Do You Trust Me?

Do You Trust Me?

Chapter Three:

"Idiot!" Draco spat, kicking the first thing that came to hand which just happened to be his trunk. It shot across the tiny room, connecting with the end of the bed and upending its contents all over the floor.

Draco cursed again. He went to reach for his wand but changed his mind halfway through the movement, throwing himself into the nearest chair instead.

The chair groaned under his sudden weight but Draco ignored it, letting his head fall back against the head rest and closing his eyes.

After several minutes of tense silence, Draco's eyes opened again. "Why the fuck did I just do that?!?" he asked the empty room. The mirror tittered and muttered something inaudible. Draco's fingers twitched with the urge to hurl something hard and solid at the blasted thing.

"I should have let him fall," Draco muttered fiercely. As soon as the words left his mouth, he laughed; it was a harsh, bitter sound that lingered in the air long after he had closed his mouth again. That was a lie and he knew it. He wouldn't have let Potter fall.

Perhaps once upon a time, not that long ago, he would have relished seeing his hated enemy in that position; the 15 year old Draco Malfoy would have wanted nothing more than to see Harry Potter fall to a painful and nasty death.

But however much Draco would have liked to pretend that he hadn't changed that much in the last few years, that the night in the dungeons had been a one off, a fluke, a rare incident never to be repeated, when it came right down to it, he had changed, for better or worse, and something had compelled him to hold out his hand to Potter once more.

He had looked over that ledge and Potter had looked so pathetic, so defeated, like he'd just given up and accepted his tragic, inevitable death in the Leaky Cauldron stairwell, that not only had Draco been overcome by the instinct to reach out to him, he hadn't even been able to bring himself to taunt the poor guy a bit before helping him.

The look in those hauntingly green eyes had immediately taken him back to that night in the dungeons. That same look of pain, fear, confusion, surprise... Draco had extended his hand automatically before he could even stop to think about it.

But it was not the fact that he had helped Potter that was torturing him, it was those four little words that had somehow managed to escape his mouth. They still echoed in his mind, taunting him, and now undoubtedly they were ringing in Potter's ears as well, spiriting them both back to that night. Do you trust me? What had possessed him to say that? What twisted part of his sub-conscious actually wanted Potter to know that it had been him that night?

He slammed his fist down on the table beside his chair. The wood creaked threateningly and then a jagged crack split the worn oak.

Draco sighed in frustration and reached for his wand. The deep fracture knitted itself together again with a simple whispered restoration spell and then Draco waved his wand in the direction of his trunk and watched, unseeingly, as his belongings picked themselves up of the floor and tucked themselves neatly back into their proper places.

So, Potter knew, that much was clear. The moment Draco had opened his mouth, those green eyes had widened with recognition; Potter had put two and two together and, Gryffindor brains or lack thereof not withstanding, he had managed to come up with four.

"I knew coming back to England was a bad idea," Draco muttered sullenly to the empty room. The mirror tittered again. "I'd be willing to risk seven years of bad luck," Draco threatened icily. The laugh abruptly morphed into a nervous hacking cough and then mirror wisely chose to lapse into silence.

For several moments quiet enveloped the room broken only occasionally by the gentle crackling of the fire. Draco exhaled sharply, expelling the air in his lungs in a swift gust as he sank back into his chair once more. His fingers released their grip on the smooth pliable wood of his wand, letting it to fall down to the newly mended table top with a clatter.

He groaned and allowed himself a brief indulgent moment of self-pity, chewing morosely on his bottom lip. It was a bad-habit that he had forced himself to outgrow years ago, but still managed to return unconsciously in times of stress or distraction when the meticulous self-policing of his behaviour that characterised his every move was momentarily forgotten. He stopped abruptly as soon as he became aware of what he was doing, frowning.

He sighed heavily. That's two from two, he thought to himself. This rescuing business was becoming something of a nasty habit.

.oO0Oo.

Two floors below in the dining room, Harry stared down, unseeing, as Tom set a plate in front of him. It might have been roast chicken, but to be perfectly honest Harry wasn't paying attention and probably wouldn't have noticed if he'd been served a hippogriff.

His mind simply wouldn't focus on anything but Malfoy. Do you trust me? That slow drawl whispered in his ears almost as though the ghost of Malfoy was standing right behind him. Harry suddenly fancied that he could feel the warmth of Malfoy's breath against the back of his neck. He whirled around, staring wildly at the patch of thin air existing innocuously behind his chair.

