the dream series harry/draco
Title : The Dream Series - ONE
Beta : Me
Pairing : Harry/Draco
Rating :G
Warning(s): Slash
Word Count: 5,836
Summary: ** written in 2004** AU. Harry, who dropped out of Hogwarts after his second year to fight the Dark Lord, runs into an old enemy who just won't leave him alone.
Harry Potter sat behind a plain wooden table in a plain wooden chair and looked out the window into the plain, vacant world around him. The hut he lived in was exactly that as well, a tiny little single bedroom home much like he remembered Hagrid's had been only a lot shorter as he was no where near the size of the massive half-giant. It certainly wasn't the type of place he had dreamed he would live in seven years ago when he had begun his brief stint at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, back when he had first learned he was famous and loved, adored by masses of people he hadn't even met. Although he'd never given it serious thought back then, he was sure he expected, at the very least, a nice floor made out of anything other than the raw, splintery wood he walked on now. He hated that floor! A fire popped lazily behind him, drying the heavy, many times patched gray traveling cloak he'd set out on the hot, hearth stones. The soles of his boots, also nearby, dripped dirty water, forming a puddle and warping the wood beneath them.
Winter was a messy season and no matter how many rugs he threw out to catch the melting snow and ice from his clothes, it always seemed to seep through and ruin something. It made him wish he'd stayed in school long enough to learn at least a few decent spells to make his every day to day life a little easier. If only he'd stayed in school, if only he'd listened to Dumbledore, if only Voldemort had chosen Neville Longbottom instead of him, if only he wasn't plagued by this wretched scar. Harry Potter suffered from if onlys. Like a disease, regrets and hypotheticals burrowed into his mind like dark seeds and sprouted flowers of moody gloom and despair. He was lonely here, in this stupid one room hut, just as lonely as he'd been in the Wizarding World. "I don't know where else you'd go," Harry told himself, focusing on his own dull reflection in the window instead of the gelid scenery beyond. There was no place for him to go, he was a displaced person. As a baby he was given to the Dursleys, abused by his scared Aunt and Uncle because he didn't belong there, not a boy who could talk to snakes and preform magic tricks. When he'd turned eleven he'd been sent to Hogwarts, to learn among peers of his own class but he'd never fit in very well in that atmosphere, either. He'd been a singular freak with his Muggle family and a singular freak with his magical peers, Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived.
He never wanted to be a singular anything, plain and normal was fine, fame brought trouble and responsibility. People expected great things of him, just because of that crooked mark, as if he'd done anything other than lay there and cry to earn it. They placed him above them and wouldn't let him down, wouldn't let him err, forced him to remain pristine and perfect and refused to humanize their idol. He couldn't live normally in a world like that, especially friendless. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were lost figures in the back of his head, faint and just out of reach like the flawed memory of a pleasant dream. He remembered how, after his first year at Hogwarts and his first tangle with He Who Must Not Be Named how unsure Ron's friendship with him had become after he'd been so badly wounded in that chess game.
He remembered how after his second year, when it was learned that Harry could speak to snakes, after those muggle born children had died including one Ginny Weasley, that Ron had completely turned from him, avoided his company and refused to ever look him in the eye or even be alone with him. Naturally Hermione had sided with Ron, she had been in love with him from the very beginning. Certainly it didn't help that Harry never tried to defend himself against the whispered oily rumors that circulated around the school halls.
Second year, his last year at Hogwarts, had defiantly been the worst. At the end of the term he found even himself beginning to believe what everyone was saying about him, that he hadn't really tried to save those muggle born children, that he'd let the basilisk petrify and later kill his school mates. After all, they had died; he had been too late to save them. Why had it taken the one boy who had defeated the most powerful dark wizard in the world so long to dispel a mere snake unless he didn't really want to?
He was relieved to not have to return for a third year, and more than happy to live with his godfather Sirius Black when he came for him just before he had climbed onto the Knight Bus to run away. Sirius was another displaced man, accused of a terrible crime he didn't commit and at the same time would never be able to forgive himself for. His godfather, however, left him as well, in the end. He had been murdered at the battle in the Department of Mysteries when Harry was fifteen. "You can't think like this," Harry told himself, his jaw aching from where he'd been clenching his teeth. "It doesn't get you anywhere and you know it!" He got to his feet quickly, tipping over the chair he'd been sitting in and turning away from the window to put out the fire so he could think about going to bed, so he could think about anything other than what had happened.
He collapsed onto his mattress, the precise world as seen though his glasses sliding askew as he laid on his side. Closing his eyes he concentrated on the gradually growing warmth of his body beneath his blankets as the layers of cotton and down trapped the heat of his body. If things had been different, if he'd never have been scarred, he was sure everything would have been perfect. Lily and James would be alive, he'd be a decent student at Hogwarts on the cusp of graduation and success, Voldemort would be a thorn in someone else's side and everything would turn out happily ever after.
****
Harry didn't even have to open his eyes to know that he was doing it again, he could tell it was happening by the wild, chaotic dreams he'd been having and by the cold layer of sweat on his forehead that made him shiver in the midnight air that had seeped from the outside and into his hut. He was levitating his bed again, just like every night. Of course the moment he realized it, the magic gave out and with a teeth rattling slam, all four posts, mattress, boy and all slammed to the ground.
Harry groaned in response and once he oriented himself, sat up, rubbing his head. He'd bit his tongue again. The taste of blood was familiar in his mouth. Rolling out of bed, it was pointless to sleep anymore anyway, he wrapped his blankets around his shoulders and lumbered towards the fireplace to start it up again. That was about all the good his wand was for him anymore, to start fires and to crush ants that wandered onto his kitchen table in the summer when he was trying to eat. A wand, Harry had learned, was only a suitable instrument for torture and death and he had saved all of his allotment of both for one man and one man alone.
Like he did every morning, Harry ate his breakfast and did his dishes by hand, bringing in snow from outside and melting it down in his sink. He then cleaned up as best he could and stooped by the water spots on his floor to pick at the warped and discolored wood and think about what he could do to fix it. After a bit of this he pulled on his cloak and his boots and grabbed his wand for security, shoving it into his pocket. Even though he really didn't need it anymore, Harry couldn't leave it behind. After he'd had a taste of deadly serious war, after he'd protected himself and killed so many with it, he felt jittery and vulnerable without it. He stepped outside into the miles of land surrounding his modest home.
