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Sleepless	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16095 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter Twelve—Decisions Not Lightly Made

            “Because she’s the one who seems to be causing all the trouble,” Harry said, glad that the dream had apparently returned him to the middle of the sentence he was uttering to Draco when he’d vanished last time. For a moment, he remembered Malfoy and his concern when he couldn’t wake Harry up, but he gave a little shudder and the memory vanished. He didn’t want to think about Malfoy here. Malfoy thought he needed help, instead of being able to give it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

            “Yes,” Draco said, frowning a little. “Discipula’s the one who arranged for most of the evidence collection, and the witnesses at other trials, and she seems to have a grudge against the pure-bloods. But that makes no sense, really. She’s pure-blood herself.”

            “Is she?” Harry asked, blinking. He didn’t remember hearing about a family named Mondragaron in his own world, but then again, he’d never paid as much attention to politics as he probably should have. And things might easily be different here, he reminded himself again. “Has anyone confirmed that?”

            Draco laughed in the back of his throat. “Her family’s old, and she’s most definitely her father’s daughter,” he assured Harry. “Besides, she was in Slytherin, during a time when the prejudice against Muggleborns was so strong and intense that most Muggleborn children weren’t even Sorted there by the Hat. I don’t know why she hates the rest of us, but I do know that she understands and knows how to manipulate the culture.”

            Harry nodded, thinking. “Then we need to know how to understand and manipulate her. Is there anyone who’s her close friend?”

            Draco shook his head. “Even when we were free and she was just starting to become a force in Ministry politics, I never heard of anyone like that. I think she kept all possible friends at a distance deliberately, so that they couldn’t potentially harm her Ministry ambitions. The only person who seems to attend on her at all times is that Mudblood bitch Granger.”

            Even knowing what made him say it, and the way that Hermione felt about pure-bloods in return, couldn’t keep Harry from flinching. And, to his credit, Draco was sorry for it a moment later, putting a hand on Harry’s arm and looking anxiously at him. “I apologize,” he muttered. “It’s just—you’re the only Muggleborn I’ve met in years who’s showed kindness and sympathy to us. After a while, it’s just easier to expect cruelty out of someone with your heritage.”

            Harry restrained himself from saying that Muggleborns probably felt the same thing about pure-bloods, and nodded. He wasn’t part of the politics of this world, he reminded himself. If anyone should be able to be an impartial observer, it was him. “All right. I’ll seek out Granger, then.” And hope like fuck that she actually talks to me. “And Skeeter. You—stay here and try to keep your spirits up, all right?”

            Draco snickered. “I really only have a choice about the second part of that.”

            Harry gently caught his chin and tilted his head up so that they could meet eye-to-eye. “But you’ll do it anyway?”

            Draco blinked for a moment, and then said, “If you want me to. I don’t really have any reason to do it for them.” He flicked his head at his parents, and then closed his hand down around Harry’s hard enough to bruise his fingers.

            Harry closed his eyes to keep from betraying what he really felt, and then nodded. “Do it for yourself, too. You deserve more attention and credit from yourself than you get, Draco.”

            When he left the cell that time, it was with Draco’s soft gaze on his back, and Lucius Malfoy’s smirk haunting him.

*

            “Potter.”

            “Goddamn it, Malfoy,” Harry snarled, turning around. They were in the middle of a new shop that had opened in Diagon Alley, selling more specialized books, which was trying to compete with Flourish and Blott’s, which sold mostly textbooks and general interest reading. The witch who owned it and gave the shop its name, Nibb’s, scurried over at once, looking somewhere between gratified and scandalized that Harry Potter was having an argument in the middle of her shop.

            “Please do try to keep the noise down, gentlemen,” she said, glancing between them and holding up a finger.

            “What noise?” Malfoy gave her a smile that made her smile back as if in helpless adoration of him. Great, he can date her, Harry thought mutinously. “I was only saying Potter’s name. It was his decision to shout at me.” He pouted at Harry and gave him the sort of smoldering look that might have convinced anyone they were long-established lovers.

