Harry

He knows he shouldn’t have done it.

He had felt it when he dragged himself out of bed this morning, the effects of one too many sleepless nights finally creeping up on him, the ache in his muscles and the fog filling up his mind. He was so close to calling in sick, but that would have kept him stuck at home, and the fight seemed very important again, now that he had that box to think about, the one that he and Ron and Hermione (and Draco, Draco is a part of the three of them now, too, however reluctant they all are to admit it) still haven’t told anyone about.

So he went to training.

And when they told him it was time to practice fighting with real spells, with a trained healer standing on the sidelines, he didn’t tell anyone that maybe it would be better if he sat this one out.

And when it was time for his turn, he stepped into the ring, faced his opponent, ignored the thumbs up that Ron gave him, didn’t listen to all the safety warnings that Hermione had forced he and Ron to sit through when they first decided to choose this as their career plan. (Because really, you think the two of you wouldn’t have killed yourselves by the third year if you didn’t have me with you?) He just stood there, adjusted his grip on his wand, gave a nod to the instructor, and then waited for the spell toe at him.

Only when it came, he didn’t block it. He didn’t raise his wand to defend himself, or try to move out of the way. If Harry was being honest, he didn’t really even see it, or if he did, he didn’t register it, just saw a flash of light and then the shock wave that went through his chest, blasting him backwards into the wall.

He hadn’t had time to prepare himself for the impact, so when he crumpled down to the floor, it was with every bone in his body screaming out to try and protect himself. But he still didn’t, just fell, his arm folding awkwardly underneath him and his ribs bending, one of them snapping.

“Bloody hell.” Ron’s face swam above him, pale and freckled, red hair falling down over his face. “Don’t move, mate.”

Don’t move, mate. Harry wished he could block everything out, the whispers and stares. He didn’t want to imagine how fast the news must have spread, how the great Harry Potter had been bested in a duel by some random auror in training, how he must have been losing his touch. But it must have spread, because soon Hermione was there beside him, Ginny running hard at her heels, both of them shoving through the crowd to kneel on the ground beside him.

There were times, really, where he was fully struck by what it means to have a friend like Hermione. This, as she let him pillow his head in her lap and ran her hands down his broken arm, smoothing his hair back from his forehead and wiping away blood he didn’t even know was there, was one of them. “Don’t you worry Harry.” She would have made a good healer, he thought, but then threw the thought out the window, because she had tears welling up in her eyes even as he thought it, slipping down over her cheeks and splashing down onto his face. “You’re going to be just fine.”

“Does it hurt?” Ron asked, his voice louder. Ginny still hadn’t said anything, just watched him with her jaw set and shoved people back when they tried to get closer to look at him. He was grateful for that, for her, for the three of them, trying to spare him from the impact of this.

“It must.” Hermione answered, and then her wand was out, and her tears were stilling, and when she turned to look at Ron her voice was cracking, the words wobbling. “But it won’t for long. Just close your eyes, Harry, alright?”

He didn’t want to, because that was the opposite of what his instincts were screaming for him to do when he was hurt in a strange place, but he trusted her. He could always trust Hermione so he closed his eyes, let himself sink farther down into her, and when she finally managed to calm her shaking hands, he didn’t feel anything at all.

Draco

There’s yelling.

There’s yelling,ing from a lot of people, all of them right underneath him, which didn’t make sense because Harry wasn’t due home for another three hours and there was no way anyone can walk into the house without him being here. It would have been alarming, except for the fact that he could clearly pick out Hermione’s voice rising up above the din, so it was mostly just annoying, considering that he had a pounding head ache and he really just wanted to sleep.

“Just shut it,” He pleaded, wondering if he would be able to put a silencing spell on the door without getting up. But then there was a particularly large crash from downstairs, like someone had just thrown one of their dishes to the floor, and the yells picked up at a rapid pace with a lot more voices than he was expecting, so he decides to go investigate instead, and finds himself in a room of screaming Weasleys.

And Granger. She’s there, too.

“What the bloody fuck,” He said, louder than he intended, without thinking about the words that wereing out of his mouth, because, honestly, what the actual hell, he was only trying to sleep, this was his house, he had the right to take a nap if he wanted to, and why were they here, anyways? And then he panicked, because what right did he have to say that to him, he had no right, he shouldn’t even havee down here, this was a private thing, Harry’s thing, he should not be here, but—“is going on here?”

