Choices of the Heart

Chapter 6

Harry stirred in the darkness suddenly, knowing something had woken him, that something felt different in the heavy silence of the room. Still half-asleep, he expected the memory of a dream, another visit to the Waiting Place to surface, but he didn't remember dreaming. Then a muffled sobbing breath brought him alert. "Malfoy?" he said, his voice soft, slurred with sleep. "Are you —"

"Shut up, Potter. Just shut up." The tears in Draco's voice answered Harry's unspoken question.

"Look, Malfoy," said Harry, an edge of sleepy exasperation creeping into his tone. "I really don't care if you're crying. I know what it's like to —"

"No, you don't! You don't know anything!" said Draco in a furious whisper. "You don't know what it's like to hear your mother screaming —"

Harry sat straight up, sheets twisting in his fists. "Oh, don't I? That's what I hear every time I'm near a Dementor — my mother screaming as Voldemort killed her. I was barely over a year old but I remembered that!"

Draco groaned softly. In the pale moonlight, Harry saw him put one arm up to cover his eyes, and Harry recalled all the callous teasing Draco had inflicted on him over the Dementors in Third Year. Silence fell between them, interrupted only by Draco's intermittent inelegant sniffles. But that one soft groan had told Harry that Draco had remembered the teasing too. Harry lay back down with a sigh.

"I didn't know," said Draco finally, barely audible.

"Don't worry about it," said Harry.

Harry was almost asleep again when one last whisper came out of the darkness. "Do you ever forget... the screams?"

"No," whispered Harry, and turned over, his back to Draco.

When Harry woke in the morning, Draco was gone. And Harry lay in the bed for several long minutes horrified at the realisation that he was disappointed. It seemed that somewhere, in the back of his mind, he had looked forward to a repeat of the comfortable, comforting feeling that Draco's unintentional snuggling presence had given him yesterday. Obviously, he reasoned, it was only because he missed Ginny...

Well, there was one good thing about this morning, he thought. He had not dreamed of the Waiting Place.

~***~***~***~

When Harry got downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast, he found Draco already sitting at the table, reading his book. He had his own plate of toast this morning, and though he smirked at Harry to acknowledge his triumph over Kreacher's dislike, it was a weak effort and he looked tired and sad.

Neither of them mentioned the incident that had occurred during the night, and that was fine with Harry. He really didn't want to think too much about Draco sleeping in his bed. He had not attached any importance to it at all when he'd first made the offer. He was used to sleeping in a dorm with other boys, used to not worrying about privacy, and understood about not wanting to be alone with bad memories. But after his realisation this morning, well... Now it was just a little weird.

They split up that morning and one of the Aurors on guard outside the house took Draco to St Mungo's. Draco planned to stay at the hospital until Bill Weasley was finished working on the traps inside the front door. They didn't know how long the curse-breaking would take, so Kreacher packed Draco a bag of sandwiches in case he had to stay at the hospital late into the afternoon.

Harry intended to shop for a new owl and be home before Bill arrived, so the other Auror accompanied Harry to the Eeylops Owl Emporium in Diagon Alley. Harry had only been inside the Owl Emporium twice before, but it was just as he remembered it. The interior of the shop was one large, high-ceilinged, dimly lit room, filled with the sounds of rustling feathers and a cacophony of hoots and screeches. Cages lined one wall from floor to ceiling, and owls of all kinds perched in a great tree-like structure in the centre of the room.