Ron nudged him, his eyebrows raised slightly; it was an expression asked 'are you alright?' whilst also managing to convey the sense that Ron was beginning to worry about his friend's sanity. Harry turned back to the table abruptly. He didn't meet Ron's gaze and after a moment or two the redhead shrugged and reached for his fork.

A minute later, Ron articulated the sentiments of his previous look, evidently worried enough to just double check. "Feeling better, mate?" he asked casually, his mouth still full of mashed potato.

Mrs Weasley and Hermione tutted in unison; neither actually said "Don't talk with your mouth full," but it was clear that they were both thinking it. Ron rolled his eyes, swallowed and then asked again.

Harry dragged his eyes away from his plate to stare into Ron's cheerful eyes. "Hmm?" he responded, rather unintelligently.

"Are you feeling better, mate?" Ron repeated very slowly as though he were speaking to a very small child.

Harry felt torn; he was simultaneously touched and smothered by Ron's concern. "Oh, yeah... fine. Had a good sleep... just what I needed," he finally replied, tacking a smile automatically on the end of his sentence.

Ron looked momentarily doubtful but then decided not to push the issue. Instead, he simply smiled at Harry and turned back to his dinner with great gusto. Mrs Weasley winced as tiny flecks of gravy splattered over the white lace tablecloth but chose to keep any noises of displeasure to herself this time.

Harry smiled again and for the first time in too long, it actually felt like there was some depth of feeling behind the gesture. It wasn't like the flood gates had been flung open wide again, but a small, steady stream of emotion was beginning to flow, or at least trickle.

It was as though that brief interaction with Malfoy had unlocked some distant doorway in Harry's mind and slowly, emotions were slipping out and allowing him to feel again. At that moment, sitting at the dinner table surrounded by the Weasleys and Hermione, he felt... well, not happy exactly, but more comfortable, with them, with himself, with life.

And it was a start. He picked up his fork and turned back to his dinner. He smiled a tiny half-smile. He had been right. It was roast chicken.

It was a smaller group this evening. Just Mr and Mrs Weasley, Ron, Hermione and Ginny. And me, Harry added as an after thought.

Bill had remained home with Fleur. She could be quite insistent when she wanted to be, and had no qualms about reeling in the leash. Harry would have felt sorry for Bill, if he didn't know that the eldest Weasley son was more than capable of holding his own against his part-Veela girlfriend. After all, he had had plenty of experience growing up resisting the indomitable Mrs Weasley.

The twins had remained in Diagon Alley. No doubt Mrs Weasley had tried every trick in the book from demanding to guilt to bribery, to try and get them to come to dinner this evening, and Harry was rather impressed that Fred and George had still managed to resist. Mrs Weasley paused, mid-bite, to frown at the empty spaces at the end of the table where the twins would have sat. Mr Weasley patted her arm gently and she continued chewing.

And Charlie was back in Romania with his precious dragons. Harry's fork fell back to his plate with a clatter. Dragons... Draco... Malfoy. He almost laughed. That was the first time he'd ever made the connection. A brief but vivid image of Malfoy sprouting leathery bat-like wings and breathing fire flashed in his mind.

Harry felt his lips quirk into a smile and shook his head slightly as Ron and Hermione turned to look at him with something akin to concern in their eyes.

"Harry?" Hermione asked immediately, reaching across Ron to lay one hand on Harry's arm.

This time a chuckle did actually escape his lips. "Oh, nothing. Just thought of something funny," he said, picking up his fork again and spearing a carrot.

"Oh yeah, what?" Ron swallowed carefully before asking and Hermione smiled.

"Forget it, it's stupid. You wouldn't get it," Harry replied with a casual wave of his hand. Harry's funny little episode was forgotten about as Ron and Hermione returned to their dinners and Harry leant across the table to ask Ginny what she had chosen to study this year at Hogwarts.

"They're starting an introductory class for people wanting to go on and study magical medicine. I've signed up for that. I think I'd rather like to be mediwitch. After the war and..." she trailed off abruptly and Harry knew that she, like him, was remembering the frantic hustle and bustle of the overworked mediwizards who worked throughout the war, tending to the ever-growing number of wounded. Beside Harry, Hermione frowned pointedly across the table at the younger girl.

"Well, it just seemed interesting and... helpful," Ginny finished finally. She was pale and mortified beneath her freckles and looked up at Harry through her eyelashes with their air of someone who has raised a topic that she'd been told to avoid.

