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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 Five—Resentment and Hostility

            “There’s no reason for you to want to know about my parents’ friends.”

            Harry blinked at Malfoy’s back. He had assumed, without thinking about it, that of course Malfoy wouldn’t have a problem in answering his questions. Didn’t he love to talk about himself? And this was a question about the worth and pride and connections his family had, if not Malfoy himself. So he ought to have no problem. He would never know that it was for the sake of an alternate Draco, either, but Harry liked to think it would only make him more eager to help if he knew.

            Liked to think. Harry was having to admit to himself frequently that he didn’t understand the Malfoy who actually existed, no matter how he understood the broken Draco in the dreams.

            And this was only another example of it, given Malfoy’s stiff shoulders and the resentment in his voice as he spun his broom away from Harry. Harry sighed, rolled his eyes, and decided that he might as well rephrase the question. “Yes, there is. I’m trying to understand you. I told you that I don’t think you fit well into the rest of my life. If I knew a little more about you, then you might.”

            Malfoy actually paused and sat motionless on his broom, staring at the far side of the Quidditch pitch. Harry decided that he should give him a few minutes and then head over and wave a hand in his face, just to make sure that he hadn’t killed him with shock.

            “Ask me questions about me.” Malfoy’s voice was quiet and dry.

            “What?” Harry asked. He knew he had heard correctly, but he couldn’t imagine any way in which Malfoy’s words were an adequate response to his question.

            “If you want to know about me,” Malfoy said, swinging around and eyeing Harry with unexpected intensity, “then ask me questions about my personal life. Ask about how well I play Quidditch. Ask about what I felt during the war, who my friends are, whether I resented it that you returned my wand to me as if you were dropping off an unwanted Kneazle kitten. But leave my parents out of it.”

            Harry did understand, then, a flash of insight that connected Malfoy’s emotions now with Malfoy’s reaction when he’d found Harry reading the trial records the other day. He made a rude noise in sheer relief. “Come off it, Malfoy. I’m not trying to get your parents in trouble again.”

            Malfoy blinked, and his face relaxed. Harry had to admit that he looked more attractive when it was that way, rather than drawn tight and ferret-like with suspicion. “Then why the questions? Why the trial records? I can hardly imagine that they make stimulating reading, even for the Great Harry Potter.” He paused and cocked his head, a malicious smirk touching the edges of his lips. “Unless you simply like to see your name in print. Keep your own collection of Daily Prophet clippings, do you?”

            Harry groaned, both because Malfoy still thought Harry liked the attention and because he didn’t know how to create an explanation for why he wanted the trial records or news about the Malfoys’ contacts without telling the truth. “It’s not that, Malfoy. I would be perfectly happy if everyone left me alone tomorrow.”

            “Right,” Malfoy said, the word like a blow, and he began to ride his broom in a lazy circle around Harry. Harry kept turning to face him, wondering when this had become an interrogation with him as the suspect instead of Malfoy. “That’s why you’ve chosen to become a barrister, dealing with trials that the press will surely cover.”

            Harry paused, startled. He had only thought about his vocation in terms of need and heroism, before, and that only when Hermione pressed him to think about it. Otherwise, it was something that fascinated him and that he wanted to do—both traits that were rare in his activities since the war—and he didn’t see why he needed to question or justify himself about it.

            Put like that, it was possible. “Well, fuck,” he muttered. “Maybe you have a point.”

            Malfoy stopped flying and stared at him. Harry quickly pressed the advantage. “My undiagnosed attention-seeking tendencies aside,” he said, “I do want to understand you, and understanding your family seems to be part of that. Since you never hesitate to remind me that you are part of a family, and not a poor little orphan trying to stand on his own.”

            Malfoy shook his head slowly, but Harry didn’t think he was denying the accusation. “I never thought you would say I was right,” he muttered.

            Harry sighed impatiently. “I have changed, Malfoy. I acknowledge that you can change, too. I just think that wanting me to train with you, considering our history and the wealth of other potential partners, is bloody weird, that’s all.”