Outdoors it was as cold and unforgiving as it had been the day before. He pulled his cloak closer around his body but the wind's fingers found their way down his collar and sleeves anyway. He ignored the shivering, knowing soon it would stop and trudged on in a different direction than the paths his feet had left the day before. He was always exploring his surroundings, finding new and secret places he could search, anything to distract his mind from the depressing and most unwelcome if onlys. No one would ever come out here to find him, he was sure, and it was that fact alone that made the inhospitable conditions around him bearable. Although he was lonely here, he didn't want any visitors, they would only make the ache more poignant. His fellow wizards, he knew, would only Potterize him when all he really wanted was to be was Harry.
In the early morning light, the spiked branches of the naked trees knifed into the cool purple of dawn. He marched away from the rising of the sun straight into the thick forest of dormant trees knowing that when the sun began to sink again that it would be time to turn around and try to find home before his cloak froze to his back.
When the time to return home came, however, Harry didn't seem to notice it. He was standing on a portion of elevated ground, a boulder that had protruded through the surface of the earth and above the blanket of snow. A hand shielding his eyes from the glaring white all around, Harry watched a dull red glow, not fifty feet in the distance, as it bathed the hoary hills in milky pink. It was a marker of some sort, he could tell and below it a structure rose from the ground. It was defiantly made by human hands, the shape too regular and proportioned to be natural. He'd never noticed any sort of anything here before although he was so far away from everything familiar it was entirely possible that he'd never noticed because he'd never come this way before. Whatever the case, he started towards it now knowing that if he didn't investigate this time, he would probably never be able to find it again. This forest he lived inside never seemed to show him the same thing twice.
As he neared, he realized it was a pyramid, made by wizard hands if that glowing mark hovering about eight feet above its apex said anything. It rose at least twelve feet off the ground and constructed of blocks wide and bulky enough that they must have been meant for climbing and every single one of them bore a name. There wasn't any snow on the stones either, he noticed, as he began to mount them one at a time, slowly ascending the pyramid in a lazy spiral from level to level, Harry watched the names beneath his feet as he did. Richard Moore, Melissa Kessley, Andrew Saxton on and on and on they went, all of them strangers. Suddenly Harry stopped, he was nearing the top of the pyramid when a name jumped out at him. Slowly he took a step back so as not to put his foot on the stone and crouched down next to it, reading very slowly out loud so he would be sure hadn't made a mistake. "James Potter." He read, the name sending shivers up his spine. Next to it was Lily Potter. Before Harry could make sense of anything he felt the sound of voices drew him from the names and he turned away from the stones, rising to his feet in time to witness a group of people also begin to approach the pyramid of stone. He recognized them almost at once by the uniforms they wore, Hogwarts students.
The lines of his face growing very tight, Harry turned back to the stones engraved with his parent's names and hopped over them to the other side and continued on the pyramid all the way to its very top. He could hear them talking, guided by a professor he didn't recognize as the students began to climb the pyramid. "This monument," the professor said, "is dedicated to all the wizards and Muggles who died at the hands of He Who Must Not Be Named, every stone represents a person. It was erected for the first year's celebration of the Dark Lord's demise."
Harry's brow creased as he frowned, the students looked so young, like babies walking all over something they didn't and probably would never understand. They had to be the same age that he was though he simply felt older than them, wiser, more mature and he knew he'd seen and done a hundred things that none of them would ever see and do. He sat down on one of the stones that rested on the top of the pyramid, obviously left for that very purpose as they weren't engraved with anything. The red symbol that had marked the monument hovered feet in the air above him, its color bleeding down on his arms and face. He watched the students as they talked to each other, as they stopped by names and pointed out ones they recognized, steadily coming closer even though he felt so far above them he was sure they'd never reach him.
Harry got to his feet as they finally drew close and a girl who hadn't noticed him there yelped in shock and fright when he did, drawing the attention of those around her. "Oh my god!" The girl stared at him, lifting a hand to cover her open mouth. Harry could see her eyes flicker over him and then up to his forehead, then she gasped anew. Slowly, as students ascended and saw the girl and then saw him and a crowd began to gather. Harry could see the surprise and fear in their eyes. He knew soon would come the praise and the thank yous, as if they had any idea of what he'd done for them. Harry was determined not to give them the chance and started quickly down the pyramid, choosing to descend a side that didn't have his parent's names on it, and onto the firm solid ground.
He'd retreated possibly six steps before someone had to say something. "Potter!" The voice snapped for his attention. There was something drawling about it that tugged at his memories enough to earn a look back over the shoulder at the one demanding his attention. He knew the face instantly, regal, refined, and pale, a halo of platinum blonde hair and gray eyes colder than a November sky. Draco Malfoy looked the same as he had years and years ago, only bigger. Like Draco had always managed to make him feel, Harry was instantly made aware of what he himself must look like, same old glasses, same messy dark hair, same ugly everything and his old worn and patched clothes like some surly out of touch with reality hermit. "It is you, isn't it? Of course it is, that stupid scar and everything, just like always, just like I left you."
Harry felt the familiar flames of anger slowly stoke inside his body. "What are you talking about?" He asked in a sharp, mean voice. "What do you want, Malfoy, what's the big idea? Why did you stop me? Why are you here? Why are you following me?"
"Oh you remember my name, do you?" He asked, walking towards him a few steps with a confident, self-important swagger that made Harry defensive. "You remember all the little people, how noble of you, especially after your big victory."
"It wasn't a victory." Harry shot back. Why had Draco always been able to do this? To make him feel so passionate? "It was revenge! But I wouldn't expect you to know anything about that when all you know is self glory!"
"It isn't anything like that, Potter." Draco smirked. "He was a tyrant that enslaved my family for an entire generation. I got revenge, just through a tool."
Of course, Harry knew, that tool had been him, although he didn't mind so much, not like he thought he would when someone finally said something like that to him. He'd always known he'd been a tool for everyone else. They're savior, twice over. "Well what do you want then, Malfoy? Are there some more thorns you need me to pull out for you so you won't have to soil your hands?"
"No." The blonde replied in a way that said he'd been insulted and was prepared to do something about it.
"Then what do you want? Why are you still here, talking to me, pestering me like every other annoying little fan that drove me out here!" Contempt curdled in the pit of his stomach and Harry had to dig his feet into the snow to keep himself from starting some sort of physical confrontation. Draco didn't reply and that only infuriated him more. "Well? What do you want!"
Draco was silent still, watching him for a minute before he sniffed and glanced away, still slightly ruffled. He looked as if he was going to say something he didn't want to and after he'd said it, Harry knew exactly why. "I'd missed you is all," He muttered. "I saw you, just wanted to see what you were up to."
