Draco leaned against a wall outside of the Entrance Hall the next morning, looking down and scuffing his shoe repeatedly on the ground, regret and guilt still filling him from the night before. After they had sent the school owl off he, Ginny, and Harry had gone to the room of requirement to stay the night, but he hadn’t gotten much sleep. What if they hadn’t followed him last night? was the burning question that had plagued him as Ginny slept in his arms. He would probably be in agony somewhere under Voldemort’s Cruciatus curse right now.

Sympathy played across Ginny’s eyes as she came down the marble steps and spotted him there alone. It was well before breakfast, and Draco had snuck off to be by himself before he had to be around other people in classes all day.

She walked up to him and he was barely able to lift his eyes to meet hers. “Don’t feel bad,” she told him. He looked to the ground again.

“I should feel bad. He led me right into his trap. He would have taken me straight to the Dark Lord if you hadn’t come.” Not knowing what else to do she lifted her hand up to his hair and ran it through it before pulling him into a hug.

“Don’t be ashamed for wanting him to be like he should be. It’s not your fault that things are like they are.”

He hugged her tightly for a few moments before letting his head fall back to the stone wall behind him. “What would I do without you?”

Ginny grinned. “Sit around and sulk all day? Good thing I’m here then isn’t it? Come on.” She took his hand and led him into the Great Hall which was empty except for Professor Sprout sitting at the staff table reading a letter and a first year Hufflepuff sitting by himself looking unhappy at Hufflepuff table.

It was some time before more students began to show up for breakfast, Harry included, but Draco was pleased to find that Snape was not at the staff table this morning. Hurt and anger still coursed through him knowing that he now had no parental figure to fall back on.

“You left early this morning,” Harry commented as owls began to deliver the morning post and a very large edition of the Daily Prophet.

Draco shrugged as an owl waited for payment for Draco’s copy and he paid it. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Ignoring his copy of the Prophet Draco looked unhappily at his piece of toast and tried in vain to turn it into a large chocolate chip cookie. Ginny picked it up and transfigured it for him as Harry pulled the Prophet over and let out a sound of disgust. “Ugh…”

“What is it?” Ginny asked as she handed the square cookie to Draco.

Harry shook his head as he scanned the article. “Minister of Magic Finch Dead. Replaced by New Minister Jasper Trent Who Dies Later Same Day. Replaced by New Minister Casey Etherian.”

Draco frowned as he chewed slowly on his cookie. “Three in one day?”

“Looks like Voldie is getting anxious to get somebody new in office,” Harry commented as he scanned the article all the way to the bottom. “It says here Fudge apparently listed an unnamed number of new Ministers to be named in the event that they should die until the reign of Voldemort is over.” Harry glanced up to see that Draco had not picked up anything to throw at him, and then set the Prophet down. “The only smart thing he ever did in office.”

“I’ve never heard of Jasper Trent,” Draco said, but Casey Etherian is half elf. She’s not even from the isles. Father hated her.”

“Half elf?” The only elves Harry had ever heard of were house elves, aside from the ones on Muggle television shows his cousin used to watch.

“She’s from the Black Forest,” Ginny commented. “I saw her once when I went to work with dad for a day a couple of summers ago. She can do magic without a wand but she has one anyway.”

“So, she has pointy ears or something?” Harry was confused. “Like Muggle elves?”

Draco laughed and almost spit a chunk of cookie from his mouth. “No, like an elf elf. What’s wrong with you? I know Binns taught a chapter on Elves and the Ministry of Magic trying to place restrictions on their magical use but being unable to.”

Harry thought hard for a moment but drew a blank. “Sometimes I didn’t listen in his class… Hermione usually got me and Ron through his tests.”

“Well, elves are supposed to have more magic than regular witches and wizards… maybe Voldemort won’t be able to have her killed so easily,” Ginny suggested. She flipped through the Prophet for the next few minutes to see if there was anything else of interest inside, but found nothing.

“They must not have caught anybody last night,” she said. “There’s nothing in here about caught death eaters close to Hogwarts… although there is a short article about some anonymous information coming in to the aurors that turned nothing up… that might not be us either though because it’s really vague.”

Draco finished his cookie and looked down at the table, still feeling his father’s betrayal coursing through his veins. It had played out in his dreams all night as well.

From across the hall a group of girls burst out in giggles, drawing Harry’s attention momentarily as he reached for a piece of toast to turn into a cookie himself, suddenly feeling hungry for one now that Draco had eaten his.

