A Performance Agreed Upon - A gift for slythrngodss!
Title: A Performance Agreed Upon
Author: secretsalex
Recipient: slythrngodss
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Word Count: 2,500
Rating: R
Warnings: D/s, Master/slave relationship, whipping, humiliation
Summary: The war has dragged on for six long years. As a spy for the Order, Draco finds a way to sneak Harry into the inner sanctuary of the Death Eaters. It just requires a strategic performance on both their parts.
Author's Notes: I don't know you, slythrngodss, so I don't know for certain if this is to your taste-but for what it's worth, I really had fun writing it. I hope you like it.
Disclaimer: JKR created the boys. I just queer 'em.
"You can't fuck around, Potter. You have to submit to me. In every possible way."
Harry rolled his eyes. They'd been over this a dozen times. Draco was nervous. "I know. Eyes down. At your heel. Speak only when spoken to."
"Potter." Draco ran his hands through his hair, ruffling the pretty blond strands until they were uncharacteristically messy. "It's highly likely that I'll end up fucking you in front of the inner circle. I need you to understand what you're agreeing to."
Harry looked up. Draco's eyes were bright and strangely urgent. "I know. I'd let Voldemort fuck me if it would end the fucking war."
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Harry had known what he was agreeing to--Draco had made sure of it. So now, as Draco tugged him through the corridors of Malfoy Manor to be presented to Voldemort for the first time, Harry felt strangely calm. The collar around his neck was foreign, yes, and he was barefoot, topless, wearing only a pair of black trousers, but he knew his part. Draco was his Master. He was the prisoner of war, the slave, the whore. All he had to do was submit. Draco was the one who was playing the role of a lifetime.
"At my heel," Draco muttered before they walked into the dining room. It was an unnecessary instruction--Harry had been there all morning in preparation.
The temperature in the Manor as a whole was uncomfortably cold; this was doubly true in the dining room, where Voldemort sat at the head of the table. Harry didn't look up, he knew he wasn't supposed to, but he heard the intake of breath from various Death Eaters as Draco led him to Voldemort.
"My Lord," Draco said, his voice a low, guarded intonation. Harry could sense Draco's deep bow. Harry fell to his knees at Draco's side, as he'd been taught.
"Draco, it is a pleasure," the Dark Lord replied, his voice setting Harry's teeth on edge. "And what is this morsel on the end of your lead?"
Draco's hand was in Harry's hair suddenly, tugging his head back, up, exposing his scar. Harry didn't know where to look, so he shut his eyes. He could still feel Voldemort's scrutiny. "My slave, My Lord. Harry Potter."
Voldemort's tittery laugh was excruciating. "Harry Potter, reduced to this? Draco, this is lovely--your father would be so proud of you."
Harry felt Draco stiffen almost imperceptibly beside him. Lucius' death at the hands of the Dark Lord a year ago was what had finally pushed Draco into the Order, six years after he had taken the Mark.
"Yes, I'm sure," Draco said, his response smooth and only half a beat too late.
"Show me what he can do," Voldemort said, as if Harry were a well-trained dog who might perform tricks.
Draco dropped Harry's hair and let his head fall back down. "What would you like to see, My Lord? On your feet, boy," he commanded to Harry, his voice like a whip.
Harry rose, trying his best to make his movements smooth. In the six weeks they'd been practicing and planning, Draco had yelled at him over and over again for his lack of grace.
"Does he handle pain well, this Chosen One?" Voldemort's giggle was wretched.
"Yes, My Lord." Draco's voice was confident. "Shall I demonstrate?"
"Please, Draco." Harry could hear the scattered laughter of the other Death Eaters. It made him cringe, but he pushed it from his mind. No Voldemort, no Bellatrix, no Dolohov. No one but him and Draco, as they had practiced. He could do this.
Draco dropped the lead and slapped Harry's arse, the way one might encourage livestock to move. "Hands on the table, boy." Harry did as he was told, listening as Draco pulled off his belt and doubled it in his hand.
"Count them, boy." Draco's voice was calm and low, and Harry barely had time to inhale before Draco let fly the first blow, strapping him hard across the shoulders.
"One, Sir." Thwack. "Two, Sir."
It continued, and Harry felt everything drop away but Draco's belt across his back, the blows raining down in an assault, and his own voice, ringing out in the echoing room.
He counted out thirty before Draco stopped and tears were streaming down Harry's cheeks.
"He did well," Voldemort mused, sounding surprised. "How long have you had him, Draco?"
