lomonaaeren | Chapter Eighteen of 'Inter Vivos'- Realization

Thank you again for all the reviews!

I just wanted to say that this story will be slightly longer than I originally planned: instead of 26 chapters, it’s likely to be 30. This fifth year took longer than I thought it would.

Chapter Eighteen—Realization

“And what did Snape do about it?” Draco was breathless. Harry had told the story of Umbridge’s torturing him, and had just got to the point where Professor Snape had burst in to rescue him. Draco couldn’t wait to hear what happened next. He was trying to imagine all the Dark Arts spells that Professor Snape might have chosen to curse the Ministry’s lackey with, but he was sure that his imagination was nothing next to the real thing.

“He Obliviated her,” Harry said. His face was tense and pale, as if he didn’t like talking about being placed under the Cruciatus.

Draco paused. Is the next part of the story that bad, then? Draco had come to accept that Harry was more squeamish than he was, more reluctant to indulge in the revenge that was his right, but Snape wouldn’t let that hold him back. “And what else?” he prompted Harry.

“That’s it.” Harry blinked at him. “He used the Memory Charm to make her forget all about enslaving me.”

“But what else?” Draco insisted. “He had to do something else, or she might just decide she hadn’t done it yet and try again!”

“He can’t get away with Dark Arts in the middle of Hogwarts.” Harry sighed and looked away, as if merely telling the story had exhausted him. Draco studied him with an expert eye; he had got used to examining his mother and father for signs of sleeplessness. Something that worried them would probably affect Draco’s life sooner or later. “And the Ministry probably tests Umbridge on a regular basis. Even if Dumbledore supported him, he could still end up in Azkaban if he isn’t careful.”

“But see,” Draco said, certain he must have misunderstood somewhere, “that’s not the way it works. Someone can’t simply torture you and get away with it. McGonagall and Dumbledore should have punished Finnigan more when he burned your things than giving him a month’s detention, and someone needs to punish the Dursleys, and Snape should have done something more to punish Umbridge.” He was starting to suspect that Snape had done something more, but hadn’t told Harry about it. That way he could have the satisfaction of watching the toad-woman writhe in pain without having to confront Harry’s scruples.

Harry turned and gave him a tired smile. Really, everything about him was tired, Draco thought, but he didn’t know why. After all, Harry had deliberately finished his homework for the winter term early so that he could have the Christmas holidays as a real vacation. And surely Black hadn’t been training him that hard. “I don’t care that much about punishment, Draco,” he said. “I care about winning this war.”

“But justice is important, too,” Draco said, deciding at the last moment that Harry would probably prefer the word “justice” to “vengeance”. “Or you’ll just seem weak in everyone else’s eyes.”

“Whose eyes?” Harry asked. “No one but you and Snape know about Umbridge—she doesn’t even know anymore. And only you and Snape and my closest friends know about the Dursleys. Maybe Dumbledore, too,” he added, after a moment of thinking about it. “Seamus destroyed my things years ago, so no one’s thinking about it anymore.”

“But they’ll know, and they’ll do it again,” Draco insisted. “Or are you saying that your family won’t starve and abuse you again when you go there for the summer?” Privately, he had decided that Harry wouldn’t be going anywhere near the Dursleys for the summer. But Harry got so agitated whenever he said something about it that Draco had decided to drop that suggestion for now.

“Leave it,” Harry said in a clipped voice, hunching his shoulders.

“No.” Draco planted his hands on his hips. “I told you before, I have a right to be angry at the Dursleys—and Umbridge and Finnigan too, for that matter. If you won’t do something about them, then I will. They can’t just get away with hurting you like that.”

“I just want to train,” Harry whispered. “I want to fight the war. I want to win—” He paused a moment, as if he was about to say something else, and then shook his head. “It’s not weakness, Draco,” he finished, before Draco could interrupt. “It’s indifference. I’m tired, and I’m already fighting to keep up with my homework and all my training. I don’t have the time to think up punishments on people and hand them out.”

Draco subsided. Let Harry think that was compliance if he wanted. In reality, Draco was going to find a Dark spell and use it on Umbridge, but Harry didn’t need to know that.

“All right,” he said, with what he knew was relative ungraciousness, and wrapped his arms around Harry. Harry stood stiff in the embrace as always, but Draco didn’t care. Just like the vengeance, this hug was more for him than Harry. “Then let’s talk about something else. Do you trust Snape, after he rescued you?”

Harry sighed. “We’re going to resume training again. I need to know things that you can’t teach me and Sirius probably won’t, even if I ask him. But I don’t trust him in the way I trust you.”

Draco’s belly grew heavy with smugness. He wanted to ask if Harry trusted anyone the way he trusted Draco, but he might not like the answer. He decided to gloat over it in silence for a moment instead, and tightened his hug.

