#hogwartssecretsanta

    Harry stood frozen for what felt like hours while his mind wheeled. He knew Draco was up to something. He’d been acting shifty, shiftier than usual anyway, all year. They had never been friends, but Draco had been avoiding him (and by extension Blaise, Theo, and Millicent)  more actively, vanishing to who-knew-where at alarmingly frequent intervals. Harry hadn’t seen Draco roll up his sleeves, and despite Ron and Hermione’s insistence that he was being paranoid and “weirdly obsessive”, he knew what it all meant. Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater. And if he really was crying alone in a bathroom, now seemed the time to get the evidence he needed to prove it.

    Harry slowly placed his hand on the doorknob as if afraid it might burn him. Then, with a sharp twist of his wrist the door was open and Harry was stepping as quietly as he could in ratty old tennis shoes on tile, belatedly thinking that he should have cast a cushioning charm on his shoes. His silent self-beratement was interrupted by a sob slicing through the room, bouncing off the mirrors and sinks and reverberating until Harry could almost feel it rattling in his own chest. He stood as still as a deer in the presence of a wolf, just as prepared to bolt, as Draco’s voice choked through the silence.

    Draco stood with his back to the door, hands desperately clutching either side of a sink, his platinum head bowed low. Then, a voice Harry had not expected warbled through the room.

    “Don’t,” whispered Moaning Myrtle from somewhere out of sight. Probably the U-bend of one of the toilets, Harry thought. “Don’t… tell me what’s wrong… I can help you..”

    “No one can help me,” Draco murmured through shaking lips as his body was wracked by another sob. “I can’t do it… I can’t… It won’t work… and unless I do it soon… he says he’ll kill me…”

    Harry felt the color drain from his face. Draco was a Death Eater- who else would threaten him with murder but Voldemort- but he was afraid. More afraid than he’d ever been, even when they’d entered the Forbidden Forest as first years and seen Voldemort drinking the blood of a unicorn. Harry’s mind whirled. He could use this. He could use Draco’s fear to change his mind. To gain an ally. To save him.  Harry prepared to make his escape, to give himself time to think, to come up with a way to--

    Draco gave a great, shuddering gasp and looked up into the mirror above the sink. The air in the bathroom turned to ice. For one breathless, endless moment, Draco’s eyes were focused only on his own reflection, on storm-grey eyes and their rain on his face. But then the ice cracked and the air and the time came flooding back in. Harry could see Draco’s eyes widen in shock as he noticed Harry standing behind him, and then narrow as his hand twitched toward where Harry knew he kept his wand. Before Harry could come up with anything to say, his tongue beat him to it.

    “Draco--” his voice cracked against the dryness in his throat. The hand paused. Harry swallowed. “Draco,” he tried again, “I can help you. We can help--”

    “You can’t help me! No one--”

    “Listen to me!” It came out louder than he had intended, desperation forcing the words out of him before he could think about them. “We can help. The Order can protect you. You don’t have to do whatever Voldemort--” Draco flinched. “ is forcing you to do. He can’t kill you if he can’t find you.”

    “He’ll kill my parents.” Draco finally turned. “You don’t understand--”

    “Yes, yes. I don’t understand what it feels like to see my parents in danger. I know. We can take them too. It--”

    “How can we trust you?” he snapped. “You know what we are! What we’ve done! Why wouldn’t you just kill us to make your jobs easier?” His lips curled into a sneer. “You forget, Harry. I’ve known you for five and a half years. I know what you’re willing to do. You have all your little Gryffindor friends fooled, but I know that you’re just as willing to remove anyone who gets in your way. You--”

    Harry could feel a muscle in his jaw tense almost to the point of snapping. “You’re valuable!” he managed to grind out. That, at least, seemed to bring Draco to a momentary standstill.

Harry could feel the importance of the moment. It was as if every choice he had made for the past six months was converging on him, leading to this point; this single breath. There was a brief moment of disorientation, as if some great weight were bearing down on him. His senses blurred and dulled and darkened. But in the same exhalation it passed, and he felt a sharpening of sensation. The light filling the room cut the air, the dust motes that had before seemed to be galaxies sharpened to individual stars. Harry could hear his own voice as if from a distance, clear and almost crystalline. Sharp as a razor, but equally fragile. “You’re important, Draco.”

Harry stepped forward once. His heel clacked against the floor, incongruously loud in the echoing silence. Again, clack. Again, clack, stop. Slowly, he extended his hand forward. Harry noted that it wasn’t shaking, though his whole body was vibrating like a plucked harp string. “Please, Draco. Let me help you.”

Harry stood as still as he could next to the fireplace in Dumbledore’s office. Why Dunbledore had the fire burning in May Harry could not guess, but it had evidently been charmed to put off very little heat. Draco sat opposite the man himself in one of those high-backed chairs Dumbledore favored, being subjected to that x-ray-like scrutiny that Harry himself had so often received. Dumbledore’s ubiquitous twinkling gaze had been replaced by the solidity of iron, giving his pale blue eyes an icy cast. The shifting light of the fire limned them both in gold, throwing shifting shadows across their faces and about the room.

Harry watched Draco’s face as he spoke of the horror of living in a house conquered by the Dark Lord, words spilling from his thin lips in an unending stream. Harry was transfixed, letting the words flow over and around him but hearing little. He told himself that there was no need to look at Dumbledore; his face would be as impassive and inscrutable as ever it had been. But in truth, he could not deny that the warmth he was feeling was more than just firelight. He had done something for the Order. He’d had no help, needed no direction, but he’d changed the course of another person’s life. He’d saved someone he had thought beyond redemption. He’d made a difference. And despite the direness of the situation and the pain that Draco would no doubt be subjected to in the coming days and weeks and months- possibly even years- every time Harry looked at him, all sharp angles harsh shadows, he could feel a heat flow through his veins and a tingle in his fingertips where there hands had met that told him he had done the right thing today. A good deed for the side of Light in their struggle against the growing Dark. He was proud of himself, and surprised to find that he was also proud of the boy sitting in front of him. They were in this together now.