This chapter has an unpleasant title, but the content is considerably more pleasant than that.
Chapter Forty-One: Spikes in the Head"I can't do it." Weasley's whining voice grated on the ears, Draco thought, as he sat on one of the desks and swung his legs back and forth. He, of course, had performed the spell that Harry was trying to show the others right the first time. His major entertainment now was watching Weasley, rolling his eyes, and trying to get Harry to roll his eyes along with him. He was irritated that Harry so far appeared inclined to do anything but that.
"Sure you can, Ron." Harry's voice was patient. He reached out, gently scooped Weasley's wand out of his hand, examined it a minute, and then chuckled. "That's it. You weren't holding it with the right tension in your wrist. Try again, but this time make your hand tense." He gave it back, and Weasley clumsily tried to manhandle his wand into the correct position, which Draco had learned just by watching Harry.
He watched Harry now, and calmed himself down by remembering that Harry couldn't possibly understand how his closeness to Weasley and some of his remarks might be interpreted—as flirting. Weasley didn't seem to take it that way, thank Merlin, but then, his gaze was always tracking Granger and that insufferable prat Smith. Smith was whispering in Granger's ear. She laughed. Draco had to admit she had a nice laugh, or he would have admitted it if he were interested in anyone but Harry. Weasley seethed with poorly concealed jealousy. Harry, oblivious Harry, went right on showing Weasley what he had done wrong with the spell.
"There," he said, stepping away. "Try it now."
Weasley gestured forward with his wand. "Incendioso!"
This time, a cloud of fire sprang out of the tip of his wand and grew quickly, rolling around in several directions before it hit the wards Harry had set up to protect the furniture. Harry did a nonverbal Finite Incantatem before turning to grin at Weasley. "There you go! That wasn't so hard after all, was it?"
Weasley blinked stupidly at his wand. "No, I guess not," he said, and then darted another glance at Granger and Smith. His jealousy went back to blasting like raw, cold wind across Draco's face. Draco was just as grateful that he couldn't feel his own jealousy over Harry, not when it was one of the more unpleasant sensations.
Harry leaned back against the desk nearest Weasley and smiled at him. On his way to smile at Smith and Granger, he caught Draco's eyes, and his expression widened into a grin.
That's it, Draco decided. He'd felt far too much of Harry's slowly bleeding emotions these past few weeks, as Harry struggled to bury what had happened at Christmas and Draco struggled to get him to talk about it. Harry wouldn't do it, but in the meantime, he felt pain and self-doubt and other emotions that made Draco wish he had the Muggle bitch in front of him, promise to Harry or no promise. He didn't know that he was assaulting Draco's empathy the way he was. Now, with his happiness beaming out of him in a rush of pleasure that nearly weakened Draco's limbs, the difference was palpable, and he should always be that happy, or at least he should have a fair chance.
I'll need to tell him. They would have some quiet time in the morning, since it was Saturday and Vince always went to breakfast early on Saturday, to feast on the more abundant food, while Blaise had been spending every spare weekend minute with his little crush lately. Harry would find it hard to pretend that Draco was feeling someone else's emotions when they were alone in the bedroom.
"All right, Hermione, Zacharias?"
"Of course, Harry," drawled Smith, putting his chin on Granger's shoulder. She blushed. Draco sneered. That does nothing for her complexion. "I think it's Malfoy that's having trouble."
Harry turned towards him, eyebrows raised, concern washing from him like the scent of honeysuckle.
Draco half-closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation, barely hearing the answers he gave to Harry's questions. Maybe it's time to tell him something else important, too.
Harry dreamed.
"But, my lord, I don't understand." That was a desperate whine that Harry had already come to associate with Rabastan, for all that he didn't dream about the man very often. He was shivering on the floor in front of Voldemort's makeshift throne now. Harry thought they were in the same house as the one Voldemort had chosen for his conversation with Rosier and Bellatrix before sending Rosier to kill Lucius Malfoy, but this was a different room. Rather than having a comfortable fireplace before which the Dark Lord and his snake could relax, it was high-arched and felt cold, with a dim ceiling showing far above their heads. Nagini was slithering restlessly about, and for all that Harry knew he was safe and not really there, he drew back into the shadows each time she slid past the doorway where he crouched.
