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Sleepless	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16095 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Twenty-Three--Confronting Two Worlds

            Harry's back went stiff, but he didn't allow himself to turn towards Malfoy. He waited until the Wizengamot members had begun to depart the courtroom, instead, and then leaned forwards and whispered to Woburn, "Sir, would you please stay? I've been thinking about what you said earlier."

            Woburn turned towards him, so haughty that Harry had to suppress a grimace. The lightless eyes regarded his expression, his hands, the clasp on his robe, or perhaps something else beyond all those. Harry had the impression that Woburn would have liked to make Harry think that he was looking at his soul.

            But he held firm, and in the end Woburn made a weary gesture with one hand and stood. "As you wish, then," he said. "Follow me."

            Harry did so, with nods to McGonagall, Wellworth, and Narcissa. Lucius was too smugly self-contained to nod to, and Draco still wasn't looking at him. Harry was aware of Malfoy drifting along with him, no more than a whisper of breath. Well, that was fine. He could give Harry the necessary knowledge to confront Woburn, always assuming that Woburn didn't have the magic to see him.

            In the corridor just beyond the courtroom was a small alcove with a shelf of stone in front of a window. Harry had noticed it and thought it was reserved for displaying treasures that the Wizengamot wanted to make sure others noticed, such as the mutilated heads of their enemies. Woburn turned in front of the shelf and faced him with the same devouring silence that he had used so far.

            Harry felt the faint, cold whisper of Malfoy's breath on the back of his neck, but he said nothing as yet, so Harry went ahead with the question that Woburn would be expecting. "What did you mean, when you said that you knew who I was?" he asked.

            "I do not know where you come from." Woburn's voice was precise and controlled, his words slicing air like pendulums. "I do not know how you hid yourself, or were hid, or why you chose to show yourself now, and in such a humble guise. But I know your genetic heritage. It is stamped plainly on your face for anyone to see."

            Harry didn't need the arrow-like warning touch from Malfoy on the back of his neck to keep his mouth shut. Woburn wasn't going to trick Harry into revealing what he might not already know. Harry just waited, instead, silently challenging Woburn to prove what he said about Harry's heritage being stamped on his face.

            Woburn accepted the challenge with a sneer of disdain that made Harry's brain briefly flare. For a moment, he thought the glamour thinned and he could see the face beneath it...

            But it vanished, or the moment hurried past, or the glamour thickened, and then he was listening to Woburn say, "You are the son of James Potter and Lily Evans. How that happened, I do not know, as all the world says that Lily Potter perished before she bore her child." He paused, and Harry felt the weight of his contempt before he added, "But as all the world says, all the world may be wrong."

            Harry shrugged. "And why should it matter? Sir? The mystery of where I come from is my own mystery, and it can't matter to the Malfoys' trial. It can't matter to you, or you wouldn't have agreed to be a witness for Lucius."

            "Do not presume to ascribe motives to me." Woburn's voice sank, and Malfoy touched the back of Harry's neck in warning again. "You will not understand them, you cannot understand them, given the small and limited functions of your brain."

            Harry shook his head. "I don't understand the point of this digression, that's for bloody sure," he said. Woburn's eyelids flickered at his language, which Harry thought was the most interesting part of the charade so far. "Why figure it out? Why help Lucius? Why tell me that you knew?"

            "Because you must not be allowed to imagine that you have got away with it," Woburn said. "And because one at least of your enemies must know. Nora Potter would not have visited the Ministry for no reason. She rarely leaves her home now."

            Harry shook his head. "It still doesn't have anything to do with you. Yes, Discipula knows." Malfoy pressed down harder on the back of his neck this time, but Harry ignored him. Woburn had something against Discipula, that much was clear from the barbs they'd traded during the trial. Perhaps he would help Harry if he hated her. "But I think she only wants to make me uncomfortable. If I'm not, then she'll have to try something else."

            Woburn stared blankly at him. Harry grinned back. It wouldn't do anything to help Draco and his family, but damn, it felt good to confound the supposedly "incomprehensible" man.

            "There are other reasons," Woburn said at last. "Reasons you cannot understand. I will be willing to do...more...if you tell me where you come from and how you managed to remain hidden for so long."

            Harry smiled again. Discipula didn't respect or fear him enough, but Woburn would make a nice substitute. "What kind of more? I believe in negotiating for specific things."

            "I will help you against Discipula," Woburn said. "You have no chance of freeing any of that family, even Draco, by fair means. There are ways to expose her, however, and to bring her down in such a way that the Wizengamot will turn their attention on her, and few will care about the Malfoys' sentence. I know what she fears. I know what she hates." He smiled, a dead shark's smile. "I know what she cannot stand to have known and live."

