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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)	By : Tommy-Lane Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13085 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any charactors from the books and I am not making any money off of this.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
The touch of solid ground brought reality quickly snapping back into focus.
They landed much smoother then Draco would have expected, the disillusionment charm melting away as they turned onto the empty neighborhood street - rows and rows of white picket houses with matching gray doors and manicured green lawns. It felt almost like walking into a picture, everything perfectly sculpted, meticulously kept, but there was something wrong with it all. Something very, very wrong. It was hard to place his finger on it with his head still as light as the clouds they'd been soaring through but as they slowed to a crawl before an identical house to all its neighbors, Draco realized what it was.
It was early Sunday evening, the sun still warm in the sky, but there wasn't so much as a flicker of a curtain at any of the windows looking out at the street. Everything was still, almost as if time had been run forward then stopped - holding the muggle's in the neighborhood captive. Plucking the children from the lawns, the father's from their vehicles, and the mother's from the dinner that normally would be getting set on the table about now.
He had the strangest feeling that they had slipped inside an hourglass and nothing would be returned to its rightful place and time until the last of the sand dropped through the glass tunnel. But something was suspending it, holding that last trickle captive.
Draco's legs felt like jelly as he slipped from the motorbike, his hair mused beyond repair about his flushed face and standing in stark defiance to the hard lined features that he carefully arranged the moment Weasley stepped out of the front door and caught sight of them with a knowing little smirk. He was dressed how he assumed Potter should have been, wearing the black trousers, white button up, and black tie that was commonplace whenever they were dealing with muggles on a case - his shoulder length fiery hair pulled back into a low pony tail at the base of his neck, one hand clutching a half-eaten sandwich and the other a nearly bursting file.
"I would ask what took so long but I really don't see the point." Weasley chuckled as he neared them, handing Potter the thick file as the black haired man shut off the engine and dismounted.
"Malfoy was being obstinate." Potter answered anyway as Draco frowned, staring up at the looming, silent house - a house that shouldn't have been so still considering the murder that had taken place inside. The death of a body, the bursting forth of a soul to a place unknown always left a mark, a stench, a creeping feeling that crawled up Draco's skin. He knew what standing on the fringe of someone's death felt like, he'd experienced it often enough during the war, and this wasn't it.
"Well perhaps Potter, you should learn how to properly begin conversations. For example instead of just proclaiming that there was an attack and that I needed to change you should have lead with: another disk has been found and we need your brilliant mind to come and have a look." Draco drawled, still not looking at either of them as he began moving up the walkway, purple and yellow flowers lining the path on either side.
"So the usual." Weasley answered, the sound of their feet following him up the walk. Then a pause and, "did you fly?"
"Erm yeah." Potter sounded as if he'd been caught with his pants about his ankles and Draco didn't have to turn to know that on top of him looking like he'd just been spat out of a hurricane that his cheeks would be flushed with a faint pink and that he would have just shoved his hands into his pockets in a nervous twitch. He didn't stay around to hear Weasley's laughing reply or even question why Potter should be embarrassed of that fact - they had gotten here, hadn't they? - instead he put his hand on the bronze doorknob and twisted, the door swinging silently inward.
If the street had felt like suspended twilight, the house felt like time had frozen completely still, an open tomb with nothing inside. The very air seemed still and waiting, a patch of dust floating in the right hand corner like it had been disturbed earlier but was unable to settle - forced to just hover there like particles in ice. Draco's spine stiffened, something familiar about it all pricking at his conscious as he stepped foot past the threshold.
The hallway was a rosy pink and lined on either side with neat little photographs of a smiling blonde woman with two sets of pearly white teeth and a tall, tawny haired man with copious amounts of brown freckles marring his otherwise handsome face. They looked young, in their early twenties most likely, too young to have had their life ripped away from them anyway.
Not that there was ever a good time for something like that.
Draco frowned at the photo with the woman sitting in the man's lap, clearly laughing even though the picture remained still and silent. They didn't look much younger than him come to think of it...
"Where's the boyfriend then?" Potter came to a stop beside him, his fingers carefully flicking through the file Weasley had relinquished into his care.
"Muggle police took him in for questioning." Weasley answered through a mouthful of turkey and salami, the man's eating habits never ceasing to amaze him.
