Title: Unseen Threads
Author: mintapotter
Overview: Harry's seeing and hearing things he's not supposed to, and the unseen consequences could be higher then anyone expected.
SLASH! Guy/Guys! If you no likee, you no readee.
A/N: I had an insane amount of fun writing this...anyway, the reviewer 'i love yous' are at the bottom and...
Please Enjoy!
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Chapter 21- Punch
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The room is an eerie white colour, barely lit enough to see everythings shape and form. Crystal balls filled with a soft glowing light are what illuminate the room, casting strange shadows acrossDraco'sbody. No sound penetrates the room from the outside, no dust can be seen floating through the air.
I watched Draco breathe in and out for what seems like ages, taking in his form.
Whoever had done this to him had it coming.
His eyes were closed but fluttering underneath the lids as though he were still awake or in a horrific nightmare. A purple and blue bruise adorned the right side of his forehead; his lips were cracked and dry, bleeding in the middle. I realized, slowly, that he was floating off the bed. The hospital whites he was wearing were floating just off his skin, not making contact anywhere along his body. His hair barely touched his pillow; his hand wasn't quite lying on the mattress beneath him. He seemed perfectly suspended, nothing touching him and he touching nothing in return. It seemed frivolous, stupid even. Why would anyone need that?
But he was sick, that was plain as day. His skin seemed waxy with a thin sheen of sweat covering it, tiny blue veins crisscrossing his arms stark against the paleness of his skin. Everything had gone horribly, horribly wrong since when I had left in the morning.
"Harry? When'd you get here?"
His gray eyes were watery and pink, like he had been crying before I had walked in. I hadn't noticed him opening them, but I did notice the hoarseness in his whisper.
"Just now. I got back from the Manor, I found…" I realized that what I found had no relevance in my life in comparison to Draco. In a matter of minutes my priorities had shifted back to where they should have been the entire time; Draco comes first. That stupid box was just that; a stupid box. "I just got here and I don't know what's going on, love. I had no clue that you were so sick."
"Neither did I." He smiles sadly, licking his dry and chapped lips. "Ever since I got here it just keeps getting worse and I'm sorry but…I'm dying Harry."
"Don't say that." I chastise quietly, reaching for his hand and squeezing it tightly.
But Draco does not,
want me,
to touch him.
He rips his hand away and cradles it with his other hand, not quite touching them either. His head tilts back in a spasm of pain, the muscles in his neck stretching in agony. His mouth is open but he won't make a sound, a silent scream leaving his mouth. I recoil as though burned before the Healer, Anne, rushes in.
"I should have told you, no touching! None!" she wants to yell at me but she doesn't make a sound more than an angry whisper. She coaxes Draco to let her look at his hand even though tears are flowing quite steadily down his face. Her locks his jaw and lets her look at it, her fingers barely brushing his skin. She finishes with it and Draco closes his eyes again, breathing more raggedly and faster than before. She turns away at last, and looks at me.
"The bones are most likely snapped and we don't expect it to heal up any time soon, but he'll live. Please come with me."
I can feel my stomach churning; I broke Draco's hand. I squeezed his hand, not even that hard and I broke the bones. Crushed them. I hurt, him. I hurt him.
"I'm sorry." I whisper over my shoulder to him and he nods before Anne pulls me back through the doorway, back into a land with sound and dust and people who could touch. I didn't understand.
"I didn't mean to, I didn't know-"
"I know that, I was going to tell you before I was called away. But now that you're here, you have to know some things."
She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, leading me by the shoulder to a bench under a portrait of a snoozing Healer. She has long reddish hair and kind brown eyes but even Anne seems frazzled, a person normally in control now out of it.
She smiles at me though.
"Your friend in there, Mr. Malfoy, he was the first to come in. That's why he's room 1, all of the patients are numbered. A whole family came in right after him though, 6 of them, and then another batch of 5 at about 2 this afternoon. Since then it's been a steady flow every hour, whole groups or people all alone coming in with the same problem."