"You what?" Harry repeated, his anger dwindling to a trickle and replaced by the more overwhelming urge of shock. Draco would never say anything like that if he wasn't sincere, would he? It wasn't his type of cruel humor, that was for sure.
"I said I missed you, you bloody git, do you have hearing problems or do you just want me to have to repeat it?"
"You," Harry shook his head slowly, his hands sinking down to his sides. "You didn't miss me! You hated me, Malfoy, you should be glad I dropped out and disappeared."
"Oh please, Potter, you never disappeared. You may have left school but you've always been all over the bloody headlines. Everyone knew what you were doing, especially when you killed the Dark Lord. Everyone loves you and they always will so stop pretending like that isn't what you want."
Harry glared at Draco as he said that, so cool and calm and refined in his Hogwarts uniform and heavy, fur lined winter cloak. "So that's what you want, is it?" He asked. "To ooze adoration all over me? Because that's what I really want?"
"You're an idiot." Draco snapped and marched forward, taking Harry by the arm and pulling him forwards him a few steps. "You don't even listen to a thing I say, now let's go!"
The Boy Who Lived didn't even bother to ask where they were going, the question was little compared to the obvious stumper at hand. "Why...did you miss me?" Harry asked finally, incredulous.
"Because, Potter." The blonde replied in a brisk easy manner, as if they were discussing the weather, "I don't have anyone to fight with anymore. Now show me where you live, I want to see what you've done with yourself since I've seen you last.
Harry was more than a little self conscious about the shack he knew he was taking Draco to as he led the blonde along the footprints he'd taken to get him to that odd memorial. Draco Malfoy was one of the elite Purebloods with more money than they knew what to do with. He was used to extravagance and opulence and nothing like his own crooked home waiting for them over the next few hills. Draco had let go of Harry's arm some time ago and walked slightly ahead of him as if he couldn't stand to have Harry in front of him. "Malfoy," Harry began, pulling his cloak and hood closer around him. He was shivering again and this time, he knew it wouldn't quit. "What about school? Your field trip, or whatever it was, it has to be over by now. Won't they look for you when they realize your gone?"
"Probably," Draco replied in a bland, uninterested tone. "But it's not like they'll find me either. Bugger them, Potter, this is much more interesting than that stupid monument anyway."
Harry was sure once they reached their destination Draco would think otherwise. Although it wasn't entirely impossible to believe that the other boy would want to be there with him, especially after he'd disappeared for so long. Draco always had to have the best, the most expensive, the most rare and right now nothing was more lauded than Harry Potter, the liberator. He watched the Slytherin with dull green eyes as he walked through the snow as if it were flat ground. He looked so warm in his clothes, his cheeks flushed with chill and vigor. "You're head boy." He noted as he saw the little gold badge glittering on his chest.
"Yep." Draco replied briskly and said nothing else.
Harry tried again, desperate to hear the sound of another voice. "How's Quidditch going this season?" He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the simple sound of conversation, the very existence of others and the sounds of them, they made him wonder if maybe he really wasn't entirely alone in the world.
"Slytherin's had the cup every year since you left."
"Who seeks for them?" In school, Harry had loved that sport. He loved the freedom of playing it, and the pride he felt when he exceeded at it, knowing it was through his own talent and skill and not something lent to him by his murdered parents.
"I do." The blonde replied in an exasperated tone as if he were tired of answering all of these stupid questions and didn't want to speak to him anymore.
Harry took the hint and didn't say anything else and by the time he reached his hut, he was in a very poor, dismal mood. There it was, his one bedroom hole like an ugly black stain on the white hills around it. He waited for Draco to began a cruel barrage of insults when he realized that they were finally home.
"This is it?" The blonde asked, looking back over at Harry. "You have to be kidding me, this is the ugliest dilapidated excuse for a livable four walls I have ever seen. Really, Potter, you live here?"
"Yes," Harry's voice sounded like dead wood.
"Merlin, I'm afraid to step inside. It won't fall apart on us, will it?"
"No, Malfoy, it won't."
"Not very reassuring." Draco informed him but pulled open the door and stepped inside. It took him all of five seconds to take in everything before he turned to Harry, just now entering and securing the door behind him, and laughed. "This is down right ridiculous, Potter! You know if you're low on money I'm sure there are hundreds of people that would climb over each other to give it to you."
"I have plenty of money." Harry's jaw clenched but he kept himself civil by unclasping the tiny, tedious fasteners that held his cloak closed.
"Where?" Draco snarked, still laughing. "Sewn up in your mattress?" And he gave the bed a good sharp kick.
"No!" Harry finally shouted at him. "It's in the bank where everyone else's money is, I just don't want to wade through the crowd of idiots that would swarm me before I could even get there!"
Draco smirked and patted the side of Harry's face roughly. In return, Harry grabbed that pale hand and jerked it away, giving him a shove backwards. The blonde took it in stride, laughing in his face some more as he said, "they would throw themselves down on the ground for you to walk on, wouldn't they?"
He chose not to answer that, turning away from Draco and tossing his cloak on the hearth stones like he did every night and then wormed off his boots. His clothes beneath were just as ragged and dirty, jeans and a messy layering of shirts. Harry pushed his hands through his hair to straighten it and then took a seat at his table, turning his back to Draco, effectively blocking the sight of him.
Draco didn't move and Harry could feel his eyes burning holes in his back before finally the blonde drew his wand from his robes and began to cast. A spell had his cloak hung on air against the wall, another had a fire burning and a third started to heat a kettle of water hung over the lively orange flames. Soon, he joined Harry at the table, taking a seat on the hard wooden chair. He wasn't comfortable, Harry could tell, sitting stiffly there but he didn't care.
"When are you leaving?" Harry asked although he wasn't sure if he was excited at the prospect of Draco leaving or not. The boy's company riled and irked him and at the same time, his presence and the slow and steady in an out of his breath was attractive in the way that only another life could be to one who had, for a long time, thought the world dead.
"Tomorrow, I think, maybe the day after." The Slytherin replied briskly, leaning into his chair and hooking an arm over the back of it as he turned towards him. He seemed to have no problem making himself at home or with inviting himself for an extended visit.
"You really have nothing better to do with your life than sit here and rot with me?" Harry frowned, scratching at a stain on his table top with a finger.
"Oh I have plenty better to do," Draco rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. "I just don't want to do it."
"Like what? What do you have to do?" The kettle had begun to whistle and without hesitation, Harry retrieved it, holding it in both hands with a thick, wrapped towel. He brought it to the counter to fill tea cups. He had to fill two tea cups today.
"Oh," Draco's square shoulders shrugged in a noncommital way. "My mother's funeral is tomorrow, but I really don't want to go to that."
