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Sleepless	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16095 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Eight—Confrontations That Do Not Go Well

            Discipula met Harry as he was stopping out of the Malfoys’ room.

            “Mr. Evans.” Her smile was perfect and apologetic. Harry looked around automatically, but didn’t spot an audience. Perhaps that was simply what she did all the time, in case someone should come around the corner and see her. “Do you have a moment?”

            “Yes, I do,” Harry said, and fell into step beside her. He watched her face, but he didn’t really expect that to tell him anything. She was too much a master of keeping her emotions concealed. Even her twisting hands couldn’t really tell him anything, because she could be doing that so that she would look smaller and more helpless than she really did. Harry twitched his head in irritation. He hated dealing with politics for exactly this reason. He had the impression that everyone around him was smarter and knew more of the moves in the game than he did.

            “Mr. Evans.” Discipula had long eyelashes, and at the moment, her eyes were almost closed, cast down to the floor. “I hope that you didn’t mistake me for an enemy.”

            “I know that you don’t like the Malfoys,” Harry said. “That you did nothing to give them a barrister until I appeared.”

            Discipula sighed. “Yes, I admit that that was not the greatest or most shining moment on my part. But you must understand that, although we should consider ourselves on opposite sides politically, I am not your enemy.”

            “Say that you aren’t.” Harry halted in the middle of the corridor, which forced her to halt, too. She looked at him with wide, earnest eyes. Harry managed to keep from snorting, but it was a near thing. “What practical difference does it make? You’re still going to try to get the Malfoys executed, and I’m still going to try and stop you.”

            A shiver ran down his spine as he thought about that. He could tell himself all he liked that these dreams were the result of a miscast spell, that nothing which happened in them was real, but it would mean the end of existence for the Malfoys if he couldn’t defend them. The memory of that made him recoil, at least a little.

            I have to do the best job I can, even if I haven’t finished my training yet, because there is no one else.

            “May I speak to you in all truth, with perfect frankness?” Discipula clasped her hands together and bowed her head slightly.

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “I thought you were.”

            Discipula sighed. “I have had more power than is good for me, since last year when Dumbledore died and I realized that someone else would have to pick up the slack. Mr. Longbottom, our Boy-Who-Lived, is a hero, but that doesn’t mean he should have to do everything. He doesn’t understand the political realities or opinions or inclinations of those who have lived much longer than he has. I took up the burden, as I conceived it at the time, but I’ve come to enjoy carrying it. That means that it’s hard for me to give up, and I found myself endorsing positions that I might not if I had someone competent to help me.”

            “Why does Longbottom have to be the natural leader?” Harry demanded. It was true that Neville and the wizard who represented the Wizengamot had both looked incompetent next to Discipula, but they weren’t her only choices, if she was serious and wanted help. “Why not look for someone older, and let Longbottom help when he reaches the age of understanding?”

            Discipula smiled. “More sense than I thought to hear from you, Mr. Evans. You are not much older than Mr. Longbottom. Why would you urge me to turn to someone older, whose interests must oppose your own as they oppose his?”

            She thinks you’re a citizen of this world, like her, Harry reminded himself. Say nothing that could make her suspect. He shrugged. “If your description of him is accurate, then he might not be a very good leader. But we’re getting away from the issue of the Malfoys. You could still oppose what the crowd wanted and not execute them if you didn’t think it right. Instead, you seemed to be encouraging them.”

            Discipula wrung her hands again. “It is a fine balance, between maintaining the power of a leader and maintaining the freedom necessary to make my own decisions. I have gone along with the crowd at times when I didn’t want to.”

            “If you don’t stand up for issues as important as human life,” Harry said, “then when do you stand up?”

            “I managed to maintain the rule of law, if I could not maintain every nicety of it,” Discipula said. “If someone besides yourself had come forwards to take on the role of barrister, then I would have permitted it. No one did.” She gave Harry a searching look. “If you’ll excuse me for saying so, Mr. Evans, I’m not sure what makes you so different.”

            “I have some courage,” Harry said shortly. He knew that wasn’t entirely fair, but he didn’t care. His blood still churned when he thought about what had nearly happened to Draco and his family, and he didn’t trust any of the excuses that Discipula was trying to make.

            “I wanted to at least make it clear that I will oppose you no more than I have to, and hope for your success,” Discipula said, and then stopped talking. Harry glanced up and saw her eyes fixed on his face. Her own cheeks had paled.

            “What?” Harry demanded. He didn’t dare reach up and touch his face, because if she hadn’t seen his curse scar, he didn’t want to reveal it.

            “Oh,” said Discipula, her natural color flooding back so quickly that Harry would have found it hard to prove she had ever lost it, “you remind me of someone I once knew, that’s all. The resemblance is perfect by this dim lighting, but I didn’t see it before. I wonder why not?” She seemed to be talking to herself now, turning her head from side to side and looking hard at Harry.

