Harry awoke, uncertain as to where he was within the castle for a few moments. When he had fallen asleep, he had not been laying down. Opening his eyes, and looking around, he realized he was still in Snape’s office. How he got onto a cot and ended up covered with a blanket, he didn’t know. Harry looked at his watch, having no windows in the office to tell him the time of day. It was nine am. He pulled the covers off of himself, still dressed from the day before, and stood. His body ached from having tripped at the bottom of the stairs in the Entrance hall. His arm showed a large purple bruise from where it had hit the stone floor.

Remembering his fit of weakness the night before, and the hug he had received, being more a symbol of comfort and strength than anything else, Harry made for the office door, not wanting Snape to see him.

Out in the corridor Harry looked around, and found Draco at the end, stopped in his tracks and staring at him with a surprised expression.

Harry stood still as well, hand on Snape’s office door. He would have to pass Draco to exit the dungeons, and the task seemed daunting. He was still tired from the many nights of nightmare filled sleep, and didn’t known if he wanted to deal with Draco and his snide comments just now.

Taking a few uncertain steps forward, Harry watched Draco to see if he would do anything. He only stood still however, eyes locked on Harry’s. Harry continued on and was just coming even with him when Draco reached out and took hold of Harry’s upper arm.

“You slept in there didn’t you…” he trailed off.

Harry looked at him, but Draco was no longer willing to meet his eyes. “Why do you care?” Harry asked carefully and quietly.

Draco let go of his arm and stormed away from him, around a corner and out of sight.

Harry sighed and rubbed his temple. Draco seemed as emotionally exhausted as he felt.

Knowing breakfast was probably over, Harry skipped the Great Hall and went straight up to Gryffindor tower to change. Before he got in the door to the nearly empty common room, Ron and Hermione were at his side, peppering him with questions.

“Harry we were so worried.”

“What happened mate?” Ron asked.

“You weren’t there when Ron went to bed last night and when we got up this morning McGonagall told us there was a restriction for all students placed on the castle grounds and-”

“Did you sneak out or something? Did death eaters try to get you?”

“Harry, we thought you might be dead…” Harry raised his eyebrows at this last statement.

“You two weren’t anywhere to be seen at 2am last night and I didn’t assume you were dead…” Harry pointed out.

Ron looked at the ground and put his hands in his pockets, suddenly looking sheepish. “We were… in the rose garden… you know…”

Hermione hit him across the shoulder with no real feeling to the slap. “Ronald! There are people around!”

Ron looked up and couldn’t help but grinning. Harry shook his head and despite of himself smiled too. The rose garden he knew, was where couples often went to make out, because the rose bushes were many and kept the garden visitors well hidden from view.

“I was just saying…” Ron told Hermione with an innocent tone and a shrug of his shoulders. “I was just ruling places out that he wasn’t…”

Hermione sighed and finally looked away from Ron and back to Harry. “Where were you Harry?”

Harry looked around and noticed that there were a few students sitting around in the common room.

“Up here,” he said, and began up the stairs to his and Ron’s dormitory.

Inside he was pleased to find it empty. Once Ron and Hermione were inside he closed the door and began to strip his shirt off and search for a new one in his trunk.

Hermione’s eyes widened and she promptly turned around and sat on the edge of Harry’s bed facing the other boy’s bunks.

Harry found a new shirt and pulled it on and began to unbuckle his belt. Hermione cleared her throat, and Ron sat on the bed beside her and covered her eyes.

“Keep facing that way,” Harry told her. He pulled his pants and socks off and began putting on clean clothes. “I was down in Snape’s office.”

“All night?” Ron asked, looking over at Harry to see his progress in dressing as he pulled one sock on and then another.

Harry nodded. “He left me there and went to see Dumbledore. He wasn’t there when I woke up but I was on an cot with a blanket.” Suddenly Harry felt very grateful that he had been placed on the cot, as he was sure he would have had a stiff neck and back if he had continued to sleep in the visitor’s chair until morning.

“Why did you go there?” Hermione asked, a little annoyed that she couldn’t look at him and that Ron was still covering her eyes.

“You can turn around now,” Harry said, finally having finished dressing, and now pulling his shoes on.

As he tied his left shoe, he said, “Voldemort killed me in my sleep last night… chopped my head clean off. And then he hung Snape on a gallows… Voldemort knows he’s on our side now… I had to tell him, and I needed his help getting Voldemort out of my mind,” Harry lied. In truth, he hadn’t thought about anything when he had run down through the castle to Snape’s office, he had just gone, to the place where he felt most safe within the castle.

