Sorry that it's been such a long time coming, this update, but I've been travelling and haven't had my laptop with me. I had to handwrite it, and that obviously takes a bit more time. But don't worry, because I've got the next chapter all planned out and have even started it. Cause for celebration, that.

I don't have my books with me, though, so if you spot any super errors in this that don't correspond with the books written by the wonderful JK, please tell me so that I can correct them for the future.

For the moment, I've decided to continue writing this fic, rather than The Same Mistakes or the marauders one I keep promising, so review and stuff to let me know if you think I've made the right decision.

Thank you also to everyone who has favourited or followed this story lately – I don't know if you understand just how encouraging that is. Very, is how.

I don't really have anything else to say, other than thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy this next chapter (October time).

The daily arrival of the post was something that Draco quickly learnt to hate. Where once his mother had sent him care packages that had made the assembled Slytherins' eyes wide with jealousy, now, in a somewhat ironic reversal, his father sent him letters that were more than enough to put him off of his food.

The beating of a thousand wings heralded the arrival of the post, and Draco wrenched his eyes from his breakfast, a spoonful of cereals arrested halfway to his mouth. He looked up, scanning the owls and hoping beyond hope that he would not see the pure black owl with an attitude problem that would announce another letter. His heart soared in communion with the assortment of brown and white owls (no black, no black, no black he chanted in his head), and he felt fearless enough to raise the spoon to his mouth and take a celebratory bite when the familiar owl landed on his raised arm. Draco dropped his spoon with a clatter, spraying Zabini with milk and soggy cereals.

"Shit," he said, losing his usual self-restraint in his surprise. He could have sworn that the owl rolled his amber eyes. Draco ignored the non-verbal reprimand and took the letter from the owl's outstretched leg. The owl looked at him pointedly.

"Thanks," he said reluctantly. The owl hooted huffily and left in a flurry of black feathers. Draco rubbed his arm where the ebony claws had dug into his flesh rather harder than necessary. For a while, Draco played his usual game of ignoring the white envelope beside him, but as usual it was only a matter of time before he picked it up. There was almost something masochistic in the way a tiny repressed part of his psyche found a perverse pleasure in this game he played, seeing how long it would be until he caved.

He slipped his fingers gently between the lip and body of the envelope, breaking the red wax seal that bore his family insignia, as delicate as a lover's touch.

One day, Draco, you'll truly know what it means to be a Malfoy. On that day our hidden insignia will be revealed to you. His father's words echoed in his ears once more as the red wax split under his fingers, cleaving the image of the peacock in two; just another reminder that he was a failure, a disappointment, an imposter in his own family.

Today's letter was shorter than its predecessor, Draco noted with relief. He scanned it, barely taking in the recycled words. The main message was always the same, unwavering threat: don't let me down, or else. His shoulders sagged slightly, bowed by the weight he carried around in his heart, as he folded the letter and stuffed it into his robes. He'd burn it later, and rejoice as the creamy parchment disintegrated into black flakes, as the cruel words vanished into nothing. Today, he'd fold the paper first into a tiny owl – he'd been learning about Voodoo, primitive forms of magic, and who better to try it out on than the stupid owl?

It was at that moment that Pansy chose to appear, placing cool hands over his eyes and cooing "Guess who" in his ear in what she obviously thought was a seductive voice. The girl wasn't to know that depriving Draco of his sight, even for an instant, was the worst thing she could have done. She wasn't to know that every night Draco dreamt of a darkness that pressed down on his skull, that deafened him with its silence, that choked him and compressed him until he woke, gasping and sweating.

He wrenched her hands from his eyes, blinking furiously as though drinking in the light that set his irises on fire, and left the dining hall without a backwards glance at the hurt look on Pansy's face. Unbeknownst to him, two pairs of eyes watched him leave. One, a pair of sparkling brown eyes, had watched the exchange with bright curiosity. The other, hooded black eyes, had been trained on him since he'd first sat down at the Slytherin table.

