June
"I put my furniture in your ballroom."
Draco watched Theo process that statement: a blink of confusion, a crest of comprehension, and finally, a shrug of acceptance.
"Bit petty of them, don't you think? Kick you out of the flat but make you keep all the furniture?"
"I've sullied it, evidently."
"Real estate, though…" Theo trailed off, shrugging again.
"I won't intrude for long," Draco said. "I'll find a new flat as soon as I've figured out"—a pause—"what I can afford."
"Was it difficult not to grimace there? I know I struggled."
"You're the most unsupportive best friend imaginable, you realize that right?"
"It's part of my charm."
Draco fought back a sigh, tried to hold the anxiety and the grief at bay. He owed Theo a tremendous debt for taking him in, not that Draco would have expected anything else. But in demanding a disinheritance, in losing Hermione, in having his accounts closed and his flat reclaimed, Draco felt a certain lack of agency in his own life. He had a ballroom's worth of furniture and a fledgling potions shop to his name, nothing more.
Theo's smile wavered, and Draco realized he'd let the facade slip, the one that pretended he might be handling things alright, that his life didn't feel like the shambles it was.
"You're staying as long as you want," Theo said, tone on the cusp of an order. He seemed to reconsider his words. "Actually, you'll stay as long as I think you should. You're untrustworthy right now"—he wagged a finger in Draco's general direction—"with all this moping and enormous, life-changing stuff. I'm taking custody of you for an indeterminable amount of time."
"Am I a hostage?"
"More like my adopted son, I think."
"I might prefer to be a hostage."
Theo grinned, slapping a hand on Draco's shoulder and giving him a rough shake as he tried steering them in a different direction.
"I was heading to my room," Draco said, sidestepping Theo.
"To do what?"
Lay on a chaise and stare at the ceiling.
"Unwind. Moving is tiring."
"So, let's have a drink, play some cards. Gobstones maybe."
Theo arched a brow, a challenge in his posture from the way he'd crossed his arms.
Draco took a step backwards.
"Maybe later. I'm tired."
"I'll let you beat me in wizard's chess."
"Theo," Draco said, realizing too late that his voice came out sharper than he'd wanted it to, cutting through the first syllable in Theo's name. "I don't mean to be ungrateful but—I've been faking it all day. I'd like to stop."
Draco doubted he'd ever be willing to express that much honesty with anyone else in his life. Hermione, of course, at one time. But now—only Theo.
Theo's smile fell. He gave a single, curt nod. "I'll send Mopsy when it's time to eat." Not quite phrased as a question, not quite phrased as a statement.
"Of course." Draco pivoted, shoes clacking on ancient Nott granite, echoing in a slightly different tone than Malfoy marble. Halfway down the corridor, Draco paused. He pinched the bridge of his nose, ran a hand down his face, dragging at features that wanted nothing more than to pinch and distort and find relief in acknowledging the sting in the back of his throat, the pit in his stomach.
He turned, finding Theo still standing in exactly the same place, watching.
Draco might have said something else, but his thoughts ran dry, a well without water, intentions without words. How did one tell his best friend how much he appreciated him? For giving Draco a place to live? Space when he needed it? A push when he needed that more? And at the same time, how did one tell that same best friend that none of it was enough? That it felt like no amount of kindness could fill the hole in his chest, remnants of a crater from an impact he thought he'd already survived.
Most days he was just so tired. He went to work; he went to sleep. He tried not to think about Hermione, about having no money, no home, nothing of his own besides a bunch of furniture in a ballroom.
He only had his friends. And that wasn't enough.
Which made him feel that much worse, an ungrateful friend on top of all the rest.
Draco still hadn't said anything, eyes on Theo where he stood halfway down the corridor. Draco forced his fingers to relax, loose and calm.
He nodded to Theo, swallowing over the lump in the back of his throat.
Theo nodded back.
For whatever it was worth; that was that.
—
The embellished, coffered ceiling in Draco's bedroom at Nott Estate had three hundred and sixty four corners. Each tile contained five circular designs. If he counted, which he did, he would find four hundred and fifty five circles above him. The largest circle in each panel contained a flower design, so ninety of those plus the two half tiles that comprised the inset for the door.
