Sorry for taking so long to post this chapter! My BETA and I were both having connectivity issues!

This fanfic picks up with Harry four years after the defeat of Voldemort. Harry is 21 and lives with Ron, Hermione and Ginny in a small apartment in London. He and Ron both work for the ministry, Hermione is perusing S.P.E.W. and Ginny is a member of the holly head harpies (keeping in line with what JKR has told us about their post Hogwarts experience). Here however we veer off the course that JKR has set and explore a scenario that doesn't include the kids, etc. Some of the things I write may seem a little bit out of character but I tried to remain to true what I felt was the deepest sense of the characters while also allowing room for them to mature. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER1:I acknowledge that none of these wonderful characters belong to me but are the property and creation of the always brilliant J.K. Rowlling. I thank her for building a world that is truly complex and beautiful for all of us to enjoy.

DISCLAIMER2: This story is a slasher between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. There will be EXPLICT ADULT CONTENT so if this makes you uncomfortable I would like like to warn you before hand. I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't read but simply that there is sexual content, harsh language, and to a lesser degree violence.

SPOILERS: P/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OotP, H-BP, and DH

The Cave, ch. 2

Every word, every inflection of his tone was calculated. From the first impression he made to the last he would leave on every person he came into contact with, everything was thought out and fully concocted at the moment of first sight. People in general were very easy for Draco to read. This was a talent he had gained from watching his father carefully throughout his childhood. As a result, they tended also to be very easily manipulated. His intuition and guile had guided him throughout most of his life fairly accurately. He had always thought of his relationships to the people around him as various mathematic equations; solve for X and you win a prize. He knew what to say and who to say it to and how they would most likely react. Even Voldemort, while impossible to manipulate was completely understood by Draco upon their first meeting. He immediately knew that no one was important to the thing standing before him. He knew he was not being honored for his loyalty but punished for his father's faults. He knew he was being used.

Throughout his existence, only a handful of people had not reacted to him the way he had wanted them to and even fewer could not be read. His father was one of these people who had evaded his talent consistently. Ever since he could crawl, he had tried to learn his father's reactions. Each time he thought he understood, it seemed his father would break stride and turn in a different direction. The pattern was seemingly random at the time. Now that he thought back on it though, many of the seemingly contradictory things his father had said made complete sense in hindsight. His thoughts graced a particularly painful and embarrassing memory.

After chastising him for being far too attached to his mother, Draco's father had gone on at length about the value of patriarchy in the wizarding community, expounding upon why male dominance and male bonding were essential to the infrastructure of wizarding culture. Draco had found himself relieved by the blandishment, at the time being nine years old and completely untaken by females. He had gone to Crabbe's house to play and had kissed him on the cheek believing that his feelings were not only natural but also to be encouraged. After his father had found out, he had been locked in a closet for three days. He remembered crying to his mother to let him out and each cry earned him another four hours of solitude in the closet. Dobby, their house elf at the time was his only visitor, appearing occasionally to bring him a tray of cold food. At first, he had delighted in the company, but found quickly that the stupid elf had been ordered not to speak to him and would disappear as quickly as he had arrived leaving Draco to wonder if he had been there at all. He learned his lesson there but hardly understood at the time that what he wanted to engage in was actually the antipathy of what his father had been talking about.

The second person, who he seemed to be immune to his specious ways, was the boy now laying next to him. Harry had reacted contrarily to everything Draco had thrown at him since the day they had first met. Harry had also been the only person who had ever brought down his walls. These walls were up against all outsiders, not just Harry, as a first line of social defense. He had perfected the art of erecting them in his sixth year when he learned Occlumency. What truly scared him was the lack of effort Harry did this with. It only seemed to take a singular volley of banter to destroy the mortar and bricks that masked his eyes. Draco found his voice impossible not to answer to. He found himself constantly re-evaluating and reconsidering his predetermined next steps, often times just giving in and revealing himself. The most he could do was speak with a guarded or off-handed tone as if the things he said didn't really matter to him very much. It was the weakest defense in his arsenal but it seemed to be all he had when talking to Harry.

