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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 Four—An Alternate History

            This time, when he opened his eyes in the room where the Malfoy parents still stood with their backs to him and Draco sat at the table in front of him staring into his face, Harry’s curiosity overcame him. He had to know what happened when he woke up. The dream always seemed to resume in the same place it had left off, no matter how long he spent awake or how long it had lasted when he was asleep the time before. Did he faint? Disappear? Did the dream simply stop for everyone, including him, and then resume with no break for the people he was dreaming of?

            “Nothing happened just then, did it?” he asked Malfoy—Draco.

            Draco frowned and looked as if he was reconsidering, or at least regretting, the decision to turn around and talk to Harry. “No. Why?”

            “I half-wondered if someone would try to pull me back to my own world for admitting the truth to you,” Harry said. “But I didn’t look as if I were fading or having to fight off any sort of hostile spell, did it?”

            “I would say that you would know that better than we would.” Draco was drawing his arms back towards himself, presenting a cool façade that he obviously intended to remain unbroken now that Harry had disappointed him.

            “I felt nothing, either,” Harry said. “But then, I don’t know how I ended up here in the first place. I don’t know what it would feel like if someone sent me here, regretted it, and then yanked me away again.”

            Draco only eyed him skeptically and didn’t reply.

            Harry was beginning to relax, though. It seemed the dream functioned like—well, a dream, when he wasn’t around, other than resuming in the exact same place when he closed his eyes and having a largely linear time-frame. He wouldn’t have to explain what was going on every time he woke up, and he probably didn’t have to fear intrusions from his own world. He had wondered if Hermione or someone else who recognized him might appear and question him as to what he was doing, trying to defend the Malfoys without having completed his legal training.

            “I can defend you,” he told Malfoy. “I was looking at the trial records in the world I’m from. The defender who stood up for you there told the court that you hadn’t done anything worse than the majority of Death Eaters, and in fact, you’d participated less in the war than most, since your father lost his wand, your mother wasn’t a full Death Eater, and you were just a kid.” He watched several expressions move across Malfoy’s face, and remembered how it would have felt to be called “just a kid” immediately after the war. He tried to soften his voice and look more sympathetic as he added, “That’s happened here, too, hasn’t it?”

            “Yes,” Malfoy said, and his voice was deep with shock. “I—I don’t know how you know that, but it happened. My father gave his wand to the Dark Lord, who lost it in an attempt to duel Longbottom. My mother never wanted the full Mark, and received it only under duress. And I was—I was the Dark Lord’s torturer, but I didn’t fight. Mostly, he used me to torture Death Eaters who messed up.” He shuddered, his fine, sensitive face suddenly tight-strung.

            Harry nodded. “And how did Longbottom beat Voldemort?” It seemed strange to call Neville by his last instead of his first name, but then, Harry would have to keep reminding himself that the people in the dream were not the people he knew until it stuck.

            Both the elder Malfoys jerked as if he had struck them. Draco’s mouth dropped open, and he didn’t bother to hide it, which made Harry like him better. He couldn’t imagine the Draco he knew in his waking life doing something like that. He would try to pretend that he had known Harry was going to say that all along—and, in his case, that would only be accurate.

            “You said his name,” Draco whispered.

            Harry reached across the table and squeezed Draco’s hand. He was reminding Harry of a duckling at the moment, a small and helpless creature who needed the protection of an older and stronger one. “Yes,” Harry said. “I told you. I defeated him. That doesn’t mean I was never afraid of him, but it does mean that I fought him and I didn’t hide from him.”

            “I didn’t hide from him, either,” Draco said. “But in the end, it didn’t matter.” He cost his eyes down and sighed.

            “What happened?” Harry prompted again, more gently this time.

