Eye of the Storm

When Eos arrived at his office window and tapped it gently with a claw, Draco stood absent-mindedly, newspaper in hand, savouring a sip of coffee as he opened the window for her. It was sunny outside for a change, he only had a couple of patients scheduled for today, and even the Prophet’s mundane headlines promised a relaxed, stress-free day.

He knew his day wouldn’t be a quiet one as soon as he caught sight of Hermione Granger’s signature at the bottom of the letter.

Feeding the beautiful European Eagle owl a treat, he read Granger’s neat compact handwriting and felt his brows settle into a frown.

Not wasting a moment, he pulled out quill and parchment and scrawled a quick reply. With Eos on her way to deliver it, he sat down heavily on his cushioned ergonomic chair and waited.

*

Not a half-hour later, there was a knock on his door followed by dark brown eyes peeking into his office.

“Come in,” he said, willing his shoulders to remain loose and his breaths to remain deep and steady.

“Good morning,” said Granger, coming to stand before his desk. He nodded curtly and pointed at the chair by her side, and she sat reluctantly before saying, hands on the table, “He needs your help.”

Draco nodded again.

“How and when exactly did it happen?”

Granger’s shoulders tensed slightly. She frowned, as though wishing they could skip the explanations and go straight to the action. Still, she said, “It was yesterday evening, around nine o’clock. Harry stayed at work late because a customer called in with an emergency. They’d barely stepped foot into Diagon when a hooded person threw the curse at him. The customer petrified the culprit before calling the Aurors and St Mungo’s. We’ve seen four Mind Healers and contacted another three by owl”—her voice rose in frustration, her frown deepening—“and they’ve all said the same thing. That Harry’s trapped inside his own mind, and that the only way to help him break free of the loop is through Legilimency.”

“From what you said in your letter, it seems like the curse was a mind-locking one,” Draco said calmly, “and Legilimency is the best-known method to undo such a curse.”

“We know that.” She breathed in deep, exhaled slowly, and her voice was steadier when she continued, “We know, and that’s not the problem. The problem is their attitude. Every single one of them had that disgusting glint in their eyes—like they’d just won the lottery. Like taking a peek into Harry’s mind was some sort of prize.”

Draco took in the heavy bags under her eyes, the rumpled state of her clothes, the biting tone. It’d been around fourteen hours since her friend had received a curse that’d put him in emotional agony, and she’d likely spent every minute fighting tooth and nail to find someone who’d treat Harry Potter with the decency any patient in such a fragile situation deserved, and not like a lab experiment.

“You said the witness heard the curse,” he said. When she nodded tightly, he slid quill and parchment to her side of the table. “Can you write it down for me?”

When she slid the parchment back to him, he paled.

“We don’t know what it’s making him remember,” she murmured, and rubbed her face tiredly with a hand. “Our best guess is it’s the last year of the war, but…” Her eyes met his. “All we really know is he’s suffering. He’s suffering immensely, and he needs someone who won’t want to turn his pain into the next Prophet headline.”

She sagged back in the chair with a sigh. Took a moment to close her eyes, and then said, “I want to trust your own time spent near Voldemort and your truce with Harry since your trial will be enough for you to be that Healer for him. If you want to take his case, that is,” she added belatedly.

“You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” he assured her, and his heart clenched ever-so-slightly when he saw her relax further into the chair and close her eyes in silent relief. “But in order for me to help him, I’m going to need you to trust me, Hermione,” he added, surprising himself—and her too, given the way her brows arched—by using her given name. “Not because of my past with him or with Voldemort, but because I am an expert in my field and I remain professional with all my patients, regardless of who they are.”

“I’m going to need you to say that again after you’ve seen him,” she murmured.

“Where is he now?”

“He’s at his house, at Grimmauld Place. Ron is with him,” she said. “We tried to take him to St Mungo’s, but he… he doesn’t like to be touched. Or moved.” She flinched minutely. “He cries out and thrashes when we try.”

“I understand.” He glanced at his schedule, then back at her. “I have one other patient this morning, but I can see him at midday. Does his house have a Floo address?”

“Yes, Number 12 Grimmauld Place,” she said. “I’ll grant your office Floo access as soon as I get there.”

“Thank you.”

She made as if to stand, but then her eyes found his and she paused.