When he reflected upon his feelings towards Harry, he found a strange concoction of hatred, admiration, lust and confusion. Hatred, for the things he had done and said to him, admiration, for the many varied talents that he seemed to have mastered, lust, for reasons that he couldn't quite fathom yet, and confusion, for all of the above. He imagined his mind as a bubbling cauldron, thoughts boiling to the surface and evaporating before they could be properly realized or understood. Above that cauldron was Harry, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose and brow lacing with beaded lines of sweat, haphazardly throwing in crushed and pressed ingredients until the potion within started to overflow.

Draco laid awake long after Harry had drifted off into a light sleep. Being next to someone after spending the past few years alone was strange and exhilarating to him no matter who that someone was, but especially Harry Potter. The chilled atmosphere of the cave seemed to make his bones vibrate for warmth and he longed for the comfort of a human touch. To admit this, he felt, would have been worse than death in many ways. His pride was all that he had left in this world and until he regained some worldly possessions he had vowed he would keep it intact. Still, he had touched Harry; he relived the moments of latent satisfaction mixed with unbearable tension. He couldn't begin to fathom how his mind was so preoccupied with this, given his situation. Sitting in a cave with little to no hope of escape was hardly his notion of the ideal romantic getaway. On second thought though, if he was going to die here at least he would not be alone.

He reached up to feel his face. A scar went from his left temple to the center of his left eyebrow leaving a slightly pinkish line across his otherwise unblemished face. He could've had it fixed completely. It hadn't been drawn by dark magic unlike the scars on his stomach, but he chose to refuse medical attention and walked away from the scene of the crime knowing that he at the very least had his pride intact and indeed that that was all he walked away with. These things had long since passed and the gash on his face had healed to form a scar, a memory of his passed that he carried with him but that no longer caused him pain.

Slowly he found the dark shapes of his imagination moving to the forefront of his consciousness until they finally overwhelmed him. He and Harry were sitting on a hippogriff and soaring silently through the sky. He was holding tight around Harry's waist to keep from falling countless stories to the ground bellow. Gigantic wings flapped against the backs of his thighs and pushed them through the air with a force that made his eyes water. Suddenly they found themselves losing air and speed, the hippogriff was struggling to stay aloft. All at once, the beast was gone and they were tumbling through the air rapidly. As the ground neared them, he realized they were falling into a wide, circular hole. They landed there almost gracefully on a soft mossy floor. He looked up to see the silhouetted form of a tall statuesque woman. He called out to her but she simply looked down upon them and said nothing. Her face was obscured by shadows but he had the vaguest feeling that he knew her. He called out again and this time she left only to return with a shovel. Hastily, she started to bury them, throwing an unreal amount of clay-colored soil with every heave of the shovel. His legs were immobilized by the first load and he was quickly being enveloped by dirt and mud. The weight of it pressed in on his chest and he struggled to breath. Harry's hand was in his own but its grip was fading. He tried to pull him up but found himself just being forced deeper into the deadly mix. Very suddenly he felt a pressure on his shoulders. He was being shaken violently out of the trap and try as he might to hold on to Harry's weakening hand he was forced to let go.

All at once he found his eyes open to the darkness and someone on top of him shaking him awake.

"Get off of me!" he cried into the darkness and was surprised by how his voice was magnified by the cave. He struggled to free himself but his arms were pinned firmly to his sides by the other person's weight.

"Wake up, Draco it's me, Harry!"

His heart felt as though it was trying to beat its way out of his chest but even still, he tried to relax his muscles and stopped attempting to free himself. After a few seconds of deep calming breaths and counting backwards from ten Harry started to lift himself off of Draco's chest.

"Wait!" he almost pleaded.

"What?" Harry's tone was sharp and carried a tinge of annoyance with it. Draco was instantly embarrassed.

"Nothing, just regaining my bearings I guess. Sorry," he contented himself with avoiding sleep for a little while. It was worth it to avoid another embarrassing episode like this one.

