Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

Warning: this is painful. But it's better it happened now than later.

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Last Day Before

"Who's that from?"

Draco was quick, and curious, and leaned across Harry's shoulder as though he would snatch a sight of the name written on the outside of the envelope. Harry was quicker, though, and managed to cover the envelope with one hand.

Not that it would have told Draco anything anyway, Harry realized as he looked down, ignoring the dull twinge that seemed to pull to the left side of his chest. There was only his own name, Harry, written in a delicate hand. The difference was that he knew that hand, and he already knew he would have to read the letter alone.

"Well, who's it from?" Draco demanded again.

Harry shook his head again, and slid the envelope into a pocket of his robe. "No one," he said.

"It can't be no one," said Draco, and peered into his face. Harry could feel a distant tug on his mind that he suspected was Draco's empathy working, trying to coax the truth out of him. "Nobodies don't write on parchment, and nobodies don't put your name on envelopes." He lowered his voice, though Harry could feel most of the Slytherin table watching them already. "Nobodies don't make you look as though you've received a blow to the solar plexus."

Harry swallowed. He knew he couldn't tell Draco the truth. Draco would demand to know what Harry thought he was doing, and even if Harry explained, he wouldn't understand most of it, not really. "Draco," he whispered. "Please. I've yielded other things to you, the contents of my nightmares and the contents of my emotions, without complaining. Leave me this."

"I could do that a lot more easily if you didn't look the way you look." Draco's irritated flush had faded, and now his face was pale. "Harry, I think you should tell me. Not because I want to know, but for your own sake."

"It's important to me," whispered Harry. "It's something I really need privacy on."

Draco let out a long breath in which Harry could hear many emotions, including the irritation that he'd obviously tried to dismiss. Then he put one hand over Harry's wrist and squeezed.

"When you're ready to talk, come to me," said Draco. "Don't—I don't know, don't go and blab everything to your brother, not if he wouldn't understand either. I want to know."

Harry met his eyes, gauging his willingness to know. Draco did seem sincere. He nodded, once.

Draco smiled at him, though the expression was strained, and withdrew his hand. "Pass the pancakes this way, Blaise," he said, waving a lazy hand at the platter still sitting in front of the other boy. "I'm not minded to wait while you fill your pockets with them. Thinking of feeding them to your little lion, later?"

Blaise flushed and almost hurled the platter down the table. "At least I have the courage to talk to my crush," he said spitefully.

Draco drew his wand under the table, and muttered a quick spell that Harry couldn't hear properly. A moment later, Blaise's hair turned pink. He didn't notice, at least until the snickering sped up and down the table. Draco slid his wand back into his sleeve, looking pleased with himself.

Harry shook his head, but couldn't bring himself to scold. Not when he was sure that his voice wouldn't shake when he spoke. Not when Draco watched him from the corner of his eye as if he might collapse at any second.

He forced his own breathing calm, and accepted the pancake platter as Draco slid it to him in turn. His stomach churned unpleasantly, but he did have to eat. Apart from classes and the letter to answer later, this was the last Friday in November. That made it the last day before the First Task.

He had to help Connor find a way to defeat the dragons, and soon.

"I don't know," Connor whinged, tossing aside Dragons and Their Origins. "I think that Viktor and Fleur must have all the good books out. There's nothing in here."

Harry glanced up from a book of glamours he'd been studying. "I told you what I think you should use."

"And I told you why it wouldn't work." Connor was obviously trying hard to be patient. He flinched when Madam Pince glared at them over her glasses, and lowered his voice. They were, technically, not supposed to be in the library, since they were both skiving off classes. "I can wrap myself in a glamour to discourage scent and sound and sight, but we haven't found any glamours to disguise the vibrations of my footsteps on the ground. And you were the one who told me that dragons were closely related to snakes. They would feel me coming."

