Twelve Steps

Chapter Seven

"Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."

-Al-Anon Family Groups

* * * * *

This time, Draco thought he was prepared for Harry Potter's nightmares.

He was wrong, of course, but then Draco had always overestimated himself: in battle; on the Quidditch pitch; in his clever schemes against the Gryffindors; and, most of all, in his loyalty to his family. For all that Lucius Malfoy had lectured about the strength of character afforded by the purity of their bloodline, he had turned Draco into a spoilt milksop. Although Draco had few qualms about eradicating the Mudbloods, he had taken issue with the severity of Voldemort's punishments for those Death Eaters who inadvertently fouled up his plans. One bungled spell and three weeks of Cruciatus later, Draco had fled in search of a more lenient master.

A year of Snape's tutelage had done much to fill in the gaps in Draco's ethical upbringing, but his first thought upon hearing Potter scream was for his own welfare. Potter would alert the nurses if he got any louder, and they might find and confiscate his potion. If he could only preserve it until tomorrow, the murky liquid would be at its utmost potency. Then he could make his escape with a simple flick of the wand.

They had spent the evening in an uneasy truce, Draco still mulling over the information that Potter had divulged, and Potter--well, he honestly had no idea what Potter was thinking. A mask of bland contentment had once again settled over the other man's face. Just before they turned in for the night, Potter had stood watching him, a hazy statue in the dusk of twilight that trickled through the blinds. His eyes serene behind the spectacles, Potter had warned him that the nightmares were likely to intensify before they began to abate.

'It's a side effect of dependency on the Dreamless Sleep Potion, Potter had told him, sounding for all the world as if he were discussing a recipe for treacle pudding. 'For each night that you don't dream, the nightmares are magnified. They become real.'

Hoping to forestall Potter from the relative comfort of his own bed, Draco now began to mutter a set of peremptory instructions in response to Potter's incoherent wailing. "Shut up, Potter," he hissed.

Potter promptly emitted a high-pitched shriek.

"Potter, shove off!"

In lieu of obeying his instructions, Potter merely shoved the pillows off of his bed. They tumbled onto the carpet with a soft thump, and Potter's caterwauling continued.

"For the love of Merlin, wake up before you disturb everyone else's sleep, Potter!" Draco snapped, nearly shouting himself. Potter only moaned something about the demise--fortunate, or so Draco privately thought--of Colin Creevey in response.

His patience exhausted and worries over the safety of his potion looming large in his mind, Draco threw off the covers and stalked over to the former Gryffindor's bed. As he hovered over Potter, Draco was struck by the disparity between the other man's daytime poise and the lost, frightened boy that he became with the dwindling of the sun. He gripped Potter's trembling shoulder with one hand.

"Potter," he said, more gently. "Whatever you're seeing, it's over. It happened a long time ago."

Potter gave a low whimper. In an echo of the previous night, his arms lunged out to encircle Draco, pulling him forward.

"Buggerall! Potter, let go of me!" Draco tugged ineffectively at Potter's hands, trying to dislodge them from his pyjamas. The fervour of his sudden embrace upset Draco's equilibrium, and he tumbled onto the bed beside Potter. Evidently heartened by the feel of a warm body against his, Potter's death grip attenuated somewhat. With another low moan he pressed his torso against Draco's side and tucked an arm around his waist, as though to lure Draco into the nightmare realm with him.

"Let--go--of me--" Draco sputtered with indignation. He scrambled to extricate himself from Potter, who had become an unwieldy mass of arms and legs and hands and feet. Potter's bare toes, cool from the drafty air that drifted in through the poor insulation, wriggled against his calf. He began rolling Potter's drooping head away from the crook of his own neck and was about to forcibly shift the other man's legs up when he suddenly realised that Potter had fallen silent.

"Potter?" he queried in a faint whisper, loath to rouse the body beside him.

