Draco spent his school hours keeping a weather eye cocked for Potter, but he never showed up to any of the lectures, nor did he appear at lunch or supper. It provided him plenty of opportunity to reflect upon his rather rude awakening to the day—and Pomfrey's part in it.
"It is, from what the specialist Healers from St Mungo's, have informed us, Mr Malfoy," Pomfrey had related irritably that early—very early—morning, knocked up and harried out of bed as she was by a demanding and single-minded Slytherin Prefect, "a wholly holistic mind-body magically-based alteration our Harry is experiencing. You will need pay very close attention to his state from now on and take on direct responsibility for his welfare—and the child's. No slip ups allowed, mind you!"
Draco had of course protested that possibility vociferously: it was not he who'd ponced off in a snit and acted like a complete ninny, it was Potter. He was, he assured her frostily, very much taking an avid interest, and had been, cheers, primarily by way of his potion and by means of his repeated attempts at approaching Potter, and had been unrelenting in his pursuit all this boring long while Potter was sulking. Blame, Draco stated clearly, could not be laid solely at his door for this one.
"Hmm, hmph!"
Pomfrey had provided him a dour and doughty glance, from tip to toe, taking in the details of his mussed day-old garb and his improperly tied shoelaces, not missing a single eyeful of the toothily indented bruising Potter had left as a marker just above Draco's wilted collar nor the distinctly loose-limbed manner in which Draco lounged about in one of her office exam chairs as they chatted. And what could he say to that? A good shag did relax him. A bloody brilliant thing it was, too, as Pomfrey was clearly none too happy with Draco and made no bones as to her displeasure.
"I do not agree. And I cannot say, Mr Malfoy, that I approve of your methods, either. However—"
The clinical once-over had turned to become a quite brilliantly fierce and semi-accusatory frown.
"As I was in the midst of telling you, young man, It has been made apparent to us, to both myself and our Headmistress, that you were not unaffected either by the doings of this Castle, our beloved school. Your actions against Harry, grievous though they were, were not all solely of your own devising, or so it has been determined by the specialists at Mungo's. Mr. Malfoy, if I may say it plainly, you may count yourself most fortunate they have bothered themselves to explore further your part in this deb—"
Draco swallowed hard, wrinking his nose in distaste; he absolutely hated that he'd been used, and by a bloody building at that, but then…then again, on the plus side, the results had been quite definitely along the lines of his subconscious desires…or such as he'd been made privy to. His mother had been very talkative as to that particular point: none of this would've happened if he and Potter hadn't already been shagging exclusively and happily enjoying each other's company. She'd begged him, politely, to recall the damned deLisles.
The damned deLisles aside, it was their thing, his and Potter's, as he'd already determined, the shagging. He supposed he'd been perhaps a little thick not to have noticed that the 'happily' was intimately connected to 'exclusively' a great deal earlier in the game. And he was damned sure Potter had not even wasted a brain cell contemplating any particle of such a connection, the oblivious little twat. Nevertheless!
"It was not," he interjected, quietly furious with most everyone and everything at that moment, but especially Potter and Pomfrey, "and is not, a debacle. I resent that, Madame. Potter and I have been perf—"
Pomfrey seemed to delight in talking over him. Draco fumed as she did it again.
"Needless to say, Mr Malfoy, the urge to ah…erm, influence Harry in this particular fashion had to have its dark seed sown from some sour—"
Hah! Really, and only purely logically, Draco had reasoned, it was that wretched tosser MacMillan who was the git to blame for all of it. If he'd not molested Potter with his stinking lips and basely trespassed so blatantly upon Draco's territory, Potter and Draco would've carried on as they always had and Draco wouldn't have been consumed by the terrible urge to rip off the fucker's privates and stuff them right up his nostrils by main force—nor would the completely nutters idea of inflicting Potter with his potent 'dark' seed ever surfaced from the dusky labyrinthine subterranean areas of Draco's primal hind-brain.
...So much. He didn't think.
