Alive
Harry could pinpoint and name every worry, disorder, or trouble that plagued anyone he’d ever cared about. He knew about Hermione’s anxiety, about Ron’s anger issues, about Andrea’s history of unstable relationships, about Ginny’s surprising and more-than-slightly addictive personality—hell, he’d even managed to pick up on a few of the many, many things that seemed to plague Draco Malfoy...
Panic attacks, for one, and a clearly fucked up sleep schedule that Harry was a hypocrite for condemning. Draco also seemed more than a little paranoid but, given recent events, Harry wasn’t going to blame him for that. Harry could still remember the most recent picture of Draco that any of the papers had printed: a still, unyielding photograph of the blond at his father’s execution. The memory alone still curdled in Harry’s bloodstream.
He shouldn’t have been there to begin with, let alone photographed while watching his father die. It was cruel and the papers had eaten it up like the sheer brokenness of Draco’s face and the hollow, sickly shaking of his frame were the public’s last meal. People had loved that photo and it was still the Prophet’s go-to whenever anything Malfoy-related made the news.
Harry shook his head and put his quill down. This was his problem. He was an expert when it came to analyzing other people and he liked to think that learning to read that deeper part of a person was one of the only good things to come of living with the Dursleys. His Mind Healer said he liked to focus on other people because it let him avoid his own struggles which, to some extent, Harry agreed with. It was a lot easier to pick apart someone like Draco Malfoy and name things like: paranoia, hypervigilance, or even insomnia.
But he’d never been very good at deciphering his own issues. Therapy helped, of course, and he’d made a ridiculous amount of progress over the years but it wasn’t the same. Harry didn’t feel his issues then, he just talked about them and let whatever emotions he thought ‘should’ be attached to them run their course. ‘Should’ being the operative word. None of the guilt or the pain or the grief actually felt like it was his. Countless people had told him that there was no ‘should’ when it came to emotions, but Harry didn’t have a way to explain to them that ‘should’ emotions had to exist because, if they didn’t, there would be no emotions at all.
It had taken Harry doing his first public scene for that to change.
Harry could still remember it almost as clearly as he could remember the picture of Draco in the papers. He’d been with Aidan for almost four months at that point and only in therapy for two so their relationship had hardly become a topic of concern yet. Even if it should have. In therapy, they talked about things like losing Sirius or leaving the Dursleys and then Harry came home to the distraction that was Aidan.
To his credit, Aidan hadn’t pressured Harry into doing a public scene. There were enough people in the community—including Andrea, who Harry was quickly becoming attached to—that would have picked up on the manipulation tactics from a mile away. Harry had agreed of his own free will and had yielded to Aidan easily. After years and years of constantly being looked to as if he should know what to do or as if he wasn’t just a kid trying his best, Harry relished the ability to let someone else worry for a bit.
Back then, in the early days, their relationship had still been good. Harry had trusted Aidan more than he probably should have, but he’d had no reason to call that trust ‘misplaced’. So, he’d followed Aidan to the center of the room, catching Andrea’s eye as they passed her, and he’d knelt the way he was quickly becoming accustomed to, prepared to let everything disappear for a while.
Harry didn’t remember a lot of the specifics of the scene. He knew the people around him seemed intrigued and occasionally paused to admire, but his focus was entirely on Aidan. It was easy to let everything fade into the background when Aidan was there, full of harsh tones and quick hands that never hurt, but also never let him forget that they could. If Aidan wanted them to.
The few things Harry did remember were mostly scraps of praise or the few genuine sounds he’d managed to earn from his Dom that weren’t for the sake of the performance. He remembered feeling proud when he’d been able to get a reaction.
All in all, it had been a smashing success and Aidan had barely needed to bring Harry down into that headspace before using the younger entirely for his own pleasure. It’d left Harry feeling tired, but accomplished. Afterwards, though, when Aidan had gone home and he’d gone out for drinks with Andrea, she’d said it.
“You come alive when you make other people feel.”
Harry had paused, letting the weight of that statement roll around in his glass before he down it alongside his whiskey. It tasted too real and it burned its way down his throat. She hadn’t said it like it was a question and he knew she wasn’t trying to pry or pull an explanation out of him even if he felt like he had to make up an excuse. From her, it was just an observation.