            Draco sucked the back of his teeth before he answered. Does the waking Draco do that, or not? Harry wondered. How different are they? “Longbottom apparently used the Sword of Gryffindor in some unexpected way. It was enchanted in a ritual to kill powerful Slytherins, I reckon. Or that was what people said. The official secret of the fight is still a secret. They said that it wouldn’t be safe for Longbottom otherwise. But there’s no doubt that the Dark Lord’s gone,” he added, looking to the side. Harry thought his eyes were aimed at his father’s arm. “And other people saw him die.”

            Harry grunted. Well, that was less useful than he had thought it might be, but that wasn’t Draco’s fault. “And what happened to you? Did you attend school this last year? What happened to the other Slytherins?”

            Draco shook his head. “I was home at Malfoy Manor for the last two years. That was where the Dark Lord made his headquarters.” He shut his eyes, looking ill.

            Harry squeezed his hand again. Malfoy in his world had suffered too, he knew, but at least he had spent most of his time away from Voldemort. He couldn’t imagine what two years of constant contact would do. Perhaps he should be grateful that Draco was sane enough to speak with him at all.

            “You’re so nice,” Draco whispered, and his fingers closed around Harry’s hand hard enough to make his arm spasm.

            Narcissa Malfoy cleared her throat. Harry had no idea what it meant, but it made Draco flinch and sit up straight. He didn’t let go of Harry’s hand, though, perhaps figuring out that his parents couldn’t see him holding on anyway.

            “I’ll do what I can,” Harry said. “Now, can you tell me what happened to Snape and Dumbledore? Where I’m from, they played an important part in the war.”

            “Dumbledore is dead,” Draco said, and closed his eyes as though he was seeing Dumbledore fall from the Tower, though from the sound of it, he hadn’t been involved in this particular death. Harry felt a surge of inexpressible relief. “There’s nothing there to be done. He would have spoken up for us, maybe, if he lived. But then, everything would have been different if he lived. Everyone said that he would have fought the Dark Lord.”

            Harry nodded, more as encouragement than because he agreed. He could see the Dumbledore in this world being at least as smart as the Dumbledore from the other one, and leaving clues so that Neville could kill Voldemort instead.

            “But Professor Snape—” Draco paused, and his tongue teased his teeth again. Harry stared in fascination, and then told himself that he was paying far too much attention to Malfoy’s tongue and looked away. “No one is quite sure what happened to him.”

            Harry blinked. “What do you mean?” he asked, when he could think of something to say. “I mean, I’d think that Snape is the kind of person you would either hear something from or nothing from. I can understand him disappearing. Is that what happened?”

            Draco shook his head. “He was in critical condition towards the end of the war. I know that. He killed Dumbledore in a duel, and he was high in the Dark Lord’s favor for a while. But then—something happened. They had a row, maybe, or the Dark Lord thought he was spying. He cast a curse. Professor Snape disappeared. They found him towards the end of the war. Now no one knows if he’s dead and the Ministry’s covering it up, or if he’s at St. Mungo’s, or if he recovered and managed to flee before they could catch up with him. Or if he’s in custody, like us,” he added, staring down at the chains around his wrists with an inexpressible bitterness.

            Harry made a careful mental note to find out anything about Snape he could. Maybe the Malfoys’ trial wasn’t the only wrong he’d been called to this world to fix. “Well, that doesn’t help much,” he mused.

            Draco jerked away from him, freeing his hand so that he could cross his arms proudly and making his chains sing like bells. “I’ve given you all I can.”

            “Oh, sorry,” Harry said, shaking his head. Sympathy or not, he thought, it was still easy for them to irritate each other. “What I meant was that Professor Snape might have been a help to us, if he was free. Without him, though, or at least his body, we can’t count on help from that quarter.”

            “I thought you said that you could help us,” Draco said, pulling further away yet. “Just you, by yourself.”

            “I can help with the defense,” Harry said patiently. “That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t help to have witnesses who could testify that you’re not the convinced Death Eaters that they think you are. People who would say that you have a good character, people who knew you and could point out that you did other things besides fight for Voldemort or act as torturers…” He looked distractedly around the room. Of course Discipula would have shut them in here without a quill or a piece of parchment, he thought in irritation, and he couldn’t exactly bring those things with him into the dream. Well, for now, he would just have to remember the list. Maybe he could write it down when he woke and then look at it closely right before he went to bed. “McGonagall, for one.”