All I can think of is 'which is?' but if I open my mouth now I think I'll vomit. I stay silent.
"They all seem to suffer from hypersensitivity. Anything too loud hurts their ears, light burns their eyes, touch," she sighs again. "bruises and breaks things. Smells make them cough up their lungs if they do it long enough, food either makes them feel as though starving or so full that they'll burst."
"Why can't you just fix it?" I cut in, my voice still a whisper since Draco's room. "Why didn't you give him something for the pain?" I remember that she handed him nothing, preformed no spell on his hand. Draco is shivering alone in his room right now, nursing crushed bones with nothing and nobody to help him.
This is wrong.
"We've tried absolutely everything. We're taking Healers from all the departments, we're flying in Healers from all over and we still can't stop it. We tried doing a Muffling Spell on case 17's ears to keep the sound from bothering him, but I turned him deaf by accident. Case number 2 had the most problems with pain from walking all day, her feet were split open. And we gave her a potion for the pain, but it numbed her so much that she just sort of…slipped away. They're both dead. So are another 4 of them, since they've all arrived. They all just keep getting worse and we don't know what to do to stop it."
I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I can feel the blood rushing through my veins, into my brain, but it's not working. Case 2, case 17, they're dead. So are another 4 nameless people. Maybe a family. Maybe children. They're gone. The Healers can't help. They're all doomed.
"I'm dying Harry."
Draco really is dying.
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask eventually, the last question I can spit up. My throat aches and I'm going to break soon, I know it. I have to cry for him, for the unfairness of it all. Anne doesn't notice me and smiles weakly, smoothing the wrinkles from her lime green robes in vain.
"We've heard a lot about you lately in the news Mr. Potter. You've been seeing things, or hearing things, or something, and we're hoping that maybe you'd understand what's going on here. We don't know what's causing it, or why, or how to prevent it or treat it for that matter. Do you…know anything about this?"
I laugh, and then have to bite my tongue from screaming at her. I'm being counted on to save all these people, fast, and I have no idea what's going on. I'm less equipped mentally than any of the Healers and yet I'm their last hope.
I'm the savior that can't fucking save a thing. Even something I love.
"Well, I don't know what's going on, and I don't have a solution. I'm sorry. I can't help."
I stand up and leave, walking past all the newly numbered rooms. They're each distinctive from the regular rooms by the large black numbers beside their frames. They go all the way up to 23.
23 people. 6 dead.
Draco's dying.
I can see the Weasley's in the lobby, Lupin, Tonks, Dumbledore, all gathered to a section of it.
Grieving family members litter the other seats, grieving for other people. Number 17. Case 2.
None of them notice me or my scar. The Order see me coming, Hermione looks up from her knitting. They look normal, everyday. To them, this is mundane. Ron's playing a card game with the twins. He looks at me once, and then back at the game. McGonagall is here, reading over some sheet of parchment with Dumbledore. She doesn't see me coming. To them, this is nothing new. It's just another death, not like Mrs. Weasley's.
Draco's life is worth less to them. Worth less.
Worthless.
Draco's dying. I hurt him. I wanted to help, but I hurt him.
"I'm dying Harry."
I slide down the nearest wall, and I cry. I sob. I pull off my glasses and put them down somewhere nearby, the floor. The tightness in my throat makes it hurt to sob, to breathe. It should hurt more. My chest aches, my heart hurts. My tears are hot this time, I can feel them burning down my face, feel them wet my hands. I can't explain this, this is sorrow.
"I'm dying Harry."
I'm sorry.
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Dumbledore doesn't need to tell us to move Harry. He doesn't have to alert us that he's crying. Well nobody had to tell me. I can tell when these things are about to happen and as soon as I saw Harry coming towards us in the lobby, I knew it was coming.
On that first sob, the clink of his glasses on the floor, I was already up to help Harry. I knew it was coming, I just expecting something else.
