Chapter 15: Aftermath
"What about me?" Harry asked in confusion as the door swung shut. "If Malfoy can't leave the infirmary, doesn't that mean that I can't either?"
"Of course it does, dear." Madam Pomfrey said, before heaving a long-suffering sigh and shuffling over to Ron's once-again prone form. One mumbled levicorpus later, she'd maneuvered him onto the bed and cast a spell to keep the pooling blood from damaging his eye. "You two are linked after all."
"Yes, thank you, I know that," Harry said snidely.
"Don't use that tone with me, Mr. Potter." Pomfrey looked over her shoulder at him sharply. "I realize you've had your life turned upside down, but that does not entitle you to speak to me like that."
"Er, Sorry Madam Pomfrey," Harry said softly.
"Don't worry, Harry," Hermione put in, delicately touching Harry's arm with the very tips of two fingers. "They're trying to work something out now, I'm sure of it. They want to keep this thing a secret. It makes you both very vulnerable right now."
"I know," Harry sighed, and glanced over at Malfoy who was standing, very stiffly, ten feet away; back to the room. "But, I just don't see how they'll be able to do that. How do they plan on hiding the fact that I can't go very far from Prince Charming? We aren't even in the same house."
"I don't know." Hermione shook her head. "But, I'm going to the library to see if I can find some reference to this spell that Weasley put you under."
"All right. Thanks Hermione," Harry said softly, his gaze wandering, once again, to the lone figure across the room.
"Just try not to kill each other, okay?" Hermione asked, with the smallest quirk to her mouth showing just how likely she thought that was, despite the circumstances.
"Of course not," Harry said eyes wide with innocence.
Hermione snorted and left the Infirmary, snagging her satchel of books on the way out.
Across the room the Mediwitch tending to Ron Weasley tsk'd and shook her head. "It seems that Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Potter have done a number on you Mr. Weasley. You're going to need some professional help." Shaking her head in exaggerated concern, she pulled the curtains around the bed and cast a privacy charm that, by chance, separated Harry and Draco from the rest of the Infirmary, it's walls were so large.
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Behind him, Draco could feel the privacy ward go up, and knew that the Mediwitch was tactfully giving them time to talk away from prying eyes. How much they would get was up for grabs, but they were, for the moment, alone; just what Draco wanted.
"Malfoy?" He heard Scarhead ask from behind him. "Um, I wanted to ask you…how far apart can we go?"
Huh, Draco thought, a reasonably intelligent question from the brat-who-lived. Impressive. I wonder if it came from a random collision of his two brain cells?
"Malfoy?"
I am Malfoy. I am the Malfoy now. Father is worse than dead, and Mother… Draco trailed off. Even in his thoughts, he couldn't say it, couldn't think it. He shook his head, determined. Mother committed suicide today. Her letter said that she couldn't live without Father, especially since he 'still existed in the world and was forever beyond her reach.' So she went out the same as her favorite historical woman of power. Of course, Mother could have chosen a more painless way of dieing than the bite of an asp, but she was such a romantic creature, and always admired the strength it took Cleopatra to do that. Fresh pain lanced his heart, just another slow-bleeding wound in the fabric of his being since Professor Snape had given him his mothers letter behind the privacy ward. Draco hadn't meant to destroy the ward, but being bound to Harry fucking Potter and being made an orphan, was just a little too much for anyone to be asked to handle calmly in the space of a few hours. Especially when the Headmaster had said that they wanted him to be re-sorted into Gryffindor so that Golden Boy would have a reason to take him under his wing and 'show you around the light side'. Fat chance of that! Draco liked who he was, a mixture of his Mother and Father. He was all that was left of them, and he had so much to do, now that his mother had killed herself. He was the only thing standing between the Malfoy honor and the dregs of society. It was already swimming in mud from the fates of his parents. He would not allow it to be damaged any further.
The phantom finger began to poke Draco in the chest, and he looked up alertly. Where was Scar face? Turning to find him, Draco was suddenly, and violently, incapacitated by sharp pain that radiated from the center of his chest, where the finger had abruptly turned into a talon and dug into his body, seeking something beyond mere flesh and blood.
Searching for his soul.