Harry was the only one to look at him, staring up at him with his busted lip and the plastic bracelet on his wrist that meant he had been to St. Mungo’s, shadows deep under his eyes and clearly wishing that the ground would swallow him up. Everyone else froze, which gave Draco a good opportunity to take stock of the situation—Granger and Ginny and Ron clearly all taking turns arguing, Luna stretched out across the couch, Seamus (who was here, for some reason) glowering across the room at him, and Geing back from the kitchen with a glass of pumpkin juice in his hand.

It was Ginny who answered, glaring at Harry, like this, whatever this was, was all his fault. “Harry had a bit of an incident at training today.” Her voice was dripping with thinly concealed anger. “Seems as if he was so tired he couldn’t even raise his wand to defend himself, and got himself thrown fifty feet into the air during a duel.”

“You what?”

Draco staggered fully into the room, squinting into the light, and when he got closer Harry looked even worse.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Harry assured him, only he was wincing and didn’t seem to be able to take deep breaths.

“Not that bad!” Ron threw himself back down onto the couch. “You could have died, mate.”

“Do you know,” Harry said, teeth gritted, eyes closed, maybe because of the pain, maybe hoping for patience. “how many times you’ve said those exact words to me?”

“But this time you could have died because of pure stubbornness!” Hermione said, and her hair was flying out around her like it had been electrified, she was so frazzled. “You could have died, and all because you hadn’t been able to sleep and then thought it was a good idea toe to training!” She knelt down on the ground in front of him, took his hands in her own. “I know it’s hard Harry.” Draco wanted to look away, because this was such an obviously private moment, a moment between this family he would never be a part of. “We’re all having trouble with it. You can’t expect to just be fine. None of us, and I mean none of us, are fine, Harry. You need to learn to ask for help.”

“I can ask for help!” Harry protests, pulling his hands out of hers. “Draco makes me a sleeping potion every night!”

Draco had thought that the yelling had been bad before, but it’s not until Harry mentioned the sleeping potion that all hell really broke loose.

Draco can see the reasoning behind it, honestly. Sleeping potions are very dangerous things to play with, normally, because they can ruin both your physical and mental health, make youpletely dependent on them to function, ruin any chance at a normal sleeping schedule. There would be no moving forward if Harry was turning to a sleeping potion every night. But that only applied to the regular way to make it, not to how Draco makes it, which, if he was right, would have no ill side effects at all, short or long term.

And he was very rarely wrong about his potions.

Not that that seems to matter to any of them, he thinks, and then he doesn’t really think anything at all, because Ron was on his feet anding towards him, grabbing by the arm and hurling him backwards, back into the wall, where there would be no escape.

“You make him one of those every night, huh?” He asks, and there is something dangerous waiting here, in these hands and these eyes. Draco had never quite managed to notice how big Ron was back at Hogwarts, but that was back when he had Crabbe and Goyle guarding him every hour of the day and his father’s reputation to hide behind. Now Ron had him pinned to the wall, towering over him, keeping him there with a forearm across his throat. There was no one to protect him now. (No one but Harry, anyways, and he wasn’t in any position to help.) “Trying to be helpful?”

“It’s addictive!” Hermione shouted out, and her voice was on the verge of tears again. She always had been rather easy to make cry. Then she turned on him, and she did not seem weak anymore, she seemed terrifying. “How could you let him do this?”

After all he’s done for you, Draco heard, and he knows then that that’s going to be the line that follows him around the rest of his life, this guilt thates with every heartbeat, the debt that stacks up with each second that he stays here. He tries not to look at Harry, but then he does and the sight makes him want to sink to his knees and beg everyone to take him away, to send him to the ministry, to stick him in Azkaban for the rest of his life if that’s what it takes to protect him. Because Draco will ruin him eventually. In the end, he ruins everything.

“It’s not,” He croaks out instead, looking past them all at Ginny, because Ginny was safe, Ginny was strong. “Not that way that I make it.”

It seems to shock them all, even Ron. Confidence tends to do that. “That’s impossible.” Hermione says, faintly, but she looks interested too. “You would have had to find your way around a dozen principle laws, at least. It would be revolutionary.”

She does not believe him, but she wants to. That was the problem with everyone in this room: they always wanted to see the best in people.

Draco shoves Ron away and stands straight, tries to make himself look what he believed a Malfoy should be, because this, at least, is something he knows. “Watch me.”

Harry

Even back at Hogwarts, there were times when Harry had to admit that Draco was smart. He was very good at magic, especially transfiguration, and even as much as he despised Snape and the favoritism he showed Draco, even Harry could see that the praise wasn’t always unjustified.

“Is he actually right?” He asks, watching as Draco t

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