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Sleepless	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16097 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Three—Cracks In a Wall

            “Will one of you say something to me?”

            It was intolerable. They had been sitting in this bare room for an hour, or what felt like an hour to Harry. He didn’t know how much time had passed in the real world. He only knew that it felt like long enough in the dream that he definitely should have woken up already. He rubbed his hand over his scar and wondered why he was having this dream and why it wasn’t normal. This was better than the visions that he had suffered when Voldemort was still alive, but it was much more boring.

            “Why should we?”

            Oh, it was Malfoy that had talked to him—Draco, Harry reckoned he would have to start thinking of him as, when there were two other people with the last name of Malfoy in the room. He had turned around, although the stiffness of his parents’ shoulders said they wished he hadn’t, and was staring at Harry. He looked away at once, focusing on the ceiling with an air of superiority.

            “Oh, come off it!” Harry snapped, irritated even though he had never seen this particular version of Malfoy before. Maybe he’s even worse than the Malfoy I know, because it only took him an hour to get on my nerves instead of seven years. “You know that you’ve got no chance unless I offer you one. They’re all set against you out there, and no one wants to defend you. I will, although God knows you don’t deserve it,” he added, thinking of what Hermione would say if people refused to listen to her just because she was Muggleborn.

            Malfoy—Draco—hesitated, glancing at his parents as if he wanted them to help. But they stood there with their backs stubbornly turned to the room, so at last he shook his head and walked over to sit at the table across from Harry. Harry studied him, trying to see some source of his stubbornness in his face.

            The face was thin, and lined. Draco might be accustomed to the best treatment, Harry thought, but he hadn’t seen much of it lately. He hunched his shoulders as though he anticipated a beating. He walked without thought in the heavy chains, too, shuffling, but not as though he was unused to them. Harry thought this was harder on him than his parents, who acted as if they could go without food and with beatings for a long time and only ask their captors, in scornful silence, for more.

            “It’s a matter of principle,” Malfoy said. He folded his hands on the table in front of him and regarded Harry steadily. “You—you can’t understand, not if you’re really from outside the wizarding world. They defeated the Dark Lord. They can’t defeat us.”

            “You’ll die, if you don’t do something,” Harry said. Then he paused. “Or was that exaggeration?”

            Malfoy shook his head. “No. We’ll be executed.” His mouth twisted. “It’s the death sentence, for helping the Dark Lord.”

            “What happened to Snape?” Harry had to ask, wondering if Discipula would have sacrificed even him, the one heroic Death Eater, to the crowd. Or the politics, or whatever the motive was for treating Death Eater prisoners as poorly as possible and not giving them a barrister.

            Draco leaned forwards and stared at him from so close that their noses almost brushed. Harry didn’t back down because that would be giving in. He focused his eyes on Draco and glared instead. Draco settled back and uttered a faint, cracked laugh.

            “Make up your mind,” he said. “You’ve lived far enough out of the world that you don’t know anything, or you’ve lived close enough that you’ve picked up some things from the papers. Either you don’t know who Professor Snape is, or you know what happened to him. But it can’t be a mixture of the two.”

            Fuck, Harry thought, and massaged his forehead. He could wish the scar was burning again. That would have been simple compared to this problem.

            Then he relaxed. Dream, remember? I got myself into this situation, but it can’t hurt me. I don’t know why I’m having these dreams. I seriously doubt they can follow me into the real world and damage my life there, though.

            “Assume that I know some things and not others,” Harry said quietly. “Remember, Malfoy, I’m your only chance. Either you trust me or you don’t, either you want to work with me despite your prejudices or you don’t, but you don’t get to reject me because I know too much for your comfort.”

            Once again, Draco shot a miserable glance at his parents. Once again, they stood there like immovable statues. Harry scowled at them. He could understand their prejudice against Muggleborns, maybe, but not the stupid way they refused to fight for themselves.

            “They don’t,” Draco said, and made it a finished sentence by closing his eyes. Harry took pity on him; he looked so incredibly tired.