The wainscoting on the walls had one hundred and twenty two corners that Draco could count from where he liked to lay on the chaise beneath the east window. If he lay on the bed he could count two hundred and seventy two corners.
If he counted all the corners on the ceilings and the walls, all the circles, and all the flowers, he could disappear inside his own head for just long enough to forget how fucking miserable he was. That escape usually lasted about how long it took for Theo to come knocking at his door, suggesting a drink or a game or an outing with a most painfully forced positivity.
All things considered, idly counting to occupy the time Draco didn't spend working felt like progress.
He'd barely left his bed for most of February, tending only to his disinheritance, motivated by spite and sadness.
He'd barely left his flat for most of March, tending only to the shop, motivated by guilt that he'd abandoned Blaise and their new venture.
He'd barely figured out how to pretend in April, tending to his image, motivated by his friends' deep concern. He'd been desperate to never have to answer the question How are you doing? ever again.
He'd blinked and three months had passed. He'd last seen Hermione at the end of January. And suddenly: May and moneyless. And by the end of the month: homeless, too.
Now June, still unmoored but better at pretending.
He heard a knock at his door. He ignored it.
He began counting corners again.
—
As it turned out, only Teddy Lupin could pull Draco from his routine constantly working, counting, avoiding, and sleeping.
Draco received an owl from his Aunt Andromeda on the first of the month. Teddy wanted to see his cool cousin, apparently. What other option did Draco have but to reply immediately with Yes, of course, please come for lunch at Nott Manor at your earliest convenience. He'd responded on impulse, stunned at first that someone other than Blaise or Theo wanted anything to do with him. Even more so, stunned that little Teddy Lupin remembered him, wanted to see him, cared enough to ask.
Draco couldn't deny his jittery anticipation as he waited beside the Floo for their arrival. He liked Teddy, always had. Faced with an opportunity to see him again, Draco was reminded of James Potter, a child who would have now more than doubled in age since Draco last saw him.
The idea that James Potter, whom Draco had met on the day of his birth, had now lived more than half his life without Draco in it, felt strange, struck oddly. Draco had no rights, no claim to Harry and Ginny Potter's child. Hermione was his godmother; Draco only knew him by circumstance. And yet, a certain something ached inside his chest, realizing he'd forgotten to miss James in all the time he'd spent missing Hermione and his old life.
The Floo flared, green flames roaring and twisting. Seconds later, his aunt and cousin stepped out.
Draco's plans of a proper greeting to the Nott Estate fizzled away with his confusion at finding himself in a sudden and moderately aggressive hug.
Teddy Lupin had grown at least half a head since Draco saw him last. Bright blue, shoulder-length hair shortened and lightened into a perfect mirror image of Draco's white blonde coif.
"That's a convenient trick," Draco said. "My hair takes much more work than that to manage."
Andromeda stepped forward, offering him a hug of her own. Draco tensed, unfamiliar with such an easy, casual embrace.
"Mine as well," she said. She tucked an errant lock of hair behind his ear, a strikingly maternal action. Draco felt his smile slip, strained at the edges as he forced it to remain in place.
He turned his attention to Teddy, announcing the presence of toy brooms and lunch awaiting them in the gardens. Draco got the distinct impression that if Teddy had any clue how to get to the gardens from the Floo parlor, he would have taken off at high speed and left his boring grandmother and cool—but not cooler than broomsticks—cousin in the dust.
Draco led his guests to the gardens, laughing each time Teddy's little feet caught on Draco's heels, following too closely in his excitement.
"Patience isn't your virtue, is it?"
He missed a step, realizing he should elaborate, but Teddy blew past him as the garden doors came into view. Draco paused on the threshold with Andromeda.
"There's no chance for lunch before we fly, is there?"
Andromeda laughed, light but forceful, and nothing like the socialite tittering Narcissa used so often. Draco drew a deep breath, gaze caught on the laugh lines at the corner of Andromeda's eyes, and resolved to stop comparing them.
He'd requested a disinheritance. He'd cut his parents from his life. He'd only torture himself by comparing Andromeda with the mother he hadn't seen in several months.
She shook her head. "You'll be lucky if you eat within the hour."
