You Jump, I jump
Written by StrawberryGirl87
Hogwarts no longer feels like home, it is time to move on but Harry has nowhere else to go. Standing on the precipice of uncertainty he finds a helping hand from the most unlikely of people. Someone who is willing to stand by his side when things seem bleak.
Chapter Three
Harry slept for the rest of the night and all through the following day. Draco never moved and didn't have the heart to wake him. He didn't eat or use the bathroom, if anything urgent needed to be dealt with then he used his wand with his free hand to deal with it. His other hand remained joined with Harry's, never once breaking their contact. Refusing to let him go.
The rain had begun to ebb by the dawn, and by the afternoon the sun was shining through the window, bright and cheerful, not only the dawn of a new day but also of a new era for the entire wizarding world. The rain had done its duty and washed away the horror and the pain for everybody else but not for them. Locked in their room, away from the world and together they still suffered.
Harry didn't begin to stir until early evening but it was not pleasant nor a natural stirring from sleep that Draco would have hoped for. The warning signs were simply the twitching of his fingers within Draco's grip and a few pained groans but nothing else forewarned him of the horror to come until he screamed and started to thrash wildly in the confines of his blankets that seemed only to restrict him and make the struggling worse.
Draco instantly threw himself out of bed and over to Harry, determined to rouse him from the nightmare as he had promised to do, attempting to shake him awake with as much force as he dared to use without hurting the fragile boy. He found Harry to be drenched in cold sweat even though his body was hot to the touch.
Draco started to panic when he saw tears falling from closed eyes and Harry went rigid, the screaming had ceased but he was clearly in agony still and there seemed that there was nothing he could do for him. He had broken his promise. "Please Harry," Draco pleaded, "Come back to me."
He lay down on the bed beside the Gryffindor boy, one hand on his chest where he could feel the racing heart beating beneath. "Nothing can hurt you now." He whispered, wanting to believe the words that he spoke but finding it hard knowing that Harry was hurting even now. The war may have been over but it lived on within the confines of his subconscious and it probably always would.
At his words he felt Harry relax but only a little, he was still shaking but not violently so, it was more out of fear than of anything else. Draco curled himself around his former enemy keeping one hand on his chest and the other he linked with Harry's hoping that this would be enough to sooth him back into a peaceful sleep and away from the horrors his unconscious mind threw at him.
Slowly green eyes blinked open, filled with fear and confusion, his entire body seemed to tremble. "Draco…" His voice was barely a ghost of a breath upon his lips, his throat hoarse from his screams.
He couldn't understand what was going on but he felt warm and safe, as if nothing could touch him. The agony and the fear of his nightmare was already fading from his mind even as his body remained trembling in his friends embrace. Harry could hardly believe that one person made him feel like this.
There was no judgement issued from the cool silver eyes that met his with understanding and compassion. Draco didn't expect him to be anything, not a hero, not a grand defender or even be sure of himself, he asked for nothing from him at all except to simply be him and be here. There were no expectations here between the two of them.
"You're still here," Harry said staring into the abyss of silver that looked at him, tracing the now familiar worry lines.
"I never left," Draco said as they simply looked at each other. There was no more than an inch between the tips of their noses, Harry beneath the blankets, Draco on top of them but both of them topless. One of the Slytherin's hands still resting upon the other teens chest where his beating heart had returned to his regular thumping rhythm.
"How long did I sleep?" Harry asked keeping his voice soft, fearing that speaking at any decent volume would shatter the moment that they were currently locked in. He would never get tired of watching the swirling blue and silver of Draco's stunning irises. They were rememorizing in their complexity.
"Almost a day," Draco responded, "I reckon you needed it."
"We were supposed to go to Gringotts, we were meant to leave," Harry said in a sudden panic but still never moving, only feeling himself fill with regret that he had slept for so long and delayed their plans.
"We can go tomorrow," Draco said soothingly. "Harry, you've been through hell and back, we don't need to rush, rest."
"Will you stay here with me?"
"I'm not leaving Harry."
"I mean here, where you are, next to me." Harry had never shared a bed before, he had never minded the space of having a bed all too himself until he discovered the comfort that having another person lying beside him could give him. It didn't matter that it was Draco Malfoy or that he was a man that was all trivial to him. All that mattered to Harry was that another person, a human being, wanted to be this close to him.
Someone could stand to touch his damaged body that would never look anything close to normal again. In Harry's heart love was love no matter who he felt it for. All that mattered to him was who was here in the moment with him, helping him, supporting him, caring for him. Love had been the emotion that had saved him and it continued to as he was lulled back to sleep by the comforting warmth of Draco Malfoy by his side.
