Madam Pomfrey was the first one to notice the wounds on Draco's back. Harry had already been shuffled to the side and told to stay put by a very serious headmistress when they discovered it. He probably would have never known what it said, if Madam Promfrey hadn't uttered the word out loud in surprise.
"Murderer..."
It had been a tense hour, between the numerous spells and potions given to Draco and the dozens of questions from both Madam Promfrey and Mcgonagall. Harry had tried his best to answer them all, but he didn't even know what happened himself and every time he didn't have an answer for them, they grew more suspicious.
"'Murderer'?" He repeated, standing up from his stool by the door. "Is that... on his skin?"
"You didn't notice it, Potter?" Mcgonagall asked, looking up from Draco's exposed back.
"He was on his back when I found him, and there was sort of... blood everywhere."
"You do not sound very phased by all this," came a voice from the door, startling Harry from the blood ridden memory. His hand automatically went for the wand in his pocket as he turned around; It had been a very stressful hour.
Harry found the owner of the voice to be none other than the new DADA teacher, Auror Kane. As the initial shock passed, all Harry could do was stare at him blankly and try not to ask him if he was an idiot. Did he not know who he was? Not phased?
Harry had been through the war, seen things people his age should probably never see, and then there was the dying bit. Yeah, it was scary to see someone he almost considered a friend laying in a pool of their own blood, but he wasn't about to fall to pieces over it. He had been in the war. He led the bloody war.
"No, sir, I am rather upset that someone did this to him," he answered honestly. Not phased didn't mean not caring.
"You do not seem upset, Mr. Potter. In fact, you seem a tad too calm, considering that you are currently the only suspect for this crime."
Harry's eyes narrowed at the shorter man; he reminded him of someone familiar. He had the same sort of short, presumptuous, bigotry he had grown to expect from Fudge. Wilkins Kane, the ex Auror who retired at the end of the first war with several medals of bravery. He didn't look the type to go rushing into battle, something he questioned as soon as he heard the story. Maybe he hadn't been as old or balding, or tweed-wearing back then, but something about him oozed laziness, and if the man shared the same difficult attitude as Fudge, there was only one thing for Harry to do. He turned around back to Draco's wounded back, and promptly ignored him.
Madam Promfrey give him a look that might have been understanding, and started placing bandages over the word carved into the pale skin, not acknowledging Kane in the slightest.
"You're not going to... make them go away?" Harry asked, painfully aware of his ignorance of healing magic. There was an irritated huff from Kane behind him and Mcgonagall ushered the man out of the room to speak in private.
"I'm afraid not," Pompfrey said, straightening up to look down at her work. "Magical scars are not so easily removed. Someone used a nasty spell on this one, and I can only hope he gave back in kind."
"Madam Promfrey, are you condoning fights in the school?" Harry joked, smiling slyly.
She gave him a stern scowl in return, and replied, "If someone needlessly attacks you, you fight back. You know well enough about this, love."
Harry nodded quietly, and had to turn his gaze elsewhere. It wasn't like the early days, when he and his friends came in with wounds from their small, yearly battles. They seemed like such massive Injuries at the time, but hardly a thing compared to the pain and suffering that came later.
But She had been there at the end of the war, patching up everyone she could still patch up. She and Mcgonagall were the ones who had to explain to the families how their child died, or why that scar would never fade. A war, they had fought in a war, and Harry had brought it to them. He brought the fight to a school filled with children.
Harry shuddered, and tried to force his thoughts away from the war for the third time that night. He had gone over it in his head a thousand times since it ended, and anytime he was left alone with his thoughts, it came creeping back. It was the worst when his friends left, when it was just him and his mind and for a while there Harry was worried he had gone insane at last.
How old were the first years again, eleven, even younger? He couldn't remember anymore, but they were still young. What if he had lost, what if Voldimort got past their defenses and found them? Hidden away in different spelled rooms across the castle in some mad hope that it would keep them safe. Even then, he had been too late to save them from the Carrows, the torture, the abuse.
And he had brought a war to a school.
"Potter?"
"Mr. Potter?"
Harry twitched, his attention drawn back to present by a hand on his shoulder. The headmistress had returned with a triumphant looking Kane beside her, both standing far too close to Harry for comfort. He was a little over sensitive to being touched, these days.
Mcgonagall cleared her throat and said, "Auror Kane and I would like to test your wand before we let you return to your dorm."
So, Harry just nodded and handed it over, not really caring what his last few spells were. He didn't attack Draco, at least he knew that much. Kane made a sound like an angry bull when Harry turned away from them to look at Draco one more.
"Potter, pay attention."
A "Yes, sir," slipped out automatically when he turned around, and he cursed himself for rewarding the man any sort of respect when he was greeted with Kane's smug smile. He looked as though he had just put a difficult student his place, and Harry knew right then and there that they were not going to get along.
All the same, he did his best not to glare at the man, and smiled weakly at the headmistress, nodding permission for her to start. She gave him an odd look before she muttered the spell and waved Harry's wand.
