Potions passed rather uneventfully, save for the fact that Snape was still examining Harry like some as-of-yet undiscovered form of Magical Creature. When the lesson ended, however, Draco grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back down into his seat before he could depart for Charms.“What?!” Harry demanded.

Draco smiled, and it was not his spontaneous, warm smile – it was the one Harry recognized, full of dark intent. “I have two requests. They will be very difficult for you.”

Harry paled, thinking that nothing could have been worse than handing over his most prized possession in all the world.

Draco moved Harry’s wrist above their worktable and pressed a sheet of parchment, rolled, into the dark-haired boy’s open palm. “Read it carefully,” he said, his tone measured. “Memorize it. Burn it. Then do as it says.”

“I’m not all that good at–”

“Oh, trust me, this’ll stick in your mind.”

Harry unfurled the parchment and scanned it, feeling the color drain from his face. He looked up, as he had before, he realized, out of some sort of misplaced conviction he might see mercy engraved on the marble of Draco’s pale features. The Slytherin was more than willing to stare him down, his grey eyes cold and unreachable.

When mute pleas failed, Harry tried for cheek. “You aren’t serious,” he said, crumpling the paper and tossing it towards the trash bin.

Draco caught it effortlessly, dropped it back on the desk. “I am. It’s an order.”

“I can’t even say some of these words.”

“If you can call me Master, you can say them,” Draco returned.

“I won’t.”

“Then you’ll be breaking the terms of your punishment!” Draco snapped, standing and towering over Harry. His lips twisted into a sneer. “Though I’ve heard Azkaban is perfectly lovely this time of year. Father’s become ever so fond...” He seemed, then, to choke on his own words. Flushing, he spun and strode for the Potions classroom door. “Do it, Harry. Or else.”

When Harry looked down at the crumpled sheet of parchment, he heard someone clearing his throat.

Professor Snape was staring at him, one eyebrow raised. “Unless you’d like to join the seventh-year Potions students, Potter...”

Harry took a gulp of air and stood, feeling that now-all-too-familiar sensation of suppressed emotion; he couldn’t let it overcome him, but he didn’t want to somehow end up muffling it with Obscura, either. He didn’t even know how he accomplished the technique, so it was hard for him to prevent himself from using it...

Try not thinking about it, he advised himself harshly, and he placed himself mentally on the Quidditch pitch, not doing Potions homework or talking to the first-years, but soaring, soaring high above it on a broom, alone on a foggy morning...

It seemed to work. The feeling of helpless rage was falling away, now. He opened his eyes and stood, gathering his things. “Sorry for staying so long,” he mumbled, and escaped out of the classroom, the parchment crumpled to a ball, rough in one hand.

Ron partnered him in Charms, but Harry paid so little attention to the casting that he was nearly useless. He was beginning to fail Charms, he realized, because it was after he partnered with Draco in Potions, and his mind was usually too occupied to keep it together, afterwards. Ron was encouraging in vague terms, telling Harry that it would soon be over; whether he meant the class or Draco’s orders was unclear. Hermione, however, eyed him worriedly.

“Harry,” she said, only paying a modicum of attention to her feather as she turned it green, then blue, then violet, “what’s the matter? You look positively grey.”

“I know,” Ron said, “it’s that Quidditch tryouts are tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Quidditch?” Harry inquired absently, setting his feather on fire. Just as absently, he drew a spare from a coffee tin at the head of the classroom, then returned. “Tryouts are this week?”

Hermione and Ron exchanged a glance, and now Harry knew that Ron had voiced his concerns about Harry to Hermione in more detail after the argument of the evening before. “Yeah, you know, Quidditch,” Ron elaborated gamely. “That thing where you go flying through the air on brooms? There are three sorts of–”

“Yes, thank you,” Harry snapped irritably. “I was just wondering if Draco was going to make me do something stupid, that’s all.”

At least Ron didn’t snort, ‘so he’s Draco now?!’ for which Harry was immensely grateful. Instead, the redhead merely looked more worried.

“Like what?” he inquired. “I mean, what can he do? You’re a shoe-in.”

“Well,” Harry said, “damn you for even making me think about it, because he’ll know to ask, but he could tell me to do my very worst out on the pitch, screw up royally. He could tell me to ignore the Snitch, or to pretend I was at a tea party. He could tell me to show in a ladies’ bonnet with pink bows, or, most simply, to ignore tryouts altogether.”

