A/N:
Prompt: Tinikling Dance of the Philippines; write about a character who shows grace to someone who doesn't deserve it
Word Count: 1616
Poppy Pomfrey has always known what others need. It's what makes her so perfect for her job. She can look at a child's crooked arm and tell exactly which bone will need repairing, or a shadowed bruise and know precisely the cause of it. Even a student free of any scratch can harbor some internal injury, not always physical, and it is those that Poppy is best at.
When a Slytherin first-year walks into the Hospital Wing on the very first day of the school year, Poppy can tell immediately that the bruising on his eye is not fresh.
"What's your name?" she asks gently, placing two fingers into a jar of salve and gingerly applying it to the boy's swollen skin.
"Lucius." The boy stares at his hands, which rest in his lap. He doesn't look up at Poppy.
As she works, she stares at the boy, taking in his shocking hair. It reminds her of lightning, and she finds her eyes darting up to his locks many times.
"Are you excited for the term?" She peers into his downcast eyes, trying to make light conversation, but the boy merely nods his head, jostling her salve-covered hand as he does so.
Through the years, she's seen many Slytherins like the boy. Cautious, calculating, sizing her up to determine if she is a threat. It breaks her heart to see these children, some as young as eleven, unloved and neglected by their own families. Lucius seems to be no exception, and she moves her hand away, inspecting his eye. She sees the indentation of knuckles near the bottom of his eyebrow, notices the way the bruise is darker in the center. She knows exactly what happened here.
"Lucius. Did someone hurt you?" Her words hang in the air, pressing down on the two of them, and Lucius looks up at her with wide eyes.
"I—" His voice snaps in two, fragile as glass, and he blinks rapidly, trying to will the tears away from his eyes. "No, Madam Pomfrey."
"Are you sure?" Poppy bites her lip anxiously, and Lucius shifts on the crinkling sheets, still not meeting her gaze.
"Yes, Madam Pomfrey."
When she is finished, Lucius scrambles off the cot and out of the room, not bothering with a thank you. It doesn't matter. She knows he would thank her if he had the words.
More children come, laden with injuries of all kinds, but Lucius never returns. Poppy sees him around the castle from time to time, though, and she watches as he grows into a cold, prideful young man. His steps never falter; he no longer speaks without intention, and Poppy knows he has mirrored the person who hurt him all those years ago.
He leaves, just like all the children do. He goes off to a life beyond the castle walls, and for a few years, Poppy forgets all about the young man. There are more children who need her help now.
The next time she sees him, everything has changed. The castle, her castle, is blown apart; bricks and dust and spells are thrown in every direction. Tom Riddle has returned, but Poppy sees that he is not the calm, charismatic boy that once came to her with a broken nose. He is filled, consumed by an evil that Poppy cannot mend, cannot heal. He is darkness personified.
So many of her children return to fight him, and her heart shatters every time she sees one of them fall, watches one of them disappear into the ashes, hears one of them scream. The aftermath is worse—there is no one left unharmed, and Poppy scrambles to reach everyone, enlisting the help of a few gifted students.
She cannot save them all.
Poppy leans back against the wall of the broken Hospital Wing, her brow dotted with sweat and her breathing ragged. She tries to bite back her emotions, but a wave of despair crashes into her. So many dead.
"Madam—Madam Pomfrey?"
A shaking voice alerts Poppy to two figures entering the room. She scrambles to the side of a bedraggled woman and helps her support a tall pale man to an empty cot. She notices the gash on his side right away—it's deep, and will require stitches. The man has lost a lot of blood, and he seems to fade in and out of consciousness.
"Please—please help him." The woman's eyes shine with tears, and Poppy puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry, everything will be—" Suddenly she stops, her words catching in her throat as she looks more closely at the pair. The woman has tangled brown hair laced with strands of silver, and the man has long, bright blond hair that she remembers as clear as day. It is Lucius who sits before her, his sleeves rolled up to reveal a dark skull embedded into his skin.
She immediately steps back, her eyes wide. She cannot do this.
"Madam Pomfrey, please." Narcissa Black—for that was how Poppy had known her back at Hogwarts—clasps her hands together in her lap, staring imploringly into Poppy's eyes with an intensity she has never seen before. "He'll die if you don't help. I can't—I know he doesn't deserve it." Her voice catches and her red-rimmed eyes threaten to spill their tears down her cheeks. "I don't deserve it. None of us do."
Poppy watches Narcissa's tears forge well-traveled paths through the dirt on her face. This man has killed and tortured and destroyed life after life. How can she forgive that?
"We have a son. Perhaps you know him. Draco."
Of course Poppy knows Draco. Her mind flashes back, sifting through memories until she is back in the Great Hall, waiting for another batch of frightened first-years to arrive. Suddenly, the teachers' table floods with hushed conversation: he is here! The Boy-Who-Lived is here!
She finds the boy easily in the crowd, a skinny figure topped with unruly black hair. He looks just like his father, and she remembers fondly all the times she patched up James and his friends.
But there, a few paces next to him, stands a boy that is all too familiar to Poppy.
His white-blond hair that stands sharply against his black robes, and his eyes shift uncomfortably around the Great Hall. Poppy knows exactly who he is and what he's been through. He is a mirror of what his father once was, and Poppy sees it in his eyes.
Draco comes to her for the first time when he is in his third year, arm broken by a careless encounter with a hippogriff. He is screaming, whining like a child, and she quickly becomes annoyed with his antics. She gives him a bone-setting potion, lets him rest on a cot as he grits his teeth. To her surprise, the dramatic act falls the minute everyone leaves. He is brave, and she knows what he has gone through, what he has seen. But she does not speak to the boy, does not ask him if anyone has hurt him. She knows what his answer will be.
Back to the present, Poppy looks at Lucius. She examines the mark on his wrist, the slashes on his face, the cruel twist of his lips. This is not the boy she once knew. But somewhere, somewhere inside him, there is a chance that boy still lives.
He wasn't always this way, Poppy knows. And it's not his fault, what he's become, not really. It's this cycle that they're trapped in, over and over as more and more children bend their pain into weapons.
Mind made up, Poppy takes a cloth and pours some liquid onto it from a bottle on the counter. Gently, she cleanses the unconscious man's wounds. She cannot let him die, no matter how many people he's murdered. This man does not deserve her help, but she will offer it up anyway. For that broken boy with the black eye, she will do it.
Sifting through her potions, she carefully selects one that will numb the patient's side. For that is what he is now: just another patient who needs her help. He is no longer Lucius Malfoy. She cannot think of that name, not now. She must focus.
An hour later and her work is done, her careful stitching winding up the man's side and covered by a clean bandage. He has not yet awoken, but breathes peacefully at his wife's side. He is alive. With luck, he will face justice for his crimes, and it is with that hope that Poppy gives Narcissa a gentle nod.
"He will need to rest for a few days before he is ready to move again." Her words are nearly swallowed in the quiet of the room, but Narcissa nods, her face set. Slowly, she helps Lucius to his feet. As they stumble together toward the doorway, Narcissa turns back to Poppy, who lingers by the hospital bed, clearing away bandages and empty potion bottles.
"Thank you." All signs of vulnerability are gone from Narcissa's face. Poppy gives her a tight smile and a curt nod, trying to convey everything she cannot say out loud.
Then they are gone, and Poppy is alone in the quiet Hospital Wing, the silence constricting around her skin. But in the quiet, she hears the words again.
Thank you.
They are for the little boy with the black eye, she knows, who couldn't say them all those years ago.
And with the words echoing in her head, Poppy stands, taking a deep breath before leaving her wing and out into the dark world ahead of her. There is still much healing to do.