The Sunrise of My Heart

As the week went by, Harry tried very hard to accomplish a task set to him by Dumbledore: retrieve a memory from Slughorn that he didn't want anyone to see. In his frustration, Harry kept reading through his Potions book, hoping the previous owner had left some clue about making someone do something they desperately didn't want to. He found nothing there, though.
"Hey, Riley, do you happen to know of any ways to get that memory from Slughorn?" he asked me one night when I was sitting in the Gryffindor common room with him, Ron, and Hermione.
"No, sorry," I said. "Well, nothing legal or morally acceptable. I mean, there's the Imperius Curse. Or you could knock him out, force your way into his brain, and steal it. Although I think Dumbledore would frown on both of those methods."
Harry sighed. "This is impossible." He stared glumly down at his lap, but his head slowly raised and turned to me again. "Do you know if Draco's a Death Eater? Have you seen his Dark Mark?"
Hermione sighed loudly in exasperation, but he ignored her.
"Um," I said. "We don't actually spend a lot of time together shirtless."
Hermione gave a small cough, staring intently at the book she was reading.
"Hasn't he said anything to you about it?" Harry pressed.
"Why would he talk to me about it?" I asked.
"Your is girlfriend, aren't you? You two should talk."
"Okay, let's say for argument's sake that he is a Death Eater. Do you really think he'd tell his girlfriend, who is an open hater of Voldemort and close friends with Harry "The Chosen One" Potter?"
"I guess not," Harry grumbled.
I glanced at Hermione out of the corner of my eye and could see she was doing the same to me, probably burning to ask me if I had noticed it when we had had sex. Apparently unable to keep her question in, she turned abruptly to look at me. "Surely you've seen his bare arms at some point, though, right?" she asked, giving me a pointed look.
"Well, we did sneak out of Hogwarts, got drunk, and played a strip drinking game together a little while ago. But let me emphasize the "drunk" part here. Also, when Draco Malfoy is half naked, his forearms are not what you're looking at. He's a little thin, but surprisingly cut."
"Stop talking," Ron said, looking like he was about to puke.
"What? It's true."
Hermione was positively quivering with the desire to blurt out that I should have seen his arm when we had sex, so I sighed loudly and rolled my eyes.
"Stop looking at me like that, Hermione!"
"I'm sorry. I was just wondering if you had seen him shirtless any other time. A time when you could prove if he does or doesn't have a Dark Mark."
"Oh, my God, fine! Yeah, obviously he was shirtless the night that we banged each other!"
Harry and Ron both coughed loudly, and Ron toppled over in his shock at my words. Two pairs of very large, very shocked eyes were gaping at me, the mouths beneath them hanging open like great caverns.
"Y-you and Malfoy..." Ron started, but was apparently unable to speak those horrifying words out loud.
"Yes, Ron, me and Malfoy. Is that really so shocking?"
"No, but... It's Malfoy," he said, looking disgusted.
"Yeah, but it's also my boyfriend. And I happen to like him a lot, thank you very much."
"Great, then you should have seen his arm while you were...being intimate..." Harry said, his cheeks turning a bit pink. "Did you see a Dark Mark?"
"My hands were on his forearms from the moment his shirt came off. There really wasn't much of an opportunity for me to see one. And besides, I was a bit preoccupied. I wasn't exactly thinking about Voldemort and Death Eaters at the time."
"I guess that makes sense," Harry said, sounding a bit defeated. "But you could try to see it some other time, right? Like, the next time you two...are alone."
"Yeah, we're taking the whole "intimate" thing slow right now, so that might be awhile. And Ron, if you don't stop looking at me like a Thestral just popped out of my ass, I will give you a full blow by blow on what happened. With excruciating detail, including how his coc--"
"I'll stop!" Ron said rapidly, looking terrified of the next words that were going to come out of my mouth.
"What? I was just going to mention how his cocky attitude lessens a lot when he's with me." I smiled innocently at him.
"I think I'm gonna puke," he said.
"Oh, don't be such a baby," I said, rolling my eyes at him. "You'll do it too eventually."
"Yeah, but not with Malfoy," he said, like Malfoy was just the worst possible person anyone could ever want to have sex with.
"It could have been worse," Harry said halfheartedly.
"Yeah? How?" Ron asked.
"Could have been Lucius Malfoy. Or Crabbe or Goyle."
"It could have been George," I said.
"How is that worse?" Ron asked incredulously.
"Think about it. Prankster, fun loving older brother has sex with younger brother's best friend, and knows that younger brother would be a bit squeamish about said sexual acts. There would be no end of kinky jokes."
"True," Ron said, a haunted look in his eyes at that thought.
