After All TBGC

Updated:  May 19, 2005

Summer 2/Part C:

It had been fun watching Harry get into trouble at first.  Snape had been calm and reprimanding and Harry had stood, slightly slumped, with his hands behind his back and his cheeks red with embarrassment.  It had all been incredibly humorous. 

“Kindly explain to me, Mr. Potter, what you were doing in the Forbidden Forest without adult supervision?”

A fleeting glance at Draco. “I was bored, I guess.”

“And what, exactly, did I tell you at the beginning of this summer?”

“That I was not to go outside without a professor present.”

“And what does Dumbledore say regarding the Forbidden Forest at the beginning of every year?”

“That it’s off limits.”

“Meaning?”

“That I shouldn’t go in there because it’s dangerous and I could get myself killed.”

“Is there any part of that that you do not understand?”

“No, I…”

“Do not interrupt!”

“Yes, Professor.”

“So, now tell me again exactly what you were thinking leading not only yourself, but Draco as well, into the Forbidden Forest with nothing more than a useless mutt for protection?”

The pink in Harry’s cheeks had quickly turned red with anger.  “He’s not a mutt!  Fang is a boarhound and he isn’t useless.  He…”

Snape’s hand opened and jerked half up before he caught himself and dropped it back to his side, raising his voice.  Harry flinched, but didn’t turn to run, hadn’t even tried to protect himself.  “Do not interrupt!”  And it had only gotten worse from then.

Within minutes Harry’s hands had gone from meekly clasped behind his back, to balled into fists at his side and Snape had gone from calmly lecturing to yelling so loudly that spit occasionally flew at the other boy.  Draco had never seen anything like it.

“When I tell you not to go outside, you do not go outside!  If you are told not to enter the Forbidden Forest, you do not enter it!  We put down rules for a reason, boy, and you may not understand them, but you will obey them!”

“I understand your stupid rules!”

“Then why do you insist on disobeying them?!”

He’d thought that Harry getting into trouble with Snape would be akin to himself getting into trouble with his father.  His father, however, had never become so enraged that he lost control of his temperament.  Indeed, the angrier that Lucius Malfoy got, the calmer and quieter he became and when he did finally put Draco over his knee and cane him, it was in a very collected fashion.

This was entirely different.

“Are you mentally deficient, you reckless child?!  Have you no respect for your elders, who…”

“I have respect for my elder, just not greasy gits who spend all their time trying to make sure everybody else is as miserable as they are!  You won’t let me go outside because you don’t want me to spend time with Hagrid and if you could have found a way to keep me from Professor Dumbeldore by locking me in the dungeon, you would have done that, too! And…”

Harry was cut off by Snape grabbing his arm.  He pulled away.  “Let me go!”

Snape marched to his fireplace, struggling boy still in tow and twisted a gargoyle on the mantle.  Instantly, the bookcase next to it swung open, revealing a very dark, narrow room that Draco recognized as his storeroom.  Before Harry could protest, Snape thrust him inside and quickly twisted the gargoyle, closing the doorway before Harry could run back out.

“You will spend the next few hours thinking about why you should obey the rules that are put in place to protect your worthless hide and if I find so much as a single broken item, I will lay into you with a belt, regardless of what Albus may have to say about it!”

Draco sat very still as Snape stormed across the room and sat at his desk, jabbing his quill into an inkbottle and scratching violently on a page.  He wanted to leave the room, or, if he were entirely honest with himself, he wanted to go and make sure Harry was alright, but he didn’t dare move for fear of drawing attention to himself.

Eventually, he settled himself into the sofa and sat as still as possible.  It wasn’t long before the scratches of Snape’s quill put him to sleep.

Draco didn’t remember going to bed that evening, but he knew he must have, because when he woke up he was in his pajamas, tucked into bed.  Then again, as he wiggled around, trying to get himself untucked, he might not have done so.  He’d never have managed to tuck both his arms so firmly under the blankets that it took concerted effort to get them free.

Finally he managed to push the smothering comforter away and sat up, looking around groggily.  Hm, Harry wasn’t in bed, he must have gotten up early.  Glancing at the clock, he noted that, indeed, it read ‘early.’  It was the first time Draco could remember that Harry had not only managed to get up, but get out of the room without him noticing.  Usually, Draco woke up, then decided whether he wanted to go back to sleep or not.

Feeling slightly disconcerting, he got up and put on his slippers, looking around dazedly.  Nothing seemed out of place.  The books were still stacked neatly, the paper and quill that Harry used were untouched on the desk, and the other side of the bed was unwrinkled and neatly made.  If there was one thing Draco was not, it was a morning person and he didn’t exactly know what was nagging at him, but something wasn’t right.

He decided, after a few moments of consideration that it wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait for him to properly wake up.  So, he went to the dresser and pulled out his clothes, a pair of black trousers and a white tunic style pull over, and padded across the living room and into the bathroom.

As he made his way, that 'something' began to bother him even more and he looked around the living room, confused.  The furniture was all where it should be, no one’s head was sticking out of the fireplace, Snape was at his desk, as he always was first thing in the morning, and… wait, where was Harry?  Stopping with his hand on the door, Draco blinked and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, looking again.

“Where’s Harry?”

Snape stopped what he was doing.  He didn’t pause, or turn to Draco, simply stopped and lifted his head to stare at the wall in front of him for a good thirty seconds before saying,  “He’ll be along shortly.”

Draco shrugged and locked the door behind himself.  Strange.  That look on Snape’s face, he’d seen that before.  Not on Snape, though, but where?   Oh, yes, it was on his father.  He splashed water on his face while the bath filled.

‘Father, we have to go surprise mother before she wakes up!’