"I did not expect you to." Voldemort's voice was growing angrier. "I expect you to obey, Rabastan."
"But it is—" Rabastan abruptly stopped his complaint. Harry edged to the side a bit, keeping a way eye on Nagini, and saw the way the Death Eater had his eyes clenched shut, shivering, as though he had just escaped saying something fatal.
"Yes, Rabastan?" Voldemort hissed a command in Parseltongue, and Nagini swayed eagerly to his side. "You had something to say?"
"No, my lord," Rabastan whispered. "It is a brilliant plan. Of course it is. And of course I will succeed at it."
"I do hope so, Rabastan," said Voldemort. "Considering that you have a month to prepare, and that you will have no other duties in that time, I expect this to be carried off perfectly. On certain things, we must wait on the sun—" a mad laugh "—but in others, we may have our own way. There is nothing quite like causing our enemies worry and pain, would you agree?"
"No, my lord." Rabastan dared to lift his head and give Voldemort a sickly smile. "Nothing like it."
Voldemort was silent for a moment, and Harry wondered what he was thinking. Nagini appeared to conclude that he had no more tasks for her, and uncoiled from the side of the chair like a restless whip, crossing the floor with liquid speed.
She came towards the doorway where Harry crouched in his animal shape.
Harry opened his mouth and hissed, but he kept the noise soundless. He had no reason for the fear suddenly making his body tremble. No one in the dreams had ever shown a sign of realizing he was there. Granted, he hadn't touched any of them, but since they had no reason to suspect an intruder, they didn't go out of their way to brush into random corners, either. Nagini had reached the doorway, but was using her long body to describe figure eights in front of it. She showed no inclination to venture further.
Harry continued to watch her, since Voldemort stayed silent. Nagini's tongue flicked out and tasted the air.
Then she paused, her body stiffening as though it had turned to marble. Harry felt his heartbeat pick up, shaking his small body as it could never shake his normal human one.
Nagini turned her head towards him, slowly, and hissed. Harry knew she would have no reason to suspect that anyone other than her Lord could understand the message she gave. "There is an intruder here in dream-form, Lord. Not quite a ghost, but not quite an imaginary presence, either."
"Rabastan!" said Voldemort. Harry crouched, his claws shot. He growled, and this time didn't bother to keep the sound noiseless. Nagini didn't seem to hear him, but she slid closer, and her tongue flicked again, and this time her hiss would have been a foul obscenity if she were speaking in English.
"My lord?" Harry could see Rabastan lift his head, though he didn't dare take his eyes off Nagini in order to observe his expression. The great snake slithered closer and closer to him, flinging loops of her body over the floor. Harry crouched lower.
"There is an intruder here," Voldemort said. "Nagini says so. Follow her, find him, and kill him for me."
"As my lord commands." Rabastan sounded startled, but eager. He came around the chair with his wand drawn, and Harry knew that he could cast curses which would hurt him if they landed.
Harry decided, reluctantly, that he would learn nothing of any further use tonight. He was better off backing out of the dream. He turned, waited until Nagini's head looked a bit to the right of him, and then sprang into the air as he had when he tore the dream to shreds so that he could warn the Malfoys. His claws reached out and rent—
Air. He fell back to the room of the deserted house with a thump.
This time, Nagini seemed to feel the vibrations. She pointed her head at him and uttered a long, satisfied hiss, then lay down on the floor and came straight for him. Rabastan followed, casting a few hexes to the left and right of Nagini for the look of things.
Unsure, despairing, Harry sat up and tried as best as he could to ready himself for battle in an unfamiliar body, against an enemy whose capabilities to hurt him in this form he knew nothing about.
I really do need help.
"Why didn't you say so before?"
Harry turned his head sharply. Draco stood beside him.
Draco had felt pain for some time, but it hadn't been quite strong enough to bring him permanently awake. He kept rising to the surface of his sleep, muttering, blinking, resolving to get out of bed and wake Harry up, and then sliding back beneath the surface. He could wake Harry in the morning. Harry didn't even like to talk about his dreams; he'd gone right back to incommunicative silence on that as on most other things. It drove Draco mad, but if Harry would just turn his back on sincere concern anyway, there was no reason for him to lose sleep over it.