            “You’ve probably met one or more of my relatives,” Harry said, with a casual shrug that he hoped concealed his mixture of hope and dismay. “We are numerous and around, although officially not part of the wizarding world.”

            Discipula nodded. “That must be it,” she said. “Well, Mr. Evans, take care to keep yourself under observation. We wouldn’t want you to suffer anything when you’re performing a task so important to sparing the lives of several people you think are innocent.”

            “Not innocent,” Harry said between his teeth. This was the point that Lucius and Ron and Discipula and all of them had trouble understanding, he thought. He didn’t believe that the Malfoys had done nothing wrong, or that Lucius didn’t deserve some time in prison. But that didn’t mean that he had to abandon all his principles, either. “Simply not deserving of death. I want a different punishment for them if I can’t get anything else.”

            Discipula smiled distantly and nodded to him. “I’m afraid that you won’t get that, either, though it’s for reasons that it would take too long to explain to someone from outside our world.” She turned and walked away, her robe swinging around her ankles with what looked like a sense of purpose.

            Harry was left to stand there uneasily and wonder what she had seen in his face to make her so interested in suddenly breaking off the conversation.

*

            He splashed his face with water that morning and stared into the mirror. No, he looked just as he always had, without the circles under his eyes that he continually expected to see because he wasn’t actually sleeping when he had the dreams. Or it didn’t feel like he was, anyway. Harry straightened back up, shook his wet hair back from his face, and then reached for the robes that he would be wearing today. Hermione was going back to the courtroom alone; she had accepted that Harry had studying to do.

            And maybe her absence would enable Harry to start looking up information on the dreams. Whether they were the result of a miscast spell or not, they were starting to mean a lot to him. That made him wonder if the spell had done exactly as it was supposed to do, after all. Perhaps he would want to spend all his time asleep and gradually lose interest in the life around him? Harry could think of some of his enemies who might want revenge that insane and detailed. He would examine the books available to him and see if they talked at all about dream spells like that.

            And he had a game of Quidditch to play with Malfoy today.

            Harry grimaced. After last night’s dinner, he wasn’t really looking forward to facing Malfoy again. But he had to do what he had to do, and he shouldn’t have agreed to the games if he thought that he couldn’t do them. It wasn’t as though Hermione and Malfoy together were irresistible forces, no matter what it might seem like.

            Why am I so opposed to the idea of giving Malfoy a chance, anyway? Why do I think that I have to not date him for everything to make sense?

            Harry shook his head at his reflection. He didn’t know the answer to that one, either. He also didn’t know why he allowed the association with Malfoy to continue when it was making him so uncomfortable. It wasn’t as though Malfoy needed him in the same way that the Draco in the dream did. That Draco, and his family, really didn’t have anyone to stand up for them. Malfoy had said there was no one he trusted as much to help him practice, but Harry privately labeled that a load of bollocks. He was simply the first choice that had come to mind, and it more than likely helped that Malfoy didn’t have to pay him.

            He just wants me. He doesn’t need me.

            Harry cocked his head before he pulled on the robes and left the bathroom. He hadn’t thought of the division between his two worlds in quite that way before, and somehow, it made a lot more sense when he did.

*

            “Where’s your head, Potter?”

            Harry started guiltily. He was aware, somewhere in the back of his mind where he kept track of things like that, that he had missed the Snitch for a third time this afternoon. He pulled up his broom and started hunting around for it, ignoring the way that Malfoy flew close to his side. He would be furious, and Harry wasn’t in the mood to deal with his fury. He had been thinking, again, about the dreams and about the way that he couldn’t make the Quidditch games fit with the rest of his life.

            “I know you’re better than this,” Malfoy sneered. He looped around in front of Harry so that he had to halt his broom or crash into him. “I know you. It’s ridiculous to think that you can’t keep your mind on the game, when I know how much you loved it and lived for it in school.”

            Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “Did it ever occur to you, Malfoy, that some of us have changed since school, and have more important things to live for?”

            The air between them suddenly cooled. Malfoy leaned forwards, his arms folded in front of him and braced against the broom. Harry could see the tension in his shoulders that belied the casual pose, though. Malfoy was angry about something. Harry cocked his head and waited for the verbal slap, while his conscience burned and his common sense clucked its tongue. I knew we couldn’t get along. It takes too much out of both of us.

            “My chosen career isn’t important, then,” Malfoy said. “That explains your forgetting the practice match yesterday. I’m sure that a single line in your dusty old books holds your attention better, because it’s more important than this.”

