Disclaimer: any and all recognizable components of this story are a product of J.K. Rowling's exceptional imagination.

Warnings: mature themes, mild swearing, vague mention of homosexuality

Draco glared across the Great Hall at Potter. Potter was, without a doubt, the bane of his existence. Not even the Dark Lord, almost a year and a half returned, could drive him to such extents of emotion. Granted, the emotions…inspired by the Dark Lord tended along the path of abject fear and utter humiliation instead of the alternating frustration, hatred, and, Merlin help him, lust that Potter could provoke.

He often dreamed of how things could have been different if only he had been more politic to the eleven-year-old Potter aboard the Hogwarts Express. Or, better, if he had pressed for Potter's name that day in Madam Malkin's. No, instead, he'd disregarded his father's warning to approach gently - then, no one had known where Potter had been for the past ten years - and had assumed that Potter would be versed in proper Pureblood etiquette.

Sometimes he'd wondered if he had inadvertently driven Potter to Gryffindor, especially after witnessing Potter display a few surprisingly Slytherin qualities - chiefly the ability to speak Parseltongue. Other times, he wished he'd let the Sorting Hat actually deliberate on where to place him - it wasn't unheard of for the occasional Malfoy to be Sorted into Ravenclaw. Perhaps, if he'd become an Eagle instead of a Snake, Potter would look at him with emotions other than dislike and anger in those enchantingly green eyes.

That was part of the reason Draco enjoyed - and despaired in - provoking Potter. It wasn't too difficult to pretend that the anger on Potter's flushed cheeks, and the way Potter's eternally mussed hair would seem to stand on end in fury, was a result of passion for him instead of hate. At times, he suspected that some of the older teachers - McGonagall and Flitwick - knew what he was doing, and he knew for a fact that his godfather was well aware of his true feelings for Potter. Even Granger, the infuriatingly pompous mudblood and Potter's best friend, would give him sidelong glances, and he once even caught her smirking at him. Granger - smirking! - at him, a Malfoy and a Slytherin to boot! Luckily, Potter was oblivious as Weasleby in the whole thing. His fellow Slytherins, of course, all knew, and even Pansy in her jealous snits wasn't crass or stupid enough to go blabbing about his feelings. She'd even gotten over it, to some extent, and was stalking Vaisey, the poor sod.

Even better than getting Potter worked up was watching the bloody Gryffindor on a broom. Sure, Potter had a sort of charming grace on the ground, but in the sky it was hard to tell where the broom began and Potter ended. Watching Potter fly - and flying against Potter in Quidditch matches - provided Draco with most of his wanking material. Potter seemed to forget everything else except for feeling and chasing the Snitch while in the air, and Draco never tired of the way emotions rolled unchecked across the wind-flushed face, the way Potter's body moved in those infuriatingly red robes. Robes that, by all rights, should have been green; robes that Draco wore as Seeker. He would have gladly given up his spot as Seeker and taken one as Chaser, or even Keeper or Beater, had it meant Potter lived in the dungeons with him.

Fantasies of what Draco would do - of how he would get Potter to succumb to his Malfoy charms - if the green-eyed Gryffindor had only been Sorted Slytherin, were rudely interrupted by an elbow to his ribs.

"Out of the clouds, lover boy," Blaise warned quietly so as not to attract any other nosy Slytherins' attention, although really Vince and Greg chewed loud enough to mask even one of Pansy's 'quiet' conversations. "Looks like Goldstein's about to make a play on Potter."

And sure enough, the smarmy Ravenclaw Prefect - never liked him anyhow, even though his blood's pure enough - was heading towards the Gryffindor table where Weasleby, Weaslette, Granger, and the idiot Longbottom sat. Draco fumed silently as he - along with most of the rest of the Great Hall including a jovial Dumbledore (meddling old fool…don't think I can kill him) and a heavily scowling Professor Snape (what potion's gone badly this time?) - watched. Goldstein was the latest in a long line of boys who'd asked Potter out on a date, whether to Hogsmeade or merely a walk by the lake. Potter had yet to accept, which was really the only reason Draco wasn't hexing the balls off the Ravenclaw at this very moment. And, although he hated to admit it, was probably why Weasleby wasn't doing anything more than turning an ugly shade of red.