Falling to his knees with a breathless gasp, Draco clutched both of his hands to his chest, as if he could catch the talon clawing its way into the center of his being and turn it aside. Instead, his fingers slid across smooth cloth and beneath that, skin that was suddenly slick with sweat. Curving his own fingers into a parody of talons, Draco ripped his shirt open and clawed at his skin, tearing rivulets in his chest where blood welled and began to flow freely and hotly down his stomach. Still, the talons bore down, and Draco somehow found breath to give a strangled cry of pain, his last ounce of thought lent to THAT DAMN POTTER BOY who had walked away and left Draco in such agony, hoping he would hear and return. For the pain had changed form, from that of a talon striving to get into his body, to a massive force that was struggling to get out of it, and Draco feared the worst.
Letting out a last breathless cry, a strangled sound of lost hope and despair, Draco's mind tumbled into chaos, his mind and body a myriad of conflicting sensations. His sight began to dim around the edges, velvety darkness softening the edges of the world, while the center became strangely sharp, objects standing out to such high relief that he could have counted the eyelashes on his eyes, had he the brain power to do so.
Cool hands and a soft voice intruded upon the encroaching darkness, offering up the hope of reprieve from the pain that had become his world. Everywhere they touched him, his shoulders, his arms, the back of his neck; the pain vanished, becoming pools of serenity that spread throughout the rest of his body, eating the pain and leaving peace in its wake.
Eventually, enough pain evaporated in the face of Harry's hands, that Draco was able to unclench his hands from where they'd dug into his shoulders and stretch them out as he cautiously leaned back to prop himself up on the wall.
Taking a deep breath, Draco carefully flexed each of his fingers in turn, making sure that he could maneuver them painlessly before moving on to each wrist in turn, and then his shoulders. By the time he'd gotten around to wiggling his toes, the deadness in his ears that he hadn't realized existed, began to fade, and he heard Wonder-boy's voice speaking to him in soft, urgent tones.
"What, Potter?" Draco snapped at him, shrugging off the hand that was still resting on his shoulder in what was supposed to be concern. "Do you have any idea what you just put me through? The agony? No, of course you don't. You aren't affected by this twisted cures, I am."
Four-eyes stared at him from the other side of his impossibly thick glasses, his mouth mimicking the roundness of his lenses.
"Oh, nice imitation of a fish there, Potter. Did your Weasel teach you that?" He raised one pale eyebrow to float majestically halfway up his brow.
The boy-who-should-be-dead lowered both of his brows to a crease, his eyes sparking irritation. "No. And what do you care? I was trying to help."
"Help? Help? You call that HELPING ?!" Draco screeched at him. "You bleeding walked away! How, in the name of Merlin, do you call that helping?" his voice lowered at the end; calm, and full of menace.
Abashed, Harry rocked back on his heels from where he'd been crouching at Malfoy's side. "Well, I asked you how far apart we could go, and you didn't answer. I called your name twice and you just ignored me. I even walked over and tapped you on your shoulder, you barely even flinched!" He said defensively, even as he avoided the piercing silver gaze of the other boy. "So I figured that I'd find out on my own since you wouldn't even acknowledge my existence. I stopped as soon as you looked like you were starting to hurt."
"Oh, really? Then you really need to work on your observational skills," Malfoy said scathingly, with an aristocratic toss of his head to keep his hair out of his face. Not that it would actually dare to fall into his face. "Because I was in pain for quite a while."
"No, you weren't," Harry said stiffly, a stubborn set to his jaw. "You were on the ground for about four seconds."
"I…what?" Malfoy asked, momentarily distracted from his mutinous train of thought.
"You were only on the ground for about four seconds, I said," Harry repeated mulishly. "It doesn't take that long to cover twenty feet in a dead sprint."
"Harry!" a soft voice cut across the silence as Malfoy stared at Harry with an uncharacteristically surprised look on his face.
"What?" Harry replied, aggravated that they'd had so little time to talk. He'd been hoping that he'd somehow been able to talk to Malfoy about what they were going to do now that they were bound to each other. Their lives had just been rather severely restricted.
"Don't hiss at me, Potter," Malfoy suddenly bristled, his shoulders rising slightly, and his eyes flashing his temper.
"What? I didn't…" Harry began.
