Darker Side of Me

A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed and encouraged me to continue! I love you all! Chapter 7, as promised. This one gets darker and less romantic, though that is a result of the plot. I hope you all enjoy it!

Darker Side of Me –Chapter 7

Harry looked around himself. He was breathing hard. He was sweaty and had collapsed from exhaustion. He was sitting in a small alcove in the Gryffindor common room, trying to come to terms with all that had happened. His eyes would dart from one side of the room to the other and to the portrait hole, then back again.

It had all happened so fast and in such a blur of pain and hurt that Harry could hardly remember it at all. It was as though it had been a terribly vivid nightmare, but as he looked around the wrecked common room, he knew that it could not have been a dream at all. It had been real… very real.

“You lied to me! You bastard, you lied!” Harry remembered yelling. He had felt so angry so fast. He remembered feeling his face fill with heat and simultaneously feel his heart die. He hadn’t gone for his wand right away. He wanted Draco to prove him wrong, somehow, he supposed. Now that he thought about it, he was glad he hadn’t gone for his wand. If he had, things might have ended up much different.

“Potter, please,” Draco had begun. His voice hadn’t been pleading, however. It hadn’t been desperate like Harry’s. It was almost sarcastic. Harry felt his chest tighten again as he remembered the words.

“You said you loved me!! You lied straight to my face and then took advantage of me!! For what? What were you planning? Did you think I’d follow you to my death? Did you think that I’d never find out!?” The words had flowed so quickly from Harry’s lips that he didn’t remember thinking them at all. He remembered throwing whatever was nearest at the Slytherin. He remembered clenching his fists and punching him, he did not remember thinking.

“Did I ever actually say I loved you?” Those words had hurt much more than anything else. Draco’s voice seemed to have been forced, almost. He remembered that. That was also the moment he decided to go for his wand. He had picked it up and pointed it at Draco. He remembered casting a spell –he couldn’t remember which –and watching the stream of magic hit nothing but the doorframe as Malfoy had fled and run down the stairs.

Harry had followed him. He didn’t remember how, but he had caught up quickly. Draco had stumbled down some steps and ended up on his knees in the common room. Harry had started yelling again. He didn’t remember at all what he had said. All he remembered was casting more spells. He remembered hitting the walls and the couches. He remembered watching Draco scramble around to get his cloak and run out the portrait hole.

Harry’s face formed a pained grimace, something like that of a wounded animal. He started to hyperventilate again. He thought he remembered Draco’s voice pleading at the end. He thought he remembered the Slytherin calling out to him but he couldn’t be sure. He just remembered screaming one last thing.

“Run you filthy scum! Run like your cowardly master who couldn’t kill me either! I won’t let you kill me!!” Harry had hollered his words. He had screamed them so loud he was sure that every person present in the school had heard him. He remembered that feeling. He remembered exactly what sound he heard in his mind when he felt his heart explode and kill his soul.

He hardly remembered what happened after that. All he knew was that the room was in ruins and his face was bloody and his body was bruised. He remembered feeling more angry at himself than anything else. He remembered feeling ashamed.

Harry then felt an overwhelming sense of distress as he burst out into a fit of quiet, heaving sobs, collapsing into his knees and throwing his wand across the room. He screamed again and again until his voice was hoarse and he couldn’t scream anymore. He continued to open his mouth and force air from his lungs though no sound would come out. He ripped at his hair and smacked himself in the face, as if in effort to punish himself for having been so foolish, so easily blinded.

He threw his head back and hit it against the stone wall behind him. He was still shaking with the anger that coursed through him. He tried to scream one more time. What was he to do now?

He had given his heart to a Death-Eater.

*_*_*

Draco threw himself onto the couch in the Slytherin common room. He had just run through the entire castle, stumbling and tripping most of the way there. He was breathing hard. His nose was bleeding and he was still shirtless. He was shaking from both fear and anger. He was shaking from the hurt. There were tears streaming down his face but he hadn’t noticed them. He was still inside the Gryffindor boys’ dorms, as far as he was concerned.

“You bastard!! You filthy treacherous bastard! You dirty coward, I won’t let you kill me!!” Draco heard Harry’s words echoing in his mind. He clenched his teeth and gingerly coughed. His hand was clutching his side where one of Harry’s spells had hit him. His torso was now half purple and he was sure some of his ribs were cracked.

“I never said I love you! You just believe what you want! The whole world doesn’t have to follow your rules, Potter!” He remembered screaming so many things in his anger. He remembered saying so many things. Why had he said them? Why had he said so many things he hadn’t meant? Why hadn’t he just accepted Harry’s words and tried to prove him wrong?