Potter nodded in the corner of Draco's vision as he continued to stare at the photograph before him. There was something off putting about it, something that somehow overreached the fact that the woman was no longer breathing and that the man would probably never smile in that same way again. She seemed...familiar. She had the high cheek bones, pale complexion, and piercing gaze that he was used to seeing on the Malfoy family tapestry when he was younger. He knew she couldn't be related, that his family hadn't once produced a squib and no one had even married outside the Wizarding community but still the resemblance was uncanny. His gaze slid from their faces, over the wall, and to the door just down the hall - a white door shut tight, the harshness of muggle lighting seeping out from under it.
He swallowed and took a step towards it, feeling like a magnet being drawn forward. It felt like the black tentacles that had emerged from the underwater disk had tried to overtake him back in his office a few days ago were back and pulling him forward - wrapping around his feet and hands and making a muted shrill noise prick in the back of his head. He paused before the door, hand on the wood, head cocked to the side, listening.
The noise was growing, turning to a desperate wail that rattled his hearing as he pressed his ear to the door next to his hand. "Do you hear that?" He asked quietly, wondering how on earth the other two men could still be talking so easily just behind him if they could when Draco felt like it was sure to strike him down at any moment.
It was the sound of pure pain and heartbreak.
"Hear what?" Weasley asked, his voice barely reaching over the scream that was growing steadily in pitch.
"Malfoy, there's nothing. Just us." Potter informed him in that carefully pitched voice he intoned when he thought Draco was cresting on the verge of neuroticism, catching Draco's eyes with an openly concerned look as he came level with him. He stared at him for a moment, watching the blonde with his ear plastered to the door and a sweat breaking out on his brow. "What is it?" He asked, glancing quickly at the door and Draco's hand before sliding it back to him.
"Agony." He muttered, shutting his eyes, in an attempt to lessen the screaming in his ears or the look in Potter's eye that was shining with worry and nervousness he couldn't be sure.
A hand touched his back, tentative yet strong, and Draco jerked, feeling like he'd just been slapped with a hot mallet. Without a second thought, he gave into the uneasy need to see what was causing the painful noise and pushed the door open, ignoring Potter's words that were starting to drown in the wail inside his head anyway.
A bright light blinded him, though logically he knew it couldn't be that bright in the little loo, the smell of rotting flesh and coppery blood making his stomach churn and his thoughts cloud. He blinked and forced himself forward, towards the screaming, towards the stench, towards the breaking he could feel happening in that very moment. His vision swam and swam until it was all brushed away, leaving a white tiled room with its white porcelain sink and curved bath, the long pail arm hanging over the side and her lifeless head angled sharply backwards - a pool of dark water in her gaping mouth and her hair still dripping wet and yet there wasn't so much as a drop on the floor beneath her. There also wasn't a hint of spilled blood anywhere, not even the tiniest speck of crimson, her very skin so white it seemed that all the blood had surely been drained from her body.
And yet he could smell it, like it was predominating the air.
His hands slid over the slippery surface of the bath's edge as he leaned forward, his eyes fixed on her open mouth and the water resting still inside. Why was it just sitting there like that? If her body hadn't naturally gotten rid of it then why hadn't the Auror's or the muggle police? Why leave her in such a horrific state. Because Draco knew that was where the breaking he could feel was coming from, knew that was why there was a screaming that only apparently he could hear vibrating around the room. Then her blue lips twitched and Draco watched as a string of black arms weaved around each other, drifting just past the surface filling her mouth.
His vision flattened, his eyelids fluttering as a weakness spread through his limbs. He swayed and felt like he was tunneling towards something, burrowing further and further, a dip of cold water rushing up him - pulling him, dragging him...
Merlin he hated death.
Except that wasn't right. He could feel her, hear her, she was...
"Alive." He gasped before promptly passing out.
****
He dreamed of floating in ice.
His body naked and cold and held suspended. He could hear voices, laughter, he could feel touches, fingers on his legs and hands on his arms. The cold seeped through his bones, the touches chipped at them, the voices made his head split. But he couldn't see. He couldn't speak. He could only scream silently and cry tears that wouldn't spill over. He could only hope...