Harry finally hugged him back, and Draco felt as though all the separation of the holidays, all the care he’d had to exercise around Lucius to keep him convinced that Draco was still his obedient son and puppet, and all the worry he’d felt about Harry in the meantime, was worth it.

*

“Not like that, boy! Exercise some bloody control!”

Harry threw his head back and glared at Severus. Severus matched him anger for anger. He’d had every right to snap like that. He knew Potter could practice these spells with more grace and ease than he was currently using on them, but something, probably his training with Black, had taught him to put unnecessary power behind them even when he was trying to achieve delicate effects. He needed to master himself, or he was going to destroy Severus’s private training room; it already bore scorch marks on the walls and more than one notch in the stone where Potter’s curses had gone awry.

Severus had thought moving them into the training room was a good idea. It would show how much he trusted Potter, that he was giving him access to a place that most of the rest of the school didn’t know existed, and it would get them out of his office, where it wasn’t possible for either of them to be neutral. But Potter was still arrogant and loud-mouthed and convinced he knew better about ninety percent of the spells Severus showed him. It was madness, Severus thought in frustration, to think that either of them could change their perceptions of each other.

“That’s the seventh time you’ve said that,” Potter said, his voice grinding. “And no matter how much I control myself next time, if I don’t do exactly what you want, then you snap at me again—”

“You are capable of better than this.” Severus wondered if a compliment would calm the boy down. “I know you are.”

“But not capable enough to satisfy you.” Potter gave him an ugly sneer that startled Severus. It had come from Black—it must have—but it looked too much like his own. “I give up. This isn’t going to work. I even told you that I didn’t like to be called boy, and you keep doing it anyway.” He shook his head and started walking towards the door.

Severus controlled the impulse to swear under his breath. He had known this would happen; he had even predicted his latest thoughts, when he would call Potter arrogant within his mind even though he knew that was not true. He needed to put himself back on the leash and hope that would work.

“Pot—Harry.” It was an effort to keep his voice level, but he had done harder things in the last fortnight since the students returned, including not slapping Longbottom with more than three detentions when he had somehow managed to melt three cauldrons in a row. “I—apologize. I did know that, and I promised that I would not do it, and I did not manage.”

Harry paused with his hand on the doorknob, and turned to face him with a frown of disbelief. Severus held his face stern with an effort. At that moment, with his eyes squinted and his glasses more than half slid off his nose, Harry looked like Lily frowning at Severus for not getting a potion right. Severus wished that he showed this resemblance to his mother more often, or at least that Severus could see it more often.

“You’ve said that,” Harry said, after a few moments of tense silence had passed. “But you keep backtracking.”

“I anticipated the backtracking.” Severus folded his arms, and, within the protection of his sleeves, dug his fingernails into his arms. It had been one of the ways he maintained control when his father was once again ranting on about how useless and worthless both Severus and his mother were. Eileen Prince had cried silent tears, but that was not an escape available to her son. “Still, whilst I might forgive myself easily, you will not. I should have anticipated that. And I should certainly have controlled my language if I wanted you to control yours,” he added, which he thought a generous concession. Harry had sworn several times during the casting process, and Severus had corrected him with each word, telling him that vulgar language was the sign of an uneducated mind.

Harry chewed his lip in intense thought. Then he said, “I know that I’ve been putting too much power behind my spells. But you’ve never showed me how to do it otherwise.”

Severus nearly snorted. Of course he would make a gesture of reconciliation in the form of a demand. But at least it was a demand he could answer. He had wanted to avoid instructing Harry in something so basic, thinking it better if he discovered finesse on his own, but once again, he had to remind himself that Harry was not Draco and did not do well when encouraged to explore intellectual concepts on his own.

Perhaps because he has been left to too much intellectual exploration of all kinds on his own, he thought. His relatives did not teach him proper behavior; he had to learn that their actions towards him were wrong through observation, and even now I do not know that he fully realizes the essential evil of what they have done. Dumbledore has coddled him but not explained that much, and he has no idea of his full importance in the prophecy and the battle to come. Yes, a little explanation would perhaps go far.

“You need to think more of the effect to achieve than the way in which you achieve it,” he said. “You are a powerful wizard. You need not be so determined to put your full strength behind any spell, because you accomplish them with only a tenth of the effort that you put in now. Now, someone like Longbottom? Perhaps would not. But you will.”

“Am I as powerful as Voldemort?”

Severus hissed at him in spite of himself. He still flinched at the Dark Lord’s name, and had tried to encourage Harry to call him by a title, but he had refused. “You are not,” Severus said, “because no one is. But it is his cunning and control that are more dangerous to you than his power. You might match him in control if not in raw strength.”

“But I have to be as powerful as he is,” Harry whispered, rubbing his scar. “How am I going to defeat him otherwise?”