“Wonder what that’s about,” Harry said distractedly as he turned half his toast into a burnt cookie before it turned to dust in his hands.

Ginny shook her head, “Honestly.” She picked up another piece of toast and transfigured it for Harry.

“Thanks Hermione,” he grinned knowing that Ginny had acted just like her. She blushed slightly before Draco turned to look at the group of giggling girls at Slytherin table as well as one of them rose and moved to speak to a girl at Ravenclaw table and whispered something into her ear. This girl in turn whispered something to a group of her friends, who proceeded to giggle just as loudly as the first group.

“Well, we’ll find out what’s so funny soon enough. Just another minute until it reaches our table.” Draco’s prediction was right. It was only a few moments longer before a girl ran over to their table and began whispering frantically into the ear of a third year named Anne. Anne however did not laugh. She rose promptly and strode to Hufflepuff and slapped a fifth year boy across the face, the sound of it resonating crisply across the Great Hall, drawing the attention of all gathered. Before any professors could ask why she had slapped him though, she ran from the audience, hand over her face to hide her tears.

Draco’s eyebrows rose. “What happened?” He turned to Ginny expectantly as if she had the answers.

“What, I’m supposed to know?”

Thinking about it for a second, Draco nodded. “You are a girl aren’t you?”

“And?” She narrowed her eyes slightly.

“And I thought, maybe, you know… you could go find out what happened. You can’t expect me or Harry to go ask any of those girls what happened. We’re the enemy… they won’t tell us anything.” He sped through this last bit very quickly, suddenly feeling on unstable ground with her.

Harry watched the exchange curiously as Ginny said, “Have you ever thought that maybe it’s none of our business?”

Draco’s shoulders slumped. The conversation resolved quickly however when Hermione came up to them and said, “Honestly! Boys are horrible at this school!”

“See!” Draco pointed at her and then said to Ginny, “I told you boys are the enemy… wait, that’s not what I meant.”

“What? Oh, never mind. Poor Anne.”

“Looked like poor Austin to me,” Harry said, referring to the boy who had been slapped and whose cheek was now very red.

“Apparently Austin went around telling people that he and Anne got to second base last night, and now it’s all over the school and she’s really upset and embarrassed about it.”

“Poor Anne,” Ginny agreed.

Hermione asked to speak with Ginny alone for a few minutes before class, and Draco told her he’d see her at lunch.

While the scene at breakfast had been enough to distract Draco from his thoughts and dreams of the night before, his feelings of guilt and self-loathing returned shortly after, even as the gossip about Anne and Austin continued to radiate through the halls as the day progressed. From his conversation with Ginny and Hermione at breakfast Draco knew better than to say anything, but from the way Austin looked down at his shoes as he walked, it looked to Draco as if he was just as embarrassed about all of this as Anne was.

Draco strolled into Potions taking up his usual seat, forgetting temporarily about his unhappiness with Snape until the Potions Master swept into the room and gave him a stern look. Then his feelings of anger rose up again and began swirling in the pit of his stomach somewhere near the bottom with the other unhappy feelings that had taken residence there. Harry found Draco in a sullen mood when he took his seat next to him just before class started.

“Today you will begin work on one of your two-day potions. Pick a partner and move your ingredients and cauldrons into a lab down the hall. You and your partner will be the only ones with access to your lab to prevent tampering.” Severus gave only a glance to Draco, but he was hastily throwing his books back into his bag and didn’t notice.

Harry shrunk his and Draco’s cauldrons to the size of a small pumpkin and picked them both up as he followed Draco out the door and to the empty lab at the end of the hall.

“How long are you planning on not talking to Severus?” Harry asked as he pulled his ingredients and instructions out of his bag and set them on one of the two small workbenches.

Draco resized his cauldron and shrugged. “He doesn’t understand anything about me, why should I speak to him at all?”

Harry frowned. “I dunno, maybe because he’s… you know.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to say to Draco what he wanted to just at the moment, especially with what had happened the night before.

“No, tell me Harry.” Draco rested one hand on either edge of his cauldron and looked up at his friend, making him feel slightly uncomfortable.

“Because he’s… our dad? I mean… he’s all we’ve got right? Isn’t he better than nothing?”

Funny how my own father, who would betray me to his master would know more about me than the supposed father who cares about me, Draco thought bitterly. “I’ve got you and Ginny haven’t I? What do I need him for?”

