BLIND SIGHT - drarry

Ch. five

Harry

Nightmares again.

Draco walked towards him, pale and beautiful as always, but sad. Harry couldn't see it in his face, that was expressionless as always, but the boy's blond fringe hung messily over his eyes, and Harry saw why when a white hand reached shakily towards him holding two delicate orbs. Harry pushed the heavy fall of hair away from Draco's face but behind it were two gaping holes pouring bloody tears and always Draco was muttering, muttering until it became a scream, "I can't look at you Harry. I can't look at you."

Harry woke with a gasp, one hand pressed to his chest as if that would stop his frantic heart beat. When he caught his breath, he tried to relax into the mattress and clear his mind, but all he could see was Draco, crying.

It had been two months of constant searching, with no result. Someone had to know where the blond Slytherin was, but none of them were talking.

After Draco left, and Harry was recovered enough, he searched Hogwarts from top to bottom, even venturing back into the Chamber of Secrets, with no result. He asked every Slytherin, every Griffindor, everyone he could think of that might have an idea where Draco went. But no one talked to him, and most of the ones who did said Harry didn't deserve to know, or Draco didn't deserve to be found, blood traitor that he was.

It took those people a rather long time to recover from their mistake.

Even the Weasley's refused to say anything. Charlie wasn't talking to Harry at all, and Molly always had a sad look in her eye when they spoke. Neither of them said anything directly to Harry about Draco, but that almost made it worse. Hermione said he was being silly, but Harry knew he had disappointed the family he thought of as his own, and it would take a long time and a lot of work to atone for what he did to the Slytherin boy.

After Hogwarts, Harry had searched Hogsmeade, and then Diagon Alley, turning Knockturn upside down. A few enterprising people had offered Harry information for a price, but Snape's Legilmancy lessons served their purpose and Harry knew the truth from the lies they were selling.

Harry went to Malfoy Manor. The gutted carcass of Draco's familial estate stood out like a burnt skeleton against the sky. It was hard to believe that only one year ago, it had been the jewel in Voldemort's crown. Shortly after Narcissa discovered that the Dark Lord was planning to displace the Malfoy family, and take Draco 'under his wing,' the stoic blonde appeared on the front steps of Grimmaud Place with her very cowed son at her side, asking for asylum and offering help in the upcoming war.

For the first time, it was someone else having the nightmares, and Harry comforted Draco as the blond sobbed into his pillow every night, shaking fiercely, especially after his mother had to go into hiding. In those dark hours the two spoke about everything, and nothing. They had been roomed together in the first place because there was no other space and theirs was the only bedroom with wards on the door, so the inhabitants could be alternately guarded and guarded against.

Harry was surprised to learn what they had in common. Actually, he was surprised at how little it was. Somewhere deep down, he always assumed that beneath the veneer of hatred and spite, he and Draco were a lot alike, only to find that nothing could be further from the truth.

Harry loved Quidditch, Draco hated it, playing because his father made him. Harry loved sweets, Draco hated them, and would sometimes gag when he saw Harry and Ron stuffing puddings and cakes into their mouths.

After a few months of hiding out, Harry loved Draco. But Draco hated Harry.

One night Harry caught Draco half way through a carton of strawberry gelato. At that point Harry began to question his assumptions.

Two weeks later, they were in the middle of a screaming row when Draco grabbed Harry by the ears, pulled him in, and kissed him.

Harry rubbed absently at his lips, then more firmly at his ears which, at the time, had bruised beautifully and taken three weeks to heal. Some sensations seemed to stay under his skin, and that was one he'd never forget.

Shaking his head to clear out the memories and recrimination, Harry went back to the maps he had spread over the table at Grimmaud Place. Covering the magical world, Britain had been crossed off already. There was a good-sized Wizarding community in France, and that was his next stop.

Across the vast mahogany expanse, Harry heard a gentle clearing of a throat. He looked up at Hermione and without meeting his eyes, the girl shook her head 'no.'

"Not France? Well, how about Spain?"

Again the silent 'no.'

Harry had invited Ron and Hermione back to Grimmaud Place after they all realized that as much as they loved the Burrow, it wasn't really wheelchair accessible. And Ron was healing slowly, the muggle way, as Skele-Grow could work when a bone was broken or missing, but not shattered. So now Harry was sharing his house with two of his favorite people in the world, and they were both refusing to talk to him about the third.

Until now.

Slowly, following tiny gestures, Harry found out that Draco wasn't in any of the Wizarding communities. He was in the Muggle world.

It looked like Hermione was about to tell him something more definite, her mouth open and a gleam in her eye, when Ron came rolling into the room, cracking the steel frame of his chair against door frames and chair legs.

Harry wanted to curse. But at least he had a lead.

There were several charms that could locate someone practicing magic in the muggle realm. It would take some time to narrow it down to Draco, but Harry would do it.