A bloody correct one, he’d soon realized once he’d sobered up. He knew he struggled with disassociation and he’d been lucky to get the worst of his symptoms under control within a month or two of starting therapy, thankfully, but that didn’t mean it was gone. Just because he could hold down a job and act relatively normal—his Mind Healer called him ‘high-functioning’—didn’t mean he was cured. Now, the urge to hide himself away from the world and just shut down manifested itself in quieter ways. Mainly, in Harry’s inability to feel proper emotions.
But Andrea was right. That night had been the deepest he’d ever let himself get into a scene thus far and the reassurance of an audience guaranteeing that Aidan couldn’t take it too far had let him slip. He’d completely immersed himself in serving his sole purpose: pleasing Aidan.
Harry got a bitter taste in his mouth when he thought about that memory now. He didn’t want to think about Aidan. Things hadn’t always been bad between them but it was easier to let the bad color the few good memories. If he dwelled on the good ones too long, he would start forgetting while they were no longer together.
Andrea had had a point that night, though, and that point had only been proved more right once Harry had split from Aidan and began to try his hand at Domming. He’d thought, with Aidan, that it was the praise that got to him. Years of living with the Dursleys and it made sense in a sick, twisted way that Harry just wanted to actually be good enough for once. But, the first time Harry had coaxed that calm, glassy trust into someone’s face, he’d understood.
It was true: Harry felt alive when he made other people feel alive.
Draco let out a deep sigh as he moved into the hotel room. He knew, in the back of his mind, that this wasn’t real but something in his gut was promising that this time would be pleasant so he ignored that fact. Sure enough, he felt the constant weight of anxiety on his chest lessen once the door closed behind him.
“Hey sweetheart,”
The voice wasn’t familiar, but Draco somehow knew that this was the person he’d been expecting to find here so he stepped closer. Long, pale, muscular limbs were splayed out among the sheets. They looked soft. For a moment, Draco ached to reach out and touch before he realized that he could.
Confidently, like he knew he was allowed to in this world, he reached out and ran his fingers over the curve of the man’s thigh. A low laugh came from under one of the blankets. Draco smiled and realized he was also naked but that didn’t stop him from joining the man. It didn’t even register that none of Draco’s scars were there.
The brush of their skin and the warmth of the man’s arm as it settled over his shoulders hit Draco like a sedative. He breathed in deep, relishing the familiar scent though he couldn’t have named it for the world, and felt the body beside him shake with laughter. A hand cupped his cheek, gently pulling him into a kiss.
Short and sweet, Draco thought, just like them—it fit, the same way that they fit together under the sheets. There was nothing inherently sexual about the situation. Draco knew with a certainty that only dreams could give that they were dating, that there was no pressure or urgency to the situation, and that they were happy. He was happy.
Draco woke up slowly, clinging to the lingering wisps of comfort for as long as his mind would allow. His alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but the feeling quickly disappeared. Dammit.
Suddenly, it hit him where he knew that face from. Seamus Finnegan. Where the bloody hell had that come from? Draco sat up and rolled his shoulders to work out the kinks, feeling that familiar ache in his gut sharper than ever. He was just lonely. Finnegan wasn’t even his type for Merlin’s sake! The Gryffindor had hated him more than most of the others, even after the war, and Draco cursed his own brain’s logic. If he fantasized about someone who hated him, then there was no danger of it ever becoming real, right?
That logic had seriously fucked him over in Sixth year, though.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Draco heard Elle sigh, but refused to look up from his hands because he was frustrated and he knew she wouldn’t be pleased. Because keeping your Mind Healer happy was both a normal and healthy goal to have…
“I don’t want you to say anything except what you feel is right to share, Draco. I’m not trying to suggest that you aren’t allowed to be upset, or that your feelings aren’t valid—you know that. I’m just asking why you think that angert might be so large and present for you right now.”
Groaning, Draco slumped back on the couch and felt the immediate answer bubble up in his throat. He sure as hell wasn’t ready to say it, but it was there. His anger didn’t stem as much from the fact that Harry had lied—he had known about the glamour from the beginning, essentially—it came from his relationship with ‘Mr. Doe’.
Because even if Mr. Doe wasn’t real, he was someone. Someone Draco had thought he might have a chance at something real with. Even once the glamour dropped, Mr. Doe would still be the same man he’d… okay, yes, he’d developed a crush on him.