Harry was stumped. He himself knew why he preferred having a parental figure to talk to, but if Draco didn’t have this preference then he didn’t know how to explain it to him. Would he be betraying Draco’s confidence if he went and talked to Severus about all of this?

“And don’t even think about talking to him about this either…”

“Or what, you’ll throw goblets at me?” Harry chuckled and then made a mock duck as Draco narrowed his eyes and then mocked throwing something at him.

“I mean it Harry. You and Ginny are who I’ve got now. Don’t let me down.”

Harry’s mood sobered. He smiled however and said, “I won’t.”


* * *

“I don’t know… are you sure about this?” Draco fidgeted as Ginny nodded enthusiastically.

“Come on Draco, please?” She elongated the last word as if hoping this in itself was like a spell that would make him change his mind. “Hermione said she and Ron have been doing it for ages now and it’s perfectly safe.”

Draco furrowed his brow. “Since when has safety mattered to me in magic? It’s not that, its just…” he trailed off thinking about the nightmares he had always had. It was bad enough having Snape crawling through his waking memories… he didn’t know if he could handle Ginny playing a part in his nightmares.

“What? It will give us more time together… we won’t even have to sneak out anymore. It’s getting so hard now that Professor Dumbledore has all the mothers on the lookout.” In the last few nights Dumbledore had indeed sent many of the “mothers” as they called them out on patrol of the lower floors of the school. They had volunteered to try to help him keep order with all the fighting and rumors that had been going around the castle like wildfire.

Draco thought about it for a few more moments, and decided that any extra time spent with Ginny couldn’t be that bad, and nodded his head.

She smiled broadly and went over the spell with him one last time. “How do I know that you won’t be getting into other guy’s dreams now?” he asked playfully.

“I guess you don’t” she told him, “except that you have to be willing to receive the spell in order for someone to initiate dream contact with you. And besides that, I plan on being in your dreams every night. Ron and Hermione have been doing this for a month now so that she could give him extra help with his NEWT studying.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what they’re doing.”

She gave him a mock look of shock, and then smiled again. “How long will it take you to get to sleep once you’re back in your dorm?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, half an hour maybe.”

She kissed him goodbye and reminded him to clear his thoughts before he went to sleep or else the spell wouldn’t work, and left the secret library. Draco lingered for a moment, praying that his dreams stayed calm tonight, before heading back to the dungeons.


Draco was dreaming about walking through the forbidden forest, a hanky tied around the end of a stick that he had slung over his shoulder, like a small child running away from home. Somewhere ahead of him he saw a death eater slither from tree to tree, as if it were a snake, and yet he kept heading toward it as if he were determined to get to him. Suddenly Ginny’s voice called out to him from a bright light behind him, and he spun around to see her standing there smiling, wearing a nightgown. When he turned back to where the death eater had been, he saw the empty Entrance hall instead of the dark forbidden forest.

“What were you dreaming about?” Ginny asked him.

“I don’t remember,” he lied. She gave him a knowing look and then took his hand and pulled him into a hug.

“I was dreaming about Percy and Ron before the spell took hold and I found myself here with you… this is much better.”

Draco smiled, and said, “Want to take a walk?” She nodded and let herself be lead off to another part of the castle.


* * *

“I don’t get it.” Harry stood in the potions lab and stared dimly down at his ruined potion the next day. It was frothy and brown, and bubbled like angry mud, ready to explode. “I followed the instructions down to the letter!”

“Mine’s pretty good,” Draco said happily, still thinking about his dream date with Ginny. “But I was doing a different potion than you were.”

“The door was locked… only you, me, and Severus had the key.”

Draco frowned. “We’ll don’t look at me. I haven’t been in here since class the other day.”

Scratching his head Harry went over to Draco’s cauldron. “What were you working on? Do you think some might have bubbled over and splashed into mine?”

Draco pulled out his instructions for his potion. “Doubtful, it was a mellow potion and I barely had the heat on so it shouldn’t have bubbled or splashed at all.”

Finally giving in to the fact that maybe he had in some way screwed the potion up, Harry bottled it and labeled it, knowing he had to turn something in. Surely a lecture on a botched potion would be better than a lecture on failing to do the assigned work.

Snape eyed the phial of brown mud doubtfully when Harry handed it to him along with Draco’s solution a few minutes later.

