Harry's heart was beating so hard and so fast that he could feel it bound against the confines within his chest.
He just had to try it. It was the perfect opportunity.
Blood rushed to his head, hishearing gradually seemed to fade away, his breath slowed, and all he could feel was the deliciously numbing energizing adrenaline shoot throughout his body. Starting from his heart, to his head, all the way to his cold fingertips, and down to his toes.
Harry hid behind a bathroom stall partition and kept an eye on a fragment of mirror that reflected what was ahead of him in a way that he didn't have to stick his head out.
There was a pause in the fighting for a moment and all that could be heard were the sounds of broken pipes with clear water bubbline out of them in the bathroom.
A flash of silver made Harry freeze. He instinctively reacted and brought himself confidently out of cover with his wand raised. The curse was already on the tip of his tongue and ready to spill out of his mouth. Draco stepped out as if in slow motion raising his wand and ready to curse him as well, but Harry was faster.
"Sectumsempra!" Harry yelled aiming at Draco and anticipating the effects of the curse.
There was a flash of light that temporarily blinded Harry. He heard a sound like knives being unsheathed and a pained yell. A pungent tang of blood suddenly flooded the air and Harry froze. His heart plummeted to the floor and when his vision returned, he could see Malfoy lying there on the flooded bathroom floor in front of him.
Blood bloomed in bright red splotches on his rumpled white shirt. Blood seeped into the clear water he was lying in and slowly began to creep out towards Harry as if trying to draw him in.
Harry all of the sudden felt cold and found himself unable to move. Draco moaned and he opened his glassy bloodshot eyes to look at Harry for a brief moment.
His face was twisted with pain that was slowly starting to fade away due to the natural endorphins being produced. Underneath that there was self-deprecation and a sneer in the shadows of his eyes and the curves of his lips.
But they were emotions that Harry' didn't understand at the moment.
Draco's eyes closed and his body relaxed as his consciouness faded. Blood was still seeping through his clothes, still spreading out into the water.
A dark figure stepped in to the bathroom and critically eyed everything. From the broken mirriors to the water flooding the floor and finally to Harry standing there stone still with Draco lying between them.
There was silence as the two locked eyes.
Harry looked away and without another word half blindly stumbled away from the scene. There was nothing he could say.
Snape remained silent as he watched Potter disappear in haste. Then when the boy was gone, he took out his own wand and knelt next to the unconscious student.
This situation was ridiculous.
He lightly touched the tip of his wand to Draco's chest and began to mutter a healing charm over and over again like a mantra until the wounds were gone and there was no trace of blood.
Like father like son.
Snape stood up ignoring the water dripping from his clothes and muttered a charm that gently lifted Draco up into the air.
There was that hate but there was another emotion as well. Something that he was reluctant to identify. He had thought this the first time he laid eyes on the boy. Snape carefully charmed Draco's body out of the bathroom into the hallway and slowly made his way to the hospital wing.
Those eyes.
He could setill feel a dull ache deep inside of his chest. The feeling was too familiar, almost welcome.
The halls were empty, devoid of any students or noise except for the quiet thudding of his shoes against the hard stone floors of the castle. Draco let out a moan but remained unconscious. Snape glanced at his student but didn't stop walking careful to keep him afloat.
Boys, he thought to himself in what was almost disdain, boys...
The people in the paintings that were hung up on the walls quietly and curiously watched as the professor walked past them with an unconscious student charmed to float in front of him.
Why did it have to be Harry Potter? He asked himself again ignoring the scandalized looks on the faces of the people in the paintings. The boy's green eyes appeared in his mind again...why did it have to be Lily?
...
It didn't take long for Harry to get rid of the book. Hermione and Ron didn't say much as they watched the pages blacken and curl eventually smoldering orange and turning to ash. They didn't try to stop Harry from going to his bed either and only watched in silence as he made his way up the stairs and disappeared behind the doors.
Was this the first time that he had actually spilled blood? And all for the sake of testing out a spell he had been overeager to use.
Harry threw himself onto his bed and turned over onto his back to look up at the ceiling. His fingers were still tingling and cold from the situation that had occurred only moments ago. He couldn't erase that look on Malfoy's face right before the Slytherin had lost consciousness.
What had he done.
It had just escalated so quickly.
Harry closed his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. Too much had happened today. He needed to sleep. Maybe that would help him organize his thoughts for the day to come.
Draco's half sneer half grimace surfaced in Harry's mind once more. Every detail was perfectly clear. The bloodshot and glassy eyes staring up at him, the tang of blood, the contrast between white and red.
If he thought that Malfoy hated him before all of this, he was sure that after this, no amount of extra lives for Harry could possibly do anything to abate the anger he was sure that Malfoy would be stewing in.
And for a brief moment, he felt a little scared.