Harry chewed his lip and flipped through the book again. That was true, but Harry couldn't shake the—perhaps foolish—hope that glamours were their best bet. He'd got much useful information out of this book, particularly a scent-defeating glamour that he had wrapped around himself now, just in case Hawthorn came by. And it wasn't as though Connor had any other ideas. He wasn't good enough at Transfiguration or Charms to use the defenses against the dragons that Harry had first hit upon, and suspected the other Champions would be using.

Harry flipped another page, and found that he'd come to the end of the book's section on glamours. He sat up when he saw the title of the next one: Illusions.

"Connor," he whispered.

"What?" Connor glanced up from using his wand to scratch at the table, obviously working hard to look bored instead of terrified out of his mind.

"What about casting illusions to fool the dragon?" Harry asked. "And wrapping the glamours around them? They wouldn't have the vibrations of your footsteps, that's true, but I think they might be distracted enough by all the different scents and sights to not realize that none of them were you. And you could, if you really tried, make illusions solid enough that they might cause vibrations."

Connor brightened for a moment, then let his face fall. "Wouldn't work," he said. "It would still have to be a lot of illusions, to keep me safe from the dragon's flame. And I can't control that many."

Then he went still, his eyes shining but an odd expression around his mouth, and Harry felt a surge of hope.

"What?" he asked.

"I—I forgot," Connor whispered. "I've tried so hard to forget everything about the end of last year." He glanced at Harry. Harry met his twin's eyes. He understood perfectly why Connor would want to forget the end of last year. His brother was the only one who would ever know that as well as he did.

"Go on," he said.

"Towards the end, Voldemort was teaching me to use my compulsion gift on my own spells," said Connor quietly. "It's not that they have minds, exactly, but spells that look like humans can—fool the compulsion, sometimes. The compulsion reaches out and controls them the way that it would try to control a mind, or a wizard who's more powerful and well-trained than I am would control many spells at once. The way Hermione does, maybe." Connor grinned for a moment. "Wonder what she'd say if I told her that she has a gift like compulsion."

Then his grin vanished, and he looked hard at Harry. "If I could just cast the illusions and the glamours, then I could use compulsion to control them, make them obey my wishes. I could send them in the directions I wanted. It'd still be risky, because the dragon might flame at me, after all, and I'd have to cast the other spells all at once, in a very short time. But I might be able to manage it."

"Do you know the incantation for a mirror image of yourself?" Harry asked.

Connor nodded. "Dupliciter. Siri—Voldemort taught me that one when he was practicing with me." Connor looked somewhat ill, as he did whenever he remembered that he'd been taking lessons with the Dark Lord himself. "I can do that easily enough. And then the glamours—wrapping them around the illusions will be the hard part. I'm more practiced with the illusions and the compulsion than I am with them."

"Then let's practice, shall we?" Harry asked, standing and picking up an armful of books to take them back to the shelves.

Connor looked at him with a faint, horrified admiration. "What? And miss lunch, too?"

Harry snorted. "You know as well as I where the kitchens are." The only difference there was that Harry had learned it from the house elves, in his first, tentative talks with them, and Connor had learned it from the Weasley twins. "We can eat later. But, Merlin, Connor. I want you to survive this."

Connor grinned slightly as he stood. "Me, too," he said. "That would be nice."

Harry hugged him briefly, ignoring Madam Pince's tutting. "I won't let you die, whatever happens," he whispered. "But I do want you to be able to succeed on your own if it's at all possible. I know that you didn't choose this, but—"

"No, I've become reconciled to it, a bit." Connor's voice was resigned. "No one else's name is coming out of the Goblet, and I've got to do the best I can. The honor of Hogwarts, and all."

Harry's heart clenched at the words. He wanted to spend more time with his brother, to demand the names of the people who'd hurt him, to hug him again and reassure him it would be all right.

He could only say, "Let's find one of the abandoned classrooms to practice the spells in."

"Dupliciter!"

Harry held his breath as his brother's image multiplied, then doubled again and again and again. He was good with the illusions, Harry acknowledged. Voldemort had apparently been an exacting taskmaster, trying all the time to draw Connor further under his influence.

