Harry/Draco - Nightmares and Daydreams (1/3)

[bloodstrom]

Title: Nightmares and daydreams
Author: Bloodstrom
Length: ~15,000 words
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mentions of torture, guy on guy action, if you needed warning about that
Summary: Harry and Draco find themselves growing closer when Draco starts helping Harry with his nightmares
Authors note: This was written for the Draco tops Harry fest, for a prompt that can be found here. It's also my first time writing slash, and my first time writing anything this long. Thank you to wendypops  and snowcrystal86 for betaing this. It wouldn't be half the story it is now if you hadn't helped me out!



Harry curled up under his blankets and listened to his dorm mates settling in to sleep. He could hear a snort from Ron as he turned over, gentle snores from Neville, and a bed creaking slightly as Dean patted his pillow and lay back down. These noises were all comforting to Harry. They reminded him of his first year at Hogwarts, the first time he had other people who cared about him. His first time feeling truly safe.

It was the other noises that reminded him how much had changed. The loud snoring and snorting from across the room belonged to Goyle, and a few feet away from that came the sound of sheets rustling as Malfoy tried to find a softer spot on the bed. These noises reminded Harry that he was not only sleeping in the same room as his former arch-nemesis, but that he had suggested it in the first place.

The summer before school started up again had been a busy one, as Harry had had to sit in on most of the Death Eater trials. He was there to identify those who he had seen acting for Voldemort, the ones who had been there when Voldemort had first risen, and whether he thought this or that Death Eater had been Imperiused. For a few trials though, he was called to testify about specific crimes. He had to dredge up memories of the people that he loved being hurt and killed, and usually walked away from those trials to go back to Grimmauld place and get quietly drunk, alone in his room.

Among all these trials, the strangest one was the trial for Draco Malfoy. The trial was barely an hour long, and was held in a court room that was only large enough to fit the Wizengamot. The media swarmed outside the courtroom, all hoping to catch a juicy bit of the proceedings floating out from under the door. The newly appointed Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, read out the list of charged against Malfoy, and Malfoy stated under Veritaserum that he spent most of the war either a virtual prisoner in his own house, or at Hogwarts.

When Harry was called to the witness stand, he testified that Malfoy had, indeed, helped him and his friends when they were taken to Malfoy Manor. After the court had called a few more witnesses, some younger Hogwarts students who Malfoy had helped escape punishment, the only thing that was left to discuss was the matter of the Dark Mark.

In the end, Malfoy was let off. Kingsley declared that the Mark had been put on him before he had become of age, and therefore could not be considered a free choice. For the crimes he did commit, Malfoy was sentenced to community service. It was to be carried out at Hogwarts, helping fix the castle up so that school could resume on schedule.

The media had a field day. Pictures of Malfoy were splashed on just as many newspapers as pictures of Harry were, and everyone had a different theory as to how exactly Draco managed to escape Azkaban. Some said he bribed the Wizengamot, which was utter rubbish as all of the Malfoy funds had disappeared with Lucius when he fled persecution. Others claimed that he had used a powerful dark artefact on the Minister, and was now in control of the whole Ministry. As far as Harry was concerned though, the strangest theory had been put out by a teen witches’ magazine that Hermione showed him. The magazine claimed that Harry and Draco had been lovers throughout the war, and Harry had pulled some strings so that he could have his boyfriend back at Hogwarts. When Harry was done laughing at the ridiculousness of that story, he ripped the page out and put it up on the wall of his room at Grimmauld Place. When asked, he stated that it had provided the best laugh he’d had in ages.

Harry didn’t give Malfoy any more thought the rest of the summer, intent on enjoying the company of his adopted family and friends. Fate, though, was not quite so ready to let them forget about each other. The first day back he ran into an argument between Headmistress McGonagall and Terry Boot. McGonagall had decided that separating the eighth years into houses was not necessary, especially since they were all supposed to be adults already. Terry disagreed, and refused to sleep anywhere that didn’t have a good strong door and at least three magical locks between him and Malfoy.

Harry highly doubted that Malfoy would mess up his second chance by hexing any of them in their sleep, and suggested that the Slytherins sleep with the Gryffindors, while the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws could have their own room with as many locks as they wanted.

And so here he was, listening to the any sounds from Malfoy’s bed and trying to tell if he was asleep or not. Not because he really wanted to know, but because for some reason it was comforting to know that Malfoy was all right. Because if Malfoy could pull through and start a new life after his had been ripped apart, then Harry could sure as hell do the same.

