Chapter 13

Harry didn't know what woke him up. It could have been a sound, or some sixth sense. It could have been nothing at all.

That he was waking at all wasn't quite as unexpected as it had been only a week ago. In such a short time, the calamitous mayhem that was the entire NEWTs process had vanished. The build-up had been so great, the performance so short and overwhelming, that the aftermath felt more like the calm in the middle of the storm, a brief respite before the chaos began once more.

But it didn't start again. It was over. Over, and leaving destruction in its wake and those stumbling out the other side picking through the splintered remains of what that storm had broken shattered.

For Harry, it meant sleep. A lot of sleep. He hadn't really thought he could manage it, but the opportunity was there and he managed it. There wasn't any excuse anymore, nothing to tie his hands and keep him up until past midnight with lies of study and productivity. The focus had shifted from narrowed commitment to wide, vague relaxation.

The prospect was nothing if not daunting. How did anyone even wind down enough to relax anymore?

Hermione wasn't managing so well. Harry knew she still took herself to the library far too often for someone who had finished her exams, and he found her still buried in books more often than not. Ron joined her on occasion, but he was spending more time at the quidditch pitch than he'd been able to before. He and Ginny had taken to one another's company with more jovial commitment than Harry had ever seen of them before, and it was such an unexpected delight to witness that he almost wasn't sad when he couldn't bring himself to join them himself. At least not yet.

They weren't the only one, on both ends of the spectrum. Harry watched with silent curiosity as his classmates, people he had known for nearly half his life, shifted and shuffled, adjusting into the newfound liberty they abruptly found themselves in. Some left the school immediately, returning to their families as was permitted of them, or leaping upon the opportunity to seek a vacation. Parvati and Padma had disappeared almost the hour after their final examination, and many had followed shortly afterwards.

But the rest…

What afflicted the senior students bore a remarkable resemblance to the adjustment of unnerved and yet blessedly relieved survivors of war. A resemblance, but without the added weight of grief. Seamus' laughter rung through the Dragon's Nest whenever he was in the common room like a sporadic yet frequent tune. Susan had established a morning tea gathering of sorts in the Great Hall for anyone who chose to join. Neville had taken to wearing dirt-smeared slacks and boots, carrying a pair of gardening gloves wherever he went, as he dove into Professor Sprouts Herbology labs to tinker with the greenery within as a near-constant pastime.

People were changing. Adapting. Recovering, even, and the ease on the faces of Harry's friends and classmates, the smiles that replaced frowns and hard lines, was an unexpected sort of wonderful.

For Harry, too. He knew he was changing, if only slightly and slowly. It was nothing deliberate, but there was a distinct sense of recovery to be found in the aftermath of school stress, an affliction that only a year before he would never have seen himself prioritising. For the most part, that took the form of sleep. And where Harry found sleep was, unerringly, with Draco.

When Harry found himself waking of an afternoon, wandering idly from the depths of slumber in an incremental climb that contemplated the inevitable endpoint with every step of the way, he became aware of Draco. Or more aware, as it were; he was never unaware of him, not when they lay together. He felt the warmth of Draco's body draped around him, held loosely in his arms that, even in sleep, maintained their clasp. He heard the sounds of his smooth breathing, breaths that weren't precisely different from anyone else's but that Harry was certain he could pick out from a line up. He felt and almost heard the soft, heavy thumps of Draco's heartbeat, only a few layers of skin and bone from Harry's own, with its constant, muted litany of reassurance, closeness, and realness.

Sleeping with Draco provided that same comfort that Harry had first pursued at the beginning of his school year when he had so instinctively sought Draco's lap. The comfort that he hadn't known he'd needed until he had it.

Even before opening his eyes, Harry was aware. When he shifted slightly, Draco shifted too, his breath hitching slightly, and Harry's hand drifted instinctively to the back of Draco's head. He grazed his fingers through his hair and, curling like a cat into the gentle touch, Draco's momentary, sleep-bound disturbance vanished.

Smiling to himself, Harry opened his eyes. He was groggy, his vision blurry even with his glasses still in place, but he could make out Draco's head where it rested on his shoulder. They'd take possession of the couch that afternoon, a habit that was growing in frequency every day for the past week and seemed to have become a generally accepted possessiveness throughout the tower. Not that Harry cared about being accepted – even outside of the desperate need for comfort after his Defence exam, he found he didn't really care – but it was nice that the offering of a consistent space was given.

For whatever reason, it felt more comfortable than the bed, even if it was something of a tight fit for the both of them. Extended across all three of the cushions, Draco lay half on top and to the side of Harry, slightly wedged against the back. His legs tangled with Harry's own, his arms firmly and instinctively wrapped, and even if his head was at a bit of an awkward angle between the cushion and Harry's shoulder, he looked comfortable. Certainly more comfortable than he'd been before the NEWTs.