            Malfoy narrowed his eyes. “What wealth? I’ve told you about how they distrust me. And they have good reason, considering I don’t trust them.”

            “There are retired trainers you could pay,” Harry said. “Why would you want me instead of them? Our relationship is too unsettled by things like simple requests for knowledge to bring you much benefit.”

            Malfoy smiled with his mouth alone. “Maybe I like being unsettled.”

            “Not when other people can see it, you don’t,” Harry said.

            Malfoy again reacted in an unexpected fashion, ducking his chin towards his chest and giving Harry a faint smile. Harry stared. Malfoy murmured, “How can you say that you don’t understand anything about me, when you know that?”

            Harry shook his head. He wanted to acknowledge a warmth that spread down the center of his chest like the path of a tongue, and then again, he didn’t. “Never mind, Malfoy. Are you going to tell me about your parents’ contacts?”

            “I want you concentrating on me,” Malfoy said, and Harry, listening, heard the strain in his voice. “Not on them. I want to be seen for who I am, as well as a Malfoy. The Weasleys can be part of the family and individuals at the same time; why can’t I?”

            Harry lowered his eyes. He could hardly dispute with that wish, remembering when he had sometimes felt overwhelmed by the shadows of his father and mother, especially with Snape. “Yes, all right. I understand.”

            Malfoy gave him a brilliant smile and shot across the Pitch, grabbing the Snitch near the right edge of the grass. Harry pursued, and forgot about his words for a time.

            But that smile lingered with him.

*

            “Are you all right, Harry? It seems something is preoccupying you lately.”

            Harry started and looked up a little guiltily as Hermione sat down beside him. He had law books spread across the bed in a fan, and he hadn’t even noticed her coming into the room. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been studying more intensely the past few days. That’s probably it.”

            Hermione leaned forwards and examined him. Harry felt his eyes cross, trying to maintain that gaze. He didn’t know what she saw in his face or why she would want to study him from that close, but he would put up with it.

            “That’s not it,” Hermione said.

            “Why not?” Harry shifted and then reached over to make sure that he hadn’t crumpled a page when he moved. He would have checked that Hermione hadn’t crumpled them when she sat down, either, but he knew Hermione was more careful than damaging a book would imply.

            “Because you get a certain look in your eyes when you’re charging ahead on a course that you think can help someone.” Hermione settled back comfortably, and, sure enough, managed to find some space for herself without disturbing a single book in the process. “You have it now. Abstract study never does that for you.”

            Harry frowned a bit. He didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like he could tell her about the dreams.

            Although, why not? She would probably have the best advice of anyone on how to deal with them, and it’s hard for me to lie to her.

            But for some reason, Harry also felt that Hermione would become too interested in the dreams. She would want to find some way of entering them with him, or at least of helping him with his research. And Harry didn’t want that. This was his dream, to work with alone. His Malfoys, to protect and preserve—if they would let him. Harry had spent last night in the dream arguing with the elder Malfoys again, and though he thought Narcissa was beginning to come around, Lucius still acted as if he were a dog who had inexplicably learned to talk.

            “I’ve been trying to figure out Malfoy,” Harry said, picking the first topic that sprang to mind. “Sometimes he acts as though he wants to be my friend, sometimes he acts as though nothing is further from his mind, and sometimes he acts as though he suspects me of suspecting him. He did that today, just because he caught me reading his trial records and I asked him a question about his parents.”

            “Why were you reading his trial records?”

            Harry resisted the temptation to put his head in his hands. He did wish that he was a better liar, right about now. It would have made it a lot easier to keep a secret that he was determined to keep.

            “Because I want to understand him,” he said calmly. “And because I think his trials could make a good model for future Dark wizard trials. Sometimes the crimes they’re accused of aren’t as heinous as the ones the Malfoys were accused of, sometimes they’re worse, but either way, the defense in those trials was excellent.”

