A/N : I am so incredibly sorry that it's been so long since I've posted anything. It's been a super rough couple of years. My fiance almost died twice from really weird and terrible medical issues, and I'm getting married in less than 3 months...so maybe don't kill me too much for the atrociously late update? I promise I am working on this story again, and I will do my absolute best to see it through!
The next day Pansy cornered Draco on his way down from his dorm. He wasn't actually surprised by this; it had been a few days since the last time that the two of them had talked for any length of time. They certainly hadn't talked about any of the things that Pansy was probably about to ask him about.
"Well?" she said, a question clearly in her eyes even though she hadn't truly voiced anything yet. "I want details, Draco, and don't even think of denying me them."
Draco rolled his eyes, not sure what exactly he should tell her, if anything, about the previous night. "Most of the things happening outside of the common room stuff isn't really my story to tell."
The look she sent him was downright defiant now. "Well then you had better tell me the things you are able to."
"Honestly Pansy, you act as though you haven't had a front row seat to my absolutely dreadful wooing of Harry. Really, you're just being greedy now," he told her, hoping to prolong the inevitable.
"You know that one way or another I'll find out all about it. You can tell me, and I won't dig into it and see what my numerous sources can dredge up, or not, your choice," she told him smugly.
Draco didn't find it nearly as amusing as she did. He knew, for a fact, that there were things that Harry didn't want anyone to know, and he certainly had a right to that. "I'm only going to tell you this once, Pansy," he leaned forward, knowing that both his tone and posture was threatening, "Do not, under any circumstances, go snooping. You will leave mine and Harry's lives, and secrets, alone, no digging or sending your little pawns to try and find things out for you. If I find out that you're even attempting to find something out without his or my permission, you cannot even imagine the painful things I will do to you."
She narrowed her eyes at him, before smiling widely, "Good. Now that we've reestablished how absolutely gone you are on him, tell me all the stuff you actually want to tell me. I can practically see you repressing something. I won't pry, so long as you spill at least something."
Draco huffed indignantly. He should have expected something like that from her, really he should have. She had grown a lot, and she almost never actually set out to do serious damage anymore. "Fine, you nosy bint," he muttered, moving over to one of the tables in a corner of the room. No one else was up moving around yet, and probably wouldn't be for at least another half an hour. Gossiping was going to take up the time he had planned to use to go over the list of things he had for what needed to be done for each room, but there would be time for that later.
"How far along are you on your step by step plan?" she asked as she sat down next to him.
"I've given up on that part. Some…things have come up that supersede the original plan. It's still going well, of course, but circumstances have changed things quite a bit," Draco told her, fidgeting with a piece of parchment that had been left on the table.
Pansy raised her eyebrow at him, obviously curious, "Any of it that I get to know?"
He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed, "Not really? It's being taken care of, if a little slowly. Honestly, actively pursuing him will probably not even be my current goal. I've decided to sort of…let things go on as they are, and see how it unfolds. I've done plenty to set the stage, nothing else will happen until he's ready for it, and I am surprisingly okay with that."
She raised her eyebrows at him, "Well that is surprising. But I think you're right. You've set things up nicely where you can spend oodles of time with him doing all sorts of things, and it seems like the less hard you try, the further you seem to be getting with him, so it's probably better this way. More organic. It might take him some time, but he already spends most of his time with you and relies on you quite heavily. I'm relatively sure that you make up most of his social interaction all on your own."
That was that. His plan which was no longer a plan was as good as it was ever going to get, and he was happy with the way things were going right now. He knew he was in for a long road, but, well, he had accepted that at the beginning of this little adventure, hadn't he?
The weeks leading up to the holidays were insanely busy for all of the Eighth Years, and quite a few of the Seventh Years. Draco and Harry didn't spend quite as much time together as Draco had originally hoped, mostly on the account of the fact that every time they thought they had spare time something else seemed to crop up. They would finish an essay just to have something go wrong in one of the common rooms. If everything was going right in the common rooms, they hit a lesson that they couldn't grasp as quickly.
A little under two weeks before Christmas break Draco found Harry sitting in their common room with his head in his hands. "Harry? It's three in the morning, what are you doing out here?"
Harry startled, turning his head so quickly in Draco's direction that he could practically hear the crack it probably made. "Merlin Draco! Don't scare me like that!"