The buck walked out, smaller and a fainter color than when it was usually cast. Mcgonagall waved it off and waited for the next one to come. Harry started to worry it was some sort of spell that would give his library activities away, but let out a sigh of relief when instead it was a heating charm. After that it was a drying charm, and a few more basic spells. He had cleaned himself off because, unfortunately, Draco had been right about something. It was a bit of a mess up in his secret spot, and he might have gotten a little carried away with cleaning up.
"He could have cast these to hide the spell used on the boy's back," Kane grumbled, shuffling from one foot to another.
"Or he could have been cleaning, by the looks of it," Mcgonagall responded dryly before turning to address Harry, "which is a much welcome thing in the castle, as of late. The house elves have been overrun with work since we rebuilt."
"I still suggest we use the truth serum on him."
"And I said that was going too far, especially for the boy who saved us all from a rather bleak future."
Harry stiffened and took a step back. Both sides of the argument were wrong, and he had no idea Mcgonagall of all people thought of him that way. She never gave special treatment to anyone because of status, yet she used his new title as an excuse not to do something he should have been able to refuse anyway. It was queer to hear her talk about him like that, almost as if she were talking about someone else, rather than himself.
"He saved us all, yes," Kane began with a cynical tone, "that does not mean he is of sound mind currently. War does strange things to a man's mind, not that he's a man just yet." He paused and gave Harry a once over. "From what I hear, he and Mr. Malfoy were not on the same side of the war, as well. He should have been evaluated before being allowed to return here."
Harry bit his tongue and tried not to scream at him. What was it with short, balding men who seemed to think Harry's gone bonkers all the time? Was his unruly hair a personal insult to them?
"I believe," Harry snapped, "I have every right to disallow the use of Veritaserum no matter who I am, and I would rather like to go to bed now if you are done with my wand."
Mcgonagall blinked down at him, looking slightly put off at his tone. But Harry really could not bring himself to care anymore, and took the wand from her outstretched hand without another word. He nodded to Madam Promfrey, gave Draco one last look, and left the ward.
There were two good things to come out of all this, Harry decided on his way back to the dormetory.
One, he was infinitely more ticked off than he had been going in, and two, he now had a target in mind rather than searching blindly for Draco's attacker.
Draco had said it was him, and then looked confused when Harry assured him it wasn't. Draco wasn't so irrational or paranoid a person to assign the blame right to Harry's face unless he had good reason to. Whoever it was who did attack him, did something to make him think it was Harry. Which meant either a Polyjuice potion, or they had something that belonged to him.
That narrowed it down to one of the fifty students in his newly established house, and Harry had a feeling he knew precisely who hated Draco enough to use Harry's image to attack him.
The first thing Draco said when he woke up the next morning was, "it wasn't Potter," and if anyone heard the utter relief in his voice, he did not care. It wasn't him, and that was all that mattered. Well, that and the searing pain from his back.
He had woken up on his side, not his typical sleeping position, and instantly rolled onto his back. That had been a very bad mistake, and his wail of pain brought Madam Promfrey over and his embarrassment only grew when she chided him for ripping it open again. She didn't seem to care for his assurances that it was, indeed, not Potter who attacked him, and it took her sharply snapping, "we know!" for him to stop.
Now, he was left to lay on his side and try not to cry in pain. The stab wounds, once fatal, were all but gone. He could feel the dull ache of freshly healed skin and organs, but it was nothing compared to his back. He knew it was a word, or several shorter words, carved across his shoulder blades in a way that every small movement made them bleed again. The nurse refused to reveal what it said to him, and told him to stop moving around before leaving him to sulk.
Unfortunately for him, his bored mind had nothing else to focus on, so he tried to figure out how many letters it was, and perhaps what letters were there. He had come up with over sixty possible words when Harry showed up a little past noon.
"Oh thank Merlin's hideous beard!" he exclaimed.
"Well, good morning to you, too."
"Good morning my arse, Potter. My back is bloody killing me, that woman won't tell me what it says, and i'm starving."
"If I get you something to eat, can we skip the part where I tell you what it says?"
Draco narrowed his eyes at the dark haired boy and sat up further. "You saw it?"
Harry shuffled his feet, looked down at them, looked to the left, then down again, and finally back up to Draco. "I was worried, so I stuck around. Plus, they had to check my wand to make sure I didn't try to kill you."
"It wasn't you," Draco confirmed, watching those green eyes for any sign that he was wrong.
"Why did you think it was?" He asked Draco quietly, pulling a stool over to sit next to the bed. "Did you actually see a version of me?"
Draco bit his lip, and tried to decide how much to tell, and how much to keep to himself. He knew he sounded paranoid, and perhaps he was, but he also had good reason to assume at the time that it was Harry, of all people, that was attacking him.
"I didn't see anyone."
Harry blinked once, twice, a third time before blurting out, "then why did you—?!"
"I didn't see anyone, Potter. Tell me again, how many people have a cloak like yours?"
Harry went pale, his eyes widening in realization. "It wasn't a spell?"
"Aparecium, nothing."
"And they stabbed you," Harry added, his brows drawn together in thought. "They didn't hex you, not like your back."
"My back was from an earlier attack," Draco informed him, daring Potter to comment on it. "And using a knife means no wand to test."