Once his breathing had returned to normal and his heart had stopped throwing itself violently against his ribcage, he slowed to a stop. Draco rested his forehead against the cool stone of the corridor he found himself in, one hand pressed against the rough surface. If walls could talk, I wonder what you'd say, he whispered to the unyielding stone beneath his feverish skin.

"Sev? I've been looking all over for you. I thought we were going to practice our transfigurations with each other?" the girl with auburn hair said, unable to fully conceal the hurt tone in her voice as she rounded the corner and spotter her best friend deep in conversation with a stocky Seventh year.

"Mulciber." She greeted him icily.

"Mudblood," he sneered. Lily ignored the insult. Once she would have, at the very least, sent a well-aimed hex at his crotch, but she was becoming too accustomed to hearing it that reacting was wearying. Mulciber gave Severus a pointed look and left the pair alone in the corridor.

"Sev, what's going on?" Lily asked, edging closer to where her dark-haired friend was pressed to the wall, a look on his face as black as his hair. A look she didn't like. She placed an anxious hand on his arm and he met her eyes for the first time since she'd appeared in the corridor. That was all it took for the dark clouds to clear from his eyes, and suddenly he was the Severus she knew and loved.

"Nothing, Lily. Sorry, I completely forgot about transfiguration." He offered her an apologetic half-smile, "Besides, even if I do practice, McGonagall will never give me more than an Acceptable. She really doesn't like me," he added morosely. Lily giggled, dragging another half-smile from her friend.

She always marveled at how different he looked when he smiled. Gone was the old, tired expression that bespoke eyes that had seen far too much. The sallow cheeks that lent to his face a gloomy look were lifted, revealing cheekbones and an endearing, lopsided grin that she rarely saw lately. She hugged him tightly to her, gripped by a sudden sadness she couldn't explain.

"I've missed you," she whispered into his neck. He could have told her that she was being ridiculous, that she'd seen him only yesterday, but he didn't. He said nothing, only wrapped his arms around her and returned the hug. When they finally broke apart, his eyes reflected the sadness that had inexplicably gripped her heart.

"Sev, please tell me what's wrong. Is it Mulciber and that horrible lot he hangs out with? They're bad people, Sev –"

"You don't know what you're talking about, Lily. Just… Just drop it, okay?" he interrupted tersely.

Lily stole back the hand that had unconsciously been resting on his arm as though stung. The gesture did not go unnoticed by Severus.

"I'm sorry, Lils –" Now it was his turn to be interrupted.

"No, you're right; I don't know what I'm talking about because you don't tell me, Severus. We used to tell each other everything. Now, you're keeping secrets from me and having heart to hearts with those degenerates. You know they're the ones who put Susan in the hospital wing? Oh, she says she doesn't remember who did it, but she goes pale every time one of them walks past her." Lily's eyes were blazing with passionate anger. Severus thought she'd never looked more beautiful, nor more distant from him.

"You know I'd never do anything like that," he said, reaching out a hand which was promptly swatted away.

"No, I don't. I don't know who you are anymore," she said, her voice cracking under the weight of unshed tears. She turned tail and ran from him.

He didn't follow her immediately – he knew better than to pursue her (the last time he'd tried, she'd sent an extremely unpleasant jinx his way which he'd been unable to remove until she saw fit to forgive him). Besides, for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure he wanted to follow her. He'd been offered the chance of a lifetime – the chance to belong and the chance to shine as he knew he could, two things he'd been waiting for, things that until now he'd only been able to find in her arms. But she was the catch: they wanted him, but he couldn't take her with him. She stood for everything they hated, and so he'd have to learn to hate her too. Or, he could continue to follow her, to be with her until she grew tired of him and cast him aside.

He sighed and pressed his head against the cool wall as though seeking a comforting touch. His eyes fluttered shut momentarily, then he pushed himself away from the quiet stone that smelled of time itself and set off to find her.

For now, he'd made his choice.

