Author's Note: Had this on my livejournal for awhile…I should update that thing more often…
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Pain potions were a metaphorical double-edged sword.
Of course you didn't feel pain after fracturing a collarbone, dislocating a wrist, shattering a shin or anything like that.
At the same time you didn't feel anything. You hardly could keep your eyes open, and everything sounded as though you were deep under the Great Lake.
The room even resembled the lake. It was enmeshed in darkness, and Angelina was floating in inky waves of the evening. Her only beacon, her only guide was a wax candle burning quietly in the corner of the room.
Between the whirlpools of exhaustion, there was only Madam Pomfrey.
It was still night.
It was one of her brief intermissions of consciousness. The candle flickered and she was thinking, or at least she was trying.
Angelina was...
She was...
Angelina was dreaming--she thinks--about gnomes with wings and a rather disturbing encounter with a Dementor, when he entered--she thinks.
That was another thing about the potions. You never knew if anything before your eyes were actually happening. It was Montague standing before the doorway.
She wasn't completely lucid, it could be...
"Johnson."
She tried to swallow but found nothing to swallow and instead tried to push back the sheets. He watched, silent as the candle.
"Stay there." He inched closer until he was at her side. Then he didn't move. He only looked. Coherent thoughts couldn't quite come to her but she suspected he was admiring his "work".
She didn't even feel her hand in his. Potions.
His lips lightly brush against her knuckles. She could feel that. His eyes darker than a pit of tar. She could feel those.
He was an animal, a beast.
He was kissing her.
It wasn't clear, but maybe it was his way of apologizing. For what, she still didn't know. However, what she did know was that this was bothering her now.
The shadows eerily danced around his face. He was a shadow, a trick. Something she couldn't tangibly touch.
A Slytherin.
She attempted to move her lips, but nothing came out. A few more seconds and the creakiness of her voice surprised her.
"Don't worry about it. It's no big deal.", she tried to sound like it wasn't, and she failed miserably. It was. It was. It was! What made it even more so a "big deal" was the possibility that this was the work of her subconscious.
He was staring again.
"Madam Pomfrey should be coming back any moment now." A simple hint. He should get that much. He should understand that. Or was there something she didn't understand?
He should, but whether he did she would never know. With pain potions you never knew until it was too late.
Without even looking away from her, he edged back the entrance and simply shut the door.
"Well we should get started then."