But not Potter. If Mr. Doe was Harry bloody Potter, then everything that Draco had thought might have been building between them was gone. There was nothing between them. Well, not nothing, Draco corrected himself. There were thousands of insults, years of brutal competition, blood-covered bathroom floors, Fyrefiends, and a bottomless well of memories better left forgotten.
Draco swallowed back the tears that were building behind his eyes and finally looked up at Elle. She looked vaguely sad but mostly patient and waiting, as though she was letting him set the tone of how they continued. Figured, Draco thought, she could probably tell he was overwhelmed. It was Potter for fuck’s sake! Of course there were far more and far bigger emotions with Potter than there ought to have been.
There always were.
Logically, Draco knew there had to be a reason that the Ministry was devoting so many resources—not to mention their precious Potter—to a case with only five deaths. Five deaths were a lot, of course, but not compared to the myriad of other horrible things that warranted a Ministry investigation. Draco realized that Monday why this case had such force behind it.
There weren’t five deaths. True, on the official case report it listed five names but that didn’t mean they were alone. Harry had owled him, asking him to come to a morning briefing that Kingsley wouldn’t be at because there had been a new development. ‘Development’, Draco soon realized, didn’t even begin to cover it.
They’d added another three names to the list, all of which had been declared dead within the past month but who had initially avoided the verdict of ‘suicide’ for a variety of reasons. Another body had been discovered that morning that was very recently dead. Draco didn’t understand why he’d been called in for this or why he was even being included because he was as far from a trained Auror as someone could get, but then he scanned the little biography.
Jolene Malaika - Potions Addict
Had he been brought in on this simply because the victim was a potions addict? He wanted to ask Harry but he kept his mouth shut while the two other Aurors who were being briefed asked their questions. Stupid questions, of course. Draco waited until both Aurors had left for their respective crime scenes before finally daring to speak.
“Why am I here, Potter?”
Harry didn’t turn around to look at him or even pause in his gathering of papers. Aidan or Kingsley must be coming soon, Draco thought, because those were the only people Harry was this distant with him around.
“Well, as I’m sure you managed to read, our victim was a known potions addict. I asked Kingsley for permission to bring you along because you’re the potions expert and because the current best guess for cause of death is some sort of potion. Having you there beside me is going to get results much faster than trying to take a sample and sending it off to the Ministry labs.”
Having you there beside me.
Draco nodded because that explanation made sense, but he couldn’t help feeling for something deeper there. Was Harry trying to keep an eye on him? It seemed unlikely, but the man had given him an enchanted protection bracelet so maybe he was just very invested in keeping Draco alive? The Wolfsbane potion was rather important…
Harry bit his lip, but led Draco through the floo towards their crime scene. He still wasn’t sure that this was a good idea—despite it being his idea—because he had no clue how Draco was going to react to a dead body. It was incredibly risky to bring someone untrained to the scene, but Harry had been able to push it because of the potions angle. If Draco really could tease apart the remnants of whatever potion their victim had been addicted to from whatever she’d taken to kill herself, they might have a solid lead to go off of.
They walked into the apartment building and took the elevator to the thirteenth floor. Harry was fully prepared for Draco to sneer and refuse to touch anything for fear of getting dirty, but the blond didn’t seem put off in the slightest. This was clearly the type of place that welcomed addicts and bail-jumpers alike. Judging by the sudden, empty silence of the halls once Aurors arrived, there were very few people here who didn’t fear a run in with the law.
Internally, Harry pushed down a thought about rehab. Hermione had been pushing for over a year now to get treatment centers put in place for people addicted to magical substances who couldn’t go to Muggle centers or use Muggle programs, but it’d gone nowhere. The Ministry had little interest in helping people they’d already written off.
People like Draco.
As they stepped into their victim’s apartment, Harry split his attention equally between taking in the room and studying Draco’s reaction. The blond seemed completely fine. He wasn’t touching anything and he kept stepping very carefully and deliberately around the room, but Harry got the sense that was more to avoid disturbing the crime scene than out of disgust. They approached the body, and Harry readied himself to cast a shield charm because the last intern they’d brought to a crime scene like this had thrown up all over himself, Harry, and the body.
Draco didn’t even blink, though. He knelt beside the body and began noting physical symptoms in a small notebook. A few other Aurors who had been assigned to collect evidence and guard the crime scene watched Draco intently, waiting for him to make a mistake. But Draco didn’t touch anything—he didn’t even draw his wand—and merely continued making his notes.
“Do you want me to try to identify the potion?”
