DISCLAIMER: I'm a newbie, and this is my First Attempt at slash. Brrrr. Quite scary, really. It all started with some story i chanced upon called Irresistible Poison, and being given to Incurable Curiosity, i drained it to the last drop. never looked back since. (someday I'll take a trip down to Spore and either kiss her/him or kill her/him.)

Hope for encouraging reviews for what should be lengthy epic. ambitious sucker, ain't I? *grin* looking for beta readers as well for the next 2 chapters ive completed that needs editing and ideas. I'm hoping to make friends in this place, y'all!! mail me!!

Draco Malfoy gazed out from the castle widow that was Hogwarts onto the rolling hills below. This evening the wind on his face was the softly beckoning call of freedom, a freedom he had surreptitiously longed for all his life but had never dared not dream of, a freedom he was now finally able to savour in quiet moments like these without fear, without that haunting certainty that such small joys were never meant to be felt by such as he.

This evening, he was conscious of the feelings of his long fingers resting upon the cool stones of the ledge. He felt with some relief the hard sturdy weight of the castle floor beneath his shoes. He was conscious of the wind moving around his robes, the slightly ticklish feeling as it rustled past his ears, leaving it a tingling pink. His silver hair streamed about him like so many flying moonbeams, incongruous against the inky blackness of the heavy cloak they danced upon. A single strand of silver had strayed away, wandering over to whip against a face possessed of the stark colouring and cut of limestones.

It was the first time in many years that he abandoned himself to just feeling. Feeling everything around him, and his place in it. For a short while at least, he feels he has a place.

Maybe even a home.

Such a word to Draco could only be whispered, but it was a word. Perhaps it existed hear, where he was now, coming back after so many years.

Perhaps...after all, he had only just arrived.

Of all the possibilities that he could have contemplated for himself in his adult life, the path he now seemed to be walking could not have seemed more unlikely. Or more impossible.

Or more what he wanted.

Freedom.

Draco closed his eyes and let the siren song of the wind take over him. Alone, with no one but the wind, he was safe, and could allow a lapse in the usually lofty façade he showed to the world.

       

Harry Potter walked quickly away from the bustling noises of the Main Hall, anxiousness and irritation quickening the stride of his long legs. He had been detained inside far longer than the necessary, far past the formalities of the function which had already lasted, in his mind, quite long enough. He had been practically suffocated with small talk, drowned with endless questions, and half blinded with all that bright smile and magically shinning teeth.

Most of the wizards were bent on congratulating him and looking forward 'to working very closely together'. Overwhelmed with well-wishers and chatter, but too polite and good tempered to tell them to sod off the way he knew a certain somebody else would have done, he had thrown his gaze at his lover, silently begging him for a rescue.

Draco Malfoy had responded by lifting his goblet towards Harry and giving him a silent toast before turning his attention right back to Snape. The slithery, oleaginous black haired bastard beside Draco had coolly raised one bat winged eyebrow at Harry, before turning back to respond to whatever Draco and him were talking about. Harry, after the initial satisfaction of wishing them both to burn in hell had felt his heart sink to the bottom of the floor, as his only lifeline drifted out of view as more well-wishing wizards swarmed over him in ever increasing floods.

An hour later, Harry's legs carried him rapidly across the grounds and up the staircases. He gave quick, brusque smiles to the portraits that waved and saluted him. It occurred to him to ask them where Draco had went, but it didn't feel somehow right to be talking to anyone about any aspect of his very complex relationship with his lover, not even to the walls which were, more often than not, terribly indiscrete.

Harry vaguely remembered that his own portrait hung somewhere on the Hogwarts walls, tacked for posterity after he was declared a hero of the Wars. He would have to look for it one day; the thought of conversing with himself was an experience heavy with far too many humorous potential to ignore. He'd just have to make sure that his silver eyed lover never came across it. Harry didn't doubt for one moment that Draco could, would dream up a range of far more embarrassing things to do with it if he ever got his highly immoral Slytherin fingers on it.

Perhaps he could hide it in Dumbledore's office, he mused absently. The way Draco acted around his beloved ex headmaster tonight gave Harry the impression that Draco would rather hex himself before he willingly entered the perfectly placid headmaster's office for a chat. Certainly the griffin carved stairwell would be an adequate repellent.

Harry walked the corridors easily, remembering the pathways as if it was only yesterday that he'd been a student at Hogwarts instead of more than a decade and a half ago. He had a hunch where Draco would be. The second time Harry had lifted his eyes to gaze at the Draco's seat again he found it empty of its occupant, leaving him feeling vaguely cheated of something he couldn't identify. Irritatingly, Snape had raised his bat-winged brows at Harry again, and Harry had felt his unspoken words in his head; lost him now, have you?

Harry missed Draco. He was used to the two of them being alone together where they could talk easily and share their thoughts. They had not talked for the whole day, and they had been seated separately during the dinner function.