Harry shook away the dark memories. He was fine. He was past them now. They were gone, and he had to concentrate on helping his brother survive the dragons.

"Dissimulo aspectum, dissimulo sonitum, dissimulo odoratum—"

Harry shook his head as he watched the spells falter again. Connor was concentrating, his face bright red as he chanted, casting the spells as fast as he could, but it was no use. They only wrapped one illusion at a time, and meanwhile the illusions were fading as Connor lost control of them before he could reach out with his compulsion. And those were only the weak glamours, the ones they'd decided to try to see how fast and hard Connor could cast. They weren't of the strength it would take to fool a dragon.

Harry wasn't quite ready to give up on the plan yet, though. His mouth tasted of ashes when he thought about the fact that the First Task was tomorrow, and there was no more time. He had to do something, so he would.

"Connor," he said, as the last of the illusions faded and Connor glanced at him in exhaustion. He flicked sweat from his brow, flipping up his fringe and bringing his scar into view. Harry felt his own twinge as if in sympathy. "This isn't working."

"But it has to," Connor insisted, sitting down on one of the crooked, broken desks in the corner. He traced patterns in the dust with a finger, not looking at Harry. "We don't have time to try anything else."

Harry shook his head. "I wasn't entirely talking about that," he said. "What we need is a spell that combines illusions and glamours, one that you can cast just a few times, so you can start controlling your illusions with your compulsion."

Connor sighed. "I don't know any spells like that." Abruptly, he slammed his hand down on his desk, not even seeming to notice when he scraped his fist open. "Shit! If I was just stronger, I wouldn't have any problem casting this many spells at once or making the illusions more solid, and then everything would be fine."

Harry winced. There weren't many times when he felt actively guilty for having stronger magic than most people did, but this was one of them. He pitched his voice low and soothing as he moved towards Connor. "Off the top of my head, I don't know one that includes the scent glamour in an illusion, even if it does include sound and sight. It's not all right, I know. But I want to try something."

Connor sighed again, the anger burnt out as quickly as it had flared. "You might as well, Harry. Nothing is impossible for you."

Harry chose to ignore the jealousy in his voice. He closed his eyes and sank into the depths of his memory, where book pages flipped past at speed. There was the one that would let him cast a solid illusion, a spell that he'd used more than once, when he wanted to leave a copy of himself in bed or at a meal and fool Draco and Snape into thinking he was there. It was limited, since the illusion would only say a few phrases and fade out of existence in a short time, but he thought a variation of it, the way he'd learned to vary the Flame Mirror spell, might serve.

"Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu," he said.

The words rippled oddly in his mouth, and for a moment, Harry thought it wasn't going to work, or that his wandless magic, which he'd confined strictly to his body for the past days, was about to break out and crash into and bounce off things. But then he heard Connor breathe something like, "To the life," and Harry opened his eyes and saw a copy of himself standing before him.

He took a step forward, and a cautious sniff. He grinned when he caught a scent of sweat. That wasn't everything he smelled like, but then, the dragon would hardly be familiar with Connor's ordinary scent, either.

"What about vibrations?" his brother asked, hazel eyes alight. "Could we do that?"

Harry nodded, and turned to an empty patch of space. "Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare!"

Another copy of himself appeared, smelling of sweat. Harry focused on it, asking it silently to walk forward, and it did, shuffling along. He could clearly feel the shifts of the feet and the trembling in the floor.

Harry chuckled and dismissed the image, then looked at Connor. "You won't want one that steps that heavily, I know," he said. "But the spell is going to be useful anyway."

"You're damn right it is." Connor's face was alive again, eyes all but glowing. He stood and drew his wand. "How did the spell go again? Aede—"

"Aedi," Harry corrected, and set about teaching his brother the correct pronunciation. Connor was managing weak efforts in a few minutes, driven by the same strength and energy he put into Quidditch. Harry felt his tension dissolve into a rush of joy as he watched him. He was going to survive this after all. Harry was not going to lose his brother. There was a possible failure that he was not going to have to bear.

