Sixth-Floor Boys Bathroom
This one, shockingly, isn't nearly as bad as the Astronomy Tower usually is. Still, Draco strides over to the sink he had been standing in front of the day that Harry Potter had nearly killed him. He still hasn't figured out how all of this is possible, what exactly is happening that's making these dreams more real than they should be. He's not even sure if he's just somehow a seer and this is his magic's way of getting him information he wouldn't otherwise know, or if some strange magic is somehow tying their dreams together and he's actually talking to the real Harry. On the one hand, he knows that many seers tend to start out as skilled Legilimense, which is certainly something he would consider himself. On the other hand, Harry has been staring at him out in the real world an alarming amount, to the point where Draco's own friends have been asking if something is happening again.
Draco isn't the least bit surprised this time when he catches Harry's reflection in the mirror, standing a bit behind him. He is, however, surprised that Harry looks sick, that his eyes are seemingly glued, not to Draco's own, but rather to his chest.
Oh. Draco looks down at his own chest and absently presses his fingers to it, blindly tracing the scars he knows are there through his shirt. Harry must feel guilty over what happened here. Something about the thought makes Draco smile wryly.
He finds himself quietly admitting, his voice echoing through the tiled space, “After Dumbledore died, during all those long days and weeks that I was trapped in the manor with them, there were days when I wished Snape had never shown up that day. If he hadn't appeared I might have died and then the Death Eaters wouldn't have gotten into the castle and Dumbledore wouldn't have died the way he did and I wouldn't have had to go through all of that.”
He's not sure why he tells Harry that. Maybe just because it feels good to tell someone. He doesn't let himself look at Harry as he says it either. The other boy had already looked sick before Draco started talking, he doesn't want to know how his expression would have changed with the revelation.
“For days after this, it felt like every time I closed my eyes I could still see you bleeding out on the floor in here.” Harry's admittance is just as soft spoken as Draco's had been. “It took me until the end of the school year before I could look at you without being right back here. I had nightmares about it for months. Still do, sometimes, obviously. I think… I think that out of everything that happened during the war, this might be my biggest regret. All the other horrible things that happened were enough out of my control that I can reason the guilt back into something manageable, but this… this was all me.”
Draco closes his eyes at the words. There's something about the way that they reverberate through the space around them that makes the words feel like they take up physical space. They linger in the room around them long after they've been spoken into an existence. Draco breathes them in, let's them settle against his skin.
“Do you think…” Harry starts to speak again, but trails off, takes a breath that's far too loud in this amplified space, and then starts again, "Do you think that in some other life we could've been friends?”
Draco does look at him now. “We're friends now, aren't we?”
Silence stretches out between them, nearly as loud as their words. The look on Harry's face is indecipherable.
“Hermione thinks this is all some way for my mind to cope.”
Draco forces himself to hum lightly as his heart rate picks up because the phrasing of that statement sure seems to imply that this is a shared dream space and that that is the real Harry Potter he's talking to. “Smart girl.”
“I know, but it's just- if that really is what this is, then I wish my mind would pick a better coping mechanism.”
Draco closes his eyes again and lets himself lean his body weight against the sink. “Not a fan of spending your nights with me?” His voice falls flat, even to his own ears.
“The opposite actually. I keep feeling like I've really gotten to know Draco, the real Draco, which makes things confusing when I wake up and I see you- him, in the halls around school. Suddenly I want to go talk to him, but how bonkers would that make me look?”
Draco takes a deep breath to try and calm his racing heartbeat. What in Merlin's name is he supposed to say to any of this? He can't very well start spouting off about this actually being real somehow, that wouldn't get them anywhere! The only way to properly convince Harry it's all real would probably be to approach him in real life, but the very thought of doing that kind of makes Draco want to throw up. “You could always approach him about something other than the dreams.” He ends up suggesting.
“Yeah. I've thought about doing that too, but everyone would just think I've gone mad or something. Harry Potter doesn't spend time with Draco Malfoy.”
Draco knows the feeling. He swallows. “So don't approach him then. He'll be fine without you, and what do you need him for anyway? What's one more friend when the entire wizarding world already worships you.”
“But that's just it!” The outburst is nearly loud enough to make Draco flinch in the emptiness of the bathroom, but Harry continues, uncaring of his own volume, “With you, I don't have to be afraid that someday you'll realize I'm not some perfect, golden boy savior, because you already know that! We've seen the worst parts of each other and yet when it came down to it, being friends with you is easy. Except that's not true at all because all of this has only been some weird dream thing and it's all just making me feel confused and lonely and I'm terrified that I'm falling in love with someone who doesn't really exist!”
Draco gasps awake in his dorm, his heart pounding, his ears still ringing with Harry's accidental confession. Not accidental in that he didn't mean to say it, but accidentally in that he didn't think he was saying it to the real Draco.
Oh Merlin, Harry bloody Potter just confessed to him.
What bloody time is it? He grabs his wand. Too early. Far too early.
But he can't go back to sleep now, not with Harry's confession still ringing through his mind.
Draco desperately needs to talk to someone about this, really talk to someone, not just mentioning vaguely about odd dreams, but actually trusting someone with whatever the bloody hell is happening, because it is well and truly getting to be too much for him to handle alone. He can't tell Gregory, he loves the fool, but he is, well, a fool. Blaise would probably be an asshole about it, and on the off chance he wasn't, he'd at the very least be weird about it, and that just might be worse. Pansy would definitely have some opinions about the whole situation, she has opinions about everything, and there's a chance that she'd be weird about the whole thing like Blaise, but at the very least Draco could rely on her to take him seriously about the situation… Pansy it is then.
He ends up getting ready for the day early and going down to the common room to sit in the calm silence for a while until other students start to wake up and begin their days. Pansy comes down before Gregory and Blaise do, just like Draco knew she would, and it gives him an easy chance to pull her aside for a private chat where he proceeds to tell her everything.
When he finally finishes a time later, Pansy does little more than raise a single, unimpressed eyebrow at him. “I don't understand, what's the issue here?”
Draco does his best not to huff in frustration and pent up anxiety. “The issue is that Harry bloody Potter basically confessed to me, only he doesn't think it was real!”
The look she gives him is partly a look of affection and partly a look of exasperation. “Draco, love, you've been pining after Potter in one form another since first year. Just ask him out already.”
He blinks at her, takes in her words, and lets them sink in. “You're not… upset?”
“Of course I'm not upset! I may be harshly judging your taste in men, but I'm not upset.”
He reaches out to grab her hand, squeezing it in a silent thank you and then just letting the small show of physical affection linger as he thinks for a moment. “I don’t… I don't know how I would even begin to approach him.”
Pansy rolls her eyes. “It doesn't matter how you do it. Just do it.”