And throughout the function Draco, hadn't talk to anyone but Snape. And he didn't once look at Harry. This didn't surprise him much, as Draco viewed happy swarming crowds with the equivalent distaste which he viewed happy swarming Cornish pixies, but Harry was irritated at Draco nonetheless.

He was irritated at Snape actually, because Snape got to sit beside Draco, and both of them had worn their infamous reputations around them like a protective cloak so nobody would dare waltz up to them, for anything short of a death wish or a dare. And he was vastly irritated about the seating arrangement which sandwiched him between McGonagall, who had been his old Head of House, and Madam Sprouts, the Herbology Professor. But as they were all situations which were out of Harry's control he decided it was a lot easier to direct his resentment towards Draco instead. The sod wasn't worth much else anyway.

Harry had a sinking suspicion that the seating arrangements at the High Table was going to be a permanent fixture for the remainder of the school year. Harry was very fond of his super strict ex-transfiguration teacher who was, in her own way, a rather caring mentor, but he rather didn't relish hearing her endless prattling off of complaints on faulty student behaviour which had failed to live up to The McGonagall's Painfully Exacting Standards during every mealtime.

As for Sprouts, Harry privately thought she was as boring as a bean, and was possessed of the most God-awful squeal that anyone under heaven had ever tried to pass for a laugh, and poor Madam Sprouts had tried to do so several times during the banquet, to every one's disquiet but especially Harry, who'd not dined enough times for his ears to be conditioned of the sound, if one might even call it such.

Harry was aware and could too easily imagine Draco's merciless teasing if he knew of that particular fact, and so was resigned to suffering it out in silence. He had a sneaking suspicion that the slimy Slytherin was already well aware of the awful truth though, and had probably been deriving the greater part of his amusement for whole night from it.

He found the object that occupied his roving thoughts on the vast landing of one of the East Tower staircases. Watching Draco there, like he had done so countless times once upon a time in the past. Some of his most poignant memories came swarming back to him of their last days as students of Hogwarts.

How'd they'd finally started talking, after they'd run out of time.

He remembered also the slow, hesitant development of a relationship between two arch enemies in the midst of a war, the birth of something so indescribably alive in an arena where everything died. A lot of its tentative beginnings took place hear, in this small space of cold stone floor overlooking the window of the East Tower, though both of them had not been aware at that time of what would soon develop between them in the years that succeeded their student years at Hogwarts.

So much more has transpired since.

Harry found that his anger had already abated and dissolved, like the scarcely visible mist which swirled beyond the window that Draco was gazing out of. He gazed at his lover, saw how his marble white face and stony features were as beautiful as they were unnatural. Traced the stiff, exacting features carved out of blanc breathing stone, and compared it to the warmer, more human face he remembered as a child and the earlier years of his adulthood.

Draco would no more look like that, not anymore. War always takes away the things we love.

In the moonlight, Harry's memories came rushing back to him, remembering Draco as a silent, brooding, seventeen year old Head Prefect during in his final years at Hogwarts, how he had avoided Harry, avoided Slytherin and their common mealtimes, had pushed away even his beloved Quiditch, and was seldom seen at all except during classes, or the few times when Harry had caught sight of Draco sweeping up the skies in his broom during the first glimpses of dawn, when nobody would be awake to see him. Or so he thought.

He remembered their last conversation at Hogwarts, during the Graduation Ball, the most meaningful conversation Harry ever had in his young life at that time. It took place hear in the East Tower. In the very spot that Draco was standing on, they had first clasped each other, strangely enough for a dance, without the fetters of enmity or animosity, both of which had fallen away at some indiscernible point during their last year.

It had started as a joke, as a cynical parody of their mutual loneliness, two enemies forced into each others arms. It had ended up as the most meaningful dance of his life, for Fate's parodies were always stronger ironically than any that the human mind can think of.

Thereafter, any subsequent dances that came close to being the shattering experience which that one dance had been was only, and only if that dance was with the same person.

Harry's gaze swept over his lover's closed eyelids, the rare expression hovering about Draco's soft lips seemed a little like what might be a quiet sort of happiness. Hear, amongst the playful wind, Draco seemed freer, younger, his face unmarred by worries, forgetting temporarily the problems he would tell no one, not even Harry about.

Harry closed his eyes, and again compared his lovers cold Veela-featured face, this time with the human one he had met again, many years after their haunting last dance. When they had made what they could of their lives, and chosen their causes and their camps, or as the case might have been for the both of them, when it had been chosen for them.

He clearly recalled the shock he received when he had followed, upon an inexplicable impulse, a mysterious hooded figure bowed over and limping slowly along Diagon Alley. The very air around the cowering figure had radiating so palpable a despair that they rolled into waves and crashed into Harry's screaming senses. He had followed, on a whim that had turned out to be his the path to his Fate, the limping figure into Knockturn Alley disguised.

The cowed figure had then entered a shop. Harry would always remember well the way his heart filled to bursting point when a trembling voice had brokenly whispered 'Malfoy Manor' as thin, shaking bloodless hands threw the floo powder into the fireplace. He had caught sight of the face that had haunted his dreams, it would now haunt his living sight.

