MEMORY VIAL 5: JEALOUSY AND LOVE NOTES (YEAR 2)

The Heir of Slytherin was at large, having claimed its first victim, Filch's dust-colored cat Mrs. Norris. Hermione was absorbed in the month-long process of brewing the Polyjuice Potion in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and Harry had passed along his own idea to Ron and Hermione for the meantime: to keep his Invisibility Cloak stashed at the bottom of his bookbag, so that he could throw it over himself at a moment's notice. He hoped to find an opportunity to spy on Malfoy and his friends on the off chance he might overhear something that could verify his reasonable suspicion that Malfoy was the one who had opened the Chamber of Secrets.

"Just don't follow them into the Slytherin common room," Hermione warned, "otherwise you could get caught and won't have a good explanation for being down there."

"Go down into the viper's nest?" Harry said incredulously. "I hope I would never do something that stupid."

One sunny afternoon in the courtyard, Harry steeled himself when he overheard Malfoy's gang of Slytherins agreeing to hang out on the sloping lawn.

Taking his cue, Harry smiled excitedly at both his friends and rushed to conceal himself behind a blue manicured shrub. Taking the Invisibility Cloak out of his bag, he threw it over himself, abandoned his things, and sped after the gaggle of second-year Slytherins at a wary distance.

Pansy and Draco were holding hands, and Harry couldn't help but stare curiously at how their fingers were intertwined. Crabbe, Goyle, and Blaise dropped their bookbags when they located a dry spot with a decent view of the Great Lake.

Draco sat next to Pansy, looking vaguely uncomfortable, as if something from lunch wasn't sitting well with him. Pansy clung to his arm and leaned against him, looking about as happy as Hagrid did when he'd first held Norbert.

Harry made himself comfortable on a hummock and listened to them talk for well over an hour. Not a single thing was said about the Chamber of Secrets in all that time, or about Draco knowing anything involved with it.

At length, Harry's ears perked up when Draco said he needed to get back to the dorm.

Pansy yanked him close, not wanting him to leave.

"But I've got things to do," Draco said. "We can hang out later like always." He stood up and shouldered his bag, leaving Pansy to mope in the stirring grass.

"I wonder if that monster in the Chamber of Secrets is ever going to succeed at killing anything," Blaise commented, changing the subject from their gossiping about one of the Hufflepuff boys being Muggle-born.

Harry's heart raced when Draco whirled around at that. Stay, he thought urgently, as if he could mentally will Draco to obey his command. Stay with them a bit longer. Even if it means you have to—

His eyes darted towards Pansy for only a moment.

"If it does," spat Malfoy, "I hope it gets Granger. And too bad it can't get that stupid Weasel girl that's always mooning after Potter."

"Why her?" said Pansy curiously. Her bright brown eyes shined up at him.

Draco wrinkled his nose. "I can't stand the way she looks at him."

"So what?" She laughed. "Why do you care if a stupid girl has a crush on Potter?"

"Because it's disgusting," Draco said, scratching his left ear, which Harry could see was turning slightly red. "It's almost as bad as how moony that queer Colin Creevey is for him too."

"You think that mousy little first-year likes Potter?" said Blaise, looking horribly disturbed at the idea.

"Haven't you noticed the way he's always pining after Potter's attention? It's practically scandalous. Tomorrow, I bet they'll be kissing by the Pairing Tree—and if that happens and I run into them, I swear I'll beat them up."

"We'll beat them up," put in Goyle.

Crabbe rubbed the fatty lumps of his swollen knuckles.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," said Blaise more calmly than the rest of them. "Even if they are queers, I'll just stay away like I already am, and not bother touching them. It's got nothing to do with me."

Harry tried to calm the pounding of blood in his ears, but the sound was almost deafening. Something wasn't right about any of this… The way they were all talking, it was as if someone like Professor Dumbledore didn't deserve to breathe the same air as them.

"If it were up to me, they would all be killed." Malfoy turned around to look out at the Great Lake. From that angle, Harry could see the lines of doubt and worry casting a somber shadow over his face.

"That sounds a bit extreme," said Pansy. "All the Ministry has to do is shame them into silence."

