Harry had only just finished with his difficult task of replying Albus' letter (which he had sent out with a large box of Albus' favourite chocolates) when he received another alarming letter, this time from Draco, one late February evening.

While not as thick as the first letter, Harry could immediately tell that this letter, which had been sealed with the same luxurious wax as the previous letters he had received from Malfoy, was thicker than the usual one page he had been receiving these days the moment he held it in his hand. He could instinctively tell there was something wrong the moment he unfolded the pieces of paper.

"Dear Harry,

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, especially to another father of a troubled son, but since I have given you a promise, I really have no choice in this matter. The gist of what I need to communicate to you is that Albus' nightmares seem to be worse than you have imagined. I really struggled to write you the information I have learned from Scorpius in my own words, but then it appeared to me that there was no way I could write this as clearly as Scorpius had done that in the end, I decided that I should just produce a copy of Scorpius' words in order for you to have a full grasp of how your son is doing. Keep in mind that I have only included the parts concerning Albus from two different long letters so this may appear a little disjointed.

I know this may sound very strange, dad, but I have been worrying that Albus seems to be spending way too much time in the library lately. I used to be the one who was always dragging my best friend to the library to study or to do homework, where he would always try his best to distract me from my studies but he is now the one who suggests to visit the library every other day, where he would not even whisper to me and would appear so focused that I could barely get him to smile there even when I try my hardest. Of course we are still together all the times and we still talk a lot but there were quite a few times when we were just having fun, chilling, snacking or talking when he would suddenly go all quiet and suggest to go study, sometimes even when there is no quiz coming up or any homework due. This may be wrong but I feel like he suggests to go to the library whenever he does not want to talk, or he would suggest for us to go practice flying or to visit Professor Longbottom for tea. I am not sure if you could understand but Albus used to talk about himself a lot that I used to know almost everything about him, these days he seems to keep so many secrets to himself that I feel a bit nervous about trying to get him to talk.

There was this one time when Albus had asked me to tell him all about the Triwizard Tournament. For obvious reasons, I was hesitant to talk about it but he looked at me with this surprisingly intense determination that I had no choice. Albus had never liked to hear about Harry's past but recently I have found him reading about the Second Wizarding War himself. I was offended that he did not ask me to tell him about it that I made it very clear to him how I felt. He ended up giving a little forced laugh then gave in to have me narrate the whole war to him. You know there were so many intense moments during the war concerning Harry that I would hesitate to tell those parts but he would insist that I should not leave out anything. More than once he had cried or looked visibly upset that I had to stop to comfort him and I would want to call it a day but he would calm and make sure that I would continue until well into the night. It was a bit unbelievable to me how little he had known about the specifics of the war though, he had heard about bits here and there but overall, Albus had been pretty clueless about the majority of Harry's experience. I ended up talking about the war for five evenings that by the end of it, both of us were physically and emotionally drained.

I have been feeling so troubled recently because Albus seemed to have perfected a silencing spell without me knowing and he has been using it almost every night to prevent me and our roommates from hearing his nightmares. While I am really proud of his newfound abilities, it hurt to think that he has been hurting but would want to keep it a secret from me. I honestly thought that after all we had been through, we would be able to tell each other everything. Albus does not take Ancient Runes so there are bound to be times when we are not together but still, it was hard to believe that he had even gotten a sleeping draught from Madam Pomfrey without telling me, which I only found out the other day.

I had only confronted my best friend once before, in an alternate universe regarding matters that concerned the entire world no less, that I was not sure how to do it especially because the last thing I wanted was to make things worse for him, so I had talked with both Rose and Professor Longbottom about it. Both of them basically said something along the lines of if anyone could get him to talk, it would be me. I knew Albus had been writing regularly to Harry but there was no way he would have confessed to his father. I thought of how he had been there for me last year, which gave me the determination to talk to him.

I talked with Albus on a Saturday morning when he had slept in, so by the time he woke up, we were all alone in our room. I was hoping that he would let his guard down and be more easily persuaded to talk being not completely awake. Unfortunately, he seemed to have been jerked awake the moment he registered my question about the spell. At first Albus had looked away and had said that he had no idea what I had been talking about, but then he knew that there was no point lying after taking one look at me. He admitted what I had known all along and mumbled something about me deserving to have peace. It was absolutely stupid of him to believe that I could have "peace" when my best friend was suffering and I told him as much. Honestly, he did not have to tell me all about his nightmares or whatever else it was that was hurting him but I had felt disappointed that things had been bad enough for him to take sleeping draught but he would not even say a word about anything to me.

