“Damn it Draco!”

Draco ducked as something heavy and silver came flying at him. A heavy sterling silver bowl clattered on the expensive wooden floor as Draco shook with anger and fear, adrenaline pumping through him, setting him on edge and making him ready to leap aside to safety at a second’s notice.

“Why the hell can’t you just do what you’re told!?”

Draco bit his tongue, trying to keep the tears from coming. Crying would only make things worse, he told himself as his father stormed around the room, shooting his son dirty glares and holding up his fist to threaten him every moment or so.

“I tried!” Draco said, trying to force respect into his voice so that he wouldn’t get smacked for it.

Lucius moved faster than Draco could, and was in his face before he could cover it with his arms. “I don’t care to hear, ‘I tried,’” he spat in his son’s face. “When I tell you to do something you had better do it!”

Tears threatened to overwhelm the small, blond haired boy again as his father took a step back and picked something else up to throw at him, this time hitting his target in the chest, and for a moment, knocking the wind out of him.

Draco shook violently for a moment with the effort not to let the tears spill forth. The last time he had cried in front of his father he had not been able to sit up on his own for a week and a half because of his father’s anger. “I will not have a weak son!” his father spat from across the room, mimicking what he had said to Draco the last time he had cried.

“I’m not weak!” Draco was terrified that he had let slip the wrong ‘disrespectful’ thing to say at that moment, but his father did not pick up anything else to throw at him just then.

“Then what are you Draco?” Lucius laughed a dry, humorless laugh that made his son shudder again. “You are certainly not worth anything to me as you are! You can’t even carry out a simple task that I’ve given you an entire year to do!”

“His friends were always around him!”

Lucius picked up something and threw it at Draco again. Draco successfully dodged the small golden statue, and it clattered to the debris littered floor of his father’s drawing room with the rest of the things he had been hit with in the last ten minutes.

“EXCUSES!” he roared. “If I wanted excuses Draco I would go and talk to Crabbe and Goyle! For God’s sake son! You’re twelve years old now! Why can’t you do something so simple!?”

Draco opened his eyes and lay staring at the green cloth ceiling to his four-poster bed in Slytherin dungeon. His chest rose and fell heavily, and he listened to his labored breathing for a few moments, not caring to gather the composure to calm himself just then. In this room, in this bed, Draco felt safe from the harm that had always fallen upon him at Malfoy manor. This was the one place where he had always felt safe, if even only for the short time of one term to the next.

He would have very much liked to tell himself that it was only a dream… only a nightmare that would not come back if he went back to sleep, but he knew it wasn’t true. At home, his life was the stuff nightmares were made of, and Lucius Malfoy took pride in knowing he scared his son into obedience most days, not caring of the hatred from Draco he brought on in doing so.

Draco rolled onto his side and pulled the soft, warm green covers up over his shoulder. I’m never going back there, he thought to himself silently. I will never be under my father’s wrath again. I will never treat my kids that way. That was an interesting thought, he thought to himself. Never before had Draco thought about having children. He was only seventeen, but still, occasionally he heard other students talking about getting married and having kids someday. Granted, those other students were mostly girls, but knowing he was not alone in these thoughts at his age helped to put his fears of abnormality to rest.

Unfortunately, there was no girl in Slytherin he would trust… not with his life or his children’s, should he ever have any. The unfortunate reality of the people he went to school with was, that Slytherins in general were not nice people. This was not always the case, but Draco had decided sometime in his earlier years at school there that he did not want to be with somebody like himself. He needed somebody who would have the guts to stand up to him and tell him when he was doing things wrong. The last thing he wanted to do was to make one of his children feel like his father had made him feel since he could first remember: terrified, alone, and unwanted.

As he lay in the dark, another thought came to him. Lucius wasn’t really his father… biologically he was… Draco looked just like him; but as a parent, Lucius was worse than an angry mountain troll. Inside, the emptiness that Draco had always tried to hide felt like an even bigger empty cavern. If Lucius was not his father, than who was? There was no one. Certainly not his head of house, no matter how much he would like him to be. Not with Potter around, stealing all of the attention and affection…

While attention was not foreign to Draco, seeing as how sometimes he had far more than he would have liked from his father, affection certainly was. In the rare moments when Draco and his mother were alone, she expressed her sorrow for his situation and her love for him as her son, but other than that, Draco did not really know the meaning of the word. Son had become a dirty name to him whenever his father had called him that… it was as bad as being called mudblood or blood traitor… two names Draco didn’t really care to use himself, but always had to keep up appearances as ‘his father’s son.’