But then her eyebrows drew together ever so slightly in a half-frown; she appeared to be rethinking her reaction to her supposed faux-pas. When she straightened up it was clear that she had reached a different conclusion. She raised her chin defiantly to Hermione and met Harry's eyes as though signalling to the table and to herself that she had had enough of censoring herself in regards to the war, that she accepted the past and was willing to leave it there and move on.

Harry smiled across at her, glad that someone had decided to stop walking on eggshells around him when it came to the war. He was tired of being treated like he would break if anyone mentioned the past.

"That sounds good. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to have you at St. Mungo's," Harry said, before taking a mouthful of chicken.

The colour returned to Ginny's cheek in abundance. "Thanks, Harry. I hope so." She reached for her goblet and took a long drink, still blushing at the compliment.

Harry swallowed and then paused. It suddenly struck him that Ginny had grown up. He was used to thinking of her as the little girl who had run back upstairs that very first morning she had woken to find Harry Potter in the kitchen of the Burrow. But she was an adult now, eighteen years old and with a past of her own.

He had never really talked to her about that night in the Chamber of Secrets, of her encounter with Lord Voldemort; he had always been afraid of upsetting her. It was a shock to realise that everyone was now treating him the same way.

She smiled at him across the table and he returned it. She was more perceptive, more spirited, and more mature than anyone really gave her credit for. Harry came to the conclusion that he would have to try and amend that but then he turned back to his chicken and decided that perhaps he would start tomorrow.

Harry couldn't sleep that night. He tried everything. He counted sheep and then Hippogriffs. He read. He jogged on the spot and then did 23 and a half push-ups. He even tried to remember some of Professor Binns' more boring lecturers on the Goblin rebellions. But every time he closed his eyes, he remembered more and more about that night. It was as though his dreams were playing before his eyes, despite his conscious state.

They started with the sound of Malfoy's voice... Do you trust me?... followed by the sensation of Malfoy's hand in his and Malfoy's arm around his waist, half leading, half carrying him out into the cool breeze...

But then the visions morphed into something altogether more frightening and Harry was alone in the dungeon with the other Death Eater. In his large, warm bed in the Leaky Cauldron, Harry shivered as he remembered that cold, hollow laugh... the desperate, crippling pain of the curses.

The sight of long blonde hair and porcelain white skin sprawled on the cold stone floor flashed before his eyes. Lucius Malfoy, Harry realised with a jolt. Harry wondered vaguely whether Malfoy had known that the Death Eater had been his father before he hexed him, and if he hadn't, what he had then felt the moment he realised what he had done.

The shivers returned, unbidden. Do you trust me? The voice asked again. Harry groaned aloud in frustration. He'd had enough. He threw back the covers and clambered out of bed. The floor was cold beneath his bare feet, but it didn't occur to Harry to put his slippers on.

His hands groped in the darkness, finally finding an old Weasley jumper draped haphazardly over the back of a chair. He pulled it on over his pyjama top and turned to leave the room. He had just reached the door and had one hand on the brass knob when he paused and backtracked to retrieve his wand from the bedside table.

The war was over but Harry rather suspected that he would never be able to go anywhere without his wand ever again. There was a tinge of paranoia, desperation, fear that he suspected would be with him forever.

Shoving the wand into his pyjama pocket, he closed the door as quietly as he could. He wandered down the corridor, past Ron and Hermione's rooms. He momentarily considered waking one or both of them. But what would he say? 'Sorry to wake you but I've been reliving scary memories of being tortured... oh, and it turns out that Malfoy isn't really evil at all?' No, he didn't think that would go down too well.

He continued his silent meander, finally coming to a stop at the top of the stairs. He ran his fingers along the smooth wood of the banister. Malfoy's restoration job was flawless; it was impossible to tell that just hours earlier the whole thing had been lying in cracked pieces in the stairwell below.

Harry paused for several moments, one hand on the railing, the other hanging limply by his side. He turned to look back down the corridor. The far window looked tiny in the distance; the outside streetlamp shining through looked like little more than a twinkling star.

He walked slowly back down the corridor, his bare feet padding on the cold stonework. He passed his own door and kept walking. He stopped again when he reached the room Malfoy was staying in.

For the briefest of moments he considered raising his hand and knocking. But again, what would he say? What could he possibly say? 'Thank you' seemed too trite while 'why' threatened to open up a whole can of worms that he wasn't sure he was ready to face.