Severus frowned. At least his obsession with the power of his magic is understandable now. ‘There are other ways,” he said. “Considering the study the Dark Lord has made of Dark magic, he most likely has protections that could not be defeated by hurling spells at him. You will need to exercise cunning in dealing with him in any case.”

“Then I should be learning to defeat those protections!” Harry took a step forwards, his eyes flaring with a panic that Severus found odd. At times, the boy acted as if he knew the prophecy, but that was impossible. Dumbledore would never have been stupid enough to tell that to someone whose skill at Occlumency was not great.

“You are learning the Dark Arts for a reason, Harry.” Severus put enough of a snap in his voice to recall the boy’s attention to himself. “I do not know what those protections are in detail; no one does, or I would be teaching you specifically to combat them. But this is the best compromise we have.”

“But—”

“If you make yourself sick with anxiety,” Severus said, “then you will not be able to control your spells.” He held Harry’s eyes and waited until the boy had returned himself to some semblance of calm. “Now.” He raised his wand. “Cast the Blinder’s Curse again, and this time work on creating the perfect star of light, rather than throwing so much power behind it that you break the shields and blind us both for good and all.”

Harry stood breathing like an impatient mule for a moment, and then mastered himself enough to nod shortly. Severus was pleased, though he thought showing that emotion would be counterproductive right now; it would only distract the boy from his work.

But it is good to know that Harry can please me, at least.

*

“Up!”

Sirius’s curse skittered across the floor towards him. Harry leaped in the air and let it pass beneath his feet.

“Down!”

Though Sirius said that, he aimed low. Harry rolled away from the curse and aimed his wand at Sirius, triumphant. He’d got into a position where he could bypass the shields Sirius had set up, and that meant he could catch him across the body and win the fight. Of course, he would use one of the harmless hexes or jinxes that Sirius had tutored him in, and not the curses that Snape thought were necessary for him to know.

But the world shuddered and a strange red haze bled in from the corners of his eyes, and Harry’s hand jerked and his mind tumbled through the memories of his latest session with Snape, and then the word that he didn’t want to speak rose to his lips anyway. “Convello!”

The spell opened like a pair of glowing white pincers around Sirius’s skull and pressed down. Harry had recognized the spell the moment he spoke it. It was meant to shatter and batter someone’s body to pieces, starting with the skull.

And he had cast it with the precision and control that Snape had tried to drill into him during their latest training session—and Sirius, not expecting it at all, screamed in pain and raised his wand with a shaking hand, clearly unable to remember the countercurse.

Horrified, with the red haze gone from in front of his eyes now, Harry choked out the appropriate spell, and the pincers vanished. Sirius rolled on the floor and shut his eyes for a moment, panting. One hand spread and dug his fingers into the stone as if he had to hang onto a violently tilting planet.

“Well,” Sirius said, after long moments when he was trying to catch his breath and Harry was too sick to speak. “That was different.”

At least his words unlocked Harry’s voice. “Sirius, I’m so, so sorry! I don’t know why I did that! Can you—”

Sirius rose to his feet and crossed the room in an instant, clasping Harry close. “Of course, Prongs,” he whispered. He had taken to calling Harry by his father’s nickname since he’d seen Harry cast a Patronus that he said was exactly the way James used to look when they ran through the Forbidden Forest together. “Don’t worry about it. If anything, that shows that you’re developing the right instincts, because the duels you’ll face out in the field are nothing like the little games we play. Maybe we should move on to more powerful magic. How would you like to learn healing?”

Harry smiled gratefully. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

Inwardly, he was just as glad to listen as Sirius began an enthusiastic explanation. It gave him time to try and work out what had happened within his mind and to wonder if Hermione was right—if his lack of sleep meant that he couldn’t properly concentrate on other things and he should do something about that.

But asking someone for help means that they’ll know I’m weak and can’t just ignore my nightmares.

And Draco’s right about one thing. Making me look weak in other people’s eyes is not what I want to do, as long as they’re people I care about. And Snape might not mean to use this against me, but I know he would.

And then the despair that had been haunting his thoughts for months now, since he’d really thought through the prophecy, crept back in.

Does it really matter who does what to me, when I know that I’m going to die fighting Voldemort?

*

“Clear your mind—”

“That’s what Snape said to me, too.” Harry glared at Draco under his fringe. “But he didn’t explain what he meant, and you’re not doing it either!”

Draco took a deep breath to smother his own impatience. It actually wasn’t that hard. These days, he was far more impatient when he was away from Harry. Those strange feelings that he’d felt before the row with Harry had come back again, and he didn’t know what to do half the time he was with him—but away from him, the only thing he could think about was that Harry might have a girlfriend or might be working too hard or might be going after the Dark Lord tonight. It was better for Draco when they were together.

