Secret Keeper

Title: Secret Keeper

Pairing: HP/DM.

Summary: I first posted this story in the later part of March without having a clear idea of where it was going. Well, now I do, so here is the re-posted story. :) Yes, I did actually delete the old version in its entirety - feel free to express your irritation and anger at me. All of your wonderful 300 reviews are nice and safe on my computer hard drive. :) *reads all 66 pages worth over and over, haha* Anyways, you should read through the whole story again; I have made some major changes to the chapters by adding more detail/description, more thoughts, etc.

For those of you who are new to Secret Keeper, this story is AU and the characters will most likely NOT be completely canon, although I\'d like to think that they\'re as canon as possible within the guidelines of my world for them. This is a GRADUALLY building relationship between Harry and Draco; they aren\'t going to immediately hop into each other\'s beds and there are going to be problems they\'ll have to get around. This is going to be a long story - I\'m thinking somewhere around 50-60 chapters? And also, I\'m sure you can deal with the short chapters for now; they\'ll get longer.

I do not have a beta, so any mistakes or typo\'s are mine; constructive criticism is appreciated and I\'m rabid for any reviews.

Secret Keeper contains possible spoilers to all books through the fifth. In regards to HBP, pretend like it never came out.

I know this isn\'t much of a summary, but that\'s why you have to read the story. ;)

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to JK and all those other people. I\'m not going to make money off of this. I just like imagining and writing a different version of her world.

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Harry Potter had a secret. Something that amazed him after all those times when he could have easily been caught. This secret was also unusual in that nobody else knew it but him. Oh, sure, that\'s normally what made a secret... however, this was Harry Potter. The Harry James Potter, savior of the wizarding world. Everyone knew about his secrets before he knew about them. Magazines and papers splashed his face all over their covers and front pages and picked apart his day-to-day existence with nonsensical articles. The worst of the culprits were Witch Weekly and The Daily Prophet; the Witch Weekly enjoyed telling the hordes of fangirls, and boys, about his favorite color, his horoscope sign and other random, often ridiculous, tidbits of information; The Daily Prophet enjoyed sucking up to him while he was in favor and bashing him when he wasn\'t. Harry always had ignored them both. But, as it stood now, neither of them had gotten a whiff of his secret. A fact of which, as mentioned, he was amazed and immensely proud of.

SNORESNORTGRUNT.

Harry blinked, gaze lifting from its blank contemplation of his coverlet. Glancing at the blaring red light of his alarm clock, he sighed and shook his head. He was up late, swallowed in his ever-moving thoughts, only to be jerked out of them by Dudley. Again. He tilted his head, listening to more of the sounds coming from his cousin\'s room. Hm. Dudley was having his chocolate cake dream for this, the third night in a row. Harry didn\'t want to think about just how pathetic he was for having memorized the dreams Dudley often indulged in. He grimaced; then again, Dudley\'s lack of imagination and intelligence obviously extended to his dreams as well, so perhaps it wasn\'t so pathetic of him. No matter; this was his last night here at 4 Privet Drive anyways. Tomorrow he could escape to the sanctity of Hogwarts and his seventh year. A slight smile curled the corners of his mouth as he looked over at his trunks in the corner, Hedwig\'s cage perched atop them like a crown jewel. Her cage was empty for now, the door open, since he had let her out to go hunting a couple of hours ago, but his trunks were packed to their fullest. He\'d had a hell of a time trying to fit all of his stuff in them; from the flood of presents he had received, leftover birthday cakes included, to his supplies for the new school year that they had sent as well - his trunks were as full as they could be.

He was looking forward to his seventh year more than any other year he could remember; even going back to the first when he had thought the wizarding world was some wonderful fairytale waiting to be snatched away. Seventh year represented closure; to his school career, to his \"war\" with Voldemort and, most importantly, closure to his life with the Dursley\'s. They had really worked him this summer, making it worse than usual; knowing that Sirius was dead and couldn\'t suddenly pop up and curse them probably had something to do with it. They had sent him scurrying about doing the housework, the cooking, not to mention building the huge deck they now had out back. Once it was completed, they had invited all the neighbors over for a huge cook-out and had then proceeded to complain about how the (professional) builder had stomped mud and dirt through their house while eating anything and everything out of the refrigerator. Harry, who had been listening to the tinkle of wine glasses and the idle chatter of neighbors who really didn\'t like the Dursley\'s from his locked room, knew that to be untrue since the builder was him. He knew better than to track dirt through the house under Aunt Petunia\'s hawk-like eyes and he couldn\'t remember a time when he had been allowed to eat anything straight out from the fridge. He wasn\'t even allowed to touch food in their presence unless it was an ingredient in a meal for them.

Ah well. He didn\'t care, really. The demanding physicality of building the deck, compounded with 6 years of Quidditch and a final, surprising, growth spurt had done wonders for his appearance. He was now three inches above six feet, lean but muscled, his skin darkened to a nice golden tone thanks to the hours in the sun. His face was now more of a mans while still maintaining the boy-ish innocence he was renowned for. His emerald eyes were as expressive as ever, glittering behind thick-framed, black glasses; his ebon mop of hair was messy and scraggly as usual, although slightly longer thanks to the Dursley\'s refusing to take him out in public anymore.

A soft hoot announced the arrival of Hedwig as she soared through his open window and landed next to him on his bed.

\"Hey girl,\" he said softly, smiling and gently sifting calloused fingertips through her snowy feathers. \"How was the hunting tonight?\"

She hooted twice more and nuzzled against his hand, hopping up onto his knee, talons pricking into his leg. He sighed and loosely circled his arms around her, lowering his head to lightly rest against her side. It was an awkward position for his large frame, but the backache and the stabbing pain in his abdomen were worth it. They had started doing this the night of his 17th birthday, for reasons unknown to him, although he was sure that Hedwig had some idea, smart owl that she was. They would hold it for varying amounts of time; simply sitting silently, letting the minutes tick by. He could never completely describe the feeling he received when they did this. It was... it felt like he was connecting to some part of him that was hidden, that was waiting for just the right moment to come into existence, to declare what it was. He felt like he was home.

Gods, he didn\'t know if he could stand another night under this roof dwelling in thoughts that always seemed to circle. He\'d swear that the same cycle of thoughts rolled through his mind every night. They never changed, never expanded, and he was getting tired of it.

Sighing again, he sat up, placing his left arm by Hedwig so that she could step up onto it. Glaring reproachfully at him, she did as he indicated, talons gripping the delicate skin of his arm a bit too hard.

He winced and maneuvered himself off the bed, slightly unbalanced with her on his arm. \"Sorry Hedwig. I know it was short, but I need to get out and run around.\" Reaching her cage, he gently set her inside, recieving a light nip on his retreating hand for his efforts. He had just finished closing her gilded door and he was gone. In his place was a large housecat, emerald eyes twinkling in the moonlight, a small silver stripe that looked remarkably like a lightning bolt above them. With a flick of its tail and a few hoots from Hedwig, it had jumped onto the window sill where it proceeded to look about as if checking for any persons around. Very unusual behavior for a cat.

A split second later, the cat had launched itself off of the sill, transforming into a large barn owl in mid-leap.

Heavy wingbeats echoed through the silence of the night, the moonlight displaying the size and the coloring of the immense bird in all of its splendor as it soared off to places unknown.