It was the face of man already dead. The once unmarred features of the most beautiful face Harry had ever know was now covered with scars, the limpid pools of dark mercury which filled Draco's eyes were drained of every emotion but pain, staring vacant and lifeless into the empty space beyond, blank and devoid of hope. He didn't see the broken man again for the next two years.

Hope was a very subtle thing, Harry discovered that day. You never knew you had it till it was gone, and it destroys you.

Somehow they both lived through the years, each in his own way. Through the bugles that called for inevitable war, through the painstaking campaigns and crippling pressure that brought them both to the brink of insanity and caused lucid dreams of escape and suicide.

Through the nightmare they found themselves in when the war broke out in earnest. Through the catalyst that brought the entire wizarding world on its knees.

Then, they'd met again, on a battlefield swimming with blood, each a champion for a cause, none of which were really their own.

The war had ended so many years ago, and they've never parted since.

To Harry's vision, as he blinked back his sudden memories, the graceful lines that formed Draco's face and hands were almost translucent, while his body almost disappeared into the black shadows of the stones around him. The moonlight suited his lover well. In fact, Harry had wondered in one of his fancier moments when they touched at night if Draco was not half made of moonbeams, and would dissolve in his fingers when the sun rose.

Those silver grey eyes suddenly fluttered opened, and Harry drew his breath sharply at their out-worldly beauty. They shone like stars, and contained a universe, one which Harry desperately hoped he was a part of, but could never really be sure. One which was so deep and so private that he feared they would never be accessible to him.

Then those silver eyes turned their gaze at him.

"Good evening, Professor Potter. I trust you didn't disappoint your fan club too much when you distangled yourself to look for me?"

Harry blinked. Somehow his lover's voice had never became a sound he could liken to familiarity, despite the years they had spent living together. Draco's voice, face, body or anything to do with him could never, Harry thought to himself mildly, take on the associations of a comfortable old pillow that he assumes most people move on to after a number of years.

"You disappeared again Draco. Leaving me alone."

Harry's tone went up a petulant notch. " As always."

His tone was slightly accusing, more out of habit than any real form of annoyance. He already knew a contrite apology was the last words that he would ever hear from Draco, and only after 'I like daisies' and 'I'll willingly wear pink'.

Harry grinned to himself. They had gone through a thousand versions of the same conversation over the years, and it always lead to one conclusion. A delightfully, pleasingly physical conclusion.

Forgetting himself, Harry's grin widened. His mind jumped ahead of the verbal sparring that would always inevitably escalate into passion, and started calculating exactly who's assigned bed chambers were nearer. Draco's, he mused. The teachers sleeping chambers were much further below.

His lovers silver voice however, cut through his thoughts.

"Why Professor Potter, I'm amazed that fame has gone to your head this late in life. Were you disappointed with the paltry amount of grovelling handicaps at your feet this evening, and wished me to join the swelling ranks of your ever adoring? As I recall, there were only twenty or so people hanging onto you like a human cloud every other moment I happened to look your way."

Harry pretended to be incredulous.

"The reason nobody dared to come within ten feet of you, Professor Malfoy," Harry sneered in an admirable imitation of School Day Draco, "was given to the simple fact that even a blind magician could sense the cloud of venom emanating from your impervious glare the whole evening."

"...You refused to talk to anybody but Snape..." Harry blithely continued in a voice that clearly enunciated his confounded perplexity of just why anyone would want to talk to Snape.

"...Both of you looked like an ugly old pair of bats, brewing something evil in the corner. I happen to know that many people would have wanted to congratulate their brand new potions master on his first day, but nooo, they didn't dare to."

Harry was really beginning to warm up to his diatribe.

"...Instead they asked me convey their...ah, anticipation (Draco's mouth flexed and curled into a smile at this).. of working with 'our great Mr. Malfoy in the near future' . Besides, in case it slipped your mind, as I'm sure it no doubt did, tonight's dinner fest was held in celebration of us. Our return to Hogwarts. As Professors. It looks a little bad, wouldn't you say, when one of the main guest of honour suddenly vanishes without a by your leave."

"Besides..." Harry finally added as an afterthought, "I've missed you."

Harry decided rather generously that he would rather skip the usual sparing this time. The dinner had ended late, and he wanted to go to bed. And he wanted to take a long, long time getting to know his... new colleague. In bed.

"I'd simply thought to leave the fancy words and anecdotes to you, Harry. You play the part rather a bit more well than a Malfoy ever would."

The drawl in Draco's voice was dismissive enough to make Harry feel that his (admittedly) rather splendid speech had gone unappreciated. The thought caused him some anguish.

"A Malfoy, Draco, would be too well bred to appear displaced in any sort of function. You merely couldn't be bothered to be kind."

Harry blinked at his own words. He didn't really know where that retort came from. He wasn't going to be efficient at pulling Draco back downstairs and into bed if he was going to fodder their conversation with anymore potential fireworks.