            Harry gritted his teeth. He hated the way that Malfoy could manipulate the people around him to make Harry look like nothing less than a sodding prat. But he had made his decision. He was out of the git’s life. He would just have to find someone else to torment.

            He turned around and picked up the book he’d been looking at, one on strictures of magical theory that applied to alternate universes, and nodded to Nibbs. “How much for this one, madam?”

            She opened her mouth to answer, but Malfoy put his hand on Harry’s wrist. It was unusually heavy and warm, and Harry was instantly convinced he’d cast some charm on his skin that would make it feel that way. “Let me pay for that one, Harry,” Malfoy murmured into his ear. “As well as the one that you meant to buy.” The corner of another book nudged the nape of Harry’s neck, and, reluctantly, he turned to look.

            Everything You Need To Know About Dream Magic! chattered the title, which wound around the book’s spine in bright golden letters. Harry was surprised, and also suspicious. It looked more like the kind of book that Flourish and Blott’s would sell, and he wondered if Malfoy had smuggled it from there.

            “No,” Harry said. “I’m going to pay for my own bloody book.” He dug into his pocket for the Galleons that he’d put there this morning—and couldn’t find them. He knew he hadn’t put them elsewhere, he knew he’d heard them jingling when he entered the shop, but right now, they weren’t there.

            His skin crawled. He knew that he could get Nibbs to hold the book for him while he ran back to the bank for some money, but it was too much like having people do him favors because he was the Famous Harry Potter for his taste.

            He smiled sheepishly at Nibbs, who looked properly forbidding. “Er. I seem to have lost my money, madam. Could you keep the book for me? Just a few minutes? I’ll be back as soon as I can access my vault again—”

            “No need,” Malfoy said, with another one of those dazzling smiles—or so Harry thought; he couldn’t see it properly since Malfoy was behind him—and reached across Harry’s shoulder. Coins gleamed and clinked, and Nibbs squeaked and stared at the wealth in her hands as though she didn’t know how it had come there.

            “Oh, but, Mr. Malfoy, this is too much for the one book.” She picked up two of the Galleons and tried to hand them back.

            “Nonsense,” said Malfoy, who, Harry thought, had also adopted that deep voice just to charm uncertain, fluttering women. “It’s just right for the price of them both, and I assure you that Mr. Potter does indeed need this book on dream magic, even if he doesn’t know it yet.” His hand came firmly under Harry’s elbow, and he steered him towards the door of the shop, ducking his head smoothly when Harry tried to push him off and dodging back when Harry tried to elbow him in the ribs.

            “Well, Mr. Malfoy, if you’re sure,” Nibbs said after them. “Thank you for being such good customers!” She practically had to shout that part as the door swung shut behind them.

            Harry waited until the door had closed and he was relatively sure that Nibbs was looking elsewhere to wrench away from Malfoy. There was no point in causing her a heart attack, he thought. “Bloody fucking nice, Malfoy,” he snarled under his breath. “Hovering over me—she’ll probably think that you’re thinking of bloody adopting me or something.”

            Malfoy just gave him a bland look. “You have very strange assumptions about the wizarding world, Potter. Even here, people can tell what it means when someone hovers over someone of the same age like that.” He leaned closer and whispered loudly, “Think carefully. It isn’t adoption.”

            Harry’s face flamed, and he flung the dream magic book at Malfoy, who caught it easily. There were way too many people around, he thought, all of them slowly orienting on him as they realized who he was. He did not need this. “Sod off, Malfoy,” he said through clenched teeth, and started walking again.

            “You need someone to care about you,” Malfoy said, sauntering along behind him. Harry knew that he was shaking his head sadly at the people who watched them, conveying without words the necessity for someone to stand up to their temperamental Savior. That only made Harry angrier. “Since, as I told you, you’re incapable of watching out for your own health.”

