Eclipse

Chapter 5

The rope that's wrapped around me is cutting through my skin
And the doubts that have surrounded me are finding their way in.
I keep it close to me, Like a holy man prays.
In my desperate hour, It's better that way.
(~Melissa Etheridge)

Draco spent a long, difficult night wrestling with the slew of thoughts, questions, and images that danced unceasingly through his mind. He was desperately trying to make some sense of them all, and failing miserably. There was something strange about Potter, something tenacious, intense, and utterly infuriating, and whatever it was had left Draco dangling from a noose of his own design.

Over the years, he'd told himself he wanted nothing more than to see Potter helpless, trapped, tormented, receiving every bit of punishment Draco had ever felt the other boy deserved. Then he could watch Potter break down. It would be all the proof he needed, to see how pathetic Harry Potter really was, how worthy of scorn, how weak without the rest of the world bending down to kiss his arse. Not once had he considered that he might be wrong; that Harry might have that strength all on his own, and a tenacity Draco was unable to counter.

Harry Potter had been a permanent resident of Draco's most intense thoughts for years. Until now, he had never let himself dwell on the reasons why Potter was such a driving force behind his actions and motives. It had just been the daily routine; wake up, brush teeth, go to class, harass Potter. However, with the current situation weighing heavily on him, he berated himself for not having realized the extent of this problem. It had been a complete obsession, and that obsession was bound to get to him eventually. He had known it all along; he just hadn't admitted it to himself. Somehow, he'd always known.

The only way he was going to be able to sort any of this out would be to talk to Potter for himself, question him, get into his head. The official reason for his assigned guard duty became secondary to his new personal mission. He wanted to know why that little scar on his arm was such a sensitive topic. He wanted to know how the hell Potter could be so nonchalant when he spoke of the Dark Lord. Mostly, underneath it all, he needed to know why he found the boy fascinating.

Until now, his fascination had been from the outside, looking in. Draco's interactions with others, even his family, had always been impersonal. With Potter, he had bridged that gap, even if inadvertently. Now that he'd had a taste of the inside view, he wanted more. Needed more.

He could scarcely admit even to himself that he'd had a conversation with Potter, but that's exactly what it had been; a civil conversation. It had left him jittery, like a child who had just discovered the candy jar hidden in the back of the pantry; afraid that he'd be caught, yet unable to resist the temptation of the sweet things hidden there. He replayed the entire dialogue over in his head, repeatedly, and found that his stomach would jump around uncomfortably at certain points in the conversation.

When Harry had dared him to say the Dark Lord's name, it had scared him without a doubt, but thinking back on it made his breath catch tightly in his throat. He had felt a strange prickle along his scalp when Potter had whispered, "Thank you," and a harsh jolt whenever he'd been unfortunate enough to be caught by one of those intense gazes; eyes that seemed to drill through his brain, to a part of him he didn't want to acknowledge. When he'd grabbed Harry's wrist, or as he'd stopped Harry from falling over backwards when the injuries threatened to cause him to pass out again, the physical contact had felt strange to Draco, like touching a live wire.

Draco cut off the memory of the touch as quickly as possible. Even with his family, physical contact was limited and impersonal. Closeness just wasn't a part of his life, but who would have expected that such a brief contact, with a person he'd been sworn to hate, could put a vulnerable little crack the barricades he'd erected around the part of him that required warmth, touch, and human emotion? Those things just didn't belong in the life of a Malfoy. There was no place for it. It was a liability.