Chapter 3: Rebirth and Recollections

"Who are you?" It was an instinctive question and Draco instantly reprimanded himself. He was the intruder in that person's place, he had broken in and it was definitely not his line. But the sheer shock of what he was seeing rendered him dumb.

A person – he wasn't able to specify it more – was laying curled between the sheets, right knee and left arm spasmodically clutched close to chest, while the remaining limbs… simply weren't there. Instead wires and chunks of metal stuck out from (probably) his shoulder and from under the rim of rather stained light-blue piece of clothing, which somehow didn't manage to add to the decency of that person. He realised he wasn't right. There was no way he could chuck this… this… thing out of the bed. It looked at him pleadingly, as though it needed help…

"Well, of course it needs help, you moron! Look at it!"

He gulped and hesitated.

"No, I c-can't k-kill it-" he took a ragged breath. The child, as he decided to call it in his head, whined pleadingly, obviously unable to speak coherently. He wanted to end its despair – because it obviously was suffering – but it wanted to live… Having seen all the effects of the war, having been imprisoned and left to rot in the sewers, having witnessed Potter's death, he wasn't about to kill anything that wanted to live…

"Dormiens," he whispered. There were other ways of nursing Potter than to dispose of the child. Must have been. He scratched his head and uncertainly looked around… But Potter needed him more acutely now… this person could hold on a few more hours under the magic-induced sleep.

There were other rooms in the house; one of them was actually habitable. He guessed it to be the real bedroom; it made him wonder why the child wasn't in there – maybe it wasn't the owner of the house. Maybe it was detained there… or…

Draco shook his head – it was too difficult for him to figure out right now and he had no time to ponder it. There was a bleeding boy laying on the floor in the hall. A boy that simply had to live for Draco to be able to go on…

o

He found the kitchen. It was nice and cozy, funished by someone who liked homely atmosphere. Not the kid back there. He opened all the cabinets. One of them was cold and shiny inside, and filled with food. It stunk.

Then he found the bathroom and a small box fastened on the wall, filled with a lot of tubes and bottles and small paper boxes. There was a lot of long nonsense words written on them and he decided to not try and use them, because the unknown stuff might have been capable of easily killing Potter… who knew? The most important was that there was a lot and lot of bandages. He could have dressed a mummy with them.

"Gee… I could do the passing tests for Healers now… thanks to your great idea," he said, entering the bedroom where he had left Potter. "Where did Dumbles's great light Saviour learn magic like that? No, don't answer that; I don't want to know what all the half-breeds taught you. Anyways-" he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the rest of the burnt rotten rags from Potter's body, one by one, "I suppose that they deserved it. I just think you should have warned me. You know… childhood with my father wasn't all jolly, he even once let me watch disemboweling a woman. She lived quite a long while into it… But I haven't seen stuff like this before. I mean… peeling off skin of people is alright, but the next time you really should stop there. I didn't have to watch muscles and veins dropping off one by one-" he paused for a while to look over the skinny body, criss-crossed with wounds caused by not-so-well-dodged curses, "How can somebody be that fast? You should have been dead hundred times over. Not that I'm not happy that you are not. But I know what this stuff is going to do to your system nervous – after all, you've let me see how it looks without the rest of the body. Apart from skeletons, but I suppose it helped to leave the skeleton for so long. Lestrange was curled in such a strange position that without the bones I wouldn't understand which fibre belongs to which part of the body- hey, it's finally about the time you woke up. If you let me do the healing itself I'll fuck it up, you'll see… Hey, Potter… Potter… Harry!"

o

"Hey, Potter… Potter… Harry!"

He opened his eyes. Various parts of his body provided him with various sensations of which none was comfortable. His mind came to a logical conclusion – he was still alive.

"Oh… shit."

There was dusk. He was laying in bed, which in itself was somewhat confusing. He remembered sending a crowd of Death Eaters to Hell and… rather blurrily the sight of Voldemort getting out of the vortex in the last instant, the son of a bitch.

Bethinking it once more, maybe the fact that he was still alive wasn't as negative. He didn't manage to complete his task yet. Well, in that case it would be a good idea to get himself in shape again.

