Of Lions and Dragons
Reading the Marauder's Map every night was a unbreakable habit for Harry Potter. So it was no surprise that when something, or someone, unusual appeared, he would be the first to know. Which was exactly what happened on December 16th.
"Malfoy?" he murmured to himself in surprise. Without a second's hesitation, he slid out of bed and padded down the stone stairs to the Gryffindor portrait hole.
Stepping through it, he was faced with the sight of Malfoy slumped in a heap on the floor, mumbling softly to himself.
"What on earth are you doing, Malfoy?" Harry asked in disbelief. "You do know this is the Gryffindor common room?"
"I know," a muffled voice wailed from the mass of clothes, and Harry frowned at the distress in his voice.
"I came here looking for Potter but he's not here! I thought.. I thought... I thought this was where the cats- lions lived, but I can't see the lions..."
"The lions?" Harry repeated with a smirk. "Malfoy, are you drunk?"
"N-no, no, I'm completely sober," Malfoy reassured him. "I'm sober... And I'm a dragon." he added after a moment, drawing himself up proudly. "Not a lion. Draco the drag..."
"You got that right." Harry muttered to himself, groaning as he saw Malfoy fully. His eyes were bloodshot and kept fluttering shut, and the penny finally dropped.
"Oh God," Harry rubbed a hand over his bleary eyes. "No, you're not drunk are you? You're asleep... Argh Malfoy I don't have the energy for this..."
But even saying so, he gently hooked his arms under each of the boy's armpits, and hauled him to his feet.
"I don't have my wand, so..." Harry slung one of the slender arms over his shoulder. "You'll have to be dragged along, sorry."
"Where's Potter?" Malfoy replied, screwing his face up in apparent distress. "I came to tell him... to tell him..."
"Tell me what?" Harry asked sharply.
"The evil house elves are coming," Malfoy mumbled. "They all want to be freed, I have to tell the Boy Who.. the Boy Who..."
"Lived?" Harry supplied helpfully. Malfoy snapped his fingers in apparent pleasure.
"Yes! Yes! You're clever..." he exclaimed happily.
"Oh, you are so going to regret this in the morning..." Harry sighed, pulling Malfoy ever closer to the dungeons.
.-.
"Bit of a wild one last night, Draco?" Blaise questioned him over breakfast, with a knowing smirk.
"A what?" Draco asked irritably, running a hand through his hair tiredly. He felt like hell.
"We found you outside the common room this morning. Clearly you'd snuck out late with someone..."
"What?" Draco frowned, pausing in buttering his toast. "I didn't go out anywhere, I went straight to sleep..."
"You sleepwalked." Nott finished helpfully, sitting down beside him at the table. "I saw you wander off. I couldn't do anything to persuade you otherwise, you kept going on about seeing someone."
"I did?" Draco asked in disbelief, staring down at his plate. He had no idea who that could be. He looked across the Great Hall, as if to pick up clues in the people eating their breakfast.
Directly across from him sat the Golden Trio, and one of them was staring expectantly right at Draco. Potter's hair was even messier and unkept than usual, and his eyes were plagued with dark circles. Draco vaguely wondered if someone else had had a bad night's sleep last night, too. He scowled and looked away.
.-.
Harry took extra care when checking the Marauder's Map that night, but was still surprised when the dot labelled 'Draco Malfoy' showed up again, this time in a third floor corridor.
Harry grabbed his invisibility cloak and wand.
He could hear shouting even as he approached the corridor.
"No! No! It's poisoned! I can't! Don't make me..." Draco was sobbing, banging his fists against the stone floor.
"Malfoy!" Harry half-shouted, running over. "What's wrong?"
"Potter!" Malfoy gasped, apparently able to recognise him this time. "I can't drink it! It's poisoned!"
"What is?" Harry asked, his arm snaking around Draco involuntarily, his impulse to comfort people too deeply ingrained to resist.
"The Butterbeer! In the Goblet of Fire! I can't drink it!" Draco whimpered, clutching onto Harry. "Make Nagini stop, Potter! You're the Saviour!"
