MEMORY VIAL 10: KISS ME BY THE CLOCK TOWER (YEAR 3)

This year, there was no Gilderoy Lockhart to pressure anyone into sending valentines on the fourteenth of February, which made Draco feel glad there was no competition for the Gryffindor's attention.

He delivered his valentine by owl, hoping his own Oberon would not be picked out of the crowd of other owls raining down on the four tables during lunch in the Great Hall.

Anxious to see Harry's expression at the new prose-poetry he had penned for him this year, Draco craned his neck until he was able to see through the gap between Marcus Flint and Miles Bletchley.

Over the past several weeks he had decided he wasn't brave enough to sign any love letters in his own name, and he didn't think he could directly ask Harry for what he wanted without the risk of being outed to the whole school. So, he'd decided to go after Harry anonymously, hoping he would figure out who his secret admirer was and spare Draco the embarrassment of making the first move and approach him instead.

Just as the owls started to flutter into the Great Hall in a tornado of feathers and parchment, someone tapped Draco firmly on the shoulder, snapping him out of his fixation. When he turned around, a small brown-haired girl was standing behind him, an adorable first-year student whom he recognized: Astoria Greengrass. Her forget-me-not eyes were wide and adoring, her elfin face as pink with excitement as it was fair.

"This is for you," she said boldly, stuffing a scarlet note into Draco's hand before planting a brazen kiss against his cheek. She skipped down the length of the Slytherin table while announcing to everyone in a sing-song voice, "I kissed Draco Malfoy after telling him I looove him! I kissed Draco Malfoy!"

"Astoria!" shrilled Pansy as she clambered out of her seat. "Draco's mine!"

"Not for long!" Astoria squealed saucily, making her way out of the Great Hall with a boisterous stomping of her Mary Janes.

A smattering of Slytherins chuckled and clapped their hands, glancing curiously at Draco, who couldn't help himself; he laughed and smiled at the shameless girl's audacity. Sure enough, her little valentine simply read:

"I love you, Draco Malfoy. You're the cutest boy in the whole school!"

The letter dropped abruptly onto Harry's plate, giving him a start.

"Who's that from?" Ron asked, thinking it was curious there was no return label on the envelope.

"Guess we'll find out the second I open it."

Harry inspected the envelope, locating the notch where it was elegantly sealed by an olive-green dollop of wax. After opening it, he read it over once, then smiled briefly before sinking lower into his seat.

"What is it?" Hermione asked, grinning at the odd way Harry was smiling.

"A love letter," he answered, biting his thumbnail. He scanned the message over a second time. "A valentine, according to the sign-off."

"Let me see?"

"Sure." His eyes devoured the final paragraph before he surrendered the note to her. "Here."

Hermione glanced over the cursive writing; her brown eyes widened gradually as she perused the script down to the bottom of the page. "Oh, Harry… Everyone has to hear this one. It's unbelievable!"

"No, Hermione, please don't—"

But she was already standing up, rallying everyone's attention at the Gryffindor table by holding the letter aloft. Harry clawed his fingers into his skull, making his hair even messier than it already was. His face transitioned to a solid shade of red as she waved the letter violently.

"Everyone, you have to listen to this," she announced, cheeks flushed with excitement. "Harry got a love letter for Valentine's Day, and I'm absolutely in love with whoever she is!"

Hermione cleared her throat when the chatter around the table had died down. A handful of other students glanced around as well, not understanding why the Gryffindors had gone silent, until someone either elbowed or shushed them, pointing up at where Hermione was staged.

"Dear Harry," she began to recite enthusiastically, "A forbidden feeling has kindled within me, bringing with it fears and torments that threaten to overthrow the prearranged order of my life. I can't pretend to hide these feelings from my soul, nor banish them from my heart as if they were castaways from my cauldron.

"My infatuation worsens with each passing year—and month and day—and I'm declining quickly in my solitude like a dog stricken with disease. If I'm unable to feel the touch of your kiss only just once, I might wilt like an ephemeral bloom in wintertime.

"The waters of my heart drown me as much as your eyes do when they behold me. And I'm undone over and over when I gain the smallest crumb of your attention, because it feels like sweet affection from the lonely prison where I am kept.