"Harry-"

'Draco. So he's fine. Good.' He felt a rather cold hand on his cheek – a touch of chaotic energy. His lover had always contained a large dose of darkness, as well as a lot of concealed light underneath, but they were always carefully separated, with a very thin bordering gray layer. Now his magic was totally messed-up.

"Gee, Potter, you gave me a scare. Don't you dare ever repeat it. I thought you were dead back there in the street, haven't you coughed I would have let you bleed out on the pavement. Anyway, we're here in a really creepy house – there's a kid there in the second room and it doesn't have leg and arm and there is a lot of metal all around it. I thought it was dead, too, but it seemed like-" Harry raised an eyebrow, ignoring the swell the expression violated, and stared at the blonde as he droned on. Draco always liked to talk, but he never stretched it to such point. A shadow of dread befell him – what if his magic wasn't the only messed-up thing about Draco?

"Ere'h 'lhgnohk?" he tried to ask and paled. There was something very, very wrong… He tried to reach up, but his right hand was apparently broken. So he reached up with the left and stuck three fingers in his mouth. It was empty.

o

Harry gulped – it was a bit harder to do without the tongue. How the Hell did that happen to him? He had no idea… Well, he had some idea, but which Death Eater in their right mind would cast a highly specific curse such as tongue-ripping in the head of the battle? Because he would have known if he had swallowed a ripping or a cutting hex… Then again, which Death Eater was in their right mind?

Of course, there were no regular Death Eaters left. He made sure that the Pit sucked in everyone branded by the Dark Mark. He considered leaving Snape out, but he didn't have enough magic to accomplish that, even after stealing the life energy of everyone who attended the meeting (safe for the snake bastard Tom, but he hadn't really hoped to best that one).

On the other hand, he still felt charged now, hours after he had opened the Pit and let the dark wizards and witches virtually melt in front of them. Although he had been knocked out before he could see what really happened, probably exactly by the tongue-ripping curse…

"-just disappeared. But I didn't watch him cause Lestrange and Mother and Lucius were much more interesting. Did you know that it doesn't happen like in the movies Granger stocks in her room, when the hair remains till the end? Cause the hair was first to disappear and honestly, can you picture my Father bald? It was a laugh-"

'Draco, where are we?' he asked Legilimentically.

"Dunno, it's a town. The streets and houses and the travelling things are weird here. I saw some before. And the lights are strange, too. It's not England, but I dunno… I've been in a lots of places with my father… I'd say it's Liechtenstein, but… Hey, ask the kid, he would know. If he isn't dead yet. I put a sleeping charm on him, but he was as good as dead before-"

Harry closed his eyes and shut Draco's voice out of his mind. There was a child that needed help, probably immediately, and his lover obviously wasn't able to tend to it. So it was, once again, up to him. That meant he had to heal the wounds quickly. Now.

'Gimme your hand.'

Draco wouldn't need his magic in the immediate future. He, on the other hand, would. So it was the best to use the Slytherin as a battery right now.

o

"Aye, Potter. But don't you get used to ordering me around."

Draco just had to say it, even though it was an absolute bulldust. Of course he let Harry order him around. Ever since he had been given asylum in the old Black House, he accepted his position as Harry's subordinate. It was a way to survive… then a way to get close… and in the end a way to become the ultimate Warriors of Light team. There wasn't a thing he could refuse Harry anyway.

As soon as his palm touched Harry's chest, he felt his magic being drawn out of him. He grinned. The Gryffindor began to glow a dim grey light; it gradually intensified and tiny little blue and pink pinpricks danced around the edges of his wounds. Draco was left to guess which exotic nation or mysterious tribe or society of half-breeds used such healing magic. Though it sure worked.

Draco was drained and released, and Harry slowly stood up, catching on the wall when his head spun. Of course – he hadn't eaten in… ever since they had been put into the dungeon. A long, long time ago. Draco smiled.

"I'll go and make something to eat. They've got loads of food here, but most of it is old. You could get food poisoning. So I'll be careful; don't worry. I know I can't cook but I promise I'll do my best-"

'All right, Draco. Thank you,' replied Harry in his soundless way and walked out the door. Draco cocked his head to the side and wondered if maybe his love was sad. But then he decided that it was only the empty stomach that ailed him.