He exhaled and the sound was louder than he had been expecting, halfway between a sigh and a groan. It seemed to echo in the darkness and he froze and then stepped back hurriedly. It would be just his luck if Malfoy suddenly opened the door and found his former enemy lurking outside it in the corridor. His stomach lurched uncomfortably at the thought of the look that would no doubt reside on Malfoy's pointed face.

His feet continued their slow tour of the corridor until they reached the end and could go no further. Instead of turning and walking back, he leant forwards and rested his arms on the window sill, looking out through grimy glass to the dark and empty street below. He bent further forwards and rested his forehead against the cool glass before turning his head to the side.

Immediately to his right there was a door, tucked away at the very end of the corridor and almost hidden in the shadows. There was no brass number plate on this door, so Harry presumed that whatever lay behind it was something other than just another bedroom. Its frame was smaller than the previous doors and it was the sort of thing that would be easy to miss if one wasn't specifically looking for it.

Harry stepped forwards and laid one hand on the rough wooden door knob, and then twisted it. The door swung open surprisingly easy considering its apparent age. A narrow, rickety-looking staircase lay beyond leading up into the gloom.

Without stopping to give it a second thought, Harry gripped the banister and began to climb. The stairs creaked ominously but Harry continued upwards regardless. When he reached the top he turned the door handle and the door swung open with a loud creak.

The cool night air rushed forwards to meet him as he stepped out onto the tiny balcony. The first thing he saw was the dark winding streets of Muggle London criss-crossing beneath a misty grey sky. The rain had stopped, but a hint of dampness still lingered in the air.

The second thing he saw was a figure sitting on the edge of the terrace, legs dangling over the side and swinging gently in the cool breeze.

Harry's first instinct was to turn around and go back down those stairs, but before he knew what he was doing he was closing the door behind him and stepping forwards to sit down.

Malfoy's blonde head was bowed slightly. A lit cigarette rested between pale, delicate fingers, a thin trail of smoke disappearing into the darkness. He didn't move to acknowledge Harry's presence; he just remained perfectly still, staring down at the gloomy pavement below.

Malfoy was still dressed and had his cloak draped around his shoulders. His sturdy dragon-hide boots clicked together occasionally as his legs swung backwards and forwards.

Harry felt suddenly awkward, sitting there with bare feet in his pyjamas and a slightly small, worn Weasley jumper, adorned with a rather embarrassingly twee picture of a lion. Regardless of having matured many years ago, of having fought in a war and having saved the world, Harry suddenly felt as though Malfoy had the monopoly on being all grown-up while he remained the little boy in the shabby clothes who had first seen his blonde counterpart through the window of Madam Malkin's.

There was a gap of about a foot between them, but it felt strangely cramped to Harry, as though they were almost pressed right up against each other. He fancied he could almost feel the warmth of Malfoy's thigh pressing against his.

He slowly became aware of the silence that enveloped them. It wasn't exactly awkward but it was a little heavy, hanging like some foreboding storm cloud in the air between them, leaving Harry with the urge to break it if only to see whether the ominous cloud would lift or whether it was a phenomenon that would always be present simply because of who the protagonists were. But he simply couldn't, for the life of him, think of anything to say. Earlier, lying in bed, a million and one questions had flown through his head as he tried to imagine how this conversation with Malfoy would unfold. But now, sitting here beside him, Harry couldn't remember a single one.

For several moments they just sat side by side in silence, and slowly the cloud did begin to fade, even without words; it didn't dissipate altogether, but the longer they sat there together, the more comfortable they each seemed to be with the situation, as though over the space of the ten minutes of silence, they managed to adjust and adapt to the other's presence.

By the time the fifteen minute mark passed, it was a surprisingly comfortable silence that hung between them, which struck Harry as strange considering the level of animosity that had once existed between them and possibly still did.

Slowly, Malfoy brought the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled. Harry watched, fascinated in spite of himself. The lit end glowed in the gloom. Malfoy's hand returned to his side, cigarette still burning innocuously. Smoke tumbled over Malfoy's lips, caught in the breeze and whisked out across the London landscape.

"I didn't know you smoked," Harry said, surprising himself. His voice sounded very loud and harsh as it split through the delicate silence and he suddenly felt overwhelmingly inarticulate and unsophisticated.

Malfoy continued to stare out into the darkness. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Potter," he said softly.