The only person Potter had ever dated was, happily enough, dead. Oh, it'd been a tragedy and all that rot at the time, but Draco was personally quite pleased that pretty-boy Diggory wouldn't be around to ruin his chances at getting at Potter. It had been quite the surprise and scandal when Potter and Diggory - the two Hogwarts champions - had shown up at the Yule Ball as each other's dates. Not because of the age gap or different Houses, but because they were competing for the glory of a lifetime; who in their right mind would start to date their own competitor?!

In any case, Diggory was gone and Potter had yet to go on a date with another boy. Or girl, for that matter, although Pansy often mused that Weaslette would probably go for it if Potter ever looked to show any inclination towards her own sex. Of course, Pansy also said that Finnegan and Thomas both claimed to have seen Potter in the duff by sneaking into the girls lockers after Quidditch games, and that Potter had been in an illicit affair with both of the Weasley twins and each of the oldest two Weasleys. At the same time. Draco personally thought that that much red hair and freckles should be made criminal, and that the Weasley twins were more likely to let their own sister into their bed than Potter. Which is to say, not at all. He watched with grim satisfaction as Potter turned Goldstein down with an easy smile - even though he was too far away to hear what was said, the slight slumping of Goldstein's shoulders made it all too clear what the answer was. Not that he'd expected anything less.

"You ever going to do anything 'bout it?" Blaise asked quietly.

"How can I?" Draco shot back, irritated. "I'm sworn to serve her mortal enemy, and my mother's life is on the line if I fail my task."

Blaise, the lucky bastard, shrugged. He lived most of the summer in Italy, and his mother could care less about the Dark Lord's plans to purify Britain. All she cared about was reeling in her next victim - er, husband.

Daphne, Blaise's steady girlfriend of two years - their parents had just started to negotiate a contract - pulled out of her conversation with Millicent. "I hear that Potter's staying the break," she said in her soft voice, demurely sipping her cappuccino. Blaise's proclivity to coffee twice a day had rubbed off on her.

"Oh?" Draco asked, feigning disinterest, where in reality his pulse had just doubled in pace. He'd elected to stay as well, at his mother's urgings. He had no interest in spending Yule with the Dark Lord lurking about his home, the risk of torture equally as probable as the likelihood of his getting more presents than last year. In a word, quite.

Daphne didn't buy the act for a second, and smiled slyly over the rim of her cup. Draco mused that if he hadn't already been caught by a certain pair of green eyes and distinctive messy black hair (even if it was in that utterly unfeminine cut Potter had sported for as long as he'd known her) he'd have been attracted to the Slytherin girls' honey blond hair and deep blue eyes. As it was, her charms paled in comparison.

"Oh," Daphne agreed. "Padma and I are partners in Runes, and she's such a gossip." It went unsaid that the Ravenclaw Patil's sister shared a room with Potter. In Slytherin, such banalities were unnecessary.

Draco contemplated the wisdom of pressing for more information. Daphne might count it as a favor owed if she divulged more, and Draco never liked to be in anyone's debt. Luckily, Pansy, never the subtlest of persons even at her best, butted in. "Yes, poor Potter's stuck at Hogwarts for the holidays. Too bad her bloodtraitor godfather's dead. They could have fu - "

Draco scraped the bench back as he stood, nearly unseating Daphne and Blaise and drawing the attention of the majority of the hall. "Have a pleasant Yule, dear Pansy," he said calmly. "I do so hope you enjoy my gift." She paled slightly, but a blush quickly suffused her cheeks, although she raised her chin defiantly.