            “I’ll tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else,” Harry said. “I know exactly what the war cost you, in another world. That’s where I’m from.” As Draco stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes, at least startled out of his own tiredness, he pushed his hair back and showed Draco the lightning bolt scar. “Doesn’t this look like the one Longbottom has? That’s because it was, in my world. His destiny was mine. Or mine was his, I don’t know which. I killed Voldemort there, but some things went differently. You were tried with a competent defender, and you were acquitted. I think I can make the same thing happen this time.”

            He believed it, too. He hadn’t read the records of the Malfoy trial, but he could get access to them. And he could use the same arguments. Who cared if he wasn’t up to the same standard of legal training, yet, as long as he could fake it?

            Draco nodded and licked his lips. “I don’t believe you, exactly,” he said, “but that’s a curse scar. I’ll see what I can do to convince my parents.”

            Harry smiled at him. Draco looked startled. That made Harry’s heart ache, to see how long he must have gone without a smile, for a simple gesture like that to startle him.

*

            That morning, Harry stood under the shower with his head plastered against the wall, and let the pleasant warm water stroke the back of his neck.

            “This is impossible,” he told the air, in case it wanted to listen to him. “How in the world am I supposed to keep up with two different versions of Malfoy? How am I supposed to handle going to sleep and having this stupid dream, and feeling sorry for Malfoy, and then waking up and remembering that it’s all just a dream?”

            “Harry!” Hermione yelled through the wall. “That trial starts at eight. We’re not going to be late!”

            Harry groaned. He knew that most people would have thought Hermione meant they were going to be late, but he knew Hermione. She would break the rules on Apparition, the wards, his arm, and quite possibly the laws of nature to ensure that they got to the courtroom on time.

            He shook his head gloomily and stopped the water. He would have liked to say that he had some idea of how to handle this, but he didn’t. The universe in his dreams involved him in the kinds of philosophical difficulties that he’d always known he’d have trouble handling. During the war with Voldemort, things had been simple. Voldemort was evil, and had to be stopped. Maybe the people serving him weren’t evil, but at least you had one person you could oppose without any qualms.

            Since he had started studying law, Harry had learned better. There were guilty people who had good reasons for what they’d done, and innocent people who were innocent in a shifty way. And you might have to defend someone you knew was guilty as hell, because everyone still deserved a passionate defense.

            But this wasn’t that kind of philosophical difficulty, either. Harry could defend the Malfoys in his dreams with a quiet heart. But not a quiet mind. Did the Malfoys in his dream exist? What about everyone else? Should he care about finding out what had happened to Snape, and Neville, and the rest of them, without him around? It was only a bloody dream.

            Except it wasn’t, because it had felt and seemed far too real, and Harry could remember all of it, and he had had it more than once. He wondered if that universe was reaching out to him because he didn’t exist there, or because he could solve the problems of the people there.

            Great, he thought sourly as he flicked his hand through his wet hair; combs were as useless for him as they’d always been. So now it’s not just prophecies and insane Dark Lords that choose me, it’s whole worlds. And I have to be a Savior twice over.

            Then he paused, remembering something Hermione had said the other day that he hadn’t thought about in detail, because he’d been occupied with one of her denser books at the time.

            “I think you chose to become a lawyer for the same reason you chose to become an Auror, Harry. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t a hero, and this is an easy way for you to handle that.”

            Harry scowled at himself in the mirror. He wondered what in the world—worlds—had possessed him to choose a best friend who was that bloody insightful.

            “Harry!”

            Oh, and one who was that bloody impatient.

*

            “What are you doing reading that, Potter?”

            Harry started and dropped the thick book on his foot. That caused him to hiss and clutch at his wounded toes, which made him tip out of the chair he’d been occupying in the corridor outside the courtroom. And that made him flush to his hairline as he stood up and faced Malfoy.

            Malfoy raised an eyebrow. He didn’t need to say anything, and he knew it.