It ultimately took much more than that to wear Teddy out, reminding Draco far too keenly that he'd done little physical activity over the last several months and that over an hour spent on a broom required more stamina than he presently had. By the time he sat down at the lovely garden tables filled with food by Mopsy and Milly, he'd worked up an embarrassing sweat.
Teddy inhaled two sandwiches at an impressive and slightly alarming pace before throwing himself on his broom again. Exhausted and starving, Draco opted out.
He would have forced himself back on a broom had he known what Andromeda intended for him.
She set her teacup down, eyes following Teddy's path on his toy broom. "I lied to you," she said.
Draco looked at her. She wore no contrition, didn't even break her gaze from where it tracked Teddy.
"About?"
"I wanted to see you, not Teddy." She finally glanced at Draco. "Although he was delighted we received an invitation to see his cousin."
Draco didn't know what to do with his expression, suddenly too aware of every muscle around his mouth, his eyes, his cheeks. Every position, every shift, felt forced and disingenuous. Andromeda took pity on him, saving him from having to formulate some kind of question or response.
"I heard from Harry that you and Hermione Granger had a falling out."
Draco almost snorted at the understatement, could almost see the humor in how poorly the phrase falling out described what had happened. But as it stood, he felt a sharp sting shoot through his chest at the naked reality such a statement ultimately exposed.
"I also learned from Harry that you are in the process of being disinherited."
Draco cleared his throat as cold pinpricks erupted beneath his skin in a wave rolling from his head to his toes. What could one say to something like that? To the truth, terrible and real? "It's a longer process than I anticipated," he said, finding his focus had slipped from her face, seeking Teddy on his broom in the background.
"Between the legal and the magical components, yes. It is a lot." Andromeda's voice took on a strained quality, not quite as carefully composed as Draco had grown accustomed to. "I was surprised I hadn't heard from you. You and I discussed this once, at Harry's wedding."
Draco didn't know if he ought to feel embarrassed. He couldn't quite tell if she sounded offended, or sad, or some strange combination of the two. "We barely broached theoreticals."
"And yet here we are."
"It—honestly didn't occur to me to reach out to you, I apologize. I've had"—he struggled for the right word, if one existed—"quite a bit on my mind."
"You've been removed from your family vaults?"
Draco nodded. "Property, too. Hence—" He gestured vaguely around them, acknowledgement that they met at Nott Manor and nowhere he could call his own.
"Wards and blood magic?"
Draco shook his head. "None of the family magic, yet. We're still arbitrating over some lingering financials. I'm"—he clenched his jaw, forced the words through anyway—"I'm insisting on paying it back. What I spent from my inheritance. I don't want any of it. And now they've refused to take back the furniture I was using."
"Is that so bad?"
"They're being petty."
"You're not?" She lifted a brow.
"They cost me everything."
Andromeda sat back in her chair, back flush with the intricate wrought iron vines spiraling in a pattern. She drummed her fingers against the tabletop and Draco could feel the vibrations in his wrist.
He moved his hand to his lap.
Nearly twenty-five years old and he felt strangely childish.
"They cost you Hermione?" Andromeda asked after what felt like several eons had passed between them.
Draco hadn't asked for this. He made no requests for a relative he barely knew, not apart from the several social gatherings they attended together, to offer unsolicited advice and understanding of his circumstances. He didn't care that she'd been disinherited herself, that she knew more and better than anyone what it entailed.
He didn't want sympathy.
And he certainly didn't want to talk about Hermione.
He forced his head to move: left to right and back again. A shake towards dissent.
"They're only at fault for Hermione having left insofar as they made me, and I made many mistakes."
"I heard you blew up some glassware."
"Story got around, did it?"
"I'm not trying to be unkind. Or to prod at fresh wounds."
Draco bit his tongue. It felt like she intended to do exactly that.
"What are you trying to do, then?"
She sighed, and even though he didn't want to make the comparison: it sounded exactly like his mother.
"I merely wanted to remind you that you still have family. Family who understands." Her eyes darted to Teddy as he flew a circle around the fountain in the center of the gardens, the same one Draco broke his wrist maneuvering around so many years ago. "Family who cares about you," she concluded.
"That's very kind and I appreciate the sentiment." He knew he sounded stiff, stale, unfeeling even as he said it.
