Third Place - Romance

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Words...strange comforting words. That's all I really have left. The dementors have taken everything else. It's all gone; been gone for awhile now and these words are all that I am left with.

Sometimes when I fall asleep I can still see their faces and remember what I used to call 'the good times'. The times before I was betrayed and sentenced here to die alone and abandoned by the world that once held me up on a pedestal. But mostly when they, my former friends, family and mentors, haunt my dreams their faces are anything but pleasant.

Even now when I close my eyes, I can see the exact moment when my life all started to fall apart. Most people who thought that they knew me would guess it was the moment that Voldemort stole my family from me, or even when Dumbledore stole my childhood by placing me in the care of my muggle relatives. But no, even despite all of that, I had somehow managed to maintain my innocence; still looked at the world through a pair of rose colored glasses, so to speak. No the event that I am referring to occurred much later, and had much more of a devastating and lasting affect on my life. It was when they stole my soul.

It was an unusually crisp and clear day in late April. Plans were underway for a Spring Ball that year, my seventh and final year at Hogwarts to be exact. I had left the company of my friends to take a walk out along the lake to try to clear my head. It had become something of a ritual of mine that I had started the summer before, when I had stayed at Hogwarts for some extra tutoring and defense training.

My thoughts that day had been focused not on the escalating war that raged outside these seemingly peaceful grounds, but on the internal emotional struggle that was taking place within me. I was never one to date much, and can't say that I had ever been involved in a relationship that lasted more than a couple of weeks. No one knew it, but for the last year or so I had been secretly attracted to a certain blonde. I was pretty sure that the feelings were mutual, but we had never mentioned it, and had certainly never acted upon it. In retrospect, I think that at least one or two other people may have suspected something, but now I will never know for sure.

The air had grown noticeably cooler as the sun had set and I finally realized how much time had passed while I was lost in my own little world. I hurried back into the Great Hall hoping to be able to catch the end of the evening meal, as I was quite hungry. I decided that if dinner was already over that I would simply sneak down to the kitchens for a bite, as I had gotten into the habit of doing lately. Being Head Boy did have some privileges, besides my private room and bath. Funny how now in retrospect I realize that I never did have to opportunity to eat another meal inside the only home I had known since I was eleven.

The moment I entered the Great Hall was the moment that it all came crashing down.

Harry gently pushed open the doors to the Great Hall hoping to slip in unnoticed. However as soon as he entered the room he could tell that something unusual was happening, something unusual and very wrong. Harry barely had time to take into account Ron and Hermione's tear stained faces before he was grabbed from behind, his arms twisted painfully behind him while someone searched him and confiscated his wand.

"Hey let me go...what are you doing?" Harry protested as he was roughly dragged forward over the hard stone floor to the Head table where a bunch of Aurors had gathered.

Harry was surprised when he looked over at the Gryffindor table and saw the hatred and accusations that resided there on the faces of his housemates. As Harry quickly scanned the hall, he saw not one friendly face. "What is going on? What has happened?"

Before Harry could assimilate all of the facts, he was sucker punched in the face by none other than his best friend, Ron Weasley. "I hate you Harry. How could you do that to me, to my family, after everything we've done for you? How could you do that?" Hermione was quickly at the red heads side trying to calm him down.

Harry tugged at his restraints but he couldn't defend himself, or even wipe the blood that had started to flow from his nose; but he tasted the coppery substance as it trickled into his mouth. Harry continued to watch his enraged friend with wary confusion.

"She loved you Harry, everyone knows that. What happened, you didn't want her but you didn't want Creevey to have her either? I never took you for the jealous type; you make me sick." Ron tore the Head Boy badge off of Harry's robes and threw it onto the floor.

Harry ignored Ron for the moment, knowing that when his hot headed friend was upset that he couldn't be reasoned with, and he was now more upset than he had ever seen him before in all the time that they had known each other. "Hermione, what's going on? Please tell me what I did."

Harry visibly flinched at the look of utter disgust that he saw on a face he knew almost as well as his own. Before Harry could utter another word, he was jerked around and made to face what appeared to be the lead Auror.

The short brown haired middle aged women eyed the tall handsome teen standing in front of her and shook her head in disbelief, how could something like this have happened? How could an entire community have been so wrong about someone as they were about this boy? Some hero he turned out to be. Taking a deep breath, the Auror in a clear voice stated "Harry James Gryffindor Potter, you are hereby charged with the malicious and premeditated murders of Virginia A. Weasley and Colin M. Creevey. You will be reprimanded into the custody of the Ministry of Magic until such time as a trial can be arranged."

Harry felt as though all the wind had been sucked out of his lungs; as his body sagged and was supported only by the Aurors that held him tightly on either side.