*   *   *

For the third night in a row, Draco jerked awake at the sound of someone screaming. He knew it was Potter, and he knew that if he just put his pillow over his head, and squeezed his eyes shut, he could pretend that he was back at the Manor, and the sound was the Screaming bird his mother had once given to his Father after Grandfather Abraxas had visited and insulted everything from the colour of their carpet to the after diner mints. Draco had almost lulled himself back to sleep when the screams started cracking, and Draco could have sworn that someone was pulling Potter’s eyes out with their bare hands.

How could the others sleep through this? He knew how Greg did; his body seemed to go into hibernation the second it touched a bed. Why were the others asleep though? He sat up and looked around at the other beds. Weasley hadn’t bothered to close his curtains, and even in the dark Draco could see him drooling on his pillows. The others all had their curtains drawn, and with a start he realized that they had put up silencing charms.

If they knew to put up silencing charms this early in the year, obviously Potter had been having these nightmares for a while. Draco was about to close his curtains and put his own charms up when Harry stopped screaming. Draco’s hand halted halfway to his wand, but before he could lie back down, Potter let out a horse cry that sounded somewhat like “Please stop” before the screams started again.

“Fuck it,” Draco muttered, throwing his covers to the side and striding over to Potter’s bed. He wanted to get some sleep, and no matter how much he had hated Potter in the past, he didn’t want to hear anyone in that much pain. Besides, he still owed him for saving him from a life in Azkaban, not to mention immolation by fiendfyre. Hesitating slightly, Draco pulled back the curtains and gasped. Not only did Potter sound like he was being tortured, he looked like it, too. His eyes were screwed shut and he was curled up into a ball, his arms clutched over his head.

“Potter?” Draco said hesitantly, reaching out to shake him awake. Potter moved very fast for someone coming out of a nightmare. He sat up and grabbed Draco’s hand, eyes wild and not quite focusing in on his face.

“Malfoy?” Potter asked after a moment, still trying to catch his breath. Draco winced at how hoarse his voice sounded, though he was surprised that Potter still had any voice left at all. Realizing why he was squinting, Draco grabbed Potters glasses with his free hand and he finally let Draco go to put the glasses on his face. “I was screaming again, wasn’t I?”

“Screaming is a bit of an understatement. It sounded like someone was peeling your skin off with a rusty knife.”

Potter let out a short bark of laughter. “Pretty close actually, but the knife wasn’t rusty.”

That drew Draco up short. “Merlin Potter, don’t tell me that you were actually dreaming about being skinned.” Instead of answering, Potter held his arm out to Draco. He glanced nervously at Potter, who was staring back at him unabashedly.

“It’s ok, Malfoy. Bad dreams aren’t catching.” Draco decided to indulge his curiosity and crawled onto the very edge of the bed to get a better look at the arm. Then he hissed, and could feel the bile rising in his throat. The only reason he didn’t shove himself backwards was thanks to the bedtime stories full of death and destruction that his father had been so fond of telling him when he was little. The only difference was that the stories were only in his head. Draco knew over a hundred different ways to get a grown man to scream, but he had never seen the aftermath.

Oh, he knew what had happened in the war, he knew that people were being horribly tortured, he knew that people who really didn’t need to die were being killed left and right, but after Dumbledore’s death on top of the tower, Draco had seen no more evidence of the war. Now, he was terribly glad of that fact. He didn’t think he could face much more solid evidence of torture.

Potter’s arm was covered in a small network of scar tissue. Some scars were simply the raised white lines where a knife had been drawn across his flesh, but those weren’t what drew his eye. The other scars were all about half an inch wide. They were long and twisted, winding up his arm in a strange sort of dance. Each one looked like someone had made two cuts, then wormed a knife underneath the skin and sliced it off.

“Who did this? Why? Why would…” Then Draco remembered who he was talking to. Potter had had every dark wizard in Britain after him for over a year. When Draco looked down at the wizard in question, he had his face turned away. “Potter?”

Harry took a deep breath. “Do you really want to know Malfoy?”

Harry’s arm was still in front of his face, the scars taunting him, telling him that he was a useless little boy who hid from the things that go bump in the night. Draco needed to know, if only to prove a point to himself.