She lifted a brow. "But?"
"I don't know." And he didn't. Truly. The entire conversation with Andromeda felt misplaced, poorly timed. The ache inside his chest still felt too raw to consider what healing might look like, what a future family might entail in the absence of the one he'd planned on having with Hermione.
"Well, when you do"—she smiled, watching Teddy as he flew, then shifting her gaze to Draco once again—"we're here. And we understand."
Draco tried not to grimace, tried not to cringe, tried to think of anything other than his desire to return to his rooms and count the tiles in his ceiling or brew enough stock to last the shop a few solid years of business.
"Thank you, Aunt Andromeda," he said. He tried to mean it.
—
"Theo says you're working yourself to death."
Draco coughed: poor evidence to the contrary. "Theo is dramatic."
Blaise stood at the doorway between the front of their shop and the back room where Draco brewed. He wasn't entirely certain of the time, but judging from the dim light illuminating Blaise from behind, the streetlights had turned on. That, of course, meant the sun had set. And that, of course, meant that Draco had been brewing for at least twelve hours.
"Have you eaten today?"
Draco pointed to the bin by the door. Blaise leaned, peering inside.
"Am I to surmise from this that you've had"—a pause—"six chocolate frogs?"
Draco didn't answer. He added eight drops of salamander blood to his cauldron, stirred anti-clockwise six times, let the solution rest, and began his clockwise stirs. He jolted when his potion vanished. He looked up, finding Blaise directly across from him, vanishing the other potions Draco had been working on that day, too.
"What the fuck, Blaise—"
"—We have enough backstock to last us several months. I'll pay for the lost ingredients out of my own salary. You, however, need to sit and we need to talk."
Fury fought with exhaustion, battling beneath Draco's skin. Before one could behead the other and claim its victory, Blaise preempted him by speaking again.
"You've been here all day. Theo said you were working with customers all afternoon while also brewing. Are you ever planning on going home or must I make use of levicorpus?"
"You mean Theo's home?"
"It's your home right now, too. Don't be difficult."
Draco might have fought more, pushed back harder, if his head hadn't hurt quite so much: sinuses throbbing, bones aching. He coughed again, lungs tacky and clogged and awful.
"Are you sick?" Blaise asked.
He certainly didn't want to be. Sickness meant bedrest. Bedrest meant time. Time to think, time to wallow. Draco was self-aware enough to know that's what he'd be doing if forced not to work. It was what he did in the scant spare time he had, anyway.
"No. I'm fine."
Blaise didn't seem to believe him.
And rightfully so.
By the next morning, after brewing late into the night despite Blaise's best efforts to coax him away from the shop, Draco could barely roll out of his bed. His body ached. Coughing felt like it tore his lungs from his chest, and his head felt fit to burst from the pressure behind his eyes.
He'd buried himself beneath his covers, wishing for a swift and early death, when Theo burst into his room.
"Happy Birth—Oh."
"Please go away."
"Blaise did say you didn't look great yesterday but..."
"Theo, just"—a cough tore from his chest, hacking phlegm from his lungs and ripping his throat to shreds—"go."
For a moment, the world spun at the wrong angle, a slide in his vision.
He didn't have the energy to be kind. To care. A year ago, he'd woken to the most beautiful birthday gift; a scantily clad witch in his bed. Now, he had mucus and irritation and no hope of the birthday toffees he loved so much.
"I'll—have Mopsy bring you some tea, something to eat. Is it your stomach or—"
"Theo—I don't want any help." Irritation burned the agony and hopelessness from his veins, it helped in a strange, spiteful way. "Just leave me alone."
Theo's face twisted, his own flash of annoyance, then a frown. "I'll tell Blaise you won't be into work, then."
"Great."
A hollow laugh. "You mean thanks."
When he left, Draco searched himself for regret, for something resembling contrition for how he'd just treated his friend. Instead, he found aches and pains and a severe disinterest in doing anything other than closing his eyes and keeping them shut for as long as possible.
Mopsy tried bringing him food; he told her to take it away.
Theo brought a bright orange potion; Draco refused to take it.
Milly brought tea; he made her vanish it.