Then he felt a surge of pain and panic, and he reached out. His empathy located the emotions in Harry, and he wanted to soothe them if he could.
Unlike most other times, he didn't encounter conscious barriers when he reached out towards Harry. He always knew which were his own feelings and which were someone else's; he had been careful to concentrate on that when the first books he studied mentioned how often empaths were lost in a whirlwind of emotions and had their minds tangled with their unwilling targets'. This time, though, he slid across what seemed no more than empty air and through a wall of swirling mist, and then he opened his eyes and saw what Harry saw.
They stood in an abandoned house, with just enough light to see by; Draco couldn't tell if it came from a spell or a distant fire. In front of them was a dark floor with an immense snake moving over it, and a wizard following her. And beside him was Harry, thinking, I really do need help.
"Why didn't you say so before?" Draco asked aloud in exasperation, and then looked at Harry, who was staring back at him. He blinked. Harry wasn't human here, but a grayish cat with long, nervously shifting legs. His feet bristled with fur, as though he were about to go sliding through snow. His black-tufted ears turned towards the sound of Draco's voice, and a short, black-tufted tail lashed back and forth in shock.
Draco didn't have time to question why Harry was in animal form here. The snake seemed to lose whatever trouble she had with sensing them, and slid forward. The wizard behind her, whose face Draco didn't recognize, lifted his wand and cast a curse at them that Draco most definitely did recognize.
If he can use his wand in a dream, then I can, Draco thought, and found his wand just where he had left it when he'd gone to sleep, tucked into the waistband of his robe. He drew it and cast the spell that Harry had taught them today. "Incendioso!"
The fire spread out ahead of him and consumed the curse the wizard was flinging; that was its primary function. The wizard cursed, slowed, and began skirting them, obviously trying to figure out some spell that would get past the guard of this stranger, and how the stranger had got here in the first place.
Draco turned to grin down at Harry, only to realize that Harry was no longer at his side. He had jumped, and now he was riding the snake's back, his mouth and his paws clamped on its body, biting and kicking and stabbing. The snake let out a shriek and reared back, trying to crush him in its coils.
Draco took a step forward and aimed his wand, carefully, but was forced to lower it. There was no way that he wasn't going to hit Harry, with both cat and snake writhing and hissing and growling all over the floor. He had to try something else, and he thought he knew what he should try.
He had to take care of the wizard first, though, and he spun to face him. "Speculum Ardoris!" He didn't think this fool would know how to destroy Harry's version of the spell right away, and from the startled oath he gave as the Flame Mirror popped up around him, he was right.
Draco turned and ran like hell for the snake. He probably needed to be near to try what he was going to try.
The hall wavered around him several times—Harry trying to wake up, Draco guessed. Then it firmed, and Harry shrieked in pain. Draco looked up sharply to see the snake's fangs caught in his shoulder.
Draco panicked, but beat it back. A fearful empath was one of the things that his books had taught him to fear. He would pick up more emotions in such a sensitive state, and spiral further and further towards losing himself. He would have to act now.
He reached out and slid through the barriers between his own mind and those of Harry's again, surging into a sea of emotions. They were so familiar that he could orient himself easily. His own emotions, Harry's in their strength and power, and another set of them, quite close and busily at work.
Draco thought quickly, I'm in Harry's mind, in his dream. Everyone else is in his dream, too, however real it must be. And that means that I ought to be able to reach their minds, too, by virtue of being inside his mind already and sharing dream-space with them.
It was a weak theory, but it was the best one Draco had, and he acted on it, sliding out of Harry's mind and into the snake's.
It worked. Draco could feel the emotions churning around him, anger and fear and protectiveness towards her master, and he knew her name, Nagini, and he knew that a few more bites would subdue this strange cat and bring him before her master. Her master had not sensed the intruder, but she had. Wonder surged, suspicion as to how many times he had watched.
A snake's emotions were simpler than a human's, Draco found. He was almost reading her thoughts, which was something that didn't happen with Harry or anyone else he had practiced his empathy on.
She could sense Harry. Harry's dreams about visiting the Dark Lord were probably not going to stop any time soon.
That meant she needed to die.
