Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters within! It's all J.K. Rowling's! It is quite fun to mess around with their brains though.

Spoilers: SS/PS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OotP (does not contain spoilers from HBP)

Pairing: Draco/Harry

Warnings: Possible language, violence, a bit of a depressed Harry, OOC-ness, some romance, some fluff, some angst (just for fun), AU (nothing from book six)

A/N: Ok, so Harry's sort of depressed, but really, who can blame him? But hopefully the second part of the chapter will lighten it up with Draco's idiocy (definitely OOC). And this chapter is longer than the Prologue! Yay! (oooh! And I got reviews! I'm so excited! Thanks, you guys, for reading and responding! ^_^, sorry for the REALLY long wait – it's been since the summer O_O)

Beautiful in the Moonlight – Chapter 01

Harry Potter sat on a swing in the playground near his neighbourhood. He wondered once again why exactly he was still alive. Dudley and his gang had certainly given him a beating tonight. And he had let them. Harry hadn't uttered a single word, hadn't let out a single scream or grunt of pain. He had simply let the punches fall all over his body.

It was with a little shock that Harry realised he could no longer feel the pain. Or maybe he had just stopped caring. Did your pain censors cease to work when you stopped caring? No, it wasn't that he could no longer feel the pain. It was just… a different sort of pain. This pain was deep in his chest and sometimes a dull ache in his stomach, where all of his guilt lay, along with his memories of Sirius. Sirius…Harry looked up at the black sky and allowed the drops of rain to fall all over his face. He clutched his glasses tightly in his hand, the broken shards jutting into his fingers.

Harry knew it wasn't entirely his fault. No, he was not so daft that he blamed Sirius's death on himself. But he did notice that people around him tended to die. Quite a few people really. Perhaps he was a death omen himself. That might explain Trelawney's predictions all of these years. Harry wondered how many more people would die around him this year. Realistically he would have to face Voldemort eventually, and with that would come much death, possibly his own. Most likely his own, he added as an afterthought. Harry was not confident in his ability to defeat Voldemort. Would he, Harry, after all of the death he had witnessed, really be able to cast the Killing Curse?

Harry stood up then and began walking back to the Dursley's. Maybe tonight the gods, if there were any on his side anymore, would be kind to him and at least grant him a moment of sleep. Harry didn't get his hopes up. His sleep was quite often plagued with nightmares, and in his wake, his mind was plagued with memories. Harry wasn't sure which was worse. But either way, sleep evaded him now. And if Harry awoke screaming from another nightmare, Vernon might just kick him out of the house. He could deal with that he decided, but Dumbledore would not be pleased, and Harry had no desire to get more people angry with him. He had enough enemies for now. Half of the world didn't know his existence, but the other half did. And of the half that knew his name, there were at least a quarter that wanted him dead or thought him insane. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

Harry reached number 4 Privet Drive and opened the front door. His clothes dripped on the entrance mat. The single word on it was blurred, but Harry knew it said 'Welcome'. What bullshit. No one was welcome here except Vernon, Petunia and Dudley. Maybe Aunt Marge and her rat of a dog too.

"It's midnight boy, get your arse into bed!" Vernon yelled from the living room. Harry said nothing in return and walked up to Dudley's second bedroom with Vernon's complaints following him the entire distance. Harry didn't consider it his bedroom, nothing in this house belonged to him except his few possessions locked securely in his trunk. And Hedwig, of course, but somehow Harry thought of Hedwig as a free creature. She was, after all, able to fly away to wherever she desired, and no one would question her absence. Harry closed the door to 'his' room and plopped down on the bed. He heard Vernon's muffled complaints from downstairs and covered his head with a pillow. He didn't bother to change out of his clothes.

Harry debated trying to sleep, although he doubted he'd be able to in the wet clothes stuck to his body. Harry longed to have one real dream, the kind he used to have as a child. The simple ones, the ones that didn't make any sense at all, but made you laugh upon awakening. Harry didn't have real dreams anymore. No more were the little dreams that filled him with joy upon awaking. There were only the nightmares, and tonight would prove to be no different.

In the end Harry decided it would be best to change into something dry at least, and before long, exhaustion had pulled him into a land of darkness. Tonight it was different though. It was not Sirius falling through the veil he saw, nor Cedric's quick death. No, tonight it was his own, as the walls around his cupboard closed in upon him. Quicker and quicker they moved towards him until he could no longer move and then a rapping came. An incessant rapping 'tap, tap, tap.'

Startled, Harry awoke from his nightmare, gasping for air, to a tapping on his window. Pig. Harry sighed and got out of bed to let the owl into his room. Pig was noisy as ever, and Harry knew that the Dursleys would hear him.