And he didn’t think he’d misread the way Harry’s faced brightened for him and only him, or the way that his eyes followed Draco around the room when he explained Occlumency—Draco found it easier to pace when he was teaching something—or the excuses he invented to touch Draco’s shoulders and hair. Yes, all of that meant something.

Now, if only he knew what.

“All right,” he said, yanking his mind back to the problem at hand when Harry’s glare intensified. “Professor Snape means that you should meditate until everything unimportant and distracting is out of your head. I don’t think that works, most of the time. What I mean is that you make one thing more important than anything else, and clear your mind behind and below that.”

“That sounds good,” Harry said, but he was skeptical and didn’t want to hope too much; Draco could tell by the way he looked down and picked at a thread hanging off the sleeve of his jumper. “How exactly do you do it?”

“Well,” Draco said, bracing himself to be laughed at, “lately I think of my mother.” And that was what he did, half the time. The other half of the time he thought of Harry, but he didn’t think Harry was ready to hear that, yet.

Harry gave him a quick glance. Then he shook his head a little and said, “And concentrating on her is enough to make everything else dim into insignificance?”

He sounded wistful. Draco relaxed, and reminded himself that that wasn’t a surprise. Harry wasn’t like Blaise, who would have said something cutting about Draco’s dependence on his mum. Harry didn’t have parents, and wanted them. Of course, Draco wouldn’t wish a father like Lucius on anyone, but if it had been possible, he would have traded with Harry. He wanted more freedom—

But not more responsibility, he thought suddenly, and I certainly don’t want his relatives. It was sometimes easy to forget that Harry was abused, too, until he said something about parents or food or Draco really looked at his face and wrists. He acted as if it didn’t matter, and he could fool other people into thinking it didn’t, too. Draco thought that was the real reason that Harry’s abuse had gone unrecognized for so long.

“Yes.” Draco pitched his voice low and stepped towards Harry. “Close your eyes.” Harry looked vaguely alarmed, but closed his eyes anyway. “Now,” Draco said, and made his voice singsong the way he imagined Narcissa’s voice being when he thought of her. It was the voice she used to tell him bedtime stories with. “Think of the best memory you can, and surround it with other pleasant thoughts—”

Harry popped one eye open. “I thought the point of this was to get rid of the other thoughts?”

“You’re exasperating,” Draco said, and Harry scowled at him. “We’re not there yet.” With an effort, he thought of his mother again and resumed the singsong voice. “Just trust me. Go ahead and surround your pleasant thought with others.”

“Trusting you has never been the problem,” Harry muttered. “It hurts not to trust you.” He shut his eyes obediently and squinted them, as if that would somehow solve the problem of his lack of concentration.

His words—which Draco didn’t think he’d been meant to hear—stunned Draco into silence for a long moment, but he managed to take a deep breath and continue at last. “When you think you’ve filled your mind with that, start stripping out the other thoughts one by one, and concentrating on that single figure. My mother floats in my mind as if she had wings. Is your thought a person? Can you see him or her doing that?”

“Yeah.” Harry’s voice was dreamy, calmer than Draco had ever heard it. He’s probably thinking about his parents, or Black, Draco thought, and refused to pay attention to the surge of desolate feeling through him. “Yeah, the other thoughts are going, and he’s smiling at me.”

Black, then. “Good,” Draco whispered. “Now imagine that person turning into a mass of white light, which hovers in front of your mind. He’ll shield all your memories, all your knowledge, from an attack.” He waited a few minutes until a tranquil smile had worked its way across Harry’s face, and then backed up, carefully aimed his wand, and whispered, “Legilimens.”

He promptly ran into the sort of thin, flexible wall that Professor Snape had first taught him to use, even though Draco had moved on from those teachings some time ago. Draco thought he could have got through it if he really pushed, but he wasn’t about to destroy Harry’s confidence in his very first successful performance of Occlumency ever. He pulled back and beamed, then realized that Harry’s eyes were still shut and he couldn’t see him. “Harry,” he said impatiently. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

Harry’s eyes blinked slowly, dreamily, open. Draco grinned at him, and hoped that he was showing all the approval he felt, because he didn’t think Harry got enough approval. “You did it,” he said. “You kept me out.”

Harry stared at him in wonder, then grinned and shook his head. “That’s actually kind of surprising.”

“Am I such a bad teacher?” Draco pretended to cuff him on the back of the head, and Harry ducked away from him, laughing.

“No,” Harry said. “Just that you couldn’t get past yourself.”

Draco stared at him, jaw dropping open slightly. “You were thinking about me?” he blurted at last, with much less than the grace his mother and Professor Snape would have wanted him to have.

“Yes, of course.” Harry cast him a confused glance, as if to ask what else he would have been thinking about.