"For good or bad, Harry Potter, in those moments when you think you hate me most, you are mine, and solely mine, and no one else can occupy that precious space inside your mind. No friend, lover, or teacher can reclaim you from the psychological power I wield over you in those moments.

"And I'm afraid to loosen my grip. I'm afraid you will squirm away and never notice me again. I'm afraid you will figure out who I am one day and run away—but I'm also sorely afraid you will never find me, and I'll be left here in my loneliness to wallow.

"Forgive me for my selfishness and greed, dear handsome Harry, and—oh, please figure out who I am and let me kiss you just one time? Only then will I be content to let things be. Only then will I loosen my hold and set you free. Happy Valentine's Day. Sincerely Yours, Anonymous."

Hermione swooned back into her seat and waved a frantic hand in front of her face to cool herself off. She took a moment to regain her breath. "Oh, Harry…" she crooned dreamily, as she gave the letter back, "whoever wrote that—"

"Is absolutely bonkers," said Ron, looking suspicious, as if the letter might bite Hermione at any moment.

Harry simpered awkwardly as the Gryffindor table exploded into wolfish whistles and high-pitched howls. He was thankful Ginny hadn't arrived at lunch yet, otherwise she might've been terribly heartbroken at Hermione's overly effusive reading of the letter.

"It's so romantic!" Hermione sighed.

"It's overdone and soppy as hell," said Ron.

"Who's it from, Harry?" Seamus shouldered his way over to get a glimpse of the handwriting.

"Haven't a clue." And because of that, Harry was unsure how he should feel.

"But you're supposed to find out?" asked Seamus.

"Apparently, but I don't know how." Harry scoured the letter a third time. "She hasn't given me any clues…"

"Oh, yes she has," Hermione said perceptively. "Read the letter carefully, Harry, as many times as it takes, and then study the students who are around you. Whoever matches the description that she—or he—has laid out for you—"

Harry blinked at her curiously when she alluded to the possibility of the writer being a "he." She had whispered that part quietly, though, so that even Ron didn't pick up on the pronoun. Hermione's grin was huge, as if she already knew who it was.

"Do you know who it is?" Harry asked.

"I might." She shrugged her shoulders flippantly. "But it'd be wrong of me to tell you. The point of the letter is you're supposed to find out yourself."

"So, it's like a treasure hunt in a castle maze?" said Ron. "Why do girls always expect us to read their minds?"

"She's not expecting that," Hermione said grudgingly. "Honestly, you're one of the most sexist—never mind. She's either shy, or scared, or both, and would rather Harry put in the effort to uncover who she is—if he is even interested in finding out, that is."

The entire table leaned towards Harry, expecting him to either confirm or deny his interest.

"Well, of course I want to figure out who she is," said Harry. "But I don't know what to do with this poem-letter-thing… It's kind of intimidating."

"It's too much letter, in my opinion," said Lee Jordan. "Bordering on obsession. My mum told me some girls are like that. They tend to be clingy. Possessive."

"I'm sure he can handle himself," Ron said brightly, scrunching his forehead. "I just hope whoever she is doesn't steal him away from us."

"No one will ever steal me away from you, Ron," Harry said without needing a second thought. "If she can't love you and Hermione as much as I do…"

But then the table erupted into fervent speculations about who the mysterious girl could be. It had to be someone from Ravenclaw, Seamus insisted, because the writer obviously had to be the bookish type to write maudlin tripe like that. Others declared that it was Ginny, until she arrived at the table, looking about as clueless as anyone else.

"Someone wrote Harry a love letter?" she squeaked in a tinny voice.

"Ginny, you have to read this," Ron said.

Before Harry could stop him, Ron had ripped the love letter from Harry's hand and propped it into Ginny's delicate fingers.

"Ron, you idiot!" Hermione slapped him on the head.

"Ouch! What?" He puckered his forehead at her. "She wants to know!"

"UGH! You are so insensitive sometimes!" Hermione gathered her bookbag and marched out of the Great Hall in a fury to their next class.