"I didn't do anything...I was just out for a walk." Harry muttered to anyone who was willing to hear him, still trying to process that fact that Ginny and Colin were dead. "I would never hurt Ginny or Colin. You've got to believe me." Harry raised pleading eyes to where the Headmaster sat, begging his mentor to believe him.

Harry's heart shattered at the look of disappointment and betrayal that was displayed in the normally twinkling blue eyes. The last thing that Harry remembered seeing as he heard the Auror's shout of "Stupify" was Draco Malfoy trying to make his way over to him and being forcibly restrained by a concerned looking Professor Snape.

Much of the time between his arrest and trial passed so slowly it was painful. Harry was being held in isolation at the Ministry of Magic and wasn't allowed any visitors. More than that, Harry had no way of knowing if there was anyone left that still believed in him. A wizard solicitor had spent some time with him the day before explaining what was going to happen at the trial. The solicitor was going to present a defense after the prosecution presented their case against Harry. Then the defendant would normally be asked to testify on his own behalf. Typically, defendants are given a truth potion, usually Vertiserum, but as Professor Dumbledore had already informed the Court, Harry was immune to Vertiserum, which was the strongest truth serum known. As a result, Harry was not going to be allowed to testify. The defense would only be permitted to refute the prosecutions evidence, and not present any of their own. Harry wasn't told what evidence the prosecution had, but from the look on his attorney's face, his chances of being found innocent were slim to none.

Having been kept in a potion induced slumber during much of the time awaiting his trial, Harry was largely disoriented when he was forced into the court room. The scared boy glanced about at the many people that had gathered at what would later be known as 'the trial of the boy who killed'. Most of the faces Harry was not able to recognized and correctly assumed that the large majority of them were from the media. The few faces that he did know could not be classified as friendly. Only Professor Snape and Draco Malfoy met his eyes.

Thinking back now Harry didn't remember much of the actual trial, his so called friends were called to testify against him. Supposedly, Hermione and Ron witnessed his attack and murder of Ginny, and Colin was found previously dead at the scene. It was assumed that Harry had come upon the young lovers and surprised them during a private moment, and in a jealous rage quickly murdered Colin and then turned against Ginny. Not only were there eyewitnesses to the murder of Ginny, but his personnel magical signature, which is as individual to a wizard as their fingerprint, was also found at the crime scene.

It was funny really. Now, when his life was about to be stripped from him for a crime that he did not commit, he would remember some ridiculous comment that Draco had made to him last summer when they had honed their fighting skills at Hogwarts. One evening after a late night swim in the lake Draco had put his arm across Harry's shoulders and said, "Love your enemies Harry, because your friends may turn out to be a bunch of assholes." That statement never seemed as true as it was at this exact moment.

Not many people realized it, but Harry and Draco had buried the hatchet sometime during their sixth year when they both realized that their petty bickering and squabbling took too much time and energy. Time and energy that neither boy had to waste. Both Harry and Draco had realized during their fifth year with Voldemort's resurrection that they could no longer afford to not pay attention in class. This that revelation both boys had became dedicated to learning. Not only their school work, but any extra defense skill, hex, spell or charm, anything that could potentially help them survive the trying times that were sure to come, was absorbed. Even then Ron hadn't understood; none of the other Gryffindors had really, now that Harry thought about. In retrospect he guessed that's when he started to drift away from his housemates.

With hard work and dedication, Harry found himself improving in all areas of study, even potions. Always considered to be a powerful wizard, his innate magical ability led him to top scores not only in defense against the dark arts, but also in charms and transfiguration. Harry still remembered the look of disbelief on Hermione's face when the O.W.L. scores were posted and Draco and Harry had tied with Hermione with a perfect score of 13.

Since the beginning of his sixth year, Harry had really started to distance himself from his peers. Granted Hermione was still book smart, but as their training progressed through the years the spells became more difficult to cast, and she often had difficulties as her innate magic was only average.

Having gone through wizard puberty two years earlier than normal, which per the Headmaster only happens in extremely powerful wizards, and summers spent with extra training both physical and magical with Severus, Remus and Sirius, turned Harry into a confident, resourceful and very powerful wizard.

Harry had learned a lot about himself during the times spent training, fighting and learning with Draco and in many cases Severus. Harry smirked when he remembered how his blonde friend had convinced Severus to teach them dark arts classes over the summer. Many evenings found the three of them sneaking down into the Chambers of Secrets for private lessons, the only place on Hogwarts grounds that was shielded enough so that no one was able to detect the practice of the dark arts.

Harry was shaken out of his private thoughts when the judge asked him to rise to hear the verdict. Harry tried not to let anyone know how badly he was shaking as he stood there alone and listed as the judge found him guilty of the murder of two people who had been his friends for more than five years. In his next breath, the judge then sentenced him to life in Azkaban, as wizard law did not permit anyone under the age of 18 to be sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss.