"I am sure I will, Draco dearest," she replied in kind, but Draco knew the girl well enough to know that she was nowhere near as confident as her voice and words indicated.

Draco pondered Daphne's words for the week until the Christmas Holidays began. It was true that Potter wasn't as cheerful as usual, and that Granger and Weasleby likewise seemed a bit glum, but that didn't mean that the Patil twin had spoken the truth.

He didn't let himself believe that Potter was truly staying behind until he watched as she hugged her friends goodbye in the entrance hall. Draco nearly growled when Longbottom blushed and stammered after Potter kissed his cheek and wished him a happy Christmas. Longbottom couldn't have her; Potter was his.

When the students had cleared out - only a few elected to stay behind. In the war's atmosphere, families wanted to spend as much time together as they could - Draco followed Potter up to the library. From a distance, of course. He watched as she flashed Madam Pince a piece of parchment and stepped past the scowling librarian into the Restricted Section.

Malfoy muttered something his mother would have washed his mouth out with soap for, and Summoned his bookbag. Even if she didn't like him, he wouldn't give up on Potter. He nodded to her as she passed out of the library a few hours later, and went to bed smiling when she hesitantly nodded in return. She'd see sense in the end.

It took a lot longer for Potter to see sense than she should have taken, but in some ways, it happened sooner than he ever could have thought. In the interim, he'd managed to accidentally poison Granger - she could stand to lose a few brain cells anyways - and to be on the receiving end of no less than three Crucios from the Dark Lord over the Easter Holidays, when he'd been ordered to return to his manor home.

But she saw sense, long before the end came. He'd thought that no one used the second floor girls lavatory; after all, it was Myrtle's haunt. But just as he'd allowed the barriers he'd built up to withstand the stress and ever-growing sense of inevitability of failure, she'd come waltzing in as if she owned the place. They'd stared at each other, using the reflection from the mirror.

"I - what are you doing in here?" Potter asked as Myrtle - cowardly Ravenclaw that she was - zoomed down the drain of the sink and out of sight, although Draco knew she'd be lurking in the u-bend, listening. The ghosts gossiped more than the students did.

"Nothing," Draco snapped, pulling himself up to his full height, but even he could hear the weakness of his voice and he hated himself for it.

"Oh?" Potter asked archly, hanging her schoolbag on a hook that Draco had never noticed before. He just dropped his on the ground, or in the next sink. She crossed her arms, and her robes tightened across her bust - something that had only developed in the past two years.

She gave one of her Slytherin smirks, the kind he'd only ever witnessed from afar. Receiving one of his very own…it almost made up for the fact that she'd seen him in his weakest moment. Even all those times he'd lost to her on the Quidditch pitch, or that time with the bloody beast that the oaf Hagrid had brought to their very first Care of Magical Creature's lesson, he'd retained some sort of control over the situation. "Well, don't let me bother you."

She made to push past him towards one of the two working stalls, but - for some stupid reason - he reached out and caught her arm. "That's it?" he asked. "You're just going to ignore me?"

"Can't stand that fact that you're not the center of the universe?" Potter shot at him, wrenching her arm from his grip.

"I - no - " He was surprised and disgusted at how easily she'd distracted him by pushing up her robe sleeve to rub at her arm. He'd never seen so much of her skin before, creamy pale white and perfect. "I - it's just - " He made a helpless sort of gesture the likes of which no Malfoy had ever made before.

And all the fight seemed to go out of Potter. Her stiff stance deflated and she leaned against the sink he'd dumped his bag into. "I get it," she said softly. He couldn't stop the scoff that escaped, and was rewarded with a sharp glare that sent spikes of excitement through his body. It was look similar to many she'd given him before, yet so different, almost…tender?

"Do you think I like being the Girl-Who-Lived? The Chosen One?" she spat out, nearly rivaling Pansy with her vitriolic tone. "The pressure, the expectations, the hopes of all Wizarding Britain pinned on me? The Ministry trying to get me to be their poster girl?"