            “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” Hermione asked, successfully distracted. “Logical, focused, balanced between precedent and rhetoric and appeals to pragmatism…”

            Harry relaxed as Hermione began to babble on about the Death Eater trials, and reminded himself that he would have to come up with another reason to be worried and occupied in the future. Malfoy by himself wasn’t enough of an excuse.

            Of course. He isn’t enough of an excuse for anything.

            But for some reason, it was still the face of Malfoy in his own world that Harry thought of that night as he fell asleep. Malfoy as he had been that afternoon, no less, grinning, rather than Hermione or the law records he had promised himself that he would memorize or even the face of Draco that swam out of the depths to appear in front of him.

*

            “You won’t be gone long? You’ll come back to us as soon as you have something to report?”

            Harry squeezed Draco’s hand comfortingly and nodded. “I promise,” he said. “Discipula might try to keep me away, but I have a legal right to see you now, as your barrister, and if she was going to accuse me of conspiring to free you, then I think she would have done it already.” He paused, suddenly caught by a suspicion and a question that he probably should have asked earlier. “What kind of person is she? Is she on the Wizengamot?”

            “What? No.” Draco shook his head. He was still playing with Harry’s fingers, sending random jolts of warmth down his arm and to his shoulder. “She’s the Ministry’s representative at the trials. The Minister would have been here himself, but he’s busy. He trusts her with everything. I forget the official title. Undersecretary, or something like that.”

            Harry swallowed, cold worming through him. Draco’s lack of specificity meant he couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as though Discipula occupied the same position in this world that Umbridge had occupied in his.

            Yes, you can’t be sure, he reminded himself, and since she’s smarter anyway, it would be a mistake to judge her by Umbridge’s standards. He extricated his hand from Draco’s and nodded. “Thanks for telling me. Between her and Longbottom, which one would you say has greater political power?”

            “Long—” Draco said, and paused. For the first time, Harry thought he looked his actual age, as he carefully considered the question. “What an interesting idea,” Draco murmured.

            “Is it?” Harry had thought that Discipula probably held the power, although Neville seemed pretty good at smiling for the crowd, but the way that Draco reacted made him wonder if the common perception was the other way around. And the common perception might not be wrong. Harry really knew very little about this world. “I didn’t know—I mean, Longbottom has a lot of popularity, but I was never very powerful back in my world, even if I defeated Voldemort. Then again, I never wanted to be.”

            Draco smiled uncontrollably at him; Harry had noticed that he did that whenever Harry said Voldemort’s name, now that he had got over dropping his jaw open when he heard it. “Yes, I think Longbottom wants to be,” Draco said. “But Discipula has always been there. She intervened a few times when someone wanted to take Longbottom away from the school for the safety of the other students. And she was the one who said that he had to spend time with his grandmother when there were people who were eager to have him over to stay in their houses. I think that she kept him safe and modest.”

            Thoughtfully, Harry squeezed Draco’s hand one more time and then knocked on the door of the room. It felt as though not much more than a few hours had passed since he was here, but, of course, with the slower way that time seemed to flow in the dreams, that might or might not be true.

            Discipula opened the door herself, smiling and bowing her head to him. Harry studied her closely, watching for signs of a lie in her facial expression. He couldn’t see them, but he didn’t think that meant she was perfectly sincere. She was probably just a good liar in the way that Harry wished he could be.

            “Mr. Evans,” she said. “Am I correct in thinking that you require some place to stay while you’re working with and for the Malfoys?” No resentment in her tone, despite the fact that he had challenged her in front of everyone. Harry gave up trying to read her for now. He had learned that it might be more damaging for a barrister to come to a wrong conclusion than to go into a situation with too little information.

