Draco was woke again later that day, Harry still in his arms. When he looked down at her, she was staring up at him, bright green eyes unflinchingly meeting his own. As soon as she saw that he was awake, her face brightened considerably.
"You're finally awake! Took you long enough." She remarked.
"I could say the same about you, sleeping beauty" Draco retorted teasingly.
"So you think I'm beautiful? I'm truly flattered, little dragon" she paused for a second. "How often do you go crawling into other people's beds?" She asked mischievously, her face lighting up with a grin.
"I'm faithfully yours forever, my fairest lady!" Draco cried out dramatically, leaping out of bed and into a sweeping bow.
"Will you be mine forever, though? And never leave me?" Harry asked quietly and seriously, instantly changing the tone of the conversation.
"Yes. I will stand by you forever, if not with my body then with my mind." Draco's response was careful and equally serious.
"Promise?" Harry was shrinking in on herself, her voice even quieter than before."
"Of course I promise" Draco said gently, pulling her head back against his chest.
After a minute or so like that, Harry leapt to her feet, back to her usual eccentric self.
"Draco! I found the answer to all your problems in my reading." Harry exclaimed. "So, lets start with the basics. A wand is an inherently light object, and with it you're trying to cast light spells; this is being weighed up against your incredibly powerful magic and cancelling it out; all you're left with to use is a very tiny bit of gray magic that everyone has.
This gives us one option; to learn wandless magic. Given how powerful you are, this shouldn't be difficult, and dark magic is so much more powerful than light magic without a wand." At this Draco interjected.
"I can't believe I've never asked this before, but what magic alignment are you? The book didn't mention silver."
"Silver - or gray, as it is more commonly know - is in between light and dark on the spectrum; this means I can use both magics with equal ease, although not as powerfully as if I were aligned with one of them."
Draco nodded at this, before asking "what's the best way to learn wandless magic?". As he asked this, he pulled his wand out of his wand holster and ran his fingers over it.
"By taking your wand away from you." Harry replied, holding out her hand for the wand. Draco gave it to her, instantly feeling lighter than he had in ages, feeling as if a weight had been lifted from him. He flexed his fingers before lifting one close to his face, the pointer finger up. He stared at it and loudly and clearly stated "incendio", but nothing happened, except the tip of finger, where he had imagined the flame, itched slightly. Harry giggled slightly, before stepping forward to correct him.
"You need to channel your magic to it; wandless magic is different to magic with a wand, in the way that... flying a toy broom is different to flying a proper broom. A toy broom, like magic with a wand, only lets you go so far, but a proper broom, like wandless magic, lets go wherever you want. Wandless magic isn't limited by the control of your wand; you can do so much more with it." Harry lectures, feeling proud of how mature she sounded.
"Okay, I'll try again." Draco said enthusiastically. He once again focused on his finger, this time chanelling all his magic into the words "incendio", trying to cast the spell he'd had problems with before. However, nothing happened. Draco opened his mouth to complain to Harry, but as he did, a jet of glowing flame shot out of his mouth and scorched the floor.
Draco instantly shut his mouth, but Harry had already recovered from her shock, and burst out laughing.
"You really are my little dragon!" She managed to fit in between her chuckles. Draco just glared at her.
o - o - o - o - o
After days of solid practice, Draco had mastered his wandless incendio.
"I can see what you meant, Harry. Wandless magic is so much more ... free." He commented, as he lit esch of his fingertips on fire. "But you said this would be easy!" He whined, thinking about the days of practice he'd had to put in.
"Did you know that Albus Dumbledore was only able to perform his first wandless magic at age 41? And it took him a great many years after that to master it.
"We are twelve, little dragon. That we are able to even consider wandless magic is a feat in itself. Now, shut up and try lumos."
o - o - o - o - o
When Harry finally returned Draco's wand to him, it was the day before he left for school, and Draco found that he had forgotten his struggle with it. As the he tried the incendio he had come to love - and was very adept at -, and barely released a lick of flame, he growled and shoved his wand back in its holster, then made the flames in the fireplace tower 7 feet tall for a few seconds with a muttered "incendio". Later that day, Draco gave Harry a beautiful tawny owl as a late birthday present, but wasn't stupid and realised it was so they could keep contact during school. In response, Harry taught Draco a charm she had learnt that meant no one else could read their mail.
By the time they said their goodbyes, both had grown a lot over the summer, but neither knew what was coming for them.
o - o - o - o - o
Sirius Black and Remus Lupin has been searching for Harry for months, but had almost given up. They had looked everywhere they thought of, using all the contacts they could talk to with Remus as a werewolf. But they hadn't found anything. They resolved to go to Dumbledore if in a few more months, they still hadn't found anything.
o - o - o - o - o
Draco had known, from the minute he stepped on platform 9 3/4 and both felt and saw the magic swirling in the air, that soon everything would change; he and Harry could run away from all the adults, and the constant but unmentioned threat of you-know-who.
But for now, he focused on keeping his magic locked away in his skin. There were hundreds of adults at the station; any one of them could sense his obscene magic power if he slipped up, and Draco didn't want to give up his advantage of having an unknown power.
So played nice with his simple housemates, ignoring their stories about their boring summers with families; nothing like all the things he had learned how to do.
When Draco received his first letter from Harry, his housemates were curious to say the least; this only increased once they found out they couldn't read what was written on it; the charms Harry had taught him was clearly working. Draco didn't answer a single question about his 'mysterious correspondent', merely writing out his response and sending it off, leaving the nosy students all the more frustrated.
Eventually, the weasel grew tired of the rumours he was hearing about Malfoy's secret correspondent, and stormed over at the end of charms.
"Okay, what the hell is going on with you, snake?" the red head furiously demanded.
"What on earth do you mean, Mr Weasley?" Draco replied with almost angelic innocence.
"That person who keeps writing to you. Who is it? Your mummy pretending to be a girlfriend?" Weasley mocked, but Draco just laughed and walked off.
Time passed quickly. Draco found himself using his wand as nothing more than a prop while he cast wandless magic in lessons. He made sure he was never first to cast a spell, either; he never allowed himself to stand out. He noticed the teachers looking at him curiously at times, presumably from the complete lack of magic surrounding him, but hey just allowed it to pass as an anomaly, and Draco didn't let any of them make physical contact with him; then they would feel the magic locked away under his skin.
Just before Hogwarts broke up for the summer, multiple things happened all at once.
Professor Lockhart was fired as a fraud.
Dumbledore came forward with a rat that proved Sirius Blacks's innocence.
And Draco found a new way to tease Harry; her hated middle name.
By the time Harry and Draco were reunited, Draco couldn't help but feel like everything was going their way. And stayed feeling like that when Sirius Black became their amazing DADA Professor at the beginning of third year; when Draco finally cracked Harry's usually calm appearance, by calling her 'Rosie' (the hated middle name) at the end of third year. By the start of the fourth year, Draco felt like nothing could go wrong. Until he got a letter from Harry two days before the Yule holiday.