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The Serenity of His Rage	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16981 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Four—In Dreams
            “I wish you wouldn’t watch Malfoy all the time, mate. It’s kind of disturbing.”
            “It’s the bond making him do that, Ron. He can’t help it.”
            Harry blinked furiously and turned his gaze away from the Slytherin table. It was hard not to simply watch Malfoy all the time, but Ron was right. It was disturbing. Malfoy had maintained his Occlumency barriers since their bonding ritual. It was clear that he wanted nothing to do with Harry’s emotions, and whatever would make the Horcrux in Harry drift closer to Malfoy’s soul, it would simply have to happen over time.
            He turned back to his food just in time for Hermione to plop a huge book in his lap. Harry blinked and opened it to find gold-tinted illustrations staring up at him. One of them had a gem like the one he’d briefly glimpsed in Snape’s hands before the ritual started.
            “What is this?” Harry asked, tracing a finger around the nearest of the images.
            “The kind of research you should have let me do before you went into that room and agreed to the bond. It’s pretty profound, Harry. Soul-bonds always are.”
            “What about when one of the bond members is an Occlumens and can block the other one out, though?”
            Hermione immediately reached for another book that she appeared to have stacked on the chair next to her. Harry held up his hand. “Look, I’ll trust whatever you want to tell me about it.” Quickly skimming the words next to the images in the tome she’d handed him, he didn’t see anything that would have made him hesitate or change his mind. It mostly seemed to be a list of potions ingredients, probably the ones that Snape had used to make the circles on the cavern floor.
            “An Occlumens can block out the emotions, but only one way,” Hermione recited. “He can prevent himself from feeling what you feel. But you still feel what he does.”
            Harry nodded. “Yeah. That’s why I was distracted the other day in Potions. I must have felt it when he was getting something right.”
            Hermione seemed satisfied with that explanation, but Harry knew it wasn’t the whole truth. He had got distracted enough when he felt a burst of savage joy from Malfoy to drop a whole beryl in the potion he and Hermione were making instead of a crushed one, and they had ended up with a ruined potion while Malfoy had a perfect one.
            But Harry had also glanced at Malfoy enough times to know that he was staring at a book on his lap below the desk. He didn’t think Malfoy’s triumph had anything to do with the potion.
            “You need to spend more time with that book on Occlumency Professor Snape gave you, Harry.” Hermione paused to brush hair out of her face. Harry wondered when she would figure out that Ron was running his fingers through it on the back of her head and letting it escape from the hold of whatever charms she’d been using it to make it stay in place. “You can’t just go around feeling what he does all the time.”
            “Why not?” Harry muttered. “It’s harmless enough.”
            “It distracts you. Like it did during Potions. And with exams coming up…”
            Harry sighed in response. Yes, he knew Hermione would care about that. And Snape had told him to pay attention to the book he’d given Harry the night after the bonding. He would probably demand it back soon. Harry would at least use a Duplicating Charm to make a copy of the most important parts before he gave it back. He didn’t think the first chapter, which was on the history of Occlumency and kept putting him to sleep, was important.
            But he knew it would be a loss to him. It was…pleasant to feel Malfoy’s happiness, like little bubbles bursting against his teeth, and even his intent, focused anger. It had such a different flavor to the emotions he tasted from Voldemort.
            Malfoy lifted his head and glared at him from across the Great Hall. Harry winced a little and returned his attention to his food.
            He needed to remember that he wasn’t the only person in this bond, though, he thought. Malfoy hadn’t entered it of his own free will. It was basically the price for Dumbledore’s help in freeing his father, and Harry wouldn’t like it either if he’d been bonded to his worst enemy and he knew that so far, his only family was still a prisoner of the Death Eaters.
            Although it’s hard to tell who I would care about. If Sirius was still alive, maybe. But the Dursleys? Voldemort could have them.
            Then Harry sighed again. He wasn’t very good at deceiving himself. He would still want to rescue the Dursleys and stop Voldemort from torturing them, even though he wouldn’t want to see them again.
            “Harry, you need to get some more sleep, and study that book. I’ll help you with studying if you want to—Ron!”
            Hermione had finally caught on to who was disarranging her hair. Harry hid his smile and nodded in response, then fixed his stare firmly on his breakfast. Malfoy didn’t want to associate that closely with Harry and didn’t get distracted by the bond the way Harry did. Well, what else was new? Other than with Ron, Hermione, Sirius, and Professor Lupin, Harry’s only close bonds were unwanted ones. Voldemort and the Dursleys and the persona of the Boy-Who-Lived.
