I Learned Your Pulse

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

The next few days had Draco living in a state of complete solitude. Nobody noticed him anymore; he didn't bother speaking up in class; he never ate in the hall (why bother, the food was disgusting to him); he spent most of his free time just looking at the thestrals - never actually approaching, just looking and wondering. Wondering about how different everything would be if Voldemort had won, if Potter had died. Mostly, he focused on one key detail; the notice stuffed into the waste bin in the common room wouldn't exist.

The notice his father had been sent to prison and his mother was on severe house arrest.

He had half a mind to go up and get it a day after he'd thrown it away. But re-reading it and determining a false meaning behind straight-forward words wouldn't help. His father was in Azkaban, being tortured by dementors - his mother had an ever-constant threat of being subject to the same things. There was no denying it. And it had been day after day of Kingsley lurking in the Great Hall, monitoring the goblet twenty-four/seven and everyone who put a name in. Almost a week. The Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor had grown on him since the day they'd 'met'...

But at the current moment in time, he could be found sitting on the floor of the common room. The bookshelves were officially 'integrated', as the students called it now, since Slytherins and Gryffindors, for the most part, got along. He was staring at his hands, committing what the Germans called 'Veldschmirtz'. He didn't notice Potter rummaging through the waste bin furiously, swearing and saying something about a lost quill. He didn't notice when he picked up the rumpled notice Draco had carelessly disposed of. And he didn't notice when Potter looked at him, twiddling his thumbs idly in a corner, staring into what appeared to be empty space. But he could hardly notice when Potter sat down right beside him, clutching the paper.

"Sorry about your parents," he said. Nothing more.

Draco tore the paper from his grasp and in one fluid movement stood and fed it to the fire. It crackled with the new fuel, casting a glow brighter than before.

Harry didn't say anything and didn't judge. He joined Draco, staring at the fireplace.

"Today's Champion Day," said Potter casually, as if expecting nothing more from Draco as the blond boy's eyes gazed between the wars of separate flames. "We get to know who's in the Tournament."

Draco didn't respond.

"You ought to come. You're Head Boy."

"And you're Harry Potter. People will care more about you being there than my existence in general."

"True."

Draco hated it, but he couldn't say anything bad about Potter right then. He as being completely fair and polite, not to mention honest. He wasn't lying about anything. Not even Draco's last statement, which they both knew to be exactly as he'd declared: true.

"Just out of curiosity, why do you never eat in the Hall anymore?"

"Not hungry for the food there," said Draco quietly. Both boys' eyes were still trained on the fireplace.

"You sound like Hermione in fourth year," said Potter, fighting to keep the laughter out of his voice. "She kept calling it 'slave labor' when she found out it was made by house elves..."

He trailed off and moved toward the door. "Coming?"

It took Draco a split-second to decide. "Fine."

The two eighteen-year-olds moved toward their destination in comfortable silence.

"Why didn't you tell her?"

Potter hadn't broken stride, nor had he looked at him; Draco glanced at him quickly, and then in front of himself again as they continued walking. "Who?"