“Don’t be late,” she said, gaze piercing. “He doesn’t deserve a minute more of this pain, and his body is going through severe distress. He hasn’t slept, eaten, or used the bathroom since this happened. We barely got him to drink a glass of water at 3 am, and it was hell.”

He nodded curtly, and after a moment her gaze softened somewhat, settling on a silent, weary plea. Then she stood with a sigh, and after hesitating at the threshold for the barest of moments, she closed the door softly behind her.

Draco sagged in his chair, sighing, shaking the tension from his shoulders. Inevitably, his eyes trained on the piece of parchment before him.

Captivum Pessimum ad Memoriam.

“Trapped in one’s worst memories,” he murmured, tracing the words with his fingertips. They looked so harmless like this, written with Granger’s steady handwriting in his favourite brand of ink.

There had been a time in his life when, having heard all about Voldemort’s—according to his father, fascinating—torture methods during the First War, Draco had been terrified any single misstep would result in him being subjected to this particular curse. Living under the same roof as him, Draco had watched Voldemort place the curse on quite a few of his prisoners. Sometimes, he’d Crucio them beforehand until their throats were raw from screaming so they’d spend the rest of their days reliving that pain. Being tortured by their own minds, saving him the effort so he could sit back and watch as they writhed in unrelenting agony.

Realising his breath had quickened, he rubbed his palms over his thighs and looked around him to remind himself where he was. He was no longer a scared teenager trapped between forces he could barely understand. He was an adult, a professional; one with a blooming career he’d built for himself despite the adversity. The war was long over, and Riddle had been dead for almost a decade.

He fixed his eyes on the parchment again.

“But if it’s all truly in the past,” he wondered aloud, “why have you been attacked now?”

Because that was the question, wasn’t it? Who, if not someone who wanted to avenge their fallen Dark Lord, would cold-bloodedly put Potter through such extreme psychological agony? Potter might have been the Saviour of the Wizarding World, Head Auror in training and two times Witch Weekly’s Most-Charming-Smile Award winner when he was twenty and fresh out of the war, but these days he owned a pet shelter and veterinary clinic in Diagon Alley, for Merlin’s sake. His worst enemies were probably the Kneazles he had to put under in order to give them a nail trim and a ridiculous haircut.

There was a knock on the door, and then a small, excited, “Hi, Healer Malfoy!” as it opened, and Draco pushed it all to the back of his mind and smiled at a mother and daughter as they approached his desk.

*

When he emerged from the hearth at number 12, Grimmauld Place, the first thing that threw him off was no one was waiting for him. He’d been expecting at least Hermione to be anxiously pacing the room, and at most an army of redhead Gryffindors about to strangle him for being fifteen minutes late. But the room was empty, and quiet save for the crackling of the hearth and the soft fluttering of the heavy curtains by the giant, open windows.

The second thing that threw him off were the decorations. If asked what Potter’s style would be, he would probably have described an adult version of the Gryffindor common room—warm tones, mismatched furniture, patchwork blankets draped across the sofa, and a chaotic yet balanced array of mugs, glasses, magazines and trinkets covering every surface.

He hadn’t been expecting a Muggle television. Or a three-storey blanket fort covering an entire wall of the room, floor to ceiling with giant stuffed toys poking from the windows and a slide leading into a giant water mattress. Or a—Draco had to physically stop himself from gaping—rainbow hammock hanging from the ceiling by the window.

He turned around, and his eyes fell on the mural of kids’ drawings that framed the entirety of the wall at both sides of the hearth. Curiosity getting the better of him—for as far as he was aware, Potter was childless—he leaned close and inspected the pieces of paper and parchment that turned the living room into an explosion of colour.

They were covered by a layer of magical protection so the sun wouldn’t damage them. Many of them pictured Potter alongside kids and animals, as well as flying on a broomstick and surrounded by hearts and fields of flowers. Others were more scenic or… abstract in nature, for lack of a better word.

“You’re late.”

Draco jolted, and quickly turned to face Ron Weasley, who was leaning wearily against the door frame opposite him. Draco had scarcely seen him in years, but even he could see Weasley looked… there was no way around it: he looked like shit.

“Apologies,” Draco said. “My previous session took longer than expected.” And I panicked in front of the hearth for about five minutes before taking the Floo, he added mentally, still mad at himself for it.

Ron sighed, and pressed his forehead against the wooden frame, eyes closed.

“S’okay,” he mumbled. “It’s probably for the better anyway. I just finished cleaning his bedsheets.”