            “Shut up,” Harry hissed anyway, bending and picking up the book. He tried to keep the title from Malfoy, but Malfoy caught the motion of his hand and waved his wand lazily. Of course the book leaped out of Harry’s arms and flew to him, and of course it flipped open to the page Harry had been trying to hold down with a finger, so that Malfoy could see exactly what he had been reading.

            “Traitor,” Harry told the book.

            “My trial records?” Malfoy asked in a perfectly polite tone that didn’t need any further commentary than his raised eyebrow had. He flipped the book shut again and tossed it back to Harry. Harry caught it and tried not to shift from foot to foot. He had every right to look at the trial records, he told himself defiantly. They were a matter for the public now. Hermione, as well as other people, had insisted that the Ministry publicize all its decisions made immediately after the war, in the name of accountability. They weren’t going to stand for another Fudge.

            “Yes,” Harry said shortly. “I’m studying them for the cases that I might defend in the future.” No need for Malfoy to know the real reason. It wasn’t as though he would believe it, anyway.

            “Of course you were,” Malfoy said. His voice was a drawl, but Harry knew him well enough by now to glance sharply at him. His head was turned away, and his mouth drawn up into an inflexible bow.

            “I was!” Harry said. It wasn’t even a lie, at least if you accepted that the future could also mean “the next time I went to sleep.”

            “Oh, just say it, Potter,” Malfoy snapped, spinning around again. He spat and sparked the way that Ron would when he was in pain, which Harry didn’t understand. Since when did his opinion of Malfoy hurt Malfoy? It was his Quidditch skill that Malfoy wanted, not his philosophy. “You suspect me of doing something underhanded, and you’re trying to find evidence so that you can try me again.”

            Harry stared at him, then snorted. “Yes, of course,” he said. “This whole meeting you to play Quidditch, and agreeing to it against my will, was just a ploy to get close to you and spy on you. That’s why I secretly cast the Imperius Curse on you so that you would get the idea to approach me.”

            Malfoy frowned at him. Harry frowned back. He didn’t see why Malfoy should be the only one who got to use humor.

            “All right,” Malfoy said. “But you would have no reason to be interested in my trial records unless I was involved.”

            “I have bad news, Malfoy.” Harry lowered his voice and leaned closer; Malfoy did the same thing, instinctively. That was one of the most useful tricks Hermione had taught him, Harry thought, whispering instead of shouting when he wanted someone’s attention. “The universe doesn’t revolve around you.”

            Malfoy sneered and stepped away from him. “So you’re going to be on time for the practice match this afternoon at two?”

            “Is that all you came for?” Harry asked. He had the upper hand, and he liked it. He wasn’t going to let it go now. “Of course I will be. Unlike you, if you have to leave the Ministry, go home, and try on at least four sets of poncey new clothes between now and two, plus the Quidditch robes.” Malfoy had insisted on wearing his professional Seeker’s robes yesterday, too. Harry thought it was to remind Harry of the difference between them, and how far he had reached down beneath himself in accepting Harry’s help.

            Malfoy gave him a sudden, genuine smile, and then turned and strode down the corridor, exactly as if he had agreed to hand Harry his victory. Harry blinked at his back and looked behind him, in case someone had come out of the courtroom, someone who Malfoy wouldn’t want to be seen arguing in front of. It was the only thing Harry could think of that would cause him to behave so differently. Hermione might have reached the part of her case that Harry could learn something from now; he’d come out to sit in the chair in the first place because she was going over material he already knew by heart.

            But there was no one there. Harry scowled after Malfoy.

            He knows how to make you feel as if you lost even when you didn’t.

*

            “I was wondering if I should call you Harry.”

            Malfoy announced that when he zipped across the pitch to greet Harry that afternoon. Harry grunted back and swung onto his broom without answering. His head pounded with the implications of the trial records and the arguments that Hermione had made before he left. He wondered if he could arrange to imitate her expression of perfect contempt as she listened to the Wizengamot member who was prosecuting the case when he went back into the dream.

            “Since we’re such good friends.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I already said that I wasn’t looking up that case to hurt you, Malfoy,” he said. “No need to pretend more friendliness than you really feel. I won’t haul you into court tomorrow.”

