Ignoring him, Snape turned to Harry. "You should go to bed as well. You're positively grey. Do you need a draught?"
While Harry shook his head, Draco shouted, "What about me? What about what I need?"
"I'll decide what you need," menaced Snape, and then he turned away and left. Harry heard the whoosh of the Floo.
Draco's teeth started clicking together again. "What... what is he going to do to me? Why... why did he need to leave?"
"No idea."
"He must have t- t- told you something--"
Draco looked about ready to faint, but Harry wasn't in the mood to care very much. Trying to blame Dobby... that was just beyond the pale. "No, he didn't."
"Harry, what am I going to do?"
"If I were you, I'd go to bed like Dad said." Harry shrugged then, and made his way back to their room.
Only to find it such a disgusting mess that he groaned out loud. The towels on the floor were definitely growing mould, he thought, shuddering. What was worse was that Draco had taken over Harry's bed, piling loads of his dirty clothes on it. Harry bundled them up and threw them onto Draco's bed, repressing an urge to fling them to the floor and stomp on them. Fetching pyjamas out of his trunk, he headed for the bathroom, which of course was even grottier than the bedroom had been. In fact, it ronked.
By that point, Harry didn't care what Snape had said about not doing magic for Draco, he wasn't going to have his shower in such disgusting conditions. He began casting Scourgify and Lavare, then with a critical glance at the loo, decided he'd better spread around a fair bit of Sanitare as well.
He wasn't cleaning up for Draco, anyway. He was doing it for his own benefit. And if Snape said one word about it, Harry would let him know exactly what he thought about that awful game with the fairy cakes!
Though come to think of it, he might let his father know that in any case!
A long, hot shower helped his headache ease up, but it didn't really calm him down. Harry's temper was still blazing when he shut the water off and towelled himself dry. He dragged in a deep breath and tried to bring his anger into some semblance of control. Another row tonight wasn't what he needed.
When he left the bathroom, Draco was already in bed, sitting up, his silver eyes glazed with fear. The room looked like he had at last made an attempt to tidy; there were piles here and there instead of things strewn everywhere.
For all that though, the floor was still a total mess. Harry snorted in derision and picked his way across the room to his bed.
"Harry--"
Harry shook his head as he got under his covers, and spoke without looking at his brother. "It's probably better if you don't talk to me right now, Draco. I might throttle you."
"But Harry--"
Draco stopped talking when Harry yanked his curtains closed.
But he didn't stop making noise. A low sob split the silence, then the sound of someone curling up into a little ball and thumping the blankets all around. Then another low sob, and another, the sound so pitiful that Harry wished he could go over there and offer his brother some comfort.
But he couldn't do that, he just couldn't. He'd been stretched too thin by the day's events and by Draco's long, horrible string of lies. He still felt flayed by the way Draco had accused Dobby.
Harry turned onto his side, away from his brother, wishing he'd taken the draught his father had offered. When the sound of Draco's crying got too painful to bear, Harry began wiping his mind clean of everything but fire. The cool damp of the room fell away from his awareness as he Occluded. He stopped smelling the slightly sour aroma rising from the heaps of dirty clothes in the room.
And finally, he stopped hearing Draco.
Lost inside a blaze of fire, Harry slowly drifted off to sleep.
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Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other
Chapter Eighty-Three: [Title withheld to avoid spoilers]
Comments very welcome,
Aspen
Chapter 83: Just Desserts
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=5036&chapter=83
Warning: Some readers may find elements of this chapter to be disturbing.
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A Year Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
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Chapter Eighty-Three: Just Desserts
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When Harry woke up, the first thing he noticed was that his brother was gone.
The other boy's bed was rumpled as though he'd got up in an awful hurry, and the piles on the floor had been disturbed, just as if someone had picked out what little they needed and then flung the rest into a great heap in the corner.
"Draco!" Harry shouted, leaping out of bed so fast he ended up with an ankle tangled in the sheets. Hastily freeing himself, he sped out to the living room, only to be brought up short by the sight of his brother calmly sitting at the table in the dining alcove, steadily moving quill across parchment.
When Harry came close, Draco looked up with tired grey eyes. "Problem?"
"I woke up and you weren't there and I thought... um..."
"You thought what, that I'd run away?" Draco gave a long sigh, the tip of his quill dripping ink. When he noticed it he swore softly, because of course without magic he had no way to clean away the messy spots on his lines. He wiped the tip of his quill on a spare bit of parchment as he spoke. "I don't have anywhere to go, Harry. Though that may not make any difference to Severus at this point. I can't figure out what made me think he'd put up with..."
Dipping his quill in the inkpot again, Draco went back to work, writing line after line after line.
"Have you seen Dad?"
That time, Draco didn't look up to answer. "No, and I've been out here most of the night. He's apparently still..." The boy's voice went quiet. Dead, almost. "Arranging things."
Harry swallowed, noticing the unevenly stacked parchment shoved to one side of the table. Completed lines, no telling how many. A lot, though. An awful lot. Pulling out a chair, he tried to give his brother an encouraging smile.
Draco didn't smile back. "Are you sure you don't know what he's going to do about... me?"
"No, I don't know."
"So I might have cleaned the room and done all these lines for nothing," Draco said, morose.
Harry wouldn't have called what Draco had done in the room cleaning by any stretch of the imagination, but he was hardly going to mention that at a time like this. "It's not for nothing--"
"It is if he unadopts me. What else could he possibly be arranging?"
"I don't know, but it's not that." Harry thought of saying that Draco knew Harry's secrets, so course there was no question of Draco being thrown out. He couldn't live at Hogwarts unless he was Snape's son, and if he didn't live at Hogwarts the Death Eaters would get him, sooner or later. No matter how angry Snape was, he wouldn't risk doing anything that would end up endangering Harry.
Harry decided, though, that it wouldn't be very nice to explain any of that. It was beside the point anyway. Snape was committed to Draco for reasons that had nothing at all to do with Harry.
"Well, I think I'll get dressed and then get ready to go to Devon--"
Draco finished one line and moved right on to the next. "You're delusional if you still think we're still going on holiday." He glanced up, shrugging. "But if you want to pack, go ahead. I'll get us something for breakfast."