He met Draco’s gaze, and the misery in his eyes left no question as to why the bedsheets had needed cleaning.

“May I see him?” Draco asked gently—as gently as he could manage what with the growing aching in his chest.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Ron said, tone bitter—whether from exhaustion or distrust toward him, Draco didn’t know. He turned and walked back out of the living room, gesturing at Draco to follow. “Come on. He’s upstairs.”

He followed Ron to the second storey and down a sunlit corridor—eyes darting over rows of framed pictures of Potter with friends, family and animals alike.

His eyes hovered on a picture he remembered seeing on the cover of The Prophet years ago. Harry, standing in front of his pet rescue on the day of the opening, waved at the camera, his smile just as bright as the words that gleamed above the building window: Hedwig’s Safe Haven.

They came to a halt in front of a dark wooden door just as Hermione emerged from it, closing it softly behind her. She looked somehow worse than she had an hour before. Her eyes were red and puffy, as though from crying.

“You’re late,” she murmured, and her nasal tone confirmed Draco’s suspicions.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Has he settled down?” Ron asked her. He reached out a hand and touched the back of her fingers, delicately. Her shoulders sagged ever so slightly.

“A bit.”

She didn’t sound like she believed it. If Ron’s frown was anything to go by, he didn’t either.

“Okay,” Ron said after a moment. He straightened, squared his shoulders, schooled his expression. “Let’s do this.”

He turned to Draco.

“Look, I’ma be honest with you, Malfoy. You’re probably the last person I’d trust if it were me in there.” Draco scoffed, but Ron continued, “But I trust Hermione’s judgement of you, and most importantly, I trust Harry’s. And before all this shit went down, for some reason beyond my comprehension, he was positive you’d changed.”

Draco’s breath stuttered. Potter talked to his friends about him? In a positive light? They hadn’t even talked since… well, he couldn’t remember when they’d last talked. All he knew was they often crossed paths in Diagon Alley after work, and Potter never hesitated to look right into Draco’s eyes when it happened. Didn’t hesitate to wave at him, to even smile at him, like you would any other old classmate you saw in the street. It always threw Draco in a loop of self-doubt and anger. He’d half-convinced himself Potter was taking the piss—it was the only explanation that had made any sense until now.

It was relieving, somehow, to know Potter’s smile had been genuine. Relieving and nerve-wracking, because he couldn’t remember ever smiling back.

“I understand,” he told Ron, who nodded curtly and reached for the bedroom door handle. Draco walked into the sunlit room behind him, with Hermione in tow.

Even before Ron stepped aside for him to get a clear view of Harry, Draco’s heart clenched.

He’d heard the way people under this curse cried before, but nothing could have prepared him for the sounds Harry was making. They weren’t loud, or piercing. They were small, and frail, and oh, so vulnerable Draco almost wanted to walk right back out of the room. It felt wrong to witness Harry in such a state of helplessness—like he was overstepping a boundary, taking advantage.

But that feeling was exactly why he needed to be here. By the sound of it, the other Healers Ron and Hermione had talked to hadn’t been scared of taking advantage—and if Draco’s experience around other professionals in his field was anything to go by, their concerns had probably not been unfounded.

Ron stepped aside, and Draco’s breath caught, all thoughts coming to an abrupt halt.

Harry was lying on his side on a king-sized bed, curled into a ball, shuddering. Draco couldn’t see his face, but he could see the way his fist tightened around strands of his hair with every whimper, could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the clenching of his legs as he shrunk impossibly into himself.

He took another tentative step toward the bed, barely daring to breathe, and suddenly Hermione was by his side, grasping his arm, murmuring, “Don’t touch him.”

“I won’t.” Draco looked around—saw a couple of wooden kitchen chairs sitting close to the other side of the bed, presumably brought in by Ron and Hermione to sit by his side. “Does magic usage bother him?”

“Not that we know of. Why?”

With a slow movement, Draco pulled his wand out, saying, “It upsets some patients in similar situations, but not all of them—”

A loud, long cry emerged from Harry’s throat, and Draco pressed his mouth shut, not daring to move, to even breathe as he watched Harry’s body writhe and shrink and heave wetly. Heart in his throat, he glanced at Ron and Hermione, who looked back at him with a pain and desperation that made his heart hurt impossibly more.

