Take a Breath...

Take a breath...Chapter one (prologue):

...Then live the moment.

Harry could feel his hair being pushed around by the warm breeze. He could see somewhere to his right a river of blood flowing slowly. He was standing on a burnt field of ashen rock that went on as far as the eye could see. The sky was a deathly black color, a strange haze coming from the horizon giving forth a terrible sight. There were bodies, dead bodies, laying everywhere. The worst of it all was that they where dead bodies of the same person, Harry Potter. He looked inquisitively into the steadily flowing river.

His questions grew once he peered over the bank. There was nothing reflecting back, but he knew there should be. `What is this?´ he thought as he turned around. He lifted one of the many lifeless bodies from the charred earth. The eyes were open, staring at nothing, penetrating, expressionless and cold. They reminded Harry of ice. It was plainly apparent that the stiff body was dead. He hadn´t really realized how heavy it was till now. Half sickened, half confused he dropped his own body and watched as it fell into the darkness.

****

Harry woke with a start, but he didn´t sit up, he just rolled over in his four-poster bed. He couldn´t clearly remember his dream, only the sensation he got from it. He regarded the thin, lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead. It had a tendency to hurt if the person who gave it to him was close or feeling hateful. No, it didn´t hurt. `How weird...´ the unsettling feeling was now overcome by the urge to sleep. He thought about the dream no more as he drifted off into oblivion.

~'~'~

Draco woke up in his dorm and almost screamed. He could remember his sickening dream! He had been lying on the hard ground looking at a jet-black sky. When he looked at his sides he saw himself cold and lifeless. There were dead bodies of him everywhere. He remembered someone picking him, up but didn´t see who it was...

He put his left hand on his forehead, it was cold, but he felt feverish. He´d had other dreams similar to this one, but this dream felt worse somehow.

He sat up letting the blankets fall freely to his side. He stood up after a moment and picked up his Hogwarts robes. He didn´t feel tired any more, but very wide-awake. It wasn´t that he was scared to go back to sleep, he just felt that since it was four in the morning, it was pointless.

He didn´t feel like waking Crabbe or Goyle, they were loud and clunky, and he wasn´t in the mood for company. He also didn´t want to attract any attention. Draco wondered why he still hung out with them. Then he thought of the protection they provided. As he dismissed any more thoughts of the two boys, he concentrated on swiftly avoiding the few teachers that would be out this early in the morning. He wondered for a moment when they slept, since they always seemed busy, teaching or patrolling at night. They probably all had their own catwalk, and took shifts. He had subconsciously learned the patterns, for the easiest way out of the castle, on his many solemn, secluded outings. His memory proved its worth as he swiftly exited through the castle doors.

The morning´s cold crispness stabbed Draco´s exposed skin like a thousand frozen needles. He drew his Hogwarts robes more tightly around his green, silk pajamas, walking swiftly across the dew-laden grass towards the shadowed forest. Leaning up against a tree he peered out over the lake. It looked colder than death in the vague early morning light. He of course, did not test this theory. The sight of the smooth lake surface calmed Draco somewhere within his being. He took a really deep breath as if trying to suck up his escaping soothed feeling. But the bitter air still burned his exposed skin, his idea for a stroll seemed worse by the moment. When he could no longer stand the fall chill, he returned to the castle and made his way to the Slytherin dorm.

~'~'~

The Great Hall was as it normally was, four long house table laden with golden dishes, the teachers table in the front of them, the sky mirroring ceiling, and the thousands of candles floating in mid air. Breakfast had not started yet, but Draco knew the students would be piling in at any moment. Draco, now more formally dressed, placed a hand on his platinum blond hair making sure it laid flat. Draco took his seat at his house´s table, Slytherin. Sure enough, as he sat down, groups of people had started to enter the hall. Behind a group of Slytherins, Draco immediately recognized two hard-to-miss boys; Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. They took their seats on either side of Draco. Groaning inwardly, he never in his mind thought of Crabbe and Goyle as friends, yet that´s what he called them.

Neither Crabbe nor Goyle asked where he was when they woke up, they never did. They never asked questions and they really didn´t seem to care. Draco thought they were too stupid at times to string sentences together. He shrugged this thought away as food had started to appear on the gold plates.

More crowds were coming into the Great Hall taking their respective seats, among them Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Draco glared at them as they came in; he suddenly got a familiar pitch of anger when he glared at Harry. Draco recalled the first year when he had held out his hand in a request of friendship, he declined and Draco had hated him for it, his hate growing stronger over the 5 years he had known him. They had become enemies, fighting every chance they got, and bitter rivals in Quidditch and even in some times their classes. Draco was jealous, but not in any apparent way, being beaten at Quidditch, he´d never admit it, not even to himself.