            Draco stared at him with his mouth open once more. Harry raised his eyebrows. He wondered if the few months that he thought this dream’s timeline ran behind the real world’s were enough to make that much of a difference in Draco’s age. If anything, he’d think Draco’s extra exposure to Voldemort would have aged him more.

            “Harry,” he said, and Harry felt a sense of inexplicable satisfaction at the way he said Harry’s name. “She was my teacher.”

            Harry nodded patiently. “And was she ever unfair? I know that in my world, she wanted Gryffindor to win at Quidditch and wanted us to succeed better than any other House in the school, but I can’t remember a time when she gave us fewer detentions than other people, or gave us points for something that we hadn’t earned, or overlooked our faults if we had them. She also gave praise even to Slytherins. She might be able to tell Discipula something good about your character.”

            “I…suppose so.” Draco looked dazed now. “But that wouldn’t help my parents.” He looked over his shoulder instinctively.

            Harry looked with him, and felt his eyes narrow. He’d had about enough of the Malfoy Deaf and Dumb Society. He rose to his feet. “Sir,” he said. “Ma’am. You might as well turn around and stop pretending that I don’t exist.”

            They remained there, motionless. Harry nodded and felt around in his pockets. If he was wearing robes, it was more than likely that he would have a stray bit of lint or thread somewhere.

            He found a few loose threads and snipped them short with his wand. Draco watched him in silent bafflement as he wound them together. Harry winked at him, faced the elder Malfoys, and threw his improvised ball at the back of Lucius’s head.

            It didn’t hit hard, but the fact that it hit at all was enough to make the man’s shoulders stiffen. He still didn’t turn around, though. Harry Summoned the ball back and threw it at Narcissa’s head this time. She also stiffened, and Harry saw a fine tremor riding the edges of her shoulders. He thought she would crack sooner than Lucius would, whether because she had been under a greater amount of stress or had more dignity he didn’t know. He aimed the ball at her again.

            “Enough, Mr. Evans.”

            That was Lucius. He had turned around and was staring at Harry with an expression of hatred that would have chilled Harry if he had intended to allow anything to chill him. It wasn’t personal hatred, of the kind that Malfoy had shown him when Harry freed Dobby. And he had never existed in this world for the Death Eaters to point their wands and their loathing at. That was Neville.

            How?

            But Harry shook away the useless thoughts. As Malfoy—Draco—had told him, there was no possibility that he could know that right now. He had to answer Lucius’s hatred, which was for his blood, and his apparent intention to negotiate.

            Harry inclined his head and raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Malfoy. Are you going to let me defend you or not?”

            “It would not be my first choice,” Lucius said, every word as heavy as the shutting of a door in a tomb. “To let a Mudblood defend me, knowing that my life rests in inexperienced hands.”

            Harry snorted. He wouldn’t let that one pass unchallenged, though realistically, it was probably better to do so. “Oh, of course. Since it’s been in such competent hands so far that you ended up a few hours away from death.”

            Someone drew in their breath from the side. Harry glanced over and saw that Narcissa Malfoy was facing him as well now, her eyes wide and her hand over her mouth. When she saw him looking, she promptly tried to pretend that she had never covered her mouth and never gasped. But Harry had seen her, and it reassured him that these people were human and not ice statues after all.

            “I’m your barrister, whether you want me to be or not,” Harry said. “And at the moment, I would rather not be.” He looked off to the side, trying to think of people who might vouch as character witnesses for the older Malfoys in the way that McGonagall could vouch for Draco. It really was too bad that both Dumbledore and Snape were unavailable—although, come to think of it, he had no idea if Snape would have gone to the barriers for the Malfoys even if he was around. He might favor Draco without liking his parents.