Draco breathed in deeply, drinking in the smell of stone, musty cloth and the tangy sweetness of oil paintings. There was something else too, a barely noticeably aroma of citrus. He turned around, letting the deep breath he had taken trickle out of his nose slowly, and came face to face with Granger who was watching him curiously from a safe distance. How had she found him?

"Are you stalking me, Granger?" he asked, in as nasally superior voice he could manage. She stepped closer, and his eyes followed the movement warily.

"What's wrong?" she asked after a while, ignoring his poor attempt at humour. The question knocked Draco off his guard, so that his façade cracked further. Her eyes widened at what she saw (what the hell did she see?) and she took another step forwards.

"Malfoy, what's wrong?" she asked again.

"Why do you care?" Too late, he realised that his reply as good as confirmed that something was wrong. Weak.

"I asked first," she countered, the ghost of a smile playing on her face. He tried not to notice that she hadn't answered his question either. Too many unanswered questions, too many loose threads, too many possibilities.

"Letter from father dearest reminding me how much of a disappointment I am," he replied with a bitter smile. Why are you even telling her? his brain shouted, as his mouth ran on.

She took another step forwards.

Stop stop stop, Draco was chanting in his head. He was frozen to the spot, his muscles tensed like a gazelle ready to spring away from a lion.

"Granger?" His voice came out strangled, but she halted and it was enough to make him relax a little. But not a lot – she was still too close for comfort.

"Why are you a disappointment? I thought you were the perfect little Malfoy," she said. The way the words left her lips didn't exactly make it sound like an achievement to be proud of. "Is it school work?" she asked, worry evident on her face. Typical Granger: for her, there was no greater problem than school work. He envied her simple outlook on life. He was about to scoff at her when he realised that his grades had been slipping steadily. Where once he had never dipped below straight Outstandings, now he could barely scrape Acceptable in his classes. It was, after all, hard to focus on the goblin revolution of 1654 when his mind was preoccupied with planning the murder of his headmaster. But he couldn't explain all of that to the girl with her wide doe eyes, so he settled for a nod. She returned his gesture with a look that clearly said I thought so.

She began to worry her lip, debating something with her conscience. He watched her deliberation with something akin to bated breath, letting his silver eyes roam over her face. It was at once alien and totally familiar – a face he had looked at for years but never really seen until recently. She was slightly tanned, the golden brown on the point of fading back into cream, with a shower of freckles delicately sprinkled across her nose.

He must have been staring a little too intensely at her, because she reached up a self-conscious hand and brushed at her nose when she thought he was looking elsewhere.

"Okay, look, what is it you're struggling most with?" she asked him almost reluctantly. Draco was strongly tempted to reply that murdering the most powerful wizard in the world was pretty high up on his list of things he was failing, but wisely held his tongue. He also had to repress the urge to tell her that there was nothing a mudblood like her could ever help him with, but remembered that she was under no obligation to help him. In fact, it was most out of character…

"Wait, why are you doing this?" he asked, fear suddenly wrapping icy fingers around his intestines. Maybe Potter was on to him, maybe he had sent Granger to spy on him… Draco's mind crawled with conspiracy theories and he probably would have done something rash had the wall, the cool smooth stone beneath his back not cleared his mind. If Potter knew, or even suspected something, Draco had to find out.

"Out of the goodness of my heart. Who the fuck knows the reason behind anything I do these days? I certainly don't have a clue," she returned angrily. Draco was taken aback more by the bone-deep exhaustion in her voice - an exhaustion he had been sure he was alone in feeling – than by the oath she uttered (although that too was fairly shocking). He raised one eyebrow and grinned.

"I'm impressed, Granger. I wasn't aware those kind of words featured in the vocabulary of a typical know-it-all."

"I'm not a typical know-it-all," she said, in a strangely enticing soft voice. Was she flirting with him? "And believe me when I say that I know far worse words, all of which I could apply very easily to a description of you," she continued in a mock-sweet tone of voice. No, definitely not flirting.

