FORTY-TWO: Harry in the Hospital Wing

Harry jerked slightly in his chair, where he was reading a book entitled, Creative Visualization: Uses in Anger Management. “Sorry?”

“Just like that,” the Potions Master quipped. “Point it in the direction of the Hospital Wing, however, if you please.”

Harry placed the book down on the desk and folded his arms. “Ron said the same thing,” he admitted. “But I don’t know what I’ve got to apologize for. I saved his life. If anything, he should be thanking me.”

The older man sighed, running a hand through his dark hair. “Harry,” he muttered, “you do trust me, do you not?”

Harry blinked. “Well – yeah, of course. You’ve only saved my life a half-dozen times. Not to mention you’re the only one who can help me out with this stuff.” He hefted the book.

“If you do trust me, then you will accept my judgment on this matter, and apologize. Very interesting, however, how you rate your loyalty to me based on my skills,” Snape murmured thoughtfully. “Very Slytherin.”

Harry gaped. “I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant – I meant, how can I not trust you? That’s all.”

“That, Mister Potter, was a joke. I suggest you learn to recognize them.”

“I guess I ought to be used to them coming from you by now,” Harry admitted ruefully.

“You’re not the only one who has commented on my sense of humor of late,” Snape replied. “Yesterday, Lupin asked if I had begun dabbling in Muggle medications.”

Harry choked on air.

“Yes, I admit to a similar reaction. After that, I laughed, somewhat against my will,” he mused. “Then the man had the audacity to ask me if I was feeling all right.”

“Are you?” Harry inquired, leaning on the open book.

“You’ll ruin the binding,” the Potions Master snapped. “Lean back, Mister Potter, if you value those arms.”

“Sorry.” Harry transfigured his quill into a white ribbon, placed it thoughtfully between the pages of the book, then closed it. “The question still stands, though. If you’re going to be able to ask me about my feelings and stuff, I get to ask you.”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow, but the answer is not personal and actually rather simple. Absurdly so. I am down to my last ten Obscura.”

Harry blinked.

“I’ve taken to removing them in the manner you are,” Snape replied. “Ridding myself of the Obscura is admittedly far more painful this way, but it is also significantly more rapid. They seem to be ordered based on level of severity in my case rather than chronologically, however. It makes for some... unpleasant surprises. I will admit to some dread concerning the last few.”

“I’d been wondering,” Harry said, leaning back. “I’m glad it’s nothing serious.”

“Speaking of which,” Snape said, “it occurs to me that, given your Obscura, you may be the only one I can talk to regarding a new project I am working on.”

“My Obscura makes me uniquely qualified?”

Snape smirked at him. “Given it is in regards to Sirius Black, I consider you to be the only one in the entire castle whom I can trust to be perfectly impartial.” He handed a small stack of papers to Harry. “Peruse these in private, Mister Potter, and let me know what you think after class tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, shuffling the papers around in his hands.

“Ready?” Snape inquired, putting away his remaining papers.

“Are you sure? What if this one is the one about Sirius Black?”

“I highly doubt, given your frequency of Obscuras, that you did not perform a single one between May and August.”

Harry nodded doubtfully. “All right.” He closed his eyes tightly. “Revealeo!”

In which case, he ought to probably trust Ron and Snape…

Shaking his head, Harry pushed the door open and slipped in, alerting Madam Pomfrey to his presence, waving at her to gain her attention. The mediwitch was in her office, well within earshot; Harry figured she would be able to stop them if he and Draco came to blows.

And they might, Harry realized. They really might. Draco had been his enemy last year, and they’d been in more verbal fights than ten other boys put together. Minerva McGonagall had once said to Harry that if he weren’t so peaceable and Malfoy weren’t so cunning, they would’ve torn one another apart a long time ago. The older witch had sounded almost rueful, as though if either boy had started a more physical altercation, that might have ended up resolving something between them. Harry wasn’t so sure. Their battles had started with words, and they had, lately, ended with them. Their last encounter, however, had been as much physical as verbal, and now Harry did not know what to expect.

He caught sight of Draco in the uneven light of the dimmed lamps about the Hospital Wing and the moon coming in through the large, many-paned windows that stood taller than Harry himself. The other boy was facing the window, his back to Harry, seated at the edge of one of the beds.

Harry paused, wondering what he ought to say – or, rather, the best way to say it – when Draco spoke.