"Are you okay now?" Harry asked in a slightly standoffish voice still kneeling over him. He sounded as though he had just woken up to tend to a particularly fractious child.

"Yeah, it was just a bad dream. Did I wake you?" Draco asked with what he hoped sounded like genuine concern as Harry extricated himself from their tangle.

"Yes, you did actually, but it's okay, I was having a bad dream too," Harry's words trailed off as he shifted around in his spot. All at once, his hand had found Draco's knee, and having found its target tightened around it. Draco's breath caught in his chest as it tightened around his heart. "I'm thirsty. I think it's time we figure out whether or not that water is safe to drink."

"Who's going to be the guinea pig?" Draco quipped trying to erase his last few spoken words from memory. He knew he should have been trying to think of what to say to Harry's possible responses but his mind was preoccupied with the hand on his knee.

"I had kind of figured it would be me, but if you would like to I certaintly won't stop you," Harry offered. Draco's mind raced with the proper answer to this. Appear brave and take the challenge to preserve his pride? Or tell Harry that he had better be the one to try it, as this was clearly beneath him. The decision took less than a second to make.

"Well as I am neither thirsty nor set on killing myself any earlier than necessary, you, my friend, may have the honor," he kept his tone guarded so as to not show vulnerability. This was the legacy his father had left to him.

"I figured you would say something along those lines. Well, come with me then. Besides I'd rather die than be the one who gets stuck alone down here," his words sparked a pang of sadness in Draco. Being alone was probably the worst thing he had ever felt. Though he had lead a fairly solitary existence for the past four years, at least he could still see day light through the heavily marred window of his apartment. He could still read a book and immerse himself in worlds true and passed or fictional and contemporary. There was nothing here. He suddenly wished he had volunteered but knew this would be seen as a sign of weakness and of fear. So his mouth remained still and his tongue silent.

Holding hands once more they made their way back to the water hole. They stopped by the nearest edge and Draco found that his stomach was doing summersaults and his insides were twisted. He wanted so badly to speak, to tell Harry to stop but no words escaped his lips. Harry felt about the edge and found a place where the water was trickling in from an unseen source.

"I think it would be unwise for us to drink from the pond directly, so I'm going to sip from where it's trickling in," he said after inspecting the area for what he must have felt was an adequate length of time. Draco felt a pull at his arm as Harry leaned forward. A sipping sound came from beside him and then another, this time much longer. Silence followed for a few seconds until finally Draco could not take it any longer.

"Well?" Draco asked trying to mask the concern in his voice with impatience.

"Well what?" came back Harry's voice sounding disgruntled.

"Is the water safe?" he replied feeling stupid and sheepish as the words left his lips.

"I don't know, I mean I think so, it tastes just fine," Harry replied sounding slightly flustered. Draco did not mind Harry being angry with him but for him to think that he was somehow mentally inadequate was simply mortifying. This situation could only be resolved by an insult.

"Just fine?"He said in a disgusted drawl. "Seeing as you have absolutely no ability to taste with discrimination, you would say that cave water was delicious." Harry sighed with exasperation.

"Well then, if your taste buds are oh so cultured, why don't you step forward and try it." Draco contemplated the challenge for a moment. Harry certainly was not dead so the odds were that the water was, in fact,' just fine' and he would have to drink it eventually. So with eyes closed he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the icy stream and tasted the purest water he had ever known.

-.-.-.-

Time passed slowly in the cave without conversation. The complete darkness coupled with the incessant echoing water had started to play tricks on their minds already. Without external stimulation, their senses had gone to their imaginations for feedback. Harry could've sworn that he had seen a large figure walking towards him and Draco was certain he had heard voices coming from the water hole. These things bore no real significance and they came to realize gradually that it was all in their heads. Because of this, the two men decided it was best to break the silence and talk. The subjects ranged from quidditch to politics depending on their moods. Harry's side was often riddled by emotional sentiment and pedantic lectures while Draco's was attenuated by eloquent sophistry.

"Why is it so wrong though," Draco had asked in reference to Harry's feelings on house elf rights.