Draco took a deep breath and reached for his wand. He hoped his physical movements were working, since he couldn't see or sense to guide his body; his own sensations were all bound up in Nagini's mind. "Defensor vindictae," he said, the same Dark defensive spell he had used when Harry fought the dragons.
The black force surged around him. Draco knew the eyes were watching him, waiting for a command, but he couldn't see them. He could only clasp his hands into fists and then smash them together, indicating that the spell was to crush Nagini to death if it was at all possible.
He felt the spell move forward, a wave of freezing pressure, and then begin to work. Nagini felt pain. Draco felt it, too, but he thought he could bear it. He was too caught up in his own savage joy at protecting Harry to worry much about it.
Then claws hooked into his thigh, and someone hissed urgently near his ear, and he was dragged out and up and away through a madly flickering hall. Draco cried out in protest. If they left now, then he couldn't know for certain if Nagini would die.
A sharp yank, and an even sharper pain from below, and then they had broken the surface and were rising steadily out of the realm of sleep.
Harry was swearing even before he sat up and blinked away the usual flow of blood coming from his scar. He swabbed furiously at it, then rolled over and out of the bed. He could hear Draco's curtains rustling. He cast a Silencing Charm around the area with a wave of his hand. They didn't need any witnesses to what was about to happen.
"Draco!" he said.
"Harry!" Draco said back, in almost the identical tone, as he tumbled out of his own bed and stood blinking on the cold stone floor.
Harry stepped onto one of the thick rugs, hoping Draco would follow suit. He had already hurt Draco badly enough when he dragged him into his dream. He didn't need him getting frostbite on top of that.
"What in the name of Merlin did you think you were doing?" he yelled. He resisted the urge to wave his arms, though suddenly he understood why people made the gesture. At least it let some of the excess emotion go. "I can't believe that you took that risk! You could have died, and in a place that I didn't even know was real or not, and if you'd stayed in her mind when she died, then you definitely would have died, you moron! Don't you know anything about your own empathy?"
"I know that I've been feeling your emotions bleeding through your damn stoic exterior for three weeks now!" Draco yelled back at him. His face was flushed, his eyes glittering with tears. It was a little like the look he had given Harry after receiving his Christmas gift, but Harry was pretty sure the opposite feelings to those of generosity and joy motivated Draco now. "And I can't say anything about it because you won't fucking talk about it! And now you've been having dangerous dreams, and you could have died, too, and you needed my help, and you're regretting the danger you involved me in? This wouldn't have happened if you'd just—"
Abruptly, his face changed, and he reached out insistently, pulling at the shoulder of Harry's pyjama top. Bewildered, Harry let him, and saw only relief on Draco's face. He looked down, and saw unbroken skin.
"She bit you," Draco breathed. "I thought the wounds might have come with you from the dream." Then he frowned. "Does that mean that I didn't really kill Nagini, since I only did it in the dream?"
"I heard Voldemort hiss as we left," Harry said. He didn't want to reveal this, in case it inspired Draco to try further moronic exploits in his dreams, but he didn't think he could lie, either. "He was calling for her. If she wasn't dead, she was at least so badly wounded that he couldn't contact her mind anymore, or use whatever version of the familiar bond really exists between them."
Draco beamed smugly at him. Harry was preparing words to take the beam away when his eyes narrowed and he said, "And you are the one who was having insanely dangerous dreams and never bothered to tell me about them."
"That never happened before!" Harry argued, fighting the urge to back away from the murderous rage on Draco's face. "That was the first time she sensed me. I swear. I don't know what was so different this time."
"Yes, well, if I killed her, it won't happen again." Draco reached out and caught Harry's hand in a death grip. "I didn't choose to jump into the dream. I felt your pain, and I was swept in when I tried to comfort you. That means that you don't need to blame yourself, Harry. But it means that we're connected, too. You can't deny that any more. You can't set up some barrier to keep me out." He was speaking quickly, as though he thought Harry would manage to convince him otherwise if he allowed him to talk. "I think it would be better if I know exactly what's going on in your dreams, so that I can defend myself if I'm going to be a regular guest in them. And I think it'd be best if you tell me exactly why you're still bleeding emotions all over the place, weeks after you claimed you were healed of what that bitch of a woman did to you."