"Your mother?" That gave Harry pause and he glanced over at Draco with narrowing, curious eyes as if it were unbelievable to him that anyone could still die now that he and Voldemort were both decommissioned. He remembered when Draco's father had been killed, put to death by the Aurors at the judgement of the Wizengraut. After the final battle with the Dark Lord where the Dementors had risen up in rebellion against the wizarding world at the behest of the Death Eaters, Azkaban had become an altogether useless prison and the Wizarding World had become personally responsible for taking out their own garbage. He hadn't attended the actual act of capital punishment himself but he'd read in the paper a few days later about how Draco had been there and how he'd had to physically remove his hysterical mother from the room. The article hadn't said if Draco had cried or not but Harry couldn't imagine watching your own father die and not feeling something.
"Yeah, the crazy old bat finally decided to give all of us a break."
"You shouldn't talk about your mother that way." Harry said, surprised at how soft his voice had become as he set a cup of tea across from Draco and reclaimed his seat.
"I know," the blonde agreed and lifted his cup to take a sip.
Together they drank their tea in silence, Draco on his feet as he took a closer look at his surroundings and Harry with his eyes on Draco as he moved around the room. He was thinking a lot of curious things about Draco Malfoy at the moment, for the first time in a long time he tried to imagine someone else's life instead of how terrible he thought his own had become. He decided it must have been very difficult for Draco after it was publicized that the Death Eater's had returned and that his father was one of them, arrested after the same battle that had killed his Godfather. People would revile him, the son of an accused and later convicted Death Eater. Who would befriend a person like that? Who would show kindness to an obviously tainted boy? And furthermore, Draco's own social circles aside, what would it be like to be rendered a guardian, given the role of a parent to your own parent? Narcissa had gone mad after Lucius was killed, he'd read about how she'd been committed to Saint Mungo's a few weeks after her husband's execution. Draco would have been responsible for her, he would have had to visit her, to watch her waste away into a babbling lunatic. He would have been responsible for her and for the entire shamed Malfoy estate. The Ministry had ransacked the Malfoy Manor in search of Dark Arts artifacts, they'd gone through all of the Malfoy family assets and finances, all of their records. Draco's entire life had been laid open and bare for the entire world to see and scrutinize and pick apart and warp. Just like his own life had been.
"Stop looking at me like that." Draco broke the silence, his voice once again mean.
Harry took his eyes from him instantly and back to his cup of tea, startled. "Sorry." He apologized quickly, feeling the shame of being caught staring flush his cheeks with pink. He kept his mouth solemn and schooled.
"Knock it off, Potter, I'm serious." The blonde replied venomously as he set his empty tea cup back down on the table. "I know that look, I'm sick of that look." He snarled.
"I"m sorry." Harry croaked again, his shoulders hunching up slightly as he sank into his seat.
"You don't think I get that enough?" Draco grabbed the back of Harry's shirts and pulled him up out of his chair, giving him a shove backwards. "Do you think I want that? Or that I need it? Your sick sorry and pity! Screw that and screw you, that's not why I came here--to get that look!"
Harry stumbled back as he was tossed, shorter than Draco as he'd always been. He straightened his clothes, his brows creasing. "What's your problem? You just don't go around shoving people."
"Stop looking at me like that and I won't have to police you." Draco jabbed an accusatory finger in Harry's direction.
"I didn't mean to, sorry, whatever, don't get all twisted up you might pop something." Harry shoved the hand away. He hated being pointed at, he didn't like the feel of the energy of pointing, stabbing right into his chest like an arrow.
"I'll hit you if I have to Potter." The blonde promised him.
"You won't have to." Harry assured and after a moment's hesitation he pushed past Draco to gather the tea cups and carry them to the sink. "You're going to have to stay the night now, it's too late to go out anywhere now."
"Fine," Draco replied and began to loosen his tie as he started towards Harry's make shift bathroom, separate from the rest of the area with a screen.
"I'll change the sheets and blankets on the bed for you."
****
"Potter, what in the hell are you doing?" Draco's sharp voice broke through the thick, weighted dreams of Harry's sleep and his eyes opened. He didn't even have to ask what, he'd gone through all of this before and just like every time the moment he reached consciousness he collapsed, fell hard to the ground, knocking the breathe from his chest. He wheezed, rolling onto his side and slowly forced himself to breathe in. "You're truly a freak." The blonde informed him drowsily.
"Shut up," Harry said when he finally found himself able to speak. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head as he hung it between his shoulders taking in slow controlled breaths. "I can't control it." He hadn't had the formal magical education that everyone else had. He often did things he couldn't control like that, like his levitating.
"You're useless." Draco sleepily sank back down onto his bed, scooting over to one side against the wall and lifting up the blankets to bare the spot next to him. "Come here."
Harry lifted his head to glance at him and his invitation. Was he serious? Was he offering what he thought he was? "Malfoy, I'm not going to crawl into bed with you." Harry informed him flatly. How strange would it be to lay curled up asleep next to another human being, especially if that human being was Draco Malfoy. It wasn't sure if he would be able to stand it.
"Fine, you stubborn fool." Draco gathered the blankets up in his hands, wrapping them around his body and slipped out of bed, next to him on the floor. "Just go to sleep." He ordered as Harry opened his mouth to say something. He thought better of it as the blonde snapped at him and obediently closed his eyes behind his glasses and laid down on his side with his back towards the other.
Draco sat down next to him and Harry held his breath as he leaned over his body, slowly plucking the glasses from off his nose. He kept his eyes screwed shut tightly as the feather light touch came and went, trailed by the cool legs of his spectacles sliding over the sides of his face and eventually off. "I'll hold you down." Draco told him as he pulled the blankets over their bodies, up to their shoulders and then tucked his arm beneath them and over Harry's side, curling against his chest.
He could feel Draco's body, soft and warm and fitted against the curve of his back, his pale fingers curling into a fist over his chest and holding their forms tightly together. He swallowed a growing lump in his throat, pulling his own arm out from where it was trapped beneath Draco's.
"Stop fidgeting." Draco sounded angry even in his sleepy, half awake voice so close to Harry's ear he could feel the other boy's breath on him and the back of his neck.
"Sorry," Harry replied and when he had his arm free, all of the tiny hairs on it standing on end, he set it down over Draco's, his fingers curling over the pale hand and arm on his chest. He felt anchored and warm, his closed eyes relaxing. The other behind him was sleeping, Harry could tell by the rhythm of his breath as it broke over his skin and as he slowly drifted off to sleep himself, he found himself wondering if maybe this floor was really as terrible as he had originally thought.