“Well?” he demanded dryly, not turning.

The hair on Harry’s forearms and the back of his neck lifted slightly at the uncanniness of it. “How did you know I was here? I mean, that it was me?”

“Simple deduction,” Draco replied, still examining the grounds bathed in moonlight outside. “Who else but you would bother? Ron’s already been, today.”

Harry found that a little unnerving as well, and swallowed noisily. “Uhm, I’m sorry,” he said.

“For bothering?”

Harry frowned, not liking the fact that he could not see Draco’s face. It made it ever-so-difficult to gauge the other boy’s emotions, and Draco’s perpetual flatness of tone didn’t help. He moved around Draco to sit on the bed directly next to him, and tried to hide his surprise when his eyes finally did light on the Slytherin.

Draco looked awful. He’d been looking tired and somewhat worn over the past month, and he still did – but there was a defeated look to his grey eyes and a blankness to his features that Harry had never seen before. The moonlight coming through the window made his pale skin paler and turned his flaxen hair ghostly white.

It suddenly occurred to Harry that he might not be able to fix this, that there were some things – like curse scars and Dark Marks – that could not be overcome. He couldn’t conquer the Mark on Malfoy’s arm. He couldn’t rescue the blond boy, not when Draco’s enemy might well be himself.

But maybe, he realized slowly, doing what was right wasn’t always in the rescuing. Maybe it was in where you stood, and in who you stood with: as much in your day-to-day as in the Chamber of Secrets, or deserted graveyard, or Shrieking Shack. He was, Harry admitted silently to himself, much better at the latter sort of heroism than the former. People like Ron and Neville practiced the everyday sort like breathing, but for him it would have to be an acquired skill.

Harry sat gingerly on the bed across from Malfoy’s, eyeing the other boy and wondering where he should begin. He sat there for so long that his own eyes were eventually drawn to the pale moon outside of the window, waning, but still nearly full. He thought about how strange it was that his Professor’s worst fear could be something so beautiful and yet so mundane. To have what terrified you not only be omnipresent, but actually be a part of you – that was even more difficult. Harry knew that from personal experience.

“You’re still here,” Draco commented.

“Yeah,” Harry said, and his voice cracked from disuse. He wondered how long they’d been sitting there like that, both completely silent. Snores emitting from Madam Pomfrey’s office caught both boys’ attention, and Harry shared an almost unwilling grin with Draco, who blinked back at him uncertainly.

“I couldn’t stop them,” the Slytherin said abruptly, in a voice that sounded like a shout in the darkened, hushed Hospital Wing. “I didn’t even try.”

Harry knew Draco well enough by now to know the sickness in his eyes – boasting was the furthest thing from the other boy’s mind. “You didn’t try?” he prompted.

Draco shook his head almost violently, his eyes staring out the window, but up close Harry could see that the Slytherin was not really looking. Instead, his grey eyes were flat, faraway, and slightly wide with remembered panic.

Under the force of the very real anguish and fear in Draco, Harry’s heart twisted in his chest, and he called himself ten kinds of idiot. “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it this time. He put all he was behind it, and hoped that the other boy could hear the force in the words.

Draco shook his head again, his eyes finding Harry’s for the first time. “Not your fault. Not your problem.”

“It is!” Harry shouted; then, when Madam Pomfrey’s snores hitched and paused, causing both boys to whip around, he repeated his words in a whisper: “it is… it’s my fault for not noticing, for not knowing there was something wrong when you came back – for not knowing there was something wrong before, with your mum showing up like that–”

A ghost of Draco’s old sneer made its appearance. “Potter,” he said chidingly. “You have the strangest ideas about what is your province and what is the province of others. Obscura, for example.”

Harry froze, then leaned slightly closer. “How do you know about that?”

Draco eyed him disdainfully. “Tell me you haven’t caught on yet? I’ve been stopping you from performing them – when I can. That’s what happened out on the pitch, you know.” He shuddered. “You were so horrified. Terrified. I thought you were going to pass out.”

“I almost did,” Harry whispered.

“I know.” Draco paused. “I owe you a Wizard’s Debt.” He raised his wand hand and Harry slowly, jerkily raised his in return. The Slytherin’s strong, slender fingers interwove with his, gripping Harry’s hand almost tightly enough to hurt. His eyes, no longer deadened, blazed into Harry’s. “Will you accept it?”

