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Author's Constant Random Babbling- Hi again! Chapter Nine, coming right up. I would like to proudly announce that last chapter was the first Draco scene to date I didn't run past my sister and Malfoy consultant, and I think it came out okay… ^^; He's going to be popping up more and more as the fic gets darker and more… er, I dunno, sexually charged? It's definitely gonna happen, soo… I mean, in all honesty, they are both seventeen-year-old boys. *shrugs*  And by the way, addressing a review that may have been a while ago… I can see where you'd get the idea, but we'll soon learn that Draco is anything but helpless…

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Notes On This Chapter- All right, I realize Lucius doesn't have a cane in the books. But, as I see it, Rowling is consulting on the movies, so I can consider them a further development of canon. Besides, I thought that cane was damn cool. Speaking of the second movie… did anyone notice Draco's kleptomaniac tendencies? And, just for my dear friend Ally… SNAPEAGE!

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            "All right there, Harry?"

            The rough voice was a comforting one, one he had been longing to hear ever since the train had petered out to a stop at the Hogwarts station. Maybe it was because it had been that same voice that had given him life, so long ago, you're a wizard, Harry… but Hagrid's voice had always been a reassurance to him. The mere sight of the half-giant made him feel like a child again. Safe, protected…

            But that was useless to think on, so he merely managed a smile and nod, responding with a cheerful "All right, Hagrid!" It wouldn't serve any purpose to worry him… and raising a hand to massage at his scar, Harry pushed through the crowds of first-years. He could hear Ron and Hermione tripping along behind him, sniping at each other just like always, and he almost smiled again. Almost…

            The late summer air smelt of rain, and he found himself hurrying along with the other students to make it inside. The first drops had just hit the grass outside as he pushed through the doors ahead of Ron and Hermione, and it was only seconds later that they had swollen into a full downpour, soaking the unlucky ones still outside the castle. A sigh of mild relief escaped his lips. He had always hated being rained on… it muddled up his glasses and he spent all the time tripping over himself.

            "Wonder who the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor's gonna be…" Ron's musing held the bored note of familiarity, and Harry glanced at him, a wry half-smile coming to his lips.

            "You realise we've said that every year," he reminded. "We should stop wondering and start casting lots."

            "Seven to one it's a vampire, right?" Ron's eyes twinkled, and he shoved playfully at Harry's arm, causing him to stumble into Hermione. The dark-haired girl merely sniffed and ignored their horseplay, rummaging in her bag and murmuring absently to herself about her advanced Transfiguration study. Somewhere Harry found it in himself to grin and shove Ron back. Somewhere he found it in himself to laugh with his best friends, to pelt the back of Draco's head with sweat-flavored Every Flavor Beans and look innocently at the ceiling whenever he spun around, forgetting that this halcyon feel would never last the year, ignoring that the blond Slytherin was no longer Malfoy, but Draco, avoiding the words that rang in his ears, whether you want it or not, you've got it…Somehow, it was just the same, just the same until the usual clamour behind them dimmed and faded to near nothing, to a silence that was so out of place in Hogwarts hallways as to be unsettling.

            Harry dropped the bean he held and turned, oblivious to Seamus bouncing off him as he stood stock-still in the middle of the milling students, deaf to Ron and Hermione's questions.  It was less of a curiousity and much more a burning need to know what had disrupted the comfortable sameness of this yearly ritual. And yet, to see it, the disruption seemed obvious, painfully so.

            Lucius Malfoy.

            He could see the figure far down the hallway, that spot of darkness amongst black robes, towering over the first year students being herded into a side room for sorting preparation. Long silver-white hair coursing over broad shoulders. A powerful hand curved around the carved metal head of his cane. Piercing, icy eyes darting over the crowd to focus tightly on his prey.

            Harry didn't have to follow that gaze to know where it led; to the pale slip of moonlight that sauntered ahead of him in all his Slytherin finery. To Draco.

            Lucius's presence was no real surprise, in and of itself. It wasn't the first year the elder Malfoy had taken it upon himself to visit Hogwarts, and yet… and yet…

            Seeing Lucius had always brought a peculiar taste to his mouth, a taste of rusted steel and blood, of stilted fear and loathing. A feeling that had been alien to him until staring into the reptilian eyes of Riddle's basilisk, the sword of Godric Gryffindor clutched in his twelve-year-old hands. A feeling he had grown so accustomed to now, the feeling of unfathomable power lapping at his heels. But this, this was something he couldn't explain, the sudden ice coating his innards, the choking explosion in the base of his throat…

            Rage. Terror. Disgust.

            But more than anything else, the overwhelming knowledge that he couldn't allow that distance between father and son to close.

            In times that required fast thinking, Harry had learned that everyone reacted differently. Ron usually found something to punch. Hermione relied on logic and knowledge. But he had always relied on instinct. It had been instinct that had told him to put a hand to Quirrel's face to protect himself and the Philosopher's Stone. It had been instinct that had led him to trust Sirius for the first time.

            And so it was his instinct that threw his body into a tight swing, trained Seeker grace bringing him to exactly where he wanted to be.

            "Potter-" Grey eyes flew wide, pale face framed by loose strands of gilded hair, thin chest heaving where Harry's forearm had pinned him to the cold stone wall. "Potter, what the Hell do you think you're doing?!"

