A/N My apology one-shot for not updating my Dramione fics sooner. Song inspiration: Runaway by The National. Changed some events.

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What makes you think I'm enjoying being led to the flood?

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There's a room in Hogwarts on the seventh floor that's both a refuge and a prison. Across the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, pace three times and tell the room what you require –tell the room what you want.

And the room will always give you what you want.

Sometimes even when you don't want to want it. Or don't know that you do.

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The first time Draco wandered the seventh floor of Hogwarts had been a few weeks after he'd been branded as part of the Dark Lord's latest cattle. He'd stopped sleeping nights, and not for nightmares. More for the fear that he might take himself a little too seriously and ensure he wouldn't wake up.

The first time he came across the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, he hadn't realized how much he'd wandered until he was greeted by the unfamiliar sight of trolls beating up a cowering wizard. He blinked up at the wall-hanging, wondered where the hell he was, and turned around. He moved a little way down the corridor – nothing familiar. Moved the other way – still nothing. Forward again. Back. Bloody hell – I need a way to get back to the dormitory.

And then a door where there was none before, and a short staircase leading to – wonder of wonders – the dungeons. From the seventh fucking floor.

Even Draco had to admit that sometimes, Hogwarts could be pretty creepy.

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It wasn't until Blaise's cocky attitude and Pansy's shrill idiocy had grated his nerves one time too many that Draco finally discovered just what that seventh-floor corridor could do. He'd wandered up there to be as far from the dorms as possible, to be somewhere Blaise and Pansy would never go – short of sitting outside the Gryffindor common room – and was walking by the tapestry again, muttering about needing to get away, when the door nearly gave him a heart attack.

If the choice was between entering the door and risking being hexed by a dozen different lion brats, he'd take the door.

The quiet, mini-library inside cemented that verdict.

Draco settled onto the couch with a book to wait out the night. It wasn't until halfway through the tenth chapter, however, when he realized that he hadn't calmed down in the slightest. His fingers crumpled the page in frustration (an act toward which he flinched; to ruin a book, for him, was sacrilege) and he forced himself to breathe slowly. It didn't work.

What did jar him out of his anger – if only for a few seconds – was the sudden appearance of a piano. The same piano, in fact, that sat in Great-Aunt Margery's third floor parlor. The one whose keys he'd bang and mangle until the flats and whole notes and rests had exhausted his anger at the world.

The sonata he ended up playing reminded him a bit too much of a brown-haired girl for comfort, but it calmed him down nonetheless.

It wasn't until the final notes, however, that he found out he wasn't the only one with a penchant for nighttime wandering at Hogwarts. The echoes of her frantic apology and the door slam were long faded before Draco realized he was standing, a "you don't have to leave" poised to fall from his lips.

He never wondered until much later why she could come inside.

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It was the fifth time in Potion's class that Draco dropped a phial of something, distracted by laughter he'd never incite. He knew Snape was a hair's breadth away from giving him detention, with the way he was acting like Longbottom, and it was only because Draco was a Malfoy and his godson that Snape did not have him scraping mold off the dungeon ceilings. Some days Draco wondered if it would be worth it to drop something on her head, just to land them both in detention. At least that way, he'd have a reason to be alone with her.

He dropped the newly-repaired phial at the thought and silently cursed himself as it shattered.

Thank Merlin there was nothing breakable in Ancient Runes.

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He'd figured out that room by now, the strange one on the seventh floor. He'd figured out how to ask it for certain things, figured out what it could and couldn't do. The one thing he couldn't figure out was how it had let her in, on a night when he'd explicitly wanted to be alone to calm down.

It wasn't as if he wanted her. Because he didn't –couldn't. No.

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He'd missed the great Weasely Quiddicth game because he'd been too busy messing about in the room, but he hadn't missed seeing Hermione run off to hide in some isolated section of the castle. He also hadn't missed seeing Potter sidle up to comfort her, and their awkward encounter with Weasel and that Gryffindor bimbo. And there was absolutely no way he could miss the tears in her eyes and the quiver in her voice.

And when she had turn and run, he had, too.

Why had he even followed her in the first place?

The room. The room would give him some peace. He paced the corridor, desperately trying to keep her out of his thoughts even as he sought refuge from the unrest she triggered in him. He wrenched open the door and – no piano. No couch. No library. Just a mirror, intricate and ancient, the surface cloudy and stained.

Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi, the engraving on the top read.

Draco approached it hesitantly. He'd asked the room for sanctuary, not self-reflection. He peered at the reflective surface –and quailed.

No – no, no, no. This – this was not what he'd come here for.

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The vision in the mirror plagued whatever dreams he had for the next days. He hated it, wanted it gone, wanted to Obliviate himself just to forget – but he wanted to know what the Draco in the mirror had felt, wanted to know what her tears and her shaking and her skin felt like as he sat in Harry's place, one arm around her shoulder, holding her as she cried.

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One week later and he was sitting at the foot of the mirror, eyes hungrily taking in the two figures inside, one hand reaching out but coming up short to cold, unfeeling glass.

At least here he was free to want what he could, no matter how unattainable.

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The splashes echoed in the empty bathroom but the cold water did nothing for his nerves.

He was failing, he was going to be killed… Merlin, his family – his mother…

"Draco?"

No – it couldn't be – he looked up at the mirror – it wasn't his mirror in the room but it showed him what he wanted.

It was her.

She was here and he was crying.

"Are you – are you cry-"

"Piss off, Mudblood!" Help me, his heart threatened to say. Save me from this.

She was talking to him, calling out to him, trying to reason with him but he wasn't letting his heart say what it wanted. He called her names instead of asking her to forgive him, renounced her filth when he wanted to tell her he didn't want to die. And how, how did she think he wanted this – wanted to be led about like a lamb to slaughter, teased with the thought of freedom if he behaved? Did she think he enjoyed being led to his death?

Her eyes, oh Merlin her eyes, they were looking at him, just like he'd wanted: looking at him not in anger or in hatred. But he'd wanted happiness, not shock and distress and sadness. He had her speechless but he wanted her breathless, and she raised her arms subconsciously in a gesture of comfort and he moved to acknowledge it, and Potter – Potter barged into the room calling her name and saw nothing but Draco Malfoy advancing on Hermione Granger, wand raised, and so he shouted the first curse he could think of –

"SECTUMSEMPRA!"

And then pain, pain far beyond anything Lucius or Bellatrix or the Dark Lord had ever caused him – was the floor wet from the water or from his blood? – and was that him screaming or was it her or was it all in his head – dying, surely – too early but too welcome – Snape?

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The mirror, the mirror, it kept him sane. He would unravel if he didn't have that small sliver of hope. He hungered after it, now: the sight of them, together. No war, no hatred, no false pretenses.

He knew he ought to fix the cabinet but the mirror made him stay. The mirror kept him in the room, kept him coming back, to sit and stare and want. The room gave him what he wanted: the only way he could have her.

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He couldn't do it. His quarry was right in front of him, defenseless, unarmed and he couldn't do it, because she was in his mind, she was there, she wouldn't forgive him if he did this. There would be no more hope, no more wanting, if he did this, no.

But then someone did it for him.

But there could be no more wanting. No more mirror. No more safe haven.

Help me, he should have said to her, should still say to her. It's you I want, not this.

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A/N I don't quite know where this came from… but I posted it anyway, even if I'm a bit unsatisfied with how it turned out. I couldn't quite get out what I wanted in this fic. I may choose to rewrite it in the future, or just post another one-shot. A brief interlude, which will hopefully lead to me updating my fics again soon.