Disclosure

My emotions are always heightened when I am wearing the cloak, because of the sense of doing something forbidden, something exciting. There is always the fear of capture, despite my invisibility. I know that I won't get caught and that, even if I did, it wouldn't be that bad - a couple detentions, not pleasant, but by no means unbearable.

My body, however, doesn't know. The adrenaline that starts racing through me whenever I put the cloak on makes me laugh almost to the point of hysteria, first at the mildly amusing antics of Peeves down the corridor, and then at the necessity of keeping quiet. I laugh until I almost choke from trying to muffle it.

Of course fear is heightened. The slightest noises make me twitch, and the sound of footsteps makes me want to run for cover before I remember that I am invisible and the best plan is to freeze against a wall. This is the hardest part of invisibility. The fight-or-flight feeling says to run like hell, possibly throwing in a punch first, but my mind admonishes me in time, and I stand still, my glasses slowly, maddeningly creeping down my nose on a slide of sweat. My whole world is focused on the frustrated desire to push my glasses up on my nose, until I am more annoyed than afraid.

This annoyance deepens into anger when I see the reason I am forced to stand here, sweating and trembling, not daring to move: Draco. I am angry at him for making me wait, for making me afraid, for all the little insults and injuries he has inflicted on me in the past five years. He doesn't know I'm here, it would be so satisfying to humiliate him. Of course, I don't have the power to turn him into a rat, like fake-Moody did, so what can I do? Scare him a bit, perhaps. I mutter "Petrificus Totalus," freezing him in place. I know that there's been a boggart hovering around the dungeons - I've had a Dementor pop out at me once or twice. I float Draco down to the dungeons. This is an area without many people - I doubt he knows that anything's here. I attach his leg to the wall, unfreeze him, and wait.

His first reaction, naturally, is to start yelling: "Who's there? What are you doing? Where am I? You're going to be in trouble when I..." He breaks off when a figure strides out of the darkness into the flickering torchlight and I realize what I've done, but I feel Petrified myself, compelled to watch.

"I had you brought here, Draco," Lucius Malfoy says. "Is there any problem?"

"No, daddy." Draco says this in a quiet voice that is close to a whimper.

"Good. Because I wouldn't like to have to...teach you respect like last time."

"Please don't, daddy." Draco's voice is a choked sob now.

I am still standing in the shadows, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. My anger, while still there, is ebbing, replaced by curiosity, empathy, and disgust.

My morbid curiosity keeps me still, watching Draco and Lucius, wondering what will happen next. What does Lucius do to Draco? The price of knowing is too high, of course, and I will have to step in, but I am frozen for the moment. My kindest emotion - the emotion I wish was the dominant one - is empathy. It is so clear, so obvious now why Draco has always been so cruel to us, so quick to assert his superiority. I know that Uncle Vernon is part of the reason I feel compelled to excel in quidditch.

The primary feeling, however, is disgust. I am disgusted at myself for putting Draco into this situation. I realize now that I have done something worse than attacking him outright. What I have done is unforgivable.

At the same time, I feel an unwanted level of disgust towards Draco. Uncle Vernon is cruel to me, and I never took it out on other people. I never groveled like Draco is, did I?

Regardless, I need to act. Boggart-Lucius raises its wand, and I don't know what it can do, how far it can take the act. I step forward and shout "Riddikulus!" His wand breaks in two and he crumbles.

Draco, how has been standing with his shoulders hunched and his eyes down, raises his head. The look of pure relief on his face pierces my soul before it turns to bewilderment, then rage.

Out of an aimless sense of penance, I had taken off the cloak before stepping forward. I face Draco, silently pleading for the forgiveness that I know Draco is unwilling or unable to give me. He hasn't forgiven me for teasing him in first year - he will eternally hate me, I'm sure, for seeing his deepest secret and his darkest fear.

"Potter." Draco spits my name like an accusation, a judgement, and a curse all in one. "You'll be expelled for this." He turns to leave.

"No - please," I call after him, unsure why I wouldn't deserve expulsion.

Draco continues walking, sneering back over his shoulder, "And why not?"

"Because my uncle's like your father." I say the words without thinking.

He stops without turning to face me. I can tell that he's struggling to maintain the composure he found in anger towards me.

"Does your uncle lock you in the dungeons of your house?" He asks this quietly, almost in a whisper, with his back still turned. "Does your uncle use the Imperius Curse to get you to kill your pets, to 'make you strong'? When the Imperius doesn't work, does he make you...do things under the threat of Cruciatus? Has your uncle ever told you to hurt anyone, and has he pledged your life to Voldemort?"

Draco hasn't raised his voice, but his face is now inches from mine. I want to make things better for him, to give him a place like Hogwarts is for me, where his father can't reach him.

"No," I whisper, as my hand reaches up of its own accord to wipe away the tear halfway down Draco's cheek. Surprisingly, he lets me. His head falls to my shoulder, and we stand like that, his face buried between the shoulder and collar of my robe, my hand stroking his hair. My mind, scrabbling for pragmatism, tries to think of a solution to all this.

"Go to Dumbledore," I whisper. "Tell him what you told me."

"I can't. My father is one of the most powerful wizards alive." Draco's voice takes on an unthinking hint of pride when he says this, before lapsing back into misery. "He's sent Dumbledore away before, and he makes sure that the Ministry is led by idiots."

"But you can - we can - Dumbledore will..." I make stabs at sentences, not wanting to concede the logic of Draco's statement.

"Let's not think for a bit," Draco murmurs. "If I think, I'll hate you again, Potter" - he spits the name, again, seemingly more out of habit than sentiment - "for what you did to me. I'll be angry at you for your sympathy and at myself for my weakness in accepting it. Above all, I'll fear my father again. So let's just stay here and not think for a while."

I mutter something affirmative, but my mind is racing. Because I want to take away Draco's pain. Because I don't want him to hate me again when he starts thinking. Because I have found an emotion that doesn't need an invisibility cloak to make itself felt acutely in every atom of my body. Because I love him.