Stitched
Harry couldn't decide whether he felt more guilty or satisfied. Oh yes, the curse was in an absolute panic about having just hexed its master into unconsciousness, but that was fabricated, something he could fight against.
The hurt wasn't though.
He didn't know why he should feel like this, why he shouldn't have expected it to happen. Why should he expect any less after a few meaningless days and even more meaningless prattle about the weather and Quidditch? Was he expecting Malfoy to not to retaliate when he hexed him? Not to be his obnoxious, sneering self? Not to hate Ginny just because she was Harry's friend?
Not to hate Harry?
He didn't even know why he'd cursed Malfoy, not really. He blamed it on reflex for the moment because he found no offense in what Malfoy had actually said about Ginny expect for…bitterness at himself for the truth of it all. He'd failed in what was expected of him. He could never have that fairy tale ending—defeating Voldemort, marrying Ginny, becoming an Auror or professional Quidditch player and so on.
Then again, he was Harry Potter after all, and nothing could ever be that simple for him.
It was all expectation, expectation he wasn't entirely sure he could fulfill.
Sharp, harsh reality set in along with a particularly painful constriction of the curse when he realized that Zabini was yelling at him from across the room, his wand trained on him uncertainly as he made general remarks about his sanity. Harry just ignored him, his voice a mere buzz as the curse flickered through his nerves and made him fluster over Malfoy's fallen body crumpled on the dungeon floor with the oddest look of peace across his features.
This made Harry think of death, eternally tranquil faces peering out of caskets with the same expression Malfoy's pale face wore, this was not a good thing to think about because the threads within him knitted painfully, guilt snaking through them, images of his own death flashing across his eyes-throwing himself off the Astronomy Tower—dear Merlin, he'd killed his master—
No, he hadn't. Malfoy's chest was rising and falling, his brow even furrowed for a moment, breath wheezing. He was most certainly alive, but the curse did not relieve him of the crazy worry clouding his rational thought, instead insisting on inquiring of how long Malfoy may live now. What had Harry even hit him with? He was fairly sure it was a Stunner, but in that spilt second before he cast, he'd been blinded. Blinded by Malfoy's proximity, his damnably incredible scent, his cruel words, and his eyes, blazing at first before freezing over, confusing and somehow disappointing Harry.
He knelt beside Malfoy's form, which suddenly looked frighteningly fragile, a speculation he couldn't decide whether it was he or the curse made. In all sense, he should hate Malfoy at the moment and not give a damn about whether or not he was hurt, but the curse did, and inexplicably, he did too.
"Malfoy?" he asked, whispering for some reason even as Zabini loudly voiced his concerns.
"You've killed him, haven't you Potter? I knew you've gone round the twist, Draco was right and now you've killed him!" his voice was wavering as he half hid behind a table, not daring to get any closer lest the mad murderer Harry Potter come after him next.
Harry snorted, but it sounded more like a squeak as he continued to prod at Malfoy, calling his name with different inflections and pitches. The Slytherin didn't stir as Harry's panic mounted, eventually resorting to slapping him soundly across the cheek, an action that Malfoy usually deserved, but it only made Harry cringe now. He didn't move, it was like he was asleep, dreaming feverishly from the way his eyes flickered back and forth behind his shut lids. Harry was maddeningly reminded of that old Muggle fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, and with every minute that passed without a response, the idea of kissing Malfoy to wake him from the enchantment holding him seemed more and more appealing.
Malfoy did have some effeminate about him, but it was offset by his low, drawling voice and sharply chiseled features, maybe it was just his eyelashes, almost white and as delicate as snowflakes framing his December sky eyes. Harry was near enough to see them now, near enough to find that Malfoy wore cologne, dark and musky, which was always overwhelmed by the scent of mint, and near enough to feel Malfoy's labored breaths wafting up, laced with something sweet, probably the Sugar Quill he'd been sucking on earlier.
"Draco?" he breathed, surprising himself as the Slytherin's given name slipped off his tongue like an unfamiliar spell, an incantation that captured his heart and sent it fluttering when Malfoy's ceaselessly moving eyes stilled.
