Chapter 10: Breathe and Step

The first week, Draco didn't get better.

Harry hadn't known he'd expected him to until he didn't, but his limited knowledge of medicine had set a precedent that had him frowning when the medication didn't shape up. Memory of a sick Dudley when they were kids together, of the sickly-sweet smelling syrup that Harry could almost taste from half a room away – that meant healing, and getting better. He'd often wondered how it would taste, that miraculous medicine that dragged Dudley from bedridden to bouncing off walls and as objectionable as ever within a handful of days. Harry had never tried that medicine himself, but it had always seemed a little magical.

Draco barely moved for days. The medicine, of which Harry couldn't help but glance towards each day he stepped inside Draco's room, was partaken of, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Shouldn't it be making a difference? Shouldn't it be… fixing him?

"How are you feeling?" Harry asked the first day after their visit to the doctors as he slipped through the doorway, breakfast in hand.

Draco didn't reply.

"Draco?"

Still no reply. Draco didn't even roll towards him, didn't raise his head in response. When Harry skirted his bed to peer down at him, it was to find him staring sightlessly towards the grimy window as he'd taken to doing so much over the past weeks.

It was horrible. Harry hadn't realised he'd expected Draco to be better, to be back to how he was supposed to be, until that moment. He hadn't realised he'd almost assumed he would step back into the room to find Draco as the obnoxious git he'd been when they were at school together.

But that prideful schoolboy – that wasn't Draco. Not anymore. Harry wondered if that Draco even existed at all beneath the depression, or whether he'd been chewed away entirely. What remained after that? After his mother had died and his world had fallen apart again as it already had with Voldemort's defeat, was Draco really the same person at all?

Draco didn't join Harry for breakfast that day. He didn't eat at all for any of the successive meals either, and Harry didn't know what to do. Was he supposed to force him to eat? Was he supposed to drag him upright and urge him into action, impose normalcy upon him as Draco seemed incapable of assuming himself? It didn't seem right somehow.

"It will likely take time," James comforted him in his typical hushed whisper when Harry joined him in the kitchen that evening. "Your job is to make sure he doesn't slip to far."

"Is this how it was with Remus, then?" Harry asked.

James didn't quite nod. Instead, his expression grew pensive. "I don't think anyone's experience is necessarily identical, but that it takes time? Yes, I suppose Remus was the same. I came to understand that he needed that time and that I couldn't force it upon him."

"What do I do if he doesn't get better? What if the medication doesn't do anything? What if he gets worse?"

"That, kiddo, is when you have to act. But you'll have to work out for yourself when far is far enough."

So Harry waited. He didn't push, even though Draco had asked him for help and Harry had promised to give it to him. James was right; this was the kind of help he could offer but shouldn't impose. Not yet.

He still visited Draco's room for every meal, and he still sat with him for a time afterwards, though he didn't force him into anything. The hours of stagnation felt long and disheartening, but it was alright. It made it worth it when Draco sat up at picked at his dinner on the second evening without any particular or apparent incentive. He didn't say anything, but he didn't need to. Harry hadn't realised how satisfying it could be to simply see someone eat until that moment. It was even better when he slowly began to keep up the habit.

Or it was mostly better.

"I don't know if he's actually going to get actually any healthier," Harry told his mother as they sat, each curled into their own chairs, in the library where Lily always appeared.

"It's only been a week, Harry," Lily said. "Don't rush it."

"Only a week?" Harry dropped his chin onto his knee, wrapping his arms around his shin. "A week's a long time."

"Not for this kind of thing, I don't think."

"Would you know?"

Lily tipped her head curiously. She didn't seem offended by Harry's words, which he was grateful for only in hindsight. He hadn't meant to sound accusing. "I wouldn't call myself an expert," she said slowly, in that same whisper of words that all of Harry's visitors spoke with, "but I like to think I was empathetic once upon a time."

Harry could accept that. He had certainly never considered himself in such a light before, so he supposed he would take her word for it.

Draco didn't speak after the first day that Harry gave him his medication. He started eating, it was true, but he didn't speak. He barely even looked at Harry as he entered Regulus' old bedroom that had become Draco's in such a short time, and Harry didn't quite understand exactly why. Or at least he didn't for sure. He could assume though.