"Hmph! Influence? Source, you say? Blame bloody MacMillan if you're blaming anyone for that, Madame Pomfrey!" he'd cut in sharply. "Cast that grabby-hands little wanker out on his theiving arse if you're all wanting a scape—"
"Source." Pomfrey really had to cease waving her wand like that at students. Draco sniffed. "Ahem! As I was saying, you're very fortunate indeed we see no valid reason to expel you altogether at this juncture, Mr Malfoy," she carried on, just as icily and very much more loudly than he, "for the act of complicitous, conniving illegal potion-brewing with clear intent to entrap—"
"Oi!" Draco barked, stung. "You've just said I didn't!"
"Although, that is not to say the idea has not crossed our minds several times this past few weeks," Pomfrey continued stodgily. "Particularly as we have observed the adverse effects upon Harry. But, as you've very obligingly stepped up—"
Draco tuned her annoying speechifying out completely at that, containing himself to simply snorting his sense of overall irk. Of course he'd stepped up! Circe up a bloody Hawthorne tree! What exactly did everyone take him for around here, anyway? He was Prefect, appointed by Hogwarts itself, via the Sorting Hat, and he'd been the natural born leader of his House well before then, for ages and ages! And when had he ever fallen down on a job or not completed a task, once given? Even if the task was one onerous to the extreme and against his very nat—ah, well.
Amend that. He'd not been able to screw himself up to the sticking point of cold-hearted murder, had he? Not even to save his own skin. And he'd not been able to turn Potter over to the blasted Dark Lord's dreadful minions, despite his horrible, terrible Aunt Bella being right there and practically gnashing her teeth to get hold of him—and then, too,he'd not been able to harm a single stupid dusty hair on Potter's ridiculous head in the old Room, either, with Goyle and Crabbe that last time, near the end.
"—your potion has proven most efficacious—"
…Even his bloody Cruciatus had misfired, fuck it, and Draco had entertained more than once a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't only because his heel had slipped on the sopping wet tile in Myrtle's lavatory.
"—and was a thoughtful and timely intervention, to your credit. So, due to your relatively young age and consequent lack of mature judgement, Mr Malfoy, and in large part because of the influence of your dear mother, who did take great care to protect Harry in a time of dire peril, Minerva and I have come to the conclusion you two gentlemen are far more in need of the faculty's wholehearted sup—"
All right, okay then. And Pomfrey, sod her, was galloping off on a proper tear, jabbering away a mile a minute and leaning forward in her seat, her hastily Summoned wrapper crinkling starchily about her wide middle as she jabbed her wand in his direction. And ignoring the reason he'd woken her in the first place: Potter and possible peril.
"—port in this very unusual of circumstances instead of our censure."
"Yes, yes," Draco nodded distractedly. "Thanks for that, but—can we just—? Look, it's already almost quarter till and —"
"Now, mind you, Mr Malfoy," Pomfrey apparently had no intention of allowing Draco a chance to wrest control away, no matter his urgency. "It is not happenstance at all that this is not become headline news in the Prophet. A spell has been cast to prevent our students and faculty from discussing it with any person outside of these walls—well, that's excepting the staff at Mungo's, naturally, and your mother, Mr Malfoy, and of course you and Harry both—"
"Yes, naturally, all right, tha—"
"As we at least are all concerned to the highest degree over the amount of public outcry this will subject Harry and you to, Mr Malfoy, now and in the near future, and the resultant stress to Harry's nerves. So, if you will consent to also—"
"Yes; I said yes already, didn't I? Fine!"
"Containing and restraining yourself, Mr Malfoy, from boasting about as to the parentage of this child before time and—"
Draco growled, under his breath. Right, so he'd failed at a few tasks. Still, it had all worked out for the best advantage. He acknowledged this highly salient feature silently as he nodded away perfunctorily at Pomfrey's blather about the huge importance of protecting Potter from the press and gigantic responsibility he bore as co-father, and blah, blah, blah, so forth and so on. But...he still had some very specific medical questions that required immediate responses and yes, it was probably best to allow this to run its natural course, so Pomfrey could rid her bloody system of all her built-up resentment on Potter's behalf.
"I get it, I get it! We're to keep our mouths shut tight; we're to do this, that and t'other—quite so. Agreed. However, Madame! If we may—" Draco cleared his throat despite the uncommon good sense of his first instinct and brought the front two legs of his chair down with a sharp tap-and-clatter, startling the Healer right out of her diatribe. "Just get on with—as he's right now—and I need to know, Madame Pomfrey! Double or naught, with my potion?"
"Ahem."