He gave a low whistle through his teeth and advanced on her.

"I bet I could make you scream those words with pleasure," he said in a deep, soft voice he'd never heard himself use. He was playing a dangerous game with her – he had no idea how she'd react to something like that. But her reaction was better than he could have imagined.

She flushed a shade of red that Weasley would have been proud of, then hit him playfully on his chest.

"Pig," she muttered as he laughed, but she cracked a smile nevertheless. He caught himself laughing and frowned, almost ashamed of feeling so at ease with her. The moment over, she took the opportunity to excuse herself, clearly sharing the same feeling of guilt as he.

"I should go." She sighed, then added, "Come and find me when you figure out what you need help with."

Just as she rounded the corner of the corridor, she called over her shoulder, "Same condition as before – no one can know. But this time, don't fold my notes up like that," he smiled, remembering how he'd folded her notes up into little snakes and enchanted them to crawl into her bag a few weeks ago. He'd known that it would irritate her no end, which was the reason he'd done it in the first place. "And that's three favours you owe me."

Then she was gone, leaving nothing but the faintest note of citrus. Draco became more and more confused as he puzzled over their encounter, before giving up on trying to untangle the events and heading instead to his first lesson of the day.

It took him three weeks to get back to her. He knew exactly where to find her – that was never the issue. He just wasn't sure that he wanted to find her. Eventually, he plucked up the courage to visit the library, a place he had been steadfastly ignoring since their last encounter. He wasn't sure he was comfortable spending so much time alone with her, let alone being so vastly in her debt. But he was pretty effectively persuaded that, like it or not, he needed her help when he was awarded a Troll in Ancient Runes.

She was the only one in the library, the rest of the school having chosen to make the most of the rare sunny October weather they were having. He approached her cautiously and cleared his throat, unsure of the traditional protocol when being cordial with a girl normally considered his enemy. She was so engrossed in her work that she didn't hear him, but carried on scribbling furiously away. He tried again, louder this time, but to no avail.

"Granger!" he said eventually, frustration magnifying his voice. She jumped at the sound, causing ink to splatter her page.

"Now look what you've made me do" she grumbled, muttering a spell and vanishing the blot from her rows of perfectly formed letters. He didn't apologise: it would have been too out of character, and besides, he sensed that she wasn't actually mad at him but at something else.

"So… What's up?" he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching against a bookshelf. He was so uncomforable, so out of place.

"Are you here to chat or to improve your grades? Because honestly, I can think of plenty of people I'd rather be talking to," she said, barely looking up from her essay. He mumbled something barely audible, but she shot him such an angry look that he bit his tongue immediately and sat down beside her.

"Well?" she asked impatiently, dropping her pen after several moments of silence, filled only by the regular scratching of her quill on parchment and the beat strummed by Draco's fingers on the tabletop.

"Um… Ancient Runes?" he said tentatively. She pulled out a thick wad of notes from her bag (which, miraculously, wasn't bulging with all the things it containted) and dropped them unceremoniously in front of him before returning to his work.

"That's it then? That's how you're going to help?" The moment the petulant words left his mouth, he realised it was the wrong thing to say. He winced in preparation for the onslaught.

"Listen, Malfoy, don't make me regret this even more than I already do. I've got better things to be doing than helping you with your daddy issues," she snapped.

"Oh yeah? Like what?" Merlin help him, his mouth was antagonising her. What a time for his brain to be absent.

"Like celebrating my 17th birthday," she replied, suddenly quiet. The fury had vanished from her eyes, leaving behind something much worse.

"I'm… I'm sorry, I didn't know," he said, at a volume Madame Pince would have been proud of.

"How could you? It's not like we even know each other," she said, picking at a half-erased name etched into the desk.

"Why are you in the library working on your birthday? And where are the idiots you normally voluntarily spend time with?"

"They're all out playing Quidditch, I think," she said in a tone that clearly implied her feelings about the sport.

