CHAPTER FOUR: …But You Can't Take the Fight Out of the Kid.
When Draco finally woke up, it was in the hospital ward. His sight had returned, but was a little fuzzy at the edges, and, when he felt his face cautiously, it almost felt normal, if a little rougher than usual. Grumbling, he rolled over, pushed his face into the scratchy pillow, and pulled the blankets over his head. These past two days had been truly horrible. It looked like this just wasn't his week.
Rubbing the back of his head, he looked around the room, curious. Madam Pomfrey was bent over a boy, encouraging him to drink what Draco recognized as a Pain Reliever potion. He thought the boy might have been one of the new first years, but, for the life of him, could not remember which House he belonged to. Shrugging, he turned and looked out of the window beside his bed, jumping violently when there was suddenly a voice speaking to him.
"Mister Malfoy?"
His neck whipped around so quick that he got a crick. Grimacing and stretching, he looked at the Nurse.
"How are you feeling today, Mister Malfoy?" she continued. He shrugged.
"I dunno—sleepy?" he replied. "How long have I been here?" She huffed, and planted her hands on her hips.
"Very funny, Mister Malfoy." She said to his first reply. "And you have been in here for almost a week." His eyes widened. A week? But, how—? But she was continuing. "Well, how about this, then; how does your face feel? The skin, I mean." Draco thought about it, then said;
"Kind of… rough. Dry." She nodded.
"Well, that is to be expected. That was a rather powerful boil curse. You're lucky that you didn't get scars for life." She squinted at him. "And your eyes? What about them? How are they feeling?"
Draco felt his face, his mind lingering horribly on the word 'scars'; an image of Potter came to mind, and he shuddered. No way would he ever want to look like that. Slowly becoming aware of Madam Pomfrey's second question, he blinked a few times.
"Sore." He said bluntly. "And everything's a little blurry—at the edges, yeah." She nodded.
"Well, that, too, is to be expected." She began to gather up bottles from beside his bed. "You must have made someone very angry, Mister Malfoy, for them to cast two very powerful curses on you as they—"
"Granger." He interrupted. She paused and looked up in surprise.
"Pardon?" she asked. He scowled.
"Granger—Hermione. Granger. She was the one who cursed me." He sneered at the bed sheets. "Filthy Mudblood." He added under his breath, too soft for the Nurse to hear. When he looked up again, Madam Pomfrey had raised an eyebrow.
"Ms. Granger, hmm?" she looked somewhat reproving. "Well, Mister Malfoy, you must have made her very angry indeed; Ms. Granger has never sent anyone to the Hospital Wing before." She fixed him with a very shrewd look. "Am I correct?"
Draco looked away, scowling. "Yeah," he said petulantly. "I might have. What's it to you?"
"You are a very unpleasant young man, Mister Malfoy." Madam Pomfrey stated, and, her mouth a thin, disapproving line, she turned and marched off to her office.
Draco snorted and turned to look out of the window again. Then, a thought striking him, he sat up and yelled towards the office; "Hey! How long do I gotta stay here?"
There was a pause. Then; "For as long as it takes until you are better, Mister Malfoy."
He snorted again. "Figures," he muttered. Laying his head back down on his pillow, he let himself sink into sleep.
A strange, repetitive sound woke him up. Fwip, fwip… over and over again, at regular intervals. Groaning, Draco slowly opened his eyes. They took longer than normal to focus, and, when they did, things were slightly less blurry than they had been when he'd woken up before. Rubbing the sleep from them, he rolled over, took his hands away from his face, and froze, staring.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked rudely, after getting over his initial shock.
Sitting in a chair beside his bed was Hermione. She held a thick book in her hands, and the sound that had woken him had been her turning the pages. She slammed it shut, and he tilted his head, trying to read the cover. But she dropped her hands over it, folding them together, and looked at him with a calm air of anger.
"Shut up, Malfoy, before I get it in my head to curse you again." She said matter-of-factly. Draco opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. He'd better not push it; he did not fancy another week spent in the Hospital Wing. Or longer. Rolling his eyes, he turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.