Maybe Draco really did hate him as he'd claimed weeks before. Maybe he resented him for saving his life, for keeping him at Grimmauld Place, for taking him to the doctor's. Maybe he regretted asking for Harry's help at all, which stung more than Harry would have thought possible. He hadn't known he'd cared until that possibility arose, but when it did he was struck by the knowledge that… that he…

That Harry actually wanted to help Draco. He wanted to help him for more than just keeping him alive. It felt good to be helping someone who wouldn't disappear as soon as he'd fulfilled their goals. Or at least who wouldn't vanish entirely; leaving the house as Draco would, should, had to, was distinctly different to leaving the world of the living.

But Draco wouldn't look at him. He seemed utterly lost in his own thoughts. The familiar smell of Death that had lingered over him, waxing and waning for weeks, hadn't reared its head and maybe even seemed a little thinner, but Draco still lingered in silence. Sometimes he stared, but he didn't seem to see Harry where he sat across the room in the alcove of the window. That stung a little, too.

"I'm sorry," Harry said at the end of that first week of slow, tentative renewal of the capacity to eat once more and slowly, tentatively beginning to look a little less of a corpse again.

Draco didn't reply, but Harry didn't expect him to. Seated in his alcove, he stared out of the rain-flecked window as he often did. "I expect you'll probably hate me for doing all of this, whatever 'this' is, and I'm sorry for that. But I don't regret it, and I'm not going to stop helping you, Draco. And –"

Harry paused. He didn't even know what he was saying, but the words demanded to be spoken for reasons he couldn't understand. Raising a hand, Harry trailed his fingers down the glass of the window, chasing the line of a droplet. Funny, how it didn't feel cool as he knew it should. Harry hadn't truly felt cold for a long time.

"Even if you go back to absolutely loathing me like you did when we were kids, I don't mind," Harry murmured, speaking more to himself than to Draco. "I just kind of want you to get better, Draco. People shouldn't be so close to Death when they're alive."

Draco didn't reply. He could have been asleep for all Harry knew; he didn't glance over his shoulder to check. It was only when darkness had swallowed the length of Grimmauld Place and the stuttering light of streetlamps had long illuminated the road in their wan attempt at brightness that Draco spoke in the barest murmur.

"I don't hate you."

Just that. Barely a handful of words and almost too quiet to make out – but Harry heard, and that slight tightness in his chest he hadn't really allowed himself to acknowledge eased just a little. He didn't glance towards Draco, but he felt himself almost smile as he stared out the window.

Harry slept in Draco's room that night. He couldn't bring himself to leave.

How long was it supposed to take to work? How long until it became apparent that it wasn't really working at all? Would Draco get better? Was Harry supposed to do something? He didn't know, and that not knowing was perhaps the worst part. If Draco he needed Harry to do something…

Harry wanted to help, but he simply didn't know what 'help' entailed. Stopping things from getting worse didn't seem like enough, but all Harry could do was sit in his room alongside him for hours on end each day.

As it happened, Draco managed for himself. He managed better than Harry would have considered him capable of given he was all but silently and listlessly bedridden for days. In all of Harry's insufficient attempts at assistance, it was Draco who managed it for himself.

And it happened when Harry got another visitor.

Most of the time, visitors were quiet. Silent, even. A select few spoke, and those that Harry had known, those he should have known, could even hold conversations.

Even fewer erupted into violent wails that seemed to shake the house on its foundations.

It had only happened twice before. Only twice, but memory of each instance was enough that Harry didn't tear through the house in a frenzy before the sheer, blood-curdling screeches. Not like the first time that seemed so long ago. Some things, however, weren't forgotten no matter how long ago they occurred.

He was sleeping in Draco's room. It had become a habit, and Harry found he almost couldn't help himself. The smell of Death that hung from Draco wasn't quite as potent as it had once been, but it still lingered. It was still sad, and wrong, and he still longed to alleviate it. Harry didn't know if his presence would do anything, but he could hope. He could try.

The scream tore him from his sleep, however. It was echoing. It was desperate. It shuddered through the walls in a way that Harry almost couldn't believe he was the only one to hear. He was dragged into consciousness in a flurry and found himself crashing to the floor beside his alcove before he'd even opened his eyes.

"Wha…?" he gasped groggily, pushing himself upright and reflexively straightening his glasses.

The screams.

"What the -?"