The shadows under his eyes were gone, Harry noticed as he gazed down at him, sleep retreating and taking its blurriness with it. The tension in his face had eased, too; not completely, and maybe it wouldn't ever leave, but it had certainly lessened. Draco had even taken to smiling more, and not just in Harry's company; when he'd first laughed at the Little Head table, Ron – seated across from him – had promptly dropped his fork. He hadn't been the only one to stare in stunned stupefaction, either.

It was nice. Draco was getting better, recovering from both the weighty trial of NEWTs and the horror that had preceded it. Results might not have been returned yet, and there hadn't been any kind of miraculous heal-all for his problems, but he would get the chance to recover. They had the chance.

Harry was so distracted with gazing down at Draco, silently drawing his fingers through his fine hair, that he didn't even notice they were being watched until Pansy shifted a shuffling step. It didn't bother him to be observed as it once would have – he and Draco had borne such study almost constantly in the past week – but he was a little surprised.

Glancing up at her, Harry met Pansy's gaze for only a brief moment before her own dropped to Draco. Or returned to Draco, as was more likely. She was one of the few that Harry hadn't noticed had significantly eased in relentless tension with the passing of exams; while Blaise seemed to have grown a little more comfortable, even edging slightly away from his self-imposed ostracism, Pansy hadn't. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

It was a little sad, when Harry thought about it. Draco was changing, and Blaise was changing. Everyone in the rest of their year group was growing and climbing the impossible mountain towards some thin promise of recovery. Even Harry, though he wasn't quite sure what 'recovery' looked like. He didn't think he needed to know, or at least not yet; he could dawdle, and in dawdling he could revel in sharing Draco's company and absorbing the comfort of that company that had grown to mean so much to him in the past year.

But Pansy was different. As she stared down at Draco with her face blank and eyes unblinking, Harry couldn't help but feel a little sad for her. Not pity – he didn't think he could consider such a thing, not for Pansy – but definitely sadness. Even Draco was changing, but Pansy…

"I've never seen him so relaxed," she murmured, so quietly that, had Harry not already been conscious, he doubted it would have bothered him into wakefulness. Pansy shook her head slowly. "Not even before everything that happened."

Harry didn't slow in carding his fingers through Draco's hair. When he replied, his words were as hushed as Pansy's. "Then I'm glad."

"How do you do it?" Pansy asked.

How had been the question, but Harry heard more than that. He heard why. He heard why you, and why now, and maybe even 'why not me?' Possibly, it could have been something other than that entirely: why can't I be like that? She was still struggling, visibly torn between clinging to a past that had hurt so badly she couldn't yet contemplate recovery and her longing to step forward. That, too, was sad to see.

"I don't know," Harry said quietly. "Just that… it helps."

"You do?"

"Mm." Not a yes or a no, but something neutral. Harry wasn't sure himself. "Maybe it's sort of how he helps me. Something as little as… touching. And being close." Harry nodded slightly, his chin lightly brushing over Draco's hair. "Something like that. It helps."

Pansy's scoff somehow didn't sound like a scoff. More like a sigh, almost a silent whimper of longing. Shaking her head, she drew her gaze sidelong, skimming across the empty common room. It took her a moment to gather herself, to shake aside whatever conflict lay within her just beneath the surface, and when she turned back to Harry there was a hint of her usual aloof and slightly contemptuous confidence.

"Well," she said, sniffing, "I'd rather it wasn't you. Definitely not you. But if you can make him like that…" She shrugged a little too emphatically to pass as casual. "I hope you two are very happy together."

Without another word, she swept away, past and behind the couch and out of sight. Head slightly tipped, Harry listened to the sound of her footsteps as she made her way up to the girls dormitory. His hand didn't slow in its gentle ministrations of Draco's hair. The comfortable silence left in Pansy's wake hadn't really been disturbed in the first place.

"Was that Pansy?"

Draco's voice, a murmur so skewed and muted it was barely words at all, hummed against Harry's shoulder. He glanced down at him, at Draco's face still lax with sleep. "It's nothing," he said, lips brushing over the top of Draco's head in a feather light kiss. "Go back to sleep."

Draco grunted. "Good. Was never awake in the first place."

Harry smiled. He adjusted his hold around Draco as he felt Draco take a slightly deeper breath before releasing it in an exhale of heavy sleepiness. In seconds, any hint of wakefulness disappeared. Just like Harry, and quite without realising until only recently, Draco really did seem to get more out of the touching, the holding, the closeness, than just the prospect of sex. In hindsight, Harry didn't know why he'd ever thought otherwise.

It was a bit of a mystery that he'd made the discovery at all. Both for Draco and for himself, for that matter. But, closing his eyes and letting himself sink into the comfortable warmth of closeness, sliding into sleep that would otherwise be all but impossible, Harry could be nothing but thankful for the accident that had led to it in the first place. He'd made many such discoveries that year, but this was by far the greatest.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! An extra special thanks to all of the lovely people who have left reviews. I honestly can't say how much it means to me to hear from you and know what you think. If you've got a second or two, please let me know what you thought of the story.
Other than that, until next time! xx