            Harry sighed and lowered his head. It seemed that he would get dragged into arguments like this whether or not he had a real relationship with Malfoy. “Listen, Malfoy,” he said. “I don’t want to row with you. I forgot because I forgot, not because I think Quidditch is unimportant for everyone. It’s obviously important for you. But you acted as though I hadn’t changed from the boy you knew, and I have. No wonder it’ll never work out,” he had to add. “You want someone I haven’t been for years.”

            Malfoy froze into a thrumming, tense stance that Harry didn’t understand. Then he made a furious gesture with one hand, and Harry’s broom rocked in a conjured gust of wind. He hadn’t even realized Malfoy was holding his wand up.

            “What the fuck, Malfoy?” he snapped, regaining control by leaning back and making his broom rise past the height where Malfoy had conjured the wind.

            “I suggest that you rethink whatever you were about to say.” Malfoy rose to join him, face pinched so tight that Harry was surprised he could breathe. “Of all the reasons for your opposing my resolve to date you, this is the worst yet.”

            “I don’t understand you,” Harry said. “At all. You show up and tell me out of the blue that you want to practice with me, then that you want to date me, or snog me, or—whatever is going on. You’re wavering back and forth. Fine, I can understand that. But it doesn’t mean that I’m compelled to just put up with your moods and never say anything.”

            Malfoy gave him the pinched look again. “This is strange for me, too,” he said, but in a cold tone that didn’t exactly encourage Harry to have any sympathy. “You would do better if you remembered that. I don’t require you to put up with my moods. I require you to demonstrate that you take me seriously.”

            “How can I when you don’t know what you want?” Harry shook his head. “I want my life to be calm. I want to be a barrister. I want to help the people in my dreams. I want—”

            He caught his breath, seeing what he’d just revealed. A moment later, he realized that he ought to have gone on and pretended that it was nothing. Malfoy could have missed it, then, and been drawn back into the current of the argument. Instead, he stared at Harry with devouring interest and nudged his broom forwards until their knees almost touched.

            “You often dream of lovers and people you need to help, is that it?” he asked. “Keep in mind that they’re insubstantial, Harry. I’m the real one, the one who might be persuaded to make a go of it with you if you behave well and I decide to choose you.”

            Harry shook his head again. “It’s not like that,” he said, but he had no idea how to explain what it was like. Malfoy probably would think that he wasn’t being paranoid enough, once he heard how deep and detailed the dreams were.

            Then Harry stopped. Why in the world am I thinking that I should tell him about them? I haven’t even told Ron and Hermione yet.

            “Tell me.” Malfoy smiled at him, and he was close enough now for his breath to stir Harry’s hair. He reached out to put a hand on the shaft of Harry’s broom. “It sounds as though you’re bothered by them. I could work out a solution for you, perhaps, or help you work something out.” He’d probably added that because Harry’s eyes flashed dangerously at the thought of Malfoy simply rearranging his life without his consent.

            “You’ll laugh,” Harry said, casting him a wary glance. He wished he’d simply kept quiet, but Malfoy was interested now, and Harry was starting to appreciate how hard he was to shake when he was like that.

            “Why would I?” Malfoy looked as if he was simple and sincere and direct, all those things that Harry had valued as his own qualities, not Slytherin ones. “This matters to you. So it ought to matter to me, too.”

            “But you just said—”

            In the face of Malfoy’s stare, Harry gave up. Yes, Malfoy had said that he was being pulled back and forth between wanting Harry and being cautious around him, and it seemed that that included the interest he took in Harry’s doings.

            “Fine. Let’s land.” Harry pulled away from Malfoy and flew down to the pitch. Malfoy followed him, and Harry could feel his smirk from here. He shook his head and rolled his eyes in annoyance, but touched down and got safely off the broom. Malfoy landed beside him with a speed and grace that made Harry think, again, that he didn’t need any help with Quidditch, and whirled around, dropping his broom on the grass.

            “What dreams?” he prompted.

            Harry sighed. “For several days now, I’ve been having very intense and detailed dreams. They always pick up exactly where they left off, as if they pause when I wake up. The people in the dreams don’t seem to notice anything wrong, so that must mean their time really stops and they don’t see me disappearing or anything like that.”

            Malfoy lifted his eyebrows. “Of course they wouldn’t notice anything. They’re dreams, Potter, I told you. I’m the real thing.”

            Harry scowled at him. “Yes, and you’re certainly annoying enough.”

            Malfoy preened as if Harry had given him a compliment. “And?” he prompted. “What sort of people do you meet in these dreams?”

            “It’s our world,” Harry said, “except behind our time, still in the midst of the Death Eater trials. Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived instead of me. In fact, no one seems to recognize me, either, so I don’t think I exist there. And your family is on trial for their lives, and I agreed to be their barrister because no one else would defend them.”