"Not a fan? You go to all the games though."

She quirked an eyebrow. Good going, idiot, now it sounds like you've been watching her or something.

"I go to the games because it's important to them," she replied as though it were obvious. Then again, maybe it was. Maybe that's what friends did for each other.

"More important that their friend's birthday?" Draco asked. Hermione bit her lip, and he got the feeling that he was asking a question that she'd been wondering herself. She brushed off the cloud that flitted across her face quickly, tapping the feathered end of her quill on the mount of Ancient Runes notes in front of him before returning to her own essay. They worked on in what could almost be described as companionable silence.

For the first time in a long time, Draco's mind was awash with a pleasant crackling of symbols and letters that reduced all thoughts of the future to background static and chained him firmly to the now. And if by chance his mind should wonder, it didn't go very far – travelling only the distance between the page and her face. Her dark eyes, framed by long black lashes, never once wavered or darted anywhere but the page where her hand was busily forming the looping letters that had burned themselves into his mind. Every so often, she would breathe in deeply, her eyes fluttering shut and her chest rising in a frankly distracting way as it filled with air. After every one of these deep sighing breaths her face would slip unconsciously into a countenance of peace and her lips hid a secret smile.

Draco grew so curious that he himself tried it, allowing his body to be guided by his lungs as a snapshot of the world slipped inside of him. The heady smell of old books and cracked leather bindings filled his head and then faded, leaving behind the subtler scents of wood, wet ink and parchment. Beneath all of this was the trace of citrus that was becoming distinctly familiar. He blew the last fragments of the moment out of his nose and immediately breathed in again, eager to taste a new moment.

"What are you doing?" Hermione said, interrupting his thought process and startling him so that the air he'd been savouring escaped his lips all in a blur. Draco looked up guiltily, caught in the act.

"Breathing," he replied, as though she were an idiot.

"Well, I don't need to tell you how much I wish you wouldn't," she returned bitingly. Draco clutched his chest as though wounded, an exaggerated picture of misery on his face. She smiled and was about to return to her work when Draco spoke again.

"I was trying to smell whatever it was you were smelling," he admitted. She looked at him quizzically, and he realised that he had probably made no sense at all. He was on the point of telling her to forget it when she spoke.

"It's the books. That smell has always anchored me – everything else in my life changes, but that smell never does. It's the same scent millions of people have smelled for thousands of years. I just find that comforting. It's like a constant throughout my life, to remind me that however much things alter beyond recognition, there's always that one thing that will stay the same, that will bring me back to myself. I guess the smell is my way of staying rooted, of threading together past, present and future. Nothing scares me so much when I smell it. It's weird, but everything with Voldemort –"

She noticed Draco's wince and broke off suddenly.

"Sorry, I'm babbling. Not making any sense, anyway."

Draco shook his head. "You made perfect sense. I just wish I could have found something like that. I could really, really use something to root me to sanity right now." He gave her a grim smile.

"What comforts you when everything goes wrong, then?" she asked after a few moments of silence.

"It used to be flying – I've never found anything else equal to that thrill of soaring higher and faster than birds themselves, until people and problems are microscopic and the world is a blur, until there's nothing but you and the wind, the smell of linseed oil and the solid broom beneath you. But then, of course, my father managed to find a way to ruin that for me too," he finished bitterly.

"How?" she asked, as though struggling to believe that his life was anything but simple. She only saw the spoilt Malfoy heir who only had to blink slightly petulantly to have his way.

"You wouldn't understand."

"Malfoy, just because I am about the furthest thing from a pureblood heir to an enormous fortune does not mean that I am incapable of empathising with your problems."

"I don't want your pity," he spat, irrationally angered by her understanding tone.

"Pity and empathy are two different things, Malfoy. Learn the difference before you bite my head off for trying to be nice to you. Now explain.

Draco sighed, but her tone signalled that she was not in the mood for anything but an answer to her question.