“You always make yourself the victim! You deserve to die!” Draco yelled out into the hollow stone common room. He clenched his fist and punched the couch. Why had he said that? He had been angry. He had lost control. He had been hurt from what the Gryffindor was calling him. He was mostly angry because he knew those things were true.

“Why does he have to fly off the handle like that? Why couldn’t he give me a chance to explain?!” Draco yelled to himself throwing his cloak across the room and tugging hard at his own hair. His eyes fell on the black mark on his arm. “It’s this stupid thing!!” he screamed, slapping the mark and beginning to scratch away at it.

When he realized the mark was not going to disappear so easily, he got to his feet and pushed over a black desk sitting in the centre of the room. The blonde closed his eyes and remembered the look of concern on Harry’s face when he woke him up. He remembered he coy little glint in Harry’s eyes while he was opening his gifts. He remembered the feeling of their bodies pressed against each other, in sync with one another and both willing.

This was never meant to happen. It was not supposed to turn out this way. He was not supposed to care. He was not supposed to doubt. He was not supposed to want to be more than he was and it was not supposed to feel so good to be good.

He was not supposed to change his mind.

*_*_*

Eight days had passed and every day since, Harry had overturned the whole of the Gryffindor common room in hopes of hurting himself so bad that he might forget. Every night, however, while he was passed out from the exhaustion on the floor, the Hogwarts house-elves had come and set the room right. Every night, he slept off most of his weakness and awoke with more strength, more anger and more memories.

Students had started filing back into the school because break was over and Harry had started to avoid people in general. He spent much of his time in the owlery. There were few people ever present there, only the birds. He would stand at the window for hours, staring out. Sometimes he would climb up onto the windowsill and lean out as far as he dared over the hundreds of feet of void below him.

He would think of letting himself fall, time and time again. He would think of just forgetting the whole thing and letting himself drop to his death on the frozen ground beneath. No one would miss him, he was sure. No one would even discourage him from doing it if they found out about what he had done.

The boy who lived fell in love with a Death-Eater and nearly gave everything away. No one would care that this child savior had jumped to his death. They would thank him for it in the end, because he would spare them his future mistakes. He would spare them the pain of having to suffer his errors.

Every time he did this, however, a reassuring nip at his ear and a heavy tug at his cloak from his beloved Hedwig would pull him back down into the safety of the circular room. She would stop him from doing the unthinkable (though he was sure he had already done that). Every time, he would give her a soft pet and send her back to her perch, assured that she wasn’t about to lose her companion.

Harry would instead spend the time fighting with himself. He didn’t know what to do now. He should go to Dumbledore and tell him about Malfoy. He should tell the whole school that Malfoy was a Death-Eater. He should inform the Ministry of Magic and have Draco arrested. He should have him sent to Azkaban or given a Dementor’s Kiss. He should have him pay dearly for what he had done and what he had attempted to do.

But every time that Harry started convincing himself that this was the right course of action, he would stop himself and shake his head. He couldn’t do what he knew he should. He couldn’t do it even if he wanted to. His heart, or whatever was left of it, was simply refusing. As much as he hated it, he still loved Malfoy.

As much as he hated it, he couldn’t destroy Draco like Draco had destroyed him.

*_*_*

“You insolent fool, why have you not yet accomplished your mission? Do you know what position you’ve put me in? Need I remind you of the consequences if you fail?” Lucius’ Malfoy’s cold and demanding voice echoed throughout the Slytherin common room. Draco listened to his father, his teeth clenched and his eyes full of fire.

“I told you, I’m in a position with few options and even fewer good ones. I can’t do anything about it now, you will just have to wait,” he spat into the fire that had taken the shape of his father’s face. Even in the fire Malfoy’s face was livid.

“You idiot! I don’t care what position you are in, I will not have you jeopardize the Malfoy name and both of our lives for your stupidity! He has given you an ultimatum,” Lucius explained, his voice serious and full of tension. “If you do not complete your part in this mission before the end of next month, we will all pay the price. I don’t care how you do it, just do it.” Lucius Malfoy was about to disappear before Draco spoke.

“I can’t do it, and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore,” he retorted simply. Lucius Malfoy grimaced at his son, his fiery eyes full of anger.

“Why the hell not?” he demanded, losing his temper and raising his voice. Draco shook his head, forsaking all politeness towards his father in favour of his own anger.

“Because he knows that I’m a Death-Eater.” Draco spat into the fire, distorting his father’s face. “He knows and I don’t give a damn.”

A/N: Again, more chapters with more encouragement! It gets darker and more rough as it goes. I also think I’m going to make it longer than 10 chapters, so there should be quite some more on the way!