The Heart of the Matter (Harry/Draco)

Chapter Six

Draco was thoroughly miserable.

After Potter settled down and fell into a quiet slumber, Draco laid back in his bed and stared at the ceiling. There were a number of reasons he was unable to immediately fall asleep, including but not limited to the viscous, burning hatred and betrayal festering inside of his chest, more silent tears of sheer frustration at everything, and a pounding headache as a result.

There was also the simple fact of acknowledging that Potter had not only failed to vex Draco because of his emotional weaknesses, but even kipped on the sofa for a few nights to let him recover from it. It boggled Draco that instead of taking advantage of it, Potter'd slept on a couch in his own home so his worst enemy could recover.

Well, perhaps not his worst, but Draco was pretty sure he was up there.

It was a new and strange perturbation and Draco found himself tripped up on what was denoted by the act. He didn't know what to do with it, where to take it, or even if he had to do anything with it at all, and more importantly, he was unable to figure out why he couldn't just brush it off. Should he have acknowledged it? How did someone – especially someone like him, in this case – attest to something like that?

He didn't even know where to begin. Draco wasn't used to being grateful for anything, and the one person Draco never imagined he'd feel anything of the sort for was quietly curled up across the room from him, apparently asleep and unaware of the turmoil he'd caused.

A large knot kept forming in Draco's throat whenever he thought about it, and his headache had grown to epic proportions. What little sleep he managed was fitful, at best. And if he had to go back to Hogwarts tomorrow, forced to reveal the secret he kept for a year and face up to it, it was promising to be just as miserable a day, too.

: : :

The first thing that registered in Draco's head upon waking was that the entire world was screaming and falling apart at the seams. He nearly had a panic attack.

A quick evaluation of the situation enlightened him that the sky was not, in fact, falling down upon London, and that earthquakes didn't normally involve loud, off-key singing. As it turned out, the shaking was due to Tonks bouncing on the edge of his mattress and the thunderous, badly-vocalised lyrics to Its A Kind of Magic! from the latest Weird Sisters album coming through the floor, presumably from the Weasley twins' room. Draco took a moment to pray silently to Merlin for five more minutes because he would surely die if he sat up right now, and stuffed his face back in the pillow.

'Wake up, sleepy head,' Tonks sing-songed, ruffling his hair. 'Breakfast in twenty, and you want to use the loo before Ginny gets it. She takes ages.'

Draco growled incoherently and burrowed his head underneath the pillow.

'All right, but Molly says if you're not down for breakfast, she's sending the twins to get you.'

Draco groaned, slightly more coherent. What these people had in mind, getting up at the crack of dawn, he had no idea.

'Up,' Tonks admonished, forcibly dragging him out of his comfortable cocoon by taking away his pillow, which served as the only barrier he had between his face and the morning sunlight. The girl had been properly sorted, for sure; she was completely evil and unforgiving.

'I don't like you,' he informed her, grimacing.

'I don't like anybody before I've had a cuppa either,' she returned. 'Come on, you haven't eaten a decent meal in half a week.'

'M'not hungry.'

'Hungry or not, if you allow yourself to grow weak and frail, you will be picked off like a sickly animal in this house.'