"Why did you forget about me? I almosst got ssmusshed-ded by the humanss with the big feet, looking for you. You ssaid that you would meet uss in the Big Birdss Nesst. But then ssomething went wrong and I couldn't find you!" The tiny snake sounded very confused and frightened, agitation clear in his tone.
With a sudden sinking sensation, Harry realized that the voice he was hearing was none other than his very own familiar; a certain baby adder that was at the moment, very peeved at being left behind and forgotten in the Owlery. Turning around slowly, Harry could just make out the image of the little snake crawling its way towards him from under one of the beds.
"What is your problem now, Potter? You aren't hearing voices again, are you?" Malfoy's voice was strong and snide even as he stood unsteadily to his feet, using the wall behind him to brace his movements.
A little shaken at the correctness of Malfoy's assumptions, Harry only barely managed to whip his head around and hiss at Serin.
"Don't move, sstay where you are!"
"What?" Serin paused in his movements and lifted his head up a few inches off the ground in an indignant gesture. "Why sshould I?"
"Becausse, there iss ssomeone elsse in thiss room with me and he can't find out about you," Harry replied desperately. Never more glad in his life, that all words in parseltongue sounded like they were words of anger. Malfoy would think that he was only cursing, instead of pleading with a suddenly irascible snake.
"Why?" Serin questioned again, his tongue flicking out in unhappiness. "Are you disspleassed with me? Iss that why you forgot about me?" another flick of his tongue, this one a slower movement that left the tip outside of Serin's mouth so that it could wiggle up and down slowly, tasting the currents in the air. "Do you not wissh for me to be with you any longer?"
"No, that'ss not it at all," Harry assured him quickly, with a glance over his head at Malfoy, whose face had taken on a shuttered look. "I jusst – don't want you to get hurt. And I'm afraid of what might happen to you if he findss out about you."
"Hmm," tongue out, tweedle-tweedle, in. "I ssuppose I can undersstand that. But if that really iss the casse, you sshould treat me later for abandoning me."
"Treat you?'" Harry cocked his head to the side in a curiously avian gesture. "To what?"
"I'm ssure you'll think of ssomething."
"What-?" Harry began.
"I'll jusst sstay over here till you can come get me," Serin said, curling up at the foot of the bed, his eyes two glittering black gems in the hidden shadows under the bed.
"Go ahead and do whatever, sso we can leave," Serin lifted his head from where it had been sitting on his coils and rubbed it on the ground. "It ssmells like death in here."
Heaving a sigh of frustration and affection, Harry turned back to Malfoy, only to see him sitting in a chair and looking rather perturbed.
"Are you out of your mind?" Malfoy asked him, his question made all the more hurtful for the utter lack of scorn carried within it. It seemed that Malfoy truly believed that he was.
"N-no," Harry answered uncomfortably. Shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot, he tugged unconsciously at the strands of hair directly above his right ear, right where Serin usually rested his head. Glancing guiltily back at the hidden snake for a brief minute, Harry abruptly returned his attention to the Prince of Slytherin leaning his chair back against the Infirmary wall, his shirt torn open by his own fingernails and blood still dripping slowly from the wounds. "Dammit, Malfoy!" Harry cried irritably, running a hand through his hair in agitation. "Now Madam Pomfrey is going to blame me for those clawmarks."
"And well she should; it is your fault." Malfoy grunted, pushing out of the chair and shuffling painfully over to the nearest bed and stretching out on it full length.
Sighing in resignation and irritation, Harry walked over to the curtain blocking Madam Pomfrey off from view and pushed gently on it, making the curtain ripple. The silencing ward was banished a moment after and Pomfrey stuck her head past the curtain.
"Yes, Dear? What is it?" She asked, kindly.
"Draco, um, hurt himself. Could you come take a look?" Harry asked, biting his lip in guilt.
"Hurt himself? How? You weren't fighting again already, were you?" She asked, breaching the barrier of the curtain and approaching the bed where Malfoy lay. "Oh dear! You certainly did a number on yourself. Why in the world were you scratching at your own chest so much it bled?"
"Because—" Draco started, fully intending to tell Pomfrey what had happened and then enjoying the show when she tore strips out of Potter's hide. Then, glancing past the Mediwitch, he looked in Potter's eyes and suddenly changed his mind. "Because my skin was itching."
