The Cellar at Malfoy Manor
Harry finds himself in the cellar at Malfoy Manor and he's not alone. Draco is stood facing the wall next to the door, his hands and forehead pressed against the cool stone.
“Malfoy.”
The other boy flinches at the suddenness of Harry's voice, but then he straightens and turns to lean his back against the wall instead. “Potter.”
Unsure of what else to do in this moment, Harry just moves to sit down against the wall next to Draco. The other boy seems to examine him for a moment before sitting down too.
Silence settles between them and its oddly comfortable. That is, until stomping footsteps sound above them. Draco flinches and then freezes beside him, he's not even sure the other boy is breathing. But the footsteps move away and eventually they can't hear them anymore and Draco let's out a sigh and relaxes slightly. He looks at Harry, his eyes guarded, but some kind of emotion is clearly swimming behind that.
“They can't know you're here.”
And just like that it clicks in Harry's head. A dream. This is just a dream, and it's not the first one he's had about Draco lately, because in the last one he had said that same thing to Draco, only about the Dursleys… This is weird. Harry doesn't have recurring dreams, at least not like this, and he certainly is never aware that he’s dreaming. He should definitely ask Hermione about this later. One weird dream is a fluke, but two… Voldemort's gone, he reminds himself, no reason to panic over a couple of odd dreams, even if Draco Malfoy of all people is in them.
Harry closes his eyes and tips his head back against the wall. “When I finally got a proper bedroom, the Dursley's used to lock me in it.” He finds himself admitting. “They even put bars over the window, so I couldn't write to anyone either.”
There's a beat of silence and he turns to look at Draco to find the other boy watching the door. Then Draco admits, “They never locked any doors here, but they didn't need to. If you went where you weren't allowed, you'd be punished. I needed… I needed his permission to ever leave, I wasn't allowed to owl my friends. My home became my prison.”
Harry feels a pang of sympathy for the other boy before shaking his head at himself, this isn't really Draco, it's just some weird dream, so it's likely none of this is even true. But if somehow it is…
“We couldn't leave the cupboard,” He finds himself explaining, “Because Vernon and Petunia would've been livid.”
Draco turns to look at him at that. “Your aunt and uncle? They're only muggles, aren't they?”
Harry huffs an unamused laugh and picks at his nails. “Yeah, and they're damn proud of it. They hate anything they don't think is normal. I'm pretty sure if he thought he could get away with it, Vernon would kill any magical being that dared step foot in that house, myself included.”
“So they couldn't know I was there because…”
“You're pureblood, not an ounce of normal in you, according to them. I just… I had to sit back and watch how they talked about my parents, how they talked to my friends, how they treated me. I don't want to see anything like that again.”
There's pain visible in Draco's eyes when Harry meets them, pain and understanding. Draco's leg shifts until it's just barely pressing against Harry's and neither of them say another word. They sit in companionable silence until Harry wakes up.
“I've been having some weird dreams lately.” Harry tells Hermione and Ron later the next day. The two share a look before turning to him with twin expressions of concern.
“Like the ones you used to get?” Ron asks.
“No!” Harry is quick to reassure, “No they're not like those! At least, I don't think they are.”
His friends relax at that. “Then what kind of odd dreams?” Hermione asks.
“I had the first one about a week ago and in that one I was at the Dursley's, and then in the one last night I was in the cellar at Malfoy Manor. I wasn't allowed to leave either time and they both just felt so real. Also Malfoy was there both times.”
Ron and Hermione share another look. “If you ask me,” Hermione starts, slowly, “it sounds like it might be a coping mechanism.”
“Coping mechanism?”
“You know, like your brain is trying to come up with ways to process everything that happened.”
“And its doing that through dreams about Draco Malfoy?”
“Well, you always have had a bit of an obsession with him, mate.” Ron says.
Harry chooses to ignore that comment. “I don't know, they both just felt so… real.”
“Maybe you could talk to one of the healers at St. Mungos about it? They would probably know more.”
Harry waves Hermione off. “I'm not that concerned about it yet.” She gives him a hard look and he smiles at her. “I promise that if they get worse, I'll do whatever you recommend.”
“Fine, just don't let it get too bad first.”
“Yeah, and try not to obsess over Malfoy too much again this year. I think I'd go mad if all that started again.”