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Siege Mentality	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7869 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Part VII. Harry and
Draco Save the Day.

�� Harry didn�t
think he needed Draco�s loud sigh of relief to tell him that they had arrived safely
back in Malfoy Manor, but it was nice to hear anyway. He opened his eyes and
looked around, smiling and nodding approvingly at the sight of shining marble
doorways, the soft-as-silk carpet under their feet, the rare tapestries on the
walls.

�� Well done,�
he started to say, but then Draco collapsed limply against him, and he had a
sudden crisis to deal with.

�� Frantically,
Harry touched Draco�s throat and forehead, but his skin was only slightly
warmer than normal. He didn�t open his eyes when Harry called to him, but he
did stir and murmur something about sleep.

�� Of course,�
Harry said, sliding an arm around Draco�s shoulders and leading him slowly down
the corridor. Draco limped and stumbled, leaning against Harry all the while.
Harry was filled with an odd mixture of worry and pleasure, as if part of him
liked Draco�s dependence on him. He put the thought out of his mind for the
moment�not hard, with everything else he had to worry about�and whispered to
Draco, �You must be tired, after shifting us to that place and then bringing us
back here, your first controlled experiment in traveling like that.�

�� Hmmm,�
Draco muttered.

�� Mostly by
remembering where they had first appeared in the Manor after escaping from the
desert, Harry managed to find Draco�s room. He opened the door and led him to
the bed, which was larger and more richly appointed than he remembered. Well,
Draco had imagined the ideal Malfoy
Manor. Maybe he had given himself more ornaments and luxuries than he really
had.

�� If I ever manage to decide what is reality, Harry
thought, as he laid Draco gently in the middle of the bed.

�� My neck
hurts,� Draco whispered.

�� Harry
hurriedly arranged the pillows into a comfortable mound and propped Draco�s
head up, so that he wouldn�t sag to the side and wake up with a painful twist
there the way that Harry sometimes did. Then he pulled off his boots and tugged
the sheets over him. Draco moaned slightly and extended his arm.

�� What?�
Harry asked, wondering if Draco had some hidden injury on his arm. When he
looked, though, he saw not so much as a speck of sand on the sleeve.

�� Please,�
Draco said, and opened his eyes. They were hazy, but with sleepiness alone,
Harry thought, and not fever. �Stay with me?�

�� Harry
swallowed and knelt on the bed, making Draco bounce slightly. �I don�t know if
you know what you�re asking for,� he said.

�� Draco
frowned at him and pouted like a child. Harry knew that he shouldn�t allow his
own face to soften the way it did, because then Draco would realize the effect he was having on
Harry. ��Course I do. Asking you to stay with me.�

�� Harry gazed
down at him for long moments, wondering if it would be so horrible to agree.
Draco�s lip was stuck out, his eyes wide open and fixed on Harry�s face as if
he could persuade him to agree just by staring. But Harry remembered the way
Draco had stumbled against him, and the slight heat to his skin�and he could
see the slight flush on his face if he really squinted.

�� He�s sick. He�s out of his mind at the
moment with exhaustion and fear. You don�t really know that it�s the best thing
for him if you stay, and he may not know what he�s asking for.

�� Why don�t
you sleep, and we�ll talk about it,� Harry said vaguely.

�� Draco
closed his eyes with a smile of triumph and locked his hands on Harry�s arm.
Harry shook his head and blinked a little. He wanted to lie down next to Draco and drop into oblivion�

�� And then he
thought of what Draco would say when he woke up and found Harry in his bed, if
that wasn�t what he wanted after all.

�� Besides, I have research to do.

�� So he
waited until he heard Draco�s breathing steady, and then he slipped out of the
bed and out of the bedroom altogether, pacing up and down the corridor as he
thought.