Draco didn’t want to give him a lot of time to consider that question. Instead, he said briskly, “And now on to the next step of Occlumency, after clearing your mind.” Harry sat up and paid prompt attention.

Meanwhile, Draco was as smug as he’d been when Harry hugged him after he came back from Christmas holidays. He trusts me most. He finds me most pleasant to think about. And that means that I’m avoiding a lot of the pain I would feel if he thought about someone else.

But why he would feel so much pain, or why this was so important—

Draco didn’t know, and he wished he did.

*

“I can keep going.” Harry’s face was shiny, pouring with sweat, determined.

You are likely to kill yourself if you try, Severus thought, but did not say. He had already discovered that, though Harry would accept straightforward explanations readily, he did not enjoy being told that he had to slow down or that his exhaustion was dangerous. Severus had to come up with a different method of distraction.

He stretched his arms over his head so that his sleeves fell away from them. He anticipated that Potter would see the Dark Mark and ask something about the initiation ceremony. Severus had already told the story several times, mostly to members of the Order of the Phoenix, and had perfected an emotionally stripped-down version that did not hurt him to speak.

Instead, Potter turned and looked at his other arm. “What’s that?” he asked, even pointing. Vulgar child. Among the many things that his abusive relatives had not trained him in—such as kindness, the satisfaction of hunger, and resting when he was tired—was good manners.

But Severus had already planned to answer questions to get Potter to relax, so he followed the pointing finger and started a little when he saw the curving scar along the flesh of his right arm. Yes, of course he remembered how he had received it, but it never hurt the way the Mark did and was of incomparably less significance in his life. And he was not sure the story was one he wanted Potter to hear—

Wait. It involves Lucius. Yes. I think it best that he hear it, so that he may understand that Draco’s father is not simply someone who loves him, and can be a dangerous enemy. Since Lucius had stood so high in the Dark Lord’s counsels ever since his return, Severus knew Harry would face him on the battlefield someday, and he wanted no absurd scruples that would prevent Harry from killing Lucius because he was Draco’s father.

“I received that as the result of an irremediably stupid wager,” he said dryly. “I was with Lucius one night, and we had had more to drink than was good for us, celebrating the impending birth of his son.” He did not think it necessary to mention that they were also celebrating the death by torture of several Muggles. He wanted to keep Harry looking at the darkness of his true enemies, not endlessly rehashing his own atonement. “Lucius looked at me with a small smile and bet that I could not take away a Saberclaw’s egg.”

Harry looked immediately intrigued. It’s a tale of reckless danger, of course he would be, Severus thought. “We haven’t studied Saberclaws in Care of Magical Creatures.”

“You aren’t likely to, though Merlin knows that Hagrid would love to get his hands on an egg.” Severus shook his head. “They were a private breeding experiment conducted three decades ago by a rich pure-blood wizard who wanted to create dangerous creatures for blood sport. They have only ever lived on his estate. Imagine a dragon, if you will, but considerably smaller, with only two legs, and with poisonous claws on its wings instead of fiery breath. The claws are as long as swords, and they fight with them. The females are larger than the males and extremely protective of their nests.”

“So what did you do?” Harry breathed, looking fascinated. Severus had not realized it would give him such a rush to have those green eyes looking at him in admiration.

“Crept into the Saberclaw’s cave,” Severus said, his voice growing dryer than ever as he mentally admonished his younger self. What in the name of God had he thought he was doing? “Found a young female asleep on a nest of sixteen eggs, and thought she wouldn’t miss one. Took an egg from under her wing, and was scratched by the claw in passing. Woke her, and ran away from her up the tunnel with her screaming and stamping and snorting and spitting behind me.” He winced. He still didn’t like to remember his wild flight up the tunnel, past flying walls of stone, with the warmth of the venom working its way up his arm and the beast clanging her claws off the rocks behind him.

“Wow.”

The boy seemed a bit too fascinated, and Severus suspected that the point he was trying to make would be lost. “Lucius dared me to do that knowing I would probably die, but also that my pride compelled me to go forwards, and that my judgment was impaired by Firewhisky,” he said simply. “I never want you to forget what he is.”

“How can I do that?” Harry gave him a grim smile with some of the light still in his eyes. “I see his shadow in Draco’s face every day.”

And before Severus could react to that unexpectedly insightful comment, Potter straightened, his face a normal color again. “Are you ready to resume the duel?”

*

Harry stumbled down the stairs to the common room, his hand on the wall to guide himself. He was shivering, and couldn’t stop. His nightmares seemed to be getting worse instead of better. This time, the details¬—Draco’s body being stripped of flesh, then boiled so that it became a pristine skeleton, except for bits of skin clinging to the bones—were so sharp and clear it was as if he’d actually seen it happen.

“The Dreamless Sleep didn’t work, then?”

