slightly and frowned, obviously not sure what to say in response to the rather jumbled description Draco had given him of what he saw in the mirror. "That's not all that's bothering you, is it?" Draco blinked and then looked back down at his hands as he continued to wring them in his lap, making his knuckles stand out against his pale skin like splotches of white paint.
"No… but the mirror isn't the only reason you're down here either, is it?" For a moment Harry just looked at him in surprise before nodding ever so slightly, not uttering a single word in response. "What's been bothering you besides that?" The dark haired Gryffindor hesitated again, running his hand nervously through his thick, curly mess of hair and momentarily making his scar completely visible to Draco. His green eyes glinted again, the lenses of his glasses capturing the light of the flickering flames and making them shimmer as if they were mini lakes.
"It's nothing, just… It's finally… It feels like it's finally fully sunk in that this place is my home now, at least till the summer holidays. I finally have a new life, and it doesn't actually feel like a dream anymore. Practically all my life I've wished for something different, for someone to come and take me away from my aunt and uncle. In a way I did get that, plus more than I'd ever thought I'd have." A small smile replaced the frown on his face and Harry looked over at Draco with a slight shimmer in his eyes. The blond couldn't quite place the emotion behind the shimmer, but still it made the slight constant weight on his chest ease slightly. "I never had friends before Hogwarts… now I have three of the best friends I could ask for…"
Draco stared at his best friend for a few moments, surprise etched all over his face, written in his silver eyes. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face and all of the tension that had been trapped in him since Christmas melted away like snow when a warm spring breeze blows in and the sun starts shining brightly again. His hands relaxed in his lap, ceasing their anxious wringing, and he ran his left hand through his hair briefly as he met Harry's emerald green eyes that continued to shimmer in the flickering orange and red firelight. The raven-haired boy smiled a bit wider and then looked away again, eyes focused on the fire as he fidgeted with the hem of his dark green Weasley-Sweater.
"I… Well, you saw what happened with my friends, so you know about them…" Draco hesitated slightly and then frowned as he continued to look directly at Harry, not averting his gaze for even a second. "But, why didn't you have friends before? You're Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived!" The smile on the other boy's face faded slightly and he fiddled with his glasses as if he were adjusting them. It was a nervous habit Harry, and most other people Draco knew who wore glasses, had.
"That doesn't mean much in the muggle world, Draco. Especially not to my aunt and uncle, so automatically also not to my cousin." Harry's voice had grown quiet and a small frown had found its way onto his face as he spoke. His eyes seemed to darken slightly, as if the flames were dying down in the fireplace, even though they remained just as bright, and a small confused frown tugged at Draco's lips as well. The way the other boy said the words aunt, uncle, and cousin set something off in the blond's mind. He sounded as if he both hated, feared and, though much less prominent in his tone, respected them. There was no love, or affection, in the way he spoke of them, only dislike, in a way that didn't make sense to Draco because he may not like his father at the moment, but he was still his family and he still loved him. The blond had never heard anybody speak of their relatives in the way his best friend was, and it just seemed so… off to him.
"Why wouldn't it matter to them? They know what you did, even if the rest of the muggles don't!" Harry looked over at him and the look in his eyes was even stranger than his tone of voice, it was a practiced sort of blank that was meant to hide what one truly felt. Draco had only seen it once before on the other boy's face, right before they were all sorted. Back then he hadn't thought about why Harry was the only person who looked so guarded and almost emotionless before all of that, hadn't thought about why when he had first met Harry he had thought he was even poorer than the Weasleys with his slightly scratched and bruised appearance, his small stature and his incredibly too large clothes. He hadn't thought about why Harry had always looked at him and Ron as if he expected them to yell at him and then never speak to him again until the night they had encountered the three-headed dog together.
"They hate magic, wizards, everything to do with it. That... includes me." Harry shrugged slightly and the formerly blank expression changed into a partially resigned, partially amused expression. His family hated him? Why? For a moment Draco felt tempted to ask, because it just didn't make sense to him. Even if they hated magic, why did they hate their nephew? Just because he had magic? The blond opened his mouth, intending to speak, but no words came out and he just sighed, letting silence fall between them again, the only sound in the room the crackling of the fire.
Eventually Harry stood up and walked towards the winding staircase that led up to the dormitories, pausing just before the first stone step. "You comin' back up?" His voice was soft, as it had been when Draco had first come downstairs and the blond stood up from the couch, following Harry and then wandering up the stairs beside his best friend, who didn't speak again after that beside to whisper goodnight as he climbed into his bed and practically disappeared beneath the thick, scarlet red blankets.