His lover in any case, merely snorted. "Aren't you the public face of wizarding England?" he asked, before continuing,

"I did not feel displaced. I merely chose not to act out a role given to me because it was one which I didn't elect to play. I never do. It is not in my nature to feel the need for approval or acknowledgment of my fellow human species in this little existence of mine..."

It was a classic Malfoysque drawl, the kind that Harry knew existed solely for the purpose of fuelling the flames of his irritation.

"...And my distance is the best kindness I could give anyone in the long run." The words were a murmur, spoken softly, perhaps less to Harry and more to himself.

Again, as Harry watched the liquid colours within those swirling eyes, he could sense the veiled warning, the weight of a thousand emotions emanating from his complicated lover. He always feared such moments, and tried not to acknowledge them, since Draco himself always acted like nothing happened after he said them.

They had a intricate relationship, were convoluted and bound to each other with threads which were as fine as gossamer spider webs, with a grip as strong as steel. Their love for each other was both a poison and its cure, and so many other things besides.

But not separation. Never separation.

"It didn't have to start so soon, did it? We've only just arrived."

"I'm just playing my potions master part, Harry. We cant all be Gryffindors. The world would unbearably stuffy. Besides, two moons will come out tonight if I became pleasant to people for a change, don't you think? We mustn't be selfish and upset the natural order of things too much. Our being together is already causing enough violation in the balance of the universe."

Draco's words came out clipped, but there was a smile in his voice as those silver eyes went back to the window, and his slender posture was relaxed.

"I don't think you'll ever be too pleasant for anybody's taste, Draco." Harry whispered as he watched the reclining man before him. Harry admired Draco's elegance with a mixture of appreciation and annoyance. Draco's body language never revelled anything that didn't look as it was done effortlessly. Even for something as simple as staring out of a Hogwarts window, the insufferable man had to turn into a veritable work of art and sculpture.

Or maybe Harry was just a lovesick sod.

Harry sighed. He suspected that the truth leaned closer to the 'lovesick sod' answer.

Ah well. Lovesick sods at least got to enjoy its accompanying virtues, which were that of making love, if only he could convince his silly silver-haired partners to comply.

"Come to bed, love."

Draco didn't budge. He sighed, apparently very comfortable from his vantage point, leaning against the cold castle walls.

"The moon is waxing tonight" he said pleasantly, as if Harry hadn't said anything more than make some dull comment on rain clouds.

He obviously did not have sex on his mind. He as usual, never felt the cold. Harry begin a slow boil inside the cooking pot that was his temper to keep himself warm. Its that bloody Slytherin blood, he thought mutinously to himself. Their veins are made of ice.

But Harry knew that was not true. Somehow Draco, the cool, self-possessed mode of Slytherin House, had turned out very differently from the commonly heralded expectation. He had turned out to posses the most unexpected, which was that of a warm, beating heart. And he had then revealed this heart to Harry, and given it to him.

Harry remembered the day like it was yesterday instead of so many years ago. Since then he had felt Draco's legendarily eluding warmth countless times, more than that, he had tasted the fire of passion that burned underneath the such a cold exterior.

Especially when they touched each other, under the blind, liberating blankets of the night.

Well, that was exactly what Harry wanted tonight. The words 'warm', 'passion', 'bed' and 'Draco' all seemed to hold the same meaning to him.

"Come to bed, Draco" he tried again.

"Are you tired?"

"No...But I wanted to get into bed before I got tired" he said pointedly. The words 'with you' hung unspoken in the air between them.

"Its too beautiful a moon to waste."

Harry rolled his eyes but didn't reply. You're too beautiful to waste, he grumbled to himself under his breath. He waited expectantly in the darkness.

Then, "Aren't we supposed to sleep in separate chambers, Harry?"

"Sod the establishment for assuming things. I'm hear to teach, not to become a bloody vicar."

"You have a one track mind you know."

Draco's voice was dripping with amusement now. He had been reminiscing about the two of them growing up together at Hogwarts, particularly about Harry's particularly nauseating incorruptibility, and couldn't believe that the man standing a few steps below him , growling softly into the darkness, was the shy, guileless and innocent, irreproachable Harry Potter. Now horny Harry Porter, he thought wryly to himself.

Who would probably sit on him if he didn't get some tonight.

It was a night of pleasant thoughts, Draco concluded, feeling infinitely satisfied. He turned away from the window, biding a quiet farewell to the moon before joining the only lover he'd ever taken in his life. Harry was glowering at him, but when their eyes met, his expression quickly fell, and a tenderness tugged upon his heart. Those impossible emerald eyes emanated all the moonlight he needed. Ever.

Together, they walked down the stairs, fingers brushing, and made their way back into Draco's sleeping chambers.

       

Harry opened his eyes when the slow baking of the sun on his face finally became unbearable. He limbs trashed about on the unfamiliar bed for a minute before his reason slowly drifted back into his head.

