The Sleeping Beauty Curse

Chapter 10

Harry woke on Thursday morning to an empty bed and a feeling of disorientation. The events of the previous night seemed blurred, somehow, and unreal, as if he'd dreamed them. It had been a bloody odd dream. He forced himself out of bed and had a quick and unsatisfactory strip-wash in the bathroom, before shoving on a fresh set of Auror robes and taking the stairs down to the kitchen, where he suspected Malfoy was sulking, at a leaden pace.

Malfoy wasn't in the kitchen. He was, however, in the dining room, sitting listlessly at the over-large table, resting his chin on his hand, until Harry entered and he jumped half a foot in the air, face turning a violent purple. He gave Harry a firm look that said 'I don't want to talk about it' and then said, "I don't want to talk about it!" as if he didn't trust Harry not to be a dick.

Harry was a dick, at least when it came to Malfoy, but he wasn't in the mood today. Besides . . . "What's this?" he asked, waving his hand vaguely to encompass both the table and the floor.

Malfoy looked first at the floor by the table. Yesterday, it had been covered by an enormous faded Persian rug in geometric swirls of blue and orange. Today it was covered in paper. Malfoy had, Harry realised, swept all of his unopened mail off the table and on to the floor. It had looked like a lot of post, piled on the table. Now, it looked like a forest had died – and died in vain. Malfoy shrugged, as if to say it was perfectly obvious what 'this' was: the natural result of Harry's lazy incompetence.

"No, I meant – this," Harry said, more explicitly, indicating just the table. It was dotted with plates and dishes, each with a small selection of cold foods – cheeses, sliced meats, pastries thick with sugar. In the centre of the table, a fruit bowl offered up bananas and pears, next to jugs of juice – pumpkin, apple, orange.

Malfoy gave Harry a look as if he were mad. "Breakfast?" he said, and then added, sarcastically, "You should eat it before it gets cold."

Harry sat. "Um, thanks?" he said, oddly confused by this domestic scene, but Malfoy just snorted and served himself a small plate of food, frowning at it in a way that reminded Harry just how much Malfoy had drunk the night before. Maybe he was feeling a bit on the delicate side.

Harry picked at a pastry for a while, not feeling very hungry. Then Malfoy stopped forcing down his own food to give a judgemental sniff – not at Harry, necessarily, but just in general – and remarked that there were starving wizards in other parts of the world who'd be grateful for such lovely cold food. Harry took from this that Malfoy preferred a cooked breakfast and was feeling hacked off at the fact he hadn't been able to use the oven without Harry being there. He immediately forced down some more of his pastry out of contrariness, making an over-enthusiastic mmm noise as he did so. He didn't often have time for breakfast, but he supposed it wasn't so bad to take the time to sit and eat like this, even if he did have to raise his feet several inches off the ground to rest them on the lurking mail.

Too soon, it was time for them to go to the Ministry. Again. Harry couldn't remember what scintillating appointments awaited them, and he feared they might be footwear-, or perhaps canape-, related. He was tempted to just stay at home, sulking, but then he'd have to stay at home, sulking, with Malfoy, and right now he felt like he needed to not be alone with Malfoy for a while. Last night kept replaying in his mind, even though he was trying very hard to stop it. The way Malfoy had looked at him, eyes fierce and hot through the darkness, as he'd come in his pyjama bottoms. And then Harry had . . . The mirror in the bathroom had still been a bit smeary this morning, where he'd tried to clean it with water and tissue rather than magic. All this embarrassment kept jumbling up in his mind, mixing with flashbacks of the way Astoria had hugged Malfoy so tightly, as he'd patted her hair, and the sound of him breathing as he came down from his nightmare, held tight in Harry's arms.