Harry frowned, flexing his fingers within Draco’s. “I didn’t know you had to accept a Wizard’s Debt–” he awkwardly began.

Draco’s animated features began to shut down again, like a slamming door that closed Harry out, and he began to withdraw.

Harry gripped the other boy’s fingers more tightly. “I – I want to, though,” he stammered quickly, when he saw that Draco still looked doubtful. “If you do, I mean.”

“It’s true that you don’t have to,” Draco said, and it was as though all of the arrogance and awkwardness had been stripped away from him, leaving him at his most essential self. Harry, noting that Draco’s wand was nowhere to be found, found himself gripped with the certainty that this magic was more ancient than wands. “It – formalizes the debt, however,” Draco finished quietly.

Harry nodded firmly, a motion which was echoed by the blond Slytherin a half-beat later. Then, Draco began to chant:

“In waking or sleeping, in silence or speech; in pain and in pleasure and hope out of reach; in defeat and in triumph, in peace and in strife; I give you this hand in return for my life.”

Harry gasped as his scar flared to life, attempting to pull away from Draco’s grasp, but that pale hand held firm. After a moment, he came to himself, and realized that Draco had his free hand clasped firmly over his forearm, hissing with pain. “Take your hand off!” Harry gasped, slowly removing his own free hand from his scar.

Draco lifted his shaking hand away. The Dark Mark was writhing, hissing. “No bindings can be made,” it said in Parseltongue, “save with the one who made me.”

“Fuck off,” Harry said, surprised when that translated quite admirably into Parseltongue. That odd instinct on the pitch, the one that told him to protect Draco from the Mark, was rearing like a snake itself, rearing to strike. “I’m stronger than the one who made you.” It was Gryffindor, running full-tilt on sheer instinct and not thinking what lay ahead; but the snake within the skull paused, hissed uncertainly, black tongue tasting the air.

“This one has a connection to me already,” Harry said, knowing it was true, “and I am stronger than the one who made you. You will go to sleep, and wait for him.”

The snake eyed him balefully, but when Harry hissed a challenge, it darted back into the skull, peering at him through the Mark’s empty eye sockets. Abruptly, Harry felt a tugging like that which preceded the use of a Portkey, just behind his navel, and gasped. His first thought was that somehow the snake had managed to defy he and Draco, and was taking them directly to Voldemort.

Oh. Instead, a brilliant filament shot from Draco to himself and back again. Each thwarted Obscura became a thin, spindly, shimmering line, shining with the color of the moon; Draco rescuing Harry from the Chamber was a dense and coolly glowing cord as thick as Harry’s thumb, traveling from Draco’s head to Harry’s heart. There were dozens of more mundane connections, including especially brilliant ones that occasionally thrummed with darkness: their first encounter on the Hogwarts Express, the half-dozen times Draco had called Hermione 'Mudblood' to her face, the Remembrall incident… The Inquisitorial Squad was a dark, pulsing rope the size of Harry’s rescue from the Chamber. Every ephemeral connection between he and Draco had become visible, concrete, the bindings of fate and choice made physical.
Harry’s Imperio, their conversation on the Quidditch pitch about Harry’s friends, their entire history up until this moment was in the whipping strands of light, and there was as much darkness and prejudice and rage as there was kindness and casual acceptance, and tentative understanding. Harry saw his own confusion reflected in Draco’s eyes, and smiled what he hoped was a comforting smile.

Draco’s breath caught for a moment before he licked his lips and nodded jerkily in return. The entire mass of cords wrapped around their still-clasped hands, shining in a way that reminded Harry of Wormtail’s glove. He shook his head to rid it of the memory, swallowing past his fear.

The cords sank into their hands and the light died, leaving Harry blinking in the sudden, moonlit dark.

“Wow,” he said.

Draco flexed his fingers and tugged, but their hands remained welded together.

“Uhm,” Harry continued, feeling less than articulate.

“It should be fine in a moment.” Draco flexed his fingers again, then laced them back through Harry’s. “What did you say to the Mark?”

Harry shrugged. “I told it I had more hold on you than Vol – than the Dark – than Him.”

“Call my Master whatever you like.”

“I thought only I got that title,” Harry joked weakly. “Anyway, I basically told it that our connection was stronger.”

Draco snorted, but his eyes were downcast and his shoulders slumped. “I thought so, too.”