Silently, Draco was disgusted with himself for many long moments as he lay there, thinking about the things he had been made to do to other students by his father’s command. He felt sickened to know he had given that much control over his life to somebody who would only use the control for evil. Again he thought, if I live long enough to have kids, they will never know the kind of life I have been made to have. More than hate for his father and for the Dark Lord now seemed to harden his resolve for ending the Dark Lord’s reign in those long dark moments Draco lay alone in the silent night every time he woke from a nightmare.

I will never have a parent, Draco admitted to himself, hating Harry right then for Draco’s own admission of loneliness. I am the creation of a monster, and will never be anything better, and who would love a monster for his deeds? Why would anybody choose me when they could choose somebody better? As Draco thought these things to himself, his mind kept trying to tell him that he was wrong, that he was better than Potter and always would be, that he had a parent at home who had taught him about life, maybe the hard way, but had taught him all the same, but he kept resisting the thoughts that had been drilled into him from day one.

Inside his head, Draco could hear his father’s words from years of lessons: “Nobody is better than you. You are a Malfoy. Always act like a Malfoy, and you will be treated like one. We come from royal blood… all other blood is filth.”

Draco stuffed his head under his biggest pillow, trying to block out the noise. “Shut up!” he said angrily into the darkness. Surprisingly, the thoughts stopped running through his mind, and for a short time, he had given himself peace.

* * *
In the morning, Harry felt refreshed from a good night’s sleep. His fears from the day before were almost gone, and he couldn’t help but walk around the castle with a smile. Professor McGonagall noticed the immediate difference in Harry’s attitude at breakfast, and was quick to return a warm smile across the table. Draco felt sickened by the display of friendliness between the staff and their perfect little hero. Draco felt like an outsider looking in every time he saw the way the staff talked to Harry, and then the way they gave Draco sideways glances in the halls, as if wondering what kind of trouble he was getting into.

Without finishing his breakfast, Draco rose from the long table and left to find better company, remembering only after he left, that there was nobody else in the castle that wasn’t in the Great Hall eating breakfast. On his slow walk back to the dungeons, Draco mused that this was the direction his life had taken… he had gone from having a great many friends, to having nobody at all. He had been ousted from the group, and for a very long moment in the empty corridor, Draco began to feel as if he may never have been in the group to begin with.

In the afternoon, Draco again felt sickened with his situation to find Harry in Severus’ office, talking about nothing in particular as the Potion’s Master brewed something in a small cauldron.

Harry and Severus looked up at Draco’s appearance at the open office door, Harry with a smile, but Draco could not find the words he would need to intrude on their private “father-son” moment, and left with a quick excuse that he could not remember later on.

Even though Draco encountered several other professors in the castle that day, and engaged in random conversations with them, he felt alone, and could not get the feeling to leave him, no matter how hard he tried. It was a feeling that he hated hanging over him. He couldn’t help but think that this was how he would spend the rest of his life. The worst part was, he didn’t even have anything to drink in the castle. He’d been stuck there since the previous Christmas, and hadn’t been able to get anybody to sneak anything in for him now that Crabbe, Goyle, and the better part of Slytherin house weren’t talking to him. He had no way of drowning his feelings. Remembering the friends he used to have, who would do things like lie, cheat, and steal for him, Draco also remembered that even with those friends, he never truly felt a part of anything. He was just another student in the house, surrounded by people who didn’t really care.

Just before dinner, as Draco was making his way back from the Library with a book that entailed the complicated spell/potion combination for brewing your own ale, he bumped into Harry in a corridor on the second floor.

Harry tried to step around Draco, content with not causing any trouble, but Draco’s stress and anger was at its peak, and he shoved Harry so hard that he almost knocked him to the ground.