“You can’t tell anyone that,” Harry told them, “but that’s why there’s restrictions on the grounds now. We figure Voldemort’s tired of toying with me and he’s getting ready to come and finish me off.”

Hermione, who had been quiet through this explanation, gasped now and said, “Harry that’s horrible!”

Harry shrugged, now done tying his right shoe as well. “Draco knows I spent the night down there,” he threw out randomly. He was in the corridor when I came out. He seemed put off by it.”

Ron frowned, “Who cares. He’s not the one who Voldemort wants to chop his head off!”

Hermione gave Ron a stern look, and said to Harry, “He has been acting kind of odd lately. His father visited him last week and after that he passed me in the hall several times and didn’t say a word to me about being a mudblood or a know-it-all or a Gryffindor or anything!”

Ron snorted. “And you’re sad about that?”

With another stern look from Hermione, Ron looked at the ground, and Hermione said, “Usually he doesn’t pass up a chance to taunt me or the other Gryffindors, but he’s hardly said a word in the past week… to anyone.”

Harry frowned. He had found it odd that Draco hadn’t told anybody he had found Harry crying in the hall.

At lunch almost every student in the Great Hall was talking or complaining about the school grounds being closed off. It was fall now, and they knew there would be precious few chances to enjoy the last bit of warm weather before the grounds were covered in snow as it was. Now those chances had been snatched away altogether.

The Slytherins seemed to be most irked by this new restriction, and many of them kept pointing at other house tables and making loud, rude remarks about scared Hufflepuffs and fragile Ravenclaws, and about the stupid Potter boy who the Headmaster was probably trying to protect, although Harry never heard the Dark Lord’s name mentioned once in those remarks. Many of the Slytherin’s parent’s were Death Eaters or Voldemort’s sympathizers, and Harry was sure most of them knew that there would soon be a strike on the castle.

As Harry looked over his shoulder at the Slytherin table, and received a particularly nasty sneer from Crabbe, he noticed that Draco was not there.

That afternoon was spent in the common room among a restless house. This day was a sunny one, and now that the grounds had suddenly been placed off limits, everyone wanted to be out on them. Harry sat by himself on the ledge of a window, looking out at the grounds. He too longed to be able to walk where he wanted, because he didn’t like feeling trapped. Most of all though, he wanted to be away from the school completely, knowing he was putting every body else in danger being there.

Ron and Hermione were sitting in a corner of the common room holding hands and going over an essay due the next day when something out on the grounds caught Harry’s eye.

A lone blond figure walked in open sight, hands in pockets and eyes on the ground towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Harry leapt off the window ledge and landed catlike on the common room floor, startling several first years sitting at a table near there. At the common room entrance, Hermione looked up and said, “Harry, where are you going?”

“Need to talk to somebody,” Harry said, and left before she could ask any more questions.

Harry raced through the castle as he had done the night before, only now, not in a panic but in a fit of curiosity. On the second floor he was forced to an abrupt halt, Snape blocking his path.

“Harry-” he started. Harry looked up and tried to act casual, and not as if he were about to break a rule that had been put into place because of him.

“Sorry Professor,” he said, “I have to talk to someone.” Harry stepped around him, wishing he could have told him the truth.

In the Entrance Hall, Harry gave a quick look around and made sure nobody else was there before he pulled the great oak front doors open just far enough for him to exit through, and pulled them closed tight again. Harry ran off as fast as he could towards the direction Draco had been walking in. He hoped desperately that nobody saw him through a window as he had seen Draco, and wished he had thought to grab his invisibility cloak before he had left the castle.

Harry ran for five minutes, reaching the edge of the lake, and continuing on past it when he saw nobody there. Not that he wanted to talk to Draco, but more that he wanted to know what he was up to.

After a few more minutes, Harry stopped to breathe for a moment, trying to think where he would have gone to. Harry had his wand with him, but he didn’t fancy marching into the Forbidden Forest alone.

He had heard from older students long ago that there was an old abandoned garden near the edge of the forest and around the side of the castle, and Harry set off in that direction, thinking it not unlikely that Draco knew of it’s existence as well.

After a short while, a rusted black gate with spikes along the top of each post came into view. One half of it was open. Beyond it, dangling vines and overgrown bushes and plants grew everywhere. There was a stone path, and Harry walked through the rusted gate and onto it. Plants grew over the path so far in some places that he had to walk on flowers, smashing them, to get through. It was a wonderful place, Harry thought to himself, thinking that this is the way gardens should be. There was a weeping willow tree in the middle of the garden, surrounded by benches. The path circled the tree and lead off in a number of other directions. Harry scanned the area, and found a slumped blond haired figure on one of the benches surrounding the enormous tree. Draco’s head hung low and his hands were clasped limply in front of him.