"It just is!" Harry exclaimed feeling far less petulant than he sounded. "How would you like to be treated like that? I'm certain you wouldn't take too kindly to being ordered around and treated like shit."

"No, I wouldn't take very kindly to it at all. But there's a very simple glitch in your logic, Potter."

"And what would that be?" Harry asked with mock deference.

"That would be that I'm not a house elf," Draco said smugly.

"So you really believe there's nothing wrong with forcing another sentient being into slavery?" Harry said, disbelief evident in his voice. "I mean that's pretty cold even for a Slytherin."

"If said being finds in to be gratifying to perform said tasks then it is hardly forced or slavery, and yes, I really do whole heartedly believe that to be the case," he said playfully as though this were all a game. "However," he paused dramatically before carrying on, "I do think that it is wrong to simply assume that all house elves feel that way. It's all about choice, you see, there would be no force involved. Many house elves maintain a sense of honor in serving Wizards, and that sense can be decreased or increased by their perception of how magnanimous or respectable their family is. There are a few exceptions to the rule of course, for example my former house elf, and your former-"

"Friend," Harry filled in his blank proudly.

"Yes, that," Draco said shortly and continued. "Dobby was, for all intents and purposes, excellent at performing any and all tasks required of him to serve but he lacked the unquestioning loyalty that is virtually endemic to house elves as a species."

"Dobby was plenty loyal," Harry said tersely.

"You and I had very different experiences with him, then," Draco said shortly.

"He was loyal to those who didn't abuse him."

"But you see, not all, in fact most other house elves just aren't like that," Draco tried to mitigate the effects of these words with a kind tone. Before Harry could object he continued, "I'm trying to be completely objective here by saying that this is neither good nor bad, neither here nor there. Dobby should not have been forced to stay in the house if it truly was not what he wanted. But others simply have no objection to it."

"Just because they don't object to it doesn't make it right," Harry said stubbornly and went on to explain that one can't just go around letting people get hurt simply because they don't speak up for themselves.

"You can't save everyone, Potter, it's just impossible," Draco had said.

They went on like this for was must've been hours. Each took his turn to expound upon what he saw as his worldly wisdom until 'evening' fell upon them. They had exhausted every superficial topic that they could think of rather quickly. Harry for his part had expected to have many more disagreements with his childhood rival. He quickly found however that they seemed to have much more in common than either one had ever thought possible. Their differences did not lie in their conclusions but in the routes, they have taken to get to them.

They had avoided two topics in particular, going out of their way every time they seemed to logically edge their way into discussion. The first was food. Neither one had had any ideas on how to obtain this necessity. While they knew they would have to confront this issue eventually they had made a tacit agreement of sorts to put it off until it was a more pressing matter. They made trips to the pond occasionally, still wandering hand in hand to take their minds off of the twisting flips that their stomachs insisted upon doing. So finally with their other options and topics for conversation dried out, they sat in the room that they had settled in, thighs touching lightly and spoke of the past in reverent tones. Harry decided to be the first to speak, as Draco seemed to prefer silence to self exposure.

"I knew you were living with muggles, but I had no idea how terrible they had been," Draco said in a hushed voice. Harry sat next to him with his elbow propped up on Draco's shoulder, twisting a lock of his own hair around his finger compulsively and playing with the beads of the bracelets he wore with the other hand; the tactile gratification kept his mind off of the memories he had recently exposed. "I just don't understand how you could be so sympathetic to muggles after the way they treated you." Draco seemed to make no effort to suppress his surprise and bemusement.

"Well they're not all like that," Harry offered in defense of the near 6 billion people he didn't know. "I mean you shouldn't denigrate all of those people just because of a few bad examples," he said reasonably.