"I didn't mean to startle you, honestly, but that doesn't answer my question Harry," he said, sitting next to him on the couch.
"I couldn't sleep. I keep thinking about all of the things that still need to be done, and how we're barely keeping our heads above water with our course load. I don't know how much more I can handle, honestly. And then there's the nutrition potions, and Professor Snape said he's going to have the first potion for my eyes tomorrow, or today, and it's just all too much, you know?" Harry got more frantic the longer he spoke, finally throwing his hands up at the end.
Honestly, Draco had been expecting this actually, though he wasn't entirely sure he was equipped to handle it. "Hey, just breathe, okay? Things are stressful right now, I won't disagree with you there, but we already have four of the rooms completely finished, just five more to go, and two more of those are nearly complete. A lot of our courses will start being review and then quizzes or tests, so the homework load should calm down. In regards to your health, those things really are for the better Harry."
Harry collapsed back against the couch and leaned into Draco's side. There hadn't been much time to pursue what Draco hoped would become an actual relationship, but when they had a few moments, touches like this seemed to be happening more frequently all the time. He ruffled the boy's hair and pulled him more tightly against his side.
Sighing, Harry snuggled more against him. "It's too much change," he mumbled.
"I know Harry, but try to remember that they're good changes, and you aren't alone. Come on, I know you're stressed out, but you should at least try and sleep, okay?" he asked, nudging the other boy to his feet and leading him towards the dorm rooms.
Harry shuffled his feet and grumbled, "I tried sleeping though, I can't. Maybe I should just finish reading that chapter for transfiguration."
Draco snorted, "Harry, you aren't in any condition to be doing school work. I can stay with you until you fall asleep if you want, though."
"And what are you going to do when I don't fall asleep at all?"
"Well, I suppose I'll just keep you company then," Draco told him, opening the door to the room and leading Harry to his bed, closing the curtain around it and putting a silencing ward up around them. Harry got settled into his bed, looking much more sleepy than he had a few moments before. He'd scooted over on the bed so that there was plenty of room for Draco to crawl into the space beside him. The blond let his eyebrow raise into his hairline. This was completely uncharted territory for both of them, and he wasn't entirely sure how this was going to pan out. But Harry had been the one to initiate the contact tonight, and who was Draco to say no?
He sighed, getting into the bed carefully and trying to situate himself before turning to Harry, "I'll stay on the condition that you actually try to sleep."
He'd barely managed to get the words out before the dark haired boy had curled into his side, yawning widely, "I'll try. Will you stay even if I do fall asleep?"
"I probably shouldn't, but I suppose I can do that," he murmured as he pulled Harry closer, feeling rather sleepy himself.
Draco didn't have any actual recollection of falling asleep, but he must have, because the next thing he knew there were all too familiar freckles and red hair entirely too close to his being for his general liking. "Bloody hell Weasley, what on earth do you want this early?"
Ron snorted, "Early? I don't think I've ever seen you sleep this late, Malfoy. If you two want to eat anything for breakfast, you'd best get up since by the time you get there you'll only have about ten minutes to eat."
Narrowing his eyes, Draco looked around for a few seconds, the night before coming back to him. Harry was still curled tightly against him, with his head partially on top of his chest and an arm tossed over his waist. It was likely the most restful he had ever seen Harry, and he was rather loath to wake him up. He sighed, and glanced up to find the red headed menace still standing there.
"I'll take care of it, you can go now," he grumbled before turning back to Harry. He waited until they were alone and reached out to gently touch Harry's cheek. If his godfather had the potion for Harry's eyes ready it was likely to be a difficult day for him. He didn't expect Harry to cope with everything perfectly. There really were a lot of changes happening, and they were happening all at once. It was more than expected that he would be struggling a little with it. It might be prudent to get a couple of calming draughts to keep on hand for him at this rate.
He sighed, "Harry, it's time to wake up. We'll be late to breakfast otherwise."
Harry twitched, groaned, and shuffled closer to Draco, though the blond wasn't entirely sure how much closer he could actually get without being completely on top of him.
"You might not be hungry, brat, but I certainly am. You will not be allowed to hide away in here all day. You can't afford to miss any classes, and you certainly cannot afford to miss any meals," Draco informed the dark haired boy who twitched entirely too much to not have been awake, "I knew you were awake! Honestly Harry, you're going to have to get up. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, you know."
