Title: Love Ridden

Author: Romie

Archive: Anywhere.  I'd appreciate an e-mail so that I can visit your site.

Rating: G, PG-13 for the series.

Pairing: prelude to Harry/Draco

Spoilers: None

Disclaimers: not mine.  Rowling's.  And inspiration from the series came largely from Fiona Apple's album _When the Pawn_. That said, anybody's pretty much free to steal from anything I've done, as long is it generates something cool.

Warnings: Although it does not appear in this particular chapter, this series features non-explicit SLASH (i.e. same-sex romantic interaction).  If this offends your particular moral sensibilities, then DON'T READ IT.  And if you feel like flaming me for that, please at least be original.

Summary: contemplations.  Harry's POV.

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I've never told anyone that I'm claustrophobic.  Not even Ron or Hermione.  Sometimes, I jerk awake in the middle of the night, heart racing, certain that I'm still locked in the cupboard under the stairs.  I can't breathe until I push aside my bed curtains and reassure myself that I'm safe at Hogwarts.  Maybe it would be easier to just leave them open, but I don't want the questions.  I don't want Dean and Seamus to watch me toss and turn.  I don't want Neville to wonder why my nightshirt is drenched with sweat and sticking to my arms like a straightjacket. 

 

I think that part of me is still convinced, even after all these years, that someone - another Rita Skeeter - is going to find out that I'm not perfect, and then they'll all realize that they made a mistake.  I'm not "The Boy Who Lived".  I'm not special.  I just happened to get lucky. (If you can call losing both your parents lucky.)  I'll be shipped away while Dumbledore looks on in disappointment.

 

Of course, I know that's not going to happen.  I belong here; I'm *happy* here.  Usually.  It's just hard to be rational at four in the morning.  Too early to wake up, too late to go back to sleep.

 

I noticed Malfoy watching me today.  It was subtle, I'll grant you that; that's probably why I didn't see it until now.  It has to have been going on for a while - his technique is almost professional.  All I caught was a tiny flicker of half-lidded blue-gray eyes before he turned his gaze.  I doubt I would have seen even that much if he hadn't been distracted with thoughts of home.

 

You see, last month, conclusive evidence was found to tie Lucius Malfoy to the Death Eaters.  Before the Aurors were able to apprehend him, he fled to join Voldemort somewhere in Ireland.  He couldn't possibly have disappeared that quickly unless he already had a plan in place; I imagine he intended for Draco to follow him, as Narcissa did a few days ago.  I don't know why he stayed.

 

To tell the truth, it makes me uncomfortable that he did.  He's not supposed to be one of the good guys.  God, what a horrible thing to say; of *course* I'm glad that he didn't go over to Voldemort's side.  It's just . . . confusing.  I'm not used to thinking of him as a human being, I suppose.  He makes it easy not to, with his two dimensional façade.

 

I guess that's what it is - a façade.  A pasteboard mask labeled "villain: hate me."  Actions carefully calculated to be cruel, with little motivation and even less sense.  Now that I think about it, I can't decipher any justifications for his day-to-day behavior beyond maintenance of that public image.  In a way, it's a measure of the spell he had us all under that I didn't question it until just now.  From almost the moment I met him, I wrote him off as just another bully, like Dudley or Piers.

 

But Dudley would have run off to Voldemort almost as soon as he returned.  He would have jumped at the excuse to brutalize innocents, even if it meant he had to follow orders every once in a while.  Piers would have waited until Dudley left, but he would have followed quickly.

 

What's keeping Malfoy here?  I'm sorry - I'm just so used to thinking of him as my enemy that I can't seem to shake it.  Ron suggested that maybe Voldemort wanted to keep a man on the inside, (although Ron said "You Know Who," of course; I wish I could cure him of that).  But it doesn't make sense.  Nobody trusts Malfoy enough to let him near anything dangerous; even the other Slytherins have withdrawn, afraid of guilt by association.  Both sides seem to view him as a liability.  Any time I see him now, he's alone, even in the middle of a crowd.

 

Perhaps it's a trick.  If it is, it's a damn good one.

 

I turn over and try to go back to sleep, even though the room is starting to lighten with the dawn.  But I can't lose the vision of those shuttered gray eyes.