�� He didn�t
think that he could reach either Hermione or Kingsley. If the first Malfoy
Manor had been just a product of Draco�s imagination, then the owl might have
flown out of it to any place imaginable. Or maybe the owl had been imaginary
even if the Manor wasn�t�Harry had found some of the truth in those Black
family history books�and so his letter had miscarried.

�� He was on
his own as far as research went.

�� Well. I can do this. Harry brushed his
hair out of his eyes and chose to ignore the way his fingers shook. I�ve done harder research. Remember the Rose
Murderess and the way that everyone was baffled when she singled out her next
victim through pied roses? Well, you solved that one, and you can solve this
one. Draco should have imagined, or put, or whatever he does with objects, all
the books in the libraries that you need.

�� He knew he
would need certain spells, so he cast them then: the Awareness Charm, which
would sharpen his senses and keep him awake when he was tempted to fall asleep;
the Muscle Relaxer Hex, which the Auror Corps had adapted so that it just kept
you loose and calm instead of relaxing you so much you fell over; and the
Pepper-Up Imitation, which delivered a jolt to the system like the Pepper-Up
Potion when he started to doze. It was possible the Manor had real Pepper-Up
Potion, but Harry didn�t know where it would be if so, and he wasn�t about to
wake Draco up and ask.

�� Then he
spent a few moments leaning against the wall and catching his breath and
ordering his thoughts into calm patterns. Yes, he could do this, but he had to be in a particular frame of mind to do
so. If worries about Draco constantly intruded on him, that would be a problem.

�� When he
opened his eyes again, he thought he had succeeded in quelling most of the
emotions that could be a distraction at a time like this. With a faint smile
and the hope of making another discovery like the one that he�d announced to
Draco on that black sand, he went into the libraries.

�� He felt absurdly
as if he were leaving Draco�s door unguarded. He told that part of himself to
shut up.

*

�� Draco woke
free of pain and worry for the first time in what felt like months�which it might
be, for all he knew. Even though he felt calmer now that he had an explanation
for what was happening to him, that didn�t mean he had gained all his memories
back.

�� He started
to roll over and bury his nose in warm flesh and hair. He had been promising
himself that whenever he woke from nightmares. Maybe Harry wouldn�t like Draco
touching him just for reassurance, but lazy good morning touches were excusable
for all sorts of reasons. Draco felt better trying to pretend it was a casual thing
when he was halfway between sleep and waking than when he was fully asleep.

�� But he met
cold sheets instead, and silk was a poor substitute for Harry. Draco drew himself
up and glared at the spot where his best friend should have been, offended.

�� How could he leave me alone like that? Doesn�t
he know that I would need comfort after a revelation like that? That I must be
protected from the consequences of not noticing what was happening to me
earlier?

�� Besides,
something Draco had noticed in the past was that Harry often didn�t take care
of himself if he hadn�t spent a night in bed. He wouldn�t take catnaps during
the day like so many Aurors, saying that it was a �dereliction of duty.� Draco
had found him at his desk more than once, using spells and potions to keep
awake and immerse himself in paperwork or research, and had forced him to go
home. It was even more offensive that
Harry thought he could get away with neglecting his health in Draco�s home.

�� It�s for both our good that I�m going to confront
him, Draco thought virtuously, and set out to do it.

*

�� Harry sat
back and stared at the ceiling of the Black library. It turned slowly in and
out of his vision like an immense pinwheel, causing him to blink and stare more
than once, but he didn�t care. His research had paid off.

�� He understood, now.

�� It turned out
that there were clues to the Black family members in the past who had been able
to do something similar to Draco, if one just looked. The Black descendents who
wrote about Metamorphmagi had a habit of underlining where and place and a few
other words. Harry would have just thought it was an odd habit yesterday, but
now he understood.

�� Yes, there
had been people with an ability like Draco�s before. And its control depended
on the will and the imagination, rather than on the imagination alone, in the
way that Metamorphmagery tended to. Draco would need to know what he truly desired
before he could separate that from the underlying reality.

