Thanks to Sanguiyn my wonderful beta, who not only saves me from grammatical errors, but also dresses as a super hero when she does it.

Disclaimer:

Loosely based on '10 Things I hate about you', which was based on Shakespeare's 'Taming of the Shrew'.

You all know that I don't own the Harry Potter characters (JKR does). But if I did, something like this would happen to them...

Six or seven years old, Draco wakes up in the night, surprised because it seems that he was asleep the minute before, and now he is wide awake as if it were the middle of the day.

When he can't get back to sleep, he pushes the covers aside and climbs out of his bed. The Manor is quiet but a dim light burns in the lengthy hallways, just as it always does at night. He pads out of his bedroom and crosses over to the room where his parents sleep.

The door is ajar. Silently he pushes it open wider, remembering that his father is away somewhere, doing his work.

His mother and a man are lying together on the smooth cover of his parents' large double bed. Their legs are bare and twisted together. His mother's head is thrown back and she looks as if she is screaming, though there is no actual scream coming out of her mouth. The man's breath is rasping. Then he begins to moan too. He is saying her name over and over, "Cissy, Cissy, Cissy."

Draco turns and runs away. He dashes back to his room, pulls the covers over his head and presses his hands to his ears. He doesn't know how, but he falls asleep.

From that night onward, he had known the direction his life would take. He would marry the woman his parents would choose for him, and he and his future bride would promise to stay together, forsaking all others, both understanding that it was a promise they would undoubtedly break. He would still be able to have sex with many different people, and he would enjoy it.

Infidelity radiated from Malfoy Manor. It was like the shadow of a bird flitting past, a flash of colour in the corner of Draco's eye. Its presence filled the house and grounds, filtered through the shutters, and haunted the hallways. There was no escaping it. It constantly served as a reminder to Draco that he would never find love in the world.

For Malfoys, love was what magic was for Muggles: a figment of the imagination. Love simply didn't exist, and Draco was tailor-made to fit perfectly into the Malfoy family suit, with this belief sewn into every last one of his pockets. But something about Harry was making him come undone at the seams. And even he couldn't deny it now.

'I love you too.'

It was the reply that expanded in Draco's chest and rose into his throat, but died before it reached his mouth. Instead, other words came out, just as the curtains began flapping noisily in a sudden gust of wind.

"What did you just say?"

Harry didn't answer, and from the rhythm of his breathing it was obvious that he was fast asleep. He was draped across Draco's chest now, with one leg resting over Draco's thighs. Draco lay fastened to him, love lodged uncomfortably beneath his collarbone like a lump of undigested dough, as though it was unsure whether it wanted to progress further into Draco's core.

His uncertainty made time stretch and distort, like the two different roads which now lay before him, shimmering in a heat-haze. He didn't know which one to follow. On one hand, there was the choice of abandoning the plan and committing to Harry for real. Or he could play it safe: stitch up the tear in his Malfoy attire, continue to carry out the plan, break up with Harry, and forget that the threads had ever broken.

He didn't know what to choose, but what he did know was that he couldn't make his decision there and then. Lying down with Harry, it was easy to dispel the thoughts of his second option, and the feeling of Harry's breath on his skin was undeniably clouding his judgement.

He struggled to sit upright without disturbing Harry, and quietly got dressed. He smiled fondly at Harry's relaxed face. There was no shadow or weight pressing on him – it was hard to believe that he was the boy who had killed Lord Voldemort barely a year ago. Draco bent down to pull the covers over Harry and kiss his forehead, before exiting from the room.

He was thankful to be able to creep out of the Gryffindor common room unnoticed. He didn't want to be interrogated by the Gryffindors, who all certainly hadn't missed the hungry look in Draco's eyes and guessed why he had dragged Harry upstairs so hurriedly.

He knew he couldn't go to his own dormitory in case it was now being occupied by Blaise and Finnigan. So he decided to go to the Astronomy Tower, hoping to find a solution in the place where the problem had begun to surface in the first place.

He climbed the narrow, twisting staircase to the Astronomy Tower, ignoring the eerie sensation that was creeping about between his shoulder blades. When he reached the top, he noticed that the door was slightly ajar, so he pushed it open, not expecting that anybody else would be inside.

The memories of that night when he was a child suddenly surfaced, vivid and unresolved in Draco's mind. They became a series of jerky tableaux, grotesquely over-lit figures superimposed on blackness. Though this time, it wasn't his mother he saw.

There, laid out on a blanket on the floor, were Ginny Weasley and Michael Corner, in the same state he had found his mother all those years before. He was cornered by the memory of his mother and the faceless man, and the lesson that he had learnt from it.

Malfoys can't love. And neither can anybody else.

Suddenly, the image of Ginny Weasley and Michael Corner bred other images. They came swimming up out of a dark place. The pairs of legs and arms seemed to multiply, clothed and naked, and the intent unseeing faces fed on one another until they blurred and became one, and turned into everyone he knew and everything he had once believed.

Everyone claimed to be in love, and even if they truly thought they were, it would change. They would grow tired of their other half, and eventually crave something new and more exciting. They would betray their 'loved one', just as his mother betrayed his father, just as Ginny Weasley was betraying Dean Thomas, and just as Harry would eventually betray him (or vice versa).

Watching the scene before him, Draco became aware of a strange sensation in his head. His brain was coming to life after two months of dormancy. Rusty and unused, it would sharpen with practice. Cogs and gears were starting to turn slowly, re-forming long-forgotten thoughts. Snakes of green and silver began to slip and slide through the newly awakened machinery, calling back his inner Slytherin, which had previously slithered away.

Everything was set up for him now. A chance to carry out Step Four had appeared suddenly and unrepentantly, and Draco was going to take it. It would be easy for him: Ginny Weasley was cheating on Dean Thomas, so all he simply needed to do was make sure she'd get caught.

It was only a matter of time before the Gryffindor Pact was broken; only a matter of time before he could be free to break up with Harry and return to his old way of living.

With this enlightenment, Draco exited the tower, feelings and emotions for Harry flaking off him like paint and staying where they landed, on the damp Astronomy Tower floor - the very place where they had been painted on him in the first place.

He went straight to the owlery and quickly scribbled out a note to Dean Thomas, telling him to go to the Astronomy Tower immediately. He sent it anonymously, using one of the school barn owls.

He hurriedly returned to the tower and slipped quietly inside, leaving the door open so that he could hide behind it. As he waited in the shadows, he prayed that Thomas had received the note and followed its instructions, and that Weasley and Corner didn't move before he arrived.

He didn't have to wait long for his prayers to be answered.