            “Yes, I need somewhere to stay,” he said. “I had thought the Three Broomsticks—”

            “Oh, no, the Three Broomsticks burned down during the war, and hasn’t been rebuilt yet.” Discipula turned up the intensity of her smile a notch. “But, of course, you wouldn’t have heard about that, as isolated from the world as you are. I should have realized. I should think that you can stay in the official boardinghouse that we used during the other trials for witnesses and advocates, however.” She turned away and motioned someone standing behind her forwards. “You can trust my assistant to bring you anything you need.”

            Harry found himself staring into the face of a young woman with closely-bound brown hair, thick glasses, and a face that made her look as though she had spent all her time reading about the follies of human beings and had grown to loathe them because of it. He had to swallow twice before he could speak. “Miss—Granger?”

            Hermione nodded briskly to him. But it wasn’t Hermione. Harry had never seen her looking like this, even when she had been most irritated with him and Ron because they hadn’t done their homework. Her eyes were sour, her smile nonexistent. She looked down at her book. “I have a room arranged for you,” she said, in a flat voice that made her sound very different from Harry’s friend. “Will you follow me?”

            Harry nodded to Discipula and did so, hoping that he hadn’t exposed too much of his utter shock at Hermione’s appearance to the woman’s watchful eyes. For a few moments, while they turned around many corners and down the endless corridors of the building, which seemed to be some sort of administration place that didn’t exist in Harry’s world, Harry worked to catch his whirling thoughts up with reality.

            Then he wondered what Hermione would have been like if he and Ron had never befriended her. (It was still possible that Ron might be her friend, of course, but Harry didn’t think so. She looked as though she had never liked anyone). Neville, in either world, probably wasn’t of the right temperament to draw people together like that. He would appeal to the crowd, Harry thought, not a few special friends. And he had been reared in the wizarding world, so he probably had all sorts of friends and playmates before he went to Hogwarts, unlike the Muggle-reared Harry.

            “I think it’s admirable that you’re trying to do something about making Muggleborns less isolated from our counterparts.”

            Harry blinked and came out of his thoughts. The compliment was thin and acidic. If Hermione really thought he was admirable, it sure didn’t sound like it. “But you’re Muggleborn yourself,” he said. “Your position is higher than mine, and more people must look to you rather than to me to get us a position in the wizarding world.”

            Hermione froze and then turned around slowly and faced him. Harry had never known that her face did an expression of disdain so well. He stood there while she walked towards him and stood studying him minutely from an inch away. At least she shared one trait with the Hermione he knew, Harry thought. She didn’t mind making people uncomfortable examining them, or cross-examining them.

            “You’re making fun of me,” Hermione finally said, her voice low and precise. “I don’t enjoy that.”

            “I’m not making fun of you,” Harry said. “Why would I be? You do have a higher position than mine, and people must look up to you. They look up to Discipula, and I can’t see her choosing someone to serve her who’s so stupid that she pisses people off every time she moves around.”

            Hermione’s hand clenched down on the pack of papers she was carrying, and she took a deep, careful breath that made Harry have to bite his lip. It sounded far too much like the breath that a bull would take right before the charge.

            “I’m not popular,” Hermione said. “I’m not a Gryffindor, or a savior of the world, or a war heroine, and right now, those are the only people of any account in our world, in much the same way that Death Eaters are the biggest criminals.”

            Score one difference, Harry thought, staring at her in fascination. She’s probably going to tell me that she was in Ravenclaw, the way that Hermione—my Hermione—once said she would have been if she wanted to be.

            “I am a Ravenclaw,” Hermione said. “I’m someone who knows how long it’s going to take Muggleborns to become really part of the wizarding world, and never mind all that noble rot about equality that the Gryffindors like to spout. Our precious Savior is still a pure-blood. People like the Malfoys still aren’t put to death on the instant.” She fixed Harry with a long stare that said she knew who to blame for that.

            Harry shook his head. It was hard for him to speak around his astonishment, but he knew that he had to find some way to do it. “But—don’t you see that oppressing the pure-bloods would be just as bad as oppressing the Muggleborns? And I don’t think Longbottom can help his heritage.”