            “You have your own issues with understanding words,” Harry snarled over his shoulder, “since you can’t understand a simple invitation to leave when it’s issued.”

            “Oh, I would leave if I had a pressing engagement elsewhere, or if you could convince me the dreams weren’t dangerous,” Malfoy said, coming up beside Harry and lowering his voice. He probably doesn’t want anyone else hearing about the dreams because that’s his secret to torment me with, Harry thought, mentally seething. “But you can’t convince me of that, so I think I’ll stay right where I am for the present.” He gave Harry another bland smile and tapped the corner of his folded arm with the dream magic book. “This belongs to you, by the way.”

            “It’s yours,” Harry snapped, shoving back. “You paid for it.”

            Malfoy gave a quiet laugh, his eyes brightening. “Then I reckon that all the things I pay for belong to me? Is that what this means?”

            “Yes,” Harry said, and then realized that one could argue that Malfoy had paid for him, too. “No!”

            “So indecisive,” Malfoy murmured. “It’s no wonder that you haven’t had a permanent relationship in months. Your horizon is probably thronged with choices, and you look around with a gaping mouth and can’t pick one. That would explain why you’ve fallen in love with someone who only exists in your head.”

            “Not fallen in love,” Harry said, lowering his voice, too. He could just imagine what kind of rumors would appear in the papers next if Skeeter or someone else overheard him. “It’s just that—he needs me, all right? I can do something for him.”

            “I notice that you didn’t dispute the ‘only exists in your head’ part.”

            Harry swung around to face Malfoy again. Malfoy gave the passersby a polite smile and pulled Harry out of the way of a woman struggling with a child and a Crup, both on leashes. Harry tried to give her an apologetic smile and Malfoy a fierce scowl at once; the woman glanced at him nervously and hurried on.

            “I don’t know how much more plainly I can put this,” Harry said when she was gone, leaning forwards so that he could speak directly into Malfoy’s face. From this close, those cool grey eyes were more smug than he would have thought possible. “I’ll use small words. Fuck. Off.”

            “No,” Malfoy said. “Would you leave someone alone who was dangling off a cliff and only hanging on with one hand? No. Neither would I. I like to be needed. I like that it’s you who needs me.” He made that outrageous statement with the same calm face that he would probably use to tell someone the time or the weather.

            “Are you mental?” Harry demanded. “I’m not hanging off any bloody cliff—honestly, Malfoy, you and your stupid metaphors—and I didn’t ask for your help.”

            “I know that,” Malfoy said, and he frowned for the first time, his eyes staring past Harry as if he was looking at something that had no name. “And sometimes, I wonder why I offered my help in the first place.”

            Harry eagerly seized that excuse. “Yes, exactly! You should have someone who appreciates you. Someone who can train with you, and offer help to you and accept your help, and treat you kindly. I can’t.” He smiled at Malfoy, hoping that it would help him make his decision if Harry used gentle language. “You deserve all that. You deserve someone who doesn’t push you away and forsake you for a dream. I’ve treated you horribly. Can you actually forgive that?”

            Malfoy sneered at him. Harry held his breath, expecting the rejection that would occur in the next moment.

            And if he felt bad about it in the back of his head—well, he didn’t like to fail anyone, and it made sense that he would feel worse about it with Malfoy than usual, since he was one variation of Draco and Harry could wish him as happy with someone as he thought it possible he could be with Draco.

            If he was real.

            Harry half-shook his head, hoping that Malfoy hadn’t used Legilimency on him to plant himself in Harry’s mind and voice suggestions that Harry would be more inclined to listen to because he would think they came from himself.

            “It’s all or nothing with you,” Malfoy said. “Complete forgiveness or complete disdain. As it happens, yes, I don’t like the way you’ve treated me, and if it was a case of training only, if I didn’t have other interests in you, then I would walk away and let you dangle. But you were one of the people who taught me better. Now I can’t turn my back on someone in trouble who matters to me, even if they’re not as invested in me as I am in them.” He was meeting Harry’s eyes directly now, and Harry thought he’d liked it better when Malfoy stared aside.