With a quick, almost imperceptible movement of his wand, he summoned an ergonomic chair for himself identical to the one in his office. He had a hunch his body would need the familiarity of it when he dove into Harry’s mind.

He carefully sat down, wincing when Harry whimpered and pulled at his hair again. Hermione, too, made a pained sound, and when Draco turned to look at her and Ron, he found Ron was holding her in a tight embrace, her face buried in his chest.

“I’ve got him,” Draco said softly, and they both turned to look at him. “You can trust me.”

A second went by before she murmured, “I trust you.”

Ron nodded curtly. “We trust you. Please, just—get him out of there.”

Draco turned back to Harry. He took a slow, steadying breath and pointed his wand at him.

“Legilimens,” he murmured, and held his breath as his consciousness parted from his body.

He treaded close to Harry’s mind carefully, feeling his way around until he found the edge of his consciousness. Once he did, he halted and, in a clear but serene voice, said, Harry, this is Healer Draco Malfoy talking to you through Legilimency. I’m coming in.

There was no reply, not that he’d expected one. With a minute push, he crossed the barrier and his consciousness slipped easily into Harry’s.

For a few seconds, he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear—couldn’t feel anything save for the faint line of consciousness that connected him to his body, sat a few feet away from Harry’s bed and leaned forward in concentration. He used the connection to draw in a steadying breath, and with his next exhale he allowed himself to relax, to ease deeper into the foreign consciousness that encompassed him.

After a few moments, the first, distant sounds reached him in the darkness: hitched, unsteady breaths mingled with quiet sobs. High-pitched sobs. A kid, Draco thought, allowing the noises to lure him into the scene slowly taking shape around him.

When the first glimpses of visual memories materialised before his eyes, Draco frowned. Hermione had said Harry was probably reliving moments from the war, but the space that surrounded him was hardly a battlefield setting.

He squinted, taking in the family portraits on the walls, the open doors around him leading to a sunlit kitchen and a living room filled with scattered toys. A carpeted staircase, at the bottom of which he was currently standing.

As floor and walls took shape around him, Draco listened intently—not just for sounds, but for emotions too.

There was another small, frightened sob, and this time Draco could discern the direction it was coming from.

Just as he was peeking around the staircase handrail, the first wave of emotions crashed against him. Bad, bad, bad, it said. Guilty, scared, bad. Hide. Hide hide hide hide hide—

Wrapped around the emotions that came with a label, Draco recognised another feeling: one that, despite being unnamed, was the most potent of them all.

Deep, bone-chilling unsafety.

Harry couldn’t see him yet. He could barely see Harry either, his mind not having allowed Draco enough access for the scene to fully form around him. Harry was but a shadow, an abstract, and Draco had to squint to make out the shape of a small boy fiddling with the closed door to a cupboard under the stairs.

He knew he could intrude further if he wanted to, could force himself fully into Harry’s mind; he knew there were Mind Healers out there who would’ve done just that, and his blood boiled at the idea.

No. Draco stood very still and, drawing in another steadying breath through the connection with his body, he waited.

As the seconds went by, wave after wave of fear and urgency washed over him, and with each wave, his connection with Harry strengthened, making the scene come gradually into focus, the edges of it pulsating like a thrumming heart.

Suddenly, Harry—a version of Harry that couldn’t have been older than seven years old—gasped and looked up, his somewhat recognisable features twisting in alarm. Just then, Draco heard it: steps. Angry steps. Stomping steps quickly approaching the stairs from the room just above their heads. Fear radiated from Harry in thick waves as he used the force of his entire body to pull at the cupboard handle, grunting, crying out as he did so.

But the door didn’t budge.

Helpless, Draco watched as a middle-aged man stomped down the stairs, fists clenched, shoulders tense, and face so contorted by rage it was practically crimson.

“Potter!” The man barked with what seemed like the full force of his lungs, spit flying out of his lips and right through Draco’s ethereal form.

After trying the door one last time, Harry jumped back and tried to run toward the end of the hall, but by then the man had already caught up to him with giant steps. He grabbed Harry by the collar of his—giant, stained, tattered—shirt, lifting him up in the air.

Harry shrieked, thrashed, and somehow managed to wiggle his way out of the shirt, but before he could escape the man grabbed his naked arm and twisted it at the shoulder with an angry shout.