****
It was hot and he was sweating, his eyes itching as he cracked them open to find himself buried under a heaping pile of thick blankets - all wool and flannel of hideous colors and designs. He didn't own such atrocious blankets. He groaned and snapped his eyes shut again, shifting under the mound that seemed to be teetering all around and above him - Merlin was someone trying to smother him to death?
"About time."
Draco stopped his wiggling and forced his eyes back open, his fingers inching up to curl around a handful of flannel before slowly pulling it down and away from his face. "Pansy?" He asked, startled to find his friend lounging in his desk chair next to his bed.
She flicked the copy of Witch Weekly in her lap shut and gazed steadily back at him, her eyes narrowed in such a way that Draco knew she was trying to figure him out. "Let’s skip the groggy, woe is me, questions and just get right to it shall we?"
Draco shoved the blankets down further and tried to sit up, only to find his limbs much too heavy to possibly move and instead just settled for staring at her incredulously. "What-"
She sighed, rolled her eyes dramatically, and crossed her long legs. "Yes you are at your home, no those aren't your blankets, Potter conjured them before stuffing you beneath them while muttering about how awfully icy you felt." She curled her fingers over her palm and studied her nails as she spoke, her tone almost bored sounding and rather aggravating as he tried to catch onto what she was telling him, the last remains of his nerve splitting dream getting shoved to the back of his mind.
"Why-"
"I'm not finished." She shot a glare his way before going back to examining her nails. "Where was I? Oh yes. You've been out for a few hours, muttering something rather frightening I must say. Quite unnerving having to listen to you really. Potter brought you here and firecalled me after you collapsed while you were apparently doing something I'm not allowed to know about." She scoffed and Draco could tell she was debating the merits of trying to pry that bit of information out of him now or later when he was more aware. She settled for the latter and launched back into her explanation. "You looked disgustingly sickly and I wanted to take you to St. Mungo’s but Potter said you'd skin him alive if you woke there so," she paused again and indicated his bedroom. "So here we are. I was instructed to keep a steady eye on you and send for him at once if you, what was it? I can't remember, but he was oddly jumpy during it all and rather snappish when I pulled my magazine from my purse. Rude really. Either case he said he'd be back as soon as he could manage it. There that should about cover it."
Draco opened and shut his mouth, his hand pressing into his temple as his head throbbed something painful. Forget the fact that Potter had obviously broken into his house, used his floo, deposited him into his bed, decided he needed more blankets than Draco even owned, and wrangled Pansy into sitting at his bedside while he was away, because Draco had fainted in the presence of another disk - and there wasn't even an explosion to blame it on this time. Not to mention the painful, screaming that had been ripping at his bones during it all - a sound that no one else could even hear.
What the hell did it all mean?
"Oh and he said to take this the moment you woke up." Pansy said, holding out a mug of something hot and smelling rather sickeningly sweet to him.
He eyed it suspiciously. "What is it?"
She scoffed once more and shoved it into his hand. "Like I know." She grumbled. "Just drink the blasted thing or I fear your rugged hero might randomly find a reason to have me committed to Azkaban. He's rather frightening when he's all wound up isn't he?"
"He's not my -" He snapped, holding the mug to his lips before her entire explanation caught up with him. "Wound up? Oh god, he didn't blow anything up in my flat did he?"
Pansy snorted and started to smile before it faltered and turned rather curious and bleak in the face of Draco's earnest stare. "Oh, you're serious? Potter actually blows things up? Goodness, I thought that was just one of those over the top rumors of his all-powerfulness or something equally as silly."
"Unfortunately not." Draco sighed, relieved that his flat was still in one piece. Dragging himself up against the headboard, he pressed the mug to his lips and let the concoction slip down his throat. It was hot and thick with the heady scent of vanilla and the raw taste of cocoa, making his tongue tingle and throat sear before it settled in his stomach in a warm sort of glow, spreading out through his limbs and slowly leeching away the heaviness that resided there.
Pansy vanished the mug right out of his hands the second he was done with it and leaned forward in her chair with a predatory gleam in her eye. "Good. Now that you no longer look like death's lover, spill. I want all the sordid details, mind, so leave nothing out."
"Nothing much to tell." Draco said, letting his body flop back against the mattress in a sprawling sort of way that if it had been anyone else but Pansy he most certainly wouldn't have been caught dead doing.