They were pained, and so desperate, and so… so…

Scrambling from the floor, Harry didn't even spare a glance for Draco's bed before he was charging from the room. He crashed into the wall opposite the door, rebounded off those of the hallway, and all but vaulted down the creaking stairs. The house groaned in sympathetic protest, but it was barely a murmur beneath the visitor's cries.

He was a young man. Or a boy, Harry realised, as he stumbled down the last of the stairs and into the entryway. He had to have been younger than Harry and that made it all the worse, because those that screamed…

"Stop," Harry said, skidding to his knees before the boy where he'd crumpled to the ground. "Please, stop screaming."

The boy didn't hear him. Or perhaps he ignored him, Harry wasn't sure. His head was bowed, his back bent, and he hunched upon himself as though afflicted with stomach pains. And the screams. The screams shredded the air like knives tearing through silk.

He was small. He was thin, almost feeble. He was so unintimidating that the thought of him being murdered was one of the most painful things Harry could consider. But it had happened. To the screamers, that was what had happened. And it was horrible.

Reaching twitching fingers forwards, Harry brushed his hand through the boy's insubstantial shoulder. "Please," he begged, because he couldn't – couldn't stand the screaming, so loud and pained and – "Please, just stop."

He didn't stop.

"I can't – I can't help you if you don't –" Harry's fingers curled through the coldness of the boy as he twitched in the throughs of his wailing, his rocking, his frantic clutching of his face.

"How can I help?"

More screaming.

"Please, can you just –? Tell me what I can do? What can I do?"

The boy's voice cracked and broke, but it didn't stifle. His shoulders shuddered, but he didn't cease his rocking. If anything, the compulsive motions grew even more rapid.

"I don't know what to do!" Harry all but pleaded, and he was only detachedly aware that his voice was raised almost in a shout. He dropped his hand into a fist onto his knee, bowing his head and squeezing his eyes closed. "Please just stop. Please, just… just tell me what it is I can do."

His ears rung. They echoed and throbbed with each renewed scream that Harry knew everyone else in the world was deaf to. It hurt to hear, and more than just for the noise. Harry felt rocked to his core, and every muscle shuddered as though lashed by the sound.

How long it lasted, Harry didn't know. He hated it, wanted to flee from it, but he couldn't, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. He was aware he still spoke, still pleaded, but he couldn't have said what words tumbled from his lips. Harry couldn't open his eyes again. He couldn't look at the boy because…

He was small. He was huddled. He was so unremarkably plain and unintimidating it was pathetic. But worst of all, the stain of bloody red that smeared across his throat was a horror that spelled out his death. Harry didn't want to see that. He was used to it, used to sometimes seeing the evidence of his visitors' deaths, but some of them were far worse than others.

"… so sorry," he heard himself whisper at one moment, eyes still closed and head still bowed. "I'm so sorry that happened to you. I just… what can I do? What can I do to help? Please just tell me what I can…"

It took Harry a moment to realise that his words were only audible for the silencing of the screams. They still resounded like echoes in his ears, but the source had stopped. Their absence was as deafening as the shrieks had been.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, Harry opened his eyes. He swallowed thickly, forcing down the choking weight that had settled there and had grown more expansive with each moment. Finally, he dropped his gaze to the worn carpet where the boy had been but moments before.

It was empty. Expectedly, but Harry was still caught in the hollow emptiness of the hallway before him. He stared and could hardly blink for where had been and yet was no longer the visitor who'd been murdered. The one who couldn't move on and who, in all likelihood, Harry wouldn't be able to help at all. The others he hadn't. The others had simply left after dragging him through a handful of sleepless nights.

The hallway seemed to echo too. The dust motes that incessantly hung in the air drifted with lazy carelessness. Harry raised a hand to knuckle a stinging eye. He wasn't crying, but it felt a little like –

"What was that?"

The quite voice, the muted words, were so low that Harry thought for a moment they might have been from another visitor. He glanced towards the stairwell, half expecting to find Fred appeared in watchful wait at the spot he always arose.

It wasn't Fred. His seat was filled, but it wasn't Fred. Draco, thin and pale, worn and wearing world-weariness that dragged at his shoulders, sat with his hands wedged between his knees. His lips thin and expression were solemn, his eyes hooded and heavy. And he was staring at Harry.

