Chapter 5: Throwing All Cautions To The Winds

I will show you a necklace
Where the pearls would all be lost
Without the thread between together
This would be the golden thread of trust

Yes - "Magnification"

Slightly irritated, Harry roamed the corridors of the castle in his invisibility cloak, trying to think of somewhere to go. Finally, he settled for a small room in the Astronomy Tower, where he used to go when he wanted to be alone. Most people didn’t know how to find it, because it was protected with a password. Harry had found it with the Marauders Map, of course. As he entered the room he saw someone sitting huddled up on the windowsill. Someone he recognised. He took off his cloak.
"Hi, Draco. What are you doing?"
"Thinking," Draco answered dismissively.
Harry sat down on the floor beneath him and waited for him to finish thinking.

Draco was contemplating his own courage. He had a lot to lose. He had a lot of secrets, terrible secrets, and if he was going to be Harry’s friend he knew that he couldn’t keep them from him for long. And there was the possibility that Harry wouldn’t want to be his friend if he found out about them. But the only other option was to push Harry away and refuse to be his friend. And Draco didn’t want to do that. For some reason he trusted Harry, maybe because he always was so honest. Draco hadn’t trusted anyone since his parents died. He decided to throw all his cautions to the winds. It wasn’t like him, but then he didn’t feel like being himself anymore, anyway.
"What are you doing here, Harry?"
"Ehm... I thought it would be a good idea to avoid my dormitory right now."
"Why?" Draco asked, curious.
Harry blushed.
"Ron and Hermione are having sex in our room, and I can’t go to bed."
"How do you know?"
"I could hear that."
Draco laughed, then asked:
"Have you ever had sex?"
"What? Why do you ask?"
"I just realised I don’t know anything about you."
"Well, I haven’t. Have you?"
"Once. With Pug-faced Pansy. But I won't do that again."
"At least not with a girl," he added quietly, but Harry heard him.
’Really? That knowledge could be useful!’ Harry thought.
’Why Harry?’ a little voice in his head asked. ’Are you planning to seduce him?’
Harry pushed away the disturbing thought.
"Why her?"
"I was pretty drunk", Draco confessed.
It was Harry’s turn to laugh.
Draco sighed deeply.
"What’s the matter?" Harry asked.
"You know what you said today, when we talked about my education in the Dark Arts? That you didn’t have a problem with it? I have a problem with it, because you have no idea what I did. What I am."
"Do you want to tell me?"
"I think you should know, if you want to... be my friend."
"I do."
Draco took a deep breath.
"I have been trained in the Dark Arts since I was a child. It began with Dark Potions and curses, simple things, but still, if anyone had found out... The summer before we began our fifth year my father started to teach me more complicated things like wandless magic and spirit magic.
"What’s spirit magic?" Harry asked.
"You work with certain kinds of spirits. It’s forbidden because they’re so difficult to control and you can never be sure of their intent. More often than not they’re causing trouble. But they’re good at creating glamours and things like that. Problem is, if they take a liking to you they can start doing things even if you don’t want them to. And to another wizard, that is like screaming ’I practice the Dark Arts’."
"Does Dumbledore know about that?"
"Yes. I’ve told him most things about my training."
"But not everything."
"No."
"Go on."
"This is the difficult part," Draco mumbled. "The summer before the war started father wanted to teach me torturing methods."
Harry gasped.
"I didn’t want to, but I felt I had to," said Draco desperately. "I had no choice! I had nightmares, still have. But it doesn’t end with that. After that I was taught the Unforgivables."
"Oh no!"
"They started with the Imperius curse. They made me practice on a muggle they had captured. He begged me to stop. I felt sick. Then they told me to do the Cruciatus curse, but I refused. My own father put me under the curse until I begged him to stop, but he continued almost to the point where the mind breaks. And then they made me to it to the other man."
He started to shake, and a shocked Harry sat down beside him and put his arms around him.
"It’s all right," he said soothingly.
"Do you know what Cruciatus feels like?"
Harry nodded.
"It’s even worse to do it."
"Was that what you wanted to tell me?"
"There’s more."