Beta : Me
Pairing : Harry/Draco
Rating :G
Warning(s): Slash
Word Count: 5,836
Summary: ** written in 2004** AU. Harry, who dropped out of Hogwarts after his second year to fight the Dark Lord, runs into an old enemy who just won't leave him alone.
Harry Potter sat behind a plain wooden table in a plain wooden chair and looked out the window into the plain, vacant world around him. The hut he lived in was exactly that as well, a tiny little single bedroom home much like he remembered Hagrid's had been only a lot shorter as he was no where near the size of the massive half-giant. It certainly wasn't the type of place he had dreamed he would live in seven years ago when he had begun his brief stint at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, back when he had first learned he was famous and loved, adored by masses of people he hadn't even met. Although he'd never given it serious thought back then, he was sure he expected, at the very least, a nice floor made out of anything other than the raw, splintery wood he walked on now. He hated that floor! A fire popped lazily behind him, drying the heavy, many times patched gray traveling cloak he'd set out on the hot, hearth stones. The soles of his boots, also nearby, dripped dirty water, forming a puddle and warping the wood beneath them.
Winter was a messy season and no matter how many rugs he threw out to catch the melting snow and ice from his clothes, it always seemed to seep through and ruin something. It made him wish he'd stayed in school long enough to learn at least a few decent spells to make his every day to day life a little easier. If only he'd stayed in school, if only he'd listened to Dumbledore, if only Voldemort had chosen Neville Longbottom instead of him, if only he wasn't plagued by this wretched scar. Harry Potter suffered from if onlys. Like a disease, regrets and hypotheticals burrowed into his mind like dark seeds and sprouted flowers of moody gloom and despair. He was lonely here, in this stupid one room hut, just as lonely as he'd been in the Wizarding World. "I don't know where else you'd go," Harry told himself, focusing on his own dull reflection in the window instead of the gelid scenery beyond. There was no place for him to go, he was a displaced person. As a baby he was given to the Dursleys, abused by his scared Aunt and Uncle because he didn't belong there, not a boy who could talk to snakes and preform magic tricks. When he'd turned eleven he'd been sent to Hogwarts, to learn among peers of his own class but he'd never fit in very well in that atmosphere, either. He'd been a singular freak with his Muggle family and a singular freak with his magical peers, Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived.
He never wanted to be a singular anything, plain and normal was fine, fame brought trouble and responsibility. People expected great things of him, just because of that crooked mark, as if he'd done anything other than lay there and cry to earn it. They placed him above them and wouldn't let him down, wouldn't let him err, forced him to remain pristine and perfect and refused to humanize their idol. He couldn't live normally in a world like that, especially friendless. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were lost figures in the back of his head, faint and just out of reach like the flawed memory of a pleasant dream. He remembered how, after his first year at Hogwarts and his first tangle with He Who Must Not Be Named how unsure Ron's friendship with him had become after he'd been so badly wounded in that chess game.
He remembered how after his second year, when it was learned that Harry could speak to snakes, after those muggle born children had died including one Ginny Weasley, that Ron had completely turned from him, avoided his company and refused to ever look him in the eye or even be alone with him. Naturally Hermione had sided with Ron, she had been in love with him from the very beginning. Certainly it didn't help that Harry never tried to defend himself against the whispered oily rumors that circulated around the school halls.
Second year, his last year at Hogwarts, had defiantly been the worst. At the end of the term he found even himself beginning to believe what everyone was saying about him, that he hadn't really tried to save those muggle born children, that he'd let the basilisk petrify and later kill his school mates. After all, they had died; he had been too late to save them. Why had it taken the one boy who had defeated the most powerful dark wizard in the world so long to dispel a mere snake unless he didn't really want to?
He was relieved to not have to return for a third year, and more than happy to live with his godfather Sirius Black when he came for him just before he had climbed onto the Knight Bus to run away. Sirius was another displaced man, accused of a terrible crime he didn't commit and at the same time would never be able to forgive himself for. His godfather, however, left him as well, in the end. He had been murdered at the battle in the Department of Mysteries when Harry was fifteen. "You can't think like this," Harry told himself, his jaw aching from where he'd been clenching his teeth. "It doesn't get you anywhere and you know it!" He got to his feet quickly, tipping over the chair he'd been sitting in and turning away from the window to put out the fire so he could think about going to bed, so he could think about anything other than what had happened.
He collapsed onto his mattress, the precise world as seen though his glasses sliding askew as he laid on his side. Closing his eyes he concentrated on the gradually growing warmth of his body beneath his blankets as the layers of cotton and down trapped the heat of his body. If things had been different, if he'd never have been scarred, he was sure everything would have been perfect. Lily and James would be alive, he'd be a decent student at Hogwarts on the cusp of graduation and success, Voldemort would be a thorn in someone else's side and everything would turn out happily ever after.
****
Harry didn't even have to open his eyes to know that he was doing it again, he could tell it was happening by the wild, chaotic dreams he'd been having and by the cold layer of sweat on his forehead that made him shiver in the midnight air that had seeped from the outside and into his hut. He was levitating his bed again, just like every night. Of course the moment he realized it, the magic gave out and with a teeth rattling slam, all four posts, mattress, boy and all slammed to the ground.
Harry groaned in response and once he oriented himself, sat up, rubbing his head. He'd bit his tongue again. The taste of blood was familiar in his mouth. Rolling out of bed, it was pointless to sleep anymore anyway, he wrapped his blankets around his shoulders and lumbered towards the fireplace to start it up again. That was about all the good his wand was for him anymore, to start fires and to crush ants that wandered onto his kitchen table in the summer when he was trying to eat. A wand, Harry had learned, was only a suitable instrument for torture and death and he had saved all of his allotment of both for one man and one man alone.
Like he did every morning, Harry ate his breakfast and did his dishes by hand, bringing in snow from outside and melting it down in his sink. He then cleaned up as best he could and stooped by the water spots on his floor to pick at the warped and discolored wood and think about what he could do to fix it. After a bit of this he pulled on his cloak and his boots and grabbed his wand for security, shoving it into his pocket. Even though he really didn't need it anymore, Harry couldn't leave it behind. After he'd had a taste of deadly serious war, after he'd protected himself and killed so many with it, he felt jittery and vulnerable without it. He stepped outside into the miles of land surrounding his modest home.
