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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 Twenty-Eight—Waiting

            “I don’t think that accomplished quite what you wanted it to,” Hermione said.

            Harry glanced wryly at her. She’d picked up a book and pretended to be absorbed in it a short while ago, but he had known she wasn’t really. Now she had laid it down and stopped pretending, so he decided he could talk to her. “If you mean persuaded him that I wasn’t his fantasy, I don’t know,” he said. “On the other hand, maybe he decided that he doesn’t want to work with us anymore. Maybe he won’t come back.”

            Hermione sniffed. “You do have a lack of trust in him.”

            “Well, yeah,” Harry said, after staring at her a bit. “Considering that he cursed me and all.”

            Hermione sighed. “He didn’t know what the consequences of his spell would be. I hope that you’ll be able to forgive him for that.”

            Harry rolled his eyes so hard that he thought it would probably hurt if he did it again anytime soon. “Hermione, can I ask why it matters so much to you if I forgive him or not? You’ve told me time and again that the intention behind a spell doesn’t matter, not if it has bad consequences. I know there have been legal defenses based on that. Why is Malfoy different?”

            Hermione massaged the cover of her book as though it would give her the answers. Then she said, “He shows me—I think a see way out for you with him.”

            “A way out of what?” Harry leaned forwards, more interested in her answer than he had thought he would be. This was an odd new line of discussion.

            “I’ve been worried about you for a while,” Hermione said, looking at the book instead of him. That wasn’t unusual, but the way her fingers were tightening about the edge of the page was, Harry thought. She might crumple it if she wasn’t careful, and that was something he had almost never seen Hermione do to a book. “Yes, you have your career as a barrister, or at least you will once you finish your studies, but what other than that? You broke up with Ginny. You’re living here with us and seem perfectly content to do so—”

            Harry interrupted with narrowed eyes. “If you want me to move out, Hermione, I will, but you could ask me in a less passive-aggressive way.”

            Hermione exhaled hard. “It’s not that,” she said. “I love having you here, Harry. But I wonder when you’ll have a home and family of your own, and you don’t seem to move closer to that by staying here with us.”

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “You don’t have children, either.”

            “I have the potential of having children,” Hermione said. “I’m married. I have someone I love. You could be so happy, Harry, if you had someone who did that for you, and I know you’ve talked about wanting a family.”

            “Which I can’t have with Malfoy,” Harry pointed out.

            “A kind of family, then.” Hermione glanced at him. “Do you know what you’re going to be doing five years from now?”

            “Defending people in trials.”

            Hermione sighed. “I meant, the people you would be living with, the family you would have, the people you’d be dating.”

            Harry shook his head back. He could see the reason she was worried, yes, because Ron was acting like that at the moment: still recovering from the war, still not getting ready to have a permanent career. He had Hermione, though, while Harry had the career and no one to date. Hermione, who had both, probably thought there was something missing for both of them. She had the right to talk to Ron like that if he’d put up with it, since he was her husband, but Harry was a friend and didn’t appreciate being urged towards someone who had cursed him simply because that person showed interest and was available.

            “I don’t know what I’ll be doing,” he said. “At the moment, Malfoy is looking more possible just because he challenges me the way I’d like to be challenged.” The rest of what he’d learned during that kiss, he was keeping to himself for the moment. He didn’t think he could put it in understandable words, anyway. “But I don’t have to make every single decision this moment.”

            “No,” Hermione said, frowning reproachfully at him. “But some sort of direction would be nice.”

            “It’s my decision,” Harry said, loudly, because she wasn’t paying attention to objections in a normal tone of voice. “Not yours.”

            “I know that, but—”

            “At the moment, Hermione,” Harry said, “you’re not being a friend, you’re being an interfering busybody. I’ll make the decisions when I want to make them. I don’t want to plan everything out right now. I don’t know what I’ll be doing in five years, and that’s fine. If you want me to move out, just say so, but you don’t actually get a say in anything else. All right?”

