Draco stared as Harry poured some tea in a cup and handed it to him.

They were in the Requirement Room. It had become sort of... their place. Both of them needed their friendship to be a secret. The Slytherins would eat them both alive, the Gryffindors would burn them to the ground, and that would even be a preferable outcome over what Malfoy senior would do to them if word got out. Draco looked at the tea in his cup and smiled slightly. There wasn't really anything dangerous going on... He had a crush on Potter but he didn't think the other boy liked him that way. He didn't even know if he liked blokes; and he was constantly flirting with the Weasley girl. So they were just friends, brought together by the terrible despair of their lives, of how they had been forced into fates that none of them has asked for. The Slytherin Prince, the Golden Boy; the heir of the Malfoy's, the boy-who-lived... all titles that none of them had asked for. And nobody else would ever understand. Everyone saw it as privilege.

Only each other understood.

They had spent countless afternoons and nights simply talking, letting it out, supporting each other.

"Thanks, Potter. You're not totally useless after all." He said after taking a sip.

Harry rolled his eyes and sat next to him on the pleasant couch the room had provided to them.

"Can't be nice for once, can you?" Harry said with a small smile.

"I'm a Slytherin." Draco shrugged.

Harry laughed and looked at him. Draco looked into his green eyes and sighed.

"What do you think will happen?" he asked suddenly, surprising the black-haired boy.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... we're here at school, studying like idiots when there's a bloody war approaching." Draco said. "Do they think we can just ignore it?"

Harry looked down at his cup and shrugged.

"The Ministry does." he said. Then he looked at Draco and smiled, that cursed Potter smile that made his legs melt. "Hey, if anything happens, we'll still have each other, right? You defend me, I defend you."

"You seem awfully hopeful." Draco growled.

"I have to be." Harry said. "Otherwise I would break."

The four of them sat around the dinning table.

Draco swallowed the last nerve-calming potion and looked at them.

"Well?" Ron asked, impatient.

"As if you couldn't see from my reaction, Weasley, Potter is not having the time of his life." he spat.

"Draco..." Hermione said.

"Look... I will spare you the terrible details. It will do you no good to know. But... he is getting tortured, and we need to get to him fast, before the Dark Lord finishes breaking him." he said.

Hermione let out a small moan, tears gathering in her eyes.

"There are two problems, though." he said. "First, he assigned me with finding the rest of your stupid friends. Dumbledore's Army and whichever goodie-two-shoes are left out there. That leaves me in a bit of a bind."

"What are you talking about?" Ron said, his eyes widening hopefully. "This is perfect! The others can help us!"

"Oh, Weasley..." Draco said, annoyed. Seriously, how did Granger even put up with him? "He wants me to find them, and bring them to him, which means he will be keeping tabs on my progress. He will know when I find one and will demand I take them to him. Besides, he will enlist a team to help me with it, which means that even if I got away with finding someone and hiding them in here, most of them would still end up in the hands of Death Eaters."

"Fuck." Weasley said, rubbing his forehead in frustration.

"Second, he wants to see the both of you." he said. Both teenagers paled, their eyes wide. "I suppose it's some sort of... new torture he's concocting for Harry. Either have you two watch him get tortured or torturing you in front of him. He said he wants to see how I've treated you, which he expects to be nothing short of horrific. So there's another issue."

"But... are you certain that if you take us to him, he will let us see Harry?" Granger asked.

Draco had been staring down at the table as he held his aching head in his hand, and he looked up in enraged confusion at the question. Wasn't she supposed to be the smart one?

"Uhm... yeah, while he tortures at least one of you senseless." he said rudely.

"Maybe..." she said, "maybe if he sees that you have tortured us horribly, he will leave us alone. Maybe if we appear truly hurt and demoralised, he won't want to hurt us further. I mean, if his plan is to..." she swallowed and her eyes watered with pain, but her expression remained strong, "...torture Harry with the image of us being hurt, maybe that would be enough. Then we would be able to see Harry. We would be able to see where he is and help you with planning how to rescue him."

"Yeah, except, I don't know if you have noticed, I haven't tortured you horribly and you are not truly hurt." Draco added, getting more and more annoyed by the second. He just wanted to throw up some more and take a bath.

"Species excrusior." Both Hermione and Snape said at the same time. The adult glared slightly at her, but Hermione just beamed.