"He made it a competition, yet another thing I could disappoint him in. He felt he had to buy my way onto the team as though I'd never make it on without his money."

She nodded. "You think your father took away the one thing you really loved, but you're wrong." He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a silencing hand. "No one can really steal away what's in your heart."

When the hell did she get so wise in these things? She spoke like an adult who had the best part of their lives already. Or a child who'd fought with darkness so many times that they clung desperately onto the last shred of light they could see.

"Why don't you just quit Quidditch?" she said, after staring at him intently for a while. He grimaced.

"I can't." He read the incomprehension in her brown eyes and continued. "Leaving out the fact that my father would kill me if I ever even talked of quitting, it still works sometimes. Sometimes, if I block everything else out, it feels like a faded memory of what it used to be. And even that's enough for me not to let it go." She nodded slowly and they both returned to work.

"Granger?" he said a while later. "What does this say?" He was on the last but one page of her notes, which he felt was a considerable achievement given the number of pages there were, but he was struggling to decipher the words as her handwriting had suddenly become erratic and jagged.

"Oh, sorry, I think my hand was struggling to keep up with my brain there," she said, scooting closer until they were elbow to elbow. Her hair fell like a veil between them as she bent over the dense forest of words. He could see her lips moving as she tried to make sense of what she'd written. She reached up a hand and pulled back her hair so that the profile of her face was fully revealed. Draco let his eyes examine her, from the hollow of her collarbone, up her neck, around her tiny ears, following the line of her cheekbone until it met her almond eyes. At that moment, her gaze shifted sideways and her warm brown eyes with their liquid honey flecks met his own silver ones. She blushed and her eyes sprang back to the page in front of her. Draco, too, glued his eyes to the parchment but internally his mind was whirring.

"Okay, I give up. I can't figure out what that says," she groaned in frustration after several more minutes. Draco chuckled, amused at her expression of irritation.

"It's not funny," she said, pouting.

"It's pretty funny," he replied, still laughing lightly.

"Shut up," she muttered darkly, punching his shoulder in a way that was obviously not intended to hurt. He well remembered from third year that she could hit very hard when she wanted to.

"Hermione?" A voice that was clearly Potter's echoed from several bookshelves away.

"Shit shit shit," she whispered, paling. Draco briefly considered letting Potter find them, for the sheer amusement of the expressions that would disfigure his face, but he looked sidelong at Hermione who was in full panic mode and decided against it. She looked at him pleadingly, a look that said don't and please and leave and even sorry. And Merlin help him but he nodded and scrambled away through the maze of bookshelves, pausing only to mouth Happy Birthday at her.

Hermione passed him moments later, Potter with a protective arm around her shoulders as Draco lounge against a desk, the picture of arrogance. Potter shot him a glare which he parried with a smirk. Hermione avoided his eyes, but turned and looked back as she rounded the corner with another expressive look. This one said Thank you.

Snape struggled to remember exactly when it was that he had taken to following around the Malfoy heir as he cowered behind a column of books several meters away from the two teenagers. He was too far away to make out their exact words, but he didn't need to listen to their inane drivel. The glances he stole from behind his make-shift refuge were enough to tell him that their mouths might have been moving but it was their eyes that were speaking.

There was no way, of course, that Draco could have known that the table he was sitting at had been Snape and Lily's own haven. They'd spent the vast majority of their years as friends with their heads bent together much in the same manner as the pair in front of him were now. He had no way of knowing, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

Snape's heart twisted uncomfortably in his chest as he peeked out from behind the books once again, only to witness a private moment between the two. Draco and Granger both flushed and hurridly averted their eyes from each other's faces, but the moment was sufficient for Snape to read the swirling molten currents of the teenagers' eyes. Snape knew full well the feeling of being dragged helplessly under the waves of green, swirling waters in Lily's eyes. He recognised the signs of the drowning man in Draco's face as the boy was hurried from the table, in the expression in his eyes as he turned back for one last look.

Snape knew, but did Draco?