            I’ll get through this. It’s nothing new.
*
            Draco opened his eyes and went still at once. He wasn’t in the Slytherin common room, where he’d fallen asleep, or even his bedroom. He put a cautious hand on his wand and spent a moment gazing at the walls.
            They had a thick red sheen that made him wonder for a moment if he was in the Gryffindor common room. Dumbledore had said something about sharing dreams with Potter, and that made it a likely place to end up.
            But then he saw the rippling light that flickered up and down the walls as if a candle was traveling underwater, and had to snort. No, he wasn’t in any place that solid. This was a dream, because Potter had predictably failed to learn Occlumency the way he should.
Draco still kept his wand drawn, though. He’d heard the rumors about Potter’s nightmares.
            For long enough that Draco grew impatient, the unstable red flickered up and down around him. He began to wonder if he would be trapped in this place all night, since his Occlumency barriers were solid but Potter’s weren’t, and what effect that would have on him when he woke up in the morning. He didn’t want to be tired when he was trying to plot the best way to rescue his father.
            But then something changed. Black streaks cut through the red and charged around Draco, making him spin and leap. They looked like cracks, and the last thing he wanted was to fall down one of those inside Potter’s mind.
            But the cracks halted a few centimeters from his feet, and then Draco heard a voice that made him drop into an instinctive kneeling position.
            “You are certain no one knows of our target, Rabastan?”
            The Dark Lord. Potter has a soul-connection to the Dark Lord. Draco breathed slowly around his fear. He had no idea how active the thing was from the Dark Lord’s side. At least once, he knew, the Dark Lord had used it to entice Potter with false visions of his godfather in trouble.
            This had to be another false vision. There was no way the Dark Lord would want Potter to know about a real plot he was spinning.
            But the real question at the moment, the important one, Draco thought, looking around at the cracks and the redness, was whether the Dark Lord would be able to sense Draco’s presence in Potter’s mind.
            “I’m certain, my Lord. It was easy enough to take some of the details Vincent gave us and make sure we were close behind her all the way through Hogsmeade. She never looked around. Polyjuice and Apparition will take care of her easily enough.”
            “Excellent.”
            The way the Dark Lord hissed the word made Draco shudder, but more than that, he wondered what the hell was going on. It sounded as though the Dark Lord was plotting to kidnap some student who went to Hogsmeade, but Draco wondered what in the world he could hope to gain. Muggles made better hostages for the Death Eaters to torture, and students couldn’t have fought against him and his people and made them angry.
            Unless…
            It’s the same thing it was with me. I got punished for the failures of my parents. These are students who are being punished for things their families did.
            It didn’t matter to Draco, not in the ordinary sense of the word. He didn’t care about what some random student’s family had done, and whether they would be kidnapped or not. But he did care that the Dark Lord not get what he wanted.
            He glanced around, trying to figure out some way to change things from here, to wake Potter up or learn how much he’d heard. He started when he saw Potter’s face hanging on one of the red walls, eyes closed and jaw slack.
            “Potter,” Draco called softly. There was no response, except for the face’s jaw swinging back and forth like a door knocker. Draco grimaced and picked his way across the shifting red floor to it.
            “I know you can hear me,” he said, although he didn’t actually know that. “You can at least feel me.” He tried to shape his determination and anger like an arrowhead and aim it at the heart of Potter’s mind, wherever that was. “Wake up and talk to me and tell me who that is!”
*
Harry felt as though someone had hooked a Portkey through his navel and hauled him out of Voldemort’s head. He sat up, confused and blinking, and looked around. But he wasn’t in bed. He was somewhere in a mist of red and black, and standing in front of him, arms folded and a scowl on his face, was Malfoy.
            Harry reoriented himself. Dumbledore said we could share dreams. Right.
            “I don’t know who he’s talking about,” he said. “The dream had just started when you pulled me out. I didn’t have time to hear names.”
            Malfoy growled and paced back and forth. Harry watched him in silence. He could feel the emotions leaping all around Malfoy, winds that cut and swirled back and forth. He didn’t say anything, though, because Malfoy hadn’t said anything intelligible.
            “What good are you, if you can’t even use this soul-bond to spy on the Dark Lord?” Malfoy demanded, and spun back towards him.