Harry gestured towards the floor beside the body where an empty bottle was lying, but Draco took one look at it and shook his head.
“No, any residue would have burned off in the air by now. Do we know what her potion of choice was?”
“Grave Dust,” another Auror answered, watching to see if Draco would recognize the street name for the drug.
The blond nodded, noting that down as well, and scribbled a few bullet points beneath the name before standing again. He moved around the room, cataloguing something every now and then. After about five minutes of staring, the other Aurors got bored and began to talk amongst themselves again which, apparently, Draco had been waiting for. As their conversation picked up, Draco motioned Harry closer.
“If you want me to try to pick apart the magical traces of the potion she took, you have to get them out of here.”
Harry was immediately suspicious. He cursed himself because he hadn’t even been completely forgiven yet for the last time he’d unfairly suspected Draco, but didn’t dismiss the feeling immediately. Why did Draco want the other Aurors out of the way? They wouldn’t go willingly or easily, and Harry could guess that Kingsley would be mad that he’d endangered the veritability of the evidence gathering. If a third party couldn’t be present, then their evidence would be worth jackshit in court.
“Okay,” Harry conceded. “But I have to bring someone else in to make the evidence usable. Your options are Kingsley, Aidan, Ron, or some other random Auror that wouldn’t be any different than these ones. Andrea isn’t considered a reliable witness.”
“What about Granger?”
Harry turned in surprise, hunting for any hint of a sneer on Draco’s face that he could find. There wasn’t one, though, and he realized with a jolt of something resembling whiplash that Draco was genuinely asking. Why would Hermione be any better than another Auror?
“I mean… I can ask her. She’s pretty rock solid in the Ministry’s eyes so she would work as a witness.”
Harry desperately wanted to ask why Draco had requested Hermione, or why he hadn’t spat out her name like some kind of slur. Maybe things had changed? They weren’t alone, though, and he was aware of the other conversation dying down again so he just nodded. Turning to the one in charge, he took out his wand.
“I’m going to send a patronus to Director Hermione Granger to act as the third party present. When she gets here, I need you all to leave the apartment. Understood?”
The one in charge was clearly annoyed by Harry giving orders—which, arguably, he didn’t have the authority to do here—but for once his reputation was actually beneficial. Instead of demanding an explanation, the man just nodded and ushered his two junior Aurors towards the door. Harry cast his patronus and sent a brief, non-specific message to Hermione. He hoped she wasn’t busy.
Only when Harry took in the slack, slightly awe-struck faces of the junior Aurors did Harry remember that using patronuses to send messages was not a common practice. The older supervising Auror had clearly never seen them used for such a purpose, but kept his face stoney and blank. His junior Aurors, though, had expressions on their faces that looked dangerously close to hero worship. Harry shuddered, turning to Draco like some kind of palate cleanser.
Except the blond was not unaffected by the patronus, apparently, and Harry noted a distinct wetness in those silvery eyes that hadn’t been there before. Draco quickly blinked and turned his face away, but it was too late. He’d looked absolutely gutted and there was no way in hell that Harry was going to let it go that easily. Later, he told himself, later I can ask.
Hermione appeared with a sharp crack of Apparition, making everyone in the room jump. She winced as she took in the room, then studied the body on the floor for a moment before turning to Harry. Before she could open her mouth or ask what was going on, Harry made a point of dismissing the other Aurors. Once the door closed behind them, he cast a subtle silencing charm on the apartment.
“Harry, what’s going on?”
Hermione had noticed Draco, evidently, but didn’t seem very surprised to see him or by the fact that all three of them were now standing around a dead body. Draco kept his eyes on the floor, avoiding conflict.
“Hey, ‘Mione, thanks for coming on such short notice. We needed a third party here for the evidence collection and Draco said the other Aurors wouldn’t work. I’m not exactly sure why, though…” he trailed off, looking to the blond to finally explain.
Draco sighed like the weight of the world had just been placed on his shoulders. He pocketed his notebook—Harry suspected that he hadn’t needed to be taking notes in the first place—and wrung his hands a few times before finally turning to face them.
“Granger,” he started, surprising them both. “Thanks for coming. I know you’ve put forth some pretty liberal policies and bylaws recently so I was hoping you’d be a good person for this.”
“What do my policies have to do with a dead body?”