Snorting, Harry answered, "What's the hard way?"
"The hard way, my dear, is I simply go get Severus now, and he will force you out of bed instead. You've become one of his favorite students, you know," Draco informed him, watching Harry open his eyes to narrow slits to glare at him. The effect was greatly diminished by how adorable he looked.
After glaring at him for several seconds, Harry sighed and started to get up, "Fine, I'm getting up. Not because I want to."
Draco tried to smile reassuringly at him, "I know, but things will be fine, I promise. This is just one more thing for you to defeat, alright?"
Harry didn't look at all convinced, but he nodded his head and started getting ready for the day anyways. "Can we at least put off going to see Professor Snape until after classes? I don't think we have enough time for him to lecture us about the potion and actually use it before class now. Do you think they'll be any side effects? How many potions is it going to take total to fix my bloody eyes anyways?"
Draco watched him steadily from where he was quickly pulling on his school robes. "Two, perhaps three, more potions most likely. If your eyes hadn't gotten so bad, it would probably have been less. The only side effects will be the change in your eyes, which might give you a bit of a headache any make you feel a little off balance for a few days, but you should adjust quickly. I think that's another reason he's timed it so the worst effects will happen over the weekend. All around, it probably is better to wait after classes to go see him."
The green eyed boy was frantically finished getting ready, looking a bit like he was going to hyperventilate, so Draco sidled up to him quickly and gently grabbed his shoulders. "Harry, you have to breathe, alright? I know it's scary, but I promise you Professor Snape is not going to let anything bad happen to you. Just another thing for you to defeat, remember?"
Harry nodded uncertainly, "Alright, let's just go and get today over with."
They did have to skip breakfast, but Hermione had been nice enough to make them both a bacon sandwich so they at least had something to eat quickly before class started. It was the beginning of one of the longest days of Harry's life. He would quite frankly rather have had to face off with another dragon or dark lord, which was completely insane, but just showed how screwed up his life had been so far. Draco and Hermione tried to keep him distracted from it, and Ron offered what support he could, but ultimately Harry spent his day on edge and half frantic.
By the time their last class let out, he was a jumbled mess of nerves. "Right, so we're just meant to meet him after his last class in the hospital wing, right?" he asked Draco nervously.
He nodded, "That gives us around an hour. How about we check up on some of the common rooms to kill time? We can at least pretend to be productive that way."
"Alright, let's do that," Harry mumbled, leading the way to the closest nearly finished common room. It was on the same floor as they were so it only took a couple of minutes to get there. This one, he was pretty sure, was meant to be for the fourth years. "Looks like the only things left are enchanting the windows and rearranging some furniture," he said, quite frankly surprised.
Draco grinned at him briefly before inspecting the room a little more closely, "It looks like our minions have been working extra hard lately. I almost don't know what we're going to do with all of the extra time once we're done with the common rooms. Do we...relax?"
"I don't know if I even remember how," Harry grumbled. He hummed briefly, moving some of the furniture around so it was organised more cohesively. "You know, I hadn't really thought about it. We've been so busy with this and homework that it seems odd to think that we will have free time pretty soon. And these rooms seem to actually be ahead of schedule. If we finish arranging the furniture, we just need to get Hermione to do the windows, and then move a portrait over...all the wards are already set in all of the rooms, so that's done too. How much other stuff did they get done and I just didn't notice?"
"I..don't know. I don't remember the last time I actually checked the list of what was left to do in which room. It was at least a week ago, I think. I remember the fiasco of orange in the first year's room that we had to fix thanks to Luna, but that's the last time I checked on something in headquarters. We've sort of just been bouncing around," Draco said, looking a little lost. They finished moving the furniture in silence, smiling at each other once it was done.
"Maybe we should check on the list after dinner," Draco said, looking around the room with pride. It was amazing seeing them all come together so well. "Or, if you don't feel up to it, we can ask Hermione about it. She probably has a copy of her own she keeps track on. That would have been useful."
Harry shrugged, "With Hermione it's possible. As much as I really don't want to, we probably need to head to the hospital wing now. You know you don't actually have to come with me, right? I promise to still go even if you aren't herding me there."
