WHOO double update!!! I love this one <3

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That night, Draco woke to screaming.

He heard it first in his dream. He can't remember what he was dreaming of, but that he was talking to someone, when their words slowly morphed into incoherent moans and cries.

He bolted upright, the cries growing into screams, the moans growing into words. "No, please," and "Cedric."

He knew immediately that they were coming from Harry's bed.

He flung himself out of bed and scurried across the room, as Harry's bed was on the opposite side of his. His heart felt a sting every time Harry yelled.The other boys in the room had started to wake up, still disoriented and confused as to what was happening. Soon Ron was on his feet and peering over Draco's shoulder as he reached Harry's bed.

Draco yanked the curtains aside. Harry was thrashing his head side to side, covered in sweat, the blankets pooled at his feet. Draco placed one hand on each of Harry's shoulders and started to gently shake him.

"Harry, wake up. It's just a dream, Harry," he repeated over and over again, in a low voice. He wanted to jolt him awake, to get him out of whatever horror he was currently stuck in. He wanted nothing more to get the pained expression off his face, but he knew that startling him was not a good idea.

Harry's eyes fluttered open as he violently gasped for air, his body shaking when he did so. Ron breathed out a sigh of relief.

His shirt clung to him, sticking to the sweat that was beginning to drench his body. His hair was messier than normal, which said a lot, and his hands were gripping Draco's biceps, his fingernails digging into his skin. His chest rose and fell, quickly at first, but gradually slowed as he came to, his grip loosening and his eyes darting around the room.

"It's okay, mate. It's just a dream-" Ron started to say, but Harry cut him off.

"It's never just a dream," he mumbled, kicking the blankets off his feet. Before any of them could even think of something to say, Harry was slamming the dormitory door shut behind him as he stormed out.

The five boys stood there in awkward silence, Draco and Ron standing next to Harry's bed, the others still in their own, rubbing their eyes, trying to go back to sleep.

It wasn't the first time this had happened, but it was the first night in a while. They used to happen almost every single night during the first week of classes, Ron always talking Harry back down until he was able to sleep again. Then, abruptly, they had stopped. But had they really?

Draco sighed. "I will go talk to him, you should get some sleep," he said.

Ron started to argue. "Are you sure-"

"I have been meaning to talk to him, anyway." It was a lie and not a lie at the same time. He didn't really need to talk to him, he just wanted to make sure he was okay. Draco didn't think he would be able to go back to sleep without knowing what had happened, without knowing that Harry had someone there to support him. But he had been meaning to talk to him, about if he was feeling the same things Draco was starting to, but he didn't think he was ready for that conversation quite yet. Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe the butterflies and caught breaths would go away, and bringing it up would be a mistake. "Unless you really want to talk to him," he added.

"No, that's alright," he said, yawning. "Thank you."

Draco gave an awkward nod as Ron climbed into his bed. Draco took a deep breath as he left the room, not knowing where he was going to find Harry or what was going to happen when he did so.

Harry was in the common room, alone, sitting on the couch next to the empty fireplace. He was curled up against the arm of the couch, his head buried in his arms. Draco though he heard him crying, but Harry immediately tensed up and went silent. He had probably heard someone coming down the stairs, and lifted his head ever so slightly to see who it was, enough to where Draco really couldn't see his face.

"Go away," he mumbled, his voice cracking.

Draco ignored him as he walked over to the couch sitting next to Harry. He sat in silence for a moment, letting Harry adjust to having someone next to him.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." He choked out.

Draco looked over at him and watched as his shoulders rose and fell in an uneven pattern. Yup, he was definitely still crying. He didn't know what to do. He never had to comfort a crying person before. Was he supposed to say something? Was he supposed to do something? He surely wasn't supposed to just sit there, but what was he supposed to do?

He wanted to do something. It hurt him to see Harry like this, and it hurt him even more to see him bottling it up, pushing him and Ron away. It reminded Draco too much of himself.

Cautiously, he placed his left arm across Harry's back, resting his hand on his shoulder.

