Chapter 13
Upon arriving at the table Harry unshrinks the tiramisu and attempts to feed it to anyone who will listen. Most people ended up with an obscene amount of the treat. Draco watches him force it on people for only a few more moments before he directs his attention to the Gryffindor table.
Draco nudges Harry and gets him to divert his attention to Nigel, who was tapping on Edison Burkes shoulder nervously. When he turns around Edison looks positively thrilled to see Nigel. Harry makes a noise of interest and stops forcing people to take the tiramisu to watch.
Nigel is a violent pink as he speaks with Edison. Eventually, Edison's grin widens and he ruffles Nigel's hair. Nigel looks up at the table and gives them a thumbs up. Harry grins and returns it but Draco just nods proudly.
***
Harrys first class of the day was quiet. Too quiet.
“Alright guys, what is it?” The class exchanges glances before Francene Hudds speaks up.
“Is it true?”
Harry stares at her raising an eyebrow, “I’m not a skilled legilimens, I think you oughta be more specific.”
“You and Professor Malfoy answered the door wasted, shirtless, and covered in ink.” She asks, Merlin's beard, Ms. Hudds is a handful.
“Francene.” Her friends hiss, but she only gives them a mischievous smile.
Harry coughs, “We weren’t wasted, and we’re adults we’re within our rights to have a life outside of work.”
Francene hums, “Oh alright, are you aware your jumper has a D on it.”
“Yes, Ms. Hudds, I am.” Harry says exasperated.
“Just making sure,” She says with false innocents.
“I have some worksheets for you to do and if we stop talking about last night I’ll put on some music in the background, how about that?” This seems to placate the class, but he still needs to get his revenge so he plays Green Day.
“Excuse me Professor Potter,” One of his students ask, “What is this?”
“Muggle music,” He grins.
***
Draco has decided he hates children. Not really, but he’s getting close. If he hears one more student talk about how they wished they could’ve seen Harry and him shirtless last night, he’s going to hurl himself off the astronomy tower.
When his second block comes in, a few students are humming things about Americans, and idiots. An adept statement.
Eventually, he gets the students to stop talking long enough to have them focus on their assignments.
In fact he manages to divert the attention from the rumors going around for the entire day and he is sitting quietly in his fifth block when several Gryffindors rush into his classroom.
“Professor Malfoy,” One of the students said while the other one gasped to catch his breath, “We were learning about safe ways to disarm a dangerous wizard and Professor Potter let us try the sleeping charm on him.”
“And something happened, we sent some others to go get Madam Pomfrey, but we couldn’t stay in the classroom so the entire class is waiting outside.” The other student explained.
“Fuck,” Draco curses forgetting his students and sprinting down the hall, only vaguely remembering to call as he sprints away, “Ms. Fosters in charge,”
The students run after him and when he gets to the classroom Poppy is already there, “Professor Malfoy, you can not go in there.”
Draco ignores her and throws open the doors, sure enough, objects are flying hazardously around the room and blood is seeping from the walls. It’s not hard to tell that the blood spelled out the words, ‘I must not tell lies.’.
Draco places a hand on Harry's shoulder and is sucked into the dream just like before. Once he was in the dream he took in his surroundings and he recognized it almost immediately as Umbridge's office. Sitting at the table was 15 year old Harry being looked down upon by Umbridge herself.
“How many times?” He asks the horrible woman.
She giggles in a way that makes Draco want to slam his fist into her face, "Oh, as long as it takes for the message to sink in."
Harry started to write, he winced as the words dug themselves into his hand.
Draco makes his decision. He turns to Dolores Umbridge and punches her right in her toad-like face. Young Harry looked up at him.
“Draco?” Draco ignored him and instead grabbed his hand.
“Is this why you didn’t want to make those kids write lines?” He traces a finger over the words.
“What?” Harry asks.
Draco sighs, “We’ll talk about it when you wake up, speaking of I think I’m giving Poppy a heart attack.”
This seemed to do it, Harry woke up and Draco was slammed back into his own body. The flying objects fell to the floor with a clatter and the blood soaked back into the wall before disappearing.
Draco grabs Harry's hand and sees the faint scarring of ‘I must not tell lies’. He takes a deep breath before starting to shout at him.
“Harry James Potter, what in Merlin’s name were you thinking?” Draco starts, “You know this happens yet you still let them test the spell on you,”
“I assumed I’d be fine, and I couldn’t let them test it on each other I didn’t know if they’d accidentally put each other in a coma.” He tries to explain.
“So instead you risk them getting hit by flying objects, that's so much safer, thank Merlin you thought about it.” Draco disparages.
“Sorry,” Harry says bashfully, Draco cuffs him in the back of the head.
The students begin entering the room and Poppy looks him over once before apparently deciding he’s fine and lecturing Draco for being reckless.
“I’m fine Madam Pomfrey this isn’t the first time something like this has happened and I knew I could fix it.” Poppy hmphs and walks away.
Harry takes a deep breath.
“So I think we need to talk about what just happened.” Harry waves his hand and the desks go back to where they were before the incident and gestures for the students to sit down, “We all know about the war a couple years back, we also know the part I played in it, after the war my good friends encouraged me to see a mind healer who diagnosed me with PTSD, does anyone know what that is?”
The class shook their heads unfamiliar with the term.
“It summed up means, I have flashbacks to the war that are nearly debilitating and a few things can trigger panic attacks, like small spaces, the dreams are the worst of it, but mostly I manage pretty well, I’m not the only one from the war who suffers from PTSD, I might not even be the one who suffers the most, me getting help is what allowed me to teach.”
The class is silent as they take in the information. Draco rests a hand on Harry's shoulder.