"Shut up," he spat out. Pig froze and quickly obeyed, not used to such a command. Well, that was a first. Harry pulled the letter off of Pig's foot and skimmed it quickly. Ron and Hermione were together at the Burrow, and wanted to know when he'd be arriving. Harry didn't feel like conversing with them at all. He really just wanted to be alone. What was the point if he'd only lose them in the end anyway? It was better to distance himself a bit, at least until he returned to Hogwarts. Harry wrote a quick reply on the back of the parchment, with a lame excuse explaining his reasons for staying with the Dursleys. He tied it back onto Pig's leg than shooed him out the window.

Harry sat back and looked out at the moon. It had stopped raining sometime during the night, which disappointed Harry somehow. He had always liked the rain. It was quite relaxing to listen to. Harry looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was almost four in the morning. No point in trying to sleep again then. He decided that today he would finish up what remaining homework he had, and then tomorrow he'd make an early trip to Diagon Alley, in the hopes of avoiding classmates. Harry pulled out his Transfiguration essay and started writing.

"Mother…"

"Yes, Draco?"

Draco shuffled his feet for a few moments trying to think of exactly what he wanted to ask. His mother looked at him inquiringly and he finally decided on, "How do you get someone to fall in love with you?"

His mother's eyebrows rose marginally and she responded, "Honey…get someone? What do you mean by get? I mean, you can't force someone to love you. Love is an unusual emotion. It just…happens."

"But…I thought that Malfoys…-"

"Maybe you better sit down," his mother suggested. Draco complied and took a seat in a comfy deep red chair across from his mother. He took a deep breath and tried again, "Can't we have anything we want?"

Narcissa Malfoy rolled her eyes and cursed her husband for teaching such pitiful things to her son. In a distant cell a certain Malfoy by the name of Lucius sneezed and looked over his shoulder. Narcissa crossed her legs and put down the book she had been reading. She decided to give her son the news now instead of later as she'd previously hoped.

"Dear, with all due respect, everything your father ever told you was a great pile of crap."

Draco looked at his mother in shock and then contemplated her words. "Does that mean that…I can't…have everything I want?" he asked sincerely.

"Draco, darling, sometimes you have to earn things you want. This love thing you are talking about for example. You have to earn a person's love; you cannot force it from them."

"How exactly…do you go about earning someone's love then?" he asked, very curious as to where his mother was going with this.

Narcissa briefly wondered how her son could be so dim when he managed to achieve Outstanding in practically every subject. She looked at her son, studying him for a moment. He was handsome, as a 'Malfoy should be' and he could be polite when he wanted to be. But he was severely lacking in the common sense department.

"Draco, I would suggest that you start with being nice to this person. I assume that you are already, because that would make sense. After that, try and get to know them and then it may be easier to come up with things to please them. May I ask who this person is?" Narcissa left out the word 'she', suspecting that her son probably went the other way. How could any straight man spend more than an hour on his hair in the morning? Although, that would mean Lucius…as well…

"Er…well. Actually, mum…I'm not really nice to hi-them. I…"

Narcissa looked up at the ceiling and asked the question she'd been saving for years, "Hun, is it Harry Potter?"

"WHAT! NO! UH…how..why?" Draco sputtered off. Narcissa didn't respond to that, instead choosing to wait for her son to work through this little glitch on his own.

"…I don't get it…how…did you know? Even I didn't know until last night! And I don't really loooove him or anything," Draco gestured furiously with his hands.

"Honey, really, it's quite obvious. I'm sure you've known deep down ever since you first met the boy, it's just been hard to admit. Really dear, it's not that big of a deal," she tried to encourage him.

"But it is! It's HARRY bloody POTTER!"

"Yes, dear. I know," Narcissa answered, "But you can't help who you love. Just let it be. However, this may be exceptionally difficult, since I know the two of you don't have the best of relations. Why don't you start with something simple…friendship often comes first you know. Try being civil with him at least, and maybe find out a bit more about him. And do try not to insult his friends."

Draco took what his mother said and decided that it just might work. Being civil to Potter. Who would've thought? Step one in his plan for seduction: earning Potter's trust. To do this he'd have to be civil with Potter and grudgingly, the Weasel and Mud-…DAMN! Granger. ARG! And not Weasel…*sigh*, Weasley. If he had to start calling them by their first names, god forbid, he would die. This was going to be hard.

A/N – Um…wow I totally forgot about this. I actually thought it was a pitiful excuse for a story…but I just read another one on here, and sort of decided to keep writing this. At least I'll try to more than before! *cookies for forgiveness!*