"It's a potion. It makes a person look like they've been tortured. And if someone were to cast a diagnosis spell on them, it'd show that they'd been under the Cruciatus curse. We could use that." she said excitedly. The three men didn't look as chirpy as her, though. "I mean, you have to take us there anyway right?"

"Granger," Draco started, "I really do not recommend for either of you to see Potter right now."

"Well, we don't have a bloody choice, do we?" Ron asked, angry. "We still have to go there and Voldemort has to think that you have been torturing us, right?"

Draco sighed and nodded slowly.

"There is one small warning." Snape said, looking at his former students. "The potion opens wounds, creates bruises; if brewn correctly, it can even break some bones. It does so in the span of a minute, which means the minute after the potion is ingested is full of pain. The aftermath is numbed by the potion itself though, so after the minute there will be no pain or profuse bleeding. Only wounds. You will have to feign distress and pain."

Ron scoffed.

"We've been practicing since we're eleven, thanks." he said.

Draco swallowed.

"It's done then. You'll take the potion when the Dark Lord summons us." he said as he stood up to go to his room.

"Wait." Hermione said. "You haven't told us anything about where he's being kept or if you saw something that might be of use."

Draco looked at Snape, uncertain, and the man nodded.

"Well, don't tell me I didn't warn you." he muttered. "Potter is not being kept in a dungeon, he is being kept in the Dark Lord's private chambers. He is either shackled to his bed or... or locked way in a chest. So when we start creating our plan, we will need a way to enter his room and free him from magically bound manacles or a magically locked chest."

Ron looked so pale Draco thought he would pass out. The red-haired boy stuttered a few times before he spoke, his voice thin.

"W-why is he-he... in his chambers? W-w-why is hh-h-he shackled-" he didn't finish his question before Hermione burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably.

"It's exactly what you're thinking, Weasley." Draco said. He turned to leave, and Snape stood up and was about to leave as well, before the blonde turned to the pair who were hugging each other and crying, Weasley's face still full of shock. "I'm very sorry. I truly am."

Draco didn't sleep at all that night, Potter's mangled body and the knowledge that he was being kept inside a too-small chest keeping him awake.

Around 3 in the morning, he started crying.

Living under the shadow of a horrible monster his whole life, losing both his parents, watching Dumbledore get killed, the belief that he had lost Harry once, and living with a stone-cold-hearted man like Snape for half a year had him believing that he was strong, that he had no more tears to shed and that he was emotionless. But he was wrong.

He had never really figured out how he felt about Harry. Sometimes he thought he loved him, sometimes he thought it was just a stupid crush. Some days he woke up thinking that it was simply physical attraction, while other days he just kept thinking that he wanted nothing more that to talk to him for hours on end. However, their relationship had been cut short before he could even know how he felt, just weeks after their first and only kiss, because the war had exploded and Harry had supposedly died but truthfully had fallen in the sadistic hands of his sworn enemy.

But what was certain was that Harry was his friend. His closest friend. Perhaps his only friend. Crabbe and Goyle were convenient; they were there as bodyguards mostly, just so that their parents could remain in his father's good side. Zabini was fun to be around, he was a joker and he was smart and witty; but he wasn't very emotionally deep, so they weren't precisely close friends. And Pansy, well, she was too smitten with Draco to actually be considered a friend. She never liked to talk about feelings, she only wanted to make out or talk about Draco's money and the many things he would inherit.

Harry on the other hand, had his two best friends; and a few others to spare in the form of pathetic Longbotton and the Lunatic; but his two best friends, even if they couldn't really understand his despair, his terribly neglected past and his deepest fears, were always there for him. They listened to him, supported him, talked to him. The closest thing Draco had to that was... well, Harry himself.

And the only person who had ever worried about him, asked him if he was alright, and listened to his deepest feelings, was now suffering inside a chest that kept him torturously curled up for hours on end.

He went downstairs at 6 am, unable to close his eyes for the entire night.

He was surprised to find the pair of Gryffindors there, too. Granger was asleep in Weasleys arms, her eyes swollen and her face wet and blotchy.

"Morning." he muttered.

Weasley looked at him and frowned.

"I need you to tell me." he croaked.

Draco raised an eyebrow and sat at the table. Dobby emerged immediately, his eyes also wet and his hands bandaged, as he put some eggs on the table for the three of them. Hermione remained asleep.