Harry’s next scream was one of pain, and just when Draco thought he couldn’t watch anymore, couldn’t bear to watch Harry struggle to get free from the screaming man for another second, the scene around him vanished and he was plunged into darkness, feeling nothing but the echo of the panic that’d rippled from Harry like a tsunami.

Draco’s body tried to pull his consciousness back into himself, but he expertly resisted it, searching, searching for something perceivable in the sea of nothingness that suffocated him. Harry was still here, after all, travelling from memory to memory, as all victims of this curse were forced to do.

Besides, even if Draco knew now Harry was reliving his childhood, he still hadn’t gotten to the core of the curse—the eye of the storm—the calm amidst the hurricane that would give him the key to freeing Harry from the prison of his own mind.

Harry? Draco asked into the darkness, looking around for any signs of a new memory forming. I’m here. Let me help. Let me see.

When nothing happened, Draco breathed deeply again. Waited. Focused.

Once again, the first thing that reached him was an echo. A muffled voice, the words unintelligible.

Despite the fear of what he might find, he followed it, pushing through the darkness with determination. As the voice grew closer and louder, light started to pulsate at the corners of his eyes.

Just as the light in his vision split up into discernible colours, a sudden piercing cry made his head pound so hard he desperately wished he could cover his ears.

It was hard to focus through the high-pitched shrieks, but he caught glimpses of a table set with dishes, cutlery and drinks. He was trying to expand his field of vision, to see who was sitting at the table, when a cold breeze brushed the nape of his neck. He turned around to see a window had materialised behind him, wide open and looking out into a cold, rainy dusk.

“See what you’ve done?!” a familiar voice shouted then, and Draco whirled around just in time to see an intangible, still semi-abstract version of that disgusting man charging toward an equally familiar child. “Do you think this is funny? Do you think Dudley deserves this kind of torment?”

Harry, who couldn’t be older than nine or ten in this memory, whimpered and shrunk into himself in fear. Draco wanted nothing more than to jump between the two of them, but he could do nothing but watch as the scene unfolded before him, clouded by a thin layer of smoke.

The floor materialised under Draco’s feet, anchoring him to Harry’s memory, and the smell of burned toast and scrambled eggs reached him just as Harry’s terror crashed against him like a shock wave, punching the air from his lungs.

“Answer me, boy!” the man barked, and that just made the other wails—the ones coming from another small boy sat at the table, presumably Dudley—grow louder and impossibly more ear-piercing.

“N-No,” Harry mumbled, voice almost inaudible, intense fear and unsafety rippling from him and making Draco desperately ache to help him.

He could help Harry, he reminded himself. That was what he was here to do. He just needed to focus. He needed to truly submerge himself in what Harry was feeling, needed to experience as much of this memory as Harry would allow.

He stepped closer. The man had Harry grabbed by the arm again, and was twisting his skin as he held him tightly in place by the table.

“Don’t lie to me!” the man screamed in his face. He dragged Harry closer to a hiccuping Dudley, grabbed the piece of burned toast—bitten into, Draco realised—from the boy’s plate, and waved it angrily in front of Harry. “You think you’re better than him. Think this is some sort of sick payback he deserves. Poor little Harry, always the victim, better than everyone else around him. Is that it?”

Harry heaved, frozen in terror.

Draco, heart pounding, reached out a hand and very, very carefully dipped the tips of his fingers into Harry’s incorporeal shoulder.

For a second, the scene froze and fluttered under his touch.

When it resumed, the entire room, as well as Harry’s thoughts and emotions, came into a sharp focus.

There’s nothing I can do, Harry’s mind screamed, helpless, petrified. Nothing I can say. Nothing that will satisfy him. Nothing that will stop this. No way out.

“Answer me when I ask you a question!” the man roared.

Can’t, can’t, can’t, Harry thought frantically. Can’t talk, can’t keep quiet, can’t risk making it worse, can’t stop this, can’t get out. I want out. Out, out, out. Hide, hide hide hide…

All thoughts came to an abrupt halt when the man shoved the burned toast into Harry’s mouth and covered it with a forceful hand, leaving Harry no choice but to chew and swallow even as hot, heavy tears rolled down his cheeks.

Amidst the sudden burst of disgust and nausea, Harry barely processed the man dragging him across the kitchen again until they’d made it to the counter, at which point survival got the better of him and he pulled at his sore arm, screaming, fighting to break free.

