A/N: Part the Third - and the end of this little H/D fic. Hope you enjoy it!

"You can take off the cloak now," said Draco, and his voice was flat with an utter lack of surprise.

After a startled moment, Potter popped into view one limb at a time, a perturbed expression scrawled across his face. An invisibility cloak certainly explained a lot of previously inexplicable incidents. Draco rather coveted the silvery folds that slid quite unceremoniously to the carpet. He'd have to find a way to blackmail the use of that cloak out of Potter.

"How did you–?" Potter began, but stopped when Draco gave an imperious wave of dismissal. Potter seemed fairly shocked.

"Hush now, Potter," said Draco, who, on this third instance of unwelcome intrusion, no longer saw the point of being intimidated by a stalker git of Gryffindor proportions. "Didn't your Muggle relatives ever tell you that nosiness snuffed out the nargle?"

"Not as such, no," Potter managed, and his startled air gave way to a reluctant smile.

"Trust a Muggle," muttered Draco, rolling his eyes heavenward, and found himself oddly pleased when Potter's smile cracked into a proper grin. It was extremely disconcerting.

"Is that another wizarding proverb, or just one of your own?" Potter teased (he teased? Potter dared to tease Draco?), and now Draco realised that he was grinning back. This really was a disgraceful turn of events.

"Muggles aren't all that bad, you know," Potter said casually, walking forward and sitting in a position that pointedly denied a view of the mirror's reflection. Draco's eyes twitched towards the glass, but he tried doubly hard to focus on Potter's insane drivel. "Excepting my relatives, of course."

"I just don't understand how they live without magic," Draco said, feeling the unprecedented need to explain himself. "It's unnatural. Squibs are bad enough. They know what they're missing out on. But Muggles," he pulled a face, noting the lack of immediate censure on Potter's, "they don't even realise. They just compensate for their weakness, and they don't even, they don't–"

"Does it worry you how powerful people can be without magic?"

Draco felt that he was being criticised without really understanding why, and he bristled in confusion. "My father told me all about the atomic bomb," he said fiercely, and then cringed. He had promised himself that he would never rely on his father's opinions again. However, he thought that in this instance the point still stood.

"People like to kill other people, I think," said Potter, a shade pulling swiftly over his face. Just as suddenly, the shade lifted, and Draco was unsettled to find a reluctant smile drawing about Potter's lips. "Who knows why anyone wants to do these crazy things?"

Draco mumbled indistinctly, trying to convey his general agreement without actually committing to anything.

"Who knows why we want anything?" Potter continued, in that rather annoying post-war philosophical tendency of his. Draco was about to respond with some scathing riposte about knowing exactly why he wanted Potter to bugger off, when Potter fixed him with that terrifyingly shrewd look of his.

"What is it that you want, Draco?" Potter seemed determined to maintain this shallow appearance of a willing companionship between them.

Draco felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead, so easily visible to Potter, and he refused to look into the mirror.

"I'll tell you when I know."

"What do you see in the mirror?" Potter pressed, sounding honestly curious. Draco hated, hated, hated bloody inquisitive Gryffindors.

"My boggart."

"No offence, Draco," said Potter, very obviously suppressing a smile, "but you seem a little bit messed up."

"Do I?" asked Draco, and coughed out a rather dry laugh. "Do I really? Shocking."

"It can't be that bad, can it?" Potter let himself grin. "After all, you're talking to the 'voyeur and a masochist' here."

"That'd be right," Draco said to himself, and pressed his face into his knees. Maybe if he curled in on himself enough, he'd manage to form a cocoon, and emerge somewhere in the vicinity of never.

"You know," Potter carried on, evidently ignorant of the metamorphic nature of Draco's thoughts, "whatever perverted things you're seeing in that mirror, it's really not healthy to keep obsessing over it. You should let it go, Draco." He paused, and the pause became protracted, and a peculiar tension grew tangible.

Draco raised his head irritably. "Something to say, Potter? I advise you to spit it out before I emerge as a very rare and lethal specimen of butterfly."

Potter looked momentarily nonplussed, but decided to acquiesce anyhow. "You don't – that is to say, your heart's desire isn't Voldemort's return or something, is it?"

"Merlin no," said Draco immediately, nauseated at the very thought of yet another Dark Lord resurrection. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Well, then," Potter said, looking relieved though hesitant, "you don't harbour any ambitions of becoming the next great Evil Overlord, then, do you?"

"I don't think so, Pothead. That throne is yours alone, don't worry."

Potter frowned. "Then I don't see what could be so terrible – unless you fancy house elves, or something."

Draco squeezed out a horrified burst of laughter, and then curled back in on himself. Stop guessing, please stop guessing, house elves were far too close to the truth. Well, not that close, that was disgusting, he'd never wipe that image from his head, but –

"Er," Potter interrupted, and then continued to just sit there, looking a little anxious and hesitant and entirely too confused to allow Draco to forget that his train of thought had just been thoroughly derailed by an inane interjection.

"Well, out with it, then," Draco said, sufficiently irritated to forget that he was supposed to be quashing any further speculation.

Potter coughed, clearing his throat. "How did you know I was here, anyway?" he asked uncomfortably.

"I saw you, stupid."

"Through my invisibility cloak?"

"No," Draco snorted, rolling his eyes, "in the mirror, what do you think?"

Oh, Merlin, no. He hadn't. Surely he hadn't said that.

They both froze, shocked. Slowly, very slowly, Draco slumped down into his hands and tried to sink through the floor without causing unnecessary fuss. To be honest, the possession of a wand would have made the task slightly easier. Oh, for that solitary acorn husk that had been in his pocket last night…

"In the mirror?" Potter repeated, very slowly, and Draco, while refusing to listen to anything more on this mortal coil, could tell that his tone was one of shocked disbelief. "This mirror?"