"Dobby, what did you do to your hands now?" Draco asked, exasperated.

"Dobby was eavesdropping, Master Malfoy, so he ironed his hands." he explained, sadly.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake you stupid house elf! Stop hurting yourself!" he said. He didn't like Dobby but the thought of him getting tortured made him queasy, especially that morning.

"The pain of the iron is nothing compared to the pain in Dobby's heart from the news of Harry Potters suffering at the hands of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." Dobby said, sniffing.

"Tell me." Ron repeated, his voice more clear. Dobby disappeared with a pop, not wanting to listen anymore.

"Weasley..." he sighed, pushing the plate away. He was not at all hungry.

"Come on, Malfoy." he muttered, angry, obviously trying to keep his emotions in check to avoid waking Hermione.

"Why?" Draco asked. "Why do you want to know? What good could it possibly be? It would just wreck you even more." Draco said. "And I need you sane. Both of you."

Weasley sighed and rubbed his forehead.

"Please" he said "I've been imagining all sorts of horrible things. If you tell me I can just..."

"Weasley," Draco interrupted, "I assure you whatever your mind can concoct isn't worse to what the Dark Lord has done. You're better off with your own imagination."

"Malfoy, please." he insisted. "I need to know."

Malfoy sighed and rubbed his forehead, and then his eyes and face, trying to relieve some stress. Truthfully, he didn't even want to say it; didn't want to have to remember it again in full detail.

But he caved, tired and sleep-deprived.

"He's been raped, brutally, probably repeatedly. Probably since the Dark Lord first got him." he started. He didn't wait for Weasley's reaction and didn't even look at him. "He's extremely hurt; bruises, cuts, anything you can imagine. He couldn't use his legs, but I don't know why. Only thing I know is it hurt like a bitch for him to stand up. He has also been under the Cruciatus curse various times because he is absolutely terrified of the Dark Lord's wand. He is broken, mentally. He is traumatized, he won't even fight back. He has been terribly starved, is skin and bones, and is highly dehydrated. Before I left, he was pushed into a small chest and kept there for the rest of the night, or at least that's what the Dark Lord said."

He looked up then. Snape was now at the door, looking at him with an unreadable expression, and Weasley was crying. He wasn't making any noise but his face was scrunched up and tears were running down.

"How..." a sob escaped him, "how could you just leave him there?"

Draco swallowed and glared.

"We've been over this Weasley. What was I supposed to do?"

"You don't even care about Harry!" Ron shouted, and Hermione finally woke up, disoriented, looking at the two boys.

"Yes, I bloody hell do, you ignorant buffoon!" he shouted, getting up. "Those fucking rumors you heard about us, you can bloody hell ignore them all you want but they were true! It was a fucking secret but Potter and I had gotten close! So I also lost a bloody fucking friend and maybe even the guy I loved! So stop saying I don't care because this is as hard for me as it is for you two!"

He slammed his fist on the table and left, sidestepping a wide-eyed Snape, and went to his room, shutting the door.

Three more days passed before the Dark Lord contacted them again.

Ron and Hermione barely left their room, so they didn't run into each other again. Draco had no way of knowing how the ginger had taken the news.

He put on his black robes. Voldemort had called for a Death Eater meeting, in his manor, and neither of them could refuse. Draco was thankful that he hadn't demanded that he take his slaves there. He didn't know if he could keep the others at bay.

Snape and Draco arrived at the manor, walked through the door, and entered the enormous dinning room, where the meetings were held. They took their seats at the table, quietly.

After a few minutes, Voldemort appeared on his seat at the end of the table.

Draco noticed that only a few Death Eaters were present. Fenrir Greyback, Bellatrix, McNair, Dolohov and the Carrow brothers.

"Welcome, my faithful friends." Voldemort said, clasping his hands together. "This will be but a brief meeting. As you all know, a lot of Harry Potter's friends are still on the lose. I need you to retrieve them for me. Especially the members of the Order." he waved his wand as a few images appeared in the air, faces of people who were once again familiar to Draco. "Most importantly, Ginevra Weasley, Arthur Weasley and wife, Remus Lupin," Fenrir gave an excited growl, "Neville Longbottom," this time it was Bellatrix's turn to laugh, "Luna Lovegood, Alastor Moody and Cho Chang. This are the only names that I have of those traitors who are definitely alive. Find them all and bring them to me. And whoever else you might find."