"They can kill you, you know," Harry commented as his brain simultaneously questioned what on earth possessed him to say that.

"Maybe that's part of the attraction," Malfoy replied.

Silence fell between them once more. Eventually Harry opened his mouth, shattering the quiet once more. "Why did you do it?" It wasn't the question he had intended to ask, but he didn't correct himself.

Malfoy turned his head slightly and looked Harry up and down with those calculating grey eyes. Finally he shrugged. "I don't know." Harry raised one eyebrow dubiously, clearly unconvinced.

Malfoy snorted. "No really, I don't know. One minute I was standing in the corridor hearing that you'd been caught, and then the next I was in the dungeons and my father was unconscious on the floor." He stopped and Harry waited patiently for him to continue. A slight breeze was stirring, lifting loose strands of Malfoy's silvery blonde hair. "I have no idea why I chose to help you when I had let so many others die. I don't know why it suddenly became personal with you."

Harry winced at those words... when I had let so many others die... he couldn't bring himself to ask what that meant; he didn't think he wanted to know. He rolled Malfoy's words around in his head again and for some inexplicable reason, a spark of anger flickered inside him. "Personal? What, you saw me chained to a dungeon wall and suddenly thought 'gee, I think I'll stop being an evil bastard now'?" The words came out harsher than Harry had intended but Malfoy didn't react; his face was expressionless, pale in the moonlight.

"Don't flatter yourself," Malfoy drawled, arching one eyebrow. "You were merely a catalyst that provoked me into acting upon feelings that already existed."

Once upon a time Harry would have felt belittled and irritated by the tone in Malfoy's voice, but in that moment he suddenly felt refreshed by it and instantly he felt his moment of anger abating. It had been a long time since he had pushed and someone had pushed him back.

It suddenly struck Harry that Malfoy didn't buy into all that Boy-Who-Lived shit and was, perhaps, the only person who had never done so; Malfoy refused to bow down to the image and the rhetoric of a hero that didn't exist. Whether it was out of jealousy or bigotry or whatever, didn't matter... the fact remained that he rejected the notion of kowtowing to a two-dimensional title. And Harry felt suddenly overwhelmingly grateful for that.

He supposed that that was the reason why he had felt so comfortable sitting in silence with Malfoy earlier. For those few minutes, for the first time ever, the labels of Boy-Who-Lived and Death Eater didn't exist; there was simply Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy sitting together on the roof of the Leaky Cauldron.

"Well, whatever the reason... thank you," Harry said simply. He winced as soon as the words left his mouth. He had been right; 'Thank you' did sound trite. He tore his gaze away from Malfoy's pale face to stare across the rooftops into the distance.

A few moment of silence stretched between them and when it was broken again, it was Malfoy who spoke. "I suppose I should thank you. If you hadn't turned up needing rescuing I'd have stayed the dutiful Death Eater and would probably be dead or in Azkaban as we speak," he said, his voice perfectly emotionless.

"I guess we're even then," Harry suggested, shaking his head, slightly bewildered by the strange experience of having a conversation with someone he had hated for the better part of eight years.

"No... you still owe me for this evening." At first, Malfoy's voice was arrogant, holding a slight trace of the sneer Harry remembered, but then he turned and gave Harry a brief smile. It wasn't the sort of beaming grin he was used to receiving from Ron nor the kind, purposeful curve of Hermione's smile, but it was the first real smile Harry had ever seen grace Malfoy's lips; the first smile that wasn't at the expense of someone else; the first smile for the sake of smiling. It was a strange sight and certainly something Harry never thought he'd be privy to. Harry returned the smile, and for the first time in too long he felt like he meant it.

"This doesn't make us friends, Potter," Malfoy drawled, turning back to the cityscape.

"Of course not. You would never lower yourself to that level and I would never be that stupid," Harry replied glibly.

Malfoy turned to look at him sharply as he spoke those words, the half-compliment, half-insult, as though he was trying to figure him out. Eventually he rolled his eyes. "Naturally."

There was more silence before Harry worked up the courage to speak again. "Can I ask you something?"

"You just did," Malfoy said smugly, his lips twisting into a hint of a smirk.

This time it was Harry who rolled his eyes. "Fine. Can I ask you something else?"

"Alright," said Malfoy magnanimously.

"You said that I was just the motivation... so what made you... oh, I don't know... um, doubt, in the first place?" Harry bit his lip nervously after he finished speaking.