            "Fight with me," Harry hissed against Draco's ear, his free hand fisting in the front of the smaller boy's robes. "Now. Loudly."

            "What do you think I'm bloody doing- OW! Let GO!" Draco struggled wildly, straining to keep his feet on the ground as Harry dragged him up. "Stoppit, Potter! You're going to pay for this-"

            Harry tensed his arms and shoved Draco's slender body forward, ramming his back hard into the cold stone wall. The yelp of surprise and pain that huffed from Draco's lungs pained him somewhere, somehow, but he ignored the pangs and summoned up all the ignominy that the blond had suffered him through all these years, and forced it into violence-

            "Mr. Potter, unhand him at once!"

            The familiar voice coursed over him, weakening every limb with relief, and he crumpled back, clenched hands uncurling from Draco's wrinkled robes. There was barely time to catch the bewilderment in those quicksilver eyes before cold hands seized his shoulders, dragging him roughly away from the wall, manhandling him to the other side of the corridor and inside a small office, the crowds of students parting in mingled respect and trepidation for the owner of those musty, swirling black robes.

            Harry fell into a rickety wooden chair, forehead pounding, and he attempted to calm his breathing while Draco was ushered into the room with considerably more politeness. Once the door slammed shut, squealing on its hinges, Harry lifted his eyes to meet the glinting black ones of one Severus Snape.

            "I should have expected no less from you, Potter," came that silken growl, so incongruous with the sallow face and rather unpleasant nose. "I'll see that this costs no less than fifty points from Gryffindor. And so early in the year…" Snape tutted somewhat insincerely. "Mr. Malfoy, shall I send for Madam Pomfrey?"

             "Thank you, Professor, but I think you managed to pull Potter off me before he did any lasting damage." The smugness in Draco's voice was expected. Normal. And for that much, Harry was grateful.

            "And now, as for your actual punishment-" The glittering, almost manic joy in Snape's eyes was flattened by the sudden knock at the heavy door. He settled into a brief glare at Harry, as though the intrusion was his fault, and then swooped over to the door. After a brief discussion with whoever had knocked, who seemed to be Professor Sprout, he growled under his breath and turned back.

            "I trust you can keep yourself under control for five minutes while I attend to this matter, Mr. Potter…" His voice fairly dripped with malice, and Harry forced back a chortle.

            "Yes, Professor."

            Silence greeted Snape's exit, and Harry breathed deeply, trying to calm. It was over with now, after all… And there was no need to worry anymore, until the next time, at least…

            "Very clever, Potter."

            Draco's dry comment startled him, and Harry sprang to his feet without regard for the continual throbbing in the side of his head. The pale Slytherin was regarding him expressionlessly from his vantage point by the door. His thin lips twisted in a smirk of sorts, a wry smile that seemed thin and wavering, defeated, and yet he sauntered forward with as much poise as he had ever had.

            "I'm assuming you staged that poor excuse for a brawl in order to attract attention and thus minimize the chances my dear father would be able to have his evil, despicable way with me…" he drawled softly, perching lightly on the edge of the desk Snape had been sitting behind. "Am I correct, Potter?"

            "I reckon you're smarter than you look," Harry retorted. "And it worked, so unless you have a death wish I wasn't aware of, I'd believe you owe me."

            "Owe you, eh…" Draco fell silent, then slid gracefully down from the old wooden desk, trailing pale, slender fingers over its surface as though deep in thought and caring little for what he caressed. He hovered there, in midstep, and the small office fell dead silent.

            Harry caught Draco's wrist only a split second before the curled fist met his jaw, staring steadily into blazing grey eyes. After a beat, Draco laughed, a bitter and cheerless sound, but a laugh nonetheless. And yet, Harry felt his grip relaxing, and he allowed Draco's knuckles to bounce very lightly off his cheekbone before his hand fell back to his side.

            "Let me ask you something, Potter… or, rather…" Draco cocked his head, a peculiar look coming over his pale face, something that slid warmly behind the pulse in his throat to touch beneath his breastbone. "Let me ask you something… Harry…"

            That quiet, tender warmth caught fire, blazing through him to touch even the ends of his fingertips. That single word, that single utterance of his given name from lips that never condescended to speak it, to acknowledge the intimacy that it would create. The intimacy that, somehow, already existed in that constant space between them… The even, intense intimacy that had always existed between them.

            And so he listened.

            Draco took one step forward, his neck craning to keep his grey eyes squarely on Harry's face. "Do you know what it's like," he said softly, "to know for certain that without something, you'd die…? To be certain of that since you can remember, to dream of that one thing that will sustain you, because you don't want to die… and yet, when you find that thing, it turns you away and laughs in your face, and you hate it more than anything in the world, and yet… and yet, you know you still need it…?"

            Harry clenched his jaw. That gentle warmth blazed in his throat, uncomfortably hot… Even behind those quiet words, in those impassive grey eyes, somewhere there was anger, bitter and resigned anger, burning fiercely and undying.

            "You were the one who turned me away." Draco laid a slender hand against the pounding heartbeat beneath his thin robes, the strangely affectionate gesture made all the more painful by the fatalism in his eyes. "You were the one, Harry. Do what you will; it's no concern of mine. But don't expect me to be grateful."