Harry started and almost fell down the last stairs, but then straightened with a small sigh. He should have known that Hermione would be waiting up for him. She had been too concerned about his taking the Dreamless Sleep Potion she’d brewed in the first place not to. Harry managed to walk the rest of the way down and take a chair next to her, staring into the fire. At least the twisting, dancing flames would give him something that wasn’t a flayed Draco to think about. There hadn’t been any fire in this dream.

Hermione leaned slowly into his field of vision. Harry ignored her until he thought she would probably cough and act worried about him, which would be worse. Reluctantly, he turned and met her eyes.

“I think you should tell someone,” Hermione said, returning to the argument they’d been having for weeks.

“No.” Harry drove the heels of his hands into his eyes. They felt as if he’d run through a wind that carried blowing sand. He was getting enough sleep to keep himself functional, barely, but no more. And the dreams were increasing in sharpness and vividness, he admitted reluctantly to himself. They were definitely worse now, in early March, than they’d been throughout February.

“But I don’t think I brewed the Dreamless Sleep right.” Hermione sounded near tears, which made Harry stare into the fire again when he took his hands away from his face. “Professor Snape or Madam Pomfrey would actually give you the potion you need, Harry—”

“And Snape would make fun of my nightmares, and Madam Pomfrey would insist on a full check-up and discover the abuse,” Harry whispered, though he was no longer sure his first statement about Snape was true. “No, Hermione, I’m not going to risk that.”

“You can’t go on this way, Harry.” Hermione was patting his shoulder, but tentatively, as if she realized that sympathy was as likely to get her snapped at as anything else.

Sure I can, Harry thought. Just a few more months. Then I’ll hopefully know enough to defeat Voldemort and win the battle altogether.

“I know,” was all he said, to placate Hermione, and then he listened again, patiently, to her theory about how his abuse had contributed to the nightmares. Harry had never told her in detail what they were about, because that would involve reliving them, so she thought he mostly dreamed of the Dursleys.

It was pleasant to sit there listening to the words of a friend who cared about him, and, although she was bossy and prying, was not as bossy and prying as either Draco or Snape would have been. Harry could close his eyes and drift, adding little mutters and nods to the conversation as appropriate.

So long as he didn’t fall asleep.

*

Draco chuckled under his breath as he slid the book he’d been reading back onto the shelves and left the library. He’d finally found the perfect spell to cast on Umbridge, after more than three months of searching. No matter how many times he searched out a spell, it didn’t seem cruel enough for what she’d done to Harry—tortured him with real hatred behind the Cruciatus, which Draco recognized from his description of how much it hurt.

And then he’d been watching her idly at dinner the other night, and seen her dig into the pudding served for dessert, closing her eyes in ecstasy all the while. And, finally, he had known what he could do.

The spell he had found was perfect. It would gradually increase Umbridge’s desire for sweets, but she would think it was her own tastes driving her to eat them. And the sweets would react badly with her body, rotting her from the inside. First her teeth would go, and then her stomach, and then her heart would get weaker. She would die what looked like a natural death over a number of years. But no more than five, the book had said.

Draco couldn’t wait to cast the spell. He thought dinner would be the best place, and it would fit his sense of irony to direct it at Umbridge just as she lifted a forkful of tart to her mouth.

He chuckled again, and then stopped. Harry’s voice was speaking from ahead. He would have recognized it if it were speaking on the other side of a dark room and from under that Invisibility Cloak he no longer owned, Draco thought.

What he didn’t recognize was the voice that followed it, too earnest, too soft and confiding. That meant that it wasn’t one of Harry’s friends whispering to him around the corner, and pausing to let him reply, and then speaking urgently again when he did.

Draco sped up. He was almost running by the time he reached the corner. He managed to close his eyes and take a single deep breath, mustering his control in the way that Professor Snape had taught him, before he peered around the corner and at the two people standing there, facing each other.

One was Harry, of course. The other was a girl whose long red hair immediately marked her out as a Weasley. Draco narrowed his eyes. Of course he knew that Weasley had a little sister, but he hadn’t ever paid her any attention, dismissing her as part of the landscape of Gryffindors that crowded around Harry.

He certainly would have noticed if she and Harry had ever spent any substantial time together.

“I’m just worried about you, that’s all,” Weasley was insisting softly, her eyes narrowed and studying Harry in a way that made Draco want to go over and shove her into the wall hard enough to break her skull. “You’re always sneaking out of the common room at night, you’re obviously not getting enough sleep, you won’t talk about your troubles with anyone…Harry, what’s going on?”

And she reached out and laid her hand on his arm.

Harry was smiling, doubtless giving some polite and reasonable and noncommittal answer, but Draco couldn’t hear what he said over the blood roaring in his ears.

She was touching him. On his arm.

And Harry was letting her.

