Chapter Text
Harry could suddenly feel his too-scratchy blanket bunched up in his palm.
Which meant that he was waking up. Again.
He let out a dissatisfied mumble and pushed his face into the pillow.
No. no. He was absolutely not doing this.
He was going to use the techniques the mind-healer had taught him and let dreams carry him away.
He just had to picture himself in his happy place. On the Quidditch field at Hogwarts, playing a match against Slytherin on a perfect day. He could feel the wind pushing against his broom. The stands were roaring, and there, out of the corner of his eye, a flicker of gold—
Harry groaned out loud.
His nose was itchy.
And his pillow was too hot.
There was no coming back from this.
He sat half up in the bed, unfurling his fist to release the clump of sweaty blanket.
Blearily, he felt around his nightstand until he grabbed a small bottle. It was the weakest sleeping draught that Hermione’d been able to find anywhere. Weak enough to allow him to wake up to the sound of his alarm, and with none of the negative side effects of dreamless sleep.
The only problem was that… if it was one of those dreams… he wouldn’t be able to wake himself up at all. But he hardly had those dreams anymore, anyway. And he couldn’t show up to work half-awake again, he’d just gotten chewed out for almost falling asleep in his chair during a meeting.
And his nose was so itchy.
With another groan, Harry unscrewed the bottle, took a small sip, and set it heavily back down on the nightstand.
He yawned and lay back down, his eyes starting to close before his head even hit the pillow. Thank Merlin for Hermione.
***
Harry looked around.
He was in a small room. It was almost pitch black, but he could make out the vague shapes of several objects sitting on shelves. The room was small—- so small that he could stretch his arms out and touch the furthest walls. He did just that, hands against the cool wood. He could vaguely feel his nose itch— could feel clouds of dust drifting past his face.
Why was he in this room?
He looked down. There was some sort of foam mat on the floor that he was standing on, soft and squishy under his feet, with a pillow shoved into the corner.
That was strange. This room was… a bedroom?
Harry turned, squinting closer at the objects on the shelves.
There was his Auror uniform, a broom-cleaning kit, and… his wand?
This was… he turned again, searching for something else in this small space. This was his bedroom? He whirled back towards the shelves again, almost tripping over his own feet as he stepped on the mat. He moved to grab his wand, but it was gone.
But… he almost tripped again as the wall behind him pushed him forward. No. That wasn’t right, this couldn’t be a bedroom, not his bedroom, because—
He turned again, falling against another wall.
Because… where was the door?
The shelves were closer now, closer each time he turned back to them. There was less and less space surrounding him, and he couldn’t breathe, and—
BAM.
The walls shook with the force of the sound.
BAM BAM BAM.
Harry turned again, desperately trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, trying to open his mouth to scream as he fell back against the shelves, jutting roughly into his back as he put up his hands to try to keep the opposite wall from closing in on him, but the wood was too warm and his nose was so itchy and—
BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.
Harry awoke with a start.
Before he could begin to process anything, the banging sound resumed, just as loud but now clearly coming from downstairs, from the front door to his flat.
Harry groaned, blindly searching his nightstand for his glasses.
There was another bang.
“I’m coming!” Harry called out irritably.
His glasses on, he disentangled his legs from his sweaty blankets and stormed out of the room, knocking his shoulder into the doorframe on his way out.
“Who the bloody fuck,” he ground out angrily as he gripped the railing and made his way down the stairs “could possibly be—”
BAM BAM BAM BAM.
Harry took the last few steps to the door in one stride.
“I said I’m fucking COMING!” he yelled as he yanked it back, revealing a swaying figure with mussed platinum hair and reddened cheeks.
Harry blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Blinked again.
Draco Malfoy stood before him, although standing was a rather generous way of describing Malfoy’s slow-motion impersonation of one of those inflatable tube men you saw outside of car dealerships in America.
Malfoy was slumped to one side, most of his weight concentrated on his right. It seemed that he was trying to accommodate for the half-empty wine bottle hanging from his hand. If Harry had to guess from the man’s posture, he’d say the wine bottle had to have weighed 15 pounds.
“Well,” Malfoy slurred back, “how nice of you to answer the door anyway, Pot… Potter,” he took a swig of the apparently-light wine bottle, and then chuckled to himself. “Seeing as you were—” he raised an eyebrow in an extremely exaggerated manner. “…indisposed.”
Harry, who’d been staring, snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. “W—”
“—Ah,” Malfoy interrupted, putting his other hand on the doorframe for balance. “Potter. Always so…” he frowned. “So Potter.”
He stared at the wine bottle for a moment, and then looked back up at Harry. “I” —he gestured broadly with the bottle, leaving an arc of dark red spots on the landing in front of him— “am glad you’re here.“ There was another pause, and then Malfoy leaned in, Malfoy’s breath on his ear. “...Potter,“ Malfoy’s voice dipped down low. “I need you to kill me.”