�� The area
altered was small, the books indicated�usually about the size of the Black
family home. And it moved around as the person who created it moved around. Now
Harry could understand why the last photograph taken by Auror Brinsley�s camera
had showed Stonehenge even though he was nowhere near Stonehenge. He really had
died in the field where his body was found, but he was perceiving Stonehenge, because that was what he was seeing at the
time.

�� He was seeing that.

�� The books
had suggested something else, something profoundly strange that Harry doubted
he could have thought of on his own. The perceptions of the person who created
and altered the place were all-important, but they weren�t necessarily shared
by everyone who wandered into the place he made up. Perhaps Draco hadn�t
actually seen Stonehenge; instead, that was the vision Auror Brinsley�s mind
had constructed out of the mingling of magic and reality he was offered.

�� That made
things more complicated, and Harry was slowly coming to accept that they might
not ever know how many of the creatures chasing Draco were �real.� Perhaps some
of them were disguised people drawn into his reality as he roamed the
countryside, who had chased him because they thought he might let them out of
the trap of the forest or desert. Perhaps some of them had been exactly the way
Draco imagined them. And perhaps some of them had been something else
altogether, but seen differently by the people who encountered them.

�� Monsters? The snake that poisoned Auror
McCormick? The sea that swallowed Auror Henslow�s body?

�� Harry shook
his head and rubbed his brow, which hurt and ached in a way it hadn�t since
Voldemort. He didn�t really know where to go for answers if the books didn�t
offer them.

�� On the
other hand, there was a ray of hope. Harry shared Draco�s perceptions, except
for the one of himself as a monster, and had since the beginning. And it had
been perfectly obvious from Draco�s behavior last night that Draco was seeing
Harry as human now that they were in the Manor.

�� I can perceive what he does. I can move with
him�because I�m seeing almost everything as he sees it. The books did say that
the ones who understand Metamorphmagi are usually their spouses and best
friends. It�s probably as simple as the other Aurors and the people whom Draco
met as he roamed around not knowing him, whilst I did.

�� Harry
yawned, and then chuckled at himself. It wasn�t so long ago that he could stay
up all night and still be ready to run several miles in the morning. He knew
that, being thirty now, he couldn�t count on the same strength as he�d had when
he was younger, but it was always annoying to be reminded.

�� He lifted
his wand to cast another Awareness Charm. He thought he�d learned most of what
he needed to know from the books, but there was always the chance that he�d
missed a stray fact. And with a talent as rare and unknown as Draco�s, stray
missed facts could be deadly.

�� What are you doing?�

�� Harry
nearly dropped his wand as Draco barged through the door. It seems to be my fate to be startled by Draco in libraries, Harry
thought, even as he studied his friend�s face closely. He was relieved to see
that the faint flush and heat of the fever appeared to have disappeared
completely.

�� How are
you feeling?� Harry asked.

�� Fine,�
Draco said, bristling as though Harry had insulted his parents instead of
asking about his health. �I�m not the one who spent a full night in here researching.�

�� How do you know it was a full night?� Harry
considered Draco his friend, yes, but he thought it incumbent on him to point
out the limits of Draco�s knowledge whenever he could. That was a service
friends owed each other. �I could have slept a few hours, and then��

�� I know how
you get when you�re protecting someone.� Draco, Harry was slightly indignant to
see, was eyeing him the same way he�d eyed Draco a moment ago. �You�ll do
everything except sleep, if there�s
something else that you can do instead. And you�re probably thinking that
Shacklebolt and Granger and anyone else who might help you is outside this�this
spell bubble or whatever it is, so you have to do everything all on your own.
That would make you even more frantic.�

�� Harry
blinked, a little startled that Draco still knew him so well after three years
apart, and then shook himself. �Well, I think I found part of the answer,� he
said. �The magic is a blending of reality and imagination. The main reason, I
think, that other people didn�t see what you saw and go with you from place to
place is that they didn�t love and trust you. I was able to see your
perceptions�most of them�and travel with you because I knew you.�

�� Draco
narrowed his eyes as though Harry had done something even more offensive than
insulting his parents�insulting his hair, perhaps. Harry blinked and wondered
what he had done wrong now. But then Draco demanded, �Why did I see those
monsters?�

�� Harry
relaxed. It seemed the topic had caught Draco in spite of himself, and he could
forget whatever anger against Harry he might have harbored�maybe for not
figuring out the cause of the curse faster. �I don�t know that. But it could be
as simple as your imagination having created the creatures in one place and
carrying them from that to another �world,� the way we discussed yesterday. Or
perhaps something traumatic happened to you at the moment your ancestor granted
you the gift that caused you to see them, and they remained in your mind and memory
after that, imprinted into the places that you changed. Do you remember
anything more of what your ancestor did than her words?�

�� No,� Draco
admitted, sounding half-angry again. �And you�re not going to distract me. You
found solid answers. Good. Now you need to rest.� He marched forwards and
grasped Harry�s hands, yanking him out of the chair.

�� It would
be good to rest,� Harry said, slightly perplexed. �I did intend to go to sleep
when I found the answers I wanted��

�� Which
could be another week,� Draco said firmly. �But instead, since I�m here, you�re
going to sleep for at least a few hours now,
and then eat something, and then sleep again.� He tugged Harry in the direction
of the door.

�� Did I do
something wrong?� Harry asked, when he�d been hurried most of the way to Draco�s
room and Draco was still striding along, muttering words under his breath that
never quite formed into the accusations Harry knew he wanted to make. �I mean,
I know that I sometimes don�t sleep enough, but I really would have, and missing a few hours one night won�t kill me.�

�� Draco spun
around and stared at him. Harry looked back, and blinked again, as it seemed he
had a habit of doing this morning. There was an odd suppressed emotion in Draco�s
face, some strong feeling barely held back with a mighty effort. Harry wondered
if something else had happened in the few hours they�d been separated. Had
Draco perhaps transported himself elsewhere by mistake, and only been able to
return to the Manor by concentrating hard?

�� I woke up
this morning,� Draco said, each word like a falling anvil. �And you weren�t
there.�

�� Did you
think you were alone?� Harry asked, understanding now, or thinking he did. �Did
you think I�d gone? I promise, Draco, I wouldn�t��

�� I knew you
were probably in the house somewhere,�
Draco said, in a tone that said he wouldn�t have put it past Harry to have gone
to the moon in his spare time. �But you weren�t in the bed with me.� His grip
on Harry�s hands abruptly tightened to a crushing one. �And I promised myself
that I could touch you when I woke in the morning, and then you weren�t there, and it annoyed me.�

�� Harry felt
as though his breath was coming too fast. It was definitely too short. He was going to lose his balance,
and he didn�t know why. �But why would you care about touching me?� he
whispered.

*

�� For a
moment, Draco thought Harry would fall over, and he knew this was his chance,
his way out. Harry would collapse. Draco could scold him about neglecting his
health and drag him into the bedroom, arrange him on the bed, and then go out
and bury himself in books or ordering the house-elves around. And when Harry
woke up, he would probably be glad enough to forget about this.

�� But Draco didn�t
think he wanted that to happen. He knew
exactly why he�d thought of Harry�s being in his bed this morning as a treat.

�� And why should I deny myself that? I�ve been
denied everything in the last few months, and denied security before that,
thinking I had to somehow transform myself to be worthy of just existing. Draco
didn�t remember that much about his years in France, but he knew this. The
haunting feeling of inadequacy was with him even now, when he thought about
Harry�s possibly rejecting him.

�� But he had
lost too much in the months and years away from Britain, wandering through
strange and wild places. He reached out, laid one hand on Harry�s shoulder,
clasped his chin with the other, and murmured, �I think you know that.�

�� Harry
lunged forwards and, unexpectedly, started kissing him. Draco froze for a
moment, but closed his eyes the next. He�d wanted this, hadn�t he? And if Harry
was enthusiastic about it, so much the better.