Draco drew his wand without even being aware of it. He wanted to hex her. No, he wanted to use the curse that he’d found to use on Umbridge on her instead. He wanted to make her writhe and squeal with pain. He wanted to hit Harry until he apologized for letting the girl touch him. He wanted to hit Harry with Scourgify after Scourgify until he could be certain that every taint of Weasley’s caress was gone from him. He—

And then Draco forced himself to calm down and start breathing normally, because really, he had no reason to feel this way. He had seen Granger stand that close to Harry and touch him before. He’d seen Weasley hug him after Quidditch games. Neither of them had ever provoked this violent reaction.

It’s because this Weasley is a girl—

But then I should have reacted to Granger the same way.

Draco blinked rapidly and slid his hand up and down his wand. Now Weasley was talking again, looking up at Harry and moving her moist open lips in a way that she probably thought was seductive.

It’s not, Draco wanted to snarl, wanted to scream. It’s not, bitch, and you should get away from him, and you can’t have him, and—

You can’t have him.

Violent shivers broke out over Draco’s body as he actually listened to his thoughts, which was something he hadn’t done in too long. And he took one step backwards, then another. He didn’t think they were soundless, but on the other hand, Harry and his new Weasley were too involved in one another to notice.

I’m acting like I’m jealous of Weasley the way I was jealous of Chang. I’m jealous of anyone Harry pays attention to—but that would have to include his friends. I’m jealous—

I’m jealous of people I think he might date.

And the confusing feelings surged over him again, and Draco did the only thing he could.

He turned and ran for Professor Snape’s office.

*

Severus lifted his head in surprise as someone knocked on the door. It was Saturday afternoon, and he’d looked forwards to a quiet few hours of marking essays; Harry did not have lessons with him today, and no students had been stupid enough this week to merit a Saturday detention. “Enter,” he said.

Draco came tearing into the room, slammed the door behind him, and turned to face Severus with his arms extended across the door as if he thought a wild beast would try to get through it. His breathing was wild and frantic.

Severus stood and promptly cast several locking and privacy charms on the door. His one thought was that Lucius had contacted and threatened the boy, or actively tried to kill him. Perhaps he had read important information out of Draco’s mind after all, despite all their cautions with Occlumency and Lucius’s poor Legilimency.

Or perhaps he had at last set a date for his son to meet the Dark Lord.

“Draco,” he murmured, determined to keep his own tone calm despite the rising level of tension within him. “Tell me what happened.”

“I’m in love with Harry,” Draco said, looking and sounding utterly miserable.

Severus paused. Then he set his wand back on his desk and leaned against it, rubbing his forehead and sighing noisily.

He had known this would come out sooner or later. He had sensed it, ironically, from Potter’s defensiveness when Draco’s name was mentioned first, and then again when Draco took fire at the account of Harry’s abuse. But he had expected at least another year before he would have to deal with it, given how oblivious both children seemed, and he had expected Draco to be shocked by the possibility and then put it aside. After all, he already knew he would have to marry and have children for the Malfoy line. And Severus was fairly certain that Harry had never once considered that he might not be straight. Yes, this was an infatuation that would pass.

Now it seemed as though most of him had always known better and was laughing at the rest. An infatuation that lasted for years, that part of his mind murmured at him. A bond so powerful that it made Draco defy his father when nothing else could. If he defied Lucius and lied to him about his allegiance to the Dark Lord, did you really think that he would go obediently along with Lucius’s plans for his marriage?

Severus silently bid farewell to his vision of a simple few next years and welcomed, not cordially, a complicated new life. “Does he know?” he asked. It was not the best first question, but he needed to know if he would be dealing with a sulky Potter in short order.

“No—no.” Draco’s breathing was returning to something like normal, and Severus congratulated himself for his serene example. But then Draco began pacing back and forth, waving his arms, and Severus realized he might have thought too soon. “I saw him standing with Weasley’s little sister, and I realized I was jealous of her because Harry might date her, and I was jealous of Chang the same way, and—” He turned to Severus, his eyes beseeching. “Professor Snape, what am I going to do? Harry doesn’t have any idea, and I don’t think he’ll want to date me. My father will murder me. And I can’t—I can’t give this up. I can’t be his friend.” He closed his eyes and put a clenched fist to his forehead. “I need more than that from him,” he whispered. “I think maybe I always have.”

“Kindly do not say such things,” Severus said sharply, and shuddered as he shoved the disturbing vision of twelve-year-olds in love from his mind. “What makes you think Harry will not want to date you?”

Draco dropped his hand and looked at Severus as if he were stupid. “Because he was standing next to Weasley’s little sister!” By the end of the sentence, he was shouting, and Severus thought it appropriate to restore his calm by a tap of his wand against the desk that cast a mild Silencing Charm in Draco’s direction.