Pomfrey coughed genteelly into the back of her non-wandbearing hand and flushed a bit about the edges of her pudgy face. She nodded in the vague direction of Draco's bits, as if his crotch bore a plaquard reading 'Have just now shagged Harry Potter rotten and it was brilliant; sod off, and I'll do it again as soon as I'm able. Problem?'
"Er. As to that, specifically?"
She blinked rapidly at him from behind the shield of her spectacles. Which Draco found ridiculous, as she was a bloody Healer by trade and had surely seen in her offices far more often then a mere once a student fresh from another's bed before. And absolutely must know all the workings of a young man's physical nature, bloody by rote.
"Yes?" He gritted his teeth at her, resettling his legs and hands so as to politely disguise his lingering condition. "That?"
Of course they were shagging again; it had only been a matter of time, hadn't it? And of course Draco was the one blamed by all for it; that was only to be expected, really. Which didn't for a single bleeding second mean it was the truth of the matter.
Potter, at least, now was aware. Fully damned cognizant; Draco was certain of it.
Potter was at times loopy as Lovegood ever was, but he was no fool, he was sharp as could be when he wanted, and he was perfectly capable of puzzling out what manner of magical transgress had been done to them both, and all by his clunky Gryffindork lonesome. Probably Granger hadn't even needed spell it out for him. Not that it was her business!
Shagging had been their thing, not necessarily a lifelong bond ensured by a mutual baby—Draco, perforce, had been mostly inno—
All right, no, perhaps some dark part of Draco had desired it, had lusted after tenable ways and means of taking Potter over completely, but he'd have never tried it on without undue outside influence—at least nothing like this! This was beyond anything rational; it was bloody insane, Wild as to the magic employed—and never the act of a Prefect nor a Malfoy, no matter how hard-pressed, but of a great hulking edifice positively saturated to the mortar with an inordinate amount of bled-out, magically-enhanced essence of spilt-over emotion. Gads, was like a bloody Imperius, Hogwart's Requirement! A million candlepower strong and growing! Likely he should sue the Board for the harm done him and his future prospects, but there was no point to that, now was there?
"If you could just—"
Yes, well. Music: facing it. Shagging, just now; abruptly resumed and rather vigorous—and therefore a fair amount of concern for the health and wellbeing of the shaggee, right? If bloody Pomfrey would just hop off her hobbyhorse and actually bring herself to the point of answering Draco's damned pertinent questions, then—
"Go on?" he urged aloud, just this side of civil, and refrained from tapping a toe in his vast impatience with all this pointless rehashing, but only barely. There was but an hour before breakfast began and he still lacked medical input as to what to do about Potter right now, at half-five in the bleeding morning—because of course there would be ramifications developing this morning. One didn't simply go from racing broom speed to a total screeching halt and then pick it up again weeks later without a single consequence, did one?
Oh, no. Potter and pain—no, it didn't sit well with Draco.
"Ahem. Now, I'm assuming you've disturbed my rest because you and young Harry have resumed relations?" Draco rejoiced inwardly; Pomfrey had wended her long-winded way finally—finally!—to the logically correct conclusion. At his slight nod and accompanying significantly arched eyebrow, she huffed for a moment and spoke on, frowning all the while, silly old biddy. "Well, if that's so, it's already been recommended by Harry's specialist at Mungo's that your potion in particular is to be doubled in dosage first thing and then he simply must come for an ex—"
A welter of instruction followed, terse and rapid, and a large part of Draco's mind was given over to absorbing it.
'Rest', 'relaxation', 'relief of stressors', diet—all these were a given; Draco knew the drill, thanks. But—
"I must emphasize that Harry will require another full exam as soon as possible. We'll convey the two of you to Mungo's for it tomorrow morning, I daresay, as soon as it can be possibly be arr—"
That set Draco back on his heels. "Er, what? Why me, Madame? I'm not the one who's—"
"Well, naturally you, Mr Malfoy," Pomfrey peered at him quizzically from over top her spectacles lenses. "With all your superior marks so far this term and all the extraordinary research you've been engaged in I'd have naturally assumed you would have taken the trouble to look more closely into your own situation. Or, surely your mother has told you, if nothing else? Hah! And you, related to the deLisles and all! I'm surprised at you, Mr Malfoy. Really I am!"