"Balderdash." Pansy waved his refusal away. "Potter spent 15 minutes tucking you in and you're trying to tell me it's nothing? Please honey, I'm not a nitwit."
"We were out on a case." He grumbled, rubbing his hand over his eyes to block out the soft lighting in his bedroom.
"I gathered as much obviously." Her foot began bouncing in the air as she shifted in her seat, her long legs crossing over the other. "Tell me something I don't know now."
"It went badly." He snapped, the rubbing at his temple doing absolutely nothing to dispel the mounting headache and Pansy's voice only managing to grate his nerves even more. He really needed her to leave, needed time to think, and figure out everything that was happening.
Pansy huffed and sat back with a muted thud, her face growing pinched in annoyance. "You're such a stick in the mud these day, just like Potter. You spend too much time with those blasted Gryffindor’s and their sense of legality."
"Pansy-" He sighed.
"No, don't Pansy me. I've been sitting here for hours, doing nothing, without so much as an ounce of entertainment, which is not an easy task for me, you know how I must stay busy. You must give me something. I demand it. Now, or I swear I'll-"
"Alright! Merlin woman..." Draco conceded. "You get one question. Just one."
She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, taking a long moment to consider her options. "And you swear you'll answer it?"
Draco swallowed and nodded, not liking the light that was starting to spark a tad manically in her eye. "Yes."
She grinned and tapped her finger over her lips. "Well then, I need to think this over. I can already surmise that you must have gotten...injured, or something other mundane like that." She muttered with a quick glance up and down his body, obviously content with the fact that he was awake and in one piece and not willing to waste her one question on the specifics of said injury.
"Sweet Pans, really sweet. I could have nearly died for all you know" He rolled his eyes and tried not to squirm under her gaze. He was already starting to regret not putting some restrictions on what she could and could not ask.
She winked but generally ignored his sarcastic comment. "And you were obviously out with Potter and no doubt that Weasley of his was there as well. On a case. Though why you keep going out on their assignments is beyond me. Did Potter insist you need to see an artifact right then? No don't answer that. He must have, it's Potter after all. So Potter probably came and fetched you, even though he could have just sent a message...then you were studying...whatever it is you study...and then. BOOM. Or something. Down you go and Potter gets all tetchy and here we are." She trailed off a little, a triumphant grin on her lips as she did so.
"Sounds like you've got it all figured out then." Draco muttered, letting his eyes drift shut once more.
"I'm rather brilliant aren't I? I should be an Auror, though red really isn't my color."
Draco snorted. "Yes, that's why you shouldn't be an Auror, because of the uniforms color and not the fact that you hate any sort of work and are a pathological liar."
"Pot calling the Kettle black dear." She shot back smoothly and Draco cracked one eye open to glare at her. "Either way I've thought of my question."
"Get on with it then."
She smirked and bent quickly, a bright crimson shirt knotted in her hand as she straightened back up. "What was Potter's reaction when he found you wearing this?" She quirked an eyebrow and shook the blasted shirt out.
"I...that's your question? What he thought of your vulgar shirt?" Draco asked bewildered and slightly flushed at the memory. Though he really should have guessed that when it came down to it that her question wouldn't be about the case. Pansy carved drama, she loved to shift out the dirt and twist it up into a storm that once she was through with it wouldn't even resemble what had happened in the first place. She didn't even need that much to go on, she liked little facts. Liked them too much in his opinion.
She nodded. "Oh yes and it's your vulgar shirt, that's how present giving works."
Sitting up quickly, he snatched the lewd piece of clothing from her dangling fingers and crushed it in his fist, cursing its existence for the third time that day. "If you must know, he didn't think it was quite accurate."
"Accurate? How can it be inaccurate? You do like Quidditch players, that's why it was such a magnificent gift in the first place." She blinked at him in confusion.
"He doesn't know that now does he?"
"Well I doubt it's that big of a secret..." She muttered.
"Regardless, he was referring to the riding part." Draco huffed, feeling something sputter in his chest as he said it. Though why it should matter that Potter would so flippantly assume that he wouldn't be a bottom was something that Draco didn't wish to dwell on. Nor on the fact that it kept making his stomach sink and twist like it had when they had kicked off the ground on his motorbike.