"Your skin was itching?" Poppy lowered her wand and looked at the new Lord Malfoy, eyebrows raised high.
"Yes, ma'am," Draco said, looking her in the eyes solemnly. "It's been itching for a while so I opened my shirt to scratch at it better when the two of us were talking. I just kept scratching, and I guess I didn't realize how much damage I was doing until Potter stopped me."
"I see. Well try and pay attention to what you're doing next time, hmm?" She walked over to a near-by cabinet. Reaching inside, she grabbed a potion bottle and turned to Malfoy. "Here," She said, walking back over and handing it to him. "Use this next time your skin starts to itch so much and we can avoid making you bleed."
"Yes, ma'am," Draco said again, opening the cap immediately and putting two fingers into the thick paste contained inside. Scooping out a lump of potion, he brought it to his now-healed chest and smeared it over the surface, removing the 'itch' that had caused him to scratch until his chest bled.
"All right, if that's all, I have another patient to deal with," Poppy said again, pausing a moment at the edge of the curtain. "Is there anything else?"
"No, ma'am," Both boys said in unison.
"All right, then," She repeated and disappeared behind the curtain.
There was a moment of silence before Harry turned towards Draco, who was buttoning up his shirt.
"Why did you do that, Malfoy?" Harry asked, puzzlement evident in his tone.
"I don't rightly know," was the soft answer.
"You don't know?"
"NO! I don't bloody know, all right!" Malfoy snapped.
"Fine! Geeze!" Harry returned, angrily.
Again, there was a pause when Malfoy didn't respond in anger, simply finished buttoning his shirt and then stretched back out on the bed and threw an arm over his eyes.
Eyeing the other boy suspiciously, Harry turned towards his familiar still hiding under the foot of a nearby bed.
"Sserin?" Harry said softly, sitting down next to the bed.
"Yess, Wizard-mine?" Serin said, softly.
"You can come out now."
Lowering a hand, to the ground, Harry scooped up his familiar when he crawled out of the darkness, and held him close to his body. "I'm ssorry, Sserin. I didn't purpossefully abandon you in the Big Birdss Nesst. Me and the One That Knowss were attacked by…" Harry paused. Having never talked to Serin about Ron before, they had not come up with a name for him in parseltongue, and Harry knew from his experience on the train that trying to say 'Ron' or 'Hermione' in parseltongue only resulted in him saying it in English. "…we were attacked by Blood-Fur."
"Blood-Fur? What did he do?" Serin asked, rubbing his chin gently against the palm of Harry's hand.
"He threw Magic at uss that wass meant to make the two of them matess. But I interfered and casst the magic away from the One That Knowss. Unfortunately, it bounced off of me and hit that boy over there." Harry raised Serin up and showed him Malfoy, who appeared to now be asleep. "Sso now, insstead of the One That Knowss, and Blood Fur being matess—"
"Now you two are," Serin finished for him.
"Uh, well… Not exactly," Harry said, embarrassed.
"You aren't?" Serin raised his head in inquiry.
"No."
"Why not? If it had hit the One That Knows and Blood-Fur, they would have been matess, yess?" Serin asked.
"Well, yess," Harry squirmed.
"Then if it hit you and that boy, why aren't the two of you matess?" Serin asked.
"Well, because…we… well, we jusst aren't," Harry said in exasperation.
Serin shaped his neck in a peculiar 's' shape that seemed to be a shrug. "Ssuit yoursself, but it sseemss to me that the two of you are matess." More softly, so that Harry almost didn't hear him, he said, "Ssilly human."
Sighing to himself, and rolling his eyes, Harry continued, "That'ss not the point of thiss sstory."
"No?" Serin curled up on his hand once more and looked at his wizard.
"No. The point iss that thiss magic—"
"Mating."
Harry clenched his teeth tightly together for a moment. "MAGIC created a bond between uss that will not let uss leave each other."
"'Won't let you leave'?" Serin cocked his head to the side, "What doess that mean?"
"It meanss that we can only go sso far from each other before he getss hurt. The magic punisshess him for trying to leave me," Harry explained.
"What about you?" Serin asked, concerned, "Do you get punisshed?"