Hide hide hide hide hide—

Savagely, the man pushed two new slices of bread into the toaster, and then pressed the handle down so forcefully the Muggle appliance almost toppled over. He pulled Harry close to him again, making him sway and lose footing.

“Why do you hate your cousin so much? Huh?”

Harry heaved. Hiccuped. “I-I don’t—”

“Don’t lie to me,” the man spat. “We do everything for you. We’ve sacrificed our entire lives for you. We’ve taken you into our very home out of the kindness of our hearts, fed you, given you clothes and a bed. And this is how you repay us? By traumatising your cousin? By breaking your poor aunt’s heart and disrespecting my authority?”

The man—Harry’s uncle—glanced at the table then, and Draco, amidst the horror and hatred threatening to suffocate him, realised there was another witness to this scene. Someone who’d kept so perfectly quiet Harry’s subconscious hadn’t registered her presence until now. A middle-aged woman with a long neck, stern eyes and pursed lips.

Harry’s aunt.

His uncle continued to yell, but Draco’s consciousness was guided to where Harry’s attention was focused. An almost-tangible, silent plea seemed to travel from Harry’s person to his aunt, on its way engulfing Draco in a sea of desperation and fear so all-consuming it was hard to remind himself the emotions weren’t his own. But as much as the emotions asphyxiated Draco, they seemed to go right through the impassive woman, not even touching her. Dudley, too, was watching the scene unfold silently now, seemingly completely immune to Harry’s trauma.

Draco knew, of course, that no child witnessing abuse ever came out of it unscathed, and that none of this was Dudley’s fault. But from Harry’s perspective, right now, his cousin was as much a perpetrator of the abuse as his aunt and uncle. A bully. An enemy. His strengthened connection with Harry allowed Draco to see glimpses of past memories as they coursed through Harry’s mind: passing memories of Petunia calling him a waste of space and a good-for-nothing like his parents; of Dudley spitting on him, pushing him down the stairs, telling all the kids at school Harry was a weirdo and a bed-wetter.

It wasn’t until Harry’s mind snapped back to his uncle with an intense wave of pain and terror that Draco realised Harry had been thinking about his aunt and cousin to dissociate from his uncle’s abuse.

Draco’s attention followed Harry’s naturally, and when he realised just how the man had forced his nephew’s mind to return to the moment, he was so horror-struck their mental connection shook, almost shattering altogether.

The man had Harry’s forearm hovering dangerously close to the burning metal of the toaster.

If this bastard’s still alive, I’m going to kill him, was all Draco could think before the scene exploded around him.

Harry pulled free with an ear-splitting shriek that made the memory ripple, and bolted toward the hall, to the small cupboard under the stairs. His uncle screamed, the toast jumped up with a loud noise, his cousin stood up with a strident drag of the chair.

All of it at once was so dizzying Draco tumbled backwards and away from the memory just as Harry reached the cupboard door, once again being plunged into darkness with nothing to hold on to but the thick, panicked need for safety that echoed all throughout Harry’s mind.

His body’s call was stronger this time—more alarmed, and though Draco didn’t follow it, he felt the beginnings of a headache thundering in his body’s temples.

He knew it was wise to take this slowly, but he’d felt so much closer to Harry during the second memory. He didn’t want to step back when he felt so close to getting to Harry—not the memories Harry was being pulled into, but Harry himself.

One more memory, he told himself—and his body. One more, and then I promise I’ll take a break.

It was light that reached him first this time. At first it was faint, but as he moved closer it became blinding, and he had to squint until his eyes adjusted to it.

By the time he was able to look around, the scene had already taken shape around him. It was a chilly but sunny day, probably a late summer afternoon, and he was outdoors.

“Why, don’t you look dashing!”

The voice came from behind him, and Draco turned to see Harry’s aunt approaching him—no, approaching the boy standing just by his side. Even though he was considerably younger than in the previous memory, Draco recognised Dudley straight away.

He also realised, with a mixture of hope and relief, that this memory had become tangible much faster than the previous two. Not only that, but Draco was standing right by Harry’s side this time instead of half a room away.

“Oh, my beautiful young man, how quickly you grow up.” The woman crouched and cupped Dudley’s round baby cheeks, kissing his forehead soundly.

Jealousy-sadness-anger-longing-guilt.

Harry’s emotions passed through him so quickly he almost couldn’t tell them apart.

He looked down at Harry, who was standing by his cousin in what must be the front garden of their house, and this time the anger that crossed Draco was entirely his own.

