The next two days following everything that happened with the trapdoor seemed to blur together, as if they were only a dream, or perhaps the word nightmare fit it better. Ron, Hermione, and Draco had been sent away from the Hospital Wing before they even got to see if Harry had made it out of the room past the flames; Madame Pomfrey had somehow managed to summon Professor McGonagall. She sent them all back to Gryffindor Tower, though surprisingly she didn't take any points from them for being out of bed after hours. Maybe she knew what was going on, or maybe she just took pity on how terrified they all likely looked, still, she wouldn't let them stay there to wait to at least find out if Harry was okay.
Later that night, Professor Dumbledore himself came up to Gryffindor Tower. None of them had gone back up to their dormitories, though they had undone the spell they had placed on Neville, who had stared at them for a solid minute, a worried and slightly nervous smile on his face, before running off to their dorm without saying a word. Ron, Hermione, and Draco had all curled up on the couch closest to the fireplace, even though it was still cold and empty, as it had been for months. None of them were touching, though they were as close as you could be without doing so. Usually Draco would have stood up and moved to sit on one of the armchairs next to the couch, but he felt like he needed to be as close to them as possible at the moment, as if they would disappear if he left them. By the time Dumbledore came through the portrait hole and into the common room, Draco had begun to drift off to sleep even though he was terrified of what they would find out as soon as someone decided they deserved to know what was happening.
The first thing the Headmaster told them was that Harry would be okay, he was just unconscious and it could be a little while before he woke up, though it would likely only be a couple days. He didn't tell them how hurt he was, he didn't tell them why he was unconscious, didn't tell them anything besides that Harry would be fine, even when they begged him to tell them everything else. They weren't told if it had truly been Severus who had been trying to steal the stone, they weren't told if the stone was safe now, they weren't really told anything, and it made everything even more terrifying than it already had been.
What if when Harry woke up, he didn't remember anything? What if he was really hurt, like lost a limb type of hurt? What if Dumbledore had been lying, and he wouldn't be okay? Nothing Draco was told by Hermione and Ron, both of which seemed to be trying to convince themselves more than anything of their words, about how he would be fine, could calm his worry.
The first day after everything was disorienting. Everyone seemed to know that something had happened the night before, though nobody knew exactly what besides that it had something to do with Harry, who was now in the hospital wing and wasn't allowed visitors. The stories people were coming up with were all completely wrong, though many of them included Professor Quirrell or Severus, since neither of them seemed to be in the castle. None of the teachers said anything about any of it, they simply acted like nothing had happened, even when Draco, Ron, and Hermione attempted to get answers out of someone besides Dumbledore.
The day after that was almost worse, because not only did the whole school seem to know something had happened, but they also seemed to know that Draco, Ron, and Hermione were involved in it somehow as well and many people had asked them what happened. They didn't tell them anything, though it was partly because they themselves didn't really know that much; they knew how they got through the protections placed around the stone, which nobody else seemed to know about thankfully, but after that they knew next to nothing. They knew nothing about why both Severus and Quirrell had disappeared, they suspected it had something to do with the Philosopher's Stone, but they knew nothing.
The second night after they snuck through the trapdoor the three of them tried to get back to, at least somewhat, normal. Hermione had received a letter from her parents just after dinner, and after reading it had decided she would reply in a while, which was somewhat unusual considering she almost always jumped at the thought of writing back to her parents, immediately stopping everything she had been doing to reply to their most recent one. This time however she had placed the letter to the side and turned to face Ron, who was staring somewhat blankly out the window, his long fingers tapping irregularly against his arms, both of which were crossed on top of his knees, which he had pulled up to his chest.
"Let's play chess." Ron looked over at her in surprise, as if he had forgotten he wasn't sitting alone somewhere.
"Huh?" he made a confused noise, blue eyes bright, head tilted to the side in a questioning manner as he slowly unfolded his legs and lowered his arms so they were no longer crossed.
"I said let's play chess, Ron. I need to do something that doesn't involve thinking about Harry or the stone, and I think you need to too," Hermione said and Draco glanced up from the book propped open in his lap that he had been attempting to read for the past hour. It had been given to him by Hermione, along with a few others, for his birthday a few days earlier. The fact that it hadn't even been a week since his birthday felt weird, wrong, like there was no possible way it was true. How could it only have been a few days ago that they had been laughing and throwing pillows at each other in the first year boys' dorm?
"I… okay," Ron said a bit hesitantly and slowly stood up. "I'll go get the board and pieces." He walked off to the spiral staircase leading up to the dorms and quickly went up them, leaving Hermione and Draco, along with a few older students who had decided to stay in the common room for a while longer than everyone else, alone down there. Draco went back to his book, staring down at the pages as he tried to remember where he had been in it. Keyword there being tried. All Draco really knew about the book, despite the fact that he was already a decent amount of chapters into it, was that it was about some girl who accidentally found a different world that seemed to be winter everywhere. He'd probably be enjoying it a lot more than he was if his mind didn't keep returning to Harry, to the trapdoor, to the stone.
Ron came back down a couple minutes later, but this time Draco didn't look up from his book. If they wanted him to play too they would ask, though he doubted they would, so he continued to try and focus on his book. It sort of worked for a while, his mind finally letting him get caught up in the story enough to understand what was happening, but after what was probably a half an hour, though it could have been more, he was pulled back to reality rather harshly by Ron.