And watching someone else happy made him happy. Thus he passed the most enjoyable part of his afternoon.

Other things were—not so enjoyable.

Harry leaned his back against the Owlery wall and opened his letter. He knew that he was going to get into trouble. McGonagall never took kindly to anyone missing Transfiguration, sick or not, late or not, and Harry had missed all his classes that day. He'd used a Disillusionment Charm to escape several confrontations with irate Slytherins. He was sorry. He was sorry for all of it. But he simply could not stand to have anyone around him when he looked at the letter inside that envelope that had come this morning.

Dear my son:

I was grateful to receive your letter, and to know what you thought about what had happened between us. I must admit, I didn't expect that interpretation. I didn't realize that I'd trained you so well, or that you had thought about issues like this so long and so thoroughly.

I think, Harry, that if you look at the difference between your allies and myself, you'll find that what separates us is motive. Your allies did what they did for a belief in pureblood superiority that you know is utterly untrue. Or they did it because they were afraid of the fanatical madman they had chosen to follow. Then they tried to escape the consequences of their choices by claiming they'd been under the Imperius Curse. I know the Ministry won't touch them now, so you need have no fear of my using your letter against them. But they never really repented. They simply took advantage of a loophole in the laws.

Whereas I—I have faced my crimes, and paid for them.

Doesn't there come an end, Harry, a point at which one must cease to take vengeance or exact justice? You seem to have reached it with your allies, or would have demanded an answer from them long since. I wish you could reach it with me. I have lost my magic. I have admitted that I would have raised you differently had I known what your power truly meant. I have read your words saying that I have possibly saved the world by making you what you are.

When does the point come at which the bitterness and hatred cease to exist? I am tired of hatred, Harry, and tired of being afraid. I admit that I hated you in the first moments after you took my magic, but now it's gone, and Dumbledore has made sure that I have everything I need. Now I'm simply weary. I want my boys home again. I want to hold my husband in my arms. I want to know that one of our oldest friends in the world is at least alive, even if he has no intention of seeing us again. It's too late for Sirius. It's not too late for the rest of us, unless one of us dies before we reconcile.

I do not want that to happen.

I realize that you have no reason to write to me anymore, at least not the same sort of reason you had before. I hope you will keep it up anyway. I would claim, Harry, that no other person alive knows you so well, and one of the pieces of knowledge I have of you is that you will write back.

All my love,

Lily.

Harry lowered the letter and put his head on his knees. His breath was coming short, and he felt, horribly, as if he were about to cry. He scrubbed at his eyes. If he started crying now, he knew, he wouldn't stop. Worry over Connor had kept him awake last night, that and racing thoughts. He was losing his ability to remain awake without it affecting his emotions, even as Millicent had said he would. He couldn't let that happen. He had to remain strong, awake, aware, if only for his allies. He would dose himself with a sleeping potion tonight.

He had managed to remain as alert and aware as he had so far thanks to Lily's training. Hours spent in studying, hours spent in concentration, practice at being a sentry, depriving himself of sleep when necessary and getting used to the resulting sensations…all those were techniques he had trained in, and things that he knew how to do. All of those, she had had a share in, either observing him when he was practicing them, the only one who did, or actually suggesting them. She was a huge part of his life. She knew so much about him that Harry was not about to reveal to anyone else, ever.

How could he just leave her behind, cut her off when she was reaching out for contact?

Oh, part of it was painful, of course, the same urge that might tell him to nudge a dangling tooth with his tongue. But he couldn't not write back. He might have managed it if she had written him a letter full of scathing hatred, or one in which she simply urged him to drop his allies and become a Light wizard. But she hadn't.

Because she knew you would reject that, whispered a voice in his head that sounded like Snape's. She is using her knowledge of you against you, Harry. You know that, just as you know that part of the reason you want to forgive her is that she trained you into that.