            "Why haven't you used that?" Harry asked. He had to be careful here, there were so many things he didn't know, but this one at least he was fairly certain of. "If you could force her to cooperate, she must give you things that you want more than you want the Malfoys' freedom."

            Woburn tilted his head back. “I prefer to work from the shadows,” he said. “I came out of retirement to defend Lucius for my own reasons. But if I exert my power too regularly, then it would cause others to see me as less powerful and important than I truly am.”

            Harry blinked, even though Malfoy was now pressing so hard into the back of his neck that it made him want to shrug and flinch and reveal Malfoy’s presence to Woburn. “You sound like an arsehole, frankly,” he said.

            Woburn went still again. Harry didn’t know who he thought that would impress. If he knew who Harry was, then he probably had contempt for his father anyway, for marrying someone who wasn’t pure-blood.

            “You would not understand,” Woburn said at last. “It is perfectly obvious that you were not reared in our society, which makes me discard the first four notions I had of your hiding place. Be careful, or you may reveal all and give yourself nothing to bargain with.”

            Harry waited, wondering if Malfoy would whisper this wonderful secret about who Woburn was to him now. But he didn’t, so Harry sighed and said, “I still want to know what would be so objectionable about working openly against Discipula.”

            Woburn made a negating motion with one hand. “These questions are beside the point. Do we have a bargain or not?”

            Malfoy must have shifted forwards sometime in the last few minutes, though Harry didn’t know how he had done it without Woburn seeing him. He hissed into Harry’s ear, “Do you know who you’re playing with? This is Professor Snape!”

            Harry clenched one fist in shock, but tried not to give away anything in his face. Of course, Woburn moved a step back from him and touched a slender ebony ring that sat on the third finger of his left hand. It probably did something like fire darts of magical energy, Harry thought dazedly.

            Snape.

            That explained the dark eyes, the way that he always seemed to know when Harry was lying, and the sense of familiarity that Harry had experienced around him a time or two. It explained why he would know Lucius, and why he might be willing to help him. He could owe Lucius a life-debt, or—and this was more likely, Harry realized, as ideas seemed to unfold in his head and become new ones at the same time—Lucius was the one who had made the Woburn glamour available to Snape in the first place. Of course he would come out of hiding to defend the one who could expose him.

            It didn’t explain how he knew Discipula. It did explain why he was so interested in James and Lily Potter.

            And it means that they died because of you, you bastard, and this time, I died with them.

            But Harry swallowed his raw fury. That was something Hermione had taught him how to do by having him read all those historical cases where injustice was served or something horrible had to happen to establish a legal precedent. He could put aside the anger and react in some other way if he wanted. He just didn’t often want to.

            But this was more like a legal situation than a personal one. Harry reminded himself, again, of how little he knew of the history of this other universe. Snape might not have tattled on Dumbledore here, since Voldemort had attacked earlier. Or Neville was meant to be the Chosen One all along. Or the baby his mother was pregnant with might not have been him.

            But it did explain a lot of things, and Harry felt more confident now. He shrugged, stared a little off to the side of Snape’s face—this one probably also had the Legilimency, although why he hadn’t read the answers to his questions out of Harry’s head, Harry didn’t know—and said, “All right. My questions don’t matter. I’ll tell you the truth, as long as you tell me what you know about Discipula.”

            Snape—Harry couldn’t think of him as Woburn no matter what he looked like, now—stared hard at him. Harry stared back and said nothing. He didn’t think he had to. Snape had often used silence to intimidate him or trick him into talking more than he should, and it felt wonderful to return the favor, for once.

            “Very well,” Snape said at last, with a heaviness in the back of his voice that Harry knew was a threat. Well, he could always vanish out of the dreams if he had to, and in the meantime, Snape might have solid information that could help him. “But this is not the place to have this conversation, near the center of her power.”

            Harry gave him a meaningless smile. “I agree, not when she would be happy to know where I hid, as well, so that she could track me back and harm my family.” That would lay down a false trail for Snape; Harry wasn’t sure how much of the truth he wanted to tell him yet. “Shall we meet at my lodgings tonight?”

            Snape laughed without humor. “And you think they are not being watched? That building is run by the Ministry. I am surprised that you have no felt their spies poking at your wards already.”

            “One of the men who works there has no reason to love the Ministry, even if they employ him,” Harry said, thinking of Ron. “He would be glad of something to do that might make him more important than he is right now, more valued, and something that uses his intelligence. I think we can give it to him.”

            Once again Snape considered him in silence, and once again Harry held his tongue against the temptation to start talking. Finally, Snape inclined his head and said, “You are more of an observer of people than I thought you were.”