‘Why ever would we do that?’

‘It’s her birthday!’

That was it.  His mother’s birthday when he was six.  He’d drawn her a card and had the house elves animate it and then he’d made them get him fresh strawberries to give her in bed.  The look on his father’s face when he realized he’d forgotten her birthday was… wait a minute.  He’d forgotten.

Snape had forgotten Harry.

He heard the grating sound of the shelf swinging open.  “Go to your room and do not come out until I retrieve you.”

Harry mumbled an unintelligible response, but it was probably something along the lines of ‘yes, sir,’ because Snape didn’t say anything else, just closed the shelf.  Draco frowned at his reflection before heading over to the bath.

He spent the next ten minutes soaking in the water, trying to figure out how a person could be so very angry with someone one moment and then forget about them entirely the next.  His father, no matter how angry, had never forgotten about him.  After a moment, he was forced to amend that to ‘not that he knew about,’ because he had been grounded several times and perhaps his father had forgotten he was there and he just didn’t know it.

Dunking his head underwater, he felt himself waking by degrees and decided that he’d spent as much time in the bathroom as he could warrant.  Besides, the water was getting cold.

He was in the process of putting on his trousers, when it finally occurred to him what was really wrong.  It bothered him.  Not that Snape had forgotten, because he thought he might have forgotten things before, so it could be possible, but that it had been his fault that Harry was in the storeroom in the first place.

Pulling his tunic style shirt over his head, he huffed.  No, it wasn’t his fault.  He’d meant to get Harry in trouble, but it was Harry’s fault for snapping back like he had.  Draco couldn’t even fathom an occasion when he might have thought about talking back to his father.  It just wasn’t done.

For some reason, however, this logic seemed to escape that part of him that wanted to go and find out if Harry was all right.  Finally, he gave up trying to think it through and decided that appeasing it was the only thing he could do.  Throwing the comb done, he gave himself one last glance in the mirror and headed towards the bedroom.

Snape was again sitting at the desk, looking no more ruffled that he had that morning, which was to say not at all, but then unless he were dealing with Harry, Snape never looked ruffled.  “Is Harry…?”

“In his room.  Send him out to take a shower, we’ll eat breakfast when he's finished.”  He hadn’t even looked up.

Draco frowned, but didn’t comment further.  He still wasn’t sure what he felt about it and until he did, he thought it best to reserve his thoughts to himself.  Harry was sitting on the bed when he came in, staring at the wall and deep in thought.  For a moment, Draco thought he hadn’t heard him come in, but then Harry looked up at him.

There wasn’t any kind of recrimination in the look, just exhaustion.  His clothes were wrinkled, but not nearly so much as they would have been had he slept in them, and his half lidded eyes had large, dark circled under them.  Biting his lip, Draco nudged his head towards the door.  “You’re to take a shower before breakfast.”

Harry nodded and brushed past him without so much as a ‘good morning’ or ‘how are you?’  Not that Draco had expected one, but it would have been polite.  Returning to the living room, he sat on the sofa and tried to wait patiently for the other boy to get out of the shower, which was a very difficult thing to do because his stomach started to make indignant noises and he realized that he hadn’t eaten since tea time the previous day.

However, despite his own minimum twenty minute shower regimen, Harry was out in five, hair still ruffled and wet, glasses steamy, and clothes sticking to parts of him that hadn’t fully dried yet.  It was disgraceful, but Draco wasn’t about to complain, because the moment Harry opened the door, Snape summoned an elf and had the food brought down.

After breakfast, which Harry ate remarkable subdued – he didn’t get a single bit of food on himself and refrained from using his toast as a spoon – Snape informed them that they were to do as they liked, but they were not to leave the castle and they would return before nightfall.  Harry didn’t even make his customary sour face at the instructions, just nodded and stood up to put his shoes on.

It was all very disconcerting and Draco wasn’t sure what he thought about this new development, either.  Harry just simply refused to talk beyond, ‘yes, sir’ and even that in a small, meek-sounding voice.  However, since Draco couldn’t quite reconcile how he felt about the situation, he said nothing of what he thought and went about their usual routine of Harry following him around the castle.

A likely looking classroom caught his eye; it had pillows piled in one corner and a podium with a step stool behind it and a bin full of various objects.  He went in, not bothering to see if Harry would follow, because he knew he would, and went straight to the bin to see what was in it.

He had just realized that there was nothing of interest in it - only a large amount of feathers, some balls, and a few weightier things like books and goblets - when it occurred to him that the room was dead silent.  Usually, Harry would be sighing or making occasional clicking noises while he read, but there was nothing.

Looking out from behind the podium he scanned the room and almost missed Harry, lying curled up among the pillows in the corner.  He stood up, fully intending to march over and tell Potter that it was rude to fall asleep when you were supposed to be entertaining a guest, previous evening’s events be damned, when the dark haired boy shifted in the pile restlessly and mumbled something under his breath.

His interest peaked, Draco walked over and sat down next to him, trying to hear what he might be saying.  For a long moment he didn’t do anything besides breathe, then he said something that sounded very much like ‘sorry’ and then ‘please.’

Blinking, he scooted closer and leaned down, only to pitch forward, face first into the pillows when Harry’s knee jerked up and into his back.  “Bloody hell!”

That was just it!  What was it with Harry and his stupid nightmares that made his hit anyone within two feet of him?  He was just about to shout at him to wake up, when Harry’s eyes flew open and he sat up.

Draco couldn’t move.  Well, he could have, his legs and arms worked, but he had the distinct feeling that with the way he was tangled in the pillows, he’d fall flat on his arse if he tried, so he sat there, waiting for Harry to say something.  Instead, he made a half choked noise and fell back, sound asleep.