He turned to look at Draco and smiled, making the boy's stomach roll.

"Our dear Draco will be leading this hunt." he said.

"The baby Malfoy?" Fenrir growled, disgusted. "He couldn't even turn Potter in while he was still at school with the boy."

"Please, Fenrir, I'd appreciate it if you didn't question my commands." Voldemort said, the threat evident in his voice. The werewolf quieted down, glaring at Draco.

"I will not disappoint you, my Lord." he said, his stomach twisting nervously.

"Very well. Now, I have a gift for those of you who wish to enjoy it." He smiled cruelly and Draco felt bile once again threatening to rise.

After a small wave of his wand, Potter's body appeared out of thin air, his hands bound behind him and his legs tied together. A gag was between his teeth. Every hope Draco had of Voldemort granting Harry some time to recover from his wounds before hurting him again shattered to pieces. He was even worse than before, his left eye so swollen it looked like the whole purple lump would fall off. Blood covered him entirely, and his body shook in pain... but his eyes, Draco could see as hope swelled slightly inside of him, were glaring; full of hatred. Full of that Gryffindor pride and bravery. He took a deep breath as the boy tried to free himself from the restraints, insults being choked back by the gag. He was fighting back!

The hope died as soon as it was born, though. Draco realized that Harry had been submissive the first time he had seen him because he had just been tortured, and he wasn't truly broken, but Voldemort was intent on changing that.

"Just this morning, my little pet insulted me. He told me that he would beat me and kill me, and that the Light would reign once more." he laughed along with his followers. Draco laughed as well, but his heart was aching.

How did he still have hope?!

"You gotta break him, my Lord!" Bellatrix laughed, a mad glint in his eyes. Harry eyed her with hatred but couldn't keep the fear from his eyes.

"I'll leave him to you, to do as you please. Only ground rules are, don't kill him, don't drive him to insanity, and don't mount him. He is still only mine." Voldemort said. "I have some matters to attend."

Draco paled, and could see Snape's eyebrow twitching, as Voldemort grabbed him by his hair and flung him down, his face crashing against the table with a sickening crack and the boy's wail.

Bellatrix didn't even wait before she screamed.

"CRUCIO!"

Harry shrieked, his body weakened, and writhed around, falling off the table as the witch walked closer to him, her hand pointed and trembling. Draco swallowed, knowing how that felt. Snape took a deep breath and, before Voldemort could leave, he walked over to him, leaning down to whisper in his ear as the Carrow brothers sent burning spells at the boy and his screams went an octave higher. Draco got up and walked closer to him, forcing a smile onto his face, but almost crumbling to pieces as he saw Harry's distressed face, as he saw the brave boy breaking, again.

"My Lord, Draco and I have found traces of magic in a nearby, deserted muggle town. We think they might be hiding there. We should go and check immediately." Snape said.

Voldemort didn't say anything at first, the only sounds in the room being the Death Eater's mad cackles and Harry's screams.

"Oh, well, if you must." the Dark Lord finally said, his eyes fixed on his pet, who was now writhing in terrible agony as Greyback bit into his leg, blood poring down. The rest were cheering him on. Greyback wasn't in his wolf form, so the only damage on the boy would be the horrible wound and eventual scar. "But... wouldn't you like some fun first? Draco, I know you are very skilled in the Cruciatus curse."

The crack of a bone jarred Draco from head to toe and he had to swallow very hard not to vomit as Harry shrieked madly and his leg sat at a terrible angle, still in Greyback's mouth.

"That was my father, sir. I'm not very good at it." he said, his voice shaking. Oh, God, the Dark Lord was going to discover him.

"But you are, aren't you, Severus?" Voldemort insisted. Snape nodded.

Greyback released Potter's leg and the boy sobbed and hiccuped into his gag, his one good eye clenched shut. Snape drew his wand, pointed it at the boy, and hexed him.

Harry writhed, crying, and Draco knew that Snape wasn't using even a quarter of his strength, but the boy was in pain and that was everything the Lord wanted.

Five minutes later, the curse was lifted and Snape and Draco left.

The Gryffindor trio found them in the foyer, Draco desperately clinging to Snape's robes as he cried.

Hermione and Ron joined him.