Hermione stared at him. “I don’t suppose he’s as creative as all of that, Harry.”

“No, he’s not creative at all,” Harry mused, thinking on it. “His thinking is... er, straightforward, I guess. But he’s very clever, really,” he went on, “and somehow he really does know me. He doesn’t seem as intent on humiliating me in front of witnesses as hurting me.”

“Hurting you?” Hermione whispered furiously. “If he’s laid a hand–”

“I’m not talking that sort of pain,” Harry said wearily. “I didn’t want to tell you, but somehow he found out about the cloak...”

Ron gaped.

“It’s gone,” Harry confirmed. “He’s hidden it, now, for good.”

Ron sputtered briefly, and in his loss of attention, his feather sprouted miniature wings and began soaring around the classroom ceiling, making soft cooing noises as it went. Several people pointed, as this was a rather out-of-the-ordinary error, but Ron didn’t appear to notice he’d done a brilliant bit of Transfiguration by mistake. Hermione, for that matter, didn’t notice either. She’d gone a bit grey herself, and was frowning.

“It... it is dead useful,” Ron managed after a moment. “I can see how he’d want it. But you think he did it to... to injure you?”

“I know it,” Harry replied, feeling miserable. “Actually having the cloak seemed to be a sort of bonus to him, icing on the cake. It... it hurt me to give up something of my dad’s... and he was... drinking it up.”

“Ugh,” Hermione said with feeling. “At least it’s nearly over, Harry, you’ve got just two and a half days to go, he can’t do that much in two and a half days...”

Harry’s shoulders slumped as he thought of the paper now crumpled into the front pocket of his schoolbag, his mind still scrambling desperately to find a way around it... “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

The day sped by again, even through Harry’s first Transfiguration lesson of the year; McGonagall had some sort of family emergency and had to travel to Devon. Now, they were far behind, and spent most of the period playing catch-up. Harry’s mind, against his will, went back to the contents of the parchment, analyzing each and every sentence, every word, and thought how well it had been put together and how much time Draco had to have spent, and how nothing would ever be the same again after he spoke those words.Believably, Draco had specified.

God.

Throughout Defense, Draco watched him, as though savoring every moment of his distress. Professor Lupin gazed at the pair of them worriedly, but Harry could tell he’d adopted the same policy as he had in his own school days: leave well enough alone. Draco wasn’t attacking or verbally abusing Harry, and so long as it stayed that way, Lupin would stay out of it.

When classes let out, Harry went straight back to Gryffindor Tower, refusing dinner; Ron and Hermione, as Harry had predicted, followed. This was just as well, since Harry didn’t want an audience.

“What’s this about, mate?” Ron wanted to know. “Are you all right?”

Harry clenched his fists and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he did his best to look angry. “It’s nothing you’d understand,” he spat.

“Well, obviously not,” Ron said, taken aback, but more than equal to an argument. “You won’t talk to me at all, anymore. What, don’t trust me?”

“Trust you?” Harry laughed, low and derisive, borrowing the sound from Snape. “Why should I? You and Hermione kept all sorts of things from me about what was really going on, last year. I don’t care who ordered you – you should’ve told me.” This was his own invention, not Draco’s, but Harry couldn’t just start screaming what Draco had written and make it believable. He had to have some sort of lead-in, or they’d merely think he was possessed, or Imperio’d at the very least.

“There wasn’t much we could do!” Hermione shouted back, her own fists clenched. “Our letters were watched, you know–”

“You could’ve found a way,” Harry returned. “Don’t tell me ‘the cleverest witch of our year’ can’t figure something out.”

Hermione flushed in combined embarrassment and anger.

“Don’t talk to her like that!” Ron suddenly interjected, one hand rising to grip Hermione’s upper arm protectively, stepping ahead of her as if to put himself between she and Harry. “What’s gotten into you?”

“What’s gotten into me? Let me remind you. Voldemort did,” Harry enunciated clearly, his voice going lazily dangerous as Draco’s, perhaps because Harry still heard the words in the Slytherin’s voice, the voice of the boy who’d written them. “Nothing Dumbledore or Snape or anyone could do stopped him for even a moment. But hey, I’m still alive, aren’t I, still able to keep plotting his murder? That’s all anybody really cares about, isn’t it?”

Ron and Hermione blinked in tandem, utterly flummoxed.