Malfoy appeared to be thinking and for a split second Harry wasn't sure he was going to answer. When he did, it caught Harry off guard. "Being a Death Eater... it wasn't what I was expecting it to be."

"What were you expecting it to be?" Harry asked before he could stop himself.

"I don't know. Glorious? Just? Inspiring? All of the above? From birth my father spun me tales of how wonderful and powerful and great the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters were. I wanted that."

Harry was tempted to ask why he had wanted that, to ask how Malfoy could ever have managed to connect glory and justice with murdering Muggles in his mind, but decided, in the end, that perhaps they weren't ready for that conversation yet. "But it wasn't like that," he replied eventually. It wasn't a question but it wasn't quite a statement either.

Malfoy turned to look at him, his eyes unreadable. "No, it wasn't." There was a finality in his tone that told Harry that the subject was closed.

They sat together a while longer. The breeze started to pick up and Malfoy's hair escaped its tie and began to swirl gently around his face in the wind. He clicked his tongue irritated, gathering it up again and securing the tie in place once more.

Harry almost smiled at the action; for all Malfoy's pride and pomp, there was a slight air of the ridiculous about him sometimes. Harry had thought it as a young teenager but it was even more noticeable in the older Malfoy with his groomed style and grace. "Ponce," he muttered, more to himself that anything else.

Malfoy cast him a stony look in reply. "Better that than looking like I've just stepped out of a garbage bin," came the retort, accompanied by a rather disparaging glance at Harry's attire and hair. Harry shook his head exhaling. That felt more like the old Malfoy.

Silence descended again. Every so often Malfoy would raise the cigarette to his lips and take a drag. The cigarette was almost burnt to the end when Harry realised for the first time that every time Malfoy exhaled he angled his head away so that the smoke wouldn't blow into Harry's face. Harry was struck by this consideration; it seemed like such an un-Malfoy thing to do.

Malfoy flicked the remains of his cigarette over the edge and they both watched as it tumbled down to the pavement.

Slowly Harry became aware of how cold he was. The almost threadbare woollen jumper was poor protection from the biting wind and he was beginning to loose feeling in his feet.

"It's bloody freezing out here," he said, wrapping his arms around himself.

"Points to Gryffindor for stating the obvious," Malfoy sneered, but Harry sensed there was humour rather than spite behind the expression.

"Right, whatever, I'm going inside." He reached up to grasp the balcony railing. He placed one half-frozen hand on Malfoy's shoulder and hauled himself upwards. It was the sort of thing he would have done with Ron had he been sitting with him, and at that moment, it felt perfectly natural to do it with Malfoy as well. He shook his head in slight wonderment at this unusual turn of events; it felt as though this should be the point where Hell started freezing over.

He rubbed his hands together, and turned to leave. "'Night, Malfoy," he said as an afterthought.

He had walked through door and was about to close it behind him when he caught Malfoy's response. "Goodnight, Potter."

Harry smiled in the darkness and trudged down the stairs and back to bed. He crawled beneath the sheets and settled back against the soft pillow. Malfoy was an enigma. Every memory and assumption about the Slytherin told Harry that he was evil and nasty and shouldn't be approached without a wand and failing that, a sharp pointy object.

But now it was as though he'd been given a chance to reconsider those presumptions. It wasn't as though every preconceived notion had just been swept away and Harry was given a clean slate on which to build an impression of Draco Malfoy; no, the past memories of Malfoy's words and actions still lingered in his mind and would probably never go away, but he felt as though he had been given a new insight into the figure behind all of that. He was willing to accept that Malfoy may have changed just as he himself had changed.

Harry had found it frighteningly easy to talk to Malfoy given their past animosity. Before, he had been nothing more than a hated enemy, a persistent niggling itch that refused to leave him alone, but now he seemed to represent, in Harry's mind, a way forwards, a way out of the hole of emptiness Harry had found himself trapped in.

He thought briefly about Ron and Hermione. Although they were his best friends, since the beginning of the war he had found himself unable to talk to them. They wouldn't, couldn't understand him... they hadn't seen what he had, hadn't done what he had... they wouldn't understand the darkness that existed within him. He shivered suddenly.

But maybe Malfoy would. Harry recognised a darkness in himself that he also saw in Malfoy. They were both a curious and complex combination of dark and light... they were different and yet similar, simultaneously opposite and identical. Yes, maybe he would understand.