"Oh, sweetheart, I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing," Draco said in a voice that dripped with sweetness and acid, "not when there is such an abundance of bad examples to choose from. Now your aunt and uncle were simply terrible, materialistic and even sadistic but seeing as I have come from similar upbringing I can't judge them too harshly, you're right," he drawled, "But I'm sure you're aware of their history having grown up with them, aren't you Potter? Every one of those so called western civilizations has waged a witch hunt of their very own, as if they could ever hope to take on someone with magical abilities. They kill themselves over the silliest of matters and enslave each other over the color of their skin, of all things. The few cultures that actually respect our kind and hold them in a spot of reverence have been wiped out or taken over. Their pitiful excuses for innovation do nothing but damage an already aging planet- one that we must share with them, mind you- and they claim to be acting for the greater good. Have you tried to breath in the streets of London recently? It's almost impossible to do without choking on your own tongue! I come out of a floo trip feeling cleaner than I do walking about that wretched city! And all of this, every single destructive event from the Holocaust to Hiroshima, from ethnic cleansing to global warming, could've been avoided if they had simply accepted us from the beginning," when he finished he was breathing heavily. His words carried on almost musically after he had stopped speaking as they bounced off of the cave walls.

Harry found himself momentarily muted by the rapid onslaught of information but quickly regained himself. "You know an awful lot about these people who you claim to hate," he said.

"Know your enemy," Draco spat back so quickly that Harry felt he must have rehearsed the line in a mirror.

"Know yourself first," Harry said with a shiver. "Are you really so ignorant as to believe that discrimination and prejudice are strictly muggle advents? I mean, look at your own movement, for fucks sake! People were being hunted for their blood!"

"The blood is a metaphor for something greater," Draco said plainly. "I could care less whether or not someone is of muggle heritage if they are raised by wizards. It's the culture and none of you muggle lovers get that. We don't want their cars or their oil or their wars and politics brought into our lives. We don't want their bullshit to put it plainly. And then we see people who venerate every little petty invention as ingenuity making up for some kind of adorable handicap! The worst are the bloody Weasley's who are so intrigued by everything but can't even take the time or are just too plain stupid to figure out what they're even called-" but before he could finish Harry was on top of him.

"DON'T YOU DARE!" he shook Draco violently by his neck," EVER, EVER SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT THE WEASLEY'S AGAIN! YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM, YOU BASTARD!" his voice shook with every syllable and he could feel Draco's pulse beating against his tightening fingers. He could feel Draco's balled up fists pounding uselessly against his shoulders and chest. His choking sounds were becoming more and more faint with every passing second. Very suddenly, he let go and stood up. This was wrong, this was a bad thing to do, he thought as he pressed his forehead against the cool rock of the opposite wall. Draco gagged and wretched against the floor in the corner that he had been left in for several minutes but said nothing.

Apart from the occasional shaking wheeze of a breath from Draco, the two sat in silence for a long time. Harry didn't know what to say and for his part felt as though it was Draco's move to make. He felt terrible but kept reminding himself that Draco had been the one to instigate, and that he was only doing what a Gryffindor did best in staying loyal to his friends. He was suddenly saddened by the thought of them and felt tears burning their way into the corners of his eyes. Surely they had noticed he was gone, were they looking for him? Were they in a state to look for him? He had confronted everything with Ron and Hermione and now he was alone. Oh and Ginny, how would she be feeling right now? The last time he had seen her they had fought over something so insignificant, he couldn't even remember what it had been. His chest burned with regret and longing. He tried to picture her face in his mind but with every minute he spent in the cave, another freckle seemed to disappear, or her hair would lie unnaturally around her shoulders; he knew it was only chin length these days.

He pressed his palms into his closed eyes as if to check on whether or not they still existed and went back to his paradise. The air there was not cool and dank but warm and humid. He could hear the euphonious dribble of streams feeding into the pond. Dragonflies zipped about and sometimes even dared to grace the water around his head, sending lapping ripples of relief towards his sun beaten cheeks. A thousand varieties of flora- fruited, flowered and verdant- bent their heads inwards over the water as if bowing down to him, Harry Potter, the kind and benevolent King of La-La Land. With that, he opened his eyes and was met by a darkness that seemed, if at all possible, even more empty than before. The warmth left his face without any trace of ever having been there at all. Draco's persistent wheezing brought a pang of remorse to his ribs. He may not have been willing to apologize but he knew he would be the first to step forward and say something because as it stood right now, Ron and Hermione were not here and Draco was. It was up to him so make an amicable gesture after the episode.