After me painstakingly pretending to be angry with him for five minutes, Albus finally confessed that the nightmares had been about Craig and the Cruciatus Curse. Those things were indeed very terrible but something about the way he had talked so quickly told me that he had to be dreaming about something even worse as well, but I let it dropped because it was evident that he had indeed been feeling upset about the death and the curse. The thing about the curse is that I know that I had been in pain but I do not actually remember the pain itself or any screaming by myself. I do, however, acutely remember Albus' screams. I know for sure that while the curse was cast on me, the mental pain he felt for witnessing it could not be any less than the one I felt. But if these were indeed only the easy parts that he felt okay admitting, I do not even want to imagine what the worse nightmares could possibly be that he is still hiding from me.

It was kind of embarrassing because I ended up tearing up because I felt so sorry for him that he had to comfort me in return. I wanted so badly to be able to do something to make things easier for him that I basically asked him directly what I could do, but then he got all cryptic and asked me to "keep being shiny and happy." I told him this would be quite impossible now after learning about his secrets, he then looked at me with his intense green eyes and insisted that I should not let his nightmares affect the both of us, it took a long time but I promised him that I would try to stay happy in the end, on the conditions that he would not keep all his pain a secret from me, he would let me accompany him if he ever need to meet with Madam Pomfrey again and he would try to write to his parents about his nightmares. To be honest, both of us were such a mess by the end of this conversation.

I know that I am not supposed to tell you this but I have been worrying about Albus with nobody else I could talk to. A part of me really wants to write to Mr Potter but it would be so weird to do so, especially without Albus' knowledge. He has told me that his father had seen him having a nightmare once so he is not completely clueless about it. However, Albus has the bad habit of ignoring questions he does not want to answer that I am sure he had been ignoring Mr Potter's questions for almost two months. Albus sent out a letter to him just two days ago but if I had such a difficult time getting him to talk, he certainly would not let on much to his father. I am not even sure what Harry could do with this information specifically but for some reason, just like how the conflict between Albus and Mr Potter had been what got our "adventures" started at the first place, I feel like if there is a key to help Albus with his nightmares, it would be his father. After all, Albus has always been too obsessed about how his father would think about him for his own good and Mr Potter himself had his fair share of nightmares in the past. As you have written that you have been writing to Mr Potter regularly, could you possibly write to him about Albus' nightmares? You do not have to do it if you do not want to, dad, it is certainly not my intention to force this burden on you but I would be so grateful if you can drop him a little hint or two about how Albus is doing.

As you can tell from Scorpius' words, our deal is not the only reason why I am writing to you regarding Albus' condition. I have never mentioned the promise to my son so I was pretty shocked myself to read his request. Of course I am biased but Scorpius possesses the same sensitivity and intuition as his mother did that sometimes I do wonder if he is secretly talented in Legilimency. For this reason I have learned to always trust his judgement regarding people and feelings. He obviously believes that revealing more about Albus' nightmares to you would be helpful to your son and that sounds reasonable to me based on the conversations we had about our sons. I may not know Albus too well personally but as I have said before, I do care about him and want the best for him. While I have been given permission to reveal some personal information to you, I have certainly revealed way more than I should. This is done because I know I would have given anything last year to get a glimpse of Scorpius' life in Hogwarts from your son's perspective. I have been in that position when I had felt powerless in comforting my son and I would not wish that on another father. Of course, the last thing I would ever want is to jeopardise the hard-earned trust I now share with Scorpius. You may show your wife your son's situation, do whatever you need to do to cheer Albus up, reach out to him, to get him to talk or just to make him know that you are there for him but I would appreciate you not to reveal to Albus or anyone else what you know he is experiencing and the source of your information.

Yours sincerely,

Draco Malfoy"

A/N: For the most part, I have been glad of my decision to write this fic in Harry's perspective, but of course there are limitations that come with this. The only ways I could show an arc that happens away from Harry are through conversations and letters but realistically speaking, there is only so much one gets to read in letters about another, not to mention it could get quite repetitive to have Harry reading letters too often. I have always wanted to write this bit from Scorpius' perspective but it's been a dilemma as I believe it'd take so much for Draco to basically just show Harry Scorpius' letter but I have tried to rationalize it the best I could.

Again, thank you so much for your support. Please comment =)