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He awoke suddenly, not quite sure why he was awake right now since the room was still nearly pitch black. It wasn’t like he’d had a nightmare and he couldn’t hear any loud noises, though that didn’t mean there hadn’t been one to wake him up.
But that wasn’t really common since Potter Manor was pretty secluded, like most wizarding homes. Especially the ancestral homes because of all the warding they had surrounding the property.
It also wasn’t because of where he was sleeping, either. Harry’s bed was incredibly soft and the sheets and blankets were warm and cozy and he always slept wonderfully. That’s when George felt movement from next to him, where Harry was presumably sleeping. There was a slight whimper that accompanied it.
Oh, that must be it.
Harry was having a nightmare.
While upsetting, it wasn’t overly unusual. Sometimes George wasn’t woken up by it, but most of the time he was. Harry didn’t have them as commonly as he used to once George started sleeping over, and they’d slowed more once he moved in. But when Harry did have nightmares, they were pretty bad. After all, he had around sixteen years of bad memories to fuel them. Especially his encounters with Voldemort and his time growing up before learning about Hogwarts.
George turned on the light next to his side of the bed so he could see better and looked over to see Harry tangled in the covers and murmuring under his breath. He reached over and grasped Harry’s shoulder, feeling the slight tremors that wracked his body.
“Harry!” George called, shaking Harry as he did so. He’d learned early on that he had to be more forceful to be able to wake Harry when he was in the throes of a nightmare. Gentle shaking or speaking did not break through them.
Harry woke up, breathing in sharply and eyes looking around as he was jolted from his nightmare. George saw tears starting to gather, too.
“Hey,” George said, talking at a lower volume and a gentler tone of voice. “You’re alright. Whatever you were dreaming of isn’t happening right now. You’re in our bedroom in the Manor and it’s the middle of the night.” George slid Harry’s glasses onto his face so he could more easily take in everything around him and realize where he was. He looked over at George, much more awake but also with eyes that were nearly spilling over with tears. George just wordlessly pulled him into an embrace, feeling Harry swipe his glasses off to push his face fully into George’s chest as he started to cry.
George just held him, rubbing calming circles over his back and running his other hand through the tangled tresses that adorned Harry’s head, combing out the tangles as he did so. He could feel a wet spot growing on the skin of his chest and his heart broke for his lover.
“S-Sorry I’m c-c-crying so much,” Harry stuttered out, sobs breaking through his sentence as he spoke, voice a little muffled as he hadn’t moved his head from where it was.
“Hey, you don’t need to apologize to me. You don’t need to apologize for crying over what was likely a horrible nightmare.”
Harry shook his head and pulled back to look up at George, eyes a brighter green due to unshed tears.
“I’m not supposed to cry. I’m supposed to be stronger than that. I can’t afford to be weak.”
George could bet that that line of thinking was due to the Dursleys and his desire to hex them into oblivion grew exponentially and he’d really have to fight that desire since he knew Harry didn’t want anything to be done to them no matter what he’d been through.
“It’s not bad to cry. In fact, I think it makes a person stronger,” George said, cupping Harry’s face with the hand that had been in his hair and making Harry meet his face (no matter how blurry he probably seemed through the tears still flowing from his eyes. “I don’t care what you’ve been told or were conditioned to believe: you are not weak if you cry. Has seeing any of your friends or the family or me cry made you think less of us?”
Harry hurriedly shook his head, eyes widened. George continued before he could say anything.
“Exactly. So it’s the same for you. It takes a lot to express and work through your emotions, especially ones like grief or sadness. You’re doing what you need to, and allowing me to see you in a vulnerable state and help you through it. So cry all you need to, and let me help you through it.”
Harry’s eyes welled up even more and he dove right back into George’s chest, tears once more coating his skin and allowing George to continue his soothing motions.
Eventually Harry calmed down enough for them to lay back down, George turning the light back off and plunging them back into darkness, reminding him just how late it was.
“Do you want to talk about it at all?” George asked quietly, still running a hand through Harry’s hair as a comfort to both of them. It pained him whenever Harry was hurting, emotionally or physically.
“Not right now,” Harry said, voice thick from his crying session and quiet like George’s in the still night. “Maybe later, but it’s too raw when I’ve just woken up from something like this. The only time I ever really talked about a bad dream was when it was a really bad vision, like the one I had of your dad a few years ago. I don’t really like talking about them otherwise. You’re the one who’s gotten me to talk about them more.”
Likely because Harry hadn’t had someone to talk to about them whenever he had nightmares during the summer. Well, nobody to talk to face-to-face about them unless he was staying at Grimmauld or the Burrow.
He took a deep breath to push down the desire to throttle Harry’s relatives.
“As long as you do talk about it, with me or Ron or Hermione or a mind healer. I don’t want you just keeping to yourself and letting the pain fester.”
Harry nodded at him, agreeing.
Eventually the two of them fell back asleep, legs still intertwined and with George’s hand still tangled in Harry’s black locks.
George was the first to wake the next morning and was greeted by the sight of Harry still curled into his side, arm laying across his chest as he gripped his shoulder, and George just decided to stay there until Harry woke up.