Hermione had a fair point, which Draco seemed to acknowledge with a slight pinch to his expression. He wrung his hands again and Harry realized he could feel the anxiety in the air. It was sharp and potent—like it’d been in the aftermath of that first panic attack—and Harry shoved that thought down to be dealt with later too. He hadn’t been able to feel a person’s emotions in their magic since he’d severed his connection with Voldemort...
“Potter,” Draco’s voice startled him out of his own head. “I need your wand.”
Harry handed it over without a second of hesitation, which he only found strange once he saw Hermione’s shocked expression. She said nothing, though, and Harry tried to shrug her piercing gaze off his shoulders as he turned to watch. Draco was gripping his wand, pointing it at the body on the floor.
For the first time since they’d arrived at the scene, Harry finally let himself look at the face of their victim. Names on a page were one thing, but the faces were what always got to him. This time, the woman was middle aged. She had short, frizzy blond hair that looked like it had been bleached far too many times and a gaunt, hollow expression. It was not a pleasant face.
Bitterly, Harry thought that she could have been the Ministry’s model for a poster potions addict. He’d been examining the room as Draco had been cataloguing, however, and he’d taken in more details about their victim’s life than a casefile could have given him. She had a shelf full of detective novels, for one. There were hand-drawn pictures of a couple crudely sketched landscapes lining the desk that were dated at least twenty years ago. Despite the evident chaos that had engulfed her life, every pair of socks was dutifully matched and put away in her dresser.
Harry tore his eyes away from the small teddy bear on the couch. He didn’t let himself consider who had given that to their victim, or if there was some long-lost child out there at university who had no idea their mother was dead. Hermione touched his arm, helping to ground him back in their present situation, and he tried to focus on Draco.
The blond was using his wand as if he’d never had anything else. It yielded and obeyed for every spell like clockwork—something that Harry knew it never did for anyone else, not even Hermione. Did it… like Draco? Or was the blond using some kind of binding object on it to make the connection easier? Harry wasn’t sure which option was worse.
As they watched, Draco began muttering incantations low under his breath and pulling strings of glowing light from the dead woman’s mouth. First purple, then pink, then a deep black. He studied Draco’s expression as he worked and noted the tiny furrow in his brow. Every time he paused between incantations or stopped speaking to make a note of something, Harry watched him catch his lower lip between his teeth and stop just before drawing blood.
Harry wanted to be the one biting that lip.
“Write down what I’m saying, Potter.”
Harry scrambled for his notebook, but Hermione placed one in his hand before he could begin turning out his pockets. He gave her a small smile in thanks, flipping to the first blank page.
“Brined lion’s paw,” Draco said quickly, barely giving Harry time to write it down before pulling out another strand and casting some sort of spell on it. “Tansy blossoms, Needle Jay pancreas, rum, basil but not holy basil—that’s an important difference, something tar-like, something blue… There’s another darker ingredient mixed in… Maybe an opiate? But it feels deeper than that… It might be an older form of blood magic.”
Hermione sucked in a tiny gasp at that, which Harry could guess meant that blood magic was very bad. Draco’s expression hadn’t changed as he said it, though, so Harry merely drew a little star next to the phrase and continued writing as the blond listed qualities. Harry honestly had no idea how a potion could be both ‘viscous’ and ‘immaterial’, but he wrote it nevertheless.
After a few more minutes of pulling strands, Draco finally stood and let the magic dispel. He handed back Harry’s wand but looked regretful to give it up and, once again, Harry was overwhelmed with questions that he wasn’t allowed to ask. Instead, he just took it back and noted the small zap of magic that traveled through the wand for the brief moment they were both touching it. Interesting…
“You can let the others come back in now,” Draco said quietly, as if that were the last thing he wanted. “I got everything I could and I’ll do some more research once I’m back in my office. Thanks again for coming, Granger.”
Hermione opened her mouth—probably to ask what the hell had just happened—but Harry shot her a look and tried to communicate that he would tell her later. Not that he had any explanation to give her, of course, but they could talk about it then. Not in front of Draco.
“Sure. Are we still on for dinner tonight, Harry?”
They did not have dinner plans, but Harry nodded his ascent because he could already sense the impending interrogation. Draco glanced between them, looking anxious, but Hermione disappeared with another crack before either of them could say anything. Taking a deep breath, Harry went to let the other Aurors back in. He sent Draco back to his office not long after that because, although he was burning with questions and wanted to know what the blond thought was going on, he had a job to do. A job which involved examining evidence and specifically did not involve interrogating his favorite potioneer in front of other Aurors. Especially ones who didn’t like Draco.