"I-I give up! I can't concentrate. I… I'm going to bed. See you guys tomorrow." Ron said somewhat aggressively and Draco looked up from his book to see him shove the chess board away from himself, knocking several pieces over in the process which made small, almost inaudible noises of protest. He stood up and stormed off to the dorms, leaving Hermione alone on the couch they had been sitting on while playing. She stared after him for a long moment, eyebrows pinched together in worry, dark eyes shining with concern, before she sighed and began putting the game away. Draco watched her for a few moments before glancing back at the staircase leading up to the dormitories. Part of him wanted to put his book away and go up them to make sure Ron was okay, but he also knew he'd get the same answer that he already knew he would-"I'm fine."-even though Ron wasn't, not really.
He sighed and turned back to his book, trying to get himself back into the story again. It didn't work particularly well, Ron's outburst had broken all illusions he had managed to create for himself, his mind creating images that made him feel as if he was watching some sort of sequence of scenes that were meant to make him terrified all over again. Harry would be fine, Albus Dumbledore himself had said so, except that was part of the problem, wasn't it? He would be fine, he wasn't right now, he was hurt, and Draco hadn't been allowed to see him, not once. How bad could it possibly be for him to not be allowed any visitors?
There was a small rustle from near him and Draco looked up, half expecting to see someone coming through the portrait hole to either tell them Harry was dead, or that he had woken up. All it was, however, was a sixth year standing up and going over to the stairs heading up to the girls' dorms. Hermione looked up too; she now had a large, old book propped on her knees, though it was closed, with a piece of paper-normal paper, not parchment-on top of it, and she held a quill in her right hand. After a short moment she looked back down at the paper, absentmindedly dipping the quill in the ink bottle she had open on the arm of the armchair she had moved to which was a bit closer to Draco than the couch had been. The scratching of her quill filled the air again and Draco watched for a few seconds before turning back to his book again. She was probably writing her letter back to her parents, that was the only thing she ever used regular paper for, and they didn't have any assignments besides their summer homework anyway, which she could technically be doing, though Draco doubted it. She didn't have a single book open around her, and he knew she wouldn't be able to concentrate at the moment even if she tried.
No matter how hard Draco tried to focus on the book opened in front of him, it just didn't work. At some point, or perhaps at more than one point, he considered starting a conversation with Hermione, maybe asking her about her parents because they always seemed to be a safe subject to talk about when there wasn't any schoolwork to be done, but he quickly shrugged the idea off each time he got it. She was writing a letter, and he doubted he'd really be able to keep the conversation up for long without slipping into mentioning his worry for Harry.
After a while, it could have been minutes or hours, Draco wasn't really sure, Hermione stopped writing and when Draco looked up she was slipping her letter into an envelope that had "Mum and Dad" scrawled across the front in Hermione's loopy handwriting. She slipped the envelope into her bag, which she seemed to take everywhere, even after classes were over, and closed her ink bottle, dropping it and her quill into the leather bag as well. The large book she had been using as a table of sorts had disappeared, likely into her bag as well. She stood up from the armchair, grabbing hold of the leather strap of her bag and slinging it over her shoulder like she did after class.
"I'm going to bed." Draco made a small noise of acknowledgement, letting her know he had heard her, as he went back to looking at his book, hoping it would somehow, by some type of magic that the muggle book wasn't capable of, pull him away from this world and into a different, perhaps simpler, one. His fingers began tapping on the back of the book, an odd habit he'd had his whole life, but usually managed to control better. "You should too, Draco. It's nearly midnight." Hermione sounded a bit concerned, but Draco didn't want to look at her. He hated seeing her worried expression, which had been the look on her face almost constantly since they snuck out two nights ago, hated how half the time it was directed at him because he'd barely eaten or slept since then.
Hermione didn't move however, and Draco could practically feel her gaze on him. When he finally glanced her way, her eyes were full of worry as he had expected, shining in the light of the lamp that was on beside him.
"I'm not tired, I'll go up later," Draco said and looked away from her again. Her gaze felt heavy somehow, like it was weighing him down. How could someone looking at you make you feel like something was draped over your shoulders, something heavy and big, like a sandbag?
Hermione sighed and for a moment Draco almost thought she had given up and was going up to her dorm, except her footsteps didn't retreat, they came towards him. She sat down on the arm of his chair, one leg over the outer side and the other on the inside, like the armrest was a broom. For a long moment she was silent, and Draco was pretty sure she was still giving him that worried look.
"I'm worried about him too, Draco, but you refusing to sleep is not going to make him any better, nor will it help us find anything out about what happened," she spoke softly, almost in a whisper and the weight of her gaze seemed to lift off his shoulders. Still, Draco didn't look at her. Some part of him knew she was right, Harry wouldn't wake up any quicker by Draco forcing himself to stay awake, but at the same time, he didn't want to sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, his mind came up with images of how bad Harry had been hurt, of what could have happened. Sleeping had become a near impossible thing the past couple days.
"I know, I just…" Draco trailed off, unsure of how exactly he wanted to continue. How could he explain that he was scared he would fall asleep and miss something happening? How could he explain that he was tired, but didn't want to let himself fall asleep because he feared what his dreams held? Saying that would just sound ridiculous, even though it was true.
"Get some sleep, Draco, it's not going to make anything bad happen," she said, almost as if she had read his mind and he glanced at her. "At least go up to the dorm and lie down, okay?" Hermione squeezed his arms slightly before standing up and going over to the staircase leading up to the girls' dormitories. "He'll be okay, Draco. He's Harry."
Draco looked back at her as she ascended the staircase to her dorm. She was right, he sighed slightly and slowly closed his book, he should go to bed, even if it was just for a little while.