"I captured him in the raid at Godric's Hollow three weeks ago, My Lord." Draco's voice slipped an octave and Harry wondered if Draco was flirting with the creepy old bastard. "I wanted him trained before you returned to the Manor, My Lord. I have been . . . breaking him ever since, in anticipation of your arrival."
"Oh, that is truly delicious, Draco." Voldemort tittered again. "The Chosen One, reduced to this--no longer so important, are you, boy?" Harry repressed a shudder as Voldemort spoke to him directly. "Just a plaything, entertainment--lovely. Perhaps I'll let Draco keep you for a time."
Harry kept his eyes on his hands, gripping the table. If he was supposed to answer, Draco would have to prod him.
Apparently he was not, because Draco said nothing, and Voldemort reverted to addressing him instead of Harry. "Tell me, Draco, do you fuck him?"
"Of course," Draco purred, and Harry was struck again by how much sex Draco put in his voice when he spoke to Voldemort. It was disconcerting. The pointed toe of one dragon-hide boot landed sharp against the back of Harry's heel. "On your knees, boy. Show our Lord how well the Golden Boy sucks cock."
Harry did as he was told, turning to kneel in front of Draco. "Worship my cock, boy," Draco instructed, his hands already tangling in Harry's hair, pulling him forward against his crotch. "Show everyone what a good slave you are."
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"You did well," Draco murmured when they were back in the master bedroom, away from the watchful eyes of Voldemort and his band of Death Eaters.
Harry snorted, reaching up to tug at his collar. "As did you, Master."
"Don't sass," Draco said sharply. "Stay in character as long as he's here--I swear to Merlin, Potter, I will beat you black and blue if I have to. It's too dangerous to risk slipping while he's in the house."
Harry inhaled. "Yes, Sir," he muttered, thinking that he was already black and blue, thanks to Draco's enthusiastic strapping. This little farce might be a performance agreed upon, but Draco had not witheld any of his strength as he wielded his belt over Harry's bare back.
"Good boy," Draco said, the casual praise sounding natural on his aristocratic lips. "He should be gone by tomorrow evening. They're going back to London, the lot of them. I should get a pass, given that I have such an interesting new plaything. If that's the case, I'll take you back to Grimmauld Place the moment they're gone. Until then, behave."
"Yes, Sir," Harry repeated.
"Good. Now come here." Harry did as he was told, watching as Draco transfigured Harry's leash into a length of heavy chain and attached it to a post at the foot of his enormous bed. "On the floor, then, boy." He tossed a blanket and a pillow to Harry from the bed, then cast a warming spell over Harry without a word. "Go to sleep."
And Harry did, but it took a long time. Of all the places he thought he might willingly go, into Malfoy Manor as Draco Malfoy's mock-slave had never been one of them.
War made strange bedfellows.
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Harry got better at being a slave. Better at submitting to Draco's wishes.
Sometimes Draco didn't even have to command him. When Draco entered a room, Harry trailed behind. Always two strides back, on the left. He learned to recognize when the Dark Lord was in a particularly foul mood-or when Draco himself felt powerless, frustrated.
On those days, Harry crawled.
Harry grew used to Death Eater meetings, sitting at the horrid dining room table in Malfoy Manor and listening to the talk, the increasingly grandiose talk, of a madman.
Sometimes he peeped up at the other Death Eaters from his vantage point at Draco's knee and looked at their tight faces, their hard eyes. He wondered if the SS had started to look like that toward the end, blinking down at their hands whenever their Fuhrer opened his mouth.
He even grew used to being part of the entertainment some evenings.
The first time Draco fucked him in front of the inner circle, he'd closed his eyes and let himself think of nothing but Hagrid's hut, the warm fire in the corner and the million competing smells of food and herbs and tea and whiskey, of Fang and whatever other assortment of animals Hagrid might have.
He'd bled for two days, and Draco hadn't healed him. Couldn't-Voldemort had been too interested in seeing the evidence of Draco's brutality.
But in private, in their room, Draco had run a warm bath for him and set him down in it, washed him gently, and then put him to bed on his little pile of blankets next to the bed. He hadn't said a word, and neither had Harry.
Harry did not speak unless spoken to.
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Strange, how it was harder to be back at Grimmauld Place. Back with the Order. There, Draco was still seen as something of a wild card-the quasi-trustworthy turncoat who held the future in his hands-or on a leash at his heels. In inchoate ways, Harry longed to see Draco given respect. Admiration. Power.
He tried not to think about it much.