Draco knew time had passed from the angle and shape of the shadows beside his bed. First they lengthened, stretching wide, before tilting, shrinking, and pulling back towards the window. He only opened his eyes every so often, after a particular violent cough or when an ache from lying so still for so long demanded that he shift. He opened his eyes once: day. Again: night.
He presumed at some point in the darkness that it must have stopped being his birthday. He only realized after the fact that he'd been holding out hope, tiny and smothered by illness as it might have been, that a Malfoy owl might deliver him his birthday toffees.
He'd demanded a clean break, and this is how it looked. No more malunions.
He spent the next day in bed, too. He felt dizzy and weak and only accepted water from Milly when Theo threatened to portkey him to a healer if he didn't cooperate.
Mostly, Draco slept. Asleep, he had a chance for dreams wrapped in memories of a life when he had Hermione in it. Sure, he might find nightmares there, too. But waking only offered the one option: the nightmare his reality had become. So he took his chances and slept.
The coughing persisted, migrating from something damp and throaty to somewhere deeper in his chest, heaving against his ribs.
"Please see a healer," Theo asked, sometime towards the end of Draco's second day in bed. "Or at least take the potion. It will manage your symptoms. You know that. You brewed it."
Draco ignored him.
Later: "Theo told me to tell you that you have to see a healer. He's set an appointment." Blaise didn't bother sounding hopeful.
"Cancel it," Draco told him. He assumed Blaise did just that.
The next day, the hallucinations started.
When he opened his eyes, disappointed to find light in his room and a painful ache in his chest, he saw an impossible sight.
Pansy Parkinson stood at the foot of his bed, arms crossed, fringe perfectly straight, and a look of utter disdain drawn in the shape of her mouth and angle of her brows.
"You're unforgivably dramatic, even after all this time. Has anyone told you, lately?" Hallucination Pansy sounded just like real Pansy: perfectly mean and exactly as expected.
"Not recently, no."
She made a disgusted noise, eyes rolling, arms falling, breath gusting.
"Fucking Theo and Blaise. I should have known I couldn't leave you three alone—otherwise I get owls about how you've gone all despondent and they're worried and evidently you're heartbroken. Merlin's fucking—" She yanked his blankets down, sending a stinging jinx at his ankles.
Draco didn't recall hallucinations having that particular ability.
"Pans?" he asked, swallowing back a cough, choking him as he lifted himself onto his elbows.
"Don't look at me like that," she snapped, wand leveled at him from where she still stood at the foot of his bed.
Exhaustion pulled his head back to his pillow, elbows and arms giving out beneath him.
"Like what?" he asked, blindly throwing his arm out to the side in search of his wand on the bedside table. He needed to summon his blankets back and he knew he couldn't count on Pansy, hallucination or not, to return them.
"Like you missed me"—he hissed as another stinging jinx hit him, his shin this time—"you didn't owl me a single time."
"You didn't want me to."
"That's not the point. You didn't even try."
"If I say I'm sorry and I really mean it, can I have my covers back?"
"Draco Malfoy, you are sick and you won't let anyone help take care of you. So, no, you may not have your covers back, you dramatic fuck."
He'd tried to stifle the coughing, but it reached a tipping point in the back of his throat, seizing whole muscle groups, sending him sputtering and heaving.
"That's disgusting," she said from the foot of his bed. But when he looked up at her, coughing controlled, the hard lines on her face had neutralized, as close to sympathy as he could probably expect.
Draco closed his eyes, body aching and exhausted.
"Why are you here, Pansy?"
"I had lunch with Hermione Granger this afternoon."
Draco shot straight up, gag reflex choking him, cough propelled from his chest. He folded in half, head over his knees, as he coughed into the mattress. It occurred to him that perhaps he ought to feel self conscious over the fact that he wore his pajama bottoms and nothing more. But it wasn't as if Pansy hadn't seen it all before, even if it had been nearly a decade now.
He closed his eyes, resting his head against his left knee as the coughing subsided. He looked up again at the sound of footsteps—determined clicking heels to be precise—next to him.
Pansy held out a glass of water.
"Drink it." The you utter fuck at the end was implied, but he heard it nevertheless. She stepped away again, taking a seat on the settee at the foot of the bed. "As I was saying," she continued. "I, Pansy Parkinson, had lunch today with the ineffable Hermione Granger, war heroine, recipient of an Order of Merlin, first class, and apparently, ex-lover to one Draco Malfoy."