Meanwhile, Ginny began to crumple the letter, but Harry set his hand over her fists and gently said, "Please don't, Ginny. I'd like to keep it if you don't mind…"

After handing the letter back, Ginny wiped a stray tear from her cheek by pretending to sweep her hair out of her face. Ron groaned, belatedly realizing what he'd done; he had just made an ass of himself by hurting his lovesick sister.

It took Draco a few more months to muster the courage to prepare another note before the week of the end-of-year exams. In a few days on Sunday, he would turn fourteen, exams would be conducted, and then he would be on the Hogwarts Express to go home for the summer holidays.

On his bed in the Dungeons, he stared at the note, believing it was too curt, that Harry would likely disregard it, although he knew that was the point. Draco wanted him to ignore it if he didn't know or care what it was about. But if Harry responded to it, Draco would have to work out what to do from there.

Before going to sleep, he folded the note into the shape of a bird, in the same manner he had done with the threatening Quidditch sketch he had given the Gryffindor Seeker back in October. On Friday morning, he charmed the note, picked up his books, then headed up the stairs with his friends to the Great Hall.

He waited until their Transfiguration class to send the note flittering to the other boy's desk while Professor McGonagall's back was turned. She was giving instructions on the upcoming exam on Monday when the paper bird alighted on Harry's desk.

Harry opened it discreetly after glancing back at Draco. The note was simple, containing no animated sketches this time. There was a lone fragment that read:

"The Clock Tower Courtyard, midnight on Sunday.
Come alone."

Harry looked at Draco again. The Slytherin's face had gone from faintly serious to entirely unreadable.

Leaning over his desk, Harry dug his teeth into the bedding of his thumbnail. Folding the paper, he stashed it into his robes and avoided looking at Malfoy for the duration of the class.

Harry already had enough things to deal with, not to mention how Malfoy had gone back to bullying him more viciously than ever before. But he was willing to see what the enigmatic note was all about—especially on the off chance it foreshadowed an apology for what he had done to Hagrid and Buckbeak, not to mention what Draco had done to him at every Quidditch match to date.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to show up and ask Malfoy directly what the hell it was all about, especially since they would still be in the safety of the castle, although neither of them was allowed to be out of bed at that late hour.

On Sunday night, Harry waited until the Gryffindor common room was empty. It took forever for Ginny and her brothers to go to sleep, and he had to convince Ron that he was staying up late to study for the exams, otherwise he might have insisted on going with him—for reasons of protection, considering how much in danger Harry was supposedly in all year with Sirius Black still trying to kill him.

When the Weasleys had finally disappeared into their respective dorms, Harry crept out through the Fat Lady's doorway, snuck past the snoozing guards, and slinked through the endless stairways and corridors into the Clock Tower Courtyard.

He was early, but he wanted to have extra time to calm his addled nerves. He waited for what felt like half an hour when he heard a twig snap from amid the ivy on the other side of the yard.

Harry got to his feet, heart pounding in his throat.

This was it. He was going to confront Malfoy about everything he had done, and hopefully it would put an end to their fruitless rivalry once and for all.

"You came."

Malfoy emerged from the shadows, hair shining like gilt silver in the moonlight. "You really are brave, aren't you? I could've brought an entourage with me to have you flattened."

"I only came because of Hagrid," said Harry, "and to tell you I'm tired of us fighting."

The shadows on Malfoy's face deepened into a scowl, but Harry got the impression that whatever emotion he was feeling wasn't directed at him.

"None of this has anything to do with Hagrid," Malfoy said.

"It has everything to do with him," Harry insisted. "That's why you asked me here, right? To explain your foul behavior and apologize. To resolve our differences."

"That mangy cur shouldn't be a teacher here at Hogwarts."

"Well, they're keeping Hagrid on whether you like it or not." Harry's fists tightened. "But they're murdering Buckbeak thanks to you."

"If it teaches Hagrid a lesson—"

"So, you're doing it to punish him?" Harry's throat contracted to deafen the rising volume of his words.

Draco stood silent for an anxious minute. His breath came in shivers even though it wasn't cold.

"Some wizards," Draco enunciated carefully, "deserve to be punished. Some wizards need to understand their place."

"Like me?" Harry said vehemently. He took a couple of strides toward him. "Is that why you're always on my case?"