            Hermione’s nostrils flared and she clamped her mouth down so hard that Harry thought she was probably hurting her tongue. Then she sighed, and a lot of the stiffness seemed to flood out of her body at once. “Sorry, Harry,” she murmured. “I think I felt—with Ron lazing around and not choosing a future, I didn’t want to see you do the same thing.”

            Silently rejoicing that he’d guessed right about the source of her concern, Harry waved a hand. “I think even Ron will choose one when he’s ready,” he said. “In the meantime, he has you, and that’s worth a hell of a lot.”

            Hermione gave him a tiny smile. Harry felt he could relax in turn, then. They’d made some progress, and soon the dreams and the troublesome matter of Malfoy, too, would be behind them.

            The door opened then, and Malfoy stepped back into the room.

            Harry stared at him. Somehow, that was the one thing he hadn’t been prepared to face. A triumph with Hermione should have been balanced out by a loss with Malfoy. Or something like that.

            Malfoy looked between them as he thought he thought they might have been planning to ambush him, then stepped closer and kicked the door shut. “I’ve thought about it,” he said.

            “Yes?” Harry became aware that he was holding his breath and forced it out again with a rush. What a silly habit.

            “I want to try being with you,” Malfoy said. “But I’m giving myself a timeline. If we can get past the screaming and the shouting and the sniping by the time your dreams are cured, then I’ll keep trying. If not, then I’m going to walk away, and it doesn’t matter what I have to do, travel around the world or brew an experimental potion or Obliviate my own mind. I’m going to do what I have to do to break myself free.”

            “That sounds reasonable,” Harry said, and it did. It really did. He didn’t know, from the sideways look that Malfoy gave him, if the git believed him, but then, Harry had never been good at controlling his facial expression even when he was sincere. “And I think I might like to try being with you, too.”

            Malfoy paused, then handed him a faint smile. Harry imagined the ways it could grow and become stronger, and was content.

            “Good that you’re going to stick around that long, at least,” said Hermione briskly. “Because I think the dreams depend on you resolving your feelings for Harry, Malfoy, one way or another, and not on Harry doing anything.”

            “Not even confronting Discipula with my knowledge and freeing the Malfoys?” Harry protested. “That’s doing something.”

            “It would depend on what you did,” Hermione said. “But you remember, what we’re concerned about is how your body reacts when your mind starts to wake up. Not what you do in the dreams.”

            “You were, for a long time,” Harry said, and interrupted as Hermione started to shake her head and say something impatient. “No. I want to know why you’re so much less concerned about the content of the dreams all of a sudden.”

            “Because you’ve gone as far as you can with it,” Malfoy said, his eyes hooded as if he were reading Hermione’s mind and transferring the information to Harry. Even though it was probably just part of the general mystique that he was trying to project, Harry would still have liked it better if he could have seen Malfoy’s eyes. “Because you recognize now that trying to help fictional people, or sacrificing yourself to help anyone who asks, isn’t the best thing. You’ve learned better.”

            “Hermione?” Harry asked, turning his head.

            “Yes, basically,” she said. “And because I do think that resolving the feelings of the caster, which were tangled in the dreams all along even when we didn’t notice, is the most important thing now. You can end the storyline of the dreams. It’s important for you. But your survival depends on what Malfoy does.”

            Harry cast Malfoy an uneasy glance. He didn’t like hearing that, though he wondered if Malfoy might relish the power of the role. What happened if he changed his mind or decided that his personal timeline should end before the end of the dreams, though? Harry had never liked being dependent on anyone else.

            Malfoy’s eyelids were lifted this time, his eyes clear. He gave Harry a single, shining, spectacular glance. It flamed. It said that Harry had better trust in his promise and show that he had learned better, because if he tried to take control of the situation, then Malfoy would walk away.