“What’s that about?” Harry asked, regaining his balance and wiping the smile off his face.

“That! Right there!” Draco half shouted at him, meaning his smile but being unwilling to explain any further at Harry’s confused look.

“Just, stay out of my way Potter!”

Harry stepped back, but then thought better of it. Was Draco unhappy because he actually got to spend some time with Severus today? How selfish and arrogant to think he should get all the attention. How like Draco, Harry thought to himself… spoiled rich brat wants everything for himself. Can’t stand to see somebody else happy for once, Harry thought, getting angrier as he thought more about it.

“You know what your problem is Draco…” he started, but next second there were footsteps, and tiny Professor Flitwick appeared between them.

“All right, move along,” he turned and motioned with his hands to Harry. “Off you go. I’m sure you have something to do young man.”

Harry looked down at him and his innocent “shooing” away of them.

Flitwick turned to Draco and motioned for him to continue on his way down the corridor. “Please Mr. Malfoy, I’m sure you have something to do. I don’t want to break up a fight… off you go… both of you.”

Harry and Draco gave each other one last distasteful look, and then left in the original directions they were headed, both angry, and Harry unsure of why Flitwick was so willing to simply let them go, and not try to punish them for fighting.

After dinner that night (for which Draco did not appear) Flitwick pulled McGonagall, Severus, and Dumbledore aside.

“I just barely caught them before they got into it… I heard them down the hall and when I got there they were ready to face off.”

McGonagall shook her head, and said, “I’m amazed they lasted this long.”

“As am I,” Severus commented.

Dumbledore simply looked thoughtful, and after a few moments, said, “Good evening to you. I just remember a book I wanted to begin.”

He began to leave, but astonished by his uncaring attitude, McGonagall said, “Aren’t you the least bit worried that they will fight with each other Albus?”

The old man chuckled to himself and turned back to the three professors for a moment. “Keep them from fighting if you can, but this is one fight I believe we will not be able to avoid in the end.”

Over the next few days, it seemed that the moment Harry and Draco met in a hall or at a meal, there was always a staff member, occasionally a house elf, right there to stop any words from being exchanged between the two. This only served to aggravate Draco, especially because Harry seemed to find it amusing.

Twice they met in the hall without interruption, and Harry opened his mouth to tell Draco off, but just as wands were being pulled Madam Pomfrey or Dobby came running around a corner shouting for them to go find something to do. Harry was beginning to agree with Draco on one thing though, dueling would be something to keep the boredom away since they couldn’t leave the castle, and it seemed they were bumping into each other more and more often now that they were angry than when they weren’t.

* * *

Early one morning, Harry woke to find Dobby sitting on the foot of his bed staring at him.

“Er… hi,” Harry said, sitting up awkwardly so that his legs didn’t accidentally kick the small house elf off the foot of the bed.

“Dobby has a message for master Harry sir.”

“Ok…” Harry rubbed his eyes and squinted at the bright morning light beginning to shine in through the tower windows. His watch read eight in the morning.

“Master Snape wants Harry Potter to wake up and bring his broom down to the Entrance Hall and wait there for him sir.”

Before Dobby could finish the message, Harry was already out of bed and throwing a fresh change of clothes on.

“How long ago did he send you to wake me Dobby?” Harry asked as he hurriedly tied a shoe.

“Only moment’s ago Harry Potter!” Dobby said, looking pleased that Harry was hurrying to obey the command given him.

“Thanks Dobby!” Harry called as he grabbed his Firebolt and the new purple Snitch he got for his birthday, and ran from the room.

Harry tore through the corridors, still pulling on his jacket as he came to the top of the steps in the Entrance Hall. He was pleased to find the hall empty except for Draco standing there with his broom and his flying gloves.

Draco looked up and rolled his eyes. “Figures he would invite you.”

“You got a problem with that?” Harry asked as he came down the stairs, happy that he would be getting to go outside.

“Yeah actually…” Draco and Harry were almost face-to-face again, but there was a crack, and Dobby appeared between the two of them, ears flopping as he forced them back apart.

“No sirs!” Dobby called adamantly, holding his hands out to keep the two boys separated. “Master Snape orders you two sirs not to fights while he is not here!”