            “But what about the next day?” Malfoy hovered in front of him and gave him a madman’s smile. Harry shook his head. Malfoy really was going overboard to make Harry think he was—

            What? At the moment, the only thing Harry thought of Malfoy was that he was mental.

            “Not the next day, either,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Now, are we here to discuss our friendliness, or are we here to play Quidditch?”

            For answer, Malfoy tossed up the Snitch. Harry laid his legs along the broom and followed after it. Malfoy sped up beside him and flew knee-to-knee with Harry, glancing at him with a smile and narrowed eyes.

            It annoyed Harry. Malfoy had the better broom; he could fly faster if he wanted to. He was only keeping pace with Harry to show off. Harry gritted his teeth and flattened himself, then abruptly dipped down behind Malfoy, came up beneath him, and nearly shouldered him aside.

            As he had known would happen, Malfoy responded to the pressure by lifting and then dropping down to the right. But he didn’t scream or fix his eyes grimly on the Snitch or try to spill Harry off his broom in turn. Instead, he resumed his former position, once more neck-and-neck with Harry, although they were both flying at a lesser height this time.

            Harry glared. Malfoy laughed silently at him and whispered—Harry could only make out the words by reading the shape of his lips—“God, it’s good to have some competition again!”

            Harry shook his head stubbornly. He knew that he wasn’t as good as the professional Seekers that Malfoy refused to train with. He spun abruptly away towards the ground, letting the broom turn in complete circles, so that he was facing backwards or to the side as often as forwards. It was an insanely risky maneuver, but it did ensure that no one could come up right beside you and crowd you, which was the only advantage Harry wanted right now.

            Malfoy cried out, but Harry didn’t hear what he said. He did glance up quickly, in case Malfoy had fallen, but there he was still mounted, racing down at an angle to join Harry.

            Infuriating.Harry turned his head, located a fugitive gleam of gold that might have been the Snitch, and shot away, dipping and lifting, riding the air like he would ride a wave at sea, so that Malfoy couldn’t tell where he was going to be from one moment to the next. That ought to convince him Harry was showing off, and make him show off in turn—by keeping away.

            But no, there he was again, flying side-by-side with Harry and exactly imitating his up-and-down movements, his hair whipping behind him and his face alight with excitement.

            In a distant part of his mind, Harry realized that it took more skill to keep up with him when his movements were wild and choppy. But he was annoyed. This wasn’t about getting the Snitch anymore. It had become, somehow, about proving that he wasn’t who Malfoy thought he was.

            He turned sideways and flew that way, his head paralleled to the ground, his hands stiff with the grip that he had to keep and hold. He didn’t look at Malfoy. He just looked straight ahead, and concentrated on the flashing shapes of pitch and trees, as well as he could see them when he was at this angle, and then drove back up into the sky again, not flying in any discernible pattern because he didn’t know where he was going from one moment to the next.

            The air trembled beside him, and there was Malfoy. He gave Harry one exhilarated grin and then concentrated on his flight.

            Unfair! Harry wanted to shout, but this wasn’t Hogwarts and there was no one to control the situation for him. He would just have to do something to prove that he was better and that he could catch the Snitch and that he didn’t like Malfoy. All three were the same thing, he thought, or at least it seemed like that to him.

He rose like a swan from water, and Malfoy followed. He circled the way that a skylark would at the top of its flight, and Malfoy was there, turning circles around him in turn. He leveled out in a straight glide that became a dive, like an eagle seeing prey, and Malfoy was a shade slower than he was, but he pulled up at the same time, and so saved himself from colliding with the earth.

            Harry turned his head once and gave Malfoy what he would only take as a smile if he was much stupider than Harry thought he was. Malfoy laughed back, mouth open and teeth gleaming, eyes brilliant with enjoyment.

            He’s the professional Quidditch player, Harry reminded himself again as he came out of a loop and turned right-side up. It’sreasonable that he would be better at this than you are. Or at least as good. And you’re not being his friend if you give him competition. You’re just doing what he asked you to do, which is make him a better Seeker.