“And what potion was this supposed to be?”

“Draught of death sir.” Severus gave him a look that said, clearly this is not it, and waved him away to take a seat next to Draco at their desk.

“See,” Harry whispered to Draco as Snape continued to accept potions from other students as they walked in the door, “having him as a dad can’t be all bad. He didn’t say a word about what I turned in.”

Draco scoffed. “Just wait… I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it later.”

“Yeah, but not publicly,” Harry pointed out.

Later, at lunch Hermione gave Draco a knowing look and giggled quietly to herself as he and Harry passed by her on their way to meet Ginny at the other end of the table.

“Do I want to know?” Harry asked.

“Of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m telling you.”

“Uh!” Harry feigned offense but only grinned when Draco rolled his eyes at him.

The sly look Ginny gave Draco as he sat down only made him more curious, but he figured it was a couple thing and didn’t push it.

“Did you hear about Molly Evans and Tobias Gregor?” Ginny asked quietly as Harry took a bite of a ham sandwich.

“No. Do I want to?”

“They broke up because he found out she fancied some third year in Slytherin.”

“What, are we Slytherins that bad looking?” Draco sniggered.

Ginny sighed. “That’s not what I meant… he broke up with her because she liked another guy and didn’t tell him.”

Harry pointed his sandwich at Ginny and said, “What I want to know is how all of these secrets are getting out all of a sudden… it seems like just rumors to me.”

“But how can they be rumors if they’re true?” Ginny asked.

Thinking about it for a moment Harry said, “I don’t know, but there’s something strange going on when all of a sudden eight couples break up, five sets of friends start getting into fights, and…” Harry trailed off when a group of students at the next table pointed at Draco and Ginny and started giggling. Draco and Ginny turned to look at them, and the look Draco gave them silenced them immediately.

“I don’t like it is all,” Harry finished. “People have been turning on each other because of stupid rumors.”

“That are true…” Ginny again pointed out.

Harry frowned and thought on it some more.

* * *

Draco and Ginny sat on a puffy couch in the room of requirement as they waited for Harry to join them. Snape had pulled him aside after dinner that evening and said he wanted a word about Harry’s potion.

“So did you have a good time last night?” Ginny asked as she settled into Draco’s arms.

He scoffed. “You know I did. When else do we get to snogg in the middle of the hall and not worry about getting caught.”

She giggled. “Well, we did get caught, but at least we didn’t get into trouble.”

Draco shuddered. “I forgot we were in a dream when your brother walked up behind us. I have to say, that weirded me out when he just looked at us, and then kept walking.”

She shrugged. “Well, that was the first time we tried to dream-share. Maybe people from our dreams will randomly show up from time to time.”

“Ron and Hermione dream share… are you sure it wasn’t your brother really in our dreams?”

“Yes. Don’t forget we have to be willing for him to pop in on us… and besides that, he would have chased you down the hall if he were really there.”

Draco shook his head. “I guess… it was fun though. Do you want to try again tonight? Maybe we can keep your family out of it this time?”

She nodded and buried her face in his chest.


Harry laid on his bed, restless. By the time he had gotten done talking to Severus, and swearing that he had followed the potion instructions to the letter, it had been too late to go and see Draco and Ginny before curfew. He couldn’t be too upset about getting to talk to Severus though. It had been something he hadn’t found the time to do in a while. The conversation had only strayed to Draco once, but upon seeing the uncomfortable look on Harry’s face when he hesitated to answer, Severus dropped the subject. Draco was right, it wouldn’t be right for Harry to betray his confidence, even if it was to someone they both considered their surrogate father. Harry was pondering this and thinking that Draco still did think of him this way, even if he was angry at their professor, when the dormitory door opened and footsteps told Harry that Ron was coming to bed. The other boys had already been asleep when Harry had come in, and the only one missing had been Ron.

“Harry?” Ron’s voice was cautious, and Harry wondered why he was speaking to him at all after months of not talking.

“What?”

Suddenly his four-poster curtains were ripped apart, and Ron was standing there, seething, wand gripped tightly at his side.

“This is your fault!” he hissed at him. Before Harry could dive for his wand on his nightstand, Ron already had his up and had Harry in a crucio. The pain was excruciating and Harry writhed and arched his back, his mouth open in a silent scream. The pain seemed to go on for hours, and when Ron finally let his wand up so that he could laugh mercilessly, Harry managed to only get a single breath before Ron started the torture again, laughing all the while.