It was hard in other ways, too. Hard not to dog Draco's heels. Hard not to lower his eyes whenever Draco looked at him. Hell, sometimes hard simply to sit at the table and eat with the Order, when all he wanted to do was take a seat on the floor at Draco's feet. There, he didn't have a dozen people, mostly older and more battle-worn than he, looking to him, always looking, for answers. There, he didn't have the weight of saving the world on his shoulders. There, his biggest concern was whether or not Draco would deign to feed him.
Ron had nearly shit himself when Harry had begun sleeping in Draco's room whenever Draco stayed over at Grimmauld Place. He couldn't believe it, couldn't stand the thought of it. Hermione had explained it to him in Muggle terms that Ron should think of Harry as a "method actor," whatever that might be.
Harry didn't care-about acting or methods or what Ron thought. He didn't have nightmares when he was chained to Draco's bed.
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The plan developed slowly, and in many ways Harry didn't take much of an interest in it. Listening to Kingsley, to Arthur, to Dean and Seamus and McGonagall and all the rest of the people he loved so much, discussing the logistics of how, as Draco was fucking him, the Dark Lord should be enticed into joining them-at which point Harry would commandeer Draco's wand, conveniently available in Draco's robe pocket, and cast the killing curse.
Harry didn't say much. But he wasn't sure what it meant, in the grand scheme of things, that in order to kill Voldemort he had to first suck his cock.
It just didn't seem like the kind of story that was going to sell a lot of Prophets.
Of course, none of the Order were admitting that giving a blowjob was exactly what Harry was being forced to do. They discussed it in vague, sanitized terms. When Draco presents Harry, and the Dark Lord comes forward... When Harry and Draco have His ear... When Harry and Draco are next in front of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named...
Sometimes Harry longed to interrupt and demand that everyone speak the truth-that they shouldn't be afraid to say Voldemort, or afraid to say that Harry Potter, their exalted saviour, was going to kill the Darkest wizard of the age while getting double penetrated and treated like a worthless little whore.
But instead Harry said nothing, and wished Order meetings could look more like Death Eater meetings, where he might curl up at Draco's feet and let his cheek rest on one polished boot.
@@@@@@@@@@
Like most big events, killing the Dark Lord proved to be rather anticlimactic.
The plan went, surprisingly, according to plan, and the Dark Lord, the feared one, the tyrant of the wizarding world, died rather quietly, with his dick shoved down the throat of a man young enough to be his grandchild.
It had been a small meeting, and the other Death Eaters present had mostly fled-with the notable exception of Bellatrix, who had cast a few poorly-aimed AKs before Draco did her in himself, his hand never wavering as he murdered his aunt.
And then, just like that, the reign of terror was over.
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Harry looked blankly over his tea at Hermione's concerned face. "I think you're suffering from what Muggles call PTSD," she said, eyes wide, voice earnest. "It's a kind of-"
"I know what it is," Harry interrupted. "That's not it."
"Oh, Harry." Hermione's voice rang with sorrow. "The things you saw-we all saw and did horrible things, but you had to-to live there, to be led around on a leash by Draco Malfoy. I don't know what he did to you while you were there and I would never ask you, but...oh, Harry. I'm so sorry."
Harry blinked. "Um. Yes."
"Do you have nightmares?" Hermione asked. "I do, and I didn't see half of what you must have."
Harry considered. "Uh-yes, I do." Which was true. He did have nightmares-but not about Voldemort or the inner circle or the war. They were about being alone, about crawling, about looking for someone he could not find.
"I really wish you would think about speaking to someone."
Harry nodded. "Maybe I will. Speak to someone."
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On the one-month anniversary of Voldemort's death, Harry Apparated to the front gate of Malfoy Manor, waiting for a house elf to let him into the grounds.
On the front steps, he didn't bother to knock. The wards would have let Draco know he was there the moment he Apparated near the place. He just kneeled.
Long minutes passed, and Harry refused to let himself think of anything, anything at all.
And finally, when the door opened, Harry didn't allow himself to look up. He didn't need to-Draco's highly polished dragon-hide boots were instantly recognisable.
Draco didn't speak, and so Harry had to.
"Master." His stomach clenched and he fought the urge to vomit, to just throw up right on Draco's beautiful boots.
"Boy. What are you doing here?"
"I-I need." Harry shook his head, trying to dislodge the sweaty chunk of fringe that was sticking to his forehead. That wasn't what he was trying to say-not really, not only-but it was all he had.
"If you come inside, it's no longer a performance," Draco said.
Harry nodded. "Yes, Sir."