“Standing next to her does not mean he wants to date her,” Severus said in measured tones, whilst silently berating fate for making him say things this ridiculous. But Draco was his favorite student, and the moment Harry realized what Draco was thinking, his equilibrium would surely be disturbed. A moody Harry would make it more likely that some of the progress Severus had made with him was undone.

And you don’t want to see them suffer unnecessarily.

Severus acknowledged the truth of that, but dismissed it as unimportant. Draco seemed to be working to inflict unnecessary suffering on himself whether or not Severus intervened.

“There is only one rival you have to fear, Draco,” he said, and watched in well-concealed amusement as the boy snapped to attention. “The war. It demands all Harry’s time and attention, and I believe he is convinced that he will die the next time the Dark Lord attacks. He will probably not want to date you, yes, but either because he will feel he cannot afford the distraction, or because he will follow some noble Gryffindor notion of not wishing you to become fond of him when he fears he may die.”

Draco’s nostrils quivered, and his mouth moved. Severus cautiously removed the Silencing Charm. Luckily, Draco didn’t yell, which would have forced Severus to replace it. “I won’t let him do that,” he said.

“Then you will tell him?” Severus asked casually.

Draco’s mouth worked open and then shut. “I’ll have to think about that,” he said, weakly.

Severus rose to his feet. “Do so. This is not the end of the war, Draco, and neither is it the most important thing with which you have to deal at the moment. No,” he added, when he saw Draco’s mouth starting to open, “it is not. Decide how to deal with it and conceal it from your father, and from Harry if you plan to. I will not betray your secret as I have betrayed others. But neither do I want you to spend more time worrying over it than it is worth.”

“It’s worth everything,” Draco said despondently, but, perhaps seeing a certain expression on Severus’s face, left the office before he could say anything more laden with unfortunate teenage melancholy.

Severus sat down behind the desk and warily watched the door, counting heartbeats. Only when he reached a hundred did he relax, convinced that Harry was not about to burst through the door and declare some horrid revelation in turn.

What did I do to deserve this? he demanded silently of any higher power that might be listening. Surely this cannot form part of my penance for betraying Lily, that I should have to listen to the confessions of love-struck teenagers.

No higher power deigned to answer him.

*

“I’m not,” Harry said, wondering how he had got here and why Ginny insisted on talking to him as if she were Hermione. He had already heard one person retreat around the corner. Someone would come along soon, and see them, and get the wrong idea, and then Harry would have to deal with one more rumor. There were already several circulating that he was dating Hermione, for God’s sake.

“But you wouldn’t necessarily know.” Ginny’s eyes met his somberly. “Remember, Harry, I was possessed by V-Voldemort. I know what it was like. Do you remember where you go every night? Are your nights totally dreamless?”

Harry gave a barking laugh before he caught himself. “Merlin, if only.” He pressed his hand over his scar and shook his head. “No, Ginny, I have nightmares all the time. Nightmares about what’s happened and what could happen. And I go to meet Snape for extra training.” He thought it was safe enough to tell her that, since Hermione and Ron had already figured that much out. “I’m not possessed. I remember everything.”

Ginny took a step back from him, sucking on her lip, and then shook her head slowly, eyes never leaving his. “All right. If you’re sure.” A hesitation, and then she asked, “And what about your scar?”

“It burns,” Harry admitted. “But it’s burned since last year, when Voldemort came back. I think I would know by now if he was possessing me. I mean, you said that it was strange, that you knew something was happening even if you didn’t really know what.” He smiled a little at her, though he knew it was strained. “And I promise that I don’t have a diary around.”

At last, Ginny sighed, hugged him, said, “You know that I’m here if you ever have to talk,” and walked away.

Harry closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, shuddering. The burning from his scar had worked through his body, and he felt achy and shivery.

Because you haven’t had enough sleep, he told himself. And you’ve already shared enough with Draco and Snape. Right now, you have to go see Sirius, and he’ll fuss over you if you’re visibly hurt and depressed. So do it.

Taking a deep breath, Harry forced a smile onto his face, opened his eyes, and then went in search of Sirius.

Just one more thing I have to do. And probably not for much longer.

Chapter 19.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

hogwartshoney.livejournal.com

Slightly LONGER?

you say that like it's a BAD thing.....

*off to read*

From:

seedless-acorn.livejournal.com

That's right, it isn't a bad thing at all!

(no subject)

From:

lomonaaeren.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-02-22 10:15 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

lethelynn.livejournal.com

I admit I had a bit of a cackle at Draco's mad dash to Severus' office after his realization.

“I’m in love with Harry,” Draco said, looking and sounding utterly miserable.

Heh... poor Draco.

Can't wait for the next post.

Edited Date: 2009-02-22 05:28 am (UTC)

From:

Chapter Eighteen of 'Inter Vivos'- Realization

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