            “I don’t think that would be difficult,” Harry said, and then restrained himself again, because Malfoy was poking him. This Snape wouldn’t have dealt with Harry in school, and wouldn’t automatically hate him. He should try to keep Snape as an ally instead of driving him away, if he could. “Anyway, what time should we meet in the building?”

            “At five after seven,” Snape said, and then swished away down the corridor. Now that he watched him move in some detail, Harry couldn’t believe that he hadn’t noticed his identity before, on his own. There was no one else who could make their robes swirl like that, or walk with that combination of grace and arrogant dignity, as though the world had unjustly ignored him.

            Then again, Malfoy had said that he wore a glamour, and it seemed to fool people like McGonagall who must have seen him before. Harry wouldn’t feel that bad about it.

            He had plenty of other things to feel bad about, he thought as he closed his eyes and yielded to the pull that dragged him towards the surface of the dream.

*

            Fleeting images of Malfoy scattered through his head: Malfoy sitting with his feet propped up on a stool in the Slytherin common room, telling stories to scare the first-years; Malfoy dropping back to earth after trying out for Seeker in second year, smugly glad that he would win the position on undisputed talent rather than just because his father had paid for new brooms; Malfoy staring at Harry’s back with his face covered in red blotches. That last time could have been any of several. Harry had the feeling that he’d been a familiar visitor to Malfoy‘s mind in other ways before taking this potion.

            Then he jerked himself out of the connection, and opened his eyes to see Ron standing over his bed, staring down at him.

            “You moaned his name again,” Ron said. “Do you have to?”

            “First name or last name?” Harry asked, because now that he was awake and didn’t need Malfoy to spy on his dreams, he remembered that he had reason to be angry at the git.

            Ron reared back and stared at him, as if startled that he would make a distinction. But Harry kept his gaze focused and as calm as possible, so after a moment Ron sniffed and said, “The first name.”

            Harry sighed in relief. As long as he could keep the two versions of Malfoy separated and he only talked about or to Draco where others could hear him, then he would think that there was some hope. He didn’t know why he moaned Draco’s name in his dreams, any more than he knew why his hands twitched, but that problem could be solved later. “Thanks, Ron.”

            Ron nodded doubtfully back, then left the room. Harry sat where he was and shook his head.

            Snape was Woburn. All right, so some things made sense now, although Harry didn’t know that that secret was the most important one he could take out of the dreams. He would be more interested in finding out what Discipula had done and wanted, and he had hoped that Malfoy would be watching her instead.

            Malfoy.

            Harry stood up and deliberately began to dress, wondering for a moment if Malfoy remained in his head and could sense what he was doing.

            They had some things to talk about.

*

            “I expected you.”

            Malfoy had opened the door with dark circles under his eyes. Harry steeled himself to resist that, though. Malfoy could have put them there with a glamour, or he could have lain awake last night because of guilt. Harry hoped it was the last that was true.

            He stepped into the main room and turned his back on the portraits on the wall. Of course, that brought him into sight of the cauldron where Malfoy had brewed the bloody potion. Well, if he had to face one or the other, it would be the one that didn’t have a face to stare disdainfully back at him.

            “I saw many strange things in your mind,” Malfoy began, with a care that seemed odd to Harry. After everything that had happened between them, that was what he chose to treat as fragile?

            “I didn’t see a whole lot in yours,” Harry said, “except that you’re more insulted by me than I thought you were, and a better flyer. But I want to know why you were looking at Snape and Draco instead of Discipula, and why you think that brewing that potion and feeding it to me without telling me or concealing Snape’s identity for a while are good ideas.”

            Malfoy shifted his stance. Harry cocked his head. That was another difference between him and Draco, come to think of it: Harry thought that he could read every expression the moment it appeared on Draco’s face, which reflected things like glass. He didn’t know why Malfoy acted the way he did, more than half the time.

            “I couldn’t speak to you right away,” Malfoy said, “not when there was a chance that he might hear me, and not when I still hoped that you might figure it out on your own. I thought it obvious once I saw the way he behaved. His eyes were exactly the same.”

            “Excuse me for not spending as much time staring into his eyes and swooning as you obviously did,” Harry said, and watched Malfoy flush. “And stick to the subject. Why are you keeping things from me? Why did you lie about the spell that caused the dreams in the first place?”

            “I really thought it hadn’t worked,” Malfoy said. “And I knew that you would hate me instead of giving me a chance if I told the truth.”

            “Then I told you I hated you, and yet continued to accept your help,” Harry said promptly. “Why did you keep lying?”

            “I didn’t lie,” Malfoy said.

            “Then what would you call it?”