Harry grudgingly added this entire situation to his growing list of things he didn’t understand about Draco Malfoy, and likely never would.
Draco knew that Harry wouldn’t be able to resist. If social conventions and sheer anxiety about how Draco would react had held back the barrage of questions the Auror surely wanted to ask, then Draco considered those dams demolished. He’d offered absolutely no explanation and had used the man’s wand in front of him for Merlin’s sake.
And, he’d involved Granger. The only person in the entire world who could probably come up with more questions and more curiosities surrounding Draco’s behavior than the Auror could. He knew Harry would show up the first chance that he got, so he’d prepared himself.
The moment he heard the door handle turn, he sprang.
“You can ask one question, Potter, and one question only.”
Behind him, he heard the Auror suck in a breath and he cursed himself for the fact that he could recognize just that sound as so distinctly Potter. He could, though, so he didn’t bother turning around to check who it was. Instead, he continued chopping cilantro leaves. Technically, he didn’t need this many leaves for his latest shower gel tonic but Harry would never know that—he’d been shit at potions—and Draco liked the security of holding a knife.
“Just one?”
Draco held back a small snort. Why had he ever worried about being caught alone with this man who was so not Slytherin that it hurt?
“Yes, Potter, just one because you are very much not forgiven yet. And because I’m feeling generous I’ll let that one not count. Better make it a good one, though.”
He waited, trying not to anticipate or brace himself for whatever Potter might ask. It would probably be about the wands because that was the most remarkable thing that had happened and Granger would push for answers on that. Or maybe he would ask about the panic attack, now that he’d been given an opening. Draco grit his teeth and did his best to keep breathing.
“Why did you react like that when I cast a patronus?”
Oh. That was… somehow much worse than asking about the panic attack. Draco hadn’t even thought the man had noticed his reaction to the spell or, if he had, he’d written it off as a reaction to the dead body in front of them. He’d hoped that Potter had written it off, at least.
Apparently, he wasn’t so lucky. He cast his mind back, letting the feeling of Potter casting that spell flood back through his system once again. Why had he reacted like that? It hadn’t been painful—far from it—and it wasn’t like that was the first time he’d felt Harry’s magic.
“I could feel it,” Draco finally replied.
That wouldn’t be enough of an answer to sate the Auror’s curiosity, of course, but it could buy him some time. And, if Harry chose to direct that question one way or another, Draco might be able to avoid admitting to the one part of this he really didn’t want to say.
“You felt what? My magic?”
“Yes,” Draco latched onto that, because feeling someone’s magic was probably the least weird thing about this situation. “But that’s not new. I meant that I felt the spell. Or, more accurately, I felt what you felt when you cast it.”
Draco could see the wheels spinning in Potter’s mind. If Draco had only used his wand the one time to stop his cousin’s bad reaction to the potion, then there was no way he should have still been connected to it. To be completely honest, Draco still wasn’t sure why he was so connected to Harry’s magic.
“You felt what I felt,” Harry repeated. “So… happy?”
Draco wanted to laugh. It sounded so mundane and so easy from Potter’s mouth and, in hindsight, he knew his reaction didn’t make any sense. Yes, he’d felt Potter’s happiness. And yes, it had flooded through him like the strongest illegal drug that had ever existed. But Draco couldn’t explain why that had hurt so badly. Why the feeling of something so pure and so joyful that wasn’t his had felt like a knife in his chest or why the realization of just how foreign that good feeling had become had brought tears to his eyes.
“Yeah, Potter, I felt your happiness. You see, I’ve grown to thrive on your misery and knowing that you were feeling any sort of positive emotion was just too much for my poor, fragile heart to handle.”
It was a joke. He knew it was a joke, and he could see that Potter had heard it as one. But Draco just prayed that Potter wasn’t guessing at any of the underlying reasons for why he might have reacted that way—though, of course he was guessing. The thoughts and ideas were swirling right there on his face. Draco shook his head and amended his prayer.
It had been more than enough of a personal revelation to tell Potter that he could feel his magic, let alone his emotions through said magic. He’d survived it, though, and Potter hadn’t tried to hex him or kill him. Now, Harry was going to keep thinking and keep guessing at the reason behind that reaction—Draco just had to pray that Potter wouldn’t guess correctly.