Harry couldn't be bothered to move. Some visitors took the strength out of him, but many did so more than others. The murdered? They were the most exhausting. Their screams clung to Harry as more than just echoes of memory; he could feel them with the weight of their violent death. That Draco had actually climbed from bed for the first time in days was astounding, but he couldn't find it within himself to be delighted or even satisfied.

Sighing, Harry briefly closed his eyes again. "What was what?" he said, dropping his chin to his chest.

"That," Draco replied. "All that shouting."

Harry cracked an eye open. "You heard it?" he asked, a buzz of surprise welling within him.

"Of course. It was impossible not to hear you, even three floors up."

Harry blinked. Then he closed his eyes once more. Oh. That was it. Draco hadn't heard the boy but Harry himself. He sighed heavily once more. "It was nothing," he murmured.

"People don't shout like that for nothing," Draco replied, just as quietly. "They don't say what you said –"

"Don't," Harry cut him off. He didn't want to hear a word of what he'd said, of how he'd pleaded. "I don't… I don't want to hear it. Please."

Silence hung between them amidst the dust motes. Draco didn't speak. Harry didn't move. The stasis of the moment was blessed just for a few seconds, and then Harry opened his eyes once more. Draco was still watching him with something almost like interest for the first time in days.

"It was a visitor," he said. Another swallow did him no good, but he attempted it anyway. "He was loud. And upset. And…" Harry turned back to the place the boy had been, where he would likely be for the next few days before the residual terror of his death faded enough to allow him to leave. It would happen. Eventually, it would happen. Nothing lasted forever but Death itself.

"What happened to him?"

Harry glanced towards Draco once more. His voice was a little hoarse, likely the result of his days of muteness. Harry stared at him for a long moment. He probably shouldn't tell him. He didn't know whether it was right to be bubble-wrapping Draco or not in his somewhat wavering state, but maybe he shouldn't tell him he'd just seen a kid who'd been murdered.

Except that Harry abruptly found that he couldn't help himself. The words tumbled forth before he truly knew what he was going to say.

"Most of the time they don't speak," he said. "Most of the time they can't. But people like him, like that kid? When they've gone a really bad way, it's like it's spilling out all over the place."

"What…?" Draco began.

"He went a really bad way," Harry said, unable to hold his tongue. "I could see it all over him. The ones that have been murdered – they're the worst because they didn't know it was coming. Even worse than the car crashes, or – or the diseases, or the deterioration."

Draco slowly straightened in his seat. "Murdered."

The burning returned to Harry's eyes as he turned back to the empty patch of thin carpet. "It's worse because I can't do anything," he said, hearing his voice warble and unable to do anything to steady them. He hardly cared. The words kept coming, unspoken ever before but pouring forth as though they'd been waiting for the opportunity. "I try, and I've tried, and sometimes the visitors come and I can actually help them, but… but sometimes there's nothing. How can you help someone who's been killed? When someone actually killed them? How is it possible to fix something like that?"

He took a shuddering breath, raising a hand to slip his fingers behind his glasses and press until he saw stars. He wasn't crying, couldn't remember the last time he'd cried, but it helped a little to suppress the burning. It did nothing for the tightness in his throat, or the weight dragging on his shoulders as much as it hollowed out his chest. It would always remain because ultimately Harry could do nothing. People came to him, they needed him, but sometimes he could do nothing to help them, no matter how much he wanted to.

"Shit, Potter."

Swallowing through the tightness in his throat once more, Harry glanced back towards Draco. His gaze was lowered to his knees, his fingers locked in a white-knuckled clasp, and Harry could see the line of a vein in his forehead.

"What?" he asked.

Draco shook his head. "Shit. You're fucked up."

Harry stared at him. Then he huffed with a resigned chuckle that was barely laughter at all. "Yeah. Definitely."

"I thought I was bad."

"Aren't you?"

Draco glanced up at him. His eyes were very dark, and more attentive than they'd been in… in Harry couldn't remember how long. "Yes. But at least mine only involves me. You've got a whole horde of people dragging you down."

"It's not that bad," Harry murmured, turning in his seat until he was properly facing Draco. "Not really."

"It's not?"

Harry shook his head. "I could be a murdered kid who doesn't even realise he's dead."

Draco fell silent at that. Then he nodded slowly. "It could always be worse."