The cheers when the verdict was read, especially from a group of familiar red heads cut through his heart like a knife. Any hope that Harry had of having someone believe in him died then and there. Even Remus, who had been one of his parent's best friends and a friend and mentor to Harry himself, looked at Harry with extreme disappointment and disgust. It was the first time ever that Harry was thankful that his Godfather, Sirius Black, was still on the run himself from the Ministry, so that he would not have to look at the hatred that he was sure would be reflected there. The irony of having the only person that he still could consider family, his godfather, who had been convicted and sentenced to life in Azkaban for a crime he did not commit was not lost on the raven haired Gryffindor.

Harry tried not to flinch or react as two dementors came forward to escort him to prison. Keeping his head held high as he left the Court Room while listening to his mother scream as she was murdered by the Dark Lord was one of the hardest things he could ever remember doing.

Draco watched the trial proceedings sitting in the farthest darkest corner of the Court Room. He sat beside his Godfather and confidant, Severus Snape. Draco looked around him in disbelief. He had always thought that Harry had lead a perfect life, the rule breaker that never got caught, the Golden Boy, and had even resented him for it for the better part of five years. But this was unexpected, ridiculous even. Did people really think that their hero, their savior for Merlin sake, was capable of cold blooded murder? Had everyone just lost their minds? How could anyone who even remotely knew Harry think that he would have done the terrible things that he had been accused of?

Draco remembered when Harry was arrested in the Great Hall. No one could fake that kind of disbelief, that innocence that was the essence of Harry, yet Harry had vehemently denied being involved in such hideous crimes. Draco knew without the smallest doubt that Harry was innocent.

He had tried to get to Harry, to help him, protect him, but Severus had held him back. They had been keeping their friendship a secret and it would not have served Harry any good for a suspected Death Eater's son to be seen supporting him.

After Harry was taken away by the Ministry, Severus and Draco tried to find out what had truly happened, but so far had no such luck. Whoever had set Harry up had done a thorough job of it but Draco and Severus were determined to keep trying to prove that Harry had been framed. It seemed unusual that even Harry's Head of House, McGonagall, and the Headmaster, who had always been two of Harry's strongest supporters had apparently turned their backs on the teen.

Harry and he had grown quite close over the past two years. No one but the two of them actually knew how close they truly were and Draco had been confident that they would grow to become even closer given the right opportunities after they had graduated. Draco had come to admire Harry for who he was, not who everyone believed him to be. Draco had even acknowledged to himself last summer that he had come to love the dark haired Gryffindor. He knew that Harry was starting to feel something toward him as well, but knew that in matters of the heart, Harry was as pure of freshly fallen white snow and it would take some convincing on his part for Harry to consider pursuing a relationship with him. Draco elected that any such relationship would have to wait until after graduation, and then only if Draco wasn't going to be forced by his father to join the Dark Lord.

The Malfoy family has for a long time been supporters of the ideals of elitism. The concept that pure blooded family's were stronger and better then those that regularly mixed, or diluted their blood with muggles or muggle born witches and wizards was revered in the older wizarding families. And to a certain extent Draco continued to recognize the virtues of such a train of thought. Continuing to introduce the wizarding world to muggle born witches and wizards could eventually lead to exposure of magic to all muggles which would eventually bring forth the persecution and destruction of the way of life that had been in Draco's family for more centuries than anyone can remember. In Draco's mind educating muggle born witches and wizards wasn't worth the risk.

As such, Draco had been raised to accept the expectations that had been established for him long before he even understood what a muggle truly was. First and foremost he was expected to join Lord Voldemort as a loyal servant. His initiation had been scheduled over two years ago to take place on the night of the first full moon following his graduation. Draco felt fortunate that he was able to convince his father that it had been too risky for him to take the dark mark while still attending Hogwarts and as a result still under that muggle loving fool Dumbledore's nose.

Secondly, he was to hate Harry Potter.

Only Severus and Harry knew about his pending appointment with Voldemort, and the three of them had been working on a way for Draco to avoid having to swear an oath of allegiance to the monster that his Father and so many others followed. Now it looked like all their planning was for not, Draco knew deep down in his gut that Harry was about to be convicted of murder.

Even knowing that it was going to happen still didn't prepare the young blonde for hearing the sentence that would destroy not only Harry's life, but also his own. Draco looked on as the dementors came towards where Harry stood. Draco watched through tear filled eyes as Harry refused to be cowered by the creatures that affected the young man so severely.

As he left the court room Harry refused to look up and meet the gray eyes that were watching his every movement, knowing that he didn't want Draco to remember him this way, and Draco understood.

A Moment in Time - Chapter 2

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