"You will be careful not to tell the boy too much, Severus?"

Dumbledore looked at Snape over his half-moon glasses. Snape shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

"Yes."

"Good. I think we can agree that there is a time and place for all manner of business to be discussed."

"Yes," Snape repeated silkily.

"I must ask, Severus," Dumbledore said, looking at Snape with ill-masked curiosity, "why Draco approached you? I thought he had been threatened into silence, presumably by Voldemort?"

Snape twitched at that. "It's Potter, I believe," he said dourly. "He does... adore him," he sneered.

Dumbledore tilted his head.

"He told me so himself," Snape said, "under mild duress. If I recall correctly, it was along the lines of, 'I know he's going to find that and use it against me, he's going to torture me into giving Potter away or kill my parents or something, if you promise to keep me and my family safe I promise I'll give you as much information as I can'."

Dumbledore smiled gently. It surprised him, sometimes, how much Draco reminded him of his younger self. Far more than Harry ever did, as selfless and noble as he was at this young age.

"He wouldn't be the first to be captivated by those green eyes," Dumbledore said, not unkindly, and Snape shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "We can use that to our advantage, however. So," he continued. "The night you kill me -- don't look at me that way, Severus. This is the plan. On that night, you will take Draco to safety, under guise of fleeing from the castle."

"Voldemort will find him," Snape interrupted. "He has the Mark."

"Of course," Dumbledore said. "But it is imperative, Severus, that you get him away from the castle on that night."

"He told me, among other things, that he is repairing the Vanishing Cabinet in order to..."

"Yes, I did know about that," Dumbledore said. He did not elaborate.

"Well," Snape said, "I will be going now, Headmaster, I have a Defense Against the Dark Arts class in a few minutes."

As he got up, he turned back to Dumbledore and said quietly, "I think he always has adored him."

Dumbledore steepled his fingers and nodded as Snape left the office.

-

"Malfoy looks bad," Ron said with a note of glee in his voice.

As Slughorn passed their table, giving instructions, Harry snuck a glance at Draco.

Draco looked back at him and his face softened for a moment. There were dark circles under his eyes and he was paler than usual. He looked like he'd just been punched in the gut; with a sort of shell-shocked, despairing, reproachful air about him.

Thunder crackled outside.

"Good Lord," Slughorn muttered, "will this storm ever let up? Now then, everyone, turn to page forty-five, it should list a number of ingredients..."

Harry fiddled with the cover of the Half-Blood Prince's book, his mind elsewhere.

-

"Draco," Pansy murmured, looking at him balefully.

"What?" Draco demanded, staring at the page he was reading without seeing it.

"Where'd you get that book?" Blaise said curiously, peering over Draco's shoulder at descriptions of ungodly torture. "Nicked it out of the Restricted section, I expect?" he said casually.

"Draco, will you pay some damn attention to me?" Pansy shrieked. A first-year stared over vacantly, then returned to his solitary game of Gobstones.

"No," Draco said vaguely. He barely heard a word she was saying; her words washed over his brain like a particularly shrill ocean wave.

Pansy pouted and crawled closer to his lap from her spot on the couch. Leaning toward his ear, she whispered, "I'll show you my tits."

"I have little interest in tits at the moment, Pansy," Draco snapped, standing up abruptly.

Blaise snorted with laughter and raised an imaginary glass to him. "Cheers."

Draco stormed out of the Slytherin dormitory and straight for the far corner of the library, where he knew Harry sometimes holed up to study with that insufferable Granger.

There was no one there, however, so he propped his feet up on the table and continued to read.

Books usually held little interest for Draco; he preferred to put things in action, but this was a special book, full of a different sort of spell. Not all of them were hexes -- some were delightfully intricate in their casting, intended to do as much damage as possible to the opponent without inflicting physical harm.

Draco liked that kind of spell. He was glad he had been able to strong-arm a second-year into requesting the book from a teacher for research. Of course, if he had Potter's Invisibility Cloak, the Restricted section wouldn't be a problem...

Speak of the devil.

Draco looked up to see Harry standing there, a few books in his arms and bag slung across his shoulder. Granger was delightfully absent.

"Fancy seeing you here, Potter," he sneered.

"Yeah, fancy that," Harry replied evenly, looking around cautiously.

"We're alone," Draco said. He didn't mention Confunding Madame Pince as he walked in, in case she decided to start lurking around.

"Really?" Harry bit his lower lip, looking all of eleven again. His hair was wildly askew as usual and his cheeks were quite red, like succulent apples...

Draco took a deep, steadying breath. "Join me?" he muttered, keeping a close watch on the shelf next to them.

"You know, I think I will," Harry said with a laugh.

As soon as he sat down, Draco's hand found Harry's thigh under the table.

Above the table, they said nothing of it.