A bit of a tragedy with a happy ending coming up :)
Written for prompts: promise, time
And it's Drarry, because those two don't know when to stop being cute and writable.
Promise Me Time
When it happens, there is no flash of light, no scream to break the silence, no pain. There is a strange sort of ringing, a certain slowness to the air, as if everything is happening too fast and too slowly at the same time.
Time.
Everything they didn't have.
And there are hands. Large hands. Not rough enough, not warm enough, the nails not bitten in a horrible, unbreakable habit, bearing no scars. Wearing gloves, but not Quidditch gloves. Wrong, so wrong. And they are holding him back, gripping and grabbing and fueling his rage, his urgency, to get there. To be there. To help him.
And the ringing starts to fade, and the silence starts to get swallowed by noises, by screams. Someone is screaming, after all. Everything seems brighter. Everything smells stronger. Everything is sharper than before. Before…
It's probably the adrenaline, pulsing through his veins, pumping in his blood, so useless now because there is no one to protect anymore. No one to breathe for and no one to tell jokes to and no one to trust and love and live with. No one else.
Draco stops struggling as they carry the body out. His body. So familiar, so warm and soft and hard and those hands and that voice and his eyes. Draco will never see those eyes again.
He lets out a wail of pain as the medics rush through the crowd of Aurors, trying to find someone to heal, someone to cure, and he screams again, shouts at them, because he's not the one who needs to be healed, to be cured, to be saved. He's fine.
Except maybe not, because the lights are too bright and the noises too loud and too many people in their house, in their home, where they drink their tea and tell each other stories and hold and kiss and share their lives with each other. Maybe not, because everything starts to become darker and darker, and a sharp pain that barely registers through all the other pain – oh merlin he's-
He wakes up strapped to a hospital bed in a white room with many monitors glowing above his chest.
His wand is nowhere to be seen.
His eyes search the walls for a clock, but he doesn't find one and there's no way to tell the time-
Time. Again, he gets the feeling that he's out of time. Maybe if he-
A Healer comes in, wearing traditional white with her name pinned to the only pocket in the robe and her hair strapped in a tight bun, cheekbones cutting through the air as she approaches Draco, apprentice in toe taking notes and looking out of sorts.
"Welcome back, Mr. Malfoy. It's good to see you awake," she says.
The apprentice taps the back of a muggle pen against the nightstand beside Draco's bed and starts scribbling more furiously now that he's abandoned the magical writing device. Must be muggle-born, to prefer non-magical means of writing.
Draco wants to get up, but his hands are strapped to the bed. He looks at the Healer, who looks back at him for a few seconds before drawing her wand and spelling the restraints away. Draco takes the time to rub his scuffed wrists before he remembers that there's no point anymore, and slowly lets his hands lower to the bed.
"Luckily for you, you seem to have sustained no physical injuries aside from a slight bruising on your left thigh," the Healer continues, but Draco barely hears her. Barely sees her. All he sees are those green, green eyes looking back at him with horror seconds before-
Tick-tick.
Draco's eyes fly to the apprentice, who seems to have pressed the back of his pen again to change the color of his ink.
Tick-tick.
"Would you stop that?" Draco snaps, startling the apprentice out of his focus.
The apprentice shoots a glance at the Healer, who dismisses him from the room with a quick, "Go help Healer Toeffus with his patient, Mr. Adams."
The apprentice scowls, but scats off without argument.
"Mr. Malfoy-" the Healer starts, but Draco cuts her off.
"Leave me alone!" he growls at her.
She blanches. "I don't think you underst-"
"I wish to be discharged now. Where to I have to sign?" he interrupts her again. He doesn't want to hear what she has to say. He doesn't want to hear anyone, anymore, if he can't hear his voice again.
Oh, merlin, what if he forgets-
"Very well, Mr. Malfoy. I'll be back with the paperwork shortly," the Healer says and leaves the room.
Draco leans back in his bed, staring at the boring white ceiling, trying to think of nothing at all. He is afraid that, if he does think, he would think of summers spent in countless fields of yellow, and winters spent snuggled together at the ratty, battered sofa he never liked, and of lazy mornings so close together they barely had enough space to breathe-
Three knocks on the glass door separating his room from the rest of the ward yank him from the flush of memories drowning him and his eyes snap up to see his visitor.
"The Healer told me you're awake," she says, and Draco notices how red her eyes are from crying. It looks like someone tried to apply make up on it, but smudged it again with new tears. "They had to tie you down last time you came to, because you tried to strangle the Healer."
"Granger," he spits. The last face he wants to see right now. It reminds him of him.
"I'm so sorry," she chokes on her words, a fresh round of tears collecting at the edges of her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. "I heard what happened from Ron. They sent him to identify-" she swallows. "You were unconscious, so he…"
"Leave," he says, simple as that, voice devoid of any emotion.
"Don't tell me to leave. I'm not leaving you alone. Ha-" she sobs, "Harr-ry made me promise I won't, if a- anything ever happened to h-him."
Draco lets the tips of his blunt fingernails bite into the fleshy skin of his palm.
"I want him back. I want him back. And I'm sure you want him back even mo-"
"Why are you doing this?" Draco cries out, his hands coming to cover his ears, pull at his own hair, something else to focus on, anything but those words-
"-re, so I brought this," she fumbles around in her bottomless purse and pulls out a long, gleaming object. "I stole it. From work. I had to."
His eyes widen and he lets his hands drop. It's a-
"A time-turner. The only one," Granger says, her voice dropping to a whisper, eyes darting to the glass door to check if anyone's listening. She looks deeply into his eyes. "I promised," she repeats, firmer.
Draco is at a loss for words. He gapes at the long, golden string of the necklace, at the shiny hour-glass of the pendant.
"Does Weasley know?" he asks, because he has to. Because if this is a joke, if this is a prank, he doesn't think he can handle it. Because Weasley is an Auror, just like- And if he catches scent of his fiancée stealing a time-turner, he would have to report it and- and-
She shakes her head. "Ron doesn't- I haven't told him anything."
Draco lets out a shallow breath.
"So you have to- have you ever-"
"I know how it works, Granger."
"Right," she says, looking out of breath herself. "Right."
She puts the time-turner in his hands, closing his fingers around it.
"Bring him back," she says.
Draco looks up, catching her eyes, so brown and so broken. He wonders if his eyes look the same right now, or just look empty, like he feels. So empty.
"Yes," he says, because there was nothing else he could say. No other answer to her plea, to her command, to giving him what he needs, what he wants, to giving back those bursts of laughter and that low, rumbling purr every time Draco let his fingers trail through the messy, untamable black hair and long hours listening to him breathe and afternoons spent casually bickering over nothing at all. Everything.
Granger nods sharply and stands up. "It's Tuesday," she tells him. "It's a quarter past three in the afternoon. You have to turn it thirty seven times, just to be on the safe side. Thirty seven."
Then she leaves.
Draco looks at the object in his hands.
He spares a glance at the glass door, making sure no one is about to come bursting into the room.
He pulls the string over his head, around his neck, wearing the time-turner and holding on for dear life.
He starts turning.