Author: secretsalex
Recipient: slythrngodss
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Word Count: 2,500
Rating: R
Warnings: D/s, Master/slave relationship, whipping, humiliation
Summary: The war has dragged on for six long years. As a spy for the Order, Draco finds a way to sneak Harry into the inner sanctuary of the Death Eaters. It just requires a strategic performance on both their parts.
Author's Notes: I don't know you, slythrngodss, so I don't know for certain if this is to your taste-but for what it's worth, I really had fun writing it. I hope you like it.
Disclaimer: JKR created the boys. I just queer 'em.
"You can't fuck around, Potter. You have to submit to me. In every possible way."
Harry rolled his eyes. They'd been over this a dozen times. Draco was nervous. "I know. Eyes down. At your heel. Speak only when spoken to."
"Potter." Draco ran his hands through his hair, ruffling the pretty blond strands until they were uncharacteristically messy. "It's highly likely that I'll end up fucking you in front of the inner circle. I need you to understand what you're agreeing to."
Harry looked up. Draco's eyes were bright and strangely urgent. "I know. I'd let Voldemort fuck me if it would end the fucking war."
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Harry had known what he was agreeing to--Draco had made sure of it. So now, as Draco tugged him through the corridors of Malfoy Manor to be presented to Voldemort for the first time, Harry felt strangely calm. The collar around his neck was foreign, yes, and he was barefoot, topless, wearing only a pair of black trousers, but he knew his part. Draco was his Master. He was the prisoner of war, the slave, the whore. All he had to do was submit. Draco was the one who was playing the role of a lifetime.
"At my heel," Draco muttered before they walked into the dining room. It was an unnecessary instruction--Harry had been there all morning in preparation.
The temperature in the Manor as a whole was uncomfortably cold; this was doubly true in the dining room, where Voldemort sat at the head of the table. Harry didn't look up, he knew he wasn't supposed to, but he heard the intake of breath from various Death Eaters as Draco led him to Voldemort.
"My Lord," Draco said, his voice a low, guarded intonation. Harry could sense Draco's deep bow. Harry fell to his knees at Draco's side, as he'd been taught.
"Draco, it is a pleasure," the Dark Lord replied, his voice setting Harry's teeth on edge. "And what is this morsel on the end of your lead?"
Draco's hand was in Harry's hair suddenly, tugging his head back, up, exposing his scar. Harry didn't know where to look, so he shut his eyes. He could still feel Voldemort's scrutiny. "My slave, My Lord. Harry Potter."
Voldemort's tittery laugh was excruciating. "Harry Potter, reduced to this? Draco, this is lovely--your father would be so proud of you."
Harry felt Draco stiffen almost imperceptibly beside him. Lucius' death at the hands of the Dark Lord a year ago was what had finally pushed Draco into the Order, six years after he had taken the Mark.
"Yes, I'm sure," Draco said, his response smooth and only half a beat too late.
"Show me what he can do," Voldemort said, as if Harry were a well-trained dog who might perform tricks.
Draco dropped Harry's hair and let his head fall back down. "What would you like to see, My Lord? On your feet, boy," he commanded to Harry, his voice like a whip.
Harry rose, trying his best to make his movements smooth. In the six weeks they'd been practicing and planning, Draco had yelled at him over and over again for his lack of grace.
"Does he handle pain well, this Chosen One?" Voldemort's giggle was wretched.
"Yes, My Lord." Draco's voice was confident. "Shall I demonstrate?"
"Please, Draco." Harry could hear the scattered laughter of the other Death Eaters. It made him cringe, but he pushed it from his mind. No Voldemort, no Bellatrix, no Dolohov. No one but him and Draco, as they had practiced. He could do this.
Draco dropped the lead and slapped Harry's arse, the way one might encourage livestock to move. "Hands on the table, boy." Harry did as he was told, listening as Draco pulled off his belt and doubled it in his hand.
"Count them, boy." Draco's voice was calm and low, and Harry barely had time to inhale before Draco let fly the first blow, strapping him hard across the shoulders.
"One, Sir." Thwack. "Two, Sir."
It continued, and Harry felt everything drop away but Draco's belt across his back, the blows raining down in an assault, and his own voice, ringing out in the echoing room.
He counted out thirty before Draco stopped and tears were streaming down Harry's cheeks.
"He did well," Voldemort mused, sounding surprised. "How long have you had him, Draco?"