Why is it so dammed bright? And where is Draco? he wondered.

He remembered the dinner fest that celebrated his and Draco's return to Hogwarts that came, in Harry's case, (and in his case only) with many a hearty well wishes and a slapping of backs. One of these friendly slaps was particularly memorable, seeing as it comprised of three parts wallop and one part thumping smack, by none other than his favourite Gameskeeper Hagrid, who'd also obligingly leaked a fair number of salty tears over Harry's favourite cheese custard, which didn't quite taste the same thereafter.

Draco had tsked lightly at the bruises he saw on Harry's back and offered to shrink the size of the gamekeeper's bones to that of a five year old. His tiresome silver eyed lover had somehow become convinced that there were a goodly number of wizards in Hogwarts that would benefit inordinately from this, Harry himself included, or rather Harry himself particularly.

Draco had then seen fit to proceed arguing for the better part the night upon the practical and evidently safer virtues of Pint sized Hagrid for all and sundry, which was to say that it was mostly for his own amusement. Poor Harry had been filled with dreadful images in his head which almost, but not quite spoilt his mood for the bed sport he so hankered for.

Despicable Slytherin.

Harry squinted into the sunlight. Since they arrived at the castle two days ago, Draco had been his usual moody and unapproachable self, and had shrugged off all attempts by others at conversation. He had only allowed Harry, Dumbledore, and Snape to carry on any semblance of interaction with him and even then the man had only answered in a polite, distracted manner.

Except of course, when they made love. Harry felt that he could almost purr as he remembered the night's unhurried events that took place after their walk down to Draco's airy chambers. They had slammed the door shut and fallen heavily behind it, kissing and caressing. Draco was absently trying to grab hold of Harry's wrist with both his eyes closed and his mouth busy when Harry had glanced up and saw his lovers chambers for the first time when it was a washed by the silvery colours of night.

It was breathtaking. The silvery colours, and...

"What's that moon doing hear, Draco?"

"Mmmm." His lover was understandably preoccupied.

"I'm not going have that thing..."

Harry pointed to what seemed like an impossible large moon sitting on the sill (had the windows been magicked?) hovering, practically staring, Harry thought wildly;

"...watching us while we make love"

Draco of course chose to ignore what he called one of Harry's famous Moment of Insanity.

"It's a dead thing, Harry, love."

"Then why do you speak to it so much?"

At this his lover withdrew, and stared into Harry's eyes. He didn't answer for awhile.

"I'll draw the curtains" he said finally.

"There are no curtains"

"We're magicians, Harry. Did that irrelevant fact slip your mind? Or do you behold such breathtaking visage in front of you that your mind can only think of contemplating the absolute beauty that is Draco Malfoy?"

"You're such a sod, Draco. Come hear. And get rid of your friend."

Draco had waved his wand at the windows, restoring their mood and their privacy. The rest of the night had been claimed with the overtures of their lovemaking.

Looking around in the daylight, Harry mused over the layout of the room he was in. Draco's strange relationship with the moon had led to an unprecedented arrangement for his living quarters to occupy the higher level floors in one of the towers, in which vast windows stretched themselves across the curving walls. He belatedly realised that that was the reason why there was so much more sun than usual.

Harry had, like all the other normal teachers, including Snape (though he hated think of Snape as normal) made his home in the lower quarters, which in Harry's good opinion was warmer, cosier, and much more accessible than running up and down four flight of stairs.

And, said quarters didn't turn the bedroom into a stone baked oven, and the bed into a baking sheet for Harry the Cookie during the day. Harry grimaced, decided that he had stewed for long enough, and swung his legs onto the floor.

"Ow!"

Harry mouthed the words automatically because his feet complained, but his mind had a hard time registering that the stone floor was...cold.

Grimacing, Harry rubbed the soles of his feet comfortingly against each the other. The sunlight was baking him alive, the air clung on his bare skin like a warm towel, and the floor was cold? He gingerly tested the hard stone again with a toe, which curled back frozen one second later as he yelped. His throbbing toe pleasantly informed him that said floor was as a matter of fact freezing, thank you very much.

Evil floor. It was just like Draco to have a floor as nasty as himself.

Harry stared at the dark grey stones, as if the answers were written there. Perhaps if he stared long enough...

"Harry?"

The clear voice jolted him from his privacy. His lover, of course, was already wide awake.

"Draaakah? Verr-rrrr-yuuu?" Harry knew he slurred like a wraith in his early morning voice. He could already feel Draco's curling tendrils of amusement even before the prat responded in his lilting, irritatingly self possessed voice.

"I was in the showers. You might want to pay it a visit as well, once you felt you've slept enough."

Harry swung his bleary eyes towards the imposing wooden door. There was no Draco standing there. For awhile he was none pulsed; Draco was always spectacular at appearing around doors. Hanging, lounging, leaning, standing, waiting, anything, but you somehow hardly ever caught him actually opening it. Harry had long ago put it down to a certain special brand of non-human Malfoy breeding, along with a thousand other inexplicable things.

