Close Enough

\'ello all. This is yet another story that has been chased off of FF.net for some stupid reason or another. I hope you enjoy this fic. i do have a handful of warnings tho: This story is long (55 chapters already written); This story is a romance (AKA not just about the sex, but it will be there at the end of it all); and This story is wonderful (my many reviewers have told me so). I do so hope you enjoy, and please review to let me know what you think.

Summary: Harry\'s life has changed drastically after the fall of Voldemort in the Departments of Mysteries over a year ago. To make matters more interesting he has found new friends, joined a band, and comes into a surprise inheritance on his birthday.
Draco has known his inheritance was coming since he was able to understand what it was, turning seventeen and being a natural Vampire can do odd things to a person, especially when your mate just happens to be an emotionally damaged Harry Potter.

Disclaimer: as anyone who is reading this should know, harry potter and all things associated with it are not owned by me! however i do enjoy placing nasty situations around the characters and presenting the product to a few hundred friends. :) but again i make no money from this and it is only for fun. consider this story disclaimed! :)


COMPLETED 9/23/05


Ch1 (prologue)

A boy, no a young man, sat alone in his London flat. Surrounded by his new furniture (all in fabulous shades of smoky gray, green, and black with touches of silver here and there) that was only delivered a little over a week ago, a sketch pad resting gingerly on his knee back pressed onto the sofa as he sat on the floor eyeing his most recent work. A small smile crept slowly onto his face, something he rarely did now even in the privacy of his own home.

This young man was none other than Harry Potter, formerly The-Boy-Who-Lived now The-Young-Man-Who-Saved-All-Your-Sorry-Asses-From-That-Crazy-Fucker. Now only a few weeks away from his 17th birthday, Harry Potter had taken out the Dark Lord over a year ago and was finally free from his abusive relatives. Free to live his life as he saw fit, and to try to be happy. Happy. Harry wasn’t sure he even knew what that was, not really anyway.

Harry didn’t feel he really knew what happy felt like. This was mostly due to the fact that he didn’t know if he ever was happy. How can you know if you are happy if you don’t even really know yourself? Up until this point Harry had lived his life the way that others thought it should be lived, not the way that he would have lived it. Growing up with his aunt and uncle he lived as a slave of sorts. Not even being given a bed or a bedroom, Harry was made to sleep and basically live his life in a small cupboard under the stairs. The Dursleys told him to do your chores and absolutely everything we say when we say or you will be beaten to within an inch of your life. This was the role that the Dursleys had made for him to grow up in; Harry never knew what it was like to be a child because they never let him be one. Cooking and cleaning before he could even read. Which even reading Harry had to learn early, due to his cousin not wanting to do his own homework and convincing his parents that Harry should have to do it because he was a freak. It was his cousin, Dudley that made Harry’s only time away from the house unbearable. He would get his gang together to chase Harry around, made sure that Harry didn’t get any friends or even mildly fair treatment by threatening everyone who came near him, and always found some way to get Harry in trouble at school so that he would get beaten at home for good measure.

After enduring this treatment for 11 years, what small boy wouldn’t want out? Harry got his chance, he found out he was a wizard, and lucky for him he got taken away from the awful place that he had called home. Unfortunately for this small, runt of a boy the joy of this was only lived for a moment. Upon entering this new world of magic and freedom from the Dursleys, Harry discovered that he was famous and that absolutely everyone knew him. Harry was forced to go from being less than a nobody and wanting to disappear into the background and doing so with ease, to not being able to sneeze without everyone noticing and knowing about it just as quickly as it happens. He was always followed, always seen; everyone always knew everything about him. Harry hated the attention, he was famous for something that he did at the age of one, which Harry felt was hardly something to be proud of or want attention over.

Even with the handful of friends that Harry made at school he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just filling a role in life, like some actor playing a part in a movie, the choices and decisions were made based on what he was supposed to do not what he himself wanted to do. But people seemed to like him this way, he may not like all the attention that he got but for the first time he had friends and he liked that part at least so he played along. Over the course of the next few years his friendships were tried over and over with death defying stunts having to do with one Tom Riddle (AKA The Dark Lord, AKA Voldemort). Much to Harry’s delight his friends stood by him through all of this. Later on he found out they stayed with him partially because they were his friends, partially because they themselves liked the attention of being friends with the Harry Potter. Harry was never one to draw attention to himself, sadly it happened all the time. It seemed as if even though he didn’t go looking for trouble, it came looking for him.

As Harry fought for his life over and over the wizarding world began to question him. They began to question his intentions and his involvement in all of the encounters. They began to blame him, at least a little, for all of the deaths and damage caused. By his fifth year in school Harry had fought with Voldemort four times and escaped with his life, however costing those of others. No one having escaped him even once before, people began to question how exactly he was doing it if not by some form of dark magic worse than that of Voldemort’s himself. The wizarding world became almost scared of Harry and his potential.

So when the final battle came, Harry wanted it to be over. After watching his godfather Sirius fall through the Veil, and having Remus die valiantly by his side, Harry went after Voldemort by himself, there was no one in the room with Harry when he finally took him out. So no one but Harry himself can tell you what exactly happened, but when Aurors showed up Voldemort was dead and Harry lay unconscious on the floor. After that final battle the wizarding world gave him a fond thank you and began to almost ignore him. Other than looking at Harry as a freak now for living five times when most would have not made it once, and looked at as the fault for any of the deaths at all because he could have made it end sooner, everyone just seemed to try to ignore his existence all together. Harry was a breathing reminder of the war and all those that were lost in it, and that Harry himself didn’t stop it sooner. To them, it seemed, the war was almost Harry’s fault.

So had he ever really known happiness? He was always playing a part it seemed. He wasn’t ever really able to just be himself; he had some role, or some station in life to live up to. But now he was just Harry. And for the first time he felt as though he might actually be happy. Well at least that he could be happy, someday.

So that is how we find Harry, sitting on the floor with his sketch pad on his knee. Harry had begun looking for things that he liked to do, hobbies and such, seeing as he never really had time for them before. He found that he enjoyed being creative in art as well as in writing. He also found that he enjoyed music, both listening to it and playing. He found that using these hobbies he could feel better about things that were bothering him. Harry was still smiling fondly down at the sketch pad when his phone rang. He closed the notebook and placed it on the sofa before standing. Harry made it to the phone on the 3rd ring, a personal best.

“’llo?” Harry intoned.
“HJ!! Glad a caught you while you were still home!!” an excited male voice came from the other end of the line.
“Dex. What is it that could be so important that you actually call me? That is never a good sign…” Harry sighed as he leaned his back on the wall by the phone.
“NO NO!! it’s nothing like that…” Dex answered. “I just needed to remind you to bring your extra guitar tonight… it seems Loki seems to have forgotten his..”
“Oh… that’s no problem… I’ll bring it with me… I was just getting ready to leave..” Harry lied.
“No you weren’t….” Dex laughed. “But that’s okay... just don’t forget okay?? And you should leave soon if you are going to make it here in time to warm up...”
“I’m grabbing my stuff and I’ll be out the door right now... cya soon Dex!”
“Cya” and with that they both hung up.

Harry made his way back over to the sofa and picked up the notebook that lay there and sighed. He shelved it on the bookcase near the door before grabbing two guitar cases and a small bag and heading out the door for the venue of the night. He was so excited to play tonight, they were going to try out some new material that Harry and been working on. He felt that it was a good thing it was just a small bar, just in case the new stuff didn’t go over well, though Dex had spent nearly an hour trying to convince him that it would go over big just like it always did. Harry smiled as he walked down the street thinking that for once something in his life seemed to be looking up.