"I have... He's gone." Harry whispered softly, and Draco collapsed against him, the sobs still wracking though his body. Harry found the citrus-smelling white blonde hair was tickling his chin, and he could feel Draco's hot breath on his neck. He shivered, and gently pushed the boy off him, before the situation got any worse.
"Right, I'm taking you back to Slytherin now." Harry sighed. He had his wand this time, he could levitate Draco, but he found he preferred holding the boy up.
"Thank you Potter," Draco mumbled, nuzzling his face into Harry's neck, unaware of how good it was making Harry feel. "I can see why they call you the Chosen One..."
"Is that right?" Harry asked absently. "Why is it me who has to come pick you up every night now, Malfoy?" he asked the silent boy, his thumb rubbing over the slender back. Malfoy gave a small snuffle, and Harry realised he had gone to sleep in Harry's arms.
He felt just a teensy bit proud as he gazed down at the sleeping boy, noticing for the first time how, well, cute Malfoy was. It was hard to see when he was all sneering and conscious, but with his face all smooth and peaceful like this, Harry could properly appreciate the boy.
He was rather unnerved, and he hurriedly deposited Malfoy back in the dungeons.
.-.
"You know you did it again," Nott informed him smugly over breakfast.
"Well why didn't you stop me?" Draco demanded. "Tie me to my bed, or something?"
"I only realised you were gone this morning," Nott said defensively, holding his hands up. "Maybe you should tie yourself up. Or better yet, get this person your subconscious mind is obsessed with to do it."
"What?" Draco asked tiredly, wondering what Nott could possibly be getting at now.
"Well, clearly you keep getting up to see someone. Someone not in Slytherin by the looks of it. You want to see them so badly your subconscious takes control and walks you there." Nott chuckled, but Draco did not.
Was this true? It must be, if someone kept depositing him back at the Slytherin portrait hole. Unless he never left the dungeons at all...
Draco shook his head. He didn't like not knowing what he was doing. It could be embarrassing and he wouldn't even know about it.
Remembering Potter's tired looks yesterday, Draco instinctively looked over to the Gryffindor table, to see Potter watching him closely. Noticing Harry had Draco's attention, Harry picked up his goblet and raised it to Draco. Draco frowned at him, and turned away. What was the significance of that? He wished more than anything that he knew.
.-.
Draco followed Nott's advice, and every night he placed jinxes and charms around his bed to prevent him from escaping, and was please to wake up every morning in the same place.
However, if the knowing smiles and smirks at breakfast were anything to go by, this did not make him desist from sleep talking. Draco shivered to think of what, or who he might say.
In turn, Harry stopped checking the map so carefully, as Draco failed to appear night after night. Until Christmas Eve, when Draco fell asleep before he could cast the spells.
"Er- Harry? Harry! Wake up!" A voice demanded, and Harry blearily opened his eyes.
"It's the middle of the night, Ron! What's wrong?" He asked, half-irritated, half-worried.
"Er- there's someone at the portrait hole for you..."
And Harry needed to hear no more.
"Draco?" He asked tentatively when he stepped through the portrait hole.
"Potter!" A voice said delightedly, and Draco appeared out of nowhere, clad in his pyjamas. He stumbled forward eagerly, and seized a bunch of Harry's top in his fist. "I knew you would come! You always help me..."
Interesting. So Draco remembered the previous times.
Draco pulled insistently on the material and pressed warm lips against Harry's. A hot tongue slid along the length of Harry's lips, but Harry prised himself away cautiously.
"Draco? Are you awake or..."
"Of course I'm awake, don't be stupid," Draco mumbled against his lips. "But shhh, or the Hippogriffs will hear you."
Harry stared at him with something that felt a lot like disappointment. Disappointed that Draco hadn't actually kissed Harry. Consciously.
"Let's get you back, eh?" he said tiredly, trying to hold Draco up again, but Draco batted his arm away. "No, Potter. I think you should hold my hand."
"I... right." Harry agreed, gently tugging the sleeping boy along with him.
"You're very fast, Potter." Draco commented after a while, his voice faint and a little slurred.
"Sorry," Harry muttered, obediently slowing up.