“This is your punishment for betraying me and becoming friends with that traitorous little scum you hang around all day. Just remember this brother… once a death eater, always a death eater.”

Panting, Harry suddenly sat up in bed, tearing at the curtains, and falling out unceremoniously onto the cold stone floor. The room was dark, and Ron was nowhere in sight. The other boys slept quietly, and did not stir when he scrambled to his feet and grabbed his wand off the nightstand. He was still dressed and still had his glasses on, and it took him a moment to realize he must have fallen asleep while thinking. A little dazed, the memory of the pain from the crucio still lingering, Harry wasn’t quite sure how much of it had been a dream. Had he actually gone and spoken to Severus after dinner? It seemed real enough, and he was still dressed as he had been the day before… but that crucio… it felt so real.

Just to be sure, Harry snuck quietly to Ron’s four-poster and pulled the curtain back. There was his ex-best friend, snoring peacefully with his pajamas on and his hair all messed up. He moaned something about Hermione and then Runes in his sleep before Harry let the curtain fall back into place and took a seat on the side of his bed. He lay back across the bed, his legs hanging off the side and his head almost hanging off the other side, and took slow deep breaths. It had been some time since he had had a nightmare like this. Was it possible that Voldemort had breached his mental barriers and gotten in? He had to admit that it was a possibility because he had not occluded his mind before he went to sleep this night, but he had started putting up spells around himself every day against the evil wizard. Spells that Severus had promised would work.

As he allowed himself to drift back to sleep, Harry thought that it could have just been a dream.


In the morning, Draco and Ginny kept shooting each other playful glances at breakfast. They failed to notice the light circles under Harry’s eyes, but did notice his altered mood when he turned down any food the table offered up to him.

“Feeling sick mate?” Draco asked.

Harry shook his head. “No.” His tone told Draco not to ask, so he dropped it there.

In Potions later that day they were assigned to another two-day potion, and Harry and Draco paired up again to share a lab, this time Harry was working on the last potion Draco had done, and Draco was working on the one Harry had previously messed up.

“Too bad we’re not allowed to brew the same potion,” Draco said as he began chopping rat spleen, being careful to get the cuts even and precisely the right size so as not to mess the potion up like Harry had done.

“Yeah, well, I got a good talking to, that’s for sure. I have to get this one right or I’m going to be doing it and the other one over again after dinner each night.”

“Well, that’s not too bad, is it? You like spending time with him don’t you,” Draco said, referring to Snape.

“Yeah, except I’ll be brewing alone and sleeping in the lab each night to ensure that I can keep an eye on my potion.”

“Ugh… that’s horrible, there’s not even enough room for a bed in here.”

“I think that was the point,” Harry said as he swept the ingredients he had just cut up off of his work-bench and into his potion.

At the end of the class, his potion looked perfect, and he and Draco made sure to lock up their brewing room tight, just in case somebody did try to get in and mess with Harry’s potion.


Careful to occlude his mind that night before going to sleep, Harry was confident that Voldemort would not be getting into his dreams. He even cast an extra protective mental barrier against the maniac wizard before drifting off, just in case. Unfortunately his dreams were much the same as the night before. Ron stood over him holding him in a crucio for hours on end, and Harry writhed in pain, knowing no end to his suffering. When he finally managed to wake, his watch read five am, and he couldn’t get back to sleep for that extra hour even if he wanted to.

At breakfast Ron didn’t bother to look at Harry as he passed, just like always, but Harry couldn’t help but feeling some kind of hatred for him, even if he had only been evil in his dreams. As he pushed his food around his plate and dared Draco and Ginny not to ask by the look he gave them, he could still hear Ron’s maniacal laughter ringing in his ears.

The third night that he dreamed about being crucioed senseless, he was at his wits end when he awoke, and actually felt the ache of hours of pain deep within his bones. It was very lucky for the real-life Ron that he was already dressed and down at breakfast when Harry awoke, because Harry wasn’t sure he could stop himself from beating him senseless if he met him in a private place like the dorms.

He rested his head on the table at breakfast silently, face down, and Ginny gave Draco a meaningful look. They had discussed Harry in their shared dreams the night before, and he had promised her that if Harry looked in bad shape the third day that he would press him for information until he got the story about what was going on.

