"Harry," Ginny sighed.  "Harry, Harry, Harry.  Gods, I thought I loved you, until I saw you break away.  That's what it felt like--a break.  There's someone from my past that I can… well, remember that I need to see.  I don't feel quite that strongly for him.  Not yet, anyway.  I know the potential is there, and I guess in the back of my mind I always have.  Friends, Harry?"

            "Always."

@}-----

            After parting ways with Ginny for the final time, Harry simply began to walk.  He walked for a few endless hours, remembering how things used to be with Draco, how they used to sneak into each other's dorm rooms and keep each other up all night, talking, arguing, and making love.  Every memory that surfaced was so vivid that he felt that he was almost back at Hogwarts, throwing things at his secret lover in Potions.  Snape would scold Harry, take away points from Gryffindor (really, what were five points in the long run?), and give him a detention. 

            It was during one of those detentions that his supposed nemesis made the first move in their relationship. 

            "Do you ever think that maybe there's a reason things happen?" Draco had asked suddenly.

            "Like what?" Harry shot back, not wanting to converse with the likes of Malfoy.

            "I'm trying to be civil, Potter.  We have five hours to clean these damned trophies and I'm attempting to pass the time." 

            "Fine."

            A few moments of silence slipped by before Draco spoke again.  "So do you?"

            "Do I what?"

            "Stop being difficult.  Do you think there's a reason things happen?"

            "No," he stated blandly.  "I choose not to believe in the cruel concept of fate."

            "So there's no reason we're locked in a room together, alone, for hours on end?"

            "Nope."

            "This isn't an opportunity sent by the gods for me to kill you?"

            "For my sake, Malfoy, I hope not."

            Draco began to step closer to Harry, who was suddenly deeply involved in scrubbing his trophy. 

            "Right.  What a typical Harry response.  So if I were to take a knife, and press it right here," he slipped his finger across Harry's throat, smiling.  "You would probably say, 'Oh, that's too bad.  I'd hoped he wouldn't do that.'" 

            Harry simply blinked back at the blond boy, too confused to speak.

            "Good thing that's not why I think we're here tonight, Harry," he whispered, reaching up to finger that famous messy hair. 

            "What—"

            Instead of silencing the boy by killing him (which his father probably would have greatly preferred), he quickly closed the remaining space between them and lightly brushed their lips together.  

@}-----

            Silken sheets, satin sheets, golden sheets, magically enhanced sheets: none of these could compare to the comfort of warm, flannel sheets.  Slowly stretching his aching body out over his elaborate king-sized bed, Draco Malfoy gradually responded to the voice trying to wake him up.  "What?" he grumbled, scowling.  "It's nearly three in the morning."

            "Harry Potter is going to marry Ginny Weasley."

            It's amazing how quickly someone can wake up when they hear a bit of shocking news.  The young blond man jumped up in an instant, ignoring the small stabs of pain shooting through his body.  "He can't!" 

            Harry had been Draco's first and only everything: kiss, lover, heartbreak.  The fact that he had moved on to someone else, a girl, a Weasley, instantly sent a tearing sensation straight through his already weak, ravaged body.  Draco had believed with all his heart that Harry would come back someday to find him, that he would forgive him for everything that had happened.  That thought had been the only thread that kept his sanity close by through everything that had happened over the past few years, and now even his dimmest hopes had to be extinguished by a damned Weasley. 

His cousin, Kathryn Malfoy, simply nodded.  "I saw them.  Tonight.  They came in the restaurant.  You know the signs: he keeps fingering his pocket, she's impatient for—"

            "Did you actually see him do it?"

            "Might as well have.  He had 'The Look'."

            "Just stop.  I don't want to hear it."  He had accepted the fact that Harry had left years ago, but the fact that he wasn't going to come back was ripping back through his heart's fragile scar tissue. 

            "Really, this is your fault, Draco.  You could have gone back for him any time over those years, but no.  Your damned pride stopped you."

            "He was the one who ended it, Kathryn.  You know this as well as I do," Draco spat, getting out of bed and beginning to pace angrily.

            "He left because you wouldn't let anyone find out about you two.  The secret was killing him, you knew it, and you wouldn't do anything about it."

            "My father would have killed me," Draco roared.  "And you know he came damned close to it in the end!"

            "Lucius is dead, Draco.  What's stopping you now?  At least talk to him."

            "He's engaged," moaned Draco.

            "He recognized me, did I tell you that?  He saw I was a Malfoy.  The look that crossed his face was absolutely crushing—he looked so confused and sad.  He hasn't forgotten you, Draco.  I know it."

