To Have and To Hold
Chapter Five
Draco awoke slowly, blinking. Turning his head slightly to one side, he ground his teeth at the grating sound of recently healed bone.
His neck had been broken within the last few hours.
Turning it to the other side, he winced – not out of pain, but from the sight of an IV needle sticking out of his lower arm, administering, no doubt, one of his godfather's more potent potions, fatal if ingested by mouth. While by no means phobic, needles were not one of Draco's favorite objects.
Grimacing, he reached over with one arm, cracking his wrist – also newly mended – and yanked at the needle, careful not to break off its ultra thin tip. While its minuteness toned down the pain if stabbed wrong, it also happened to make the object exceedingly fragile, and digging it out of one's skin was hardly a cheerful process.
Once free of the contraption, Draco sat up, fighting off the giddiness the potion often exerted. Rotating his fort absently, the cricks yet another sign of once-shattered-bone, he looked around the room for his clothes.
His own had been removed, tattered and shredded and ultimately useless as they were. Spotting them in our corner of the sunroom, he tottered unsteadily over to get them, cursing his godfather as he squinted against the brilliance of the westering sun.
He had to have a potion that reacts to ultra violet rays. He thought peevishly. He felt hung over, and the sun wasn't helping any in relieving the throbbing in his skull.
Once out of the room, he took a deep breath and forced himself to focus, ignoring the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him, shoving the headache roughly aside.
Padding softly across the carpeted floor, Draco did not little resemble a great cat, dressed all in black and moving with a silent sway. Reaching his father's door, he concentrated, refining the sounds, focusing on the vibrations of voices that one could feel, if one were still, and silent for a very long time. Abruptly, one those vibrations stopped.
Turning swiftly, Draco padded back halfway, then tuned and began walking as normal, carefully storing away the sounds to decipher later. Three quarters of the way there, the door to his father's study opened.
Draco stopped and nodded. "Sir."
Lucius barely glanced at his son and didn't reply as he moved northward – probably to his library. He thought absently. He didn't give a fig to his father's behavior; he knew the reason for it already. Besides, his father hadn't been a father in so long – at least six years – he no longer reacted to any attitude of pride or disproval any more. His godfather was more paternal, and this thought was only strengthened when he examined his father and godfather's conversation, once in the privacy of his warded room.
Slowly, Draco sat back in his high-backed chair, letting out a slight breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. So. It was to be marriage. While not wholly unexpected, it still came as something of a shock. Absently, he wondered what he had done most recently to bring about this result...
Casting a glance at the dying sun, he yawned suddenly and shrugged down in his seat. He had long since quit using his bed for anything in the manner of sleep. Nightmares too often visited him there.