"Yes. I mean, no…"

"And what's that supposed to mean? All year you've done nothing but humiliate me for reacting badly to the dementors; you taunted me for having a godfather who betrayed my parents; you sabotaged Hagrid's professorship and sentenced Buckbeak to death; you ratted me out to Snape about Hogsmeade; you could've made me fall off my broom during the match against Ravenclaw; let alone the complete bullshit you pulled off during our own match!"

Harry was so angry that he was quaking. He could hardly catch his breath, and more than anything he wanted to hurt Malfoy and make him experience true pain.

Draco took his time to absorb all of that. He knew what the only acceptable response was, but he couldn't bring himself to say those dreaded words—I'm sorry. He simply shrugged his shoulders and then said, "Habits are hard to break."

"That's all you have to say?" Harry's voice was hoarse. "Seriously, Malfoy…?"

"You enjoyed our match as much as I did."

"I didn't enjoy it, Malfoy—you pissed me off! You were a louse—not to mention you pulled out several twigs from the back of my Firebolt!"

"I'll pay to get it repaired."

Confused at that, Harry stumbled over his next words. "That… The money isn't the point. It's the principle. What the hell's wrong with you?"

"Marcus Flint was on my arse ever since he heard about you getting a Firebolt. He couldn't understand that it would help protect you from the dementors. I couldn't fail. He told me to play as dirty as I needed—"

"I don't care if Flint threatened to kick you off the team! You're capable of making your own damn choices."

"I do what I want," Malfoy said with a half-hearted sneer. "I do exactly what I want…" But even he didn't sound convinced of that.

"It was low, whatever your reason. And the dementor trick?"

"Flint's idea again. But I went along with it because I thought it was funny." Draco rolled his eyes, getting tired of rehashing all their violent encounters for that year. "Look, Potter, if I'm such a terrible person, then why are you out here?"

"Isn't it obvious? I would prefer that we were friends. I want us to get past all this stupid—"

Harry swallowed back his words when Malfoy took several furious steps toward him.

His face loomed dangerously close to Harry's. "Friends?" he repeated scathingly, as if the word were a slur worse than Mudblood. "What in God's name made you think we could be friends?"

"We were friendly just a few months ago," Harry reminded, feeling rattled to the core. "What gives…?"

Draco gave no answer.

Harry rubbed the sleeve of his robe against his forehead in an effort to ground himself. "Alright, look… If this is how you're going to act, then I wish you'd just leave me alone." Harry swallowed dryly. "I wish you'd leave all of us alone, or at least leave my friends alone like I asked you to last year. That includes Hagrid, Hermione, Ginny, and Ron. Whatever I did to you, Malfoy—whatever you're punishing me for—just leave them the hell out of it, alright?"

Draco moved away to lean against one of the stone partitions. His eyebrows drew together, and then he looked at Harry when something occurred to him.

"You don't know why I asked you out here, do you?"

Harry searched his mind quickly for whatever clues he might have missed. After unsuccessfully rummaging through mental cabinets and depositories, he very slowly shook his head.

Malfoy pushed off the wall and strutted toward him with a drawl. "I thought you knew. I thought I made it obvious enough. I thought you had to at least suspect. I figured that was why you came, if for no other reason than to rub it in my face."

"Rub what in your face?"

"God, you're clueless. If you really don't know, then it's just as well."

"Goddammit, Malfoy," Harry said. He licked his lips and angled for a different tact. "If you can't be direct, then I don't know how to move the conversation forward."

But Draco ignored this. Harry had already said something earlier that was nagging him. "Do you really want me to leave you alone?" he asked in a hollow tone.

Harry swallowed the lump in his throat. Reluctantly, he nodded. "Yes."

An otherworldly expression twitched over Draco's face, but it was too quick for Harry to decipher.

After a prolonged moment of silence, Draco said, "I can't leave you alone, Potter. I'm sorry." He stepped closer, and it was all Harry could do to not stumble over a leafy net of vine.

"You want to know why I asked you out here…?" And when Harry didn't respond, he told him anyway. "Because you're always on my mind… You're in my very bones, like a slow-drip poison, and I'm never going to leave you alone. Not until you see what's been right in front of your face this whole time."