They both drifted off to sleep and managed to sleep through the night without nightmares disturbing them. To see the two teenagers slumbering together would have you believing that they were something more than friends seeking comfort. They shifted throughout the night so that come the dawn they were both on their sides, Draco curled around Harry's body, spooning him. Both were beneath the one single blanket, encompassed in their shared warmth where nothing, not even their deepest, darkest nightmares could reach them.
It was Harry to rouse first, stirring slightly as the weight of his full bladder made him uncomfortable and therefore unable to return to sleep. The sun was only just starting to creep its way up into the sky. He felt so content and warm that he didn't want to move, with Draco breathing deeply to his rear peacefully it seemed such a shame to move and wake him. However there was no denying his bladder the release it craved and his wand was just too far away, either way he was going to have to get up and out of bed.
Carefully he lifted the possessive arm that had encircled his waist so that he could slip out of the bed unnoticed and head for the bathroom on tip toe so not to wake the sleeping Slytherin. Only once he had dealt with his bathroom needs that included brushing his teeth did he return to the bedroom and take the opportunity to assess his companion more fully.
The war hadn't been kind to either of them. Draco was just as scarred as Harry. He was too thin for his height and his blonde hair limp and lifeless. There were unattractive dark circles beneath his eyes even in sleep. His skin was paler than Harry could ever remember it being, almost like white marble in its perfection. Some of the scars seemed to fade into his skin as if they weren't there at all but Harry could see them as they were so similar to his own.
Sitting back down on the bed he traced his fingertips over the ones he knew he had caused, a pang of guilt striking him suddenly as he recalled the vicious curse he had thrown in his sixth year without knowing what it would do or understanding its purpose. Oh how regretful he was about that now. There were others now too, signs that he had been tortured at length for the pleasure of another, sure signs that he had been kept under Voldemort's regime of fear, contained with the threat of torture and continued agony.
Harry hadn't even realised that as the tips of his fingers had ghosted across the pale skin that silver eyes had flickered open and watched him intently. "He hurt you a lot didn't he," Harry said when he realised that Draco was now awake and watching him curiously.
"I was his youngest recruit, skilled at deflecting him from my mind I was a fascination to him. Of course I feared him like all the others but he liked so much to torture me whenever my father didn't rise to his expectations. My mother said that he didn't do enough to keep me safe. She never wanted me to be branded with the dark mark."
"Would you let me see?" Harry asked tentatively as Draco sat up so that they were both sat cross legged on the single bed, able to see each other more clearly. The blonde bore his left forearm to the Gryffindor who took it within his hands as if it were the most fragile material known to man. He ran his fingers across the branded skin finding it smooth to the touch. He could see that even now the mark failed to move as it once had and was beginning to fade away, in a few years it would barely be visible, just another scar.
"It's fading," Harry stated
"I'll always know that it's there," Draco replied, "Even now that he's gone it still twinges on occasion but maybe that's just a phantom pain, me remembering how much it used to hurt."
"Am I … Does this?" Harry asked suddenly withdrawing his hand in a panic that he might have been making it worse.
"No, it actually feels nice …" Draco admitted a little sheepishly, "I mean … no one has touched it before, they've all been too scared." Harry felt more at ease here than he had the night before. Draco and he had a connection that Ron and Hermione would never understand. Harry had been so ashamed of his scars, unable to show them to anyone because he would thought of as a freak. He had survived the war but had been irreversibly damaged by it. His body an eternal reminder of the torment he had suffered but here he sat, in front of a boy who had suffered just as much as he had, just as scarred. Though their experiences and horrors differed their bodies held the same tell-tale marks and scars.
"I'm sorry," Harry whispered, bowing his head.
"Why are you sorry?" Draco asked using his finger to gently tip Harry's back up so he could look imploringly into his striking emerald eyes, he found them so beautiful.
"For not being able to stop him sooner, for causing some of these scars that you have, if I had known what that curse did …"
"Don't," Draco said with a hint of sadness in his voice, he didn't want to think about his sixth year any more than Harry did. He was so ashamed of the things that he had done, all of them because he had been so scared of what Voldemort might do to him or his mother if he didn't carry out his orders. "I started that fight, I didn't have to throw the first curse."
"I didn't even know what the curse did, I found it in an old potions book, Severus' old potion book. I should never have used it, I could have spared you a few of these scars."
"It's done and it's forgotten, we were both young and foolish. There are a lot of things that I would like to change between the two of us but it's the past that makes us who we are today. If we hadn't done what we did we wouldn't be sitting here, together. I wouldn't change what this is now for any amount of happy memories in my childhood. Our struggles have brought us here and made us stronger, I have to believe that because otherwise what was it all for?"