"What does that...oh. Oh!" She grinned lewdly, and leaned towards him. "Does he know this for certain?"
Draco's back snapped into a perfect line, his face going blank and hard, making Pansy's grin falter into a slight frown. He was getting tired of her insistent prying, of her never ending questions that had started months ago when she had first gone to the club with him. "Don't be absurd."
"Oh for fuck's sake Draco, are you still playing at this? Honestly? Must I remind you that you two disappeared into the loo for -"
"That was Barry." He interrupted indignantly, to which she simply rolled her eyes. "And you've asked your question so kindly shut it, my head hurts."
"Fine. But don't think this is over." And with that she stood from her chair, moving towards his bedroom door with a fast pace that hadn't changed since their day's at school.
"Where are you going?" He asked after her, suddenly leery of where she might be headed now.
She paused with her hand on the door, a smile tugging on her plump lips. "To firecall Potter. He wanted to be informed the moment you woke up and I fear I'm already in violation of his rather excessive instructions."
"You will not." Draco sat up straighter, his eye's narrowed and jaw hardened.
"Don't even try that look with me Draco, I know you to well for it to work." And with that she was gone, her heels clicking loudly all the way down the hall.
With a huff Draco sank back into the bedding, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to gather his thoughts about him. But the more he reached for them, the quicker they slipped away, growing fuzzy and distant, merely an echo that he could vaguely remember. It was like his mind refused to go back, refused to relive those moments in the loo with the water drenched woman.
****

An hour later when his fire blazed bright green and spat out an extremely exhausted and disheveled Potter onto the woven rug at his hearth Draco was ready for him. He carefully set down his quill on the deep walnut table and sat back in his chair, suddenly grateful that he had managed to get rid of Pansy and her endless string of awkward questions before the Auror had arrived when he caught the look in his tired green eyes.
Potter wasn't exactly in one of his moods but he was nearly vibrating with a certain kind of energy. It was Hero Potter and Work Potter jumbled into one ball with a strong dash of Protective Potter.
Draco didn't like Protective Potter, he put Hero Potter to shame and more often than not made Draco extremely uncomfortable. It was Protective Potter that tended to leave bruises on his skin with too tight of a grip, who had once spelled a rope around Draco's waist and sent him flying off a cliff when a dark artifact he had been testing at the scene of a crime had activated and tried to kill him - leaving him dangling above the rocks below while Potter went off his hinges again and did something stupidly heroic before hauling Draco back to safety. The fight that had followed had been dubbed by Weasley as the 'most wicked' one they'd ever gotten into. It had lasted an entire two weeks until well...there was the club and then...the tension was gone with a few well-placed bruises on Potter's body in retribution.
Damn it, not Potter, The Club Man wasn't Potter. He needed to remember that. Always needed to remember that.
Potter stood before the dying flames, staring at him curiously for a long moment before pushing a hand through his mangled hair and sighing softly. "Malfoy-"
"Sit." Draco indicated the chair across from the table he was residing at. "Eat." He ordered, nodding at the plate before the empty seat holding a single cheese sandwich - which apparently was the only food Pansy knew how to make. She had 'cooked' it for him, grumbling the whole time even though he had never asked her to do it. But he found that his stomach simply refused the idea of food when she had finished so it had just sat there, where Pansy had left it, waiting. And a good thing too, it turned out.
Potter glanced at the sandwich and back to Draco. "No thanks, I'm not hungry."
Draco shook his head and picked his quill back up. "Yes you are." Draco corrected, Potter's stomach growling in the next second like it was desperately trying to agree with him and therefor get Potter to put something into his body. "You never eat on a case and its past supper, so just shut it and eat otherwise you will be completely intolerable to talk to."
"Yeah, alright." Potter said after a moment, the sound of the chair scraping back breaking the silence before he plopped down into it and dug into his sandwich.
The next several minutes were filled with soft chewing noises and his quill scratching across the parchment, the mantle clock ticking more loudly then it ever seemed to do in the past, as Draco tried to pretend that Potter wasn't sitting across from him and that he couldn't feel his intense gaze boring into his bent head. When it finally all became too much - too much silence, too much staring, too much Potter in general - Draco stood abruptly and fled to the kitchen, taking his time to reorient himself in the methodical procedure of preparing tea.