He was not expecting Harry to move into his embrace, choosing to curl up against his side instead of the couch.

Draco instinctively wrapped his other arm around him as Harry's fists grabbed Draco's t-shirt. He buried his face in Draco's chest with a sob. His cries were audible now, and Draco felt his shirt grow wet where Harry's face was. He rubbed Harry's arm with one hand and made small circles with the thumb of the other in an attempt to soothe him. What the hell had happened in that dream?

"It's okay, you're okay. Whatever it was, it's over now." He whispered into the top of his head.

Draco had wanted Harry in his arms, but not like this.

He still had no idea what his feelings were, or where they had come from. They seemed to come out of nowhere and hit him like a truck. He had never felt something like this before, and he wasn't even good at processing his emotions when they knew what they were, so how the hell was he supposed to know what was going on inside his head? Was he supposed to be feeling this hurt whenever Harry let out another cry? Maybe that just meant that he cared for him, but at what point does he cross a line?

Harry's breathing had calmed down, he was no longer sobbing, but Draco could still feel a few stray, silent tears falling down his face.

"It- it was the graveyard. Cedric."

Draco tightened his grip on Harry. "Fuck, Harry, I'm so sorry. It's okay, you don't have to talk about it."

Harry sat up straight, causing Draco to let go but still keeping an arm around his shoulders. He shook his head. "No, I want people to talk about it. People refuse to even say his name, and, it's like he never even existed. He was our classmate, and now he's dead, Draco." He sighed, leaning his head on Draco's shoulder. "I don't feel safe at Hogwarts anymore."

"Neither do I," Draco admitted. "But that's why we have the DA, right?"

"Look at me, I'm a mess. It should be you and Hermione leading it, not me."

"You're not a mess-"

"Really?" He snapped, tensing up. "Are you sure about that?"

"How often does this happen? The dreams?"

Harry slumped back into the couch. "It's not always the graveyard. Some night, I can't explain it, but there's this door, and it's like someone's pushing me to open it but I can never reach it. I don't wake up sweating and screaming, no, that only happens with the graveyard."

"How often, Harry?"

He shrugged. "Maybe, like, three nights out of the week?"

"Three nights a week?" Draco felt his stomach drop. He felt guilty that he hadn't noticed it sooner. "That's-"

"It's fine." Harry cut him off. "I usually cast a muffliato around my bed, to not wake you guys, but tonight I could fall asleep before I remembered. I'm sorry."

"Are you really fucking apologizing right now?" And Draco thought that he had a problem dismissing his emotions. "You should go to Pompfrey, this isn't normal. She could at least give you a bottle of-"

"I don't want it," he argued. "I'm fine."

"Harry-"

"Can we change the subject? Please?"

He sighed, knowing that he wasn't going to get anywhere. He didn't want to push Harry further than he was comfortable with. "Fine. What do you want to talk about?"

Harry shrugged. He moved so that he was laying down on the couch, his head in Draco's lap. His hands found themselves playing with Harry's hair, trying to smooth it out, but eventually giving up and just let himself run his fingers through his hair.

"That feels nice." He hummed. His eyes were closed and he seemed relaxed. Draco smiled.

"I wish your hair were longer," he admitted, "I kinda really want to braid it."

Harry let out a snort. "You? You know how to braid hair?"

"I had long hair when I was a kid!" He defended. "My father made me cut it all off before Hogwarts, saying that I would look more normal or whatever."

"Well why don't you grow it back out?"

"I always have wanted to, but I don't know. It has been a while, I don't know if it would still look good."

"You should, I think it would look nice."

Harry had opened his eyes and was staring at Draco's face. His eyes looked different without his glasses. Draco felt that the glasses hid them away from the world, that they were so much brighter than he had thought. So much greener than he had though. Green had always been his favorite color.

"What're you thinking about?" Harry raised an eyebrow, catching him off guard.

Draco cleared his throat. "Uh, nothing. Nothing."