"I captured him in the raid at Godric's Hollow three weeks ago, My Lord." Draco's voice slipped an octave and Harry wondered if Draco was flirting with the creepy old bastard. "I wanted him trained before you returned to the Manor, My Lord. I have been . . . breaking him ever since, in anticipation of your arrival."
"Oh, that is truly delicious, Draco." Voldemort tittered again. "The Chosen One, reduced to this--no longer so important, are you, boy?" Harry repressed a shudder as Voldemort spoke to him directly. "Just a plaything, entertainment--lovely. Perhaps I'll let Draco keep you for a time."
Harry kept his eyes on his hands, gripping the table. If he was supposed to answer, Draco would have to prod him.
Apparently he was not, because Draco said nothing, and Voldemort reverted to addressing him instead of Harry. "Tell me, Draco, do you fuck him?"
"Of course," Draco purred, and Harry was struck again by how much sex Draco put in his voice when he spoke to Voldemort. It was disconcerting. The pointed toe of one dragon-hide boot landed sharp against the back of Harry's heel. "On your knees, boy. Show our Lord how well the Golden Boy sucks cock."
Harry did as he was told, turning to kneel in front of Draco. "Worship my cock, boy," Draco instructed, his hands already tangling in Harry's hair, pulling him forward against his crotch. "Show everyone what a good slave you are."
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"You did well," Draco murmured when they were back in the master bedroom, away from the watchful eyes of Voldemort and his band of Death Eaters.
Harry snorted, reaching up to tug at his collar. "As did you, Master."
"Don't sass," Draco said sharply. "Stay in character as long as he's here--I swear to Merlin, Potter, I will beat you black and blue if I have to. It's too dangerous to risk slipping while he's in the house."
Harry inhaled. "Yes, Sir," he muttered, thinking that he was already black and blue, thanks to Draco's enthusiastic strapping. This little farce might be a performance agreed upon, but Draco had not witheld any of his strength as he wielded his belt over Harry's bare back.
"Good boy," Draco said, the casual praise sounding natural on his aristocratic lips. "He should be gone by tomorrow evening. They're going back to London, the lot of them. I should get a pass, given that I have such an interesting new plaything. If that's the case, I'll take you back to Grimmauld Place the moment they're gone. Until then, behave."
"Yes, Sir," Harry repeated.
"Good. Now come here." Harry did as he was told, watching as Draco transfigured Harry's leash into a length of heavy chain and attached it to a post at the foot of his enormous bed. "On the floor, then, boy." He tossed a blanket and a pillow to Harry from the bed, then cast a warming spell over Harry without a word. "Go to sleep."
And Harry did, but it took a long time. Of all the places he thought he might willingly go, into Malfoy Manor as Draco Malfoy's mock-slave had never been one of them.
War made strange bedfellows.
@@@@@@@@@@@
Harry got better at being a slave. Better at submitting to Draco's wishes.
Sometimes Draco didn't even have to command him. When Draco entered a room, Harry trailed behind. Always two strides back, on the left. He learned to recognize when the Dark Lord was in a particularly foul mood-or when Draco himself felt powerless, frustrated.
On those days, Harry crawled.
Harry grew used to Death Eater meetings, sitting at the horrid dining room table in Malfoy Manor and listening to the talk, the increasingly grandiose talk, of a madman.
Sometimes he peeped up at the other Death Eaters from his vantage point at Draco's knee and looked at their tight faces, their hard eyes. He wondered if the SS had started to look like that toward the end, blinking down at their hands whenever their Fuhrer opened his mouth.
He even grew used to being part of the entertainment some evenings.
The first time Draco fucked him in front of the inner circle, he'd closed his eyes and let himself think of nothing but Hagrid's hut, the warm fire in the corner and the million competing smells of food and herbs and tea and whiskey, of Fang and whatever other assortment of animals Hagrid might have.
He'd bled for two days, and Draco hadn't healed him. Couldn't-Voldemort had been too interested in seeing the evidence of Draco's brutality.
But in private, in their room, Draco had run a warm bath for him and set him down in it, washed him gently, and then put him to bed on his little pile of blankets next to the bed. He hadn't said a word, and neither had Harry.
Harry did not speak unless spoken to.
@@@@@@@@@
Strange, how it was harder to be back at Grimmauld Place. Back with the Order. There, Draco was still seen as something of a wild card-the quasi-trustworthy turncoat who held the future in his hands-or on a leash at his heels. In inchoate ways, Harry longed to see Draco given respect. Admiration. Power.
He tried not to think about it much.
