"Get away from me," Harry hissed, striking out blindly. But there was nothing there to hit.
"I can't say it didn't cross my mind to scare you into wanting some light," Draco drawled from the direction of the couch, "but I heard what you did that night in the hospital wing. So, I think perhaps I'd just better wait until the dark gets so utterly banal and boring that you want to end it."
With that, the lightless room fell into a silence broken only by Harry's harsh breathing.
It took him perhaps a full five minutes to calm down, and then he tried again. Lumos. Nothing. And again, and again, and again, until he was shouting the word, demanding his wand do his bidding.
Nothing.
Draco came up behind him at one point, saying in a quiet voice, "Don't panic. I'm not here to hex you. Switch your wand to your other hand and take mine, all right? Just to see."
But Draco's wand didn't work for Harry any more than Sirius' old school wand had.
"All right," Draco finally said, taking back his wand and incanting his own Lumos. "This is obviously not the way through to your magic." A few words from him, and the room returned to its former level of brightness.
Harry sat down in an easy chair, exhausted, and glared balefully at Draco. "Did you enjoy that?"
"Oh, certainly. It's a hobby of mine, sitting about in the complete dark, bored out of my mind, listening to spells that don't work," Draco languidly returned, sarcasm dripping from every word as he stood, one hand leaning on the round table they ate at.
"Seeing me fail," Harry spat. "That's what you enjoy."
"If I'd wanted to see it, I'd have left the lights on," Draco replied in the same bored tone. "Rather strange I extinguished them, don't you think?"
"Ha, very funny!"
"Oh yes, it's hilarious," Draco grated, irritation beginning to win out over the scorn in his voice. "I'm convulsing with laughter, can't you tell? Nothing is so funny to me as knowing my life is in your hands and you can't even do a Lumos. In case you hadn't noticed, I've thrown my lot in with yours, so I hardly find it amusing to see you struggling with spells the Dark Lord mastered sixty years ago!"
"That's ten points from Slytherin!" Harry shouted. "You aren't supposed to deride my magic!"
"I'm deriding your idiocy," Draco scathed. "You need your magic back under your control, and I do not enjoy watching you struggle to accomplish that. But you know what occurs to me? This is all very much simpler than you make it out to be. You won't be getting your magic back until you actually want it back."
"Are you mental? I do want it back!"
"No, you don't. You're like Longbottom, now. He's got everything it takes to be a great wizard, including the bloodline, but he's too scared to grasp hold of it. And no wonder, with what happened to his parents--"
"You know about--"
"Death Eater gossip," Draco admitted, starting to pace back and forth in Harry's line of vision.
"Neville hates Voldemort and would love nothing more than to avenge his parents!"
"At one level yes, I'm sure that's so. But at another level, he knows full well that it's only strong, confident wizards who've ever dared to tangle with the Dark Lord. His parents, your parents, you. He doesn't want to die or be tortured into insanity, so he's decided not to be a strong, confident wizard. You've apparently decided the same."
Harry sat up straighter. "That's not true! I've been trying as hard as I can! For weeks and weeks! You know nothing about it!"
Draco gave him a twisted grin. "It's not like I'm judging you, Harry. I'm sure you're sick of all this shite, a madman trying to lure you places to kill you, then too stupid to actually do it when he's got you at last! So you escape and it starts all over again. I'd be ready to quit too, if I were you."
"Oh, so you think Voldemort should have killed me!"
"That is not what I said," Draco stated, clenching his hands. He stopped pacing, and pulled over a wooden chair to face Harry, then sat in it, his whole frame tense. "What I think is that he spent hours watching needles get poked into you when he could have just had your head lopped off, so of course he's stupid!" Draco sat back, shaking his head. "But that's not the point. Here's what is. If you want your magic back, you have to get over this inappropriate desire to stay clear of the war."
"I don't desire to stay clear of the war," Harry sneered.
"Well, now you're just in denial," Draco pronounced.
"Denial!" Harry objected. "Where are you getting this crap?"
"From Severus' text on Muggle psychology."
Harry didn't normally feel completely out of his depth with Draco, but that answer was so unexpected that he simply said, "Huh?"
"You heard me. Adolescent Trauma: The Road to Recovery, it's called. He left it out one day, and I read it cover to cover."
Harry drew in a breath. Snape had gotten a hold of a Muggle book about helping children recover from traumatic experiences? This must be the book Snape had been upset about Draco reading, the one Draco had said Snape was poring over every night. Nobody had ever gone to that much trouble for Harry before, had they? It made him feel warm inside.
That, however, didn't mean he appreciated Draco sticking his nose into Harry's trauma.
"So, based on one day's reading, you consider yourself some sort of expert?" Harry scoffed.
Draco gave a wave toward the table, where they'd spent days studying together. "You know I do a fairly good job with remembering and synthesizing what I read. Now, listen, because I have it all figured out. According to the book, it's perfectly normal for you to try to withdraw from anything that might pull you back toward the same kind of trauma that hurt you in the first place. In your case, that means magic. You don't want to face the Dark Lord, ever again, so you're holding yourself back from even the simplest spell."
Draco's silver eyes looked determined, which took Harry aback. The Slytherin obviously did believe what he was saying, though it was completely erroneous. "You have it figured out wrong," he argued. "I lost touch with my magic before Voldemort ordered me kidnapped and tortured. This is not a response to trauma."
"Didn't your problems with your magic start just after the trauma of subjecting yourself to Muggle medicine?"
"I had an operation, Mal--" Harry started over. "I had my bone marrow tampered with, which turns out to be not such a good idea. Anyway, the cause of all my troubles is physical, not mental, okay?"
"You were afraid of needles and you had to deal with one," Draco countered. "A big one. I think that was the real trauma. What my... what happened later just made it worse."
"Well, stuff this little fact into your weird theory," Harry scathed, starting to feel offended. He wasn't a coward running away from a fight! "So my wand is useless to me, so what? It doesn't exactly gain me any benefit to be this way. Voldemort is still going to do his best to hunt me down and kill me. Why would I want to make myself an easier target?"
"How's your scar been feeling lately?" Draco suddenly questioned.
So dormant I haven't given it a thought, Harry suddenly realized.
"Hasn't twinged at all, has it? Don't you think that's strange? The Dark Lord had you just where he wanted you, he was about to burn you to a crisp, the way I hear it, and you just up and vanish right from under his nose. Don't you think he'd be furious and ready to lash out at you? Shouldn't he be making that scar blaze day and night? But he hasn't. He knows your magic's gone, he couldn't care less about you, now. And you know that, too, subconsciously, so you've decided to hide in some fantasy world where you can't get your magic back no matter how you try!"