Harry doesn’t sleep much that morning. He should—he knows he needs it—and he tries, for a while, after he calls in sick to work, first in a room right across from the one he stuck Draco in and then in the room he slept in back when this was his house. It looks nothing like it did when he was seventeen, and for the first time since he set foot in the museum Harry wishes, a little, for the dusty old halls of the place as she once was. He thinks it might actually be easier to fall asleep if everything around him was crushingly depressing, instead of bright and clean and reminding him of Draco.

God: he's in love with Draco. Harry’s so stupid, he can’t believe he’s let this happen, and without his even noticing—and that, Harry thinks, is the most horrifying part. At least twice a year since he was fourteen Harry’s had the same nightmare, where he’s tied to a flagpole in the middle of Privet Drive, trying frantically to dodge a basilisk wearing Voldemort’s face, as from the ground Mad-Eye Moody shrieks, “CONSTANT VIGILANCE, POTTER,” at the top of his lungs. Sometimes the flagpole is the statue at the Department of Mysteries; sometimes the basilisk is a lake full of Inferi; sometimes it’s not Mad-Eye but Sirius or Dumbledore, or little Teddy Lupin, one particularly rough time Harry doesn’t like to think about. But the message is always the same: constant vigilance, Potter. Constant vigilance or die.

Which is why, Harry thinks a little hysterically, it’s particularly mind-numbingly horrible that he’s found himself in this beast of a spot. He is supposed to be aware of his surroundings! He is supposed to be abreast of the situation! He is not supposed to be in love with Draco Malfoy, identally but irretrievably, and not notice it happening until it’s too late to do a damn thing about it.

He throws his hands a little in the air as he thinks this, and then recognizes he’s lying flat on his back in bed waving his hands around like a crazy person, and goes downstairs to pace.

In the end, he walks the whole house. He walks the storeroom, its endless soothing shelves; he walks the museum, reading the little placards next to the exhibits; he walks Draco’s private floors, careful to creep on light feet past Draco’s door. He even goes up to the attic to see Vicky, who seems to be snoozing and throws only one seedpod at him, and that one halfheartedly, before settling down into an innocent-looking pile of vines.

Harry goes back downstairs. He sits on the couch in the first floor parlor. He puts his head in his hands and tries to tell himself that it’ll be fine, that it’s just the pressure and intensity of the last twelve hours playing tricks on him, and he’s not in love with Draco at all. He even tries to tell himself that he’s a saviorplex in ill-fitting trousers, and this is all nothing more than an outcropping of his twisted desire to save someone because Gryffindor children aren’t socialized properly, and then realizes he’s trying to talk himself out of being in love with Draco in Draco’s voice. He has a bit of a hysterical fit at this point, muffling his not-at-all pleasant laughter into a throw pillow, and he must fall asleep somewhere in the middle there, because he wakes up to the sound of knocking on the front door.

He blinks, heavy-lidded, sore-muscled exhaustion letting him know that he didn’t sleep nearly long enough, not more than an hour or two. Then he remembers that Draco is upstairs and needs the sleep a lot more than he does, and drags himself wearily off the couch to meet Kreacher at the door.

“Kreacher was not sure if Master Draco and Harry Potter would want him to answer it, in the circumstances,” he tells Harry in a nervous squeak. “Kreacher is sorry for making guests wait!”

“It’s okay, Kreacher, I’ve got it,” Harry says.

He’s assuming it’s just museum guests or something, that he’ll just tell them toe back tomorrow and go back to sleep, so it’s a nasty surprise to open the door to Blaise Zabini and a short Asian woman with close-cropped hair who Harry’s fairly certain is Pansy Parkinson.

“Er,” Harry says, and then—because what the hell else is he supposed to do?—adds, “Hello.”

“Oh my god it’s true,” Pansy says, and rounds on Blaise. “I thought you were having me on! Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t having me on?”

Blaise shrugs, his eyes dancing. “I did, Pans. You wouldn’t believe me. You never do.” To Harry, in a conspiratorial tone, he adds, “Draco and I played one trick too many on her as children, you see. She just wasn’t up to playing with the big boys, and it scarred her; she may never trust again. It’s all very tragic.”

“I want you to remember you said that,” Pansy tells him sweetly, “when I spell your eyebrows off again, Blaise. May the phrase ‘she just wasn’t up to playing with the big boys’ bring youfort in their absence.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t,” Blaise says; he’s laughing, but he touches a fingertip to one of his eyebrows a little nervously anyway, and she smirks. Seeming to decide that he's through with her for the moment, Blaise turns to Harry. In a tone that Harry suspects means he is being mocked, he says, “So, what, are you Draco’s doorman now?”