Harry ran a hand through his semi-messed up hair, that he hadn’t even bothered to comb this morning as he and Draco met outside their Potions lab and Draco pulled out his copy of the key and keyed in.

“You don’t look so good Harry… haven’t been dipping into some secret stash of moonshine I don’t know about have you?” Harry gave him only a half glance as they walked in the room and Harry saw his cauldron, once again filled with brown, bubbling goop.

“What the hell?” Harry kicked his cauldron hard and turned on Draco. “You and I are the only ones with a key!”

Draco frowned. “I don’t know how-”

“Are you sure!? Because it seems pretty obvious who’s responsible for this!” Harry was shouting now and Draco had no doubt that Snape would come in any moment to see what the ruckus was about.

“What are you saying?” Draco was trying to remain calm. He knew Harry was on edge about something and didn’t to push him too far.

“You know what I’m saying. How the hell would anyone but one of us get in here? And I sure as hell don’t have motive to screw up my potions so that I have to come back and sleep down here for two nights in a row!”

Draco bit down on his tongue hard to keep from shouting the things at Harry that he wanted to, knowing that he would regret it if he did. “Just, calm down Harry and listen to what you’re saying. You know I wouldn’t-”

“Do I?” Harry kicked his cauldron again and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Draco stood there for a moment before he too kicked a cauldron. Was it that easy to lose Harry’s trust?

It was only a minute before Snape opened the door to see who had been shouting. Upon only seeing Draco there he asked, “Where is Harry?”

“How should I know, am I his keeper?” He tried to move past Snape but the larger man blocked his exit.

“You are his friend. Now explain what has happened.”

Draco threw his hands into the air in frustration. “He thinks I messed with his potions!” Snape peered into the cauldron with brown goop and then looked back up at Draco. “And no, I didn’t,” Draco said angrily pushing his way past him, mistaking Snape’s look for one accusing him of the crime.

Severus walked to his office and found Harry inside sitting in one of the chairs looking livid. “I want a different lab partner,” Harry said calmly, his voice betraying his appearance.

“That will not be necessary,” Severus said as he took a seat behind his desk. “I do not believe that Draco sabotaged your potions.”

“So what, I’m just that big of a screw up?” Harry demanded, his voice and temper rising again.

Severus took in his appearance calmly. “No, but you will be able to rule out Mr. Malfoy tampering with your potions when you sit with your potions tonight. I will conjure a bed to replace his workbench and cauldron.”

“Fantastic,” Harry said lamely, knowing there was no way to prove that Draco had indeed committed the crimes Harry had just accused him of. And if his potions turned out just as fouled after he had spent the night with them, then he was doomed to fail. Either way he lost. Either he was to lose his second best friend that year, or he was to fail out of Potions and be disowned by Severus.

“Is there something you wish to discuss with me Harry?” He had noticed Harry’s appearance growing more ragged over the past three days.

“No sir,” he said, getting a good view of the floor.

“If you change your mind, I will be grading papers for most of the night.”

Harry nodded, grabbed his bag and left.

Even though he had lived through the hormonal teenage years himself (barely) it was ever a wonder to Severus how moody his students grew. It was amazing to see them go from snotty, innocent eleven year olds to hormonally imbalanced teens on the brink of emotional disaster. Of course, he reminded himself, Draco and Harry were not your ordinary teenagers. They had been through evils most people couldn’t even fathom.


Draco was so upset that he skipped dinner that night and met Ginny in the room of requirement. He told Ginny what had happened and she sympathized. “I wonder what’s wrong. Maybe he’s sick?”

“Yeah, he’s mental.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she told him. “Maybe he’s physically sick and he doesn’t want to say anything? Ron’s like that too you know… I’ve no idea why.”

Draco sighed as he looked at his watch. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Then don’t.” She smiled at him and said the spell that would link their dreams as she curled up in his arms. “We can be together now and in our dreams.”

“This is why I love you,” he whispered gently into her ear.

“This is why I love you,” she echoed back to him.

Down in the dungeons Harry put several locks on the lab door from the inside and sat at his workbench, exhausted. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had made a mistake now that he was so tired, but at least he had gotten both potions started and they wouldn’t need anything else done until the morning. He desperately didn’t want to fall to sleep but knew that aside from a strong potion there was nothing he could do to fight it off, and he wouldn’t be able to fight it forever.

Letting his head rest on the bench he closed his eyes and tried hard to occlude his mind, trying to forget his anger at Draco and not think about the horrors that awaited him in his dreams. Soon he had drifted off into his mad little world where Ron stood over him as he lay writhing on the lab floor.

