CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
[Little Lion Man]
HARRY
As it being the first couple days of October, Autumn was rolling in fast. Faster than it usually did. It was finally far enough from summer to have lost the heat and not close enough to winter to have that bite of cold. The leaves had begun to fall and rain was in the forecast. In the distance the Ravenclaw quidditch team waw practicing for the first quidditch game on the season tomorrow. Harry watched it all jealousy from his bedside window in the infirmary. He was starting to hate his prolonged imprisonment with passion. At least this now the mediwitch was allowing him to wear his own clothes instead of hospital issued ones. Probably only because he'd been refusing to talk to her ever since their confrontation a couple days ago.
He couldn't get in out of his mind. Draco, Madam Pomfrey, Dumbledore. It was funny how things so fast. Harry out of all people should know that, coming from a neglectful muggle household to being a famous wizard in the span of a day. Still… Draco. He was a lot more intricate than he'd ever realized. Stupidly, he supposed it made sense. No one was really as graceful as they made himself out to be. Harry himself was the same, but also different. They had both put walls around to protect themselves. Draco was just a little more scared than him and a little bit more lost. He was also better at hiding it.
Draco was wrong about him not being a different person. Maybe in the way he was looking at it originally but now he knew. They weren't two different people. Just one that he'd been looking at wrong all along.
Draco was… he couldn't explain it. There was just something about him they kept his attention so vigilantly. Like a snitch. A flash of gold before it was gone just as quick. Out of his grasp.
Harry wasn't the youngest seeker of the century for nothing though.
Without warning the hospital wing doors flew open. A mass of bushy brown hair came rushing in like a bullet. Harry didn't even get a word in before she was inside the mediwitches office.
"Nice to see you too," he responded moodily.
Ron came in seconds later comically out of breath. "The woman- I don't know how she does it!" He watched the two females talk excitedly through the windows in the office and shook his head.
"What happened?"
"I don't know! I reckon she found a cure though. We were just in the common room studying then she slammed her book and she's off running like bloody Cockatrice! It almost made me snap my quill in two!"
"Really?" Harry asked excitedly. The faster he got out of the suffocating walls and away from the mediwitch the better. He was quickly becoming paranoid because of it.
"I sure hope so. She's been looking non-stop. She even forgot to do her herbology essay yesterday!"
Harry rapped his wand on his knee nervously. He was wordlessly grateful for Hermione's dedication. "Remind me to get her a good Christmas present."
They both shared a stupid grin.
The two women came out a moment later. Now that he had a closer look he could now see she was carrying two huge books and was breathless despite the huge smile on her face.
"I figured it out!" She exclaimed, throwing the texts down on the table at the end of Harry's bed. He scrambled up quickly to get a better view. The four of them circled her as she started to explain it. "I've must have read over this book a thousand times but always skipped the footnotes. I figured they would just repeat information I already knew. I went over this cover to cover this time and something in the index caught me eye. All the footnotes seemed to keep referencing the work of a witch in the early 1500s named Violet Hemlock. She was burned at the stake by local muggles for dark magic. Before she died she left a lot of her work for her husband and it's become a basis for tons of medical dark magic to date. Though, her name itself was almost completely erased from history by other people trying to take credit for it." She looked up, meeting all their eyes as she pointed to various mentions throughout the first book.
"And?" Ron asked.
"And, I looked up her work. It was incredibly hard to find. There was only one company that published her work who stopped printing to avoid suspicion during the witch trials in the America. Not even Hogwarts owned a copy of it. I had to owl multiple national libraries. I even messaged Krum- oh shut it Ron- and Flur to check the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons libraries for me. I finally got this one this morning during breakfast." She opens the other book to a page she already had bookmarked. The cover was beautifully intricate with blue leather and goldened engraving, claps, and painted page edges. "And look. 'Confusulso Impairasis'. There are photos, diagrams, potions. Everything. And look," she pointed to something in the middle of the page. Harry's eyes widened. It was a potion. A cure.
"You're brilliant, Hermione." He exclaimed. Harry nearly jumped for joy. Hermione blushed slightly. Ron was grinning wide too.
"This is amazing work, Ms. Granger. You never failed to impress me. I don't know adults who could have done the work you have done." Madam Pomfrey read over the potion. Her face faltered slightly. Hermione seemed to know exactly what was troubling her.