He felt a little sick. A different kind of sick. A stomach-churning sick, a heart-aching sick.
"I know what you're thinking. However did I manage that? Well, I'll tell you. Theo chaperoned, even though the two of them don't seem to be on great terms right now, either. I'm still not entirely certain what he's up to. There's a lot of meddling going on, that much is obvious."
Pansy pointed her wand at his glass and refilled it with a casual aguamenti, leveling him with a pointed stare that told him to continue drinking.
"But here's what I do know," she said, leaning against the footboard. "I've been back from France for more than half a year and you haven't reached out once. I'm pretty upset about that because I know Theo told you I was back. But I didn't owl you, either, so that's my own fucking fault. I'm willing to call it even on us both being awful to each other because we have something more important to discuss."
She paused and Draco realized he was meant to agree with her. So he did. And despite the general sense of dizziness, the weight in his bones, and the constant searing sensation in his chest, Draco smiled.
"I have missed you, Pans."
She scowled.
"We'll have a hug about it when you're not all"—a vague gesture towards him—"grotesque and infectious." She tossed him his blankets. He covered himself again, laid back, sank into his pillows. Prepared himself for whatever attack Pansy had in store for him.
"I don't know much about Hermione Granger. But I'll tell you this, Draco: she doesn't look great. You look worse, obviously." He felt a light tug at the blankets. "What are you two doing to each other?"
Draco took a slow, deep breath, pulling air in carefully so as to not irritate his raw, aching throat. "I don't know."
Pansy made a growling noise, as if preemptively displeased with what she planned to say. "You love her?"
"I had a ring. Before I had to return it." A pause, a sigh. "Disinheritance, and all."
"Fuck."
Draco pressed his palms to his eyes, pressure against his sockets as he tried to ignore the headache stampeding through his skull.
He felt another small tug at the blankets, then came Pansy's voice from a new angle.
"When I fix this for you, I expect an important role in the wedding."
Draco didn't mean to laugh. It shouldn't have been funny. But Pansy's completely unwarranted confidence struck him sideways. Ridiculous, impossible. And if he wasn't careful, several laughs away from a sob.
But as it stood, he coughed instead. He refused water this time, declined her assistance, terse as it was. He couldn't encourage her any more. He coughed and coughed and coughed until his stomach hurt as much as his chest and he couldn't even hear his door opening and closing as Pansy left.
—
Two days later, and he still hadn't left this bed. His stomach ached and grumbled, simultaneously starving and repulsed by the idea of food. He'd only cough so much he'd throw it all up. Theo had tried to force a cough suppressant potion down his throat twice the day before.
Draco had since warded his doors and refused to let Theo or the elves in. Not that it would do any good if Theo really wanted to enter. Nor would it stop elf magic. But it felt symbolic enough, representative of his wishes they would need to knowingly break if they intended to try and force care upon him.
He didn't want to feel better.
Something about suffering felt appropriate, twisted as he knew the logic was.
He realized he had a fever sometime in the early morning, judging from the bluish tint to the light peeking through his mostly-drawn curtains and the slanted angle of shadows cast by the window panes.
He probably should have accepted some of the potions. But he really, truly, just wanted to be left alone. What did it really matter if he was sick for one day or four? Or however long it took to get over an illness without potions?
From behind closed lids, he heard his door click open, metal dragged along the strike plate, a hinge creaking, a single step on the tile floor before footsteps met a persian rug. Draco almost sighed. It was near time for Theo to try and force some sense into him anyway, what with a new day dawning and all.
With the throb of his pulse shooting behind his eyes and a grotesque clamminess encasing his skin, Draco considered that perhaps this would be the day he gave in and finally let Theo help him.
The mattress dipped beside him.
The vanilla gave her away.
Draco couldn't open his eyes.
Then a hand brushed his hair from his forehead. Quick, practiced fingers that had done such a thing many, many times before. Her hand flipped, the back of her fingers now, gauging his temperature.
Her hand lingered. Trailed down the side of his face. Connected with his shoulder. Travelled down his arm. Found his hand.