"No, which iss a good thing." Harry glanced at the sleeping boy on the bed. "Though I'm beginning to think that he may be punisshed enough for the both of uss. What he goess through is horrible. I may not like him, but he doessn't desserve thiss."
"You don't like him?"
"No. Not one bit. He'ss rich and arrogant, and jusst downright mean. I don't like being around him, all he doess iss make me mad. I'm not ssure we'll be able to get through thiss without killing each other. But the alternative iss mind-numbing." Harry rubbed his forehead with his free hand. It was still very difficult to understand and even believe what had happened. If it weren't for the pain that Malfoy had experienced not to long before, Harry would've said that it was a joke, a scam put on him by somebody hoping to increase inter-house unity. But it wasn't. The pain for Malfoy was very real, and seeing the other boy go though the agony had forcibly reminded Harry of the pain of the cruciatus that the Dark Lord had cast on him. Which is why he decided to do everything in his power to avoid causing the other boy pain. Agony like that went beyond mere words and certainly beyond the childhood rivalry the two of them had going. Not that Harry was suddenly going to be nice to Malfoy. He just wasn't going to walk too far away from him.
"What iss the alternative?" Serin asked softly, rubbing his scales together to create a soft, rustling sound that Harry found soothing.
"Death, destruction, and madness."
There was a soft pause in which Harry's familiar absorbed that information. Then he slithered out of Harry's palm and around his wrist, which he wrapped around in an embrace. "I will help you, wizard-mine, any way that I can. And so will the Other. Sshe likess you very much."
Harry smiled softly. "I know sshe does. I'm glad that I have the both of you, ssince Blood-Fur iss no longer going to be my friend."
"What about the One That Knowss?"
"Sshe's sstill going to be my friend, but I don't know how things will turn out, ssince me and the other boy cannot leave each other. It will make the other humans very ssusspiciouss of uss. We've never sspent much time around each other. And when we were together, it wass only to fight." Harry rubbed his forehead again in frustration. He was getting a headache, and it seemed to be spawned by the situation he was in. What were they going to do about this?
"Trust in Old Wise Fur, he will think of ssomething."
"I ssure hope sso, Sserin. I ssure hope sso."
Lapsing into a comfortable silence, Harry began to softly stroke his familiar's scales again, reveling in their soft feel, as well as the pleasurable sounds the tiny adder made.
Harry had never been very good at waiting; he usually used his music to pass the time. But for the life of him, he couldn't think of anything to sing. His life just sucked too much right now. It was just one of those days. Inspiration suddenly struck, and he remembered a song about it being 'one of those days.' Harry racked his brain for a moment until he thought he remembered the words; then he began to sing softly, but with feeling:
It's just one of those days, when everything is fucked; everybody sucks; and you don't really know why, but you want to justify, ripp'n someone's head off.
No human contacts, and if you interact, your life is on contract, you best bet is to just stay away motherfucker, it's just one of those days!
It's all about the he-said, she-said, bullshit. I think you better quit lett'n shit slip, or you'll be leav'n with a fat lip…
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Draco Malfoy lay on the bed, right arm flung over his eyes in an effort to keep the evil world at bay. He'd been able to ignore Potter's hissing, and had been almost asleep when the singing started. Considering the soft tone that Potter was using, Draco had been expecting a soft and sappy song about love lost or something else equally inane. Imagine his surprise when no words of love were forthcoming, in fact there were words of hate and destruction instead. What was the Boy-Who-Lived doing knowing a song filled with such anger? And the fact that he was singing it so smoothly with no sense of hesitation implied a rather intimate familiarity that Draco would not have guessed the Saint to have. And given the fact that Draco himself was unfamiliar with the song implied that it was Muggle-made. Imagine that, Saint Potter listened to hate-filled Muggle music. His last thought before he drifted off into sleep was that perhaps there was more to Potter than met the eye.
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Well, here we go. Once again, here is a silly excuse session from the author about how she got married and allow a little thing like an, um, energetic husband get in the way of her writing. What can I say? I'm very much in love. And for about two months there, I just didn't give a crap about writing. Oops. Anyway, that doesn't matter. The song Harry sings, is called 'Break Stuff' by Limp Bizkit. Tootles!