"Sirius," Potter slurred, his head edging back to a position just under Draco's chin. His breath fell in a slow pitter-patter against Draco's bare neck, and Draco felt his muscles slackening against his own will. Still, he almost jumped out of his own skin when he felt a tender brush of fingers against his forehead, smoothing the fringe away from his eyes. He stared up at the ceiling, wondering if it looked any different on this side of the room. This is what I wanted, isn't it? For him to be quiet?

"Don' leave me, Sirius," Potter implored, nuzzling Draco's cheek. This time, Draco did not stiffen. He told himself that he was subduing his natural antipathy only to save his potion. "...please don't...be alone..."

Steeling himself for yet another sleepless night, Draco managed to arrange himself so that Potter was not entirely cutting off circulation to his upper limbs. He resolved not to contemplate what might be occurring in his lower extremities. Tentatively, he unfurled the sheets until they muted the glimmer of Potter's snowy white pyjamas. Despite his internal protests, he found himself slipping from Potter's languid embrace and into the welcoming arms of sleep.

* * * * *

For the second time in so many months, Draco awoke in another man's bed.

At first, he thought himself back at Hogwarts. He had often found himself tangled in the sheets of his fellow Slytherins, the previous evening's alcoholic splendour gripping his head in a vise of agony. Once he had even been slapped into wakefulness by an enraged Ravenclaw prefect, who maintained that Draco had carried out a dastardly Slytherin plot to seduce him. 'I'm not that way!' the prefect had insisted, aiming a well-placed foot toward Draco's nether regions as he tried to scoot out of the way. 'I'm not a pervert, you slimy Slytherin shirt lifter!'

When he realised whose body was curled against his own, whose scruffy brown hair tickled his chest, he anticipated a similar reaction. Eyes still blurry with sleep, he could only make out the top of Potter's head, which had not yet stirred. He sighed in relief, hoping he could ease back into his own bed before the other man noticed his unlikely bed mate. Sliding his arm out from under Potter's bony shoulder, he found himself strangely reluctant to eschew the warmth exuded by Potter's deceptively frail body. A minute or two more won't hurt, he told himself. A cold front had just come through, after all, and not even a hint of dawn streamed in through the panes of glass on the wall. The nurses won't be here for at least another hour. My potion could use a bit more time to meld.

A second later he froze, muscles tensed in readiness to spring from the bed. Potter's head had not moved, and his legs were still flush with Draco's own beneath the roughness of the sheets. There was nothing to indicate that Potter was awake; nothing except for the delicate pressure of fingers on his wrist. Slowly, surely, the pads of someone's fingers ran a slow tracery along the network of wounds that decorated Draco's forearm.

Draco's breath caught in his throat. "Potter--"

"These are new," Potter murmured, his voice a soft lilt that petered out into the air. His fingers followed the lines of the old scars lazily, examining the intricate filigree. They faltered when he arrived at the patch of charred flesh that had been the Dark Mark, ghosting over the area until they hit the palm of Draco's hand. There they lingered for what seemed an eternity whilst Draco mustered the presence of mind to speak. His voice came out in a choked gasp, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"What's it to you?"

Abruptly, Potter rolled back on the bed, shifting his head to face Draco. Although his glasses still lay on the bedside table, his gaze was fixed and clear. His green eyes seared into Draco's flesh with an intensity reminiscent of the Dark Mark, when it was first emblazoned upon his arm. "What are you trying to accomplish, Malfoy?"

"I don't see how it's any of your business, Potter," Draco muttered, his voice gathering strength. If Potter made the connection between the scabs and the potion, he was in a bit of a predicament. Knowing Potter, he reckoned that the impetuous git would pour the precious infusion down the drain.

"Are you in that much pain?" Potter asked, his voice awash with empathy. Pity. I do not need pity from a half-blood Gryffindor prat! Impatience overcame him, then, and he jerked away from Potter. Climbing to his feet, he tugged at his sleeve until it concealed the true nature of the skin beneath it.