Still refusing to talk to the healer, he waited for Ron to ask what was wrong.
"These potion ingredients are rather out of fashion and for good reasons as well. Unicorns blood? Occamy egg? These certainly aren't in our potion stores."
Harry has a flashback of his first year watching Voldemort such the life out of a unicorn in front of him. "You mean if I drink it I'll…"
"I don't believe so. The other potion ingredients in it should counter the cure in the blood. Besides, unicorn blood can be ethically sourced nowadays but it's about as rare as Phoenix tears." Hermione corrects him. "It's super expensive."
Madam Pomfrey huffs. "Life is more important than money. It'll be taken care of." She picks up the book and starts to walk off with it. They protested.
"I have to get this potion off to Severus as fast as possible if you want your friend to live."
Harry didn't know how much he trusted his life in the hands of his potions master but begrudgingly agreed knowing he had no other choice. They allowed her to leave until it was just the three of them. Hermione made sure she was completely gone in the floo network before turning back to them. She threw open the first book again and started flicking through the pages.
"What now?"
Hermione shot him a look telling him to shut up.
"I didn't want to show his to Pomfrey in case I was wrong but look." She finally starts flipping and stops on a page and points to a sentence near the middle of the page. Someone had drawn in a circle over it. Harry immediately knew it couldn't be Hermione, she valued books too much. "This wasn't here the first time I checked out the book. Someone else had underlined this after I checked it out the first time. And look. the footnote. This is what got me on the trail of Hemlock. Someone knew what I was looking for and that I'll come back to this book."
Harry looks up grimily. Could it be Draco? He was the only person that he knew about at least that knew about his curse who could have done it. But he would have told Harry straight out, right?
"Did you ask Madam Pomfrey who had it last?" Harry asks.
"That's the thing, no one did. I was the only one to check it out."
Rons frowns. "Didn't you say Parkinson was bugging you about it a couple weeks ago?"
She nodded. "Yes. I think Pansy left the clue there. She was trying to get me to find the answer."
"Why would a Slytherin like her want to help Harry?" He exclaims. Then; "No offense."
Harry shrugged.
Hermione tapped her finger nervously on the edge of the book. "I don't know."
Harry stays silent
DRACO
Bang
Bang
Bang
Ban-
"Will you cut it out?"
"No." Draco hit his head on his desk for what had to be the thousandth time, staring down at his ancient runes homework and groaning.
"I swear to Salzar if you don't stop within the next second I'll hex you."
"You could do my homework for me and I'll stop."
A pillow hit him in the back of the head causing Draco to sit up and glare. Blaise was lounging on his bed reading with some magazine he'd 'confiscated' from a first-year on prefects duty. "I wouldn't do your bloody homework even if you got Daphne Greengrass to run naked throughout the school."
Bang
Bang
Bang
"Don't test me."
"I'm not trying to." Nonetheless, Draco stopped and looked down at his homework. It was an unintelligible mass of scribbles he doubted Professor Babbling would be able to understand. He huffed, scrunched up the parchment in a ball, and chucked in angrily in the bin beside his bed. He just couldn't focus.
His mind was on repeat of that night in his tower. No matter what he did it kept coming back to haunt him.
'I know you can do it just don't hold yourself to impossible standards, Draco.'
The more he thought about it the more complicated things became. Draco naturally loved being ahead of everyone else as snottish as it sounded. He was ambitious and always dreamed of getting better. But how much of this was because of him and not his father? He had pushed him to to the point where Draco could no longer stand it and only a couple years earlier was Draco still hopeful he could achieve such demands. He had woken out of that a long time ago but maybe there was a tiny part of him who still wished to make his father proud. He didn't know why. Now Harry was telling him that none of it mattered, and it shouldn't, but it did. The question was to him or his father?
And Harry did think he was coward. He hadn't denied that. Though, he had said he wished knew Draco could climb over it. Draco couldn't imagine how he thought that. It gave him hope though oddly.
"Alright, that's it. Who is it?"
Draco, looking up from his head in his hands, gave him a questioning stare.
"Don't play dumb with me. Who's the girl who's got your attention? I hear you sneaking out every other night."