"Well, they should have never existed," Malfoy said, looking unnerved at the idea. "Father says so. They shouldn't be allowed to live, or influence children, or have any effect on our politics. If they're allowed to do all that, then they'll have the opportunity to bend others, which'll be devastating to the natural order as we know it. Queers are no different from wizards marrying Muggles in that regard."

"I guess Mr. Malfoy knows best," Blaise said in resignation. "But it isn't something I care to worry about right now."

"Me neither," Pansy agreed, plucking twigs affectionately off Malfoy's shoes. "I've got no problem if they're killed. But I'm not equipped to be the judge of anything where that's concerned."

"But if you become a judge like your mother hopes you will…," Crabbe said to Pansy.

"…You'll have to judge those sorts of things, won't you?" Goyle said, finishing Crabbe's thought.

"I hope that Weasel girl dies," Draco murmured under his breath. "She isn't any good for him…"

But no one else seemed to notice when Malfoy had gone back to the subject of Ginny, except Harry.

Harry felt a strange surge of anger and… something else. He didn't quite know what it was, but the look on Malfoy's face seemed to confirm with Harry that they both had more complex feelings on the subject than either of them were willing to deal with at the moment.

Without another word, Draco swept away from his group of friends. Harry fumbled after him, tottering on legs that were still half asleep, but he managed to keep up as Draco made his way back inside the castle.

Rushing to the nearest stairwell, Draco swooped down its spiraling stone steps. Harry followed, pressing against the wall in apprehension whenever another student passed him going up. Eventually, they reached the end of a long corridor. Draco stood in front of a chilly, dank wall, then said aloud, "Silver scales," and the enormous wall rumbled as the bricks shifted and opened onto what Harry guessed could only be the Slytherin common room.

Stalling for a split second, Harry dove in after, unable to resist. It was wrong, he knew—but he couldn't help feeling as if the answer to his questions resided in descending to his rival's own bleak world, if only for a few stolen moments.

Malfoy steadied himself against an elaborately carved chair, hand quaking with suppressed emotion.

Eyes wide, Harry circled around him on silent feet, hardly daring to so much as breathe.

Malfoy's eyebrows were pinched together, and his mouth was wrung into a troubled expression Harry was unable to interpret.

Harry watched in a state of suspense as Malfoy raised his head at the sound of someone speaking from further inside the common room. "Feeling alright there, Draco?"

An annoyingly handsome fourth-year offered a charming smile that seemed to unman Draco even further.

"Yeah," Draco said quickly. "Hey, Dorian."

"Why don't you come and sit?"

Malfoy's knuckles went white. "I'm busy, actually. Thanks though…"

Dorian returned to the conversation he was having with another boy, but the brief exchange seemed to have unraveled Malfoy to the point that he looked like he was on the brink of a panic attack.

"Not me," he hissed hotly under his breath.

Harry had to strain his ears to pick up on what he was saying.

"Not—me…" Draco shut his eyes in the apparent effort to ground himself. "I won't disappoint you. I'll hide everything. I swear… I won't let anyone find out, not even you…"

Harry could not have known Malfoy was thinking about his father, but it sounded like a confession from the Heir of Slytherin more than anything else. It was difficult to keep himself from hurtling at Malfoy from underneath his Cloak and accusing him of everything.

But it is you, Harry thought fiercely, fully convinced that he had solved the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets at last. You might be able to hide what you are from everyone else, Malfoy, but not me. I swear I'll find you out. I'll catch you…

Harry clenched his fists, wishing no one else was in the common room right now so that he could do something about what he had just heard.

After a few minutes of silent brooding, Draco straightened and readjusted the collar of his shirt under his robes. He glanced sideways at the fourth-year Slytherin once more, then lowered his hands to his sides. His fingers were still twitching with the dregs of his panic, but he allowed the excess energy to expend itself.

Draco crossed the room, strutting awkwardly past the attractive fourth-year boy. Color patched his cheeks when Dorian glanced at him once more, and Draco scurried along a green-carpeted corridor before veering into his dorm.

Harry remained in the common room for a while, sensing he'd be overstepping a serious boundary if he still went after him. But when Blaise entered through the portal in the wall, looking worried himself, Harry considered following him into the dorm to listen to whatever conversation they might have—but decided against it. He would press Malfoy further with direct questions when the Polyjuice Potion was complete.