            Harry stopped abruptly and lifted a hand. The Snitch slammed home into his palm. Malfoy flew up beside him a moment later and shook his head.

            “How did you know that it was right there?” he demanded. “That’s the kind of skill I want to learn from you, but I don’t know if you can teach me.”

            Harry smiled. Here was another road to his goal, the one that included pushing Malfoy away from him so that he would stop being—being right there all the time. “I don’t know. That’s not the kind of thing I can teach, you’re right. I could have put my hand up and grasped empty air. I thought I would.”

            “Instinct,” Malfoy said, not looking as discouraged by this as Harry had hoped he would be. “And intuition. Yes. A large part of your victories depend on instinct and intuition, don’t they?” He had a narrow grin on his face now.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “They do.” He tried to appear and sound as dignified as he possibly could. He could do this, he reminded himself. He didn’t have to feel so on the defensive. Malfoy had asked for training, that was all. He hadn’t paid for it. Harry didn’t have to stick around if he really didn’t want to. “So it’s kind of useless, don’t you think? All I’ve done is lead you a chase all over the pitch. I didn’t show you defensive techniques or anything like that.”

            Malfoy pushed his fringe out of his eyes and gave Harry a sharp stare. “What are you talking about? That’s the best exercise I’ve had in—it feels like centuries, but of course it isn’t that long since I started with the Eagles.” He hovered closer to Harry, and Harry kept an eye on his wand hand. “If nothing else, you’re showing me how I can fly faster than my enemies and they’ll labor to keep up with me.”

            Harry frowned. He hadn’t wanted to show Malfoy that.

            “What’s the matter?” Malfoy’s voice was softer, darker, and he had pulled away, hovering on his broom as though he expected an attack from below. “You look, sometimes, as though you wish you weren’t here.”

            “Everything else in my life makes sense,” Harry said. Except the dreams.But Malfoy—this Malfoy—didn’t need to know about those. “My friendships with Ron and Hermione. My study of law. The cases I attend. But you—this doesn’t. I can’t tell if you really want to be friends, or what.”

            “Does that matter?” Malfoy whispered. “Surely what should matter is the way that you feel on the pitch, rather than what I feel. If you really don’t care about the way I feel, that is.”

            Harry looked at him warily. Malfoy was stroking his chin with one hand and smiling. His eyes gave him away, though. They were too intense for the casual question he had asked.

            After a few seconds of staring, though, Harry had to give up. There were just too many factors going on that could be behind Malfoy’s question, too many things that he could have meant. And so far, he hadn’t threatened Harry. Not as such. He had just made him feel strange and given him a puzzle piece that didn’t fit in with the rest of his life. Harry wanted to accuse him of causing the dreams, since they had started after he had agreed to practice with Malfoy, but he couldn’t.

            Not yet.

            “I felt good,” Harry said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve flown like that.”

            Malfoy nodded, reached out, and rapped hard on the knuckles of Harry’s hand that held the Snitch. Harry yelped and let it go. Malfoy laughed. “First one to the Snitch earns a drink from the other!” he shouted, and took off.

            Harry followed, relieved. Malfoy was acting like Malfoy again, instead of a stranger.

            Instead of like the Malfoy in the dream. I don’t think I could put up with more than one of him.

*

            Wölkchen: Well, the Malfoy pride has to take some beating before it cracks, but yes, I think they’ll have to make a decision eventually about what’s more important to them.

            Harry doesn’t yet know “real” Draco’s desires, so you don’t, either. ;)

            Harry will probably have a problem with it in time, but remember, he doesn’t think of the dreams as real right now. You can’t cheat on your boyfriend or girlfriend if you’re dreaming about someone else.

            SP777: Well, I am glad Discipula’s name meets with your approval!

            Draco may have been flirting. Harry is so far not really impressed by it.

            I’m really not sure what’s wrong with AFF. I have no problem posting, but I’m not sure about reviewing.

            anonanon; Thank you!
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Sleepless