"What're you talking about?" Harry croaked. His mouth was dry. His skin was tingling. He could practically feel Malfoy's body heat as he loomed mere inches from his face. The other boy's breath ghosted across his cheek for the briefest moment, and Harry squeezed his eyes shut for one horribly delicious moment…

"Are you this clueless about everything?"

Draco watched the boy swallow tightly, and one side of his lips drew slightly up. "Fate is cruel, isn't she? Maybe you shouldn't understand. Maybe this is my answer, and it's better this way."

Malfoy started to lean back, but Harry swayed toward him as if drawn by the pull of an invisible magnet. Draco paused for a moment while Harry blinked his eyes rapidly to compose himself.

"You… talk like a poet sometimes," Harry said, his mind resisting what it was beginning to understand. "It's unnerving…"

Draco shrugged in casual acknowledgement. "The teachers get on me about that, actually. Say I'm using fancy syntax to sound smarter than I am. Scrivenery as a form of magic, is what they call it. 'Stop prevaricating,' Professor McGonagall says about my essays. 'Stop pretending,' Professor Flitwick says, 'because if you were actually as insightful as you sound, you would get the answers on your homework right for once.'"

"If you're hiding your intelligence—"

"I only know words, thanks to my mother reading to me and gifting me with literature, but I'm not intelligent like Granger is."

"She's brilliant," Harry acknowledged. "But it's all hard work from where she's coming from."

"I don't want to talk about that Mudbl—Granger…" Draco corrected himself.

"Then… then what? What were we talking about?" He had honestly forgotten, and he had a fleeting hope that the other boy would do something wonderful and unexpected.

Draco shifted his weight before venturing to say anything else. "Ever since I first saw you, Harry Potter, there isn't a day you haven't crossed my mind. Do you understand? Ever since we met in Madam Malkin's…"

Harry's heart skipped when Draco suddenly stopped talking. A voice was reverberating from somewhere in a distant corridor, but Harry's mind was still grasping at the fringes of the Slytherin's most recent words.

"If you want to be friends," Harry said faintly, knowing that their time was running short, "just tell me…"

"I don't want to be friends," Draco said, listening for where the echoes were coming from.

"Then what?"

By the sound of it, the eerie voice was likely Peeves.

"Some feelings shouldn't be explained like this. But if you knew them… from what I've heard about you, Potter, I'm convinced you'd make this easier for me."

To Harry, Malfoy looked like he was in physical pain, or, perhaps, it was a trick of the shadows being cast by the moon and stars. Maybe it was the strain of getting caught by whoever was coming closer, and so Harry braved through the sleepy-headed fog that he was feeling and reached out to pull on Draco's arm. He wasn't a Gryffindor for nothing. He was no fool. Something was going on, and he was determined to suss it out, to hear it straight from Draco's mouth.

Harry pulled him into the shadows as the disembodied voice drew nearer.

Draco shoved him off with a half-hearted sneer. "Touch me again, and I'll—"

"Or you'll what? Kill me?" Harry hissed. "Tell your father? Come off it, Malfoy, no, you won't."

Before Draco could retort, Harry dragged him into a deserted corridor where they could avoid an otherwise unavoidable collision with Peeves.

There was an ominous creak followed by a smash of what sounded like pottery.

"I know I heard ickle ones rambling down here sooomewhere," Peeves squealed delightedly. He twisted and turned through the air with a shivering guffaw. "Come out, come out, icky widdle bumpkins!"

Peeves' voice was carrying closer, as if he knew where they had ducked.

"If I get caught—" Harry said.

"I know."

"Quick—down here."

Harry pulled Draco further away from the Clock Tower, sinking deeper into the palpable darkness of the castle. When they made it to the end of a series of interconnected corridors, Harry pressed himself against the wall, while Malfoy doubled over to catch his breath.

It felt like Harry's heart would drop out of his throat at any moment, but he did his best to tamp the emotion down. His head was spinning. Holding Draco's arm while avoiding Peeves had sent his temperature skyrocketing by a hundred degrees.