"I did ask you not to talk about her," said Harry, turning his head away, preparing to draw his emotions in after him. He thought he'd found a way to block some of Draco's empathy and give him peace, a variation on the Occlumency barriers that Snape used to keep Voldemort from reading his thoughts.
Draco grabbed his shoulders and shook him. The physical effort definitely distracted Harry from putting up barriers, and he glared at Draco. Draco caught and held his eyes with an intensity that Harry couldn't remember seeing from his friend before.
"I feel those emotions anyway," Draco snapped at him. "I can feel the barrier you've been using, Harry, but it's not enough."
"Then I don't understand what you want me to do!" Harry twisted in Draco's grasp, trying to get away. He could feel the panic rising. If he leaned back, if he let himself take comfort, there was the possibility that he might break down. And if he broke down, then he would have to let some of his emotions go. And if he let some of his emotions go, then there was the possibility that he might encounter that sadism he knew now lay just under the surface of his conscious thoughts.
"Talk to me," said Draco, pulling him towards him so that Harry's head rested on his shoulder. "Heal the wounds, and then they won't be bleeding anymore, and I won't feel bad, and you won't, either." His hand skimmed Harry's back, so lightly that for a moment Harry hoped he'd let him go, but then it tightened. "It's so practical, Harry. Whether or not I loved you, I'd want to do this, as long as I had the empathy, so that we'd both stop feeling bad. Surely you can see that? Surely you can see it's only the sensible thing to do?"
Harry twisted again. He was still a bit shorter than Draco, though not by much anymore, but he had some training in physical fighting that Draco didn't. If he could only get the right half of his body completely free, and stop the stupid tears now blinding him, he could run away.
Draco murmured in his ear, "Come on, Harry. I can feel what you're suffering." He sounded as if he were about to start sobbing himself. "I know that you don't care about your own pain, but you care about other people's, don't you? I know that you wouldn't want to go on inflicting wounds on me, even if they're the kind of wounds that no one else can see."
Harry didn't know when he'd started to cry, but it terrified him. Panic and sorrow were wild emotions, like rage. He might end up summoning that deadly rage again if he pursued these emotions long enough.
"Hush," Draco whispered. "Harry, calm down."
"I'm trying!" Harry struggled furiously to regain his self-control. He could do it. He had to be able to do it, if he wasn't to explode in some shameful way again. He couldn't believe what he'd done to his mother, once he regained some perspective. What she'd said to him was awful, but how did striking back with his magic, which she didn't have any of any more, make him any better than she was? How would wielding his magic over less powerful wizards make him any better than Voldemort? And he'd known, he'd known, that talking about things like this would send him dangerously close to the emotional edge. His mother's letters had had the power to do that. So it was better not to talk about her, or about anything that had happened that night, and then he wouldn't let his magic loose in an orgy of either fury or self-blame.
And no one else will stare at me, either, in pity or disgust. That would be good. And no one will try to hurt her. It would be one thing if they would just confine themselves to hurting me, but they would hurt her, too. I can't let this go on spreading.
But it appeared that he'd been hurting Draco while thinking he'd protected him, and that just encouraged him to cry further.
I don't know what to do. No matter which way I turn, I'm going to hurt someone, or encourage someone to get hurt.
"Hush, Harry. I've got you."
Harry clawed his way out of the maelstrom of his emotions by focusing on physical sensation. That sensation was Draco's arms locked on him, one around his waist, one around his upper back. They were sitting on the floor, leaning against the skirt of Draco's bed. Draco cradled him so close there was no way that he would miss the tremors shaking Harry, and whispered into his ear. At first it was those same few words, over and over, but when Harry looked up at him, knowing his own face was probably sick with fear and confusion, they altered.
"I promise, I promise, that I won't do whatever it is that you fear I'm going to do. Cause pain to other people, isn't it? I promise, Harry, I—" Draco shuddered as though the words were torn out of him. "I promise by Merlin and my magic not to hurt your mother, never to hurt her. If that's what you need to be safe with me and trust me, I promise it."
Harry blinked. Stunned surprise slid over his emotions and numbed all of them for a moment. That had been something he wanted, and thought none of his allies would ever give, so it was useless and stupid to request it from them against their wills.