Harry fought the absurd urge to laugh. “All anyone cares for is whether I’m going to manage to kill the Dark Lord,” he added casually, trying not to wince. Couldn’t Draco keep it in his head that I don’t call him that? “They’re not interested in me, are they?” he continued, angrier, because in a way, this was nothing but the unvarnished truth. “All they care about is the Boy Hero – all you care about is that I’ll defeat Voldemort.”

Tears began to gather in Hermione’s eyes. “Harry... you can’t believe that...”

“The very first day on the train,” Harry reminded Ron, “you asked to see my scar. Do you remember? And Hermione, you said I was in several of the history books you’d read. That’s what you were both interested in, from the beginning. Don’t deny it.”

“H-Harry, we won’t,” Hermione interrupted. “Or I won’t. I mean, sure, that’s why I spoke to you at first. But we’re friends, now, I don’t care for all of that...”

“Oh, really?” Harry shot back. “That surprises me, it really does. Do you honestly think that you would be my friend at all if I didn’t have this?” He gestured viciously at his scar. “Would you have bothered to ask the Hat to put you in Gryffindor if it weren’t for me?”

Hermione pinked, and Harry realized that his hunch had been correct – Hermione had chosen Gryffindor because she’d guessed that was where he’d end up, rather than because she felt it would be best for her. Maybe that’s why she really didn’t believe in the House system, Harry thought irrelevantly.

“I can’t believe, after...” Ron gesticulated wildly... “After everything, you’d say that.”

After everything, Harry thought, bitter amusement decorating his features. After the Mountain Troll, and Quirrell; after Lockhart, and Riddle; after Sirius and Remus and Snape; after Dementors and Time-Turners and the Department of Mysteries... “I understand, of course,” Harry went on, hating himself, hating Draco even more, “why you’d do it. The both of you need every scrap of advantage you can get.”

He didn’t even sound like himself – wasn’t it incredibly obvious to them that these weren’t, couldn’t be his words?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ron inquired almost softly. His face had gone red, and his fists were clenching and unclenching, but he was the quietest and angriest that Harry had ever seen him. He knew what he was to say, but he couldn’t help but wonder, with some small corner of his mind, if he were about to be clocked. It certainly seemed like it.

“Well, your family’s so poor, you know,” Harry continued. “And Hermione – the lack of a single witch or wizard in the family other than yourself... maybe it was the only way you could make a name for yourself, right, Mudblood that you are? Hitch your wagon to a star, eh?”

Yes, Harry realized, that had done it. Ron punched him flat.

“After all my family’s done for you, you ungrateful little–!” he screamed. “After all Hermione’s done for you...!”

“Ron!” Hermione shouted, moving to hold him back.

Harry lurched again to his feet and nodded once to Hermione, once to Ron, then scrambled out of Gryffindor Tower via the Fat Lady’s portrait and into the hall. He’d done the only thing he could think of to let them know he hadn’t meant it, but that did not mean he was foolish enough to sit in Ron’s view while the redhead regained his temper, while he and Hermione worked out between them what had really happened. If they would even bother.

He was sitting on the steps of one of the moving staircases, staring blankly ahead, when it actually hit him, what he’d just done. What he’d just called Hermione. What he’d just implied about Ron, and Hermione, and how they felt about him.

The fact that he’d really meant quite a bit of it, someplace deep in his darkest self.

Harry read and re-read the last instructions on the crumpled sheet of parchment. And you’re not to talk to either one of them again, it said. That’s an order, Harry.

Harry swallowed heavily, leaning his head against his knees. Of course the order wouldn’t hold in two more days, but that currently seemed an eternity. Now he could attempt some sort of damage control, even without speaking to either one of them, but he felt sick and drained of energy. There was no way he could go back to the Tower, not now. He hated Draco Malfoy, and how he seemed to be able to strike at the heart of him without really knowing him at all; but now, more with each passing moment, he wondered at the elation in his heart after he’d said those terrible things... It had been brief, but the immediate lightening of his burdens had been almost overwhelming for a minute... he’d longed, however briefly, to say every other terrible thing that had ever entered his mind, but he’d swiftly caged the impulse...

How could part of him enjoy what he’d wrought, while another part cringed in horror at Ron’s clenched jaw, that look in his eyes that was normally reserved for followers of Voldemort, and at Hermione’s shock and tears?

The horror built and built in him until it seemed to swathe the corridors and staircase itself with a darkness thick as tar, swirling, rising to choke him – and then it was gone, all gone, tucked away in some secret part of himself, and Harry, for the first time, recognized that he had just performed Obscura.