Having done all there was to do, Harry left through the exit, then panted up the stairs to the familiar safety of Gryffindor Tower.

As far as the two boys were concerned, the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin was no longer about winning or catching the Snitch. Instead, it was entirely about them wrestling through the air on their broomsticks, shoving at one another, getting as hands-on as they could without betraying the mixed-up feelings burgeoning in their hearts.

It was as if there was no one else in the whole arena besides them. Nothing else existed except Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, and the golden orb that was bringing them together—even when the rogue bludger usurped the crowd's attention partway through the match.

Even at the dueling club, the moment Professor Snape paired Harry with Draco for a dueling demonstration, it felt to them as if nothing else in the Great Hall mattered besides them.

And then came Valentine's Day, Harry's most embarrassing day yet, thanks to the singing valentine Ginny had apparently sent his way, which caused nothing but unbridled chaos between classes.

Harry dropped Tom Riddle's diary when a "card-carrying cupid" ripped his bookbag open while trying to deliver the musical message.

Draco stooped to pick it up and made a show at trying to read it, but Harry forcibly retrieved the diary with the Disarming Charm they had thankfully been practicing at Lockhart's dueling club.

Only later that same evening did Harry notice something sticking out from between its pages—a simple parchment without a shred of pink or lavender blotched onto it.

Harry unfolded the note, having already decided it was probably Tom Riddle's old school notes or something equally as bland.

He read the following:

"Hey, Potter. I couldn't chance giving this to one of those stupid dwarves, so here you go.

Snow drops are white, moon-grass is blue,
You're in my thoughts, Potter, if only you knew.
Behind the cruel mask I hide, feelings I can't cast aside.
Happy Valentine's Day, from someone I hope you will never find."

Harry refused to entertain the idea that Draco Malfoy had helped a Slytherin girl slip a valentine into Riddle's diary. But the alternative, he realized, was even more unbelievable than that…

"It makes sense Harry would be popular with the Slytherin girls," Ron said while he, Harry, and Hermione were leaving their History of Magic class. "If everyone thinks he's the Heir of Slytherin like Malfoy said, why wouldn't he be a superstar to the likes of them?"

Hermione rolled her eyes, then snatched the valentine out of Ron's hand to read it over one more time. "I think we can say for certain it's from someone in Slytherin," she said. "'Behind the cruel mask'? It's the most obvious allusion to a Slytherin I can think of."

"But the thought of Malfoy helping her," Harry said, making Ron shudder at the thought.

"The good news is," Hermione said brightly, "you aren't interested in anyone—are you, Harry? So even with all these love notes from Ginny, Cruel-Mask, and the Ravenclaw girls, you don't have to choose if you really don't want to."

"I like a couple of girls," Harry commented. "But none of them sent me a note."

"And you didn't send any of them a note either, did you?" Hermione said perceptively.

"No…" Harry hung his head.

"Well, I'm not ready to lose my best friend just yet, so it's just as well!" cried Ron, feeling suddenly unimportant. "Blimey, I'm only twelve! I still have five more years left of my childhood, and what's all that gonna be worth if my best friend gets married!"

Hermione shook her head and laughed. "Ron, even if Harry gets a girlfriend, he's not going to abandon us."

"You sure about that?" Ron said eagerly, exchanging glances between both of them.

"Of course not," Harry said, holding back his laughter. "I might like girls, but I'm not that interested, so you can relax. Besides, Hermione is a girl too, isn't she? And she hangs out with us, so even if I get a girlfriend, I'll expect her to do the same."

"Wait—you're a girl?" Ron widened his eyes at Hermione, and was rewarded with a painful, supposed-to-be-playful slap on the back of his shoulder.

Ron yelped. "I was just messing, Hermione—geez!"

Even though Harry had figured out Draco Malfoy was not the Heir of Slytherin, he still couldn't help confronting him a few days after Hermione turned up Petrified in the hospital wing.

Upon sighting Draco and Pansy from a narrow window while being escorted to the next class by Professor Flitwick, Harry grabbed hold of Ron's arm and allowed the rest of the students to file past them.

When Professor Flitwick turned around a corner and out of sight, Harry rushed down a series of narrow stairwells while Ron trailed whimperingly in his wake. At ground level he darted out of a side door onto the gusty lawn where the two Slytherins were walking toward a patch of trees.