"No, my compact," Draco bit into his fingers (which would have been extremely painful if not of a metaphorical nature). "Yes, this bloody mirror of desire. Now please leave me alone. I'm sure it won't be easy to figure out how to kill myself armed solely with a single Bertie Botts bean."

"Unless it's snot flavoured," Potter said distantly, and made noises that suggested that he was climbing to his feet in preparation for a hasty exit from this Room of Madness and Despair.

"You're quite right," said Draco, already chewing, "but no. Treacle flavoured. Just my luck."

"Oh, sorry," Potter said, as if he wasn't quite sure what he was saying, or why he was apologising, or what an apology was, and made noises that suggested that he was wiping hands slick with sweat and fear on his robes. Quite disgusting, really. Draco wished he'd stop it.

"Well, er," Potter continued, obviously in full possession of his normal articulacy, "er, that is."

"Death be quick," Draco muttered, already gaining a sense of what Hell would be like.

"Stand up, would you?"

Draco opened one eye, and froze up at the completely unexpected sight of a hand dangling centimetres from his head. He opened the other eye, and realised that the hand was attached to a distinctly crimson Potter. Expecting relief, and instead experiencing a wave of misery, Draco swayed forward and accepted the help of a wizarding saviour whose hero complex evidently knew not the meaning of a 'break'.

As soon as possible, Draco snatched his burning hand back, and clutched it to his chest, feeling an ounce of odd relief that he could not possibly look more pathetic to Potter than he did right now.

"Just don't tell anyone, alright?" he told his shoes, silently cursing the inventor of mirrors for all subsequent sorrow and destruction.

"Draco?"

Draco really didn't want to look up, but he did anyway. After all, Potter was his heart's desire; Draco probably couldn't refuse him anything. The Karma fairy was definitely living it up at Draco's expense.

Draco looked up, and was greeted by two very large and very earnest green eyes, which were rather closer than expected.

"Potter?" he all but squeaked, backing up automatically, away from that very troubling expression in those eyes.

"Call me Harry, alright?"

"Well, alright," Draco conceded, conceding a great deal of ground.

"You really like me?" Harry asked wonderingly.

"The mirror says yes," said Draco, really preferring not to ask himself the same question. Suppressed Inner Draco said yes, too, but Draco pretended not to hear. He could preserve some dignity, after all.

Harry just smiled, and Draco felt the wall climb up coldly against his back. He shivered as his thin jumper failed to keep out the chill. He shuddered again as hands gently gripped his forearms, but this time the cold had nothing to do with it.

Without giving them permission, his eyes crept down to Harry's lips, which looked very pink and a little like they'd been recently chewed. As Draco watched, the bottom lip was slowly caught by the upper set of teeth. It was an oddly endearing gesture of nerves.

Almost unconsciously, Draco felt himself mimic the same movement, catching his own bottom lip, and then releasing it as he ran his tongue swiftly over his lips. Harry gasped or sighed or exhaled, Draco wasn't entirely sure which, but it was quiet and tense and somehow exciting.

"So, um, is this the same advice Dumbledore gave you back in first year?" said Draco, going for breezy and instead breaking through to a whole new level of awkwardness.

"Not really," said Harry, but he didn't seem to be focussing on the conversation at that moment, which was unmistakeably a point in Draco's favour. It wasn't like he'd personally killed Dumbledore, quite the opposite, in fact, but the guilt still lingered and it was pricking up its head right now like Fluffy at an operatic interval.

The pressure on Draco's arms hadn't lifted at all – quite the opposite, in fact.

"Do you," Draco started, and then cleared his throat noisily, "do you, well," he reminded himself that it wasn't possible to sink any further in Harry's estimation, not that he cared, anyhow, "do you like me?"

"Not sure, to be honest," said Harry in the same even tone of voice, just staring and staring into Draco's terrified eyes.

"Right," said Draco, feeling a bit all over the place, even while firmly pinned to the wall.

"But I think I do," Harry said, leaning in that little bit closer, and causing Draco to suck a breath right through his teeth, "and I don't think a mirror's going to help me figure it out."

"As long as we've got that sorted," said Draco, finding some comfort in inanities. Maybe this was where Gryffindors found their relentless bravado.

"Won't you ever shut up?" Harry breathed, and Draco didn't, and he just watched instead, dumbfounded, as those chewed-up lips came closer and closer and then press-touched – jolted – against his own.

Then Draco finally breathed, and his eyes fluttered shut, and the wall came away from his back as he leaned forward into what was unmistakeably supposed to be a kiss. It felt like a kiss; it felt like heaven. He made a small noise in the back of his throat (or Harry did), but either way it was thrilling, and now his hands were tangled in the tangle of hair that he'd hated desperately for around about seven years.

Even as his pulse quickened, lips opening gently against Harry's (and then not so gently), Draco felt his confidence returning. Oh, this was delicious. He could work this to his advantage. Pushing off blindly against the wall, and careering the both of them rather unsteadily into the room proper, Draco bumped his way around until he felt the unmistakable cool of glass against an outstretched hand.

With a grin of triumph, he pulled away from Harry's eager mouth, and watched dilated green eyes blink quickly into view.

"Don't need a mirror to tell me what I liked about that," said Draco, smirking wholeheartedly up at a thoroughly snogged wizarding saviour. "But tell me one thing, Potter."

"Harry," said Harry, evidently a tad dazed.

"Tell me, Harry, what exactly is the mirror showing you now?"

Harry blinked away from Draco's lips, and focused in on the mirror that Draco had steered them in front of.

"Less clothes, for one thing," Harry said, finally breaking into a smile of his own, and Draco felt happy for the first time in a long while. He could hardly see the point of selling his soul for beauty – but for those lips, well, that was another question.

THE END