Harry continued to stare at him. "You remind me of Sirius, you know."

Draco had learned about Sirius, through Hermione. He had overheard bits and pieces of their conversations, about how Harry was writing to him, and one day he approached Hermione because he felt that he deserved to know why his friend was writing to a mass murderer.

"Your Godfather? Really Potter? What am I, your daddy now?"

Harry's face began to turn bright red. "I- uh, no! What? I didn't mean it like that."

"Merlin, take a joke," he smiled playfully, continuing to tease him. "And somehow I'm the one who needs to learn social cues."

"Shut up, I was being serious."

"You mean Sirius-"

"Draco!"

He laughed. "I'm sorry! It was right there. I had to."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and you're the first person to ever make that joke. I'm just dying of laughter over here."

"Rude."

"I'm not kidding, though. You both had similar upbringings, then were the first in your families to not be sorted into Slytherin, and ended up in Gryffindor of all houses-"

"Thanks for the reminder."

"-but you both didn't let your family define you, and you went against your families. It took you a while to come around, I will say, but look at you now."

Draco frowned. "And it led me to being disowned, to being replaced."

"You replaced them too," Harry argued back.

"Yeah, and now I am looked down upon by everyone who values the Malfoys. I am still technically the heir, you know, but I doubt I will be able to find anyone who would be willing to continue the Malfoy bloodline with me."

"Please, you and I both know that you don't give a shit about that."

Draco knew he was right. He sighed. "Whatever happened to blood is thicker than water?"

"You do know that's not the full idiom, right? It's really the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."

"I'm sorry, who are you, so very wise in the way of pureblood idioms?"

"It's actually a muggle phrase, you know," he said as if everyone knew the truth. He sounded like Hermione. "People use it wrong all the time. It actually refers to how bloodshed on the battlefield creates stronger ties than your family ties." He paused, letting the words sink in.

"What's your point here, Potter?"

"My point is," he continued, "that family doesn't define you. And you don't let it define you. There are ties stronger than family ones, but you don't necessarily need to spill blood in order to form them. The friendships you make and the ones who love you no matter what are the real ties. Blood may be thicker than water, sure, but love is thicker than blood."

He didn't know what to say. He was at a loss for words.

"Oh, don't be like that. You've come to see this in the past month or two, you just needed someone to tell you so that you could stop feeling so guilty all the damn time. It's not a good look on you."

"'Mhm, and you think about what looks good on me all the time, it seems?" Draco smirked. He could do this.

"Why is it that you must always deflect serious conversations?" Harry narrowed his eyes despite the smile crawling onto his face. "And besides, you're the one who keeps circling the conversation back to your good looks-"

"So you admit it?" Draco smirked. He loved this. He loved teasing Harry, the playful banter. One day it was going to drive him insane.

"What?"

"You admit that I have good looks-"

Harry interrupted Draco's sentence by picking up the pillow on the couch and whacking him with it.

"Will you stop always whacking me with the damn pillows?" He took the pillow and hit Harry's shoulder back.

Harry only laughed.

Dear God, Draco thought. I could listen to Harry Potter laugh for hours on end and it would still make me smile every time.

Draco didn't know why he liked being in Harry's presence so much, why he craved it so desperately. A month ago, the two of them could hardly be in the same room as each other. A month ago, he hated Harry Potter with all of his guts. But here they were, talking about friendships and those who loved you no matter what. Why the hell had everything changed so fast?

But when he thought back to his previous encounters with Harry, everything started to fall into place. All of the emotions he had been feeling, that seemingly came out of nowhere, started to make sense. The tension was always there, and now that they had grown closer, it was simply manifesting itself in a different way, in the way that it always had been that Draco had refused to pay attention to.

He always did crave Harry's presence. It was exhilarating. It was electrifying. It made him feel alive. He used to think that feeling was just because of the mutual hatred that they shared, and that feeling of electricity was going to settle down once they did. But it never faded. It was still there, alive as ever, only intensifying.

He only hoped that Harry could feel it too.