            “I omitted the truth.”

            “That’s lying,” Harry pointed out, with what he thought was the quite commendable restraint of not destroying the windows.

            Malfoy shook his head, a curl of hair falling in his face. “I just—I couldn’t trust you to react the right way,” he murmured. “I still don’t. Half the time we can have civil conversations and exchange secrets, but the other half…you speak to me as though I was something you found under your boot this morning.”

            “Because you cursed me,” Harry explained. He heard his voice rising and forced it back down, to a growl, because he would take the shrillness but not the anger out of it. Malfoy needed to hear the anger. “How am I supposed to just get over that? I accepted your help because I thought I needed it, and now I think I need it less than I need to be away from you and free of you.”

            Malfoy swallowed, looking stricken. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I didn’t think about it from your perspective. I only know that I want you more than you’ll ever want me, even if you forgive me, and I was trying to redress the power imbalance. Keeping things from you meant I was still necessary.”

            Harry stared at him, then shook his head. “And that’s the heart of what I don’t understand. Why do you want someone who rejects you?”

            “Believe me, if I could get away from this ridiculous obsession, don’t you think I would have?” Malfoy looked disgusted. “You and your ridiculous savior complex, your drive to help people whether they’re real or not, your eyes that are the most unnecessary shade of green, and your face that looks twisted-up and petulant half the time? Those aren’t the ingredients of a long and successful love affair, which I never asked for, or a long and successful marriage, which I did. But they’re what’sthere. You’re the one who keeps bringing me back. And I know you don’t mean to do it,” he added bitterly when Harry opened his mouth. “But it happens. So I keep things from you because I want to keep you in my debt, and see you look at me in awe, and have your attention, just once. I lie because it’s important to me.”

            Harry ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t know what to say, except the truth. It would probably hurt Malfoy even more, but at this point, Harry thought everything would.

            “I can’t be with someone who won’t stay honest,” he said. “I can’t be with someone who treats me like a child. I’ve had too many people in my life who did that.”

            “I know.” Malfoy’s face twisted in a complex expression. “I saw some of your memories when you were falling asleep, the way you saw some of mine as you woke up. Harry, why did you never tell anyone about your relatives?”

            Harry gaped at him. Malfoy raised his hands defensively. “I’m telling you that I saw them!” he said.

            Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his hands through his hair again. This was spiraling out of control. He’d meant to argue, he’d meant to ask Malfoy for information, he’d meant to persuade Malfoy away from him, and now he meant to get Malfoy off the subject. “Look,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I still want to know if you saw anything about Discipula in the dream that would tell you what her secret was. Or did you spend all your time staring at Snape and yourself? That would be like you.”

            “You prick,” Malfoy said, with what sounded like wonder rather than anger in his voice, and so made the insult even more confusing. “You didn’t tell anyone because you’re ashamed.”

            “I am not!” Harry dropped his hands and stared at him. “My friends know what happened. The wizarding world doesn’t, because I don’t want it splashed on the front of every paper and every witch crooning at me in a motherly fashion. Did you see anything about her or not?”

            “Nothing that would tell me beyond doubt what her secret was.” Malfoy leaned forwards and stared at him. “I’ll need another visit to your dreams, and that means that I’ll probably learn more about your relatives. Can you stand that?”

            “Ignore the memories,” Harry said harshly. His heart was beating fast, the way it sometimes did in unexpected situations. Why does everything keep turning into a conversation about me and Malfoy? It should be about Draco and Discipula. The reminder that he himself had started the conversation off in that direction did nothing for his temper. “Just—that’s all I want you to do.”

            “I think you need to talk to someone about them,” Malfoy whispered. “They sit like stones in your mind, weighing you down. And I think they might explain a lot about you. If I knew more—”

            “That’s what I don’t fucking want!”

            Malfoy stepped back a pace from him as if surprised by his outburst, and Harry seized the chance to have his say. “You’ve cursed me, you’ve lied to me, you’ve given me a potion that I would have refused if I knew the full truth, and now you’re prying into my memories. Give it up. Stay away from me. Find someone else. Wrestle with your—I don’t know, your mind or whatever it is until you overcome this freakish attraction to me. Go away.” He tamed his tongue with a harsh breath and said, “Fine. You didn’t find out anything about Discipula. You don’t need to come into the dreams again, because Snape is going to tell me, but I reckon you’ll do it anyway.”

            And he hurried out, before Malfoy could say anything, before he could defend himself, before the chorus of different voices in his head could convince him of whatever it was they wanted him to believe.

            He wanted to be alone, or he wanted to be with people who didn’t lie to him. Was that so hard to accept?

*

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Sleepless