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You shouldn’t be here.
haunted
read on ao3 | written for @hp-fearfest‘s day 1 prompt: haunted house. 565 words; no warnings (but spooky!) big thanks to my personal hero @wheezykat for the speedy beta!
“He’ll be fine, Harry,” Hermione tells him for the tenth time that night. “He’s just overtired. Insomnia can distort reality when it lasts this long.”
They stand at the threshold of her and Ron’s spare room, watching Draco sleep for the first time in days. Their murmured conversation is swallowed by the patter of heavy rainfall as a storm rages outside, but even the mighty claps of thunder aren’t enough to wake him.
Harry wants to believe her, but he knows that all of it started well before the insomnia began. Draco had been glancing around Grimmauld manically for weeks, flinching away from things that Harry couldn’t see. He’d woken in the middle of the night countless times to find Draco huddled against their bed frame, staring at the space above the foot of their bed as if locked in a trance. Draco had tried playing it off as nothing for as long as he could, but he eventually broke down and told Harry the truth.
Draco had never been one to give in to fancy or fantasy, so when he told Harry that Grimmauld was haunted, Harry got him out. It didn’t matter if Harry believed it or not. It didn’t matter if it was true. He just knew he never wanted to see Draco like this again - wound up and jumpy, sick with a fear he tried to keep off of his face, like he was being slowly digested by whatever lurked in the shadows of their home.
Harry never saw a thing.
“You two can stay as long as you need,” Hermione says as a flash of lighting floods the room with light. Draco stirs, tossing fitfully onto his side. “But Harry - you know it’s not really haunted, don’t you?”
She’s trying to comfort him, but it just makes Harry’s stomach twist. He wishes Grimmauld was haunted - it would be easier than knowing that it’s all in Draco’s head.
“I know, Hermione,” Harry says. “I know.”
“Try to get some rest,” she says. She squeezes his forearm before turning into her own bedroom and shutting the door behind her.
Harry climbs into bed slowly, careful not to disturb Draco’s sleep. He seems exhausted even as he slumbers, his face pinched with worry, occasionally twitching and contorting against a nightmare. The storm picks up outside, wind whistling as it throws rain against the window. Another flash of lightning drenches them in a burst of light.
The room is illuminated for less than a second. It’s so short that Harry can barely register what he sees: the dark impression of something that may have once been a human hunched over the bed. Its mouth protrudes from a shroud of tattered robes, a toothless, gaping cavern lowered just above Draco’s face, chapped lips twisting as it murmurs rapidly into his ear.
The figure disappears as the room is swallowed again by darkness, the lightning echoed with a crash of rolling thunder. Draco jolts up and throws his arms around Harry’s neck, knocking the wind out of his lungs.
“It’s okay, Draco,” Harry says, trying not to let the fear seep into his voice as Draco breathes shakily into his chest. “I’ve got you.”
He was wrong. They were both wrong. It’s not Grimmauld that’s haunted, Harry realizes as he pulls Draco tight and glances around at the empty, darkened room.
It’s Draco.