Harry nodded. That was true. It didn't mean that what happened to Draco, what happened to any of the other visitors or to anyone else slogging through their daily drudgery, wasn't a struggle. But it could always be worse. If anything, it simply made Harry long to help all the more.

He sat on the floor next to the empty stretch of worn carpet where the boy had sat for a long time. Draco sat with him without comment, and it might not have been much, but at least it was something.

Draco started coming out of his room after that. Harry wasn't sure the main reason why. It could have been that his medication started working enough to help him. It could have been that the day after the murdered boy arrived they had to make the necessary revisit to the doctor. Or maybe something about talking of the visitor had been a change.

Maybe, possibly and just maybe, he actually got sick enough of his room to venture out. That would have been somehow wonderful.

"He just screams?" Draco said the first day, sitting on the step beside where Fred always appeared.

"Just screams," Harry replied, slumped heavily on the floor with his ears ringing of those very screams even in their absence.

"Have you tried talking to him?" Draco asked the second day.

"Of course. He's too lost. I doubt he'll ever hear anything again."

"How did he die?" was asked on the third day.

Harry turned slowly towards him. He knew from the previous two visitors that it was impossible to sleep on the days he encountered a murder victim. Exhaustion weighed upon him and no amount of painting walls or staring out of windows, not even assisting and actually helping another visitor when they'd appeared the previous afternoon, was able to distract.

Harry didn't know why Draco asked what he did. It could have been some morbid fascination with Death, some leftover urge from when he'd made his own attempt at embracing it barely weeks before. Harry didn't know, and he almost didn't care. Almost.

"His throat," Harry said quietly, raising his hand to his own neck in sympathy. The pulsing redness that still throbbed from the dead boy's injury, staining his plain shirt already mucked and torn into disrepair, welled before his eyes in a glaring vision of horror. "It looks like a puncture wound, I guess."

Draco's sharp inhalation was almost a hiss. "Someone stabbed him?" he asked, voice hoarse with more than disuse.

"I suppose."

"So you see when a person…?"

Harry waited. When Draco didn't continue, he prompted him. "When someone what?"

But Draco only shook his head. "Fuck, Potter. That's… that's fucked up."

Nodding, Harry lowered his gaze to his hands. "It is. That anyone could take someone else's life like that."

"That wasn't what I was referring to," Draco said quietly.

Harry didn't really know what he meant by that, but he didn't ask for an explanation. Instead, he only remained in silent wait for Draco to continue. When no further words were offered, he abandoned the conversation entirely. It wasn't important, and he didn't have the energy to care. Not at that moment.

For four days the boy returned. Four days he screamed and wailed, and each of those days he faded just slightly. When Harry watched him slowly, slowly disappear on that fourth day for the last time, his cries and sobs, his frantic gasps of distress, were so muffled that Harry actually heard Draco shuffle down the stairs and take his seat.

Neither of them spoke into the absence that followed. Not for a long time. Finally, as the detached listlessness slowly faded from Harry's mind, he sighed heavily and straightened from his slouch. "I'm really sorry I couldn't do anything," he murmured to the disappeared boy.

"What?" Draco asked.

Harry shook his head. "Nothing. He's just gone."

"You mean like…?"

"For good."

"You can tell?"

Harry nodded. His hand reached without intention towards the patch of carpet, fingers rubbing on the smooth, worn carpet. "Yeah. Every time."

"Is that a good thing? Does it make you happy?"

Harry turned towards the stairs. Draco regarded him as he always did, his gaze intent and eyes slowly blinking, hands pressed between his knees. He rarely spoke outside of those moments, just as he rarely stepped from his room except when the boy arrived. It didn't matter, not really, but it was vaguely interesting.

Just a little, though. Not quite enough that Harry could be wholly distracted from the magical coldness on the carpet that only he could feel, the tinge of wrongness in the air and the faint hint of pungent Death that lingered. It was a smell he didn't think he would ever forget, regardless of how long he lived.

"Happy?" he echoed, and Draco only blinked in reply. Harry shook his head. "Draco, Death is never happy. It's horrible, and it hurts, and the people that are left behind will always carry the weight of it, even if they forget the one who died."

"Everyone?" Draco asked lowly. He shook his own head. "Some people don't have anyone to miss them."

Harry hitched a shoulder in a shrug. He couldn't bring himself to argue, not with any vigour, but speaking the truth was different. "Everyone leaves a shadow behind them. Everyone, even those who think they don't have anyone to leave behind."