Malfoy squinted through the gloam, watching Harry's mouth open and close as he gulped for air.

"Next time you want a date," Harry breathed, meaning to be facetious, "just say what you want in plain English, because I swear, I'm not going to play these stupid word games with you in a deserted courtyard after curfew ever again…"

Malfoy smirked at that. "If only you weren't the biggest idiot I've ever met. If the Whomping Willow doesn't pound you into pieces one of these days, I'll do it myself."

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" Harry asked with a wry grin. "Because it doesn't sound like it'd be so bad…"

Malfoy brushed the riposte off with a mild scoff. "Anyway… It'd be a bad idea to test our luck now that Peeves thinks someone's out of bed, so… I'll see you around. And, um… sorry for wasting your time… Potter."

With that, Draco disappeared into one of the adjoining corridors where there was a stairwell that would take him into the belly of the castle.

Harry's heart was still thrumming in his throat; he couldn't get himself to relax, and so he ran through their conversation in the courtyard one more time, puzzling over what the point of that cryptic meeting had been.

"I thought you knew. I thought I made it obvious enough. I thought you had to at least suspect."

Harry tried to swallow, but his throat was dry.

"…there isn't a day you haven't crossed my mind."

He took a deep inhale…

"I can't leave you alone, Potter. I'm sorry."

…then exhaled…

"God, you're clueless… you're always on my mind… in my very bones…"

And then he remembered the ridiculously sentimental letter he had received in the post four months ago.

"…like a slow-drip poison…"

Malfoy couldn't possibly have meant…

"Do you understand?"

"No way…" Harry gripped the hem of his robe as comprehension dawned.

Malfoy couldn't have been confessing his love sideways like that. If that was what he had been trying to do, there would have been no reason for him not to be straightforward, since only the wind could have spied on their private whispers.

Was he giving me an opportunity to say something first? he wondered.

Harry was smiling almost uncontrollably to himself…

Did he want me to be the one, so he could save face if I made fun of him?

He was giggling now, grinning even through his rage.

You've got to be kidding… I'm imagining it. I have to be. Draco Malfoy would never have those feelings for me in a million years, even if we both liked boys…

Not to mention, Draco never missed an opportunity to remind Harry that he most definitely wasn't bent; in fact, he hated bent wizards, and so none of it made sense.

But then he remembered Draco's breath grazing his cheek, and his heart melted at the very thought.

He couldn't possibly be bent that way… towards me? He hates me… He doesn't even want to be my friend.

But there was always such an intensity to the way Draco looked at him, and Harry always found himself mirroring that energy. Draco never failed to make Harry's heart pound just by looking at him with his cold, mean eyes. Draco was forever throwing a tantrum to get his attention—was always stalking—looking for a reason to invade his space, to insult Ginny—spitting his name on the cobblestones as if nothing else in the world was more amusing for him to say.

"For good or bad, Harry Potter, in those moments when you think you hate me most, you are mine, and solely mine, and no one else can occupy that precious space inside your mind. No friend, lover, or teacher can reclaim you from the psychological power I wield over you in those moments."

Harry whispered very quietly to himself, "Holy shit…" The soppy letter couldn't have been from anyone else.

Harry dug in his robes for the note Draco had given him two days ago and tried to recheck the handwriting, but the corridor was too dark, and he didn't want to risk using Lumos with his wand just then.

Harry was grinning from ear to ear. If a kiss was the only thing Draco had wanted, they could have been kissing in the courtyard about now, banishing every last shred of barrier that stood between them. But he had been too blind and stupid to realize what was going on. And, of course, none of that would have ever changed the fact that Harry was still fuming over everything Draco had done.

"God, I want to punch him," Harry muttered, feeling strangely euphoric. I want to punch him, he thought, but also kiss him and then find out what this means…

Refolding the note, Harry stuffed it inside his robes and wondered if the handwriting matched the letter he had received on Valentine's Day. Fighting the urge to run after Draco in the Dungeons, he began his long hike back up to Gryffindor Tower. He didn't know what to do from here if it turned out that the handwritings matched, but one thing he knew for certain was that there was one person he could talk to without risking gossip about Malfoy finding its way into the wrong ears.