Harry walked into the great hall with Hermione and Ron, his dream hung on only by a thread on the edges of his mind. They took their seats.

"I wonder who the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is," Ron said eagerly.

"We have it today," Hermione said looking at the timetable she had just received.

"It´s right behind Care of Magical Creatures, which is first today," Harry said.

On the other side of the room, Draco had just received his timetable, along with Crabbe, Goyle and the rest of the Slytherins. He furrowed his brow, "Divination this morning..." he smirked awkwardly. He cracked a joke about professor Trelawney and the Slytherins around him broke out laughing. Which was how it always was.

Ron had seen the fits of laughter starting from Draco´s mouth. Ron glared at Draco and said in a monotone "I really hope we don´t have care of magical creatures with the Slytherins this year," he tone changed slightly to angry, "It´s bad enough have every years potions class with them."

After everyone subsided at the Slytherin table Draco got to his feet. Immediately Crabbe and Goyle looked at him for instructions but he said he needed to use the rest room and that he´d be back. So they waited.

"Yeah, there´s absolutely no looking forward to potions tomorrow," Harry said sounding slightly defeated.

"Harry don´t," Hermione started but Ron suddenly stood up, "Where are you going Ron?" Hermione asked.

"To the bathroom... I hope everyone´s ok with that, cause I really got to go," and so he left.

"Um..." Hermione let out as she went back to her food.

Ron steadily walked out of the great hall, as he turned to head for the bathroom he came face to face with Draco.

"Oh," Ron said his tone cold and hard as steel, "it´s you..."

"I feel so wanted..." Draco said in his casual drawl.

"I really hope you don´t feel that way because no one would want you. Except your mum maybe, but even then I feel sorry for her, any one like that doesn´t deser--"

"If you don´t shut up, I´ll rip off your head, Weasley," saying his name with certain iciness, Draco glared at him with everything he could muster; his patience with these useless comments about his mother was growing thinner every second.

"I´d like to see you try." Ron said returning his glare.

Draco suddenly realized he had no one to back him up but he was too angry to care, "I really don´t care if I do any gory damage, and your friends may not miss you, seeing as you´re no use to them anyway. But your mum may not have enough money for a proper funeral..."

Ron was so hopelessly entangled in a sudden thread of rage everything around him blurred and all he wanted was Malfoy to be destroyed, physically or mentally. His wand lay in his pocket un-thought of as he lunged at Draco, punching him in the face.

Draco was to stunned to react in time, he´d expected retaliation, but not physical. He was thrown to the floor.

Ron looked down at Draco; he could see a huge bruise forming under his eye where he´d hit him. `Ouch!´ Ron though for a fleeting moment but the anger inside him burned it to cinders. An intense feeling filled Ron like liquid fire in his veins. What he just did felt good, like glory, and all he needed to do now was finish the job.

****

Hermione had dismissed her thought as soon as Ron had said he really needed to go but Harry watched him as he left. And he saw him confront Malfoy, `oh no...´ he thought, `what are they talking about,´ he could sense something bad could happen if no one pulled them apart, Draco was too arrogant and Ron too stubborn to leave the situation. Harry stood up to make sure nothing happened. But as he started to make his way there it was too late, Ron had punched Draco

~'~'~

Before Ron was able to punch Draco again, Harry seized him under the armpits and wrenched him up. This was somewhat of a bad thing as Ron was now open to attack from Draco, who took the chance and lunged his elbow into Ron´s stomach off the floor. He slumped out of Harry´s grasp and crumpled onto the floor and Harry pushed Draco, who was unsteady after his last attack, back down on the ground. Before anything else could happen, Professor McGonagall had strategically placed herself between all three of them.

"THAT´S IT!!" she yelled, "Weasley, Potter, Malfoy, all of you follow me!"

As she led them down the corridor they glared at each other, Draco with his hand to his face and Ron with both hands on his stomach.

McGonagall stopped them short on their direction to her office and decided to tell them off where they stood, "I don´t care the reasons behind it but fighting is never accepted," her tone was calm but shadowed a sea of anger, "I´ll give you your detentions later. I´d give it to you now, but I have too much work to be done. I suggest you all make your way to your classes!"

She left down one way, which was also seemingly toward Draco´s class because he followed behind her and Ron and Harry made their way out to the grounds for care of magical creatures.