Harry eyed Draco with concern. “Listen, I’ve been a real prat, you know? Ron’s so brilliant, I should just do as he says–”

“I think we’ve both had enough of obeying people for a lifetime, wouldn’t you agree?” Draco tonelessly returned.

Harry frowned. “You remember those – those lines. I was – I was still thinking of you with the dark half. I thought you’d be happy to have it, the Mark, but I’m – look, you can hit me, okay? I might feel better if you hit me.”

Draco scanned him up and down, as if considering such a thing, then shrugged and turned to look out the window again.

Harry tugged on Draco’s arm, suddenly thankful for the still-working spell. He tugged Draco’s hand into his lap, wrapping his other hand around it as well. The added contact caused the other boy to turn to look at him, really look at him instead of just stare through him, and Harry was grateful.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve been a jerk, I know it. Just – can’t you forgive me? Maybe? Someday?”

Draco’s expression shifted slowly from blank to hurt. “I…”

Harry waited anxiously, eyes wide and trained on Draco’s features.

“I just turned into one of your worst nightmares. I should have known you’d react like you did. I guess I did know,” he added disjointedly, eyes trained on Harry’s hands enveloping his own. “I’m not angry at you for that,” he finally said in a small voice. “I think I’m angry for an irrational reason.”

“An irrational reason? You?” Harry joked, but his voice was as quiet as the other boy’s.

Draco nodded miserably. “When I was getting the Mark, I – I called for you.”

“You – what?”

“I called,” Draco repeated, shivering, not meeting Harry’s eyes.

Harry scooted a bit closer and draped Draco’s blanket around him.

The blond boy didn’t even seem to notice Harry had done anything, and after a brief moment, the disregarded blanket slid down the small of Draco’s back and pooled there. “He was there, he was coming, and all I could think of was that –” He swallowed before continuing. “That maybe I could call you, like I did when you were in the Chamber, and–”

“Oh,” Harry said, his throat tight. “Oh, no.” Guilt twisted inside his gut, even as he realized that he never knew, that he could not have known, he thought of Draco calling for him, waiting for him, waiting for someone who would never come, who would never save him.

“I told you, it’s not your fault,” Draco choked out. “It’s just irrational–”

Harry shook his head. “It’s – yeah, but I’m still so sorry–”

“Stop apologizing, Potter, it’s not necessary–”

“It doesn’t matter!” Harry exclaimed. “I’m still – Draco – I’m so sorry I wasn’t there–”

“Will you stop that!” Draco shouted.

Harry felt tears prick the back of his eyes. “S-sorry…”

Draco’s free hand was gripping the edge of Harry’s sleeve so tightly that his fingers were showing even whiter at the knuckles. His breathing was harsh and quick, and his eyes were hidden by his fringe as he hung his head. “I… order you… to stop… apologizing.”

Harry shook his head. “Not until you accept my apology,” he said, but very quietly. “Now, look at me.” He moved his hands, found he could separate them, now, from Draco’s, although a thin silver line seemed to be stretching out between the two of them, connected at the center of their palms. He set those hands against Draco’s shoulders and shifted the other boy so that they were face-to-face. He thrust all of his earnest nature into and behind his words, gripping Draco’s shoulders hard enough to bruise.

Draco’s face lifted slowly, his features set in hard lines, and his eyes glinting.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said.

“Stop it,” Draco whispered, but his eyes were glinting with more than ire, and the fight had gone out of his voice.

“I’m sorry, Draco. I can’t imagine what that was like.”

The other boy’s lower lip began to tremble and he tore away from Harry’s grasp. Draco laughed wildly, tears in his voice. “Are you happy, now, Potter? You’ve seen Draco Malfoy have an hysterical fit. All right? Satisfied?”

Harry gaped. “No!” He gulped, wondering if he were going to regret this, but already not caring. He shifted his grip on Draco’s shoulders and drew him in.

Draco stiffened into his arms, going cold and silent as a statue, stunned out of his tears. The moment passed beyond what Harry allowed the other boy for shock, but Draco neither relaxed nor withdrew. It was as though the Slytherin were completely ignorant of the gesture.

Harry thought it might help if he added a soothing motion, so he ran his hand across one of Malfoy’s shoulders, rubbing gently. After another moment and an uncertain twitch, the tension went out of Draco in a rush of expelled air, and his breathing became irregular again. Slowly, he began to return the pressure of Harry’s embrace, but that pressure quickly became uncomfortable; Draco began to grip his shoulders so hard that Harry feared he would have fingerprint-shaped bruises in the morning.