Upon catching up with them, Harry yanked on Draco's robe and unleashed a bevy of accusations about everything.

Freezing for one horrified moment, Malfoy believed they had been caught by a teacher. But then, after sizing Harry up, he wrinkled his forehead into an indignant expression. "Petrified who?"

"Hermione—you viperous toad!"

Draco stepped back when Harry bulldozed towards him, but Ron managed to hold him back.

"What's gotten into you, Potter?" Draco shouted, feeling more disconcerted now than if it had been a teacher that had found them. "I haven't done a thing to your precious Mudblood friend, but I'm glad to hear she was targeted after all." He scoffed. "Just as well. I tried to tell you that she was worthless."

"My friends—aren't—worthless!" Harry shoved Ron off, but managed to refrain from attacking Malfoy.

"Too bad Ginny can't be next," Draco said, striding up to Harry so that they were practically nose to nose. "Then you wouldn't be surrounded by all those empty-headed geese. Of course, that fag Colin Creevey would still be pining after you, wouldn't he? Isn't he your boyfriend, Potter? Aren't you sad that he's been Petrified? Why aren't you up in the hospital wing with him right now? Have you kissed him yet? Or would you rather get on with that boring-looking Weasel girl? I bet she hates that you're just as bent and abnormal as Dumbledore is."

Harry couldn't take it anymore. Something in him snapped. He landed on top of Malfoy before he knew what he was doing.

There was a scuffle and an awkward throwing of limbs. Malfoy never hit him, but they wrestled hard enough to cause some damage to each other.

Ron yanked Harry off Malfoy, while Pansy began to swat Harry on the knees with her bookbag.

"It has to be you," Harry shouted blindly, while Malfoy struggled to gain his feet. "I don't care if you act innocent to even your friends. You're the only one who hates anyone that much!"

"I didn't have anything to do with it!" Malfoy said desperately in his defense. "If I knew who did it, I would have helped them—but I swear I didn't."

"I can't stand you—" Harry was rushing at him once more, and in a matter of seconds they were on the ground again.

"Potter, stop!"

Pansy screamed, believing Malfoy had been seriously hurt. She shot off towards the castle to fetch the first person she could find, while hollering the whole way, "Potter's beating Draco up!"

But as livid as he was, Harry couldn't bring himself to hit Malfoy. Lowering his raised fist while panting feverishly, Harry let go of the front of Malfoy's robes and climbed back up onto his feet.

Draco scrambled up as well and shook the grass off his robes. He eyed the two Gryffindor boys warily, not knowing what else to expect from them. He didn't have Crabbe and Goyle with him now; he was entirely defenseless.

Harry gasped for air. "Your jealous of her," he said. "You're only mad because she's the best in every class. A 'filthy Mudblood' is better than you."

They stood in silence for a while. Ron took a moment to glance around them, realizing belatedly they were all standing next to the Pairing Tree.

"I'll go get a teacher who won't automatically put in for Slytherin," he said, turning to run back towards the castle. Even though he knew they were all in trouble at this point—thanks to Harry's unusually rash behavior—the least he could do was retrieve someone who would be less biased than whoever Pansy ended up getting.

Harry and Draco stood in front of the Pairing Tree's mauled bark, glaring at each other with mistrust. The tree looked just like any other tree, except that its trunk was white with black letters carved into it like scars.

Draco squinted against the wind. "You should've accepted my offer," he said, when that was all he could think to say.

It took Harry several moments to catch on to what he was talking about. "Your 'offer'… you mean last year? You're still bent out of shape about that?"

"I'm not bent!" Draco growled, looking as if he'd taken that as a personal attack.

"Whatever, Malfoy. You know what I mean…"

After a long stretch of silence, Draco said peevishly, "No one's ever said no to me."

"Well, I did."

Draco scowled at that, but then said in a more pacified tone of voice, "Yeah, no one except you, Potter…"

For some reason, the way Draco said that pissed Harry off. "I would rather be killed by Voldemort than be forced to hang out with you. I wish the Heir's monster would come after you—but monsters don't tend to attack their own, do they?"

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Harry wished he could take them back. He had spoken brashly—spitefully, even—on an impulse brought on by rage. But now his inner thoughts were out in the open, weighing heavy on the frigid air between them.