            Or maybe it said that Harry should trust Malfoy to keep his promise about the timeline, for the sake of his selfish goals as much as ending the dreams. Or maybe it was a look of simple desire. Harry had never been all that good at reading his enemies’ minds, actually.

            He looked away again in embarrassment, and fixed on Hermione’s face. “All right. If you really think that we can get this right, and end the dreams.”

            “Yes,” Hermione said. “I’m sorry that I haven’t explained myself before, Harry, or if I’ve done things that made you feel like a baby. I’m trying not to do it this time. You’ll work on the dreams from the inside, and Malfoy will work on them from the outside. It’s the best course, and it means that you have a chance of doing what you feel you need to do for the dream people while still surviving the transition back to the outer world.”

            “And showing that you can trust someone who exists,” Malfoy added, which, Harry reckoned, was the message he had been supposed to pick up from that earlier stare.

            “As long as you prove trustworthy,” he said. “You haven’t so far, much.”

            Malfoy bowed his head and blew through his nostrils, his fingers flexing back and forth in what looked like a regular pattern. Harry wondered if he was reminding himself that he had done things like keep the nature of the dream potion from Harry.

            “I said I would stay,” he said. “And I will work on the problem. I want to be free from this nightmare of tortured feelings as much as you do.”

            “Fine,” Harry said, biting back the temptation to say that at least Malfoy didn’t have actual nightmares from it, and turned to Hermione. “Does this mean that I can stop taking the Dreamless Sleep?”

            She nodded. “But I think both I and Malfoy should get some rest now, so as to watch over you when you sleep tonight.”

            Harry nodded in resignation. Malfoy watching over him was an inescapable thing, and better than Malfoy actually intruding into his dreams.

            Hermione went on chattering away, making plans and issuing instructions. Harry let her run on, because it pleased her, and because he knew that once he got into the dreams, then some things would have to change. Hermione just couldn’t control every factor or make plans for every contingency.

            And because he wanted to watch Malfoy.

            Malfoy watched him back, with a long, slow, deep gaze that seemed to Harry to have the weight of contempt behind it. He didn’t know if it actually did. He wondered if he would ever be able to read Malfoy, and if it was a problem that he didn’t communicate effortlessly with someone who wanted him the way Ron did with Hermione.

            When Hermione finally finished her talk and left the room to take a nap, Malfoy stood up. Harry watched him walk over, his steps slow and heavy, and then halt by his chair. Harry stared up at him and felt his pulse hammering in his throat, faster than it should be when, really, Malfoy was the one who’d made the decisions and the timeline and Harry was the one who’d tried to drive him away at first.

            “Are you going to stay here and nap, or go home?” Harry asked, for the sake of saying something.

            “Here,” Malfoy said. “A bed on a couch will suit me, and I would just as soon not move far from you. Why haven’t you told your friends about the abuse you suffered?”

            Harry grimaced. He should have known that Malfoy would wield the memories of the Dursleys he’d seen against Harry, but he would have preferred a different time if it had to happen. “They know,” he answered. “Ron saw the bars on my window in second year. Both of them know that I didn’t want to be there, that I was deliriously happy every time I could escape Privet Drive for the summer. Just because you’re seeing it for the first time and no one’s ever blabbed it to the Daily Prophet doesn’t mean that it’s a secret to other people, Malfoy.”

            Malfoy shook his head. “I don’t think they know the depth or the extent of it,” he murmured. “I know how to look at memories with that potion and see how close they are to the forefront of the dreamer’s mind, whether he often thinks about them, whether he’s shared them with someone or not. You haven’t shared them with many people.”

            Harry shrugged. “They aren’t influencing my dreams, if you’ll notice. I was never born in that universe, so I can’t have spent time with the Dursleys.”

            Malfoy stared hard at him. “And you think that means that they don’t influence your behavior, or your actions?”

            “The dreams are the problem that we have to deal with first,” Harry said. “Well, that and your feelings about the dreams. Do you really think that we should be talking about this yet? Why would I want to, when you might leave, carrying my confession with you?”