Draco's heart skips a beat. "What?"
"I'm not deaf," Blasie says rolling his eyes. "And Pansy calls me a horrible sneak."
Draco sputters. "Girl? That's not- I'm not- That's insane."
"Oh, come off it. I've known you for five years and never once seen you look twice at a girl. So why now? Who is it?"
Draco stares at him in shock and slight embarrassment for him to be suggesting what he has. Draco wasn't the type to go shagging every girl he saw like Blasie did. He was always too busy to entertain himself with silly notions such as dating. He simply couldn't be bothered by it. In earlier years it was most likely the fact it was expected for Draco to court and marry someone of his parents choosing. A political marriage was what was expected of him and at the time he'd never thought twice of it. Until now.
"Just because I don't go kissing every girl I see doesn't mean I don't think about them. It's called modesty. I was brought up properly. You were dragged."
Blaise scoffs. "Yeah right. Who do you think is the prettiest girl in our year is then?"
Draco hesitated. His brained racked his brain of all the available options. Lisa Turpin wasn't too bad. Neither was Brianna McKinsey. Both had rather good social standings and power. He'd heard a couple boys talk about them in the bathrooms or during classes. He supposed they were rather pleasant to look at. Draco didn't really understand the hype though and made him feel as though he was missing something rather important. There was no beating in his chest or urge that other boy talked so eagerly about. He even tried to picture them that way but the experience left him a little off-put.
Draco shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know, Selwyn? I don't know and I really don't care. I have more important things to worry about."
Blaise snickers something and Draco shoots him a glare.
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
"No, spit it out. What do you have to say? I know you aren't one to hold your tongue."
"Jeez, what's got you knickers in a twist? All I said is that you're full of shit. You come back exhausted every night with that face before taking a shower."
Draco wanted to protest it was because the lake muddied up his clothes and hands but realized it probably wasn't going to help his case. "What do you mean 'that face'?"
Blaise smirks. "You know the one. You look dazed but happy about it. Like you just ate an entire tub of chocolate in one sitting. Or should I say eating-"
"Alright, I get it." Draco cuts him off not wanting to hear the end of the sentence. "I sneak out and I come back happy. Your point? Ever hear of taking a walk? Some people actually enjoy it, you know."
Blaise raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not shagging any girls. That's disgusting. Get your mind out of the gutter." Draco grabbed his Hot Chocolate (he'd bribed a house-elf to bring it up to him) and took a huge gulp to avoid Blasie's stare.
"Blokes then?"
He'd choked. His drink goes everywhere.
"What? You said it yourself, no girls."
"Yes, but that doesn't mean…!"
"Why not?"
His comment was so out of character, so far from what he knew of him, Draco just stared at him open-mouthed. His brain formulated no thoughts other than to register that he was shocked. He closed his mouth, then looked down at his homework trying to come up with a good response.
"Because I'm not a bloody poof."
Draco's opinion on homosexuality was entirely formed on the opinions on those around him. Had it not been for the stigma around it he wouldn't know what to think of Blasie's words. He knew from the remarks people made it wasn't something to sought after, only avoid. And pure-blood families like his own had an even worse view of it. They couldn't afford blood to wasted or to be seen as anything other than proper. To them liking the same sex was anything but. Besides, Draco was a Malfoy. He would need to carry on the family name even if he did despise his father. If he didn't his line would die with him.
Blaise shrugs his shoulders and goes back to his magazine. "Suit yourself then. It's your sad virginity, not mine."
Draco glares once again. Sometimes he hated how he so casually mentioned sex sometimes. It made him feel insecure when someone knew more about something than he did.
Draco began working on his homework again when Blasie finally shuts his lamp off and goes to bed. It was times like this Draco was grateful the Slytherin dorms only housed two at a time.
He scribbled the Uruz rune on the paper as he desperately tried not to let his mind wander off again. The attempt was in vain. Blaise's comment had unsettled him too much.
I'm not gay. That's absurd. Just because I don't pay attention doesn't mean I'm that.
He even tried picturing the males in his year just like the girls. It turned out just the same. Nothing really took him by surprise or jump for joy. It was like picking out the best kind of flour.
Suddenly Draco's quill stopped mid-word and his eyes went wide.