He ignored that, mumbled the inanities that seemed to help Hermione when she was like this, while shudders shook the Slytherin boy’s frame, a trembling so violent Harry could only hang on tight. He wasn’t even certain Malfoy was crying – he seemed in a sort of despair-induced seizure. Tears became apparent in the wet slowly seeping through Harry’s robes, and Draco’s fingers relaxed their hold ever-so-slightly. The other boy’s breathing slowed and, with a shuddering gasp, he slowly drew away from Harry, his grey eyes wide and his face bright pink. “Merlin,” he swore quietly, looking frightened of his own outburst. His eyes caught briefly on to Harry’s, then slid away to that infernal middle-distance again. “Merlin.”

Harry clamped down on the usual and infinitely stupid question ‘are you okay?’ and attempted to ground Draco with the force of his will alone.

Draco shook him off almost absently. “That was – I haven’t ever–”

“You haven’t ever what?”

“I mean, I haven’t – I haven’t broke down.”

Harry sighed. “We all do it sometime.”

“Malfoys don’t cry,” he continued wonderingly. “We stomp and scream and throw temper tantrums. Occasionally we set things on fire. But we do not cry.” He took a deep breath and whooshed it out experimentally, looking far more alert and alive than he had all evening.

“Which may be why Malfoys are often rich, and powerful, and occasionally deranged,” Harry tacked on, somewhat thrown, himself.

Draco turned to his bed only to find the blanket that had fallen from his shoulders; he seemed surprised to find it there. After a moment’s rearrangement, he slid beneath the covers, Harry rising briefly to accommodate him.

Harry gave in to the inevitable question. “You all right, then?” He frowned. “We all right?”

“There would have been nothing you could have done, anyway,” Draco replied slowly, as though realizing this himself, for the first time. His cheeks and eyes were still bright with tears, and his fair hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. “You just would’ve gotten killed. I think that would’ve made me even more miserable than this.”

“Sortis,” Harry murmured, and the Slytherin’s hair shifted off his brow and arranged itself neatly.

For a moment Draco blinked up at him sleepily, an unreadable expression on his features, his grey eyes wide and uncharacteristically solemn. A burst of confusion, loneliness and wariness exploded from within him, then emanated from him like heat.

“I have to go back to Gryffindor sometime, Draco. You know, to sleep.” Harry was halfway through his statement before he realized that Draco hadn’t said anything to him – no… he was feeling the other boy. He closed his eyes briefly, focusing on the dark waters that were Draco’s consciousness, brought himself close enough to stir the surface.

What he felt for Draco was still a jumble. Each emotion crowded his thoughts until he felt nearly overwhelmed by them; then he relinquished them to Draco’s mind as a child sets small paper boats out onto the sea: first, his anger, the way something lit under him every time Draco Malfoy entered the room. Then, the wary respect he had felt as Draco’s slave, the tentative friendliness that had worked in them both. He thought of the way he would feel whenever he managed to coax a smile from the taciturn Slytherin, thought about how Draco’s tendency to repress amusement made Harry feel even more triumphant when he managed to make the other boy smile, or, once in a while, laugh in startled delight.

Harry tried to keep his thoughts simple and ordered, but he found that after mere moments he could no longer let each thought set sail and drift towards Draco – everything came at once, a veritable flood of information: his confusion, his horror over the Mark (which he had not meant to convey at all), his growing affection for Draco despite – because of? – his many foibles, and above all else a guilty twinge about his own recent actions and a protective streak surprising in its ferocity.

Harry cut the flow of information abruptly, gasping with the effort and with the suddenness of the sensation.

“Oh,” Draco said aloud, his voice sounding faraway. His eyes were closed, and Harry was no longer so sure that he was completely awake anymore. “Oh. Good.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, then?” Harry said, feeling a bit out of his depth.

“Mmmgh,” Draco replied into his pillow.

If it had been a whisper, Harry could have pretended that he hadn’t heard, but it was not a whisper that carried across the Hospital Wing to the door where Harry stood.

Thank you...

As exhausted as Draco was, Harry was unsure whether Draco had meant to convey that last, or not. Good night, he replied, firmly thinking the words.

Harry was careful not to click the door too hard against the frame on his way out.