            Harry found himself opening his mouth in a silent hiss, as if he really was Voldemort. “What good are you, if you get drawn into my dreams even though you have Occlumency barriers? I thought I would feel things from you, but you wouldn’t feel them from me!”
            Malfoy paused, as if he hadn’t thought about that, and Harry glared at him in silence. His enchantment with the bond had faded. Yes, it was nice in some ways to know what Malfoy was thinking. But Malfoy gave no sign of being interested in him back. That meant Harry had to get some distance from him, and fight to keep it. Malfoy would be more powerful than him otherwise, just like Voldemort was.
            Harry refused to have two soul-bonds that went that way. It was disgusting enough being a Horcrux.
            “You only want to stop the Dark Lord. Right?”
            Malfoy spoke with his head turned away. It irritated Harry for some perverse reason. He shook his head. “I never said that. I want to stop him and survive. That was what the soul-bond with you was supposed to give me some chance of doing.”
            Malfoy turned around with narrowed eyes that caught the red light flickering around them and looked particularly bizarre. “You haven’t even given me a chance to prove that I could do that.”
            “You’re using Occlumency and it’s not working on the dreams, but on the emotions,” Harry said, and gestured around. “It’s the worst of both worlds for me. I could at least stop sharing dreams with you. That way things could go on pretty much as before.”
            Malfoy’s eyes widened again, but Harry wasn’t sure what he had said that changed things. Maybe Malfoy had just realized how pitiful Harry was at Occlumency.
            “But it’s a soul-bond. They can’t go on as before.”
            “They have for you.”
            “Keeping Occlumency barriers up all the time is annoying. It forces me to keep some of my thoughts concealed and ignore the wave of your emotions.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “And what do you want me to say? Sorry? When I can feel yours all the bloody time? Not bloody likely.”
            Malfoy folded his arms. “Tell me whether you heard anything about who the Dark Lord is going to kidnap, Potter.”
            “I already told you no. You pulled me out of the dream just as it was beginning. Now go away and let me go back to sleep.”
            Harry was already turning around to find the place in the crackling red-and-black wall where he would be able to go back to his own mind. He felt more tired than usual. Battling Voldemort was one thing, but he had hoped—well, not that Malfoy would be nice. More that he would be understanding.
            I’ll probably wake up even more tired than usual tomorrow morning.
*
            Draco stared at Potter’s back. He felt as though one of the cracks had caught him and swallowed him up after all.
            This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. Of course things had changed after the soul-bond, and Potter should have felt the same way. It was a bloody soul-bond!
            Draco crossed the distance between them, physically or however it worked here, and caught Potter’s arm. Potter turned to look at him, his face pale and harassed. His scar stood out on his forehead like a ruddy flame, reminding Draco of the fire that had burned at their bonding.
            “There must be something you know. Some name you heard.”
            “I heard him ask Rabastan about a plan, and Rabastan talk about Polyjuice and Apparition, and then you pulled me into your dream.”
            “This is your dream, not mine.”
            “Whatever, Malfoy. Raise your Occlumency barriers higher and go back to sleep, yeah?”
            Draco shook his head. “The dream had to have been going on longer than that. I was here waiting before I could hear the Dark Lord’s voice.”
            Potter rolled his eyes and tore his arm from Draco’s grip. “Yes, I must be lying to you. Why? It’s fun, I suppose. Look, you can close off my dreams. Or you ought to be able to. So go do it.” He stomped towards the red wall he’d emerged from.
            Draco shook his head. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be going. The bond was supposed to give him Potter as an ally, not someone who sounded as though he was upset and weary of the whole thing.
            Maybe Draco could still appeal to him, through the compassion that Dumbledore insisted Potter had. He opened his mouth and phrased his complaints as calmly as he could.
            “You have no idea how hard it is, Potter, losing a parent. I know yours died, but that was before you could really remember them. And—”
            “I hear my mother dying every time a Dementor is near, you wanker.”
            Draco shut his mouth. Potter had conjured a wand from somewhere and had it aimed straight at Draco’s chest. He was panting a little, his face pale.
            “And I watched your mum die, too. Had no choice, didn’t I? Voldemort was there, watching, and I can’t do anything when I’m in his head. So.” Potter flicked his hair back over his shoulder and shrugged, still watching Draco. “And I saw Sirius die last year. Shut up about this you don’t have the least idea business, Malfoy. You’re the one who has no idea what it’s like to have Voldemort in your head.”