            As he lowered his head, the pale blonde boy looked as if he was seventeen instead of twenty-seven.  Ten difficult years had passed since he had last been with Harry, yet it felt as if Harry had walked out only yesterday.   Fuming silently, he left Kathryn, changed into some presentable clothing, and went for a walk.

@}-----

            Their breakup had been an extremely brutal ordeal for the both of them.  Harry had always remained convinced that Lucius Malfoy would accept their relationship and that he and Draco could live happily ever after. No matter what, Harry wouldn't listen to Draco when he claimed that his father was clinically insane and would kill both of them without remorse or hesitation.  Harry had retreated to his dormitory for a week, refusing to even leave his bed, until a seething Professor Snape had personally entered the Gryffindor Tower and pulled him out for Potions.  Harry could still remember the shock he had felt at seeing the evil Potions Master looming over his bed, his blackish eyes glinting dangerously.  "Your other professors may believe you to be talented enough to miss an entire week's worth of classes, but you will not miss another second of my class.  Go.  Now."  Out of sheer terror, he had attended Potions, during which he stared at the wall and pretended that Draco wasn't in the room. 

@}-----

            The two men could still sense each other's presence, even after all the years that had passed.  Harry knew Draco was nearby, and he didn't give a damn, either.  He had been sitting on a park bench by a small pond for the past few hours, alternating his staring time between the small ripples on the pond, the little black velvet box, and the glittering diamond inside the aforementioned box.  Frustrated at how the evening had turned out, he snatched the ring from its plush velvet depths, examined the flawless diamond for the last time, and threw the damned thing into the pond.  Suddenly, he heard a familiar voice behind him.

            "What a waste," the drawling voice said.  "That was probably worth thousands of Galleons.  You could have at least let Weasley sell it to keep herself afloat."

            "Leave me alone," Harry snapped, "before I do something even more foolish."

            "More foolish than throwing away a priceless ring?  I know you've done worse than that in your past."  He stepped forward slowly, taking one graceful step at a time.  Even after everything that had happened over the endless ten years that stood between them, Draco hadn't lost his smooth, classic grace. 

            "So it's back to Potter, Draco?"  Harry kept his back to his one-time boyfriend, hoping against hope that he had the strength not to turn and face him.  One look into those lustrous eyes would shatter his frail resolve, which was already unstable from just hearing that damned drawling, cocky voice. 

            "I thought that's how you wanted it."  Inching closer to Harry, he could see the tension in his body, and he found it nearly impossible to resist running to the man.

            "I don't know what I want right now."

            "Well, when you finally figure out what's floating around in your little demented head, you know what to do," he whispered, coming within an inch of the back of Harry's neck. 

            "Why are you here?  Of all nights, why did you pick this one to come waltzing up to me?"

            "Maybe it was just a coincidence.  Maybe I just happened to see you sitting here after all these fucking years.  Maybe it wasn't.  Maybe this is all a part of some little twisted game that Fate likes to play on a Friday night, called "Let's Fuck Up The Boy Who Lived's Love Life," he murmured softly. 

            "Just tell me, Draco.  Explain what's going on before I make another mistake.  Fuck fate, fuck your cryptic messages, fuck you, fuck me, and fuck this whole damned world.  Just fucking tell me why you're here now, when you could have showed up on my lovely fucking doorstep years ago and saved a few people a lot of pain."

            "I heard that Weaselette didn't like the way you drooled over your waitress tonight, that's all."

            "How did you know about that?  And I wasn't drooling over her… she just reminded me of y—someone."

            "Said waitress woke me up from a nice dream about you to tell me that you were going to marry Ginny Weasley.  Kathryn is my cousin… she's a sort of low-level spy for the Ministry.  When Death Eaters go to lunch there, they don't stop talking business around her because she's a Malfoy, and… you know.  We've got a certain reputation."

            "Reputation," Harry scoffed, turning to see Draco for the first time.  What he saw chilled him to his very center: the man was nearly a skeleton.  Upon closer inspection, he saw that his hair was lackluster, with almost none of its old vitality in it.  Generally, the man looked like absolute hell had waged a war through him.  Circles ran under his eyes, making his white skin look even sicklier than before.  Shaking his head in amazement, Harry couldn't even bring himself to ask what had happened.

            Fortunately, Draco planned on telling him anyway.  "This is what five years in my father's dungeon can do to a man, Harry.  Five fucking years he locked me in there, with only enough food and water to keep me alive.  Five goddamned years ago he found my journals from Hogwarts.  Since that man has no sense of privacy, he read them all.  He devoured every last fucking word about us, saw the little doodles you made in the margins, everything, Harry, fucking everything!"