Draco rolled his eyes, "I'm going. I don't want you to feel alone, and anyways, it was my idea in the first place. Plus, how am I supposed to make sure you take care of yourself correctly if I don't go with you?" Draco proceeded to lead Harry out into the corridor, precisely like Harry had predicted he would. He spent the entire walk to the hospital wing grumbling to Draco about terrible tasting potions and nosy nurses, while Draco nodded and hummed agreeably when it seemed appropriate. Whatever Harry needed to do to keep from having a mental breakdown before he even had the potion was fine with him.
Honestly, he'd been waiting for a breakdown about them sharing a bed the night before, but Harry seemed to want to treat it like it was normal, and Draco didn't know whether bringing it up at the moment would be a good or a bad thing, so he thought that it might be a better idea to wait until Harry brought it up himself. Or, if that didn't seem like it was going to happen, once they were finished with the common rooms maybe. Draco wasn't sure when his life had seemed to get so far out of his own control, but since it was in a way that seemed relatively beneficial to him, he had decided to ignore it for the time being.
When they finally got to the hospital wing, Professor Snape and Madam Pomfrey were waiting for them, murmuring in low tones, presumably about Harry's eyesight. Harry squared his shoulders and glanced back at Draco for reassurance, getting an encouraging nod back in return. "Alright, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. What do you need me to do?"
Snape rolled his eyes, "Really, you're making this out to be much more difficult than it will be. It's quite simple. You will sit down on the bed right over there, take off your glasses, and drink the potion I have painstakingly brewed for you. The next potion needed is already in the works, I just need the results from the diagnostics that Madam Pomfrey will run after your eyes have adjusted to their new state after you have taken the potion to continue to make the second one. You might feel a bit discombobulated, but the side effects should be rather minimal. After you have adjusted to it, we will charm your glasses to your new prescription, and you will be free to go."
That seemed less bad than what Harry had been trying to prepare himself for, really. He made his way to the bed and settled down on it, Draco wandering over after him, and took off his glasses. Draco handed him the potion bottle and Harry downed the concoction quickly, knowing from experience how awful some potions tasted. This one tasted like copper and earth, so it was definitely one of the better ones he'd encountered so far.
The potion took almost no time at all to begin working, and it didn't hurt exactly, but it felt a little like something was squeezing and pushing on his eyes, and then just as quickly as it started, it ended, leaving him feeling a little light headed. He opened his eyes and for the first time in years, probably since he was in primary school, the objects and people around him looked significantly less blurry.
"Whoa," he muttered as Madam Pomfrey started her spells. It was weird how much less blurry his world without glasses was. Knowing that it was only going to get better made him even more excited. Colors seemed sharper too, and the closer things were to his face, the better he could see them. He suspected that reading was about to get a lot easier.
"Well, Potter? Is your vision better? How are you feeling?" Snape asked him gently, and wasn't that something new to get used to still?
Harry grinned a little sheepishly, "It seems a lot better, sir. Thank you for taking the time to help me. Things are less blurry and colors are just...more. I can see better close up now too. I feel just a little light headed, but otherwise I feel normal."
Snape smiled at him, nodded, and moved to speak to Madam Pomfrey again after she handed Harry his glasses back. His glasses seemed to make his eyesight even better than they used to, probably because they were not only to correct prescription now, but also because his eyes weren't utterly destroyed any more. He'd gathered from the way Snape and Pomfrey had been talking that he had actually been rather close to going blind, and hadn't even known it. He'd been trying not to dwell on it, since it was being fixed, but it had still been hard to hear. It had made him understand some of Draco's anger better.
Speaking of Draco, the other boy was leaning on the bed next to him, watching Harry with expectant eyes. Draco was even more attractive now that he could see him better, his eyes more of a silvery grey than the flat storm grey Harry had originally thought they were. "Well hello there," Draco murmured softly, "We should be able to go back to the common room whenever you're ready. If you still want to check on the other common room projects after dinner, we can do that then."
Harry smiled at him, "Yeah, I'm ready to go when you are. I feel fine, mostly." He did too, which was surprising. He was still anxious about all of the change, and kind of flustered between Draco and dealing with the common rooms. He felt like he could handle things a little better again, now that he was over the first hurdle with his eyes and that hadn't been nearly the nightmare he had been anticipating. He was starting to feel like things might just fall into place after all. The thought made him grimace. It was usually right about now when something was likely to go horrifically wrong.