If Dudley’s smart clothes, shiny new school bag, and smug grin were anything to go by, this was probably their first day of primary school.

Glancing at Harry alone wouldn’t have given him the same impression.

Harry’s clothes were, as in the previous memories, too big, too old, and too tattered for him to wear. He was wearing dark, patched-up jeans, so baggy they surely would’ve dropped down around his ankles had he not been wearing an old and frayed belt several times his size. His jumper, which was definitely not warm enough for the chilly weather, had a grease stain on the front that someone had only half-heartedly attempted to remove, which made it fade in and out of existence and made it even more eye-catching. His round glasses were skewed and barely held together with tape in several places, and his school bag’s zipper was completely broken.

“Okay, let’s go! We don’t want to be late for Dudley’s first day of school!” said another voice—one that, despite the cheerful tone, sent a shiver down Draco’s spine that was only partially caused by Harry’s own spike of fear.

Harry’s uncle was standing a few feet away from them, waiting for them by the family car.

“Of course!” his aunt replied. “You’re really excited, aren’t you, ickle Dudleykins?”

“Yeah!” the boy squealed with delight.

“Of course you are, my sweet boy,” she cooed, smiling fondly at him and opening her arms for him. The boy jumped into the hug, allowing himself to be swayed and held tightly for several seconds before running off to the car.

When his aunt turned to Harry, all traces of kindness vanished from her face.

“And you,” she said, and another wave of jealousy-sadness-anger-guilt crashed against Draco. “You’d better behave, boy. Do you understand?”

Guilt. Bad. I’m bad. I’m bad bad bad monster wrong gross bad.

Harry gave a small nod that didn’t seem to satisfy his aunt. She looked him straight in the eye, menacingly.

“Because if we get a single call from school saying you’ve done anything you shouldn’t have…” she started, voice dangerously calm. “We won’t be as benevolent with you as we have been up until now. Benevolent—you understand the word, right? It means good. Patient. Caring. Do you want us to stop being those things?”

Anger-guilt-shame. They care so much. They care so much and I still don’t feel cared for because I’m selfish bad wrong.

Harry shook his head, trembling, and in that moment Draco wanted nothing more than to hold the boy in his arms. Wanted to yell from every rooftop until the entire world knew that Harry was loved, and good, and worthy.

“And do you want all your classmates and teachers to think you’re a weirdo?”

Harry shook his head again, lip quivering.

“Then you will behave.”

She stood and walked to the car, not looking back to check Harry was following her.

Draco did look down at Harry, though. And, through waves of anger and hatred and sadness, he watched as Harry brought his hands to his arms and rubbed his shoulders minutely. A shudder visibly ran through Harry and reached Draco, making his breath hitch from the sudden, cold emptiness that seemed to permeate his skin and seep into his very core.

It was only then that Draco realised Harry’s aunt had not touched him at all. That in all the memories, none of them had touched Harry whatsoever except to abuse him.

He felt his consciousness being strained again, as if about to be yanked back into dark nothingness, and he stretched an arm to touch Harry’s shoulder before that could happen.

Instead of going right through Harry like they had before, his fingers pressed into Harry’s shoulder, and the small boy looked up at him in shock.

As soon as their eyes locked, the memory vanished, and Draco was violently jerked backwards.

Except this time, he didn’t fall into nothingness.

He fell into everything at once.

Every single emotion—named and unnamed—Harry had felt in the memories engulfed him like a hurricane. Anger, hatred, hopelessness, and a fear so harrowing he felt seconds away from death. Loneliness and shame and guilt. Bad gross selfish worthless wrong.

He tried to find his balance, to look for Harry’s consciousness, but all there was around him was light—too much light, hurting his eyes and making him restless and uneasy. And cold, an unrelenting breeze setting the nerves on his skin on edge, making him feel exposed, vulnerable. And sounds: muffled voices he couldn’t understand and steps he couldn’t locate, making his heart race and his every muscle want to jump away from the danger before it descended upon him.

Above it all, he felt an urge to run he couldn’t fulfill because he was completely paralysed by fear.

It was like rolling down a dune: Draco couldn’t see beyond the blinding light, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop himself from falling; could only feel and feel and feel until—

He jerked up, gasping for air, head pounding painfully and heart racing.

“Hermione!” a voice said, making Draco’s temples throb. “Malfoy’s back!”