Harry stood there for a moment, and then began to approach cautiously.

After a few steps, he accidentally stepped on a fallen twig from a bush, and it cracked under his weight. Draco’s head snapped up and Draco leapt from the bench, wand out and aimed at Harry. Harry didn’t move, only stared at him.

“What Potter!?” Draco spat, “you would take this from me too!?”

Harry frowned; he wasn’t sure what Draco was talking about.

“I-” Harry started, but he didn’t finish, not knowing the right thing to say.

“OUT!” Draco shouted at him, lifting his wand as a threat. “This is my place! Mine! Hear me! You’re not allowed in here!”

Harry took a step back, not wanting a fight. He had no desire to take anything of Draco’s even though Draco felt he did.

When Harry didn’t move back further, Draco strode forward quickly and shoved Harry back forcefully, angry red sparks leaving the tip of Draco’s wand as he did so. “Didn’t you hear me? You can’t have it! Get out!”

Harry took another silent step back, not sure what was happening. “I don’t want your, garden,” Harry said cautiously. “I just… I saw you leaving the castle and…”

“Thought you’d spy on me?” Draco asked angrily still. Harry didn’t know what to say to that, because that was exactly what he was doing.

“Go back to your filthy castle Potter… it is your castle now isn’t it? Your dungeon and your head of house?”

“No-” Harry started. He held up his hands, and resisted the urge to draw his own wand to put them on equal ground.

“You’re disgusting Potter!” Draco spat. “You have to have everything don’t you? You have to take everything away from me!”

“Now wait,” Harry said forcefully now, starting to get angry and frustrated. “You’re the one with a bloody mansion and loads of money and a mum and dad Malfoy. What makes you think I have everything? What are dead parents worth and a bounty on your head by a load of dark wizards who want to see you dead!? What are nightmares every night where you get your head chopped off or your friends killed worth?”

Draco shook his head and aimed his wand at Harry’s throat, the tip of the wand less than a foot from its target. “A father,” Draco said quietly. “They’re worth a father.” For no reason, Draco lowered his wand and turned from Harry, walking back to the bench he had previously occupied before Harry had interrupted him.

“I don’t-” Harry began, but he didn’t finish, knowing how he felt about Snape.

“Don’t lie to me,” Draco said, defeated sounding and quiet, head in his hands now. “Living parents aren’t worth anything but bruises and scars… at least you have somebody that cares for you.”

Harry was thinking quickly now, jumbled thoughts coming together like pieces of a puzzle. Draco had made many attempts to keep Snape and Harry apart, and then later on when Harry had been avoiding Snape, he had made an attempt to help, and for some reason, that still bewildered Harry, hadn’t told anybody that he had seen Harry in tears.

“You think I took your surrogate father away from you?” Harry asked him quietly, unsure if his assumptions were correct.

Angry, Draco pulled up his sleeves to reveal large week old multicolored bruises on both arms. “You think I want a father who does this when he doesn’t get what he wants? Of course you took the only parent I actually care about having.”

“I… I didn’t know…” something heavy had fallen into the pit of his stomach. Suddenly Draco didn’t seem as pompous as he always had. Suddenly he was just another kid who like Harry, had been subject to torture from a guardian.

“It doesn’t matter,” Draco finally said, still quietly. “It will be over soon.”

“Because I’ll be dead?” Harry just wanted to clarify that that’s what they were talking about.

“Because we’ll all be dead,” Draco said, looking up at him.

Harry frowned. “Not you though…”

Draco nodded. “Father doesn’t recognize me as a son anymore… I was ordered… ordered to kill… so many people,” Draco was having trouble getting the words out now. “I had to kill to be initiated… I wouldn’t do it.”

Harry ran his fingers through his hair. “When is he coming?”

Draco didn’t answer, only looked at the ground for a long, silent moment. “Potter, he’s already here.”

Alarmed, Harry looked wildly around himself, and saw nothing but the garden.

“What?”

From behind Harry there was a snapping of twigs on the ground as footsteps approached. Harry spun around, wand out, and Draco jumped up, only to find Snape standing there, empty handed.

“Back,” he said, “into the castle. Both of you.” Harry and Draco looked at each other and said nothing, wondering how much he had heard.

“Go!” Snape said urgently. Harry and Draco suddenly snapped to action and passed Severus without a word.

The three of them were hardly past the lake when the sky began to darken. Both boys looked up, but Snape kept ushering them along as quickly as they would go.

Within minutes, the sky was almost black with clouds. “How-” Harry asked, but he was cut off.

Solemnly Snape said, “He’s here.”