Harry banished the voice, and sat in silence as clear-headed as he could make it for a moment, with fatigue and pain battling for preeminence. He had to consider needs and duties other than those he owed himself and Lily. Last weekend had reminded him that he was part of a wider context. What would that wider context say about this? Would writing back to Lily help other people?

Even there, though, there was a conflict. He knew that Snape and Draco would urge him not to write back. He knew that Millicent and Pansy and Blaise would sneer, and say that she'd got what she deserved—if they knew the full story, which none of them did—and that being a Muggleborn witch was only one step up from being Muggle anyway, and she'd reverted to her natural condition of life. (He had never confronted them about that, either).

But he also knew that he would not be able to think about anything else until he had written back, that the unanswered letter would nag him both with pain and a sense of guilt. The guilt would unbalance his reactions to everything else, and he couldn't afford that. The pain was not so easy to get rid of, but he would endure a swift, clean stroke better than a festering wound in the back of his mind.

He took a deep breath, and drew parchment from his robe pocket. It was not the honesty-charmed parchment he'd taken from Dumbledore. He was going to be honest anyway, of course. His mother knew him well enough to be able to tell if he lied.

Lily:

I don't see how we can reconcile, ever. How can we? Dad and I have problems between us now. I have a much better relationship with Connor than I did last year, but I'm not sure it would survive reuniting our family. And you—

I—

Furious with himself, Harry squeezed his eyes shut. A tear had had the nerve to fall on the parchment, and now he couldn't think of what to write. His throat ached as if he'd been running for miles in freezing cold air. He waited, swallowing several times, until the tears had gone and he could continue. He knew he'd had a narrow escape from the flood of emotion that was waiting for him.

I know that you made me what I am. And there are times I hate and loathe that. But it's saved me so much recently. It spared me from incredible temptations. It's helped me and my allies achieve victories, a few in the last couple of weeks. So I can't say that I hate and disclaim you, because you're so bound up with that, and you're the only one I'll ever be able to really discuss it with. There are times I burn to discuss it with someone, but not the kind of people who wouldn't understand. And you're the only one who will understand, as well as the only one who knows.

And you're right that I can't ignore it, and periods of restitution do have to have an end. I'm not ready for that end yet, though. I'm not ready to see you, not ready to forgive you for the phoenix web, not ready to try and reconcile.

Please, don't send me any more letters. I was only good at answering the first one because I thought I had to be. This isn't a good letter, and I know it, but it says what I want it to say.

Harry.

He finished it, and choked back the large lump trying to rise up his throat, and stood, calling for Hedwig. She landed on his shoulder, and he stroked her feathers for a moment, forcing himself to focus on the incredible whiteness of them. She was the only snowy owl in the Owlery. She looked beautiful when she was flying. She had carried his truce-gifts to Lucius. He thought about all those things, to avoid thinking about what she was carrying right now.

He bound the letter to her leg. "Lily Potter, girl," he whispered, when she looked at him expectantly.

Hedwig nibbled at his ear, and hooted softly, a sound that Harry could convince himself was sad if he let his mind run about like a mad thing. Harry watched her fly out of sight. He could see a web binding her if he looked, but he closed his eyes and turned away. He had to admit that he wasn't ready to see the webs, not yet. He had to be a vates, and he had to be one whenever a magical creature needed him, but there was no magical creature requiring his help just at the moment. The webs only existed. He could unbind them in time.

"There you are."

Harry jolted. He hadn't realized anyone was coming up the Owlery stairs, and he really should have, since he could recognize the feel of this woman's magic. He pressed his back against the stones and murmured, "Dissimulo odoratum, dissimulo—"

"It's too late, Harry." Hawthorn Parkinson's voice was gentle. "I've already smelled you. And seen you, too."

Harry heard a rustle, and suspected that she was kneeling down on the floor of the Owlery, utterly forgetting her fine robes. He was startled beyond all bearing when she reached out and gathered him into her arms. She didn't hold him very close, loosening her hold a bit when he struggled, but she didn't let him go completely, either.

"What are you doing here?" he whispered.