Then relief crawled like sunlight where the surprise had been, and melted away its mist. Harry felt his breathing calm. He stopped struggling, and studied Draco's face for a moment. He no longer felt as if he were about to destroy the room with his magic. "Why?" he asked quietly.
"Because you matter more to me than she does." Draco arched an eyebrow, as if Harry had asked him in what direction the sun rose. The silent of course was so strong that Harry could feel it ringing in the chambers of his skull. "I won't pretend to like her, but it's obvious to me now that you're not trusting anyone because you fear your revelations might just encourage that person to get angrier against your mother. So just cast her out of the equation. It's not like she matters. Besides, I heard everything, Harry. So you don't need to tell me about it. I just want to speak with you about it, and hopefully prevent pain to both of us." He met Harry's eyes full-on, his own eyelids fluttering with nervousness. "I swear, you matter more to me than anything or anyone else."
"Even with the Dark magic that I poured out that night?" Harry whispered.
"You prat," said Draco, and then hugged him tightly enough to grind breath out from between Harry's ribs. "You were worried about that? Of course I was afraid, but I was afraid for you and not of you. You must have known that, or you wouldn't have come back to us at all."
Harry closed his eyes. Perhaps, perhaps, just perhaps, if it was like this, he could speak without perfect self-control and not cause a magical disaster in doing so. "I'm so tired, Draco," he whispered. "Tired of pretending nothing's wrong, tired of thinking about what people would think of me if they realized that surge of Dark magic was me and I wanted so badly to hurt someone else, tired of worrying about what will happen to my mother if I do say something to Snape or Hawthorn or your mother."
"You don't have to be." Draco's voice was low, but Harry thought he could have heard it if trumpets were sounding in the room. "You have at least one person who's sworn that he won't hurt Lily, Harry. And I'm not afraid of anything you tell me. I never will be."
Harry swallowed. He thought, somewhere under the spinning chaos that occupied the surface of his mind, that he shouldn't let Draco give him this. It was too big a sacrifice. How could Draco possibly care for him more than anything else? What about his parents, his own life, his own future that he would have after the War that Harry fully expected he himself would die in?
But he needed it too much, at the moment, to reject it. And the thought of having someone whose loyalty was to him first was…
Too attractive to give up right now.
"Thank you," he whispered, and relaxed. Exhaustion was creeping over him. "But do we have to talk about it right now?"
"No," Draco said. "So long as you understand that we will talk about this, Harry, and that you can't get away from it by pretending that you've forgotten what happened when we wake up."
"I know that," Harry whispered. He was drowning in rich warmth. The terror of trusting someone else was somewhere beneath that, like gulfs of space through rays of sunlight. "Do we have to move?"
Draco laughed in his ear. "We do, or we'll both have cricks in our necks in the morning. Up you get."
He shifted Harry without taking away from the warmth, somehow, and crawled into his bed with him. Fawkes was sitting on the edge of the mattress this time, and radiated warmth at them, coruscating gold touched with blue. Harry felt his eyes slide relentlessly closed. He didn't think he would have any dreams this time, either visions of Voldemort or the more ordinary nightmares he'd had of the confrontation with Lily.
"Hush," Draco whispered in his ear. "Relax."
Harry turned his face towards him without opening his eyes. "You'll be here?"
Draco's voice this time was, for some reason, fiercely triumphant. "I'll be here, Harry. I promise."
"Good," said Harry, and drifted away on waves of fire and phoenix song. Fawkes was crooning a lullaby that gave Harry visions of golden chicks hatching from scarlet eggs, and singing to greet the dawn.
Imperio.
Harry stiffened his shoulders, but kept walking. He could feel the Imperius Cruse drifting about his head. This wasn't the first time it had happened in a few weeks, but always before, it had faded immediately, as though it had only been a test run. Harry was sure that this was the same person who had cast the Curse to madden the dragons in the First Task, and he wanted to see if he could track down who it was, this time.
He caught a glimpse of a shadow following him, and when the voice in his head said, Turn into the side room and wait, he did so. The shadow strode in confidently a few moments later.
Moody. Rosier said to beware of him.
Harry stood as if passive under the Curse, breathing softly, letting Moody examine him. Moody shook his head after a moment.