The kettle sang, the water sizzled, the leaves unfurled in the mesh strainer. The mugs burned the palms of his hands as he picked them up and carried them back to the study to find Potter waiting silently for him with a small smile - the empty plate pushed a little ways away from him.
"Thank you." He said as Draco placed the mug down in front of him before sliding into his own seat and folding both his hands around his own. "How are you feeling?"
Draco tried not to wince at the soft tone of Potter's voice. He didn't like it when Potter sounded like that. It made his boxes wobble in his mind and now with them blown to shreds he couldn't afford the disturbing thoughts that tone caused in him. He waved a dismissing hand and sat back. "Let's just get to it Potter."
Potter frowned but didn't ask again, his fingers tapping rhythmically on his mug giving away his nervousness. "Yeah, alright." With a deep breath he launched into his story - Potter told him how he had started screaming before he passed out at the muggle's house, how he had went white as a sheet and cold as ice. How he had been limp and motionless no matter how hard Potter had shook him. How he didn't respond to any of his spells. How he seemed to be sleeping in death.
Potter's voice had hitched then, his gaze flicking briefly to Draco with a look that told him that he wanted to say more, but he didn't. He just looked back down at his tea, bit into the tip of his tongue and then pressed on. The diagnostic spells told them that he was alive and stable, even though he had seemed so far from it. "You were just...sleeping for all the spell could tell. You didn't even twitch when I Apparated us back here." He trailed off for a moment again before clearing his voice and starting back up.
He briefly mentioned getting Pansy (which from his tight tone Draco could tell had been quite the ordeal even though Potter didn't mention it) before leaving again and that's when Draco's attention perked back up. Potter had apparently heard him mutter about the girl being alive and though there was every indication that she was indeed dead, he and Weasley had transported her immediately to St. Mungo's where they put her under some heavy stasis spells before working on her. It was after several hours that they had proclaimed her oddly enough alive and dead. Which made absolutely no sense and frustratingly perplexed everyone involved.
"She's still there, under heavy surveillance to say the least. But she's defying all the laws of nature and magic simultaneously. The Healers can't seem to find anything at all." He sighed deeply and raked a hand through his hair, sitting back heavily in his chair like recounting the last few hours had sapped the last of his energy. It probably had.
"And the disk?" Draco asked after a moment of silence, letting everything sink in.
Potter took a long drink of his tea before meeting his eye and answering. "Still attached to her cheek. The Healer's seemed reluctant to remove it since they couldn't determine just exactly what it was causing in her."
"You mean if it was killing her or keeping her on the very thresh hold of deaths doorway?"
Potter smiled weakly. "Exactly."
Draco's jaw clenched at the thought, his mind spinning around and around again. He didn't have an answer. Part of him was desperate for the Healers to remove the disk, positive that that was what was causing the agony he could feel. But another part of him told him to wait, to be patient and cautious. Because for all he knew it was killing her slowly but also...keeping her suspended right before death, like her house and entire street had been suspended.
"So your turn." Potter said quietly after Draco didn't say anything for quite some time.
"Mhmm?" Draco hummed, still staring into his tea and trying to puzzle it all together.
"What happened with you in there?"
Draco stared back at him for a moment, hopelessly trying to figure out how to put it all into words. He didn't know how to explain how she had felt so familiar, how everything seemed still and fuzzy around the edges, almost like he had been looking at everything through underwater goggles. He didn't know how to possibly explain how entering the house and...god the room...had made him feel without making Potter determined to have him locked up in the mental ward. How exactly do you tell someone that a supposedly dead girl had been screaming inside his soul? That he just knew she was alive? "I'm not sure."
"You said that you could hear something. You said it was agony." Potter pressed.
Draco nodded slowly. "I can't explain it."
"Try." Potter insisted, making Draco scowl at him.
"Potter." Draco pinched the bridge of his nose, the other man's insistence in the face of Draco's confusion just making everything that much harder to process for some reason.
"It has to be something." Potter sounded edgy again, his fingers once more in his hair. "The disk hasn't reacted to anything, you said so yourself and yet both times you've come in contact with it while it's been submerged something has happened. Something that only seems to affect you. I didn't hear or feel anything either time and neither did Ron, hell those weird tentacle things only appeared after you entered the room and we had been there for hours before I came to get you. So Malfoy you....you have to try."
