If Harry called out for him, Draco didn't hear him. He kept his head turned downwards as his feet tread up the path from the Quidditch Pitch and back towards the castle, not bothering to look up to see where he was going. Though Hogwarts wasn't quite home for Draco, it was, at the very least, familiar.

Familiar enough that he didn't have to put much thought into where he was going. But also familiar enough that, if he didn't pay attention, he could end up exactly where he didn't want to be.

Like the Slytherin Common Room. Or, as Draco had begun to think of it in recent years, the designated spot for pushing aside his feelings for Harry.

Whenever Draco had had a particularly frustrating encounter with the Chosen One, he'd always been able to find solace here. But instead of going inside, he turned bitterly away from the door.

Before, he would've strode into the common room and been immediately sought out by Crabbe and Goyle. Thick as they might have been, they had always been a much-welcomed distraction, especially when he wanted to get his mind off of Harry Potter. But Crabbe was gone now, destroyed by the Fiendfyre he'd conjured, and Goyle hadn't returned.

And things were different now.

Ever since the final battle, many of the Slytherin students had tried to distance themselves from the house, every trip to the dungeons a painful reminder of where they had been forced to stand while their classmates and comrades had fought for their lives above them. Most of the house didn't come to the common room until they absolutely had to.

The few Slytherins who were in the common room whenever Draco was there looked at him with fear and not revelry, whispering about him in groups from their little secluded corners. Even Snape's portrait, moved at the request of the older students from McGonagall's office to hang above their fireplace, seemed to always look at him in disdain, though this could be due to the perpetual scowl that had been painted on the portrait.

Draco let out a long sigh and glanced at the suit of armor beside him. He wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere else. Normally, he would've headed to the Great Hall, but he would bet anything that that was where Potter was now, eating with the rest of the school.

Still, with no other distractions, Draco realized that the Great Hall might be his best option.

"Come on, Draco, you damned fool, pull yourself together," he growled as he glared at himself in the reflection. He was all out of sorts, and for what? Potter's dirty cheeks? His messy, dark hair? His infuriatingly vibrant eyes?

Draco let out a loud groan, so frustrated that he didn't resist the urge to run a hand through his hair, releasing it from his hair gel's final attempts to keep it in place after a long day.

"Have you forgot the password," someone asked behind him.

He spun around to see Pansy Parkinson. In an instant, Draco felt all of his weak and pitiful feelings shrivel away, leaving behind the familiar sense of detachment. He slid a hand over his head to try to smooth his hair back down. "What are you doing here?"

She dipped her head down in a way that would've made Draco think she was shy if he didn't know her better. "You weren't at dinner."

"Wasn't hungry."

"Potter must not've been hungry either," she said as she raised an eyebrow, "because he also wasn't there."

By now, Draco was a master at concealing his emotions whenever someone mentioned Harry's name, which was practically all the time. Pansy was many things—mean-spirited, petty and cruel, with a penchant for finding weaknesses to pick out—and apparently smarter than Draco often gave her credit for.

Still, he doubted she would come to the correct conclusion on her own. She was always softer with Draco, always willing to listen to his side of the story, ready to accept whatever excuse he gave her for his actions. Through all the years, Pansy had always faithfully stood by his side.

In spite of that, he didn't trust her with the truth of his feelings for Harry. It was the one thing he had never told her, never told anyone. And would never—not with the amount of power he knew it would give someone over him.

He could only imagine what someone like Pansy would do with power like that, even if she was usually content to bend to Draco's will as easily as he could levitate a feather.

Pansy reached out tentatively and brushed her fingers against Draco's arm. "You're always so…agitated after seeing him. If you want, I could help. I could—"

"Just let me into the common room," he grumbled as he rolled his arm away from her.

He knew what she was suggesting, what she was offering. Long ago, when he had been deeper in denial of his feelings, when he had tried every way he knew how to convince himself to enjoy the attention girls heaped onto him, Pansy had been there.

And for a while, he could pretend that Harry Potter didn't exist, that it wasn't Harry whom he wished he was kissing, whose body he wished that he was getting the chance to explore.

He imagined Harry's skin would be rougher than Pansy's, standing firm against Draco's hands instead of molding underneath it. He imagined, instead, that he would be the one reshaped beneath the Chosen One.

He imagined, too, the sound of his name as it passed through the lips of the Boy Who Lived.

"Draco," Pansy whispered as she touched his arm again, and Draco, deep in fantasy, felt his resolve come undone.

He crushed his mouth against hers as he pushed her against the cold stone wall. This was familiar, too, the way her body quickly yielded to his touch. He knew exactly how she would gasp as he hitched her up, what noise she would make as he moved from her mouth to her neck.

But Draco didnotknow what her face would look like when his mouth took a break to call out the name on his heart: "Harry."

He knew she had heard him by the way her arms went slack from around his neck. Draco had but an instant to put some composure back into his face as she pulled away to look at him, her eyes wide with shock. "D-Did you just say 'Harry?'"

"No," Draco said immediately, definitively. He unclasped his hands to distract her as she hurried to regain her balance before she could hit the floor. He still wasn't sure how he could turn this around, but he knew how he could buy himself some time to figure it out: "What's the matter with you?"

"I-I'm sorry," she stammered. Even now, Draco could see the wheels turning in her head the way it always did when she came across new information that she thought she could use as a weakness. "It's just that it sounded like—"

"I said 'hurry," he said, garbling the last word so it might actually pass off as a legitimate excuse. Draco tilted his head back toward the common room door. "You seemed to have forgotten that I gave you something to do. Or did you want to be seen by everyone in the castle?"

Embarrassment colored her face rose and Draco thought that Pansy looked much better in it than he would have. Still, Draco couldn't help the feeling of his own indignation—however misplaced and undeserved it was—as it rose up in his throat. "Tell me, Parkinson, what reason would I have toeversay something like that?"

He knew she wouldn't have an answer for him, not when the only answer he'd been able to come up with for that question was that he didn't deserve to. And this, Draco decided, was the best answer someone like him could ever hope for.

Draco startled to attention when he heard the door to the common room roll back. He hadn't realized Pansy had spoken the password, hadn't even realized that she had moved from in front of him. He didn't turn back to look at her as she said, "I could still…help you, if you wanted."

Draco decided that he didn't. In truth, he shouldn't have started this again after he'd unceremoniously cut her off in their sixth year. "It seems I've suddenly found my appetite," he said quietly.

"Draco," she called after him. "I-I'm sorry."

"It won't happen again." It wasn't a reassurance; it was a promise. Gone were the days of him seeking out Pansy to distract him from thinking about Harry. If this slip-up had been any indication, he was clearly past the point of being able to be distracted, and Draco thought himself to have been a fool for not realizing this sooner.

He felt he owed Pansy more of an explanation this time around, but to do so would be to alert her to the fact that there was more to this than she'd realized. And no one could know the truth about his feelings for Harry, even if that meant cutting off what little comfort he'd been able to find in her.

It was time he faced just how lonely it was to be Draco Malfoy.