He opened his mouth to point out that she didn't have the Dark Lord himself pressuring her to let Death Eaters like his bat-shit crazy Aunt Bellatrix into Hogwarts, or aspiring Death Eaters like Fenrir Greyback into a castle where Daphne's younger siblings slept up in Ravenclaw Tower, un-protected by the automatic aegis of belonging to Slytherin. "I know life isn't all peaches and cream for you either," Potter cut him off before he could start, "But Gryffindors don't have it easy either."

He nodded warily.

She gave a sort of half-smile, and said, "Sorry about that. Ron and Hermione have been driving me spare with their bickering. You'd think they'd just get over each other and kiss already." Draco raised his eyebrows in surprise, and a little bit of horror as he imagined any offspring the two Gryffindors would have. He gave an involuntary shudder.

"Change the subject, please," he muttered, and was surprised by the laugh that escaped her mouth. He found his eyes drawn to her full pink lips, and wasn't aware that he'd leaned closer until her tongue darted out and swiped over her top lip in a quick motion.

"Good idea," she murmured, and he raised his eyes to meet hers, and was immediately surprised by what he saw. He was by no means a master Legilimens - in fact, he'd only just had the basic training in the Mind Arts the previous summer, barely enough to keep the Dark Lord from viewing his true feelings for Potter. Snape had taught him how easy it was to mask love as loathing. He was enough of a Legilimens to pick up on the foremost emotions in her mind: excitement; anticipation; an odd emotion best expressed by the words 'finally' or 'at last'.

"How long?" he asked, taking a step forward, almost expecting her to take a step back even after seeing her emotions for himself. It was almost too good to be true.

"Since you stopped Umbridge from Cruciating me," she whispered, taking a step forward to meet him halfway. "Even Hermione was surprised," she added.

"Right," he said eloquently, breathing in the air she exhaled. She closed the distance between them, and he felt her smile against his lips. She moved against him, soft and forgiving where his own body was strong and planar. He didn't even care that someone had obviously taught her to kiss, because she did things with her mouth that even Pansy - in their brief time together - hadn't been able to do. Their kissing mirrored the many spats they'd had over the years; both fought for domination, although Potter eventually gave way, submitted, allowed herself to be lifted onto the sink so that Draco didn't have to bend over to kiss her properly. He stood between her legs - which crooked behind his own, trapping him there (as if he'd want to escape, now that he'd only just got there!). They only broke apart when two first year students - lost no doubt, even after an entire year at Hogwarts - came in, giggled, shrieked, and ran out.

"Shit," he breathed, staring after them, trying to be concerned with anything other than the fact that he'd just kissed Potter, the fact that Potter had just kissed him, and the fact that he currently had a hand up the back of her blouse and she didn't seem to care. In fact, she actually seemed to like it, if the way she was smiling was any indication. It was a smile that sent hot shivers of arousal down his spine, a smile that he had put on her face.

"Here," she said, and dragged him over to a different sink, one he'd never used because the taps were broken. She bent and after a second hissed something at it. And didn't that do interesting things to him. When the Dark Lord spoke Parseltongue, it sounded dark and foreboding, but Potter - well, it just sounded dirty when she did it.

He almost didn't care that he was in Salazar Slytherin's famed Chamber of Secrets. Why should he, when Rosalind Potter was kissing him, when Rosalind Potter was touching his skin, and when, hardly six months later and the Dark Lord was defeated and gone from the world, Rosalind Potter was baring herself to him and offering him her most precious gift.

And when he asked, later, after they'd made love no less than four times, why she'd taken him down to the Chamber of Secrets, which undoubtedly held bad memories for her (Godric, the skeleton of the basilisk sent shivers of fear down his spine!), on that day that would forever be branded into his mind as the first day he was truly happy, she just gave him a lazy, satiated smile, and said, "Spite."

And being the Slytherin he was, Draco just grinned and kissed her.