            “He could be a bit more kind,” Hermione spat. “Less condescending when someone like me has to help him. And the Malfoys still got all sorts of considerations that they wouldn’t if they were Muggleborn.”

            “Er.” Harry pushed his glasses up his nose and wondered for a moment whether he would get anywhere by arguing with her. He didn’t think so. This wasn’t the woman he knew, with the same friendship with him and the same background. But he found himself trying anyway. “But surely no Muggleborns committed the same level of crimes? I mean, Voldemort wouldn’t have wanted them in his ranks.”

            Hermione paused and gave him a closer look. Harry blinked back and resisted the temptation to move away from her.

            “Maybe you’re more than I thought you were,” Hermione murmured, as if she was evaluating a scientific specimen. “Certainly braver than I thought you were, if you dare to speak his name.”

            “What, I wasn’t brave to defend someone—multiple someones—that no one else would defend?” Harry asked. He didn’t know if he was joking or if he really wanted her to agree, but either way, he thought he deserved a better response than the hardening of her eyes.

            “I don’t think you planned it,” she answered. “You just charged ahead and dealt with all the consequences after they began to happen. If you had gone to Hogwarts, you would have been a Gryffindor like all the rest of them.”

            Harry concealed his wince with difficulty. She still knows me.

            “It’s stupid,” Hermione continued, her voice rising. “There are better ways to run things. More logical ways. But wizards have no logic. Take the law that you’re invoking to defend them, for example. The Good Stranger Exception. Who cares about that? Who cares that a centaur once defended a bunch of wizards? Centaurs remain outside the Ministry and the centralization of the wizarding world for all that. Who cares that I’m the Undersecretary’s assistant? Most people like me still can’t afford good positions because of their lack of power and influence.” She shook her head in disgust.

            “Er,” Harry said again. This time, he didn’t have a response ready to hand.

            Hermione took a deep breath, looked around as though she had suddenly realized that they were arguing in the middle of a public place, or at least a corridor, and began walking again. Harry had to hurry after her as she rounded the next corner with more speed than Harry thought decent. “Well,” Hermione said, as though picking up their conversation in the middle, which she probably was. “There weren’t any Muggleborn Death Eaters. He didn’t trust them in his inner circle. There were people who helped him and were Muggleborn, though.”

            “And?” Harry asked. “Weren’t they accorded a defense?”

            “No,” Hermione said. “They were simply executed.”

            Harry stared at her back.

            Hermione gave him a glance over her shoulder, her smile mocking. “I told you. They talk a good game, but they don’t play by the rules for anyone except pure-bloods. They make the rules, and as long as that’s true, I don’t think you need to talk to me about truth and justice. Even the people you risk yourself for are pure-bloods. People like you and me—they’re taught that there’s some sort of romance and mysticism about the pure-bloods, something mystical that needs to be honored.” She snorted and continued to walk briskly down the corridor in the direction of, Harry hoped, an exit. “Excuse me for not thinking you’re a hero because you’re doing the same thing as everyone else.”

            Harry followed Hermione down the corridor, thinking hard. He still believed defending the Malfoys was right. He couldn’t help the people who were already dead, and the Malfoys still deserved representation even if the larger system was fucked up.

            But he would have to think a lot more about how many things had really changed in this universe.

            Dream. Place. Whatever it is.

*

            SP777: Well, Harry isn’t having much luck with the real-world Draco right now; he may have to wait. But even if he talked to the Malfoys in possession of that information, they might not care to listen.

            Harry doesn’t yet know enough about the other Neville to say.

            Wölkchen: They don’t want to be convinced.

            Harry is more likely to confuse the dream-Draco with the real Draco in the other direction.

            Given everyone else’s lack of reaction to him and lack of comparison with him to some other Potter, it’s likely that the other Harry never existed.

            Ritinha: Thank you! They seem to be separate worlds, one slightly behind the other.

            Anonanon: Harry doesn’t see how they can be real yet, when they take place solely in dreams.
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Sleepless