“Er,” Harry says again, “no.” He tries to think of some way to explain his presence that isn’t, I volunteered to stay here indefinitely because as it turns out I’m desperately in love with Draco, whoops, sorry, bloody shocking for me too, andes up with: “I’m…just keeping an eye on things.”

“I told you Draco was still in St. Mungo’s,” Pansy exclaims, and hits Blaise in the arm with her handbag. “I told you, you were all ‘Oh, my intel says he was treated and discharged, it’s perfectly fine to wait until nearly two in the afternoon to drop by and see how he’s doing.’ Men! We’ve dithered about all morning while he’s clinging to life alone in a hospital bed—”

“Er,” says Harry, for the third time in as many minutes. He’s having a lot of trouble stringing a thought together. “No, he’s—upstairs. Sleeping. It was,” Harry stops, yawns hugely, and finishes, “a really long night.”

“We heard,” Pansy says, fixing Harry with a murderous look.

“Well, I heard,” Blaise amends. “And then I made the horrific mistake of telling this one, thinking she could perhaps remain calm for long enough to—”

“Oh, I remained calm last time and look what good that did me,” Pansy snaps. She pushes past Harry into the house, apparently sharing Draco’s ‘I know the rules of etiquette and therefore it’s perfectly eptable for me to break them’ attitude. “‘Stay in Cairo, Pansy,’ you said. ‘I’ve got this all perfectly handled, Pansy,’ you said. He was treated for internal bleeding last night!”

“No he wasn’t,” Harry says. “It was—bruising, I’m pretty sure. One of his kidneys, a couple of his ribs.” He crosses his arms over his chest, rubs them a little with his palms, and adds, more defensively than is probably wise, “He’s okay now.”

Blaise and Pansy turn identical incredulous looks on him. Harry sort of wants to die.

“Blaise, are youing in or not?” Pansy demands, having apparently determined that Harry is obsolete to the whole entering-the-house process. “Because I’ll leave you down here with Potter if I have to, but I’m going up.”

“Er,” says Harry, who is starting to suspect that it's all he can say. “Sorry—no.”

Pansy whips her head around to stare at him, and then stalks across the hall until they’re inches apart. It’s a familiar move, one of Draco’s, but when Draco does it he winds up looking down at Harry a little; Harry’s got about half a foot on Pansy, so her version isn't quite as effective. She does, however, change it up with the added element of a jab from one of her nails, which are all filed into long points and painted a deep, gunmetal grey.

“No?” she demands, like the very word is offensive. Harry wonders if maybe there’s some sort of emphasis on dramatics that the Sorting Hat seeks out for Slytherin House.

Then he remembers that the Sorting Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin, and promptly banishes the entire thought process.

“No,” he repeats to Pansy. When she continues to glare at him, he gives her a little shrug —it’s trying for apologetic, but Harry’s not sure he does that great a job. “Like I said, he’s asleep. You can, er,” he pauses and casts around, trying toe up with anything else to suggest, before he sighs and offers, “wait down here, if you like.”

Instead of seeming mollified at this perfectly reasonable offer, Pansy looks like she wants to rip Harry’s spinal column out and beat him with it. “You,” she spits furiously, “do not get to decide whether or not we can wait! You do not get to decide whether or not we go up and see him in the first place. I mean, who exactly do you think you are?”

Harry blinks at her. He’s too tired for this. “Er—”

“Now, now, Pansy,” Blaise says in soothing tones. “I know being unnecessarily aggressive keeps you young, I do, but Harry’s made some perfectly rational points, haven’t you, Harry?” He doesn’t wait for Harry to answer, just breezes right on ahead. “And since it would, actually, be quite a terrible idea to go wake Draco up, why don’t we just have a nice little sit-down in the parlor, hmm? Relax in the manner to which you were once ustomed? Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Ugh,” Pansy says. She takes off her black leather jacket and drops it in Harry’s hands; Harry stares at in mute confusion and vague offense. “Fine, but only to stop you using that terrible Unspeakable voice on me. It’s so demeaning! I’ve known you since we were four, I’m aware when you’re manipulating me.”

“Doing a lot of that at four, was I?” Blaise says, amused, and follows her clacking black heels into the sitting room. Harry doesn't bother straining to hear her reply.

Kreacher peeks his head out from behind a bannister. “Harry Potter?” he whispers.

Harry sighs. “Yeah, Kreacher?”

“Kreacher could take care of tea for Master Draco’s guests,” Kreacher whispers, in an entreating little voice. He sidles up to Harry, blinking up at him with

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