            Draco spent a moment contemplating that. Then he looked up. “But I heard his voice.”
            Potter rolled his eyes. “Of course. Forgive me. That means you have an idea of exactly what it’s like for me to have a piece of Voldemort’s soul in me at all times. And stop flinching at the name, will you? I’m not going to call him by that adoring name you do just to make you more comfortable.”
            “I don’t adore him. Calling him the Dark Lord acknowledges his power—”
            Potter gave him a nasty smile, and Draco fumed, but kept silent. “Right. So. You might as well leave. You’ve upset me and heard his voice and as much of his plan as I know, either. Good-bye.”
            The way he turned his back infuriated Draco. He darted around in front of Potter again, which wasn’t any more difficult than it would be in a school corridor, now that he was trusting to the stability of the room. He grabbed Potter’s wrist, and admitted it would have been easier to speak without the wand jabbed up his throat.
            “Similar,” he did get out. Potter paused, cocking an eyebrow at him.
            “We’re similar,” Draco finally clarified. “I’m the only one who’s heard his voice like that, besides you, right?”
            “He did possess Ginny in her first year,” Potter said.
            “But no one else has heard him like this,” Draco said. “Shared your dreams. Been this close to you and known how appalling—You-Know-Who is.” Draco wasn’t about to call him by the most dangerous name, but he did have to admit that “Dark Lord” was the sort of thing Death Eaters would say. “Surely we can build something out of that.”
            “But I thought you didn’t want to. That was why I said the bond hadn’t changed anything. If you strengthen your Occlumency barriers, then it’ll be like we never bonded at all.”
            Draco shook his head and sighed a little. “I know we’ll still be bonded. Keeping the walls up hasn’t worked for me, either. I can still hear the roar and the call of your emotions even if they’re beneath me.”
            Potter’s nostrils flared, and Draco realized what that sounded like. “I mean, literally beneath me. It’s like being in a tower with the sea washing around it. That’s what I meant.”
            Potter just studied him closely, then apparently decided to let it go. “But if you raise your barriers even higher, then you can be rid of all the inconveniences.”
            “I have them up. It didn’t prevent me from coming here.” Draco hesitated, because he hated to make this offer after the way his words had gone down so far. But if he didn’t, then nothing would change. Potter would just go on being a noble, suffering martyr, and Draco would probably still wake up in his head.
            “How much Occlumency have you learned?”
            Potter’s neck and face both turned an ugly color. Draco pressed in, sneering a little because he couldn’t help it. “You can’t read it? You need another book? What?”
            “The book and Snape both keep telling me to clear my mind,” Potter said, in a high-pitched imitation of what he probably thought was Professor Snape’s voice. “I don’t know how to do that. They don’t tell me how to do it, either! They just keep repeating to clear my sodding mind.”
            “But it’s obvious.”
            “It is not.”
            “You have to—clear it.” Draco stood there, licking his lips a little. When Bellatrix had told him that was the first step, he had immediately known what she meant.
            “Yeah, Malfoy, you’re so helpful.”
            “Okay, look,” said Draco, thinking that the bond was coming in useful for one thing after all. He moved forwards and reached out to wrap his fingers around Potter’s temples. Potter’s eyes met his, willfully distrustful. “I can’t hurt you here. I’ll feel it.”
            “No, you won’t.”
            “In the dream? Yes, I will.”
            Potter sighed, then said, “All right. So what do I do next?”
            “What do you do when you want to go to sleep?”
            “Lie there until it happens.”
            “There must be something other than that.” Draco knew he would never have got any sleep in the past year if he’d had to rely on his body to collapse into it, not with the amount of worries he had.
            “I don’t know any other way. Counting things in my head doesn’t work. Breathing slowly doesn’t work. Counting heartbeats doesn’t work. Thinking about things I have to do tomorrow doesn’t work.”
            “I should think not,” said Draco, a little relieved. At least now he knew what the problem was. Potter was missing all the basic information. As always. “You have to be calm and not think about things you were worrying about.”
            “Yes, that’s so easy. With Voldemort and the rest of it.”
            “It’s enforced relaxation.” Draco paused as he took in the way Potter was suddenly standing. “No one ever told you that?”
            Potter snorted softly. “No. Snape would yell for me to clear my mind and then attack me with Legilimency. Hard to relax with the pain and the memories flashing past my eyes.”