"derrs nooh-shuuuwerrrr-erre" Harry said eloquently to the heavy door.

Dam, Harry thought. His tongue was always a late sleeper, probably on account of the amount of work it did late into the night.

The though of sticking his feet on the floor was bad enough, but the thought of standing under a stinging shower was rapidly becoming unthinkable. Harry shuddered, and then forced his sandy eyes wider apart. It was shaping out to be a nasty hangover sort of morning, although Harry distinctly remembered not taking any alcohol...that was baring the mild allocation which could have done absolutely no harm at all, he excused himself.

"The shower room is behind you, love." Draco's voice was impossibly irritating in the morning.

Harry turned; the room moved into a blur, and then his eyes stumbled on some dark form of an appropriate Draco-like length.

He screwed his eyelids against the light, blinking as his lover's slender profile came gradually into view. Harry could see that Draco was already wide awake and immaculate in his raven coloured robes. He was dressed for teaching, which was to say that he had substituted the usual shorter, light weight cape they both wore for functional purposes in exchange a more elaborate robe that swept along his slender form and ended at his feet.

The results were quite spectacular, and rendered Draco's already feminine form more androgynous than ever. His lover wore a black shirt of interminable material under the ceremonial ensemble, enhancing the lines on a white throat which Harry was sure Draco's new students was going to concentrate more on than anything else in during the boring potion class the undeniably good looking git must be about to give.

God, but he defined beauty in Harry's existence . Wide awake now, he drank in the sight that was Draco; the wet sliver blond hair hanging long against his back, the incredible mercurial eyes, which at that moment was looking back at Harry in an unmistakable gesture of love. The pale, pale skin that made him look almost see though at certain points of the day, the perfectly symmetrical features lying easily across a perfectly angular face...and...

The fact that Draco was again standing in front of a door, looking absolutely, breathtakingly perfect and absolutely, incorrigibly amused. A second, smaller door which Harry had never noticed before, which was no doubt placed there for the sole reason of making Harry look like a fool.

Draco's amusement had always doused Harry's flaming thoughts into icicles at a speed nothing else could match.

He could see it now, in Draco's generous mouth as it widen and curled into a corner, observing the sequence of Harry's own thoughts, from his mildly irritated sleep deprived expression to his dizzy light headed state as he flung his eyes around the room looking for Draco, to the obvious tribute he paid towards his lovers good looks when he located him and the final 'Oh' his mouth had shaped themselves into when registering that there was actually another door in the room. Which was obviously the bath room.

The blistering sod was always amused.

Over the years Harry had grudgingly acclimatized with the fact that there was probably no way in hell that their positions would ever be reversed, and when he, Harry, would be the who was amused one instead. He could pray for the chance, but he somehow doubted it would ever arrive.

And he somehow knew that if it ever did, it wouldn't be in the morning either.

Although he was sure that Draco didn't, couldn't possibly wake up with perfect with the perfect speech and mental faculties in the morning, but he's yet to do anything remotely resembling the awkward rituals that Harry had to go through every morning in front of his lover's laughing silver eyes before his mind really woke up and joined his body.

Thus Harry felt that in times like these, which was actually every morning, the best way to respond was of course by being totally disagreeable.

"The floor is cold. You've jinxed it." Harry glared at the taller blond man who was now walking over to the bed.

"This in a common chamber in the castle tower, love, not one of the wood panelled sleeping rooms. The stones are bound to be cold, and I placed none of the usual heating enhancements as well. I didn't know you'll be....visiting...." the tone turned slightly teasing, "...since you made it amply clear when we arrived that you preferred the comforts afforded to you in your own chambers.

"The windows I created," Draco gestured fluidly with one white hand as he swept smoothly around the bed, "are secured by spells that magnifies the view and allows in the room half of whatever temperature it happens to be outside. For some reason it does not affect the stones of the castle, which are probably under some of its own enchantments. It doesn't bother me at any rate, and I don't recall you being anxious about it yesterday."

Draco ended his explanation with a smile and a shrug as he reached behind Harry, and sitting down beside the bed, wound his arms around the front of the other man, fingers linking, and with a contented sigh, kissed him behind the neck.

Harry had narrowed his eyes, but as he had been too much enjoying the effects of Draco's drugging morning kisses he decided to forebode retorting on Draco's slyly suggestive comment about his lack of complaints yesterday night.

Mornings always found him suffering a lack of advantage. If Harry was going to respond to any sort of imbroglio it would be on his own turf...and that would be any public place with people around.

Which was practically the rest of the day.

As slow smile begin to creep along his lips at the prospect, Harry begun to wonder not for the first time, if some of Draco's more Slytherin characteristics were rubbing off on him. He was surprisingly unbothered by the thought.

He leaned into the other man, savouring the cold, still damp skin of his lover's face against his own warmer sleep flushed cheeks. He shuddered slightly, quietly delighted at the soft flicker of Draco's long wet hair against his skin as Draco rested his head on Harry's shoulder, and as they both enjoyed the secure pressure of leaning on each other.

