The Thunder in My Heart

And a Few More Things...

Draco didn't fall asleep immediately either. He had too much to think about.

He unconsciously petted Hermione's cat who was back on his bed. It must have followed him in but it wasn't the focus of his attention, despite the lulling purring. Unsurprisingly, Draco's thoughts centred on Harry, again.

Draco supposed he could relax a bit about the situation with Harry. It was clear that they both desired each other, immensely. But it was also clear that Harry wanted more than just something sexual between them and, at the moment, it was sexual tension which sizzled behind every glance and touch and word. He was beginning to understand Harry's point of view, there was so much history lingering in the background that he wanted to unpick it first. If they just fell into bed (which would be just so easy) they might, just as easily, walk away from each other the next day. The point was, did the last seven years mean more than that? And if so, well, they needed to understand it all, they needed to make it meaningful, because this might just turn out to be the most important relationship that either of them had ever had, would ever have, even.

There was, of course, still the little voice in Draco's head which was arguing that they could sort it out as they went along so why not fall into bed now, after all, he was still a young man with raging hormones.

But there was another, more serious reason that Draco thought was probably stopping Harry from letting Draco fall into bed with him. Draco had spent a large portion of the night putting together their conversations and his observations of Harry and had a revelation in the early hours of the morning. Harry'd mentioned nightmares and re-living scenes from the war on a couple of occasions. It could be the nightmares that were possibly preventing Harry pulling Draco into his room, even for a night of simple comfort and affection. No one would know if Harry was casting silencing charms at night and he wondered how bad the nightmares really were. Harry, it seemed, was very cautious about falling asleep in public places or in front of other people. He thought of how easily the two of them could have cuddled up on the sofa and spent the night there. He thought about how it wasn't an unusual sight to see one or another eighth-year dozing in the common at some moment during the week. They'd often come back from the library to find Neville and Hannah spooning on one of the big sofas and Terry was bugger for it, constantly stretching out on the big armchair and falling asleep (and snoring like a warthog too). Even Draco had been known to take 'forty-winks' by the fire. But never Harry, when he thought about it, the slightest sign of a yawn and Harry would take himself off to bed.

And there were other worrying observations too, Draco knew that he'd seen Harry's hands trembling on more than one occasion when they discussed traumatic events from the past, and when they were on the sofa, he was actually unconsciously wringing his hands together and rubbing at his fingers obsessively when they were talking about Ron and the effect of the Locket Horcrux on their friendship. It worried Draco, he suspected Harry was suppressing signs of anxiety. And those thoughts led onto other symptoms that Draco thought Harry might be exhibiting. He'd mentioned avoiding going back to DADA classes and he knew avoidance of being reminded of certain events was a classic sign of trauma, as was emotional numbing—he thought of Harry pounding his bread dough to perfect elastic smoothness—the physical distraction of kneading would be enough to numb his feelings or emotions at that given time. Perhaps that was why Harry liked to cook late at night, because it was when his emotions had space to surface.

He's covering up symptoms of PTSD, said the little voice in his head. And Draco had to agree.

He had talked to his own Mind Healer about this after the war, she had explained that people experience PTSD in many different ways. His own symptoms had manifested themselves in temporary agoraphobia when he was living in London as well as the social anxiety he still occasionally experienced.

He wanted to talk to Hermione about it, he wanted to know if Harry had shown these signs before coming to Hogwarts or if she knew when he made his 'conquests' over the summer if he'd stayed over, actually slept next to someone else. He realised that the benefit of Harry making 'one-night conquests' was the lack of emotional involvement; these signs could remain buried in such ephemeral situations. This reinforced the idea that Harry wanted more from a relationship between him and Draco but he wasn't yet ready to show his emotional baggage, that he wanted things more sorted first. That frustrated Draco, he was more than willing to be there for Harry, to help him on this journey, he knew that this was something he could give to Harry. But he decided it might not be him but Harry that was the barrier here and, somehow, he needed to let Harry know he was there for him when he was ready. He wondered how much Harry was hiding from Hermione too. Which came back to him needing to talk to her.

But this presented Draco with another problem. If Harry was truly struggling beneath the surface, he needed to be surrounded by trustworthy friends and now Draco was questioning Hermione's behaviour. He was ninety-nine per cent certain that she was coming out of Harry's room when they entered the corridor. He really would have dismissed the doubtful idea that the door was closing too behind her if it hadn't been for the fact that there was obviously a 'Mufliato Charm' cast on her own door. It all pointed to deception. He didn't know what to make of it, let alone what to do about it.

And that was before he even got into that bizarre scene with Blaise but, quite frankly, he didn't have the energy to deal with that. His focus was Harry and what to do.