After Snape had whisked him away from Hogwarts, Draco had been brought back home. He stayed there for the summer, waiting on his parents and their Death Eater friends. He attended some meetings with the Dark Lord, but he was left in his room when there was anything of import to talk about. For the whole summer, Draco did his very best to portray a tough Death Eater that would still cower at the feet of a maniac. Then he was sent back to school, where he was expected to attend class and look the other way when he saw little kids wincing as their book bags brushed against their backs.

In times past he would have laughed about it with his lackeys, but in the end it was just further proof that the war he had signed up for wasn’t about pureblood ideals, but about revenge and power instead. Draco’s illusions about the illustrious Dark Lord had cracked as he watched Dumbledore fall from the tower, and yet he still followed the madman without question. At times, he had found himself wondering if Potter would have helped him if they had started out friends. It didn’t matter anyways. He hadn’t had the courage to make a difference during the war, so the least he could do was face up to the aftermath.

“I need to know,” Draco said in a voice much sturdier than he felt. He pulled himself further onto the bed, so that he was sitting cross legged right next to Harry, both of them in pyjama bottoms with no shirts. Draco wondered for a second why he was doing this. Potter had no reason to like Draco, even if he didn’t seem to hate him anymore, and Potter had never really stopped being the wizarding world’s favourite hero, even if he didn’t act stuck up and self-righteous like Draco remembered.

Still, Draco was sitting beside Potter, on Potter’s bed, wondering if Potter would mind if he touched his arm. For his part, Potter was sizing Draco up, and suddenly Draco knew that Potter was considering ignoring his request, simply to keep Draco… Safe? Happy?

Draco looked straight into Potters eyes, and then back down at his arm. He slowly reached toward it, giving Potter plenty of time to move away, and when he didn’t, he gently ran a finger down the longest trail. “My father did it, didn’t he? That’s why you don’t want to tell me.”

Potter sighed and looked away from Draco. “He gave me the smaller ones. Your aunt gave me those.” Draco nodded jerkily, and moved his hand down to trace the delicate white scars on the inside of Potter’s wrist. Unlike the big scars, these didn’t have a pattern. They were all over the place, some almost nonexistent, and some long and jagged, like his father had been running out of patience. Or time.

“How…” Draco stopped and choked back a sob. A tear slipped out of his eye, trailed down his nose and landed on Potters arm. Potter looked at him, and didn’t say anything. He just waited, and Draco choked back another sob. “Why don’t you hate me? The rest of the world does. People who don’t know me treat me like something on the bottom of their shoes, and my family did this to you and you still… still…”

Draco cut off as Potter moved, sitting up against the headboard. His arm rose up with him, but he kept it extended, an invitation for Draco to keep tracing the scars. This time he didn’t bother holding back what he was feeling. It wasn’t like any of the other Gryffindors could hear him, and even if Greg managed to get up, he was probably used to hearing Draco cry at night.

Once again, Harry simply waited quietly, not even remarking on the fact that Draco was holding his hand. When Draco could finally look back up at Harry, Harry curled his fingers around Draco’s hand and drew him in closer.

“You aren’t your father Draco.” Draco jerked at the use of his first name, and that there was actually someone in the world who still believed that he wasn’t some little duplicate.

“I know its odd coming from me, and it took until your father made me bleed for information for me to figure it out. Sure, for as long as I’ve known you, you have been a horrible, insufferable prat, but the worst thing that you’ve ever done to me is break my nose, and I was spying on you at the time, so I guess I deserved it.”

“I tried to Crucio you.”

Harry’s eyes drifted to Draco’s chest, and his hand followed to touch the scar that ran from one shoulder to the opposite hip. “You only tried. I did this to you before you could. I… I’ve never done something so horrible to someone before.”

Draco shivered. Was this how Potter… Harry felt when he touched the scars? It was strangely comforting, and Draco stayed silent, the two boys acknowledging each others pain, apologising silently for what they felt they had done. It was strangely cathartic, sharing their scars, both physical and emotional. Draco wondered if he had ever really seen Harry clearly in the past.

Then Harry yawned, and his hand fell to Draco’s leg. “Thanks for waking me up,” he said, and slid back down the bed, tossing his glasses haphazardly at the table. They caught on his finger and fell short, and Draco leaned over to put them back on the nightstand. When he turned back, Harry was already asleep, his hand still on Draco’s leg. Draco wondered if he looked that peaceful while he slept. He figured that if Harry could look like that after all he had gone through, he probably looked like an angel. He smirked at the thought, and then started thinking about going back to his own bed. When he moved though, Harry’s hand tightened briefly, almost as if he wanted Draco to stay. So instead, Draco propped himself up against the headboard, and settled in to watch Harry sleep.