"I asked the Headmaster for permission to visit Pansy," Hawthorn said.

"But you aren't."

Hawthorn shrugged, or at least Harry thought so from the motion of her arms on his shoulders. "I did see my daughter. I came to look at someone else on whom most of us depend, too."

"I'm better than I was on Halloween." Harry pitched his voice as convincingly as he could. To his horror, it wasn't very convincing. He tried to withdraw behind his Occlumency shields, and found even those shredded, as though his emotions were briars and had punched holes in them. He wrapped one arm around his face. That much he could manage, at least, so that Hawthorn wouldn't see his tears. He did not want her to think him weak, not when they had sworn formal alliance together just a year ago. That would weaken her, too. "I am trying to take care of myself. I know it's not working very well right now, but my brother faces the First Task tomorrow. I'll be better when that's past. I'm going to take a sleeping potion tonight."

"It should never have come to this point in the first place," said Hawthorn, voice low and determined. "It will not come to this point in the future."

Harry's uncertain emotions wavered and tipped over into anger. He felt a wind pick up, blowing around the Owlery, and the stones at his back frosted over. Hawthorn took a sharp breath, but didn't withdraw from him.

"I don't care how many spies you put on me," Harry snapped, still not lowering his arm. The tears weren't gone yet, not entirely, though he could manage a ferocious scowl in a few minutes. "I'll still work as hard as I can, and I would think you would appreciate that, since some of that work benefits you."

Hawthorn was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "Harry, I am going to tell you a story."

Harry snorted.

"Not a fey tale," said Hawthorn. "A real one. A story that started not much more than a year ago.

"There was a witch once who did things she wasn't proud of. She wouldn't disown them, but she wasn't proud of them. When someone came to her and wanted her to renew those activities, she refused. She was proud enough to think there would be no retaliation for refusing. She had a lovely home now, and a wonderful husband, and a pretty daughter. She had a life. She'd moved on and left those dark things behind. How could they touch her?

"They did, of course. They touched her so deeply that they put a wolf into her soul, and she heard it whispering to her all the time. She still hears it. Its words are savage, and it hates you, and it wants to consume everything she comes near. It can take over her body on the full moons. It made her into a slavering beast on the first one she endured. The memory of that night still makes her shudder.

"But every full moon since then, she has had her own mind. She still transforms, but the full moon is when the wolf goes silent, and the rest of the time she can control it. Do you know why, Harry?"

Harry gave a sulky little pull, trying to get out of Hawthorn's embrace. She ignored him, indeed tightening her arms, and Harry was reminded that Remus, too, was much stronger than he looked when he wanted to be.

"Because a thirteen-year-old wizard—well, he's fourteen, now—saw her when she was sweating in the terror of her first transformation, and offered to brew a potion for her that lets her keep her own mind." Hawthorn's voice was so soft that Harry could have mistaken it for Pansy's; he had never realized before how much Pansy sounded like her mother. "He offered it on no other condition that she not ally with those who had hurt her, who were also his enemies. She gave him a book as a gift in thanks, but there is no thanks enough for opening her eyes in the moonlight, and feeling her limbs shift and change, and the wolf in her mind fall silent instead of howling. When she speaks back to the moon, she does it as herself."

Her embrace tightened again, and Harry found his face resting against warmth—her shoulder.

"If you never did anything else for me," said Hawthorn, shifting the pronouns of the story just when Harry was least prepared to deal with it, "that would have been enough. It would be more than enough. You never need be afraid that I would think you weak, Harry. You saw me in my weakest hour, and you chose to give me back my strength. You never hesitated. Someone with that much compassion inside him is assured of more than allies. He is assured of friends, and deathless loyalty. Do not worry about weakening me, or anyone else who has allied with you. Lean on our strength when you must, and then stand and go on. There is no shame in this, ever."

Harry felt as if he were drifting beyond speech or thought. Hawthorn sounded as if she were speaking the truth. And that meant that she really saw him as someone like that, someone strong and compassionate…

He began to cry, and couldn't stop himself.

