Windows
In the past few weeks, Harry had come to an uncomfortable realisation.
He would never understand Draco.
It was like being dragged through a storm, keeping up with his moods, perfectly civil one moment, and screaming rage the next. He’d thought they’d reached an understanding with their deal, but Draco now seemed determined to snub Harry at every turn.
The only thing was, it’s hard to stay angry at someone when you’ve quite literally cut them open and held their chest together with your bare hands. Makes you a bit guilty. You start feeling bad for them, even if they're a git who seemed like he deserved it at the moment.
This wasn’t helped by the fact Harry still saw through Voldemort’s eyes.
How do you tell someone you know what they sound like when they're being cut open and flayed, thinking they'll surely die this time? How do you look someone in the eyes after watching them force themself to their knees in service of a madman you know they hate? How do you say 'I'm sorry you think you have to do this, but also it’s quite helpful apparently so please continue?'
Even when he was awake, Harry could hear Draco screaming. Sometimes it was after the sectumsempra, sometimes an echo of Bellatrix and her games, most of the time horrific.
Because he knew Draco spent most of his time as a Death Eater in Malfoy Manor, he saw it every time.
And tonight was no different.
As he went to sleep, begrudgingly as always, Harry began to recognise Voldemort's sitting room.
It was dark. Draco was sat to the side, scribbling notes with his right hand, twirling his wand with his left.
Harry felt Voldemort’s annoyance like his own, some abstract feeling of being denied.
He watched his own hand raise to Draco’s chin, grazing lightly.
Draco didn’t respond, and Harry felt his annoyance grow.
“Draco,” His voice called, “Have you no updates?”
The young Death Eater still didn’t look up, “I will not risk our plans yet, they are quite precarious.”
“So you have not made sure they are stable before you implemented them?” Harry felt his eyes squint.
Draco still did not look up, though he did stop writing, “Any of our worthwhile plans have a certain amount of risk, that risk is minimised when as few people as possible know of the plan in the first place.”
Harry grabbed Draco’s chin, “Look at me when you-”
And Harry felt fear.
There was nothing behind Draco’s eyes. No thoughts, no feelings. There wasn’t even the mental block of a shield, as there was when someone was using occlumency.
No, it was like walking into a familiar room, but all the windows were gone, and it was cold, and dark, and the door had just slammed shut behind you.
Harry felt something brush against his mind, a sudden distinction between him and Voldemort that wasn’t there before. It was cool and quick, retreating before Harry could analyse the feeling further.
He felt Voldemort try to pull out of Draco’s mind, but there was no escape. He was no longer the aggressor, and all exits had closed.
Distantly, in the part of his mind that still saw the physical world, Harry realised Draco hadn’t blinked once, his wide silver eyes staring past Voldemort, into his very being, and somehow, seeing Harry through all of it.
Draco tilted his head, his chin still firmly in Voldemort’s hands, and Harry was thrown violently back into himself.
The sudden feeling of being himself again was jarring, to say the least. It always took a few moments for Harry to fully shake off Voldemort’s mind, like a particularly stubborn tick.
But this time, he was Voldemort, and then he was Harry. No transition, no blend.
Harry sat for the rest of the night, thinking about what he saw, and trying to reason out what the hell happened. Why was it just Voldemort and Draco? Usually there were more people. It obviously wasn’t a meeting, they were in the sitting room, and Draco wasn’t telling Voldemort something, something important.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait long, as a few hours later, the door to his room swung open.
Now, Harry, in all of his strange years living, had more than enough reason to be suspicious of self-opening-doors, but this was Grimmauld Place, and for some odd, unexplainable reason, it felt safer here.
Walking out of the room he shared with Ron and Hermione, careful to tiptoe around them, Harry only spared a brief thought for what Grimmauld was leading him too. Perhaps he was wrong to do that, as he was soon faced by one Draco Malfoy.
It was obvious Draco knew that Harry knew. His eyes gleamed, so much brighter than they’d been even a month ago, almost reflective.
“You’ve seen.” he says, more statement than question, all of the hostility from the past weeks gone.
Harry opened his mouth, to reassure, to defend, to explain, but all that came out was, "Yeah."
There was something strange about this, but Harry couldn’t tell what.
Draco sighed, looking out of the window from where he was leaning against the desk. His leg must have been bothering him again. He always made the leaning look so casual, but Draco, for all his tendency to lounge, had always stood straight when holding an important conversation.
It was hard as ever to reconcile this Draco with the one from a month ago, and the one from Hogwarts. It seemed like whenever Harry got too close to figuring him out, Draco would run the other direction, just to piss him off.
“Don’t tell them.” Draco said suddenly.
The command took Harry off guard, “What?”
“Potter-”
“Harry.” He interrupted.
“Harry,” Draco corrected, annoyed, “I’m asking you not to tell them. Not about anything you’ve seen, and especially not Blaise.”
“Why?” Harry asked, “He cares-”
“Oh screw off,” Draco rolled his eyes, “This is bigger than that. And I’m not telling you not to, I’m asking you,” he paused, “So, don’t tell them, not yet.”
“I think your fiancé has a right to know what’s happening.” Harry said finally, a thought he’d kept to himself bubbling to the surface.
He thought about what it might be like, to sit by, not having a clue what your partner was doing. It made an ugly feeling rise in his chest, the idea that Draco just left Blaise for days on end, with no idea about where he was or what he was doing.
“I know, Harry.” Draco sighed, looking away, his hand flexing harshly on the handle of his cane.
His face was as calm as ever, no evidence of the spell Harry had used on him earlier in the year, but still something just looked wrong.
“Please,” Draco asked, the word shocking enough Harry shut his mouth and stopped his impending interruption, “Think of it from his perspective, will you? I leave him, and he’s forced to wonder for weeks if I’m alright, where I’ve gone, if I’ll come back.”
He dropped his cane, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, looking a thousand years old, even if his eyes were bright and his skin perfect, “He knows the work I’m doing is dangerous, deadly, even. But I come back, and we can both be happy knowing I’m not dead.”
Draco raised an eyebrow as Harry sunk onto the floor across from him, their legs taking up the narrow hallway, “I still have to leave from time to time of course, but we both get to live in a wonderful world of plausible deniability, wherein I am schrodinger's cat, alive and dead every time I leave his sight.”
“But there's a possibility, however slight, that every time I leave, I’m perfectly fine, doing good work on behalf of the order safely behind a desk or something.” Draco looked at Harry, and for the first time, Harry thought Draco’s eyes were a bit unsettling.
“Would you take that from him? Would you make him confront the reality that every time I leave, I willingly subject myself to torture, and it might be the last time he sees me?” Draco’s hand went to the base of his throat, right where a necklace would sit, “He’s loyal, he’d never ask me to stop. You would make it his fault this is happening, in his mind, for knowing, and not stopping me.
Harry swallowed, “I don’t know-”
“Harry, I’m asking you, because there will come a day when I don’t come back.” Draco interrupted, “One day, there is nothing but possibility, and I’ll need you to tell him.”
He stood, leaning heavily on his cane, “He doesn’t deserve that kind of hope.”