Both lapsed into a comfortable silence, enjoying the moment for what it is, for the simple ones are more often then not the most precious. Of such stuff are the best memories made of.

Together they watched the sun gleamed brighter against the colossal glass window which Harry privately mused to himself was more of a see-though wall. Draco must have a closet exhibitionist streak about him, he thought.

He was by now resigned to the fact that his lover's taste in living spaces leaned slightly towards the unorthodox. At least Draco would not be blowing holes into the walls of Hogwarts for the sole purpose of enjoying the wind.

Or would he?

Harry still winced whenever he recalled the night when he had walked home after an exhausting 18 hours spent shut and isolated in a small box they called an office down at the Ministry of Magic, thinking of nothing more than Draco, bed and rest. He'd had a miserable day, and was quickening his steps towards the welcome he greedily anticipated back at their home in a comfortable wizarding suburb.

That day, Harry elected to walked up the street to his house instead of fly, and he'd been scarcely aware of the unusual number of wizards and witches out about their gardens at what could only mildly be described as a rather unusual hour. Harry was blissful oblivious of the reason they were milling around, pointing and whispering, and although he vaguely wondered if he was being given some Very Strange Looks, for a War Hero and The Boy Who Lived, Not to Mention Defeated Voldermort, he was rather used to being stared at, and even more used to blocking it out.

Harry hadn't care, and was too tired to analyze the motive. All he wanted was dinner and Draco...

Then Harry had reached the small short path leading up to his home. He had stumbled to a halt, his Firebolt falling away from him with an unnoticed thud by his side as he gaped at the sight of Draco waving amicably at him from an upstairs room.

A room which seemed to have rather suddenly lost half its walls and entire ceiling.

Looking back, Harry realized that his encounter with his newly decorated 'room' had passed by with a blur. Draco had cheerfully explained that dinner would be a lot better taken 'under the elements' and that they could 'watch the moon as they ate.' He had magicked the dinning table into their new 'room', and lighted candles which hovered charmingly in the air and moved slowly about the room, covering everything in dancing blue flames.

Draco had also laid out a meal that could have came straight out of a medieval romance novel.

Harry, to his irritation when he finally pondered about Draco's motives the next morning realized that he had fell straight for the obvious diversion. He knew Draco needn't had bothered; the fact that his lover himself had looked impossibly beautiful that night, in a white silk shirt and his hair flaming against his shoulders, had more than enough distractive clout.

Harry till today still highly suspected that his lovers exceptional looks and tantalizing conversation that night had been a conscious strategy, despite Draco's pleading to the contrary.

Draco could be such a Slytherin sometimes.

In any case, Harry did not feel particular bothered himself with a few holes blown into his walls. In fact, Harry had thought privately to himself that if such, ah, enjoyable results was the fruits of loosing a few walls, Harry himself did not mind blasting a couple more down.

Naturally he had not said this aloud to the man seated opposite him that night. Heaven knows the unpredictable blond might actually do so.

Harry had quickly got used to this quirk, the way he got used to a hundred other smaller quirks of Draco's and had sent out the subtle signal of his consent. He knew Draco would be quietly anxious about the nature of Harry's response, although no expression betrayed themselves on Draco's as he chewed thoughtfully, the blue flames casting themselves on his silver face as if it was a mirror.

His lover didn't need much, and never asked for anything, a fact that always left Harry with vague feelings of guilt and doubt. Harry was painfully aware of Draco's formerly lavish, aristocratic life as a Malfoy. Even if today the name was hissed at, and the Malfoy Manor burned to the ground, even though they've been through the kind of wars that made such petty considerations laughable, if Harry had a chance to make his unassuming lover happy for something as simple as a hole in his house, then by God he should thank the stars, and that dammed moon that he'd inexplicably come to hate after being privy several times to Draco's apparent obsession with it.

So Harry had to live in a house with a hole. He'd lived in a cupboard before, after all.

"Uh, it is rather.. um, nice, Draco..." he'd stammered, lifting his head up to survey the blanketing night sky, while his lover surveyed him for his response.

"...but couldn't you just magic the ceiling to reveal the sky, darling? Like we had in Hogwarts during the festivals? It would be just as... " Harry lifted his hands helplessly as he searched for an appropriate word.

"...romantic, and we wouldn't lose two walls and a ceiling, not to mention a goodly part of the roof in the process.."

And privacy, Harry added silently. He was absolutely sure that Draco, who was supposedly a much bigger privacy freak than Harry, had to be aware of the gossip they would surely be courting from their nosy, no-life wizarding people that made up the sum of their neighbours, now wide awake and gaping like fish at two o'clock in the morning.

He was later to wonder why he hadn't taken the opportunity to hex the lot of them.

Draco had bit delicately on a piece of fish, looking for all intent and purposes totally unaware of the attentive stares radiating out from the neighbours that he made sure he absolutely nothing to do with. He took his time before he replied in a dissatisfyingly short answer.