Hawthorn said nothing, simply holding him. Harry didn't lower his arm, but she didn't tell him to. She just murmured the same words over and over, and when Harry's sobs quieted and the tears finished choking him, he could make out what they were. "You gave me back my strength. Thank you."

Harry took a deep breath. He had wept, and he could believe, just, that Hawthorn did not think him weak or foolish for it. He began to draw back.

Hawthorn still didn't move her arms, and then, with another sign of that strength that he kept forgetting she had, picked him up and off the ground.

"You're already missing classes," she said quietly. "And though I know that you have other needs, I think sleep is the most important one, now that you have shed your tears. You stink of exhaustion." Her voice was gentle, so that Harry might hear that she was teasing.

"I was going to take a sleeping potion tonight," Harry said, and could hear his words slurring. "But I have lessons that I'm teaching to other students this afternoon. I was going to—"

"No," said Hawthorn calmly. "Pansy gave me the Slytherin password. I'm taking you back to your room. You'll take the sleeping potion now, assuming you need it. I don't think you will, not when you get a pillow behind your head."

That was Harry's fear, too. He pushed at Hawthorn, of course ineffectually. "I don't want to fall asleep yet. I want—"

"What you want and what you need are two different things," said Hawthorn, heading towards the steps down from the Owlery. "And what you need should win, I think."

Harry fought. He had techniques for this. Lily had taught some to him, and some he'd learned by experience. He fought the relaxing in his muscles, the insidious warmth that was calling to him. He had lessons to teach. He thought he knew how to break through the block on Ron's magic, if…

He started when he realized that the ghostly images of the lessons he'd been seeing on the backs of his eyelids were the precursors of dreams, and tried to jerk back awake. He couldn't even open his eyes, though.

He felt something soft beneath his head, and someone rolled him over enough that he wasn't lying on his arm. He murmured something about lessons and Connor, and then sleep hooked him and dragged him away like a Portkey.

Harry awakened briefly. He blinked at the dark room, and the intense warmth curled around him. He realized he was in Draco's arms. Draco had apparently decided to crawl into his bed and hold him without so much as a by-your-leave.

Harry realized that he could use more sleep, from the dust weighing his eyes down, but he had slept some hours, and that ought to be enough. He squirmed, and that woke Draco up.

"Go use the loo," Draco whispered. "And then come back."

Harry shook his head. "I wasn't thinking about that—"

"Yes, I know," said Draco, voice sharpening now as he looked into Harry's eyes. "And it doesn't matter. Did you know I fainted in Transfiguration, because I was picking up your exhaustion?" He sounded disgusted, but Harry didn't know if it was with Harry or himself.

"I'm sorry—"

"Not enough anymore," said Draco. "Damn it, Harry, this is going to stop. So go to the loo, if that's what you need to do, and then come back here. It's two in the morning. You still have seven hours before you need to wake up and watch your bloody prat of a brother survive the First Task. I'm sure that he will. Everything is going to be fine, since you've been training him."

Harry hesitated for a long moment, weighing the pros and cons of staying awake right now in his mind. He could go out into the Forbidden Forest if he stayed awake now, perhaps.

And in the morning, he would have to deal with an angry Draco, whom apologies weren't enough to content any more, and he would still have to watch Connor face the dragons, and Millicent and Blaise and Pansy would doubtless yell at him, and he would still attract unwanted attention from the other Slytherins.

And he would lose the warmth and languor pulling at his muscles now.

He bowed his head, padded into the loo, brushed his teeth, and relieved himself. He avoided looking into the mirror.

Then he came back and curled up next to Draco, who immediately moved over to him and slung an arm over his side. Harry pressed closer to the warmth despite himself and closed his eyes. It's all right, he reassured himself. Draco won't tell anyone about this. No one else can see.

"Good night, Harry," Draco whispered, stroking his forehead.

Harry let out a deep sigh, and, for the first time in far too many days, relaxed.