"It's fine," Draco reassured him, rubbing his thumb over the back of Harry's hand. Harry stared down at their entwined hands in surprise.
"I'm fast too." Draco continued. "We can be fast together." And he smirked as he clumsily pressed sweet tasting lips on Harry's lips before tugging him forward.
Harry stared after him in amazement.
"Well, aren't you something." he murmured dazedly to himself.
.-.
Instead of dumping Draco unceremoniously in the corridor, Harry rapped smartly on the dungeon door. It snidely asked for a password, but Harry ignored it in favour of an actual human being.
Eventually the door opened, and Blaise Zabini stood there with his mouth agape, and Harry realised a moment too late that Draco's fingers were still laced through his. Not to mention the fact that Draco was pressing sloppy kisses to his neck.
"Well, Merlin knows he's said your name his sleep enough times." Zabini said finally, smirking. "This arrangement hardly surprises me. Bring him in, Potter, by all means."
"Shut up now," Harry advised, smartly through the doorway, still hand-in-hand with Draco. "I'm looking after him. Which way is his dormitory?"
Zabini gestured silently up the stairs, still smirking. Harry ignored him, and pulled Draco closer to him, quickly heaving him into his arms in order to safely ascend the stairs.
"You are rather hot from this angle," Draco commented from Harry's arms, striking his jawline. Harry snorted.
He staggered into the correct dormitory and deposited Draco on the empty bed that could only be his, with a perfectly ordered bedside table and the curtains drawn to keep everyone out. Draco snuggled into the mattress, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief as his duty was apparently done.
He stared down at the pale, sleeping boy, looking truly beautiful as he lay bathed in moonlight.
"You have no idea how much I want you." Harry murmured tiredly, stroking his hair. "I'm falling for you, in all likelihood. But you're asleep, and as far as you're concerned we've barely exchanged two words this year. Never mind kisses. And you never will know, because I won't ever say anything, Draco. The only reason I'm telling you now is because you'll forget by the time you're awake again."
Silence fell. Then, "Potter?" Draco questioned sleepily, his eyes fluttering open. "Why aren't you in here? The Hippogriffs..."
"I'll help fight them..." Harry promised tiredly, clambering into he bed, abandoning all sense. He curled up behind Draco, his legs slotting neatly into the crook of the other boy's. "Merry Christmas, Draco," he whispered, pressing a soft kiss into the white blonde hair.
.-.
When Draco awoke, the first thing he thought was that he was once more in his warm, green bed, and not the stone corridor.
The second thought was that it was Christmas. Draco rolled over, and froze.
Green eyes stared straight into his own, and Draco knew those green eyes. He realised for the first time that there was an arm that was definitely not his own wound round his waist, and a soft shock of brown hair was sharing his pillow.
"Looks like Father Christmas did bring me what I wanted after all," he murmured softly, and Harry needed no more encouraging. His warm lips found Draco's and his hands wound in his hair, as their legs tangled together, desperately drawing as close as possible to one another.
"It was you the whole time, wasn't it?" Draco gasped when they finally drew apart, their legs slung over each other's waist. "Looking after me each night. It was you I kept going to."
"Yes," Harry agreed, before gently licking Draco's lips and continuing down his jaw, his neck, his chest.
"I heard you last night," Draco whispered. "I woke up when you dropped me on the bed. I... I've always wanted you too. That's why I kept going to you, in my sleep, I suppose. I'd always wanted you"
Harry gazed at him with darkening eyes, positioning himself so that he was directly above Draco. "Well it looks like you got what you wanted this Christmas." he commented, before fiercely, passionately kissing him, all hot tongues and lips and moans and running hands.
"Did you?" Draco asked somewhat breathlessly.
"Oh, yes." Harry replied with a grin. And with that, he pulled the cover high and over their heads, dragging Draco underneath.
And from outside those green hangings, three boys stood staring questioningly at the noises and cries of "Oh God, yes!" the regal and haughty Draco Malfoy was making from within his own bed. Nott and Crabbe turned to stare questioningly at Zabini, who shrugged.
"Well, I guess he got that Potions book he really wanted."
Merry Christmas guyz, review for free candy canes :))