"I'm fine," Draco retorted. I will be fine, he thought, if I can just get to that potion. He backed away from Potter on a trajectory that would lead him toward the bathroom.

"Wait!" Rising from the bed, Potter extended a hand to bridge the distance between them, feet shuffling awkwardly. "I just wanted--that is--what I mean to say... thanks," he finished in a rush of jumbled words. "For keeping me company. They didn't have to sedate me, did they?"

"No," Draco admitted.

"Oh. Well. I never thought you'd do anything like that. I'd known that another person's presence might mitigate the nightmares, but I didn't want to ask--"

"Forget it, Potter." Draco retreated further, his cheeks beginning to flush. This was not a discussion he particularly relished having. He added hastily, "I just wanted you to shut up so that the nurses wouldn't find--"

Understanding flashed in Potter's eyes. He took a step forward, latching onto Draco's arm. "You're hiding something, aren't you? I knew you had something up your sleeve..oh, Merlin," he breathed, realising that his metaphor had been precisely on target. "You don't have a Muggle disorder, do you? You were drawing blood for some kind of potion!"

"Again," Draco hissed through clenched teeth, wresting himself from Potter's grasp, "it is none of your concern. If you are content to be a Squib and consort with the Muggles, so be it. That doesn't mean that I can't do something to remedy this intolerable situation."

"You're in denial, Malfoy!" Potter exclaimed, moving even closer to Draco. Draco recoiled, backing up until his skull collided with the lone wall hanging that graced the room. Pressing his hand against his throbbing head, he met Potter's eyes. Flattened against the wall as though Potter had used an iron, he found that there wasn't anywhere else to look but at the other man. He schooled his features into an icy glare.

"You," he said, "are an ignorant fool."

"No potion is going to restore your magic! It's gone, forever! It doesn't matter how skilled you think you are--"

"Snape taught me everything he knew!"

Potter pressed a restraining hand against Draco's chest, his palm obscuring the pocket of the pyjamas. His eyes were flashing with agitation. "Professor Snape spent two years researching an antidote to that spell, Malfoy. There isn't one. If he didn't find it..."

Stung, Draco ceased his attempts to wriggle away from the slightly taller man. Breathing was suddenly a struggle. "Snape--he knew, this whole time? He knew what would happen? He let me go there?" His voice shot up in pitch, but he could not keep the adolescent outrage from creeping into his words. Snape! Snape, who had been his mentor and confidante. Was that why the Potions Master had consented to share his bed? Did he know that it was to be Draco's last taste of pure blood? How could he--

"Malfoy," Potter entreated, jarring Draco out of his mental tirade. His free hand had snaked up to cup Draco's chin, tilting his head so that their lips were only inches apart. He could feel Potter's breath on his cheeks in a flutter of snidget feathers. Their faces were so close that Draco could see a smudge of dirt on the tip of Potter's nose; his brain distractedly wondered about the scope of the other man's vision without the aid of his glasses. The tension floated between them in a palpable cloud.

"Malfoy, I'm sorry," repeated Potter, and the moment shattered. Draco hurled Potter away with a movement so spasmodic that he nearly tripped over his own feet. Lurching headlong into the bathroom, he barely managed to slam the door on the desperate glitter of Potter's eyes as the other man rushed to dissuade him from his plans.

The potion had lain in wait all night, fermenting and bubbling into a miasma of rich jade. If it functioned as expected, he could finally rid himself of Harry Potter and his irksome desire to make amends for every wrong ever committed by any human being, wizard or otherwise. Gingerly he hefted the polystyrene cup in one hand, securing the door against Potter's attempts to wrench it open with the opposite shoulder. Bottoms up, he told himself. When he next opened the door, it would be to immobilize Potter with a well-aimed Stupefy.

"Don't you dare apologise to me!" Draco bellowed, the noise vibrating through the flimsy wood that separated them. Without further ado, he downed the potion.

* * * * *