"Um, if you want, I'll go with you to the water so you can get a drink?" he posed the phrase as a question as his words seemed oddly chosen given that he had just nearly strangled the other boy. Draco didn't respond for several seconds.

"Is that an apology?" Draco final croaked before going into another coughing spell.

"No," he started defensively, "I just thought you might need a drink, after… after that," he tried to finish as plainly as he could but the words held an unshakable admittance of guilt.

"Oh. In that case, I accept your apology," coughed Draco, apparently picking up on this as well, "and offer one of my own."

"Oh," Harry said in utter surprise. "Accepted." Harry felt his way over to his prison mate and pulled him up gently.

"You know, this is the second time you've ended up on top of me today," Draco said casually.

Harry thought for a moment. "Yes it is."

"There are less violent ways of letting me know that you like me, just so you know," he said casually and Harry laughed. With some of the tension alleviated, they started to move.

Draco staggered a bit and resumed choking as they exited the cavity, so Harry rapped his arm around his waist and supported as much of his weight as he could bear to. Hunger was beginning to weaken him and he had started to feel oddly dissociated from the movement his legs were making by the time they had reached the water's edge. Taking turns, they drank until their thirst had been satisfied and then more to try to fool their stomachs into thinking they were full. Harry wet his face with the cool water and sat for a moment until Draco spoke.

"Can we go back now?" his voice was still hoarse but showed a vast improvement from before. "I'm tired."

"Yeah, we can," said Harry with some ambivalence. The sound of the water relaxed him, but the rocks here were sharp and uneven making it impossible to be truly comfortable. He rose and gripped Draco around the waist again though this time Draco was not leaning on him as heavily. He was thankful as his own weight was proving harder and harder to carry. Even still, Draco was not entirely a burden and he found it very comforting to be close to another person. Draco's thin frame slouched lightly against him and his hand fell on Harry's shoulder. Tentatively he pulled him closer under the false pretense of shifting his weight. Draco did not push away but rather adjusted himself to fit more closely and comfortably onto Harry.

They settled into the hollow carefully making sure not to bump or bruise their heads on the low ceiling. Harry's spinning head was aggravated by the darkness which offered nothing for him to focus on. Chills were increasingly plaguing him as well, so when Draco laid down by his side he was hard pressed not to ask him to move closer. Instead, he decided to roll towards him slowly, hoping he wouldn't notice or become irritated. To his surprise Draco further nestled himself into the crook of Harry's arm. His hair was longer than he remembered it being but just as delicate as it had looked. For reasons that he couldn't understand he felt compelled to stroke it. Maybe it was the hunger or perhaps the sheer oppression of the darkness that surrounded them from all sides but it seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time.

And so with shaking unseen fingers he carefully reached down and began to feel. At first very tentatively and then, having gotten no reaction, good or bad, a little more firmly and with more confidence. He remembered stroking Ginny's hair in their tiny bed. He had relished in feeling the curves of her body and bare skin against his own, pressing through the sheets in the middle of the night trying to get a little bit closer each time. He shook the thought from his head but realized with some alarm that what he was feeling right now was strikingly similar. Before he could get much further with the thought however, Draco shifted abruptly.

"Potter," he said in a sleepy voice, "what on earth are you doing?"

"Oh, um, uh- n-nothing," he stuttered pulling his hand out of the locks and instantly feeling silly. "I-I uh, I'm sorry, I'm just… Hungry?" he finished lamely. As if to bolster his claim, his stomach immediately grumbled loudly at them both.

"So… were you going to eat me? Or something?" Draco asked slightly mockingly but with a hint of honest concern in his voice.

"No!" he quickly responded. "I'm just not thinking straight, I think…"

"You think?"

"Can I just say sorry and be done with this topic?" Harry said hearing how ridiculous he sounded. Draco sighed heavily.