She left fire in her wake. If he didn't have a fever before, he certainly did now. Her hand rested atop his: fingers not quite entwined, but slotted together in a way that suggested an inescapable entanglement.
"You are quite pathetic, aren't you?"
He opened his eyes, bleary and tired and filmed over from too much sleep, to find her sitting with one leg drawn up on the bed, watching him. She wore one of her trusty jumpers—purple, one of her softer ones, by his recollection—and her muggle denims. Her hair spiraled away from her head just as wild, just as magnificent as he remembered. And she had bags beneath her eyes. She'd glamoured them, but he could tell. Her hand slipped from his, reaching to his bedside table.
"Theo said you're being stubborn and won't take any potions." She held up a vial, offered him a close-lipped sort of smile.
It sounded rather petulant when she said it like that.
"Have you eaten anything recently?" she asked.
He could feel a cough strangling him deep in his throat. He kept his mouth closed, breathing through the single, unblocked side of his nose. He shook his head slowly from one side to the other in a single drawn out motion, so as not to send the room spinning.
"Will you take it?" she asked, holding up the vial. "And then eat something?"
Slowly, he shook his head again.
She dropped her hand, resting the potion against her denims. She swallowed, tapping a finger against the vial. She'd bitten her nails quite short.
"Why not, Draco? You can't just torture yourself. You clearly have a fever—"
"You'll leave," he said, forcing words through a sharp cough. His face pinched, forcing the cough back. "If I take it, you'll leave."
He hadn't noticed how tightly she'd held her shoulders until they sank.
"I have to."
"You don't."
"I—"
He coughed. Forced himself to speak through it, broken and awful as it was. "It's been months. It's not—we're not—we should talk." He rolled away from her, groaning as he coughed into his pillow, each heave ratcheting the tension behind his eyes tighter until he felt like they might simply erupt from his sockets. He cleared his throat, struggled to breathe, felt a hand at the back of his neck.
"Please," she said, holding the potion to him.
He took it, incapable, as he always had been, of denying her. He downed the bright orange, electrifying solution in a single gulp.
She took the empty vial and set it back on his bedside table. He expected her to leave then, duties complete. Theo had forced him to take his potions by sending in the one and only person he couldn't possibly say no to.
She surprised him by taking his hand. This time there was no doubt; fingers entwined.
"I just want you to know that I don't hold it against you. The glass. And I don't—you don't have to protect me from your family."
The orange potion sizzled down Draco's throat, burning away mucus and healing sore muscles and tissue all at once. When he spoke, his voice came out stronger than it had been before, less rasped and broken.
"It's still true that you're my only family that matters. I haven't regretted a moment of the disinheritance. It's still happening."
"I know."
"So don't go."
Saying it left him breathless, despite the potion fortifying his lungs.
"I have to."
He didn't know if he wanted to hold her fingers tighter or rip his hand away.
"You really don't—"
"I'm taking a bit of an extended holiday—with my parents. We're going to Australia. They—they've finally sold their home there and they have some friends they wanted to visit and I—well, I'm joining them."
"Will you be alright? Going there with them?"
She bent her forefinger, dragging it along the side of his: a small touch she watched with absolute fixation.
"I think so. It will be good—closure, I think. I'll be gone almost three weeks."
"And when you're back?"
Draco didn't know if it was the sudden introduction of healing potions in his system that buoyed his sinking hope, but it rose to the surface, bobbing uncomfortably in his throat, just there—wishing.
She squeezed his hand and pulled away. She stood, and distance had never felt so damning.
"I think we should talk, then," she said.
He nodded, nearly choked by the hope.
She didn't quite leave, but didn't quite stay. Hovering in the space by the doorway, not fully committed to her exit. He watched her soft sigh more than he heard it. But he'd heard it enough times to know exactly how it sounded.
"I never wanted you to have to give them up for me."
Propped up on his elbows, still feeling a little unsteady, he said, "I'm giving them up with or without you. I'd much rather do it with you."
Her cheeks twitched, almost a smile, as if she almost gave herself permission to be pleased about that. But she kept her expression neutral. "I'll owl you when I get back."
With his chest tight, he sank back into his pillows once she'd gone. Eventually, he called Mopsy to bring him something to eat.