"Can't tell why it's so important to know everything about you," he muttered to himself. "You'd think the Ministry would have learned their lesson already, and there's been enough demonstrations at Hogwarts to fill a bloody Prophet all by themselves. Why?" He began walking around Harry at a slow pace, examining him again. Harry listened, in hopes of finding out what he was up to, but Moody only muttered generalities, without revealing whether he really was connected to Voldemort somehow, or to Fudge, or to someone else.
Harry caught sight of the gleam of the silver collar around his neck, and suspected it would be useless to try Legilimency on Moody himself.
And I can't talk to Snape about it because I don't want him doing anything stupid, and it's useless trying to talk to Dumbledore about anything. Who can I tell about this, someone who will promise to go at my own pace, until we can figure out what's really happening?
The thought hit him hard enough to make him smile, and Moody paused and stared at him.
Draco, of course.
Harry let his eyes blink, and he looked up at Moody and asked in a voice that he kept deliberately calm, "What are you doing here, sir?"
Moody pulled his wand at once and aimed it. "Obliviate."
Harry bounced and destroyed the Memory Charm on his Occlumency shields as he had when Lockhart tried to use it on him in second year, but pretended to the glazed eyes and gaping mouth that Moody would expect from the Charm. The professor studied him for a moment, then grunted. "Enough wandering around the halls, Potter," he said. "Go back to your common room now."
"Yes, sir," Harry said in a dazed tone, and trotted off, glancing back only once. Moody was sipping from the flask that hung at his hip, and frowning.
I hope Draco's there, Harry thought, walking faster. Maybe it is a bit selfish, but I like having someone else to tell about these things.
"You wanted to see me, sir?" Draco opened Snape's office door and peered warily around it at his Head of House.
"Yes, Draco." Snape didn't bother pretending to courtesy or shyness. "It's about Mr. Potter. Come in and sit down."
Draco nodded, shut the door, and walked over to the chair in front of the desk. At once, Snape set a clear bottle of silvery potion in front of him. Draco eyed it, then squinted at Snape. He knew it wasn't a kind of potion that he'd seen before, and he could say that with certainty. He was one of Snape's better students.
"This is a Pensieve Potion, a recent invention of mine." Snape folded his hands in front of him. "The Ministry has approved its use. In a glass bottle such as this, it will capture strong memories from the mind of another person, as directed by its creator. It can happen without the consent or knowledge of the person involved, but I would like you to know what I am doing, and to give me your permission. I want your memories of the night that Lily Potter came here, and what she said to Harry."
Draco blinked. "What do you intend to do with them, sir?"
Snape's eyes turned darker, and Draco fought the urge to shrink back in his chair. He'd seen his father in these moods, too, but, maybe because Lucius was more familiar to him, he didn't seem as purely Death Eater as Snape did in this moment. "For right now? Perhaps nothing. But I do not think it is wise to let Lily Potter go without paying for what she has done."
Draco felt a brief surge of longing. He could imagine the kinds of things that Snape wanted the memories for. He could imagine Lily drawn and quartered in front of the wizarding world—it was a shame that literal drawing and quartering wasn't practiced anymore, he thought, because it would make a fit punishment for her—and his body fluttered with pleasure at the image.
It's too bad. It's really too bad.
Draco met Snape's eyes and said, "No, sir."
Snape blinked, and his surprise traveled in an icy breeze across Draco's face. "And why not?" he asked after a moment, voice descending to a snapping hiss. "I thought you would have been quite as eager to see justice done for Harry as I am."
"I am, sir," Draco said. "But I'm more interested in seeing mercy done to him, and he needs the mercy of knowing that someone would never turn against him, in any way. I've sworn to be that person."
Snape cocked his head to the side. "If he took that oath from you under duress, Draco, you are in no need of keeping it."
Draco narrowed his eyes and rose from his chair. "How dare you," he said, noting in only mild shock that Snape had flinched. "How dare you think he is capable of anything like that. I gave this oath of my own free will. I am keeping it of my own free will. Find someone else to give you your memories. I won't turn against Harry like that. No, not even for his own good," he added, as Snape's mouth opened. "Goodbye, sir. I'm not telling him about this right now, because he doesn't need the added stress of knowing his guardian's an idiot, but if you try anything without my or his consent, and I find out about it, I won't have any compunctions."
He shut the door hard behind him on his way out.