"No apologies are needed. You put it so eloquently yesterday 'I think it helps somehow.' You don't need to stop. It feels… nice," the last word lacked the fluid grace that qualified his other phrases but it seemed somehow more natural. Less calculated, Harry thought, and more honest. So his hand made its way awkwardly back to Draco's hair and found a particularly soft spot that started between his left ear and temple. As his fingers ran their repeated course, it became more and more familiar. He worked his way up towards Draco's face. His skin was cooler than it should have been and felt slightly moist but otherwise it was smooth. He graced his finger tips lightly from the top of his temple towards the middle of his eyebrow and found that they were running along a track of sorts; a raised and even ridge of scar tissue made a thin line on the boys face.

"What is this scar from?" he asked in a hushed voice. But Draco did not respond. His breaths were deep and slow, and their vacillating rhythm combined with the eerie sound that the water made from this far down the cave had started to lull Harry to sleep.

Everything was black except the glowing platform beneath him. It shined so brightly that for a moment he thought he was laying on top of the sun itself. He blinked the sting away from his eyes and forced them to adjust. Copper or gold, he couldn't tell, but the metal was pleasantly cool against his skin. He realized with a shock that he was naked and stood up quickly, holding his genitals as if this could assuage his feelings of exposure. His situation seemed to exist within a bubble, nothing but darkness surrounded him and no visible support seemed to exist beneath his platform. Had one existed it would've been rather pointless, he felt, as there wasn't a visible ground either. Something caught his eye very suddenly, where there had been nothing before. A second glowing disc of gold slowly lifted up and then fell down as if on a teetering scale with his platform on the other side. The outlines of two tall men, one thin and elegant, the other thick and brooding stared at him or perhaps through him from the other side, motionless as if frozen.

Who are you? He shouted at them but was shocked by how his words seemed get sucked into a vacuum and fall deadened upon leaving his mouth. They sounded muted as if he was shouting with his hands covering his ears. As short of a distance as his words had seemed to travel, this seemed to awaken the two figures abruptly. They pulled their wands out, one from a holster on his belt and the other from within a walking stick and took aim at him. He stood completely vulnerable upon the platform, illuminated from all sides and naked. With no other choice in sight, he closed his eyes and waited for the deadly spells to hit him. A long time seemed to pass but he had felt nothing aside from his pounding heart trying to make the best of its final beats. Something tenderly sweet smelling, maybe grass, tickled his nose and he opened his eyes.

Am I still asleep? He asked a seventeen year old Draco, his voice echoing against the tiled walls and porcelain sinks of the second floor girls bathroom. He didn't respond at first and seemed to be lost in thought before realizing that Harry stood before him. Even then, he only smiled mildly and welcomingly at Harry. Only now did Harry realize that Draco was also naked and was bleeding profusely from several jagged edged gashes in his stomach. He ran towards the other boy whose face remained as florid as ever in spite of the amount of blood he was losing. He frantically but uselessly tried to stop the effluent current that was pushing past his fingers, but his efforts only seemed to exacerbate the problem. Every time his fingertips pushed against one wound, another one seemed to appear until Draco's entire abdomen was nothing but a bloody pulsing pulp. Hot tears blurred his vision. Sweat poured off of his brow and down the curves of his cheek bones. Draco laid there calmly as if this was a minor inconvenience that plagued him occasionally but whenever he tried to speak, crimson poured out of his mouth forming a poor substitute for his words.

Without knowing why or what he intended to do, Harry found himself lying behind Draco. He held the limp nearly lifeless body to his chest and realized he was sinking into the ground. Plant life burgeoned around him and vines bound the two of them together rapidly like devils snare. I'll be all right, Draco's complacent voice said surrounding him, just don't leave me here in the flames. I don't want to burn.

You know I wouldn't… darkness overwhelmed him until the only sense that remained was the one that let him know he was still holding Draco. He sobbed deeply into the other man's shoulder and clung to him as tightly as he could. Nothing remained but the two of them, the darkness and the mossy floor beneath them.

"Harry," came a whisper in his ear, "Harry, it was only a dream," but he clung tighter still, the image of the blood bathed boy still stinging his memories.