As Malfoy had said, they weren't friends, and they probably never would be, there was just too much history between them. But when Harry though about it, he didn't need another friend; he had plenty of friends to love him and support him... what he really needed was someone that he could talk to, someone that could help him find a balance between the lightness and the darkness.

He smiled. Someone he could argue with, debate with; someone who wouldn't treat him like glass, who wasn't afraid to counter him; someone who could ignite a spark of something more with him. And maybe by some bizarre turn of fate, that someone might just turn out to be Malfoy.

Harry laughed out loud. It sounded awkward and corny even to his mind. With all probability Malfoy would be in no way interested in fulfilling that role.

Harry frowned gently in the darkness, caught in a mixture of hope and resignation. He buried himself further into his doona and when he finally fell asleep, there were no dreams.

.oO0Oo.

Draco sat for a while after Potter had left. He too had begun to feel the cold but he withstood it in favour of spending just a few more moments in cold blackness of the night sky. He felt strangely at peace and so although the night air was cold, swirling around him and penetrating his cloak, he made no move to retreat inside.

Talking with Potter had been a very strange sensation. For so long Potter had been the bane of his existence, an irritating ever-present reminder of everything that supposed held Draco back... the light to his dark; but now with the memory of Potter's demeanour, his voice, the hollow look in his eyes, Draco began to realise that perhaps Potter wasn't as light as maybe he had once thought, as everyone else still seemed to think.

Draco frowned. He wasn't sure he was quite ready to accept that he and Potter might have something in common and yet, still a thought niggled at his mind: the experience of sharing the rooftop with Potter had been strange, but not unwelcome.

He thought back to the reception he'd received from the patrons of the Leaky Cauldron, from the Weasleys. In the safety of the empty black night, he was willing to admit, if only to himself, that he was rather tired of being treated like a pariah, like something that should be imprisoned or better yet exterminated.

Though he would never say so out loud, it had been somewhat refreshing, even pleasant, to have someone look at him, speak to him, with something other than disgust. Even if it was Potter.

All the while they had sat together, Draco had continually remembered past interactions... the burning hatred and animosity between them; the passionate fires of loathing that had been lit in their eyes every time they encountered each other in the hallway, in the classroom, on the Quidditch pitch. It was hard to imagine that anything else could ever exist between them.

But sitting beside Potter under stars... it felt like those were the memories of someone else, like he was merely privy to actions recorded in the penseive of someone else. And in a way, he supposed he was right. The Potter and Malfoy of the past evidently no longer existed in their original form, and so perhaps there was hope for the Potter and Malfoy of the present.

He had found it curiously easy to go from taunting Potter relentlessly to engaging in almost friendly banter with him. He had felt at ease with Potter and that was something that he wasn't used to feeling with anyone.

Draco had never really had anyone to talk to. His mother was cold and distant and the thought of trying to have a heart to heart with his father was laughable. He had had friends in Slytherin, but really to be perfectly honest, friendships in that house tended to be more like alliances than anything else... they certainly refrained from all the touchy-feely crap that the other houses seemed to go in for.

Draco paused and wondered whether he even knew how to be a friend. If he was being strictly truthful with himself, and this felt like the sort of moment where that was probably a good idea, he would have to say no. He had never been a friend before, though now he thought about it, if being a friend required him to become anything resembling that red-haired cretin that Potter insisted on calling a best friend, well Draco would rather drown himself in a bucket of Dragon piss.

No, it didn't seem likely that he and Potter would ever be friends but maybe, just maybe they could tolerate each other long enough to become something other than enemies.

Perhaps Potter would turn out to be someone Draco could talk to... In the first moment that Draco had seen Potter in the robe shop before their first year, he had known that there was something more to that skinny little runt with the abominable hair and piercing green eyes than met the eye and today, he still felt that Potter was not someone who could be deciphered with one quick glance... there were things there, hiding beneath the surface, that not even Granger and Weasley seemed to have noticed or uncovered.

Something in those somewhat unsettling green eyes had spoken to Draco; just like that night in the dungeons Draco felt himself been drawn towards the Gryffindor, and although he was loath to admit it, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Apparently there are some moments that you can't share without ending up with some form of connection, and evidently a life-saving experience is one of them.

Draco laughed out loud, and nipped those distinctly Hufflepuff feelings in the bud before he started wearing yellow and hugging people.

He rolled his eyes and heaved himself to his feet. Casting one last searching glance across the expanse of Muggle London, he turned on his heel and strode across the roof top, descending the creaking stairs and retreating to bed.