            Malfoy looked at him with such extreme surprise in his face that Harry was sure he hadn’t expected that answer, or anything like that. And a moment later, Harry was sorry for announcing it so bluntly. He could have done it more gently, he thought—assuming that Malfoy would have listened. That was always the problem. Harry didn’t know how to handle Malfoy because there were too many factors going into the discussions. Sometimes Malfoy wanted gentleness from him, and sometimes Malfoy acted as though nothing would irritate him more.

            He ought to be more sympathetic to me for not knowing what to do with him, Harry thought, rubbing his forehead. After all, look at the problems it causes him when he doesn’t know what to do with me.

            “I don’t believe you,” Malfoy whispered.

            Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course, this is something that I would lie about for no good reason. Really, Malfoy? Why? You ought to see that I wouldn’t have a reason. Anyway, I’ve volunteered to be their barrister, and I’m getting opposition, especially from someone who doesn’t exist in our world but is sort of like Umbridge would have been if she was smart. Hermione works for her, a different version of Hermione. And Ron works in the inn where they’re boarding me, except that he’s bitter against your father—I mean, Draco’s father—and the whole lot of you because your father—him—killed Ginny with that diary when she was eleven. Everything’s changed, and not for the better. They don’t even seem to really know if Neville defeated Voldemort, which you would think would be the whole point of calling him the Boy-Who-Lived.”

            Malfoy swallowed several times. Harry waited, glaring at him, to see what he would say. He could imagine all sorts of uncomplimentary things, but he wasn’t sure enough of Malfoy to know beforehand.

            “How are you surviving with this whole world in your head?” Malfoy breathed. “Doesn’t it get difficult, to separate the dream world and the waking? Have you spoken to anyone else about this? Granger, Mind-Healers, experts in dream magic?”

            Harry blinked. That had not been a reaction that was on his mental list, either. He mentally shook his head and decided that he would have to go on as if Malfoy was a stranger. That was the only fair way to treat him, apparently: not to have expectations at all.

            “I haven’t told anyone else yet,” he said. “You’re the first one I’ve let it slip in front of. I did hint to Ron and Hermione that I was dreaming about a world where everything was different, but not to the extent and depth that I’ve been having them.”

            “Why not, Harry?” Malfoy moved forwards, eyes so intense on him that it was barely a shock when he rested his hand against Harry’s shoulder. “You ought to see that it’s dangerous to keep to yourself. What if the dreams damage you?”

            “I don’t think they will,” Harry said. “I haven’t been losing any sleep when I go through them, and the food I eat there doesn’t sustain me. I drank a lot of Firewhisky with Ron in the dreams the other night, but I didn’t wake up with a hangover. It’s—different, Malfoy. I don’t think they can leave any mark on me. They’re just dreams.” He shifted a bit, wondering if the warm, pressing hand would go away if he did. It stayed in place.

            “You don’t know that,” Malfoy said. “This doesn’t sound like just dreams to me. You should see an expert in dream magic. I’m amazed that you haven’t already.”

            “I didn’t know there were any such things,” Harry said, his indignation rising again. “And what if they want to stop the dreams? I don’t think I should, not until I know the outcome for your family—Draco’s family.”

            Malfoy cast him a swift glance that Harry couldn’t interpret until he spoke again. “You call him Draco,” he said in a strangled voice. “Why do you apply the name so easily to him and not to me?”

            “He needs me,” Harry said. This seemed to be his day for honesty with Malfoy, so he might as well go full-out with it.

            Malfoy’s face took on that tight look again. Then he stepped back, though his hand remained on Harry’s shoulder for long moments as he did so, as if he couldn’t bear to lose all contact with Harry like that. “You’re mistaken,” he said, “if you think that I don’t.”

            “Not in the same way,” Harry said. Perhaps it was best if he just spoke the words that were in his heart after all. He could only be expected to put up with Malfoy’s constantly changing ideas and emotions for so long before he struck back. “It’s a pure, concrete, immediate need. I don’t know what you want me for. To date, to fuck, to snog, to rage at, to train with?”

            “Why can’t it be all of those things?”

            And somehow Malfoy had turned the tables on him again, and his eyes were so bright that Harry turned his head uncomfortably to the side. “It’s different,” he muttered.

            “Real people are complicated,” Malfoy said. “You can’t put them in neat little boxes the way that you have the dream Malfoys.” His voice was calm, and Harry didn’t hear any tremor in it when he named his family. “And I think that you’re more afraid of what I can offer you because you’ll have to second-guess and question yourself more.”

            “I am not—”

            Malfoy gave him a single look of pity, then turned and picked up his broom. “Meet me here at two tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll speak more about this. And I won’t tell Granger or any dream experts—for now.”

            Harry shouted at him. He flew merrily away, paying no attention. Harry swore, and kicked his broom.

*

            Review responses for Chapter 7 are at http://lomonaaerenrr.livejournal.com/4189.html
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Sleepless