It was hard in other ways, too. Hard not to dog Draco's heels. Hard not to lower his eyes whenever Draco looked at him. Hell, sometimes hard simply to sit at the table and eat with the Order, when all he wanted to do was take a seat on the floor at Draco's feet. There, he didn't have a dozen people, mostly older and more battle-worn than he, looking to him, always looking, for answers. There, he didn't have the weight of saving the world on his shoulders. There, his biggest concern was whether or not Draco would deign to feed him.
Ron had nearly shit himself when Harry had begun sleeping in Draco's room whenever Draco stayed over at Grimmauld Place. He couldn't believe it, couldn't stand the thought of it. Hermione had explained it to him in Muggle terms that Ron should think of Harry as a "method actor," whatever that might be.
Harry didn't care-about acting or methods or what Ron thought. He didn't have nightmares when he was chained to Draco's bed.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
The plan developed slowly, and in many ways Harry didn't take much of an interest in it. Listening to Kingsley, to Arthur, to Dean and Seamus and McGonagall and all the rest of the people he loved so much, discussing the logistics of how, as Draco was fucking him, the Dark Lord should be enticed into joining them-at which point Harry would commandeer Draco's wand, conveniently available in Draco's robe pocket, and cast the killing curse.
Harry didn't say much. But he wasn't sure what it meant, in the grand scheme of things, that in order to kill Voldemort he had to first suck his cock.
It just didn't seem like the kind of story that was going to sell a lot of Prophets.
Of course, none of the Order were admitting that giving a blowjob was exactly what Harry was being forced to do. They discussed it in vague, sanitized terms. When Draco presents Harry, and the Dark Lord comes forward... When Harry and Draco have His ear... When Harry and Draco are next in front of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named...
Sometimes Harry longed to interrupt and demand that everyone speak the truth-that they shouldn't be afraid to say Voldemort, or afraid to say that Harry Potter, their exalted saviour, was going to kill the Darkest wizard of the age while getting double penetrated and treated like a worthless little whore.
But instead Harry said nothing, and wished Order meetings could look more like Death Eater meetings, where he might curl up at Draco's feet and let his cheek rest on one polished boot.
@@@@@@@@@@
Like most big events, killing the Dark Lord proved to be rather anticlimactic.
The plan went, surprisingly, according to plan, and the Dark Lord, the feared one, the tyrant of the wizarding world, died rather quietly, with his dick shoved down the throat of a man young enough to be his grandchild.
It had been a small meeting, and the other Death Eaters present had mostly fled-with the notable exception of Bellatrix, who had cast a few poorly-aimed AKs before Draco did her in himself, his hand never wavering as he murdered his aunt.
And then, just like that, the reign of terror was over.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Harry looked blankly over his tea at Hermione's concerned face. "I think you're suffering from what Muggles call PTSD," she said, eyes wide, voice earnest. "It's a kind of-"
"I know what it is," Harry interrupted. "That's not it."
"Oh, Harry." Hermione's voice rang with sorrow. "The things you saw-we all saw and did horrible things, but you had to-to live there, to be led around on a leash by Draco Malfoy. I don't know what he did to you while you were there and I would never ask you, but...oh, Harry. I'm so sorry."
Harry blinked. "Um. Yes."
"Do you have nightmares?" Hermione asked. "I do, and I didn't see half of what you must have."
Harry considered. "Uh-yes, I do." Which was true. He did have nightmares-but not about Voldemort or the inner circle or the war. They were about being alone, about crawling, about looking for someone he could not find.
"I really wish you would think about speaking to someone."
Harry nodded. "Maybe I will. Speak to someone."
@@@@@@@@@@@@
On the one-month anniversary of Voldemort's death, Harry Apparated to the front gate of Malfoy Manor, waiting for a house elf to let him into the grounds.
On the front steps, he didn't bother to knock. The wards would have let Draco know he was there the moment he Apparated near the place. He just kneeled.
Long minutes passed, and Harry refused to let himself think of anything, anything at all.
And finally, when the door opened, Harry didn't allow himself to look up. He didn't need to-Draco's highly polished dragon-hide boots were instantly recognisable.
Draco didn't speak, and so Harry had to.
"Master." His stomach clenched and he fought the urge to vomit, to just throw up right on Draco's beautiful boots.
"Boy. What are you doing here?"
"I-I need." Harry shook his head, trying to dislodge the sweaty chunk of fringe that was sticking to his forehead. That wasn't what he was trying to say-not really, not only-but it was all he had.
"If you come inside, it's no longer a performance," Draco said.
Harry nodded. "Yes, Sir."