"It's not for lack of trying Potter." Draco snapped, unnerved by the frantic lilt that had sneaked its way into Potter's speech and the harsh reality that it had been just him - there was no pretending otherwise now. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he placed his palms flat on the table top. "It felt a little like being under the Imperius curse. Thoughts and feelings that weren't my own were threading through me. In the bathroom, with the girl was more...intense then with the disk in my office. Then it had just been an impression so to speak. Like echoes of things that had happened. But today it was like I could feel her, knew her, knew her pain, knew her breaking, knew her suspension."
"Suspension? What do you mean?" He asked curiously.
"Like I said, nothing was clear it was all just...feelings. And she, her house and even the street, felt suspended in time. Like something was holding it still." He shrugged and sipped his tea.
"Hell Malfoy." Potter finally breathed after a terse silence. "Have you encountered anything like this before?"
"I -" Draco shut his mouth, unable to say no like he had been planning on because that wasn't exactly true was it? He didn't know how it was all familiar but it was. And that was the most worrisome aspect of it all, the nagging thought that he was forgetting something so huge, like something had been wiped from his mind and all that was left was an oily residue. "I'm not sure."
"How does-"
"I don't know Potter." He said tensely. "If I did don't you think I would have more answers?"
Potter considered him for a moment before nodding and visibly deflating a little. "Right. So we're right back where we were then."
"Until the girl wakes up or..."
"Doesn't." Potter finished for him with a grimace, his teeth sinking into the corner of his lip. "Fucked up case huh?"
Draco let out a harsh single note laugh. "Mildly put but yes."
Potter smiled at him, tapping his fingers at the table. "You'll be alright?"
He scoffed and with a flick of his hand sent both their mugs floating lazily back towards the kitchen. "Always manage don't I?"
The look Potter shot him had Draco resisting the urge to shift uncomfortably in his seat. It hinted at things they weren't supposed to openly acknowledge and made something warm stir low in his stomach. If it were any other night, any other case, any other moment he knew how this night would have progressed. They would part ways, separately enter the club, and then seek to relieve their tension (and he could even guess how, Potter liked to use his mouth when he was especially worked up). He knew this because that's how it always happened after a difficult day. And it would be spectacular, it always was when Potter left after looking at him like he was now - like he was desperate to remind them both that they were still breathing and there.
But this night wasn't like any other and it never would be again, because there was no more separating the Potter's in his head and he couldn't risk it. He couldn't pretend without the walls to fling back up at a moment’s notice. It was bad enough he was sitting across from Potter, having these thoughts, connecting the remembered sensations with the Auror. They were never supposed to connect, he reminded himself before scowling inwardly, fat lot of good that rule did him now.
"Malfoy-"
"I'll see you in the morning." Draco interrupted, unwilling to hear whatever it was Potter was about to say, not with that softness in his eyes and the way his fingers were tense against the wood of the table.
Potter pursed his lips before going slack with a tired sigh. "Right. Just don't -" He stopped himself short, standing abruptly and walking quickly back towards the fireplace. He grabbed a fistful of floo powder from the dish on the mantel, the jerky movements of his hand dislodging more than was necessary so it floated like sooty snow to the floor at his feet. He paused with his hand clenched around the powder and even though all Draco could see was the side of his face harshly cast in shadow and light from the fire, he could tell that Potter was starting at it intently, a hard line to his jaw.
He could practically see the debate raging in Potter's mind and wasn't sure if he was relieved or not when the man's shoulders sagged and he tossed his fist full into the fire. "Night then." He muttered without turning back and then he stepped through and was gone, swept away to his own cold study in his dark home. He watched the fire blaze bright then settle back to its amber and orange glow, wondering idly why he felt a twist in his chest as he unwilling pictured Potter trudging up the creaking steps to his bedroom, flopping down on his bed still in his worn clothing and booted feet - no doubt just staring at the ceiling the entire night before finally drifting off into a fitful sleep moments before he needed to rise for work.
Much like Draco found himself doing in the hard wood chair, staring at the flames and letting their dancing drown out everything else.
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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)