"Riley," Hermione suddenly said, "do you know what the Mirror of Erised is?"
"Yeah, why?
"What would you see if you looked in it?"
"Where did that come from?" I asked.
"I'm reading this book on potions, and it mentions Amortentia. Amortentia caused infatuation and desire, which made me think of the Mirror."
"Oh. Well, I'm not totally certain what I'd see. But I'd be old. Or older. Thirty, at least. And I'd have kids and a husband. But I don't know who I want that husband to be."
"What about your boggart?" Harry asked, looking at me curiously. "Did you face one in third year with Remus?"
"No. Remus was afraid that my boggart would be something that brought me pain as well as fear, so he didn't make me face it."
"But what would it be?" Ron asked. "What is the Riley Carson afraid of?"
"I don't know," I answered honestly. "Dead loved ones, perhaps. Or Salazar. Or the Basilisk. I honestly have no idea. I'm afraid of things, yes, but nothing really stands out in my mind."
"Huh. Guess you'll never know unless you face it," Ron said, brushing it off as Ron often does. This was something I loved about Ron. He could just ignore something unpleasant and move on with his life. When he wanted to, at least.
"Well," I said, "it's late. I should probably get back to my own common room. See you all in the morning."
I set off, slinking through the shadows to avoid getting caught. But instead of heading down, I stayed on the same floor. I was curious about my boggart, wanting to know what my greatest fear was. It may seem strange that I didn't know, but really it's not all that rare. We often don't know what scares us the most until we have to look it in the eye. So I headed to the Room of Requirement, asking it to show me my greatest fear.
Taking a deep breath to steady myself in case something was waiting in the room for me. I held my wand tightly and opened the door stepping inside. I frowned once I got in, looking around. I was in a rather small room, no bigger than the average classroom, and it was completely empty save for a trunk pressed against the far wall. When the trunk rattled, I realized a boggart was inside it. So the Room had chosen to bring me an image of my fear instead of the fear itself. I was instantly grateful for that.
I walked over to the trunk and pointed my wand at it. "Alohamora." Now that it was unlocked, the boggart inside could come out. The lid opened and out stepped a human. Not dead or mangled, not evil and cruel. Just a human. But it made all the sense in the world to me. The face kept flickering, changing features constantly before settling back down into its original form.
"Of course," I said. "What else could I possibly fear that much?"
The person standing before me was a beautiful woman with a long, flowing green gown and hair red as the sunset. And then she would change, flickering into another appearance, only staying for a second before another body took her place. Her expression always remained cold and empty, like the heart beating beneath the breast was made of stone.
I took a deep breath and stood up straighter, aiming my wand at that emotionless face. "Riddikulus," I said. Immediately, she changed into a pouting child looking like she hadn't got her way. I laughed, if only because I could never fear something like that, and the boggart was forced back into the trunk, which I then locked.
When I got to the Slytherin common room, Draco was waiting up for me as usual. I sat down beside him, absently chewing on my bottom lip and staring blankly at the wall facing me. I could feel Draco glancing at me, but I was too wrapped up in my thoughts to look at him.
"You've got a lot on your mind," he finally said, but I stayed silent for another few moments.
"We should probably break up," I said abruptly.
He raised his eyebrows. "And why is that?"
"Look, I was in the Gryffindor common room talking to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and they asked me what my boggart would turn into, and I didn't know. So then I left and went to the Room of Requirement and faced a boggart."
"And this has to do with us breaking up, how?" he asked.
"Because my boggart was Cassandra, and Roxanne, and a million other names and faces. It was me."
"You're afraid of yourself?" he asked in surprise.
"Yes! Because I am cruel and selfish. I take what I want and make my own happiness, and by doing so I cause people I care about to go through hell. You're not that attached to me right now, so you can just forget about me. Which is why I'm breaking up with you."
"I don't accept," he said.
"Excuse me?" I asked, looking at him in surprise.
"No." The word was very close to a snarl, startling me. "Fuck your curse, and fuck your break up. I refuse."
My eyes widened in shock. Draco didn't often use profanities. I set aside my shock to try and make him see reason. "Draco, you don't under--"
"I don't understand what?" he interrupted. "I don't understand that you're going to die? Yes, I do. I don't understand that you're trying to do this for me, to save me? Yes, I do. I don't understand that part of me will die with you? Yes, I fucking do. But you said yourself that you've been selfish in a lot of your lives. Well now it's my turn, dammit. I am not letting you break up with me. Am I understood?"
"Okay," I said after awhile. "All right, fine. I'm not breaking up with you."
"Good," he growled, pulling me to him in a crushing kiss that wiped all other thoughts from my mind. All that mattered in that moment was Draco.