"You don't know that," Draco murmured, shoulders hunching slightly.

"And neither would you if you left," Harry said simply. "Neither would I. Because we'd be gone."

Draco stared at him for a long moment. Then he puffed a sigh of laughter that hadn't the barest hint of amusement. "You're so fucking messed up, Potter," he said.

There wasn't a hint of derision, or anger, or resentment to his words, but even if there had been, Harry didn't think he would have cared. He could only shrug again, gaze turning back to the empty carpet. "Yeah. Probably."

Week three dawned with a feather-light touch of chilled fingers to Harry's cheek. He blinked his eyes open, squinting into the greyness of morning light spilling through the window beside him. It took a moment to recall that he'd slept in the alcove in Draco's room again.

Then he turned towards the Puppy Girl who he could all but instinctively sense at his side. She was familiar enough for that now. Her wide eyes and pale face peered up at him with solemnity that shouldn't have been possible of a five-year-old. With a hand, she grazed her fingers down Harry's cheek as had become her habit and left trails of coolness in her wake.

Harry sighed. He straightened from his awkward position, rolling out the kinks in his shoulders. "Have you found another one?" he asked.

The girl didn't need clarification anymore. She likely never had. Harry didn't know where her fixation with puppies had come from, but it was clearly the element that held her captured and unable to move onwards. If Harry could only find a way to free her from her obsession…

"What is it?"

Startling, Harry glanced towards Draco's bed, and then to Draco as he pushed himself up from his pillow. Draco, who was almost always asleep when Harry woke in the morning, but who evidence had suggested had particularly good hearing, even in his sleep. Maybe Harry's simple words had been enough to urge him awake

Harry turned his gaze briefly down to the little girl at his side. She stared at him unblinkingly, thumb rising to slip between her lips, and didn't spare Draco a moment of her attention. It wasn't atypical of her to ignore anyone but Harry, though it did sometimes feel a little jarring, especially when others couldn't see and thus effectively ignored her in return.

But Draco was a little different in that regard. Oddly enough, even with what scare interactions he'd had with any of Harry's visitors, he seemed different. Hermione still seemed to consider Harry delusional half the time, if only half. The Weasleys had turned from him in a fit of grief. Everyone else… well, the rest of the world couldn't know. Harry couldn't let them. Even those he was forced to confront on behalf of his visitors – Harry couldn't let them truly know.

But Draco had never questioned the validity of Harry's claim. Granted, he'd rarely spoken to Harry at all over the past few weeks, but after the first moment that Harry had explained, when he'd told him of Narcissa, he'd known Draco had believed him. How could he not? Draco had abided by Harry's words at Narcissa's wishes. He'd withdrawn his heartfelt desire to simply stop because his mother had wanted it.

No one had ever done that before. Just as no one had ever sat alongside Harry while he was with a visitor in distress. Draco had been the only one to ever ask exactly why Harry painted every wall he could get his hands on, too.

Harry had barely truly spoken of his visitors before, but he supposed there wasn't anything wrong with doing so. Not when it was to Draco.

"There's a little girl here," Harry said quietly. He held out his hand in offering, and the girl rested her own tiny, splayed fingers in his palm. "She comes to ask for my help sometimes."

Draco was heavy-eyed and sagging into his blankets even as he pushed himself up to sitting. He frowned slightly, stared at Harry, and then deliberately lowered his gaze to Harry's raised hand. "You mean she's…?"

"Here." Harry curled his hand around the little girl's. Even if he wasn't holding it, the weight of it too insubstantial to clasp, he could feel its coldness. "She comes fairly often."

"Why?" Draco asked, only to shake his head a moment later. "No, that's not right. You said most of them can't talk, didn't you?"

He remembered. For some reason, that meant something. Even if Draco hated him, and even if he only spoke out of wary curiosity, it meant something that he remembered that small fact. Even better was that he was talking at all. It felt somehow comforting that he would bother; that after weeks of listlessness that was too worrying to leave him alone in, he was motivated enough to speak.

Was Draco getting better? Harry didn't know. He didn't know if people could just get better because of pills or if they needed something more. Hermione had spoken of therapists, but maybe that wasn't for Draco. He'd spoken of them too for that matter, and Harry wasn't inclined to force him to relive that particular experience. He wasn't that cruel.