-.-.-.-

They sat for an immeasurable amount of time without speaking before Harry moved. They had their backs against the cave wall and sat side by side with their shoulders and thighs touching. Occasionally Draco would lean against Harry and sigh deeply as if this made their arrangement more comfortable but he always picked his head back up off of Harry's shoulder after a moment not wanting to seem too dependent.

"I just wish I could see," Draco finally said in a strained voice. It was all either one of them seemed to be able to think of. That is to say, it was the most innocuous thing to think of. It had been three days since they had found themselves in the cave and while the concept of food seemed like a distant memory, hunger had become as familiar as the ancient halls of Hogwarts. Draco imagined himself taking the well trodden path to the room of requirement, placing one foot in front of the other, each time praying silently that his tireless efforts might come to fruition. Thinking back on it, he wasn't sure which was worse: a life where he was constantly fearful and on edge, or the insipid existence that he had come to lead afterwards. After being disowned, his mother had- through some covert actions, he was sure- sent him enough money to rent and eat, along with a few of his own things. For two years, he lived off of what little he had been given or could attain and lived a life full of banal activities. Walk to the park to read, sit at the kitchen table to read, eat when he remembered to do so, read for a bit and then sleep. This had been his routine.

The idea of becoming an auror had been the first thing in two years that had provided him a past time of any significance. It wasn't really a goal at first, as the possibility of going from Deatheater to crime fighter seemed unlikely, but the more he heard about Professor Snape the more he longed to emulate him. When Harry had finally submitted to being interviewed (for a historical reporter intent on documenting the momentous battle) Draco had read the section that vindicated Professor Snape almost obsessively, memorizing every word used to describe the audacious and heroic life of his mentor. He scrutinized every detail of the man's biography from his clandestine love of Lily Evans to his ultimate and lack-luster fall at the hands of the Dark Lord. On the surface, his life seemed like a wasted one with the untimely death of his true love being sealed by his own hands and his final year of life as an outcast from those who he sought to protect. And yet, Draco felt there was beauty to his tragedy. His life reminded Draco of a painting that had hung in Father's library of an old war scene- stoic men clad in heavy silver sitting atop pure white stallions, destined to exist in perpetual conflict- a terrible cross-section encapsulated though not frozen in a breath taking mural.

Draco liked to think of himself as having similar qualities; after all, he had always been Professor Snape's favorite. He very briefly had wondered if that had all been an act to appease his father but had ultimately decided that this could not be the case. He didn't doubt that a large portion of the relationship they had had was fabricated, but in Slytherin, this was considered to be a quality that was endemic to the community. Many of the people he had been closest with were what others might call polite acquaintances. While he was certain that Harry's friends were probably going into an absolute panic over his absence, Draco would've been shocked if Pansy had even flinched upon reading about his disappearance in the paper. There was no suffocating link to others in that sense, but at the same time he had longed for what seemed like a lifetime to be close to someone, to have a true companion. Still though, Harry seemed to care for his well being, at least when he wasn't trying to strangle him. He smiled to himself but was brought back to his present situation by a rumbling sound from his abdomen.

He turned his head in the direction of his prison mate, eyes closed because the darkness seemed slightly more natural when confronted this way. And yet, his eyelids had the faintest hue of blue to them as he turned towards Harry. No, impossible. Slowly, and in disbelief he opened his eyes. There sitting beside him was a soot faced, bedraggled locked, Harry Potter staring in awe at the bluish light that radiated from his fingertips.

Thanks are due to thebrunnetteone for the BETA!

Please let me know what you think, good AND bad!

PteraWaters: Thank you! I've been brain storming back and forth between this and another story for a few months and decided to go with this one for now as the idea is way more developed. Draco is no longer a Malfoy, but he still carries the name of a pure blood family. He really needs to ask himself How much importance can be stocked in that when he has no assets or political pull as a result.

NaginiPotter: Thank you for the encouragement. This is my first posted Fanfic so its much appreciated.

Trina, Charlielovesme: I should be updating more frequently in the future. I hope you continue to enjoy!