Outdoors it was as cold and unforgiving as it had been the day before. He pulled his cloak closer around his body but the wind's fingers found their way down his collar and sleeves anyway. He ignored the shivering, knowing soon it would stop and trudged on in a different direction than the paths his feet had left the day before. He was always exploring his surroundings, finding new and secret places he could search, anything to distract his mind from the depressing and most unwelcome if onlys. No one would ever come out here to find him, he was sure, and it was that fact alone that made the inhospitable conditions around him bearable. Although he was lonely here, he didn't want any visitors, they would only make the ache more poignant. His fellow wizards, he knew, would only Potterize him when all he really wanted was to be was Harry.
In the early morning light, the spiked branches of the naked trees knifed into the cool purple of dawn. He marched away from the rising of the sun straight into the thick forest of dormant trees knowing that when the sun began to sink again that it would be time to turn around and try to find home before his cloak froze to his back.
When the time to return home came, however, Harry didn't seem to notice it. He was standing on a portion of elevated ground, a boulder that had protruded through the surface of the earth and above the blanket of snow. A hand shielding his eyes from the glaring white all around, Harry watched a dull red glow, not fifty feet in the distance, as it bathed the hoary hills in milky pink. It was a marker of some sort, he could tell and below it a structure rose from the ground. It was defiantly made by human hands, the shape too regular and proportioned to be natural. He'd never noticed any sort of anything here before although he was so far away from everything familiar it was entirely possible that he'd never noticed because he'd never come this way before. Whatever the case, he started towards it now knowing that if he didn't investigate this time, he would probably never be able to find it again. This forest he lived inside never seemed to show him the same thing twice.
As he neared, he realized it was a pyramid, made by wizard hands if that glowing mark hovering about eight feet above its apex said anything. It rose at least twelve feet off the ground and constructed of blocks wide and bulky enough that they must have been meant for climbing and every single one of them bore a name. There wasn't any snow on the stones either, he noticed, as he began to mount them one at a time, slowly ascending the pyramid in a lazy spiral from level to level, Harry watched the names beneath his feet as he did. Richard Moore, Melissa Kessley, Andrew Saxton on and on and on they went, all of them strangers. Suddenly Harry stopped, he was nearing the top of the pyramid when a name jumped out at him. Slowly he took a step back so as not to put his foot on the stone and crouched down next to it, reading very slowly out loud so he would be sure hadn't made a mistake. "James Potter." He read, the name sending shivers up his spine. Next to it was Lily Potter. Before Harry could make sense of anything he felt the sound of voices drew him from the names and he turned away from the stones, rising to his feet in time to witness a group of people also begin to approach the pyramid of stone. He recognized them almost at once by the uniforms they wore, Hogwarts students.
The lines of his face growing very tight, Harry turned back to the stones engraved with his parent's names and hopped over them to the other side and continued on the pyramid all the way to its very top. He could hear them talking, guided by a professor he didn't recognize as the students began to climb the pyramid. "This monument," the professor said, "is dedicated to all the wizards and Muggles who died at the hands of He Who Must Not Be Named, every stone represents a person. It was erected for the first year's celebration of the Dark Lord's demise."
Harry's brow creased as he frowned, the students looked so young, like babies walking all over something they didn't and probably would never understand. They had to be the same age that he was though he simply felt older than them, wiser, more mature and he knew he'd seen and done a hundred things that none of them would ever see and do. He sat down on one of the stones that rested on the top of the pyramid, obviously left for that very purpose as they weren't engraved with anything. The red symbol that had marked the monument hovered feet in the air above him, its color bleeding down on his arms and face. He watched the students as they talked to each other, as they stopped by names and pointed out ones they recognized, steadily coming closer even though he felt so far above them he was sure they'd never reach him.
Harry got to his feet as they finally drew close and a girl who hadn't noticed him there yelped in shock and fright when he did, drawing the attention of those around her. "Oh my god!" The girl stared at him, lifting a hand to cover her open mouth. Harry could see her eyes flicker over him and then up to his forehead, then she gasped anew. Slowly, as students ascended and saw the girl and then saw him and a crowd began to gather. Harry could see the surprise and fear in their eyes. He knew soon would come the praise and the thank yous, as if they had any idea of what he'd done for them. Harry was determined not to give them the chance and started quickly down the pyramid, choosing to descend a side that didn't have his parent's names on it, and onto the firm solid ground.
He'd retreated possibly six steps before someone had to say something. "Potter!" The voice snapped for his attention. There was something drawling about it that tugged at his memories enough to earn a look back over the shoulder at the one demanding his attention. He knew the face instantly, regal, refined, and pale, a halo of platinum blonde hair and gray eyes colder than a November sky. Draco Malfoy looked the same as he had years and years ago, only bigger. Like Draco had always managed to make him feel, Harry was instantly made aware of what he himself must look like, same old glasses, same messy dark hair, same ugly everything and his old worn and patched clothes like some surly out of touch with reality hermit. "It is you, isn't it? Of course it is, that stupid scar and everything, just like always, just like I left you."
Harry felt the familiar flames of anger slowly stoke inside his body. "What are you talking about?" He asked in a sharp, mean voice. "What do you want, Malfoy, what's the big idea? Why did you stop me? Why are you here? Why are you following me?"
"Oh you remember my name, do you?" He asked, walking towards him a few steps with a confident, self-important swagger that made Harry defensive. "You remember all the little people, how noble of you, especially after your big victory."
"It wasn't a victory." Harry shot back. Why had Draco always been able to do this? To make him feel so passionate? "It was revenge! But I wouldn't expect you to know anything about that when all you know is self glory!"
"It isn't anything like that, Potter." Draco smirked. "He was a tyrant that enslaved my family for an entire generation. I got revenge, just through a tool."
Of course, Harry knew, that tool had been him, although he didn't mind so much, not like he thought he would when someone finally said something like that to him. He'd always known he'd been a tool for everyone else. They're savior, twice over. "Well what do you want then, Malfoy? Are there some more thorns you need me to pull out for you so you won't have to soil your hands?"
"No." The blonde replied in a way that said he'd been insulted and was prepared to do something about it.
"Then what do you want? Why are you still here, talking to me, pestering me like every other annoying little fan that drove me out here!" Contempt curdled in the pit of his stomach and Harry had to dig his feet into the snow to keep himself from starting some sort of physical confrontation. Draco didn't reply and that only infuriated him more. "Well? What do you want!"
Draco was silent still, watching him for a minute before he sniffed and glanced away, still slightly ruffled. He looked as if he was going to say something he didn't want to and after he'd said it, Harry knew exactly why. "I'd missed you is all," He muttered. "I saw you, just wanted to see what you were up to."
"You what?" Harry repeated, his anger dwindling to a trickle and replaced by the more overwhelming urge of shock. Draco would never say anything like that if he wasn't sincere, would he? It wasn't his type of cruel humor, that was for sure.