*   *   *

“Morning Draco,” said Harry as he passed his bed the next morning. Draco had just poked his head out, and mumbled a quiet “morning” before ducking back behind his curtains. Ron’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

“You just called him Draco!” Ron exclaimed, choosing to highlight the obvious before tackling the real issue.

“Well, I do believe that’s his name. Unless he changed it since I saw him last.”

Ron gaped at him before closing his mouth with an audible clack and storming past him out the door.

“What’s with him?” Neville asked, coming up beside him.

“He’s still under the impression that I hate Draco,” Harry answered, looking back at his good friend. Tie still only half on, Neville nodded sagely before turning back to his bed to pull on his socks.

Down at breakfast, Ron was still in a mood. He was slouched down in his seat, glaring at his eggs as if they had somehow kidnapped his Aunt Muriel and would return her if he stared at them long enough. Harry chose instead to sit down beside Hermione, who seemed to have given up on her boyfriend.

Hermione threw up her hands as Ron viciously stabbed at a sausage and sent it flying off his plate, hittin a third year in the side of the face. Ignoring the subsequent commotion, Hermione gestured furiously at Ron.

“Do you know what’s up with him? I haven’t been able to get a single word out of him since he sat down.”

Harry started filling up his plate, ducking as a hard boiled egg sailed over his head. “I told Draco ‘good morning’ before I left the dorms. He seems to have taken it personally.”

“Draco?” Hermione gaped, doing a rather good impression of Ron. “You’re calling him Draco now? Are you out of your mind? Why?”

“Because I didn’t think it was a problem. Obviously I was mistaken.” Harry frowned as a piece of potato landed in his pumpkin juice. He swirled the drink around a bit, but decided it was a lost cause and instead switched it with Dean’s drink when he wasn’t looking.

“Have you completely forgotten what happened to us in his house?”

Harry glanced at Hermione. She looked a tad green, and Harry couldn’t blame her. He didn’t like thinking back on that time either, even though he didn’t have much choice.

“In case it slipped your mind, I can’t forget. I have to re-live it every night. And Draco is not his father. I don’t know where everyone even got that idea. Even though he’s been horrible to us over the years, it was mostly just school rivalries and meaningless grudges. Hermione, Voldemort threatened his parents. It doesn’t completely let him off the hook, but it does prove that he was heavily coerced. If he wanted to do any of that stuff in the first place, Voldemort wouldn’t have set such a steep penalty for failure. And remember, even though his father did torture us, Draco protected me when we were first dragged into that place.”

“And then he buggered off,” Hermione spat. Ron raised his head, shocked to hear Hermione swear, but smiled when he saw that she was giving Harry the what for.

“Hermione, think. He was only 17, living in a house filled with Death Eaters who were all on high alert because the Golden Boy and his friends were in the dungeons. What could he have done? And why would he have wanted to? For all that Draco was probably miserable under Voldemort, he looked like the clear winner at that point, and saying that Voldemort dealt with traitors harshly would be an understatement.”

Hermione slumped in defeat. “You’re right, you’re right. It’s just so hard… What am I saying? You have to deal with that every night, and if you can be friends with him then I can accept that.”

Hermione went back to her breakfast, pausing only to cast a quick charm around herself and Harry, and the custard that had been sailing their way instead decided that Ron was a much better target. Harry smiled into his new juice. It really was great to have a friend like Hermione.

*   *   *

That night, when Draco woke to screaming, he jumped out of his bed and immediately rushed to Harry.

“Harry, Harry, wake up,” Draco pleaded, not having to wait long before Harry’s eyes snapped open. He was breathing hard, like he had just run around the common room twenty times. Then he screwed his eyes shut and started crying.

“Harry?” Draco asked, startled at the sudden change. It felt almost wrong to be hovering over Harry as he broke down, but Harry reached out for him and dragged him down onto the bed. Draco ended up sitting against the headboard with a lapful of crying wizard.

“Tell me something. Anything. Just talk to me. Please,” Harry managed to get out, before he bit back more sobs, instead letting them shudder through his body.