“Yeah, well I doubt he’ll let us when he is here,” Draco said, scoffing.

Harry gave him a cold look, and then took a step back, obeying the elf.

Dobby remained with them until Severus arrived a few minutes later, one auror guard in tow. Without a word to the two boys, he motioned for them to follow, and gave a nod to Dobby in thanks for his help. Dobby disappeared with a pop as they exited through the oak front doors out into the sunlight grounds.

The grounds were a little chilly with the morning air, but Harry didn’t care. He was outside, and in a few moments, he hoped to be flying through the crisp air as fast as his broom would carry him.

Severus and the auror named Mulvitch walked ahead of the two silent boys, and chatted about something neither of them could hear. As they reached the stadium, Severus turned to them and said, “Stay inside the pitch.”

Harry and Draco were both already on their brooms though, and zooming through the open Pitch doors and off around the arena.

Wind blew Harry’s hair in every direction, and he loved the feel of it. He pushed his broom faster and faster until he was lying flat to its handle, making many circuits of the field high in the air very quickly.

After a few minutes, Harry looked up and found Severus and Mulvitch in the stands, watching them and talking. Every once in a while Mulvitch raised his wand and uttered a spell that sparked green at the end of his wand and then disappeared. Harry suspected that it was some kind of intruder detection charm, but couldn’t be sure.

Remembering the new Snitch in his pocket, Harry reached in for it and let it fly away at near twice the speed of a normal Snitch. He took chase, but found Draco already ahead of him and almost to the Snitch. Moments later Draco had the purple winged ball wriggling in his fingers. He turned to Harry with a nasty grin, and threw the ball back into the air. Harry gave it a few seconds head start, and then both boys took off after it again.

This time Harry found himself elbow to elbow with Draco, and they both kept banging into each other in pursuit of the purple ball.

“Back off!” Harry yelled, but he only got elbowed for his trouble.

“Shove off!” Draco yelled, and urged his broom faster. Again he caught the Snitch and threw it into the air. Draco waited for a few moments, and then motioned to Harry to take a head start. Harry glared and took the advantage. For ten minutes they chased the Snitch up and down the field, in and out. The ball seemed to go faster and also seemed to evade them easier, maneuvering in and out more now that it seemed to be warmed up. Draco crashed into Harry several times, and finally with one last elbow in Harry’s ribs, got the advantage and stole the purple ball from the air.

Already low to the ground, Harry dove off his broom and tackled Draco, both of them falling the four feet to the soft green grass.

Draco released the Snitch, which took flight immediately, and pulled off his flying gloves, punching Harry square in the face.

High in the stands, Mulvitch stood up and turned to run down and break up the fight, but Severus put a hand on his shoulder and forced him to sit.

“They’ll kill each other!” the auror said, surprised that Snape didn’t seem to care.

“This is something that the other staff have been preventing for the past seven years. I believe the good that will come from this one brawl will outweigh the bad.”

“Yeah,” said the auror, “well let’s hope the good doesn’t kill the bad.”

Snape gave the young auror a challenging look, and said, “Do not speak of either of them in that manner again. Neither is as bad as you would think.”

Unsure, the auror relaxed a little bit, and peered over the edge of the stands to see the two boys better, who were now rolling over and over, trying to pin the other down.

Harry’s face was pressed flat to the grass and for a moment he could taste the green plant before he managed to push himself up and hit Draco in the side of the head. Harry, now sitting on Draco’s legs, had nothing else in his mind but to beat Draco senseless for all of the rotten things he’d said and done to him and his friends over the years.

“You stupid, selfish, son of a-”

Draco kicked Harry in the stomach. “Rotten, filthy, thinks he’s better than-”

“-death eater, piece of slime-”

“-everybody else, fake wanna be-”

“-waste of space-”

“-good for nothing Potter!”

Harry and Draco were barely hearing the names the other was shouting, but Harry did hear the last one. Tired, he fell off of Draco and threw up his arms in front of his face so that Draco wouldn’t take advantage of his lack of fighting just then. Draco raised his arm to hit Harry again, but saw that he was just lying there, and dropped it, too tired to continue anyway.