"I'd have know it was fake" was all he said.

Excellent. Another well executed attempt to flick on Harry's slow boil button. It worked too.

The infuriating blond man had then gone on to more pleasant topics of conversation. Harry had blinked, unsure of what to think of about the whole thing, and finally settled on not thinking about it at all. He had nodded his assent and lifted his glass at Draco, who responded with a small triumphant smile, and the topic was not brought up again between them.

The only problem was that it was brought up again and again... by newspapers, neighbours, friends, during functions, during work, in letters, and every hour in between. It was too delicious not to talk about, the most famous couple in wizarding England blowing holes into their walls for fresh air. Wizards in general well know for enjoying the essential eccentric quirks or two, but blasting walls apart were apparently something of an unknown novelty.

Harry had, over the next few days exasperatedly tore up several own post arriving at his office from The Daily Prophet which requested for an interview about the current shocking trends in modern décor.

Draco, as usual, ignored the outside world and enjoyed his new living space with all the propensity of a cat who had discovered a new goose feathered cushion. Whereas Harry avoided the room (he felt that 'fishbowl' was a much more appropriate word really) like it was hexed, Draco spent most of his time where, undaunted and indifferent, in front of view and world. His breathless audacity and obvious lack of respect for, well everything, romanced and scandalized the bored inhabitants of wizarding London.

They loved to hate him, and Draco was more than happy to return the feeling in full. It was a vicious cycle which Harry more often that not found himself caught right in the middle of. And pummelled from both sides.

Sometimes it left him feeling very tired.

Thus, Harry had found himself worried sick about the backlashes from the two sides which he was heavily involved and cared deeply about. Draco's shadowy past, links with Voldermort and family name did certainly had not endeared him. The wizarding community was small and suffocating co-dependant, especially after the war was over and the sum of wizard entirety was cut by more than half. Considering that his lover was tied to the cause of such a terrible blight in wizarding history, Harry truly couldn't fault the hostile reaction and cold shoulder that Draco had received.

Draco's auto defensive attitude and blithe opinion of the world sometimes brought him more them more trouble that he knew to Harry's very well scrutinised life in the public office he held as a senior ministry officer. Harry was aware that Draco had no idea how difficult it was for him, and he liked this ignorance. Draco had been through enough. They'd both been though hell...

Hell was over, in any case.

Harry pressed further into his lovers embrace, blithely ignoring the fact that he should really be preparing to get himself ready for his very first day of class.

From today, he was officially a Hogwarts professor. From today, the first day of classes he, Harry, would take on the mantel of a teacher for the Defence Against the Dark Arts, and share with his students the shadowy nature of the creatures and spells which lurked beneath the superficial safeties of their sun-lit world.

Harry himself found that he had mixed feelings about accepting the post. If Dumbledore hadn't insisted that he, Harry, should take this position and no other, and if Harry himself had not entertained such high amounts of love and respect for the counsel of his ex-headmaster, he would certainly have balked and given up on his dreams to return to Hogwarts.

Of course, everyone had thought that the Defence Against the Dark Arts position was exactly what Harry was after. It seemed the most obvious choice for the Boy who Lived, now the Man who Defeated Voldermort.

Nobody could imagine Harry not getting anything other than what he wanted. Nobody could envisage him walking any other than the path that was so obviously set out for him.

Famous Harry Potter.

He didn't expect anyone other than Draco to understand that he wanted nothing to do with the dark arts again. Ever.

Ron and Hermione, though they were his best friends, didn't come close to fulfilling the role the Draco now played in his life. Because of the roles of friendship they'd played during Hogwarts, both Ron and Hermione had gone on to take on the roles of his private cheerleading squad. They saw in themselves the responsibility of making sure Harry had all the support and encouragement he needed in his fight against Voldermort.

And while he was at it, Harry might as well rescue the whole dam world from the crushing grip of Evil.

For someone like Harry, who could do anything, they assumed it would be a walk in the park. And Harry, when faced with the shining expectation that lit up their eyes, couldn't tell them how he really felt. Not after years to neglect at the hands of the Dudley's, not after years of solitude, now that Harry was finally wanted, no, needed, he couldn't turn away the people that came to him with such hope in their eyes.

And so it continued, the two sides of Harry, drowning between the desires to run and the desire to save the world.

He'd learn to swallow his own fears and apprehension, and then he'd learn to swallow his own bitterness and pain.

The hardest to swallow, of course, was the guilt and the regrets.

Only Draco had understood the depths of his emotion. That underneath the public Harry, there was a Harry that was screaming that he had been put though enough. The real Harry was tired, the real Harry who cried when he was afraid, the Harry whom when Draco had first found him, was already hovering precipitously on the brink of suicide.

Only Draco had cared enough, or knew enough, to draw aside the façade and seen the stricken boy within, torn and trembling from years of public misuse.

A boy who knew his reason for living, but didn't know who he was.

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