�� And, bloody
damn, the kiss was good.

�� Draco had
been kissed by experts in his time, but he didn�t think he�d had a tongue lick
over his lips like this, or dart into his mouth and out again like a
hummingbird, or give individual attention to each of his teeth. He moaned under
his breath and wrapped his arms around Harry�s shoulders. Harry molded himself
closer, grabbing the back of Draco�s head and holding it still as he licked and
sucked and bit, and then started to make his way down Draco�s neck.

��

�� Draco
opened his eyes. Harry�s eyes were half-lidded and shining.

��

�� I thought��
Harry whispered, and shook his head. �I wanted to lie beside you. But I thought
you didn�t know what you were saying when you asked me to stay and might be
embarrassed or resentful when you woke up. I don�t want you to resent me,
Draco.�

�� And for
how long has that been your goal in life?� Draco couldn�t help teasing, though
he gasped as Harry scraped sharp teeth down his throat in punishment.

�� I�ve never
wanted you to resent me since we became friends. But this�it�s more recent. I
missed you. I felt sorry for you when I started to realize what had happened. I
admired your strength. And yes, I do think you�re handsome, and I used to
wonder if you were a good fuck.� Harry hummed under his breath. �Now, do you
have any more probing questions, or can we get back to what we were doing?�

�� The pause
had been long enough for some of Draco�s scattered thoughts to return, and he
shook his head and pulled himself back from Harry. �Later,� he said. �You�re
tired��

�� Draco.�

�� Harry
looked so disappointed that Draco almost gave in, but both common sense and the
opportunity to make Harry cooperate and take care of himself stopped him. �Later,�
he repeated. �I want you awake enough that you can actually concentrate on what
you�re doing.�

�� I could do
that,� Harry muttered. Still, he let himself be pulled along to the bedroom.
Draco knew that Harry had used a different room when they were last in the
Manor, but he didn�t really care. Harry was sleeping in his bed.

�� I have Harry in my bed.

�� He reveled
in the surge of triumph that spread through him when Harry sprawled on his
pillows, and even more in the way that Harry extended a hand, silently
demanding his presence in the same way that Draco vaguely remembered doing last
night. He crawled onto the bed and curled up next to Harry, draping one arm and
one leg over him. He doubted that he would sleep much, since he�d rested so
thoroughly already, but this gave him more time to touch Harry and memorize his
skin.

�� Harry
sighed, yawned, and quickly fell asleep. Draco remained awake for a few hours
only, stroking his hair and shoulders and watching his face when Draco�s
fingers scraped some particularly sensitive spot of skin, before he began to
drift off himself.

�� His last thought
was that Harry hadn�t pressed Draco to know when he�d begun to think of Harry
as more than a friend.

�� Of course not, Draco thought, feeling
oddly smug. He knows that I won�t make a
confession that quickly, that honestly, the Gryffindorish way he made it.

�� He knows me. He sees me.

*

�� Fallen_angel1129:
But they found out some information! It wasn�t a tease!

�� hieisdragoness18:
Thank you!

�� Blackmutt:
Thank you! I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

�� callistianstar:
Thank you! In general, I prefer a mundane explanation rather than a magical one
for Harry�s super-Auror abilities.

�� From now
on, Draco will probably see Harry as human.

�� DTDY: Yes.
As he says, he was kind of a bloodthirsty child.

�� Caldonya:
Thank you!

�� SP777: For
the imaginary land or the idea of twisting the Metamorphmagus ability? The land
itself is just a compilation of weird effects. The Metamorphmagus idea was
there from the beginning of the story, just as a twist on the Black family
magic.

�� Mangacat:
Definitely haven�t seen everything yet. If nothing else, Draco still has to
find a way to control this gift.
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