Harry dropped his arms and looked over at Draco, blood coming from his nose and bottom lip, awesome bruise beginning to color his left temple where Harry had hit him several times.

“I’m proud to be a Potter,” Harry said in the sudden stillness and silence, breathing hard.

Draco spat out a mouthful of blood on the grass beside him, and said, “Well I’m proud to be-” he let the sentence drop, realizing that he certainly wasn’t proud to be his father’s son. Harry looked away, realizing it too.

Looking around, Draco realized just how far they’d gotten away from where they had originally landed… it was more than twenty feet.

“I’m not a death eater’s son,” Draco said after a few moments.

Harry looked back over at him. “Then whose son are you?”

Suddenly laughing at the fact that he’d been asking himself that question for years, Draco quieted, and looked up into the stands to where Severus stood with his arms folded, and the auror stood looking dumbfounded, hanging over the rail watching them.

“Nobody’s,” Draco said, looking back to Harry. “I’m nobody’s son. I never have been, and never will be. You have seen to that.”

“What!?” Harry moved forward half an inch, but Draco had his wand out now, and Harry stopped. The move wasn’t to fight, but more out of shock. He sat back and Draco lowered his wand back to the grass. “What do you mean I’ve seen to that?”

Draco spat more blood out onto the grass, and wiped his mouth with his dirty sleeve. “Perfect Potter always gets everything he wants… popular Potter, our little hero gets himself a new daddy… fantastic Potter, that’s just fantastic. You were born into a good family, and you lost them, and got yourself another one… that’s just great, you have no idea how happy I am for you,” he finished his rant sarcastically.

Harry sat there dumbly, trying to figure out exactly everything the bloodied, blond hair boy on his knees in front of him had just said.

“You’re the rich one Malfoy… you’re the one who always struts around with your tight little Slytherin gang saying how much better you are than everybody else. You’re the one who goes back to a mansion every summer and every Christmas and who has enough money to buy a small country.”

Draco laughed. “You really think my life was that brilliant? What do you think being the son of a death eater is like? You think he treats me any different than he does you or a Muggle?”

“If you’re saying my life has just been all smiles,” Harry said, “you should meet my three hundred pound uncle and my two hundred pound cousin who like to use me as a punching bag on vacation.” Harry and Draco’s eyes met here for a moment, and Draco suddenly felt as if he understood something, although he wasn’t sure what yet.

Silence fell between the two boys again, and a soft wind ruffled through their hair as Harry reached up to feel the thick, sticky blood coming from a scratch on his cheek. From the way his eye felt, he could also tell he was going to have a great bruise there by the time they made it back to the castle.

Draco stood up gingerly and looked around for his broom again. Harry watched him, and wondered just what kind of life he had lead at Malfoy Manor. Was it so unreasonable to believe what Draco had said? From what Harry knew of Lucius Malfoy, and the way he treated people, Harry knew that what Draco had said was probably true.

A moment later, a hand extended down in front of Harry’s face, and he looked up to see Draco looking down at him. Unsure of whether or not it was a trick, Harry took the chance and took Draco’s hand, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. Once he was standing, he realized that he was more injured than he thought his was. There was a pain in his stomach, and he also thought he might have broken a rib.

“I don’t really have a family,” Harry said, referring to Draco’s earlier tirade against him. “I never did.”

“You have him,” Draco said, meaning Snape, who was still in the stands.

Harry shrugged. “I thought you did. I walked around the day of my birthday thinking how good you had it… thinking that he liked you more because you were in his house, and because he didn’t bother to show up for me.”

Draco snorted. “I hardly see him.”

Harry frowned. “Then maybe neither one of us have parents. Maybe neither one of us have anything.”

“At least you have friends Potter,” Draco pointed out. Harry shrugged.

“You do too.”

Now Draco began walking back towards the two fallen brooms and his gloves. Harry followed. “Not after I helped you last year… not after I cast curses at my father and Crabbe and Goyle’s father’s.”

Harry moved in front of Draco to stop him from walking any more. He looked him in the eyes, and said, “You have a brother…”

Draco eyed him warily. “What have you been drinking? I’m an only child.”