Harry braced himself.
"That Christmas all the Death Eaters and Voldemort had a large meeting in our home. Pansy was there. I think she had come up with some plan to be neutral in the war, but she tried to blackmail Voldemort, and that was not a good idea. My father saw this as an excellent stage in my training, so he told me to throw the killing curse at her. I couldn’t do that! You understand, don’t you?" he asked Harry, with tears in his eyes.
"Of course I understand," said Harry. "I couldn’t have done that either."
"They were very angry with me. Voldemort told me that my weakness would make her suffer so much more." Draco sobbed. "They tortured her to death. She was screaming for hours. I thought I would go insane at first, hearing that sound in my dreams every night, but now I can almost forget about it, most of the time. I should’ve killed her. That would have been more humane."
"No one should have to make that choice!" Harry said, close to tears.
He still had his arms around the other boy.
"And then I betrayed my parents, causing their death," Draco continued. "Now you know what I am."
"Yes, you’re Draco Malfoy, my friend, and a very good person."
Draco sniffed.
"But how can you say that?"
"Draco," said Harry and looked into his grey eyes, which were a bit red from crying. "If you had laughed when you told me this, I would have hated your guts. But not now."
Draco was suddenly aware of Harry’s arms surrounding him and wondered at how comfortable it felt. He sighed and rested his head on Harry’s shoulder.
"It feels better now that I told you about it."
Harry felt Draco’s silky hair tickle his neck.
"Good. That was the point, wasn’t it?"
Draco laughed.
"You’re impossible."
"How did you find this room?" Harry wondered.
"In my second year, a seventh-year told me. I haven’t told anyone."
"Neither have I."
"Good. We should have it to ourselves then."
Harry just sat there, enjoying the body contact and closeness of the other. It had been such a long time since he was close to someone. He memorised Draco’s scent; he smelt clean, and of something sweet, and under that something decidedly masculine. He decided that maybe he was quite happy after all.
Draco wasn’t thinking, but he was relieved that someone was there, someone who could take away the pain, if only for a moment.
"Harry, you’ve got friends who really care about you. Do you tell them everything?"
"No," Harry answered reluctantly.
"So there’s things you never told anyone as well?"
"Yeah..."
"Would you tell them to me?"
Harry thought about it.
"I s’pose... I haven’t done so many terrible things. It’s more what I’ve seen, what people did to me, what I’ve been thinking..."
And Harry found himself voicing his darkest thoughts, and even as he spoke his worries, doubts and feelings of guilt melted away under the warmth of his friend’s quiet reassurance. Even his worst fears seemed much smaller than before. Draco’s silvery eyes told him without words that he understood, and Harry knew that not many people could have, simply because they had been sheltered from certain things. Ron and Hermione would never understand. Dumbledore was so powerful, so old and wise, he would never understand the unreasonable fear Harry still could feel. But Draco understood.

Thursday came, and Hermione decided to have a talk with Harry.
"Harry, you’ve been spending a lot of time with Malfoy lately, right?"
"Yes, I have."
"Do you mind if I ask why you two suddenly started to be friends?"
"Don’t know really," said Harry, slightly modifying the truth. He had his reasons, but he wasn’t going to tell Hermione. "We understand each other."
"He has changed a lot, hasn’t he?"
"You wouldn’t recognise him."
"Ron and I thought about having a small party in the common room tomorrow evening. It’s our anniversary, you know."
Harry lit up.
"Oh, I forgot. Good idea!"
"Why don’t you invite Mr. Mystery Man, then?"
"You think so? Wouldn’t the others mind?"
"I don’t think so. You know, at least one third of the younger girls have a crush on him."
"Really? Kind of hard to imagine..."
"Why so? He’s really good-looking!"
"I know, but still! When you know him... Girls are strange."
"Not just girls for that matter. Seamus is always telling how he thinks Malfoy is just drop dead gorgeous when he wants to make Dean jealous."
"Okay, I’ll ask him, but don’t expect him to be all charming and social. He’s not feeling very well, you know."
"I understood that much."
"What do you think Ron will say?
"Don’t worry about that. I’ll talk to him."