"Well?" he said after a long moment of silence. "What do you want?" he lolled his head over until he could see her again. "Why're you here? Come to beg my forgiveness?" he smirked. "It's a lost cause, you know; I don't forgive people I consider under me. Then again, I bet you wish I considered you at all. After all, you are a—" "You wish I was under you," she muttered angrily, venom dripping from her voice.
Draco paused, wondering if he had heard right. "Granger," he said, slowly. "Did you just… burn me?" he couldn't help the note of shock in his voice. She looked at him with a bored expression.
"Shut up, Malfoy." She said simply. He rolled his eyes again.
"You're just lovely, Granger. You sure you don't want to add a 'your momma' to that? No, really? You're certain? Oh, my, that's a rather rude thing to do with your middle finger, Granger, honestly, what a classy girl, just oh so—"
She stood up, lifted something into her arms off of the floor, then dropped a pile of books and loose-leaf onto his legs. He yelped and jumped.
"OW!" he exclaimed, and pulled his legs out from underneath the pile. "What the HELL is all this?!" Hermione folded her arms over her chest, looking at him.
"It's called homework, Malfoy." She said scathingly. "And, somehow, I got stuck with the job of giving it to you." She waved a hand at the pile of schoolwork. "I'm lending you my notes, so make sure you hurry up and get them back to me soon." She turned around, as if to leave, then paused. "Oh, and…" looking over her shoulder, she frowned. Draco blinked at the sudden indecisiveness in her tone, and watched her curiously. She shook her head, then continued.
"And… I'm sorry. For, you know—cursing you. You are a right little bugger, but I shouldn't have been so…"
"Damaging?" Draco offered, scathingly. She screwed up her face, then nodded.
"Sure." She said, then gave him a tentative smile. "So, yeah—I'm sorry." She turned away again; began walking towards the door. Draco dragged himself up into a sitting position, pushing piles of books and paper and quills onto the floor in his haste.
"HEY, GRANGER!" he yelled. She stopped, turning to frown at him.
"What?" she asked. He narrowed his eyes at her.
"I don't care about you or your apology!" he said, and she only smiled.
"There's the Malfoy I know and hate." She replied, and walked out of the Hospital Wing.
Draco collapsed back against the pillows, smirking.
"'Right little bugger', indeed," he muttered. "Stupid little Mudblood, she doesn't know me at all." He stared out the window, his brow smooth and his lips curled in something more like a smile than a smirk.
"Draco."
The voice, cold and smooth, made him jump and look up quickly, as if he had been doing something wrong and bad, instead of merely shirking his homework. He looked up from his doodling and blinked at Snape.
"Sir—?" he asked, setting his quill back in its holder. Snape inclined his head.
"I merely thought it would be a good idea to check on your condition." His black eyes flickered down to the sheet of parchment spread across Draco's lap, lingering on his shoddy artwork. The Professor's lips twisted ever so slightly. "So glad to see that you are filling your time here constructively." Draco felt his face burning.
"I'm doing—er—homework," he insisted, pulling out several sheaves of parchment and spreading them out on the bed sheets. Some fluttered to the floor, and Snape stooped to pick them up. He raised his eyebrows.
"This is not your writing, Draco." He noted. He cast a wry eye at the blonde-haired boy. "Copying, are we, Draco?" his lips thinned. "I really expected better of such a—"
"No, no, they're notes!" Draco interrupted hurriedly. "Notes—someone lent them to me, to help me with the work I've missed." Snape looked slightly surprised.
"Notes?" he repeated, and glanced down at the papers held in his hand. "From whom?" Draco looked down.
"Granger, sir." He hesitated, then added; "She brought my work to me, I guess one of the teachers told her to or something, and—and she lent me her notes." He finished, and shrugged. "I don't know why—I guess she just felt sorry? For what she did to me, I mean, sir."
Snape looked like he was thinking. Finally, he shook his head, gathered up the spread out papers, and placed them in a neat stack at Draco's side.
"Hmmm." He said. "Interesting. Well, I'll leave you to it, then, Draco." And, with a final nod, he swept from the room, his long, black robes billowing.