            Well. An incomplete plan was still better than the lack of options they’d been left with before he showed up. He turned around.

            “I’ll seek out and speak with McGonagall,” he said. “You think of people who might speak up for you.”

            Lucius sneered at him. “Think rather of the people who would not,” he said, in gloomy satisfaction. “That would give you an embarrassment of riches.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Is your embarrassment at being defended by me really so great that you would rather go to your death?”

            “You do not understand,” Narcissa said. Her voice was soft and harsh, the way Harry had heard it when she was stooping over him in the Forbidden Forest and preparing to lie to Voldemort. “We have standards to preserve. We are nearly the only ones left who can preserve them. Everyone else is dead, in prison, or compromised because they have given up their principles to fit in with the enemy. If you defend us, who will be left to think of blood purity as it should be thought of?”

            Harry blinked. Then he stared. Then he turned to Draco. “Were you or were you not going to die?” he asked.

            Draco blinked back, as though he was unused to being spoken to like an adult. With these parents, Harry could see why. Either he had never realized how overwhelming Lucius and Narcissa were in his own world, or they had sheltered and dominated Draco more here.

            But Draco drew himself up just before Harry would have felt compelled to intervene and said, “Yes, I think we were going to die.”

            Harry turned back to Narcissa. “Then you would have joined all the rest who were dead. Isn’t it better to be defended by a Muggleborn than let your precious standards perish?”

            Narcissa shook her head. “Any life we buy, we must lead in being pure.”

            Lucius nodded beside her. Harry looked from face to face, and saw no relaxing or cracking in their masks yet. They probably would do this, he thought, let things continue until they got to the point where they would die, because they really and honestly believed in what they promoted.

            Without madness, the way Voldemort had had, but it was fanaticism anyway.

            Harry took a deep breath and then turned his back on them. Hermione had taught him this method of dealing with clients’ family members who didn’t really want a defense for whatever reason. He would leave them out of it—even though they were clients in this case—and work with the one who wanted to live.

            He sat down across from Draco and said, “I’m going to McGonagall. She’ll speak up for you, I’m fairly certain. Your job is to think of anyone else who could belong on the same list and communicate the name to me. All right?”

            Draco gaped at him for the third time. His mother took a step forwards and reached out one hand as though she could command him to turn around with that simple gesture. “Draco, you must not,” she said earnestly. “You know that you must not, if you listen to your instincts rather than your wits.”

            “Such a charming set of standards, when you tell your son to ignore his intelligence,” Harry said, without looking away from Draco. “Will you do it, Draco?”

            Maybe it was the first name, maybe not, but Draco slowly nodded. Harry smiled and rose to hold his hand out.

            He only thought of the significance of the gesture when Draco’s fingers closed around his, but that was all right. The only other people who could have appreciated it weren’t in this world, anyway.

*

            “I have got to stop dreaming like this,” Harry told the wall of his bedroom.

            The wall of his bedroom went on looking like the white plaster and brown wood it always did. Harry sat up and lowered his head into his hands, taking some deep breaths, until he had to accept that the memories of the dream wouldn’t fade.

            This is weird. It’s still dreams, and I’m still not waking up with mysterious wounds or hungrier than I was, as if I’d spent time awake. I’m not tired. It seems as though my body sleeps in the bed while my mind goes wandering.

            Then Harry rolled his eyes. He had Malfoys on the brain, since he had immediately envisioned the answer that the Malfoy in this world would give to that statement. You have a mind that can go wandering?

            “I deserve to have a life of my own,” Harry told the bedroom wall, which kept its own counsel. “I’ll have to find out why I’m having these dreams and then stop them. Maybe Malfoy decided to make me have them? They started appearing after I agreed to practice with him. But I can’t imagine why he would want me to have them. I mean, he doesn’t want to appear pathetic, and they’re another distraction that might keep me from practicing with him.”