"I said I missed you, you bloody git, do you have hearing problems or do you just want me to have to repeat it?"
"You," Harry shook his head slowly, his hands sinking down to his sides. "You didn't miss me! You hated me, Malfoy, you should be glad I dropped out and disappeared."
"Oh please, Potter, you never disappeared. You may have left school but you've always been all over the bloody headlines. Everyone knew what you were doing, especially when you killed the Dark Lord. Everyone loves you and they always will so stop pretending like that isn't what you want."
Harry glared at Draco as he said that, so cool and calm and refined in his Hogwarts uniform and heavy, fur lined winter cloak. "So that's what you want, is it?" He asked. "To ooze adoration all over me? Because that's what I really want?"
"You're an idiot." Draco snapped and marched forward, taking Harry by the arm and pulling him forwards him a few steps. "You don't even listen to a thing I say, now let's go!"
The Boy Who Lived didn't even bother to ask where they were going, the question was little compared to the obvious stumper at hand. "Why...did you miss me?" Harry asked finally, incredulous.
"Because, Potter." The blonde replied in a brisk easy manner, as if they were discussing the weather, "I don't have anyone to fight with anymore. Now show me where you live, I want to see what you've done with yourself since I've seen you last.
Harry was more than a little self conscious about the shack he knew he was taking Draco to as he led the blonde along the footprints he'd taken to get him to that odd memorial. Draco Malfoy was one of the elite Purebloods with more money than they knew what to do with. He was used to extravagance and opulence and nothing like his own crooked home waiting for them over the next few hills. Draco had let go of Harry's arm some time ago and walked slightly ahead of him as if he couldn't stand to have Harry in front of him. "Malfoy," Harry began, pulling his cloak and hood closer around him. He was shivering again and this time, he knew it wouldn't quit. "What about school? Your field trip, or whatever it was, it has to be over by now. Won't they look for you when they realize your gone?"
"Probably," Draco replied in a bland, uninterested tone. "But it's not like they'll find me either. Bugger them, Potter, this is much more interesting than that stupid monument anyway."
Harry was sure once they reached their destination Draco would think otherwise. Although it wasn't entirely impossible to believe that the other boy would want to be there with him, especially after he'd disappeared for so long. Draco always had to have the best, the most expensive, the most rare and right now nothing was more lauded than Harry Potter, the liberator. He watched the Slytherin with dull green eyes as he walked through the snow as if it were flat ground. He looked so warm in his clothes, his cheeks flushed with chill and vigor. "You're head boy." He noted as he saw the little gold badge glittering on his chest.
"Yep." Draco replied briskly and said nothing else.
Harry tried again, desperate to hear the sound of another voice. "How's Quidditch going this season?" He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the simple sound of conversation, the very existence of others and the sounds of them, they made him wonder if maybe he really wasn't entirely alone in the world.
"Slytherin's had the cup every year since you left."
"Who seeks for them?" In school, Harry had loved that sport. He loved the freedom of playing it, and the pride he felt when he exceeded at it, knowing it was through his own talent and skill and not something lent to him by his murdered parents.
"I do." The blonde replied in an exasperated tone as if he were tired of answering all of these stupid questions and didn't want to speak to him anymore.
Harry took the hint and didn't say anything else and by the time he reached his hut, he was in a very poor, dismal mood. There it was, his one bedroom hole like an ugly black stain on the white hills around it. He waited for Draco to began a cruel barrage of insults when he realized that they were finally home.
"This is it?" The blonde asked, looking back over at Harry. "You have to be kidding me, this is the ugliest dilapidated excuse for a livable four walls I have ever seen. Really, Potter, you live here?"
"Yes," Harry's voice sounded like dead wood.
"Merlin, I'm afraid to step inside. It won't fall apart on us, will it?"
"No, Malfoy, it won't."
"Not very reassuring." Draco informed him but pulled open the door and stepped inside. It took him all of five seconds to take in everything before he turned to Harry, just now entering and securing the door behind him, and laughed. "This is down right ridiculous, Potter! You know if you're low on money I'm sure there are hundreds of people that would climb over each other to give it to you."
"I have plenty of money." Harry's jaw clenched but he kept himself civil by unclasping the tiny, tedious fasteners that held his cloak closed.
"Where?" Draco snarked, still laughing. "Sewn up in your mattress?" And he gave the bed a good sharp kick.
"No!" Harry finally shouted at him. "It's in the bank where everyone else's money is, I just don't want to wade through the crowd of idiots that would swarm me before I could even get there!"
Draco smirked and patted the side of Harry's face roughly. In return, Harry grabbed that pale hand and jerked it away, giving him a shove backwards. The blonde took it in stride, laughing in his face some more as he said, "they would throw themselves down on the ground for you to walk on, wouldn't they?"
He chose not to answer that, turning away from Draco and tossing his cloak on the hearth stones like he did every night and then wormed off his boots. His clothes beneath were just as ragged and dirty, jeans and a messy layering of shirts. Harry pushed his hands through his hair to straighten it and then took a seat at his table, turning his back to Draco, effectively blocking the sight of him.
Draco didn't move and Harry could feel his eyes burning holes in his back before finally the blonde drew his wand from his robes and began to cast. A spell had his cloak hung on air against the wall, another had a fire burning and a third started to heat a kettle of water hung over the lively orange flames. Soon, he joined Harry at the table, taking a seat on the hard wooden chair. He wasn't comfortable, Harry could tell, sitting stiffly there but he didn't care.
"When are you leaving?" Harry asked although he wasn't sure if he was excited at the prospect of Draco leaving or not. The boy's company riled and irked him and at the same time, his presence and the slow and steady in an out of his breath was attractive in the way that only another life could be to one who had, for a long time, thought the world dead.
"Tomorrow, I think, maybe the day after." The Slytherin replied briskly, leaning into his chair and hooking an arm over the back of it as he turned towards him. He seemed to have no problem making himself at home or with inviting himself for an extended visit.
"You really have nothing better to do with your life than sit here and rot with me?" Harry frowned, scratching at a stain on his table top with a finger.
"Oh I have plenty better to do," Draco rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. "I just don't want to do it."
"Like what? What do you have to do?" The kettle had begun to whistle and without hesitation, Harry retrieved it, holding it in both hands with a thick, wrapped towel. He brought it to the counter to fill tea cups. He had to fill two tea cups today.
"Oh," Draco's square shoulders shrugged in a noncommital way. "My mother's funeral is tomorrow, but I really don't want to go to that."