Draco quickly thought up something he could tell Harry that didn’t include his father. “Once, when I was ten, I was playing with Pansy in my yard. We were walking through the gardens, and Pansy demanded that I give her a flower, because all beautiful girls deserved flowers. I looked at her and asked ‘Why do I have to give you a flower then?’ She didn’t talk to me for months after. I can’t say I was too choked up about it; I mostly just played with her because her family was over often. When I told my mother what had happened, she laughed. I brought Mother a flower each day for the next week.”

Draco trailed off into silence, listening to Harry calm down, and it took a minute for him to realize that he was running his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t a feeling that he was use to, as Draco had only played with girls’ hair. Harry’s hair was soft though, and his fingers didn’t get caught in any knots like they would with long hair, and Harry didn’t seem to mind.

“I wonder if Parkinson ever looked good,” Harry mumbled from his lap. Draco chuckled.

“I once had the honour of going through all of her baby albums. There was one picture of her in a little pink dress and ponytails that looked rather charming until she started stamping her foot and screaming about something or other. The rest of the pictures were of her either crying, being given some trinket to stop crying, or covered in food.”

Harry laughed quietly. “I think I ruined your trousers,” Harry said eventually, moving off of the wet patch on Draco’s leg so that he could look up at him. Then he blushed as his brain filtered through what he just said.

Draco laughed and ruffled the hair that was still under his hand, which in turn earned him a glare from Harry. “I have more were those came from, don’t worry.”

Harry nodded and looked up at his canopy. “I don’t have many baby pictures,” he told Draco in a small voice. Of course he didn’t. His family had been murdered when he was only one, his house destroyed, and he was left with people who didn’t care about him. Draco felt like an absolute heel right then for all of the times that he’d reminded Harry of the family he no longer had. It was an easy shot to take, and Draco could never imagine how he would have survived without his mother. He slid down the headboard and stared up into space.

“Neither do I,” Draco confided. He wondered if he would ever be able to apologise properly for all that he had done to Harry. Looking at the boy now, he knew that he had deserved none of it.

Draco fell asleep first this time, leaving Harry awake and wondering when he had stopped seeing Draco as a rather harmless Death Eater and started seeing him as a rather nice person.

*   *   *

“Morning, Harry,” said Draco on his way out the door.

“Morning, Draco,” said Harry, not looking up from tying his trainers. When he did glance up, Ron was in front of him.

“He called you Harry,” Ron stated, in the same way he had the day before.

“Really?” asked Harry, staring up at his best friend. “I though he was talking to the other Harry that sleeps in this dorm.”

Ron gaped at him for a minute, his mouth opening and closing and looking very much like a fish out of water. Then he turned on his heel and stormed off again.

“You could have handled that better,” Dean said from behind him. Harry spared a smile for him. Though he never had spoken to Dean much in the past, the boy had always had his back, and Harry was grateful that he had come back for his final year.

“I know, but Ron’s still trying to hold onto prejudices, and I’m bloody well tired of people disliking others simply because their family happens to be something or other. I know that his father is an absolute ass-wipe, but you’ll notice that Draco hasn’t said a word crosswise to Ron or Ginny since we got back to school.”

Dean shrugged and waited for Harry to tug on his robe before following him down to breakfast.

Ron ignored him all of breakfast again, so Harry spent the time catching up with Hermione and Ginny. Ginny was finding classes rather easy, as she had gone through most of it last year. Now she was acting as a tutor for the rest of her house mates who had either been thrown out of school or landed themselves in enough punishments to keep them from their class work.

Harry’s mind glazed over as she started telling him how some fifth year kept pestering her for test answers. He was rather glad that the two of them were no longer together. They had fit together almost too well, like everyone (including them) had expected to happen. There was no passion, no joyous reunions when they saw each other after a week apart. All there had been were goodnight kisses, cuddles in front of the fire, and other things that Harry could have just as easily done with Hermione without any awkwardness.

The biggest problem with the two of them was something Ginny brought up as they were walking through Diagon Alley, picking up school supplies. He still treated her like a sister, someone to be protected from the world. He never told her any of his problems, never told her about his dreams, and though she asked about the scars, he didn’t want to burden her with unpleasant thoughts.

They broke it off that day, and though Molly cried over the fact that Harry wouldn’t be part of their family, he pointed out that as long as their doors were still open to him, he would visit as often as possible.

Part two