"It also leaves me the only suspect," Harry said bitterly, "which was obviously intentional."
Draco studied him for a long while until he realized that this was probably the longest conversation they ever had without snapping at one another at least once. In fact, it was nearly pleasant, which was just odd.
"I know who it is, anyway," Harry added, his voice low. He seemed to be talking to himself, and Draco watched his fingers curl into fists.
"If you know who it is, tell someone already!"
Harry shook his head and glanced at Draco with a sheepish look. "I'm not positive, yet. It doesn't do anyone any good if the wrong person gets blamed."
"Better safe than sorry," Draco hissed, glaring at Harry in disbelief. How could he let his attempted murderer roam around? What of he attacked again?
"Better one enemy, than two," Harry quoted back and gave him a pointed look.
Draco simply huffed and crossed his arms over his aching chest. He must have winced, because one of Harry's hands closed around his arm gently, and Draco was met with worried green eyes.
How in the world were his eyes that green? That could not be natural. Draco had a half a mind to comment on the matter, when a disapproving voice called out, "who allowed you back in here without an escort?"
Draco looked up to see a short, annoying looking man striding towards them. He was the type of person who attempted to have presence, but naturally failed at it. Draco nearly laughed outright, until he glanced back at Harry.
His expression was absolutely murderous, quite a feat, considering not even his coward friends earned such a look from the hero. The hand on Draco's arm pulled away carefully, and the clenched fists returned before Harry turned around to address the man.
"Madam Promfrey is here, not that I require an escort to begin with."
"Mr. Potter, you are still a suspect in—"
"He didn't do it," Draco interrupted calmly, feigning boredom. "Are you here to do something, or just to whinge at my friend?"
Friend, ah. That felt strange to say.
Harry hadn't seemed to noticed, too preoccupied by the burning glare from the other man who looked at Draco with an even deeper scowl and puffed up his chest.
"I have come to take your statement to issue a report back to the Ministry on your attack."
Harry turned and was staring at Draco now, which was giving him an odd mix of worry and comfort. Those damned green eyes, again.
"There were two separate attacks and I shan't be speaking of either one of them. Forget it happened and go back to doing..." Draco raised a brow, "whatever it is that you do."
The man sputtered, "But, Mr. Malfoy, you—"
"Black," Draco snapped, "Mr. Malfoy was my father, and you will call me Mr. Black, or not at all."
The man deflated before them, looking between Draco and Harry in utter confusion. He obviously didn't like either one of them and Draco understood himself, but not the dislike for Harry. It was a bit strange, hero of the wizarding world and all that.
The man muttered something that might have been an apology, turned on his heel, and lift the room quickly. All of which caused Harry to snort, and when Draco turned, he was already grinning.
"What do you look so pleased for?" Draco asked, the corners of his lips tilting up, "You have another irritation following you about."
"Oh, that's just Kane, the new DADA teacher, ex-Auror, and my new Fudge replacement. Haven't you heard? I'm completely bonkers."
Draco allowed himself to smirk and folded his hands in his lap. "I knew that since day one. Please, tell me something I don't know."
"So, we are friends now, eh?"
"I had really hoped you hadn't heard that," Draco groaned, closing his eyes and moving to lean back before the stab of pain reminded him why he had to sit so rigidly.
"I'm crazy, not deaf."
"One could say both was in order."
There was a quiet pause before Harry spoke again, his voice soft, "Draco..."
Draco frowned at the way his name sounded nearly whispered, and opened his eyes to find Harry gazing at him strangely.
"What? You look as though I've died already."
"You nearly did," Harry mumbled, not taking his eyes off of him. "Why aren't you telling them about the other attack? You clearly remember that one better, don't lie."
"Potter, I was told all of three things when they allowed me to return here. One, do not attack anyone, either verbally or physically. Namely, keep your head down and don't fight back. Two, complete your classwork, and three, you will be expelled if you fail to meet the other two requirements." Draco dug his nails into the sheet and continued, "now you tell me, who do you think they will blame for either of these attacks? I may have a history of provoking them, but it doesn't mean I did now. Not that that matters, who would trust or believe my word over a few Gryffindors? I would be the one expelled, Potter, and no one would bat an eye."
"I wouldn't allow it."
"Oh, and why not? You are not all knowing, Potter, I could be lying."
Harry scoffed quietly, reached over, and flicked his cheek. Draco squeaked and opened his mouth to berate him for even thinking of touching him, when Harry interrupted, "You're not lying, know how I know that?"
"How?" Draco grumbled, rubbing at his stinging cheek.
"You're my friend, and I trust you not to lie about this."
It was an entirely different animal to hear it from Harry's mouth, not his. Like a promise, rather than a challenge. Draco could feel his cheeks burning, and hoped Harry would put it down to the flick rather than the flaming embarrassment and excitement at his words.
"You're a pratt," he mumbled, rubbing at his cheek more furiously.
"You're a git," Harry replied with a grin. But his smile slowly slipped away, and his eyes grew serious once again. "Now, let's talk about who did this to do, and what we're going to do about it."