            The wall didn’t answer. Harry frowned as he thought. Yes, it might sound stupid, but he really did believe that Malfoy wasn’t the one sending the dreams. He had no motivation for it, and as little as Harry thought he understood former Death Eaters, he still believed he had a better handle on the Malfoys in this world than he did the ones in the dream, bizarre behavior and all.

            “So what does the caster want, then?” he asked aloud. “If this isn’t meant to hurt me, or at least isn’t hurting me right now, do they want me to think about this dream world? Spend my time focused on going to sleep instead of the world around me? Is there something that I’m meant to miss because the dreams absorb my attention?”

            And again, it seemed like a stupid, roundabout way to achieve anything that really mattered. After all, why not just injure Ron or Hermione? That would achieve the same thing at much less expense of magic, and it would be something that Harry couldn’t keep separate from the rest of his life, or hidden, the way he could the dreams. As long as he didn’t wander into thinking about Draco in court, then those dreams would have virtually no mental effect on him.

            Hermione had taught him to reason logically, or at least she had tried before giving up in disgust. Harry closed his eyes and thought. What solution was left, if he had got rid of the idea of someone trying to influence him with the dreams or distract him?

            Well, it could be the result of a mistaken spell that had been meant to do something else. In fact, the more Harry thought about that theory, the more he liked it. Yes, he could see someone who hadn’t meant to send him the dreams but to curse him. Perhaps he had been meant to sleep forever, or become obsessed with Malfoy, or get a crushing inferiority complex from the fact that he wasn’t the Savior anymore. Hermione kept telling him that she thought he had started studying law to stay a hero. What better way to punish him, someone else might think, than to make him dwell on the fact that he wasn’t a hero anymore until he couldn’t think of anything else?

            Instead, though, this unknown, incompetent wizard had just assured that Harry had another chance to play the hero. He did like being needed, and he could admit readily that he had chosen to study law because he wanted to serve people who needed help; he just didn’t think that was the proof of obsession with heroism that Hermione thought it was. But this way, he got to be one in his sleep.

            “Harry Potter against the forces of the universe,” he said aloud, and chuckled.

            “Harry?”

            He blinked and turned. That was Ron, and he stood in the doorway with his hand on the door as if he didn’t know whether he should come further into the room. Harry reckoned he must have presented an unnerving sight, sitting half-naked on the bed and talking and laughing to himself, moments after he’d been frowning fiercely at the wall.

            “It’s all right, Ron,” Harry said reassuringly, and he really did think it was. The dreams weren’t hurting him. He could set them aside and go on with his life, although he would do some more research into the Malfoy trial records.

            And why not ask Malfoy about his parents’ connections the next time you play against him? That might give you some ideas for ways to help the Malfoys in the dream, assuming the people exist in that universe.

            Then Harry shook his head. It wasn’t a universe, not if it was the result of a miscast spell. It was just magic acting on his mind. He didn’t owe these people anything. They weren’t real, and he would be as justified dressing them up in pink robes as laboring to help them.

            But if it didn’t matter, he thought a moment later, and what he did didn’t matter, then he might as well choose to help them as to do anything else.

            “If you say so,” Ron said dubiously. “Anyway, breakfast is ready.” He vanished, and Harry reached for his clothes. He would go away and have an ordinary day of studying and watching Hermione, and in the afternoon would come the brief bizarre interlude when he played Quidditch and tried to figure out what Malfoy wanted. It was the only useless part of his day; Harry didn’t believe he could actually teach Malfoy anything about how to be a Seeker, which meant he wasn’t helping anyone, but on the other hand, he couldn’t figure out Malfoy yet.

            Then Harry brightened. Not so useless, if I can ask him about his parents and their friends this time.

            For some reason, Hermione and Ron both wanted to know why he was humming under his breath with happiness during breakfast. Harry didn’t see why he shouldn’t hum if he wanted to.

*

            SP777: Thanks! It’s interesting, because Harry perceives the other way around. The AU Draco is the one who seems younger to him.

            There are more Quidditch moves coming up.
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Sleepless