"They can't," Harry finally said, turning back to the little girl. "But she doesn't need to. She shows me."

"Shows you?" Draco asked.

"She takes me to see what she wants to show me."

"And that is?"

"Puppies."

Draco stared at him, blinking slowly, and sleep gradually retreated from his gaze. He knuckled an eye. "Puppies?"

Harry nodded, watching as the little girl made an phantom impression of tugging on his hand. He slipped down from the alcove and stood. "I don't know why she does it – maybe it has something to do with what happened in her life – but I think it's what's keeping her here. If it might help her to move on, I've got to at least come with her, don't I?"

Allowing himself to be effectively pulled from the room by what was barely more than a brush of cold air, Harry started towards the door. Only to be stopped as Draco twisted in his seat to follow his passage. "Will you be coming back?" he asked.

Harry paused with his free hand resting upon the doorframe. He glanced over his shoulder. "What?"

Draco shifted a little awkwardly in his nest of blankets. He dropped his gaze to where his fingers plucked idly at his blankets. "Forget it. It was just a question."

"Draco, I'm –"

"Whatever, Potter. It was just a stupid question."

Harry didn't think it was stupid. He didn't think it was stupid at all. If anything, he thought it was maybe a little bit wonderful. If Draco was interested enough in his whereabouts to ask where he was going and if he was going to return, that was surely a good thing, wasn't it? It was certainly better than dismissive listlessness.

"It's not a stupid question," Harry said. "And I will be. I don't know when, seeing as it takes a while to go anywhere without magic, but I will."

"Without magic," Draco echoed. "I don't understand that. You mean you can't -?"

"No," Harry said, shaking his head. "Not anymore. I generally just walk back home when she disappears again, which she always does seeing as I can't…" Since I can't help her. Harry glanced down to where the girl peered owlishly up at him, thumb still stuck in her mouth.

"It would be easier if you could Apparate back," Draco said quietly.

Harry nodded. "It would be."

"But you can't."

"No."

"Because of…?"

"I don't know. I just can't anymore."

Draco had never asked about Harry's magic, either. Or not more than in passing, and certainly not in the past few weeks. He still didn't ask. Instead, quite unexpectedly, he swung his legs from his bed and rose to his feet. He was tall, had always been taller than Harry, but looked even taller and spindlier because of that thinness.

Nonetheless, and despite any weakness he might be fighting against, Draco stepped almost tentatively towards Harry. He seemed to fight with himself when he stopped at Harry's side, mouth opening and closing before managing to speak. "Alright, then," he said finally. "Then I'll come with you."

Harry stared up at him. He almost couldn't believe his ears. "What?'

Draco's lips thinned, and even that touch of disgruntlement was somehow satisfying to see. He'd worn little enough expression in the past few days. "Unless you have an objection to that?"

Harry could only continue to stare. Draco was out of bed without the trigger of a screaming visitor and Harry's shouted replies. He was speaking without direct provocation. He was… he was offering to…

"Do you?"

Harry gave a mental shake of his head, discarding the stupefied thoughts. A slight frown had settled on Draco's brow and he seemed almost nervous. Harry had never thought to see him like that.

"Do I have a problem with it?" he asked. He shook his head before Draco could reply. "Of course not. You're free to do what you like, Draco."

"Am I really?" Draco replied, a touch of sarcasm to his words that was barely discernible.

Harry peered up at him for a moment, hearing the unspoken reminder. He didn't like it. He didn't want Draco to consider him a warden of the pseudo-prison Harry had forced him intoHarry h. He nodded. "Of course."

When he turned and left, he didn't glance back over his shoulder. It was a feeling, however, that told him Draco followed. And it was only a brief glance over his shoulder to determine that he'd scooped up his wand from where it had lain neglected on the nightstand for days.

Harry didn't comment on that fact. He didn't breathe a word about Draco's subtle wand waving to slip shoes onto his own feet, the magic that was just a little bit sparking and rusty, or that he followed Harry. He didn't say anything about the fact that, if anything, something almost like delight welled within him as he stepped out of Grimmauld Place with Draco in tow. He'd never experienced that before; wandering in search of reprieve for his visitors was never a happy pastime.

But if Draco was coming, was actually motivated enough to climb out of bed and join him – that was surely worth some satisfaction, wasn't it?