            Malfoy’s jaw rippled with the force he used to clench it. “Fine,” he said. “But think about it. Whether or not you discuss it with me, whether or not I stay, it’s still something that you’ll have to face sooner or later.”

            He swept out of the room. Harry shook his head at Malfoy’s back. He might be resolved to change, the same way Harry was resolved to change the way he coddled people, but in the same way that Harry would fail occasionally, Malfoy couldn’t help touching on weird and inappropriate subjects.

*

            It hadn’t been hard to figure out where Discipula lived; Ministry records were kept updated, and the information Hermione had left with him included her address and Apparition coordinates. Harry waited for long moments after the Apparition had ended, leaning against the stone wall beside him so he could consider her house.

            It was a small, neat cottage, considerably smaller than Harry would have thought she’d live in, though he reckoned she could have made it larger with wizardspace on the inside. The walls bore climbing ivy and climbing roses. Done for effect, Harry thought, because here and there he caught the shimmer of a glamour that probably disguised bare stones or curling and browning leaves. There was a wall around the garden, too, and it shone with wards like barbed wire. The garden itself looked like a strange mixture of vegetables, wild green things that were valuable only as Potions ingredients, and flowers. There was a massive pole in the middle of it, with a sundial on top. Harry didn’t know why.

            He’d been watching for a few hours, but no one had come in or out. Harry squared his shoulders and marched forwards. He might not be able to just knock on the front door and ask his questions, but if Discipula wouldn’t come out to him, then he would have to go in to her.

            He stepped up to the front gate and waited. The wards on it spat and hissed like angry cats when they saw him. Just for fun, Harry hissed back in Parseltongue and watched the wards freeze, quivering, as if they’d heard a danger signal.

            “Come in, Mr. Evans. Or should I call you Mr. Potter? You should have known that no one could keep those eyes and hair disguised for long.”

            Harry looked up. Discipula stood in the front door of her home, her hand poised on the door itself, her hair done up in a complicated mixture of twirls that was meant to look casual but which Harry thought probably took a lot of effort. She wore casual golden robes, and on her shoulder, a tiny swallow watched Harry with bright eyes.

            “Your wards don’t appear to like me,” Harry said.

            “Oh, dear.” Discipula drew her wand, and Harry kept his hand near his. She whispered something, and the wards on the gate disappeared—the visible ones, at least. Harry wouldn’t move forwards for a minute or so, while he reached out with hearing and that sense of magic the Aurors had trained into him and felt for whether that was true. “No reaction to my announcement?” she continued lightly. “Or are you used to hearing people call you that, wherever you grew up?”

            Harry smiled, decided the gate was safe, and stepped inside. “Is there anyone else here?” he asked. “An audience could overhear something you don’t intend them to.”

            Discipula’s eyes narrowed in what looked like honest amusement. “And you think you can keep me from telling whoever I want to tell?” she asked, touching the swallow on the back. It hopped away from her and flew over to sit on the sundial, cocking its head wisely at Harry all the while. “Oh, I grant you, you might succeed in winning freedom for at least one of the Malfoys. But once I mention the resemblance, then someone else will see it, and then another person, and then you will have too many questions to deal with to consider threatening me.”

            “Someone else already saw it.” Harry estimated the distance between them, decided that he could see most spells coming, and stopped where he was.

            “Who?” Discipula’s smile didn’t waver, but her eyes narrowed in what looked like anticipation, as if she thought that she’d like to share the joke with the other person in on the secret.

            “Woburn.”

            Whoever Discipula had expected, it hadn’t been that. She clutched harder at the door and swallowed. Then she said, “And what of it? I expect that he knows many secrets, and will not willingly share them. To me would belong the honor and the credit of first mentioning it, while he is still negotiating his bribes.”

