At Night

***

At Night

***

I don’t think you ever hear me when I come to your room. The most you’ve ever done was stir a bit as I trailed my fingers across your face, gently, softly, so carefully. It’s almost ridiculously easy to get to your dorm. The idiot woman in the painting that guards your precious tower is too easily charmed by my words and my sad face at not seeing my ‘beloved darling just behind her beautiful painting.’

And I climb the stairs without a sound. I know them well by now. I slip through your dorm room’s door and draw the chair by that Finnigan’s bed up to your four-poster and sit down. Sometimes you close your curtains. I think that’s when you have a fight with Weasley, because it never happens very often. More often, your curtains are partially open, so they will let in the sun when it peeks through the window by your bed.

I never used to touch you that much, just when I couldn’t fight the urge to feel, once again, the texture of your hair or see if your cheek was as soft as it looked. When you have nightmares, I don’t touch you, in fear that in your agitated state, you’ll awaken and see your enemy by your bedside, keeping a silent vigil over you. Once though, you were just about to awaken anyways, and make everyone else wake too, with your groaning and stirring, so I came close and whispered into your ear, ‘It’s all right. You’re safe.’ And you latched onto me in your sleep and you quieted while holding my arm to you. You held it as it if it were a stuffed toy a child is given on its second or third birthday, a bear or a purple penguin or something of the sort. When dawn came crawling up, I finally took my hand back and I went back to my room to try and catch an hour or so of sleep before my first class.

After that night, I touched you more often, and I found that when I did touch you, you never had a bad dream. Sometimes all a person needs is a loving touch.

You’re a very sound sleeper, you know that? The rest of your dorm mates are too. I’ve had a few close calls, like when Longbottom, the lightest sleeper of you all nearly woke up when I bumped against a chair in the night, but I’ve been very careful ever since that incident.

When you sleep, you seem so very -- and this will seem very trite, I know -- but you seem innocent. Well, not so much innocent, but like the entire world isn’t weighing down on your shoulders, which is how you’re like a lot of the time when you’re awake. You don’t look good when you have that look on your face, that of stress and worry. It makes me think you’re constipated or something.

You stir now, and I watch in fascination as you turn on your side; you were lying on your back before. You settle and sleep on. My hand moves to smooth your hair. I don’t know why, but your hair annoys me. Sometimes when I look at you, I have to look away because of my overwhelming urge to take a comb to your hair. There. That’s better.

My fingers stray to your cheek, and I cup it gently as you sleep on. You have such warm cheeks; I wonder sometimes why you don’t wake because of my cold hands on your face. My hands starts to warm and I move my hand again, now to brush your hair away from that scar on your forehead. There it is, the thing that distinguishes you from the rest of the world. I marvel, ‘Why is it that it is this tiny thing that makes you famous, this little thing that gives you recognition that you don’t even want?’ It is almost a cruel irony that this little lightning scar makes you a hero when a scar on any other person makes them disfigured. I have a scar on my palm from a knife I picked up when I was but four. Does that make me famous?

Your eyes are closed, so I cannot see your best feature. It’s sad that though I know almost every other feature on you, I don’t know what your eyes look like, really. In the day, they are covered by those ridiculous glasses, and if you ever caught me staring at you in a way that didn’t denote absolute hatred, you’d probably think I was crazy. So I don’t know your eyes. I only know that they show all of your expression even when the rest of your body doesn’t, that they really are the windows to your soul. You should learn how to keep your emotions from showing in your eyes; it could get you into trouble someday.

“Mmm,” you say in your sleep. I take my hand back slowly as you stir and yawn, your mouth opening like a lion’s after sleeping for most of the day. I watch, spellbound, as your eyes blink open and focus on me. Surprisingly, you don’t seem at all shocked to see me. You sit up. “Hello Draco,” you say throatily.

I lick my lips before saying hoarsely, “Hello.”

“Why are you here, Draco? Are you here to fuck me?” you ask coyly. I realize that you think you’re still dreaming. A wide-awake Harry would never cuss, for one thing. And you would never ask me if I wanted to fuck you.

“No,” I answer truthfully.

“Really?” You sound disappointed. “Well, maybe I can change your mind.” You lean toward me and your lips are on mine and your arms are about my neck and I am falling, falling, falling…

You pull away and instead put your cheek against mine. There is silence for a long moment as I indulge in your warmth and your arms around me. You whisper in my ear now, “By the way, Draco, I know I’m awake.”

I recoil and stare at you, your eyes so, so, so close, and so, so, so green. And then I get up and run. As I run, I hear your voice faintly calling me back, but I cannot stop. If I stop running, I’ll be drowning into the depths of your so, so, so green eyes, and I won’t be able to swim back to shore. And I won’t want to. And so I run.