            “That’s not what I meant,” Harry said. “I meant what I wrote, that I can’t help you now, and you should find someone who could.”

            “I know what you wrote.” Malfoy’s gaze and voice were both steady. “I just don’t choose to pay attention to it.”

            Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He would have walked away in turn and left Malfoy to take his chances, but there was still the fact that Malfoy might go to Hermione. And then Harry would never be able to return to the dreams in peace. She would hound him and make him agree to take Dreamless Sleep or see this expert in dream magic that Malfoy kept pushing at him. She had a lot more influence over him than Malfoy did. Harry needed a solution that would actually end the problem.

            “Look,” he said at last. “If I could prove to you that the dreams weren’t dangerous, would you leave me alone?”

            A dangerous smile curved Malfoy’s lips. Harry didn’t know why. He had meant what he said, about all of it, and Malfoy shouldn’t look like a cat someone had held a defenseless bird out to.

            “If you could prove that,” Malfoy said. “You can’t prove that.”

            “How do you know?” Harry leaned forwards belligerently, then saw Malfoy’s eyes focus on his lips and started back again. He had to remember that Malfoy was still uncertain about a relationship with him, he reminded himself. That was his greatest defense. He shouldn’t make Malfoy think too much about whether he wanted Harry or not. “If I go to this expert in dream magic that you proposed I see, he could tell me something entirely different.”

            “He might, yes,” said Malfoy, while his lips widened in an even more dangerous smirk for some reason. “But you do have to remember, Harry, that he might decide on my point-of-view. What would you do, if he did that?”

            Harry shook his head stubbornly. “I have to remain there, or go on visiting there, at least until Draco doesn’t need me anymore.”

            For some reason, Malfoy lost his smirk and looked wounded at that. But he had covered it up so fast and gone back to a normal expression in the next instant, so Harry thought he might just have intended it as manipulation. “So it seems that I’m to have nothing either way, no matter who’s right.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I know they’re not dangerous, git, or I wouldn’t have volunteered to try and prove they weren’t.”

            Malfoy burst out laughing. A few people passing through Diagon Alley turned around to stare, but he didn’t take any notice of them, and in fact rubbed tears from his cheeks while he watched Harry in amusement. “Ah, Harry. I fear that you would never make a good Potions master if you weren’t willing to change your mind in the face of new evidence.”

            “I don’t want to be a Potions master,” Harry said. “I want to be a barrister. A good one. One who helps all the people in need.”

            “Are the people in want not ones you feel any compassion for?” Malfoy murmured, drawing closer.

            “You can do something to help yourself,” Harry retorted. “You have your freedom, and your family’s freedom. Draco has nothing and no one to help him but me. How can I abandon him like that?”

            Malfoy opened his mouth to say something, then looked thoughtful and shut it again. “All right,” he said at last. “Do you trust me to make the appointment with a theorist I think trustworthy, and to make it for a time and place you’ll be able to easily reach? Unless you’re asleep when I call for you,” he added with mild sarcasm.

            Harry nodded. He was going to go through with this in good faith. It didn’t bother him. Malfoy was the one who would be severely embarrassed when it turned out that there was nothing threatening in the dreams. Harry hoped that the dream magic expert was someone like Dumbledore, with a long silver beard, so that he could stroke it and stare at Malfoy sadly for making such a stupid mistake.

            “See you in a day, then,” Malfoy said, and nodded, and walked away down Diagon Alley before Harry could make any of the several cutting remarks that had sprung to mind when he heard those words.

*

            “You want to know what.”

            Harry winced. Dream-Hermione was far more cutting than the Hermione he knew. She kept her head bowed over the papers she was working on, despite Harry having cleared his throat several times in an attempt to get her attention, and she didn’t make her question a question, even though it should have been.