Draco watched him go, then, stretching, looked down at his doodling. A Snitch—oh, how he longed to beat Potter, just once, just once, at his own game—and the foggy shape of a Dementor. He had never been a very skilled artist; the Dementor looked like a stickman in a ragged grey towel. Draco shrugged, tossed aside the doodle paper, and pulled a stack of work towards him. Flipping open one of the heavy text books, he unearthed Hermione's notes from the pile, and held them in his hands for a moment, frowning at them. Finally, he shrugged again, dipped his quill in the ink bottle, and bent forward to begin writing.
It was barely ten minutes later that there was a small commotion at the doorway, and he looked up to see Blaise and Adrian tumble into the room. He stared at them.
"What the hell are you blokes doing?" he demanded, hastily shoving Hermione's notes under his work, hiding them from sight. He really didn't feel like being interrogated again. He looked up and watched the two Slytherins practically dive through the threshold, and roll across the floor. Adrian ended up somewhere under one of the beds, but Blaise calmly stood up and walked over to where Draco sat. Shortly after, Adrian popped out from under a metal bed frame and joined them. Draco stared at them both.
"What the hell was that?" he said, feeling embarrassed just looking at them. But Blaise was shaking his head, trying to catch his breath. It was Adrian that answered.
"Peeves," he stated. "Throwing dungbombs all across the hall." He looked mildly disgusted; it was a distinctive character trait of Adrian's, that his face very rarely showed an excess amount of emotion. He went on to say, "Think I want to smell like bombs all day? No thanks." He looked around the room with a sort of bland curiosity, then wandered over to poke the first year Draco had noticed when he first woke up.
"Oh," Blaise said after a moment of silence. "Almost forgot—here." He lifted a bag, and, tipping it upside down over the bed, dumped loads of candy and sweets all over Draco's lower body. The blonde-haired boy smirked.
"About time." He sneered, and, grabbing a handful of brightly-wrapped sweets, unwrapped them and stuffed them into his mouth. "Had nothing to eat but this bloody hospital wing slop." He said through a mouthful of chocolate and hard candy. Adrian, who had returned from prodding and staring at the first year in a menacing manner, strolled over and settled himself in the chair beside Draco's bed. Eyeing him, Draco could not help but compare the boy with the chair's previous occupant. Clearing his throat uneasily, he unwrapped a Chocolate Frog. Biting off the head with a sort of dark, savage pleasure, he turned over the collectable card and snorted.
"What?" said Blaise, settling himself on the bed near Draco's feet. "You get someone crappy?"
"Dumbledore," Draco sneered. With another snort, he tossed the card away from him. "What a weak old Muggle lover." His fellow Slytherins chuckled darkly, and Draco smirked.
They spent most of the day in the Hospital Wing, stuffing themselves with candy, making fun of the Gryffindors, and calling out insults to anyone who walked by that wasn't a Slytherin. It was as Adrian was entertaining himself by pelting the first year—who seemed somewhat unable to move—with Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans that Madam Pomfrey came out of her office. She paused, looking at the boys, the candy wrappers strewn over the bed and floor, and at the jelly beans bouncing off the first year's slack face, and her mouth tightened into a thin, disapproving line.
"Mister Adrian, stop that at once. If you and Mister Zabini wish to visit Mister Malfoy, you must learn to respect the Hospital Wing and the people staying here. If you do not, then I will be forced to—"
It was only when Adrian hit her in the face with a bogie flavoured bean that she lost it, and chased both him and Blaise out of the room. She glared at Draco, then shoved a glass of pale green liquid towards his face.
"Drink it." She ordered. Draco looked at her shrewdly, then narrowed his eyes at the drink.
"Is it poison?" he asked, suspiciously. She glared.
"Poison or not, Mister Malfoy, you will drink it right now, or I'll call in Ms. Granger, and she can take care of you!" she said, and he snatched the goblet from her hand, downing the liquid in one gulp. He gasped; it was like swallowing ice. She took the goblet from him, and marched away, disappearing into her office.
"Bossy old nag," he muttered under his breath. But his eyes were getting heavy, and he couldn't sit up any longer. Sagging back into the pillow, he fell asleep again.
A/N: Yeah… so, review please? Tell me if I'm getting the characters ok? : /