Malfoy swallowed at an itch in his throat. An unpleasant pressure was building in his chest. It felt cold, hollow, and painfully disarming.

Both Ron and Pansy were returning with a teacher. Professors Snape and McGonagall were puffing after the children's wake.

Harry and Draco remained in front of the Pairing Tree, never once taking their eyes off each other.

"What happened here?" Professor McGonagall gasped, sounding distressed at whatever Ron had already told her. "I thought the rules were clear after what happened to Miss Granger. None of you are permitted to be out here without a teacher—and to be fighting no less."

"Harry Potter was the aggressor from what I've been told," Professor Snape said with a cold glittering in his eyes.

Draco's instincts urged him to save his own skin, but he remembered the flying car incident that had nearly gotten Harry expelled at the beginning of the year.

He quickly said, "That isn't true. Pansy wanted to carve our names on the Pairing Tree, so I snuck her out here for only a minute while we were changing classes. Potter came and told me I shouldn't be out here. He said he didn't want everyone to be sent home because of me. I told him to bugger off," he said, adopting a convincingly hateful grimace, "but then he tried to pull me back towards the school, which Pansy must've mistaken for him hitting me." He closed his mouth at the vaguely puzzled look on Harry's face. Draco couldn't believe what he was saying either, but he finished the story off with: "If anything, he was just trying to help."

Pansy was speechless, and Ron's jaw was hanging open.

Professors Snape and McGonagall exchanged shocked glances, but Snape disregarded the nobility of Malfoy's statement by saying, "Be that as it may, Malfoy, you are all out here against our clear and direct orders. I will have to write you and Miss Pansy up for your disobedience. And if this lunacy with the Chamber of Secrets ever does come to an end, you can both look forward to detentions…"

"The same goes for the two of you," Professor McGonagall said, nodding stiffly to her own students. "I am deeply disappointed in you both. I thought you had better judgment. Next time, alert a teacher or a prefect. It isn't right of you to go breaking the rules in an effort to uphold them."

"We're sorry, Professor," Harry and Ron grumbled simultaneously.

Harry frowned questioningly at Malfoy, hoping to catch his eye as he was being led back toward the castle by Professor Snape. But Malfoy avoided looking in his direction. He simply grabbed Pansy's hand and lowered his head against the bracing wind.

Draco returned to Malfoy Manor at the end of the school year only to find that Dobby, the only person he could talk to, had been let go.

His thoughts wandered into dark, dead ends over dinner, and he responded to his mother's warmhearted inquiries with absentminded grunts and nods.

"I'm not feeling well," he said, when Narcissa asked him if everything was alright. "I think I'll go to bed now… The train ride was exhausting, and the whole year was—"

Awful, he wanted to say.

After dismissing himself from the table, Draco walked woodenly through the cold, echoing corridors to the privacy of his bedchamber. He shut the door behind him and glanced up at Oberon who squealed a greeting from his cage.

Draco undressed himself, put on his nightclothes, pulled the silk sheets aside and crawled into bed. But when he laid his head on top his pillow, something crumpled noisily underneath him.

Jolting upright, Draco twisted around and threw the pillow aside.

A wrinkled parchment had been slotted between the pillow and mattress, neatly ironed, folded into thirds, and delicately tied like a parcel with twigs and vine.

Without hesitating, he removed the knot and unfolded the parchment—

It was the drawing he had made the previous summer.

Dobby? he thought curiously, peering around the moonlit room.

Smiling pensively at the drawing again, an ache came over his heart when he remembered Harry's last words to him.

Draco thought of Dorian as well, and one of the Hufflepuff boys who made his heart do that funny skipping thing like Harry did.

I can't keep this, he thought apprehensively to himself. Someone could find it.

But he kept it anyways, folded into thirds and hidden in a book titled Quidditch Through the Ages, where he hoped it would be safe until he outgrew his Undesirable Feelings.

Quick Author's Note: I deleted a scene (additions to the Polyjuice scene from the movie/book) that mentions Harry not remembering where the Slytherin common room is with the Dungeons being so labyrinthine, and him being so emotionally worked up the first time he went there in this chapter. If that seemed inconsistent, that was the thought process. (Hope that explanation passes the smell test.)