            “Um.” Harry scratched the back of his head. He could hardly ask her outright to betray Discipula or any important secrets. He had to go for a more discreet route, but he didn’t know what it could be. He wished fiercely, not for the first time, that Draco and his family weren’t so disdainful of Muggleborns, so that they could have got to know her better and given Harry some advice.

            But then Harry thought about Draco’s outburst, and Hermione’s earlier one, and snorted to himself. She had already handed him the secret to manipulating her, if he was bold enough to use it.

            “I want to know why you’re not more outraged over Discipula and the way she handled the trials,” he said, leaning forwards with his hands on her desk and speaking softly. “Since, by all accounts, she was the one who arranged them for the Ministry. If the Muggleborn Death Eaters died first, without much of a trial, whose fault was that?”

            Her head jerked up so fast that she nearly hit him in the jaw with her skull. She stared at him with her mouth twitching, and then she turned and looked aside, one hand clenching on her knee. Harry stepped back and waited. He had thought of saying something, but he doubted that that would be productive.

            “You have no idea what it’s like,” Hermione said mechanically a moment later. “I’m doing what I must to survive, and I’m probably not going to be allowed to rise much higher, because I already have too much power for some people.”

            “I’m not asking you to take any risks,” Harry said. “I’m asking you to do something that might make everything better for everyone in the long run.”

            “No risks, he says.” Hermione flung him a searing glance. “I know that you’ve spent most of your life outside the wizarding world, but do try not to act stupid, would you? It would help me so much.”

            Harry fell silent again, biting his lip. He thought Hermione was making her decision, and he would be stupid if he interfered with that. He watched her combing her fingers through her hair in an unconscious gesture that Hermione-at-home would never have used. But then, Hermione-at-home was self-conscious about her hair. This Hermione seemed too taken up with the issues of blood politics to have time left to worry about anything else.

            Hermione sat there with her eyes closed, meditating with tiny little puffs of breath, for a while. Then she turned around and faced Harry with a hard stare. “You do realize that I still hate the pure-bloods you’re helping?”

            “Why did Discipula wait until the last to execute them?” Harry asked softly. “Why make such a big deal of it, when other people who did more were permitted barristers? That’s all I’m asking. That’s the only thing I want to know.”

            “You want to know more than that, or so you said at the beginning.” Hermione’s fingers wound together as she stared at him.

            Harry mentally cursed both her memory and his tendency to blurt things out before he thought them all the way through. “Yes, fine. I’d like to know what the difference was between the Muggleborn and pure-blood Death Eaters, and how Discipula got so much power in the first place, and why she would take you on and yet execute people like us…I don’t understand. What side is she on? What are her sympathies?”

            Hermione reeled a bit, actually catching hold of the desk to maintain her balance. Harry stared at her, wondering what he’d done.

            “That’s what I’ve wondered,” Hermione whispered. “Sometimes I think that she hired me because I really was the smartest assistant she could find, but the way she looks at me sometimes—and the way she ignored me when I told her that she had to be fair to the Muggleborns as well—I don’t know. I don’t know.”

            Harry reached out and squeezed her hand, deciding that he could take that much of a liberty. Then he slipped away, congratulating himself. He had tapped into one of the secret things Hermione had always wanted to do, then, and that meant he didn’t have to worry as much about her tendency to obey the rules catching up with and stifling her curiosity, the way it sometimes had in Hogwarts.

            He hesitated outside Hermione’s office in the Ministry, wondering if he should try to contact Skeeter or go back to Draco, the way he wanted to.

            “Mr. Evans?”

            Harry started and turned around. There stood Discipula, and she led an older woman by the arm. The woman’s eyes widened when she saw Harry, though a single glance had already told Harry that she wasn’t someone he knew in either world. She had blue eyes and auburn hair, and looked a little like Mrs. Weasley, but she was much older.

            “Excuse me for taking up your valuable time,” Discipula said. “But this is someone I thought you should meet. She might be a distant relative of your family. Her name is Nora Potter.”

*

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Sleepless