            “He’ll mention it to those who can offer him a bribe in return,” Harry said, and this time estimated how close her hand was to her wand. A comfortable distance away, he thought, and relaxed. “But he’s not the one I learned this from. He sent me to someone else. And when I offered him the full and complete story of my life, not just what he could guess based on my eyes and hair, he gave me something in return.”

            “Woburn knows only the rich, they say.” Discipula made a dismissive motion with her hand. “And no doubt, you’ll need money if you intend to keep on defending the Malfoys.”

            “He told me who you really were,” Harry said softly.

            Discipula didn’t move for long moments, and she was so good at concealing her reactions that Harry would have thought she was merely thinking over an interesting tidbit of new information if he hadn’t been the one who offered it. Her fingers tapped out a slow, steady rhythm on the door, and then she sighed and shook her head. “And that is all you have to tell me? I allowed myself to imagine it would be more dramatic than that. Anyone can know my family background, my—”

            “The fact that you fought in the war and have the right to call yourself a heroine?” Harry asked. “Or the fact that you didn’t do it because you’re a half-blood?”

            This time, Discipula closed her eyes, but her voice continued flat and uninflected. “No one will believe you if you say that.”

            “Without proof, no,” Harry agreed. “But I have the proof, beginning with the Ministry records you altered.”

            Discipula opened her eyes. Harry fought not to take a step backwards. Not even from Voldemort himself had he ever received such a stare of flat and uncompromising hatred.

            “You have my gratitude for giving me a new enemy,” Discipula said. “And the fear that what you ask will be greater than what I can provide.”

            Harry let his hand drop openly to his wand now. “What I want is for you to ‘advise’ the Wizengamot that they should let Draco and Narcissa go,” he said. “They did nothing wrong, not compared to Lucius. I don’t want you to beg for him, because that would push the gambit too far, and the Wizengamot wouldn’t believe you changing your mind. But I saw you. You were playing it safe when it came to them. You always knew that you might lose, and that would mean it paid to keep an open mind—seemingly—about them, and the chance to appear generous and gracious. You can do this.”

            Discipula watched him in utter, absolute silence. Then she shook her head slightly and said, “I cannot control the Wizengamot.”

            “Bollocks,” Harry said. “The only reason you haven’t advanced further and faster—tried to become Minister, for instance—is concern about what someone digging into your background might find. But you don’t need to change anything for this. Just act on some of the lines that you left open for yourself, walk those paths, rather than others. I’m not asking for much,” he added, deciding that he rather liked the venomous sweetness his own voice had taken on. “Just that you change your mind on something you always knew you might have to alter it on.”

            Discipula clenched her fist once, then opened it and turned it over. Harry imagined scraps of torn paper fluttering to the ground.

            “I imagine that you will spread this far and wide, if I do not,” she said, almost conversationally.

            “You have a good imagination,” Harry said solemnly.

            Discipula turned her head away. Her shoulders moved with her breathing, but nothing else about her seemed to. Harry had the sudden vision of a chained and dangerous animal testing the length of its bonds without moving.

            He knew that he couldn’t trust her, and so he moved on to the second part of his bargain.

            “I’m willing to give you a vow that I’ll leave after this, and not tell your secret to anyone else, and not trouble you again,” he said. “As long as you swear one that you won’t hurt the Malfoys after this.”

            She turned and stared at him, and Harry knew that he had caught her attention. He smiled, a bit grimly. Someone like Discipula would always think she could get out of trouble with a bargain. Well, he would reinforce her tendencies and win the freedom that he was determined to have for Narcissa and Draco.

            And get her used to the sort of bargain she would have to make with Hermione.

            “We’ll have to find someone else to be a Bonder,” Discipula said at last.

            Harry nodded. “Of course. Why don’t you go and fetch them?” Then he leaned back against the sundial, prepared to wait.

            Discipula departed with another of those hateful glances. This time, Harry didn’t allow himself to be impressed.

            Keep on doing that, and she might actually think she has a hold over you.

*

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Sleepless