Holding out his hand to shake, and unsure why he was doing it at all, Harry said, “Not if you don’t want to be.” Draco looked down at the hand, wondering if he had knocked something loose in Harry’s head when he hit him.

When Draco did not take his hand, Harry shrugged and said, “Come on… we just beat the crap out of each other. You don’t have anybody, I don’t have anybody, we both think of… Severus… as ‘dad’… what does that make us?”

“Pathetic?” Draco offered.

“Blood brothers.”

Draco frowned and looked down at Harry’s hand again. “I don’t know what it is to be a brother.”

“It means blood is thicker than water… blood brothers stick together when they don’t have anybody else. You said yourself you don’t have any friends anymore in Slytherin… that’s going to make this year kind of hellish if you live with them. Wouldn’t you rather have somebody to be your second in a duel than nobody?”

“You wouldn’t do that.” Draco was confused and quite certain that Harry was putting him on.

“How come? Because we hated each other because we both thought the other had everything we wanted?”

Draco looked Harry in the eyes for a long moment, and then reached down and took his hand in a shake. “Don’t be lying to me,” he told him seriously. “I’ve never had anything… not like you. I’ve never had a real friend who wasn’t in it for himself. If you double cross me…”

“You’ll beat me to a pulp?” Harry offered, smiling.

Draco laughed. “I guess I can’t scare you out of it then.”

“Brothers,” Harry said again, gripping Draco’s hand tighter, “or at least… not enemies anymore. You don’t have to be my friend, but we can stop thinking the wrong thing about the other.”

Draco nodded. “Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.”

“Maybe I am.”

Watching him from the corner of his eyes, Draco said, “You weren’t supposed to agree. That was an insult.”

“Maybe you weren’t supposed to insult your new friend.”

“Are we friends then?” Draco asked as Harry picked up his broom and they began to move back to the doors of the pitch.

“I thought we just went over that.” Harry looked up to the stands, and noticed that Severus and Mulvitch were now no longer there.

“You said brothers,” Draco said. “Sounds like a dirty word to me… haven’t you ever heard, who needs enemy when you have family?”

Harry nodded as they crossed the grass, wondering if it hurt Draco to walk just as much as it did him. “I have, but that’s not really family if you can’t call them a friend.”

Draco wiped some blood from his nose again with his sleeve. “I told you Potter… I don’t know what it means to have a brother.”

“Hm…”

Just as the two boys made the door to the pitch, Severus and Mulvitch appeared there, Severus with his hands behind his back, and Mulvitch looking nervous.

“Done flying for the day?” Snape asked in what was supposed to be an innocent tone.

Harry looked down and said, “Yeah… sorry about that.”

“Sorry about what?” Severus asked, still trying to sound as if he didn’t know what they were talking about. “Crashing? That was a nasty crash you two had… next time I believe it would be wise if you both actually watched where you were going instead of crashing head on into each other. Perhaps next time your eyes will be open, and you might see each other coming.”

Draco and Harry looked at each other for a moment, confused, before they realized that Snape was going to deny just sitting there and watching them fight.

“Yeah,” Draco said, catching on just a little quicker than Harry, “nasty crash.”

The walk back to the castle was a quiet one, Harry and Draco thinking deeply on what had just happened, but not feeling alone in their thoughts. To himself, Severus wondered if he had done the right thing, and wondered what would become of it. He had seen many fights before, and had been involved in the majority of them, but he had not seen the kind of fight that ended in mutual respect for both parties.

Barely inside the entrance hall, the auror guard having already left them at the front steps to the castle, a cry of surprise and dismay issued from somewhere above them. “Oh!” It was McGonagall. She rushed down the steps and gave Severus an accusing glare as she appraised the state of both boys, bloodied, bruised, and limping in front of her.

“What happened?” she asked angrily.

Draco shrugged and walked by her towards the steps to find Madam Pomfrey, Harry following close behind.

“Crash,” Harry said calmly, trying to sound as if it were the truth.

“Big crash,” Draco said over his shoulder, and both of them left McGonagall and Snape alone in the Entrance hall. She turned on him as soon as they were gone.

He raised a brow, and said, “They didn’t even see each other coming… good thing they were close to the ground when they came down,” and walked away.