            Draco shook his head a little. He’d thought better of Professor Snape. He supposed the professor’s hatred for Potter just ran too deep. Draco’s might have if he wasn’t bonded to him.
            “All right.” Draco shifted his fingers on Potter’s temples, attracting his attention again. “Listen. The next time you’re trying to go to sleep, think of this. The way I’m touching you. The way my fingers are pressing down.”
            “It involves an element of pain?”
            “It’s not supposed to, I think, but that’s the way I learned. At least you won’t get the Cruciatus Curse the way I did from dear Aunt Bella.”
            Potter gave him a sympathetic look, and Draco felt something unknot in him. This bond might work after all. Then he began to whisper, “Think of the way my fingers dent your skin. But I’m holding you, right? Not hurting you. The same way I knew my aunt wouldn’t torture me to death because she didn’t have orders to.”
            “Jesus, Malfoy.”
            “Don’t think about that. Think about the way I’m holding you, and I could hurt you, but I won’t, because I would feel that through the bond, too.”
            “You’re the one who brought it up...”
            Draco gave Potter a stern glance, and he did shut his eyes and keep quiet. Draco kept on talking, hoping that somewhere within his voice lay the thread Potter could follow out of this labyrinth.
            “Think about the way my fingers are cradling your head. The way I could hold it and twist it around and hurt your neck, but I’m not. Can you think of anything but that?”
            “Your aunt and your mum.”
            Draco sighed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought up Bellatrix, even though he had done it to convince Potter that the things he was moaning about weren’t such huge inconveniences after all. He shook his head, then murmured, “Repeat my words to yourself. The ones about the way I hold you, and the sensation of my fingers, nothing else.”
            “For how long?”
            “For as long as you need to.”
            Silence. Potter seemed to have settled on repeating the words to himself, which was fine with Draco. He stood there, watching the flicker of Potter’s closed eyes, and wondering absently if this was the way he looked when he was asleep, too.
*
            Harry thought this was stupid, honestly. Not that much better than Snape yelling at him and then dredging up all his worst memories of the Dursleys. How could Malfoy just tell Harry that he’d been tortured and expect him to think about something else?
            But he evidently did. So Harry began to repeat the words Malfoy had last spoken to himself. Oddly, it was a lot easier to remember them than it would be with most people if it was a few minutes since they’d spoken. Harry supposed that was another side of the bond, one he should probably be grateful for.
            Think about the way my fingers are cradling your head. The way I could hold it and twist it around and hurt your neck, but I’m not. Can you think of anything but that?
            This was stupid.
            Think about the way my fingers are cradling your head. The way I could hold it and twist it around and hurt your neck, but I’m not. Can you think of anything but that?
            But it was true that when he really concentrated on the sound of Malfoy’s words and the sensation of his fingers, it was harder to force his mind away. In fact, he kind of wanted to think about them.
            Think about the way my fingers are cradling your head. The way I could hold it and twist it around and hurt your neck, but I’m not. Can you think of anything but that?
            Malfoy could hurt him, but he wasn’t. And he seemed to think the bond was more important than Harry had assumed. Harry knew he couldn’t trust that mood to last forever, but maybe he didn’t have to. All he had to do was lift his Occlumency barriers to match Malfoy’s, and then they could ignore the washing of each other’s emotions. Malfoy could get on with rescuing his father and disappearing into a safehouse. Harry could get on with fighting Voldemort.
            Think about the way my fingers are cradling your head. The way I could hold it and twist it around and hurt your neck, but I’m not. Can you think of anything but that?
            The fingers bore into Harry’s skull, skin and temples, and his breathing slowed. He felt as though he had fallen into a doze, but one with someone lying beside him in the bed, still imprinting his fingers on Harry’s face.
            Not such a bad thing, not if it meant Harry could stay safe from other dangers.
            Think about the way my fingers are cradling your head. The way I could hold it and twist it around and hurt your neck, but I’m not. Can you think of anything but that?
            No. No, he really couldn’t.
            The sensation of physical fingers disappeared from around him. Harry had the thought that he’d slipped out of the dream, but so what? He was drifting somewhere that neither Malfoy nor Voldemort could touch him now.
            And he drifted off and dreamed better than he had since the start of the term, with no tossing emotions of any kind to disturb him.
*
moon: Thank you!
Jan: Dumbledore is trying to prevent such a sacrifice, though it may not work the way he intends.
SP777: Thank you!
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The Serenity of His Rage