“Once a death eaters son, always his son Harry. You would do well to remember that,” Ron told him as he knelt down beside him in a momentary break from the torture. Harry breathed hard and opened his eyes to look up at his tormenter, but found no-one there. He sat up and pushed his glasses back onto his head. When he stood up, he found both of his potions ruined and the door still locked, although only from the outside.

Harry knew there was nothing he could do to Draco at the moment when he was safe inside Slytherin common room, but he suddenly didn’t feel safe here, and could think of only one place where he did. He opened the door and left it open, and headed for the room of requirement, where he knew he could make entrance impossible for anybody but him.

It was four am. He knew he would only be able to sleep for a couple of hours, but maybe it would be Ron-free, and a couple of hours was still something.

Harry was to the second floor before he heard footsteps from around the corner and Draco appeared.

“You!” He dove for Draco but being so tired missed as Draco side-stepped him.

“What?” Draco asked. Harry picked himself up off the floor and pointed an angry finger at the blond.

“You sabotaged my potions again! I had the door all locked and I fell asleep and you came in and ruined everything!”

Draco again side-stepped as Harry charged him. “Get a grip Harry!” Draco shouted. “I’ve been in the room of requirement with Ginny! Ask her yourself, we were dream-sharing!”

Harry stopped mid-way through his third attempt to charge Draco. “What?”

“Hermione told Ginny how to do it and we’ve been dream sharing for the last week!”

He was slowly trying to wrap his tired mind around this. “Hermione?”

Suddenly Draco was uncertain. “She and Ron have been doing it for ages so he could catch up on studying…”

Harry stood there as the answer to his nightmares had finally come to him. Ron was torturing him and making him try to lose his mind… only it was in his dreams. He turned and strode off towards the stairs. Nothing was going to stop him from killing the traitor that he once called his brother.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“To kill Ron.”

Draco hurried after him and tried to block his path. “What are you on about? You aren’t serious?”

Harry tried to dodge him but Draco was firmly planted in front of him.

“He’s been using dream sharing to crucio me in my sleep every night Draco! He’s a traitor! He’s probably the one that’s been spilling secrets all over the castle! This is what he wants! He wants people to fight!” Harry was suddenly remembering a comment Ron had made to him earlier that hadn’t made sense until now.

“Wait, it doesn’t work like that Harry, you have to be willing to-”

“Draco, get out of my way.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Get, out, of my, way.” Harry was trying to keep calm.

“I can’t, you can’t, just wait a minute.”

Harry’s mind was so tired he didn’t have the patience in him to deal with Draco at the moment. He charged Draco and pushed him to the floor, but suddenly Draco was on top of him and pinning him down, and then Harry was swinging like he had never swung before and Draco was shouting as Harry’s fist repeatedly hit him, though what he was shouting, Harry never knew. And then Draco was on the floor and Harry was hastily pushing himself up.

“And you Draco? You’re a traitor too.” Draco wasn’t moving although Harry saw his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. He sped off to find Ron with tears in his eyes, and left Draco there for somebody else to find.

When Draco woke in the darkness he had blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Harry was nowhere in sight, and he feared Ron was already dead. He had no idea how to get into Gryffindor common room as Ginny was supposedly already inside, and he didn’t know where McGonagall’s private quarters were. He could only think of one man who could get in, and sped off to find him.

Harry found Ron in the common room sitting on the couch. With a wave of his wand he sealed both doors tight that lead to the girls and boys dorms. He couldn’t handle anyone coming down to see him become a murderer, and at the same time he had to kill him. He wasn’t really Ron anymore, he was an agent of the dark lord now.

“Harry?” Ron had a bewildered look on his face as Harry dove on him and forgot his wand entirely. He was going to pay for all those nights of torturing Harry. He was going to feel it in his every bone as Harry still felt the crucio in his every bone.

Harry didn’t know for how long he and Ron struggled, perhaps because he was so tired he no longer had a sense of time or of what he was really doing, but the next thing he knew there was someone very strong pulling him off of Ron and restraining him. He tried to struggle free of the unnamed wizard’s grasp, tears in his eyes as he heard Draco speaking in the background, but he could not get free and soon resigned to the fact that he had once again failed. It was then that his sleepless body gave out and he just let himself be held as he sobbed.