I was expecting cold indifference. Silence. Shock. No tears, no words, none of this. I expecting him to close up and shrivel up and stop caring again. Like he did with me. Like he did with my Mother.
But oh no, over Draco, he would cry.
"Come on Harry, up." I mumble this to him even though he's in a faraway place where he can't hear me. I pull him from under his arms and follow Dumbledore to an empty room across the hallway, number 17. The bubble lights and silence other than Harry seems too intimate, but we have nowhere else private to go. Nobody follows us in but Hermione. She shuts the door as I sit Harry down on the bed, his sobs subsiding into shakes.
"I…I can't do this anymore." He croaks eventually, wiping the back of his hand across his faceroughly to try and wipe away the tears.
"Do what Harry?" I ask first, ignoring Dumbledore and Hermione. They can wait.
"This." He cries, gesturing at the room surrounding us. "This death, this me supposed to fix things. I can't do it anymore I won't! I'm sick of dealing with it! And it's always, always my fault and no one will hear me out when I say that but it's true! And I won't do it anymore, I won't…"
More tears leak through his eyelashes; they're plastered together in little peaks making his green eyes all rimmed in red the only thing I can notice of his face. He's hurting now, more than ever before but I don't know why. Why him, why Malfoy?
"It's not your fault Harry-" Dumbledore tried to cut in but Harry stands up off the bed and the vehemence behind his words seems to drown out even the Headmasters.
"But it IS! It is, and I know it! Everyone I care about, they get hurt. Ron and Hermione, all the Weasley's, all my friends…they all get hurt! All of them! You can't name a person I care about without something caused by me that harmed them! And they die too, Cedric died! He would never have died if I hadn't told him to take the cup!"
Harry stops to breathe, but no one cuts in this time. He seems to deflate the more he talks though, receding back to sit on the edge of the bed, tears falling down his face again.
"And those that I love, my parents, and Sirius…I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop it either. And Mrs. Weasley, I couldn't stop that either. And Draco, the one person I managed to save; now he's dying too." He shakes his head and throws his hands into the air, a look of defeat.
Harry Potter's giving up.
"And I can't help him now. I can't do a fucking thing."
"You stuck Draco in the wrong category mate." I murmur, his head downcast, eyes invisible behind the sheet of his hair. But slowly he shakes his head no.
"No, he's in the right category. And don't try and tell me otherwise or I'll really lose it."
"Harry, you can't possibly mean that you love-" Hermione starts in but I already know what I don't want to. I know that he's not lying, not crying over nothing.
This can't be happening.
"Yes I mean it and don't even think about telling me the rules about this, alright? I already know everything that comes with this, and it doesn't change a thing. You can't change this. I love him. I just do."
I can see light spreading through the room from the doorway openeing and realize all too late that Dumbledore has left. Hermione keeps shaking her head but she turns and leaves too, closing the door slowly and obviously believing that I'll follow. I stay, and watch Harry cry more and more into his hands.
I walk right up while he's looking down, and punch him square in the jaw.
His head snaps back so perfectly, his body colliding into the bed at just the right angle to make it look like it hurt that I'm happy with just that one punch.
"Harry Potter, that guy I used to call a friend. Whatever happened to him? Now he's just the fucking faggot savior of nothing and nobody."
He looks up, his green eyes tormented and tearing and I want to rip them out, but the sight of him wiping the scarlet blood flowing out of his mouth and down his chin away with his sleeve is enough. For now.
I leave him in that room, bleeding, dazed, depressed, whatever. He's a nothing and a nobody to me now; I've got no strings left to attach me to him.
He's completely, and utterly, alone.
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A/N: Alrighty...you already know that I love you, but here it is again...: Yellow Bird, Megalicious Moony, brionyjae, MimiTaylor, &krippity ! Thank you SO much, please keep reviewing!
Luv,
mintapotter!