"Your mother?" That gave Harry pause and he glanced over at Draco with narrowing, curious eyes as if it were unbelievable to him that anyone could still die now that he and Voldemort were both decommissioned. He remembered when Draco's father had been killed, put to death by the Aurors at the judgement of the Wizengraut. After the final battle with the Dark Lord where the Dementors had risen up in rebellion against the wizarding world at the behest of the Death Eaters, Azkaban had become an altogether useless prison and the Wizarding World had become personally responsible for taking out their own garbage. He hadn't attended the actual act of capital punishment himself but he'd read in the paper a few days later about how Draco had been there and how he'd had to physically remove his hysterical mother from the room. The article hadn't said if Draco had cried or not but Harry couldn't imagine watching your own father die and not feeling something.
"Yeah, the crazy old bat finally decided to give all of us a break."
"You shouldn't talk about your mother that way." Harry said, surprised at how soft his voice had become as he set a cup of tea across from Draco and reclaimed his seat.
"I know," the blonde agreed and lifted his cup to take a sip.
Together they drank their tea in silence, Draco on his feet as he took a closer look at his surroundings and Harry with his eyes on Draco as he moved around the room. He was thinking a lot of curious things about Draco Malfoy at the moment, for the first time in a long time he tried to imagine someone else's life instead of how terrible he thought his own had become. He decided it must have been very difficult for Draco after it was publicized that the Death Eater's had returned and that his father was one of them, arrested after the same battle that had killed his Godfather. People would revile him, the son of an accused and later convicted Death Eater. Who would befriend a person like that? Who would show kindness to an obviously tainted boy? And furthermore, Draco's own social circles aside, what would it be like to be rendered a guardian, given the role of a parent to your own parent? Narcissa had gone mad after Lucius was killed, he'd read about how she'd been committed to Saint Mungo's a few weeks after her husband's execution. Draco would have been responsible for her, he would have had to visit her, to watch her waste away into a babbling lunatic. He would have been responsible for her and for the entire shamed Malfoy estate. The Ministry had ransacked the Malfoy Manor in search of Dark Arts artifacts, they'd gone through all of the Malfoy family assets and finances, all of their records. Draco's entire life had been laid open and bare for the entire world to see and scrutinize and pick apart and warp. Just like his own life had been.
"Stop looking at me like that." Draco broke the silence, his voice once again mean.
Harry took his eyes from him instantly and back to his cup of tea, startled. "Sorry." He apologized quickly, feeling the shame of being caught staring flush his cheeks with pink. He kept his mouth solemn and schooled.
"Knock it off, Potter, I'm serious." The blonde replied venomously as he set his empty tea cup back down on the table. "I know that look, I'm sick of that look." He snarled.
"I"m sorry." Harry croaked again, his shoulders hunching up slightly as he sank into his seat.
"You don't think I get that enough?" Draco grabbed the back of Harry's shirts and pulled him up out of his chair, giving him a shove backwards. "Do you think I want that? Or that I need it? Your sick sorry and pity! Screw that and screw you, that's not why I came here--to get that look!"
Harry stumbled back as he was tossed, shorter than Draco as he'd always been. He straightened his clothes, his brows creasing. "What's your problem? You just don't go around shoving people."
"Stop looking at me like that and I won't have to police you." Draco jabbed an accusatory finger in Harry's direction.
"I didn't mean to, sorry, whatever, don't get all twisted up you might pop something." Harry shoved the hand away. He hated being pointed at, he didn't like the feel of the energy of pointing, stabbing right into his chest like an arrow.
"I'll hit you if I have to Potter." The blonde promised him.
"You won't have to." Harry assured and after a moment's hesitation he pushed past Draco to gather the tea cups and carry them to the sink. "You're going to have to stay the night now, it's too late to go out anywhere now."
"Fine," Draco replied and began to loosen his tie as he started towards Harry's make shift bathroom, separate from the rest of the area with a screen.
"I'll change the sheets and blankets on the bed for you."
****
"Potter, what in the hell are you doing?" Draco's sharp voice broke through the thick, weighted dreams of Harry's sleep and his eyes opened. He didn't even have to ask what, he'd gone through all of this before and just like every time the moment he reached consciousness he collapsed, fell hard to the ground, knocking the breathe from his chest. He wheezed, rolling onto his side and slowly forced himself to breathe in. "You're truly a freak." The blonde informed him drowsily.
"Shut up," Harry said when he finally found himself able to speak. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head as he hung it between his shoulders taking in slow controlled breaths. "I can't control it." He hadn't had the formal magical education that everyone else had. He often did things he couldn't control like that, like his levitating.
"You're useless." Draco sleepily sank back down onto his bed, scooting over to one side against the wall and lifting up the blankets to bare the spot next to him. "Come here."
Harry lifted his head to glance at him and his invitation. Was he serious? Was he offering what he thought he was? "Malfoy, I'm not going to crawl into bed with you." Harry informed him flatly. How strange would it be to lay curled up asleep next to another human being, especially if that human being was Draco Malfoy. It wasn't sure if he would be able to stand it.
"Fine, you stubborn fool." Draco gathered the blankets up in his hands, wrapping them around his body and slipped out of bed, next to him on the floor. "Just go to sleep." He ordered as Harry opened his mouth to say something. He thought better of it as the blonde snapped at him and obediently closed his eyes behind his glasses and laid down on his side with his back towards the other.
Draco sat down next to him and Harry held his breath as he leaned over his body, slowly plucking the glasses from off his nose. He kept his eyes screwed shut tightly as the feather light touch came and went, trailed by the cool legs of his spectacles sliding over the sides of his face and eventually off. "I'll hold you down." Draco told him as he pulled the blankets over their bodies, up to their shoulders and then tucked his arm beneath them and over Harry's side, curling against his chest.
He could feel Draco's body, soft and warm and fitted against the curve of his back, his pale fingers curling into a fist over his chest and holding their forms tightly together. He swallowed a growing lump in his throat, pulling his own arm out from where it was trapped beneath Draco's.
"Stop fidgeting." Draco sounded angry even in his sleepy, half awake voice so close to Harry's ear he could feel the other boy's breath on him and the back of his neck.
"Sorry," Harry replied and when he had his arm free, all of the tiny hairs on it standing on end, he set it down over Draco's, his fingers curling over the pale hand and arm on his chest. He felt anchored and warm, his closed eyes relaxing. The other behind him was sleeping, Harry could tell by the rhythm of his breath as it broke over his skin and as he slowly drifted off to sleep himself, he found himself wondering if maybe this floor was really as terrible as he had originally thought.