It was only then that some common sense bubbled up through his senseless worry, nagging at him with a curious combination of Hermione's patient lecturing and Malfoy's irritated snark.
Counter-curse, you dolt.
"Rennervate," he mumbled and gasped in stupid shock when Malfoy was revived, sputtering and coughing as if he'd been drowned.
"Fuck," he choked, holding to his side and squinting at the high ceiling, "That was one hell of a spell…"
"I'm sorry," Harry blurted, and it was not just the noose about his neck that was the curse asphyxiating the apology from him, "Merlin, I didn't mean it to be—I didn't know—are you alright?"
Malfoy answered neither affirmative nor negative, his eyes sliding shut and taking a deep breath, shifting as if he wanted to turn to his side to get more comfortable. Harry watched, his hands and wand held over him as uselessly as Zabini's bitching from the other side of the Potion's classroom.
"What should I do?" he asked, his voice hushed and hoarse, "Master, what should I do?"
He didn't even stumble on the word; he needed it right then, latching to the curse like a lifeline as he felt he was hopelessly floundering in his own helplessness. For once, in that split second, he wanted to be lead, allowing the enchantment gone wrong tying him to Malfoy be his leash to guide him.
Inexplicably, despite all that had transpired that day and all the days before that, he trusted Malfoy.
Malfoy looked over his shoulder at him, having twisted to his side, curled into a rather painful looking ball, a single stormy eye as cold as a winter's dark night piercing him with an unreadable look, his lips curled into a smirk that was more like a grimace.
"Do whatever the hell you want, Potter."
On any other day, Harry would walk away, perhaps slap Malfoy again even, but today that's not what he wanted. Today he had to fight against what he wanted because what he desired wasn't fabricated by the curse, and it was insane. He wanted to apologize, he wanted to mend whatever tentative, coldly friendly thing that had grown between them, and he wanted Malfoy to feel better.
Even if he was quite sure he still hated him.
With another a mutter of spell, Harry cast a Lightening Charm on Malfoy's prone form and gingerly, flushing heatedly all the while, lifted the Slytherin in his arms and stood for a few moments shifting Malfoy's nearly feather-light body in his grip. As expected, Malfoy was staring at him as if he'd grown a second head through his frosted eyes.
"What in Salazar's name are you doing Potter?"
"Whatever the hell I want." Harry replied roughly, stepping quickly toward the doors, back of his neck prickling as if expecting Snape to swoop down and attack him at any moment. But he didn't, and Zabini, the coward, had even fallen silent at last, likely struck dumb from the absurdity of Harry Potter carrying Draco Malfoy.
And he was carrying the proper way at that. Some would call it tender, lovingly, but Harry simply saw it as the most appropriate, cradling Malfoy's body close to his chest, a firm, but lose grip on him, trying not to jostle the injured Slytherin. If he said it was the curse that made his blood burn and race southward when Malfoy's lolling head pressed to his neck, wet warmth brushing just at his pulse point, it would be a lie.
Harry was lucky enough not to run into a single wayward student in the moonlit corridors, obviously it was later than he had thought, although the time in detention seemed to have taken mere minutes, moments of misplaced anger and split seconds of ill-chosen words. Malfoy wasn't responding to any of his questions by the time he edged into the hospital wing, finding it empty but for a single lump of person tangled in sheets occupying a bed. He laid Malfoy down on a bed, his breath catching at the way the Slytherin's features shone in the pale light pouring in from the October moon.
The image haunted him as he dully reminded himself to find Madam Pomfrey, who was sipping tea and reading a romance novel when Harry peeked into her office. She instantly frowned when she caught sight of him, looking put out when she marked her place and pushed past him into the silent hospital wing.
"Well, what is it this time, Potter?" she grumbled, "What have you and your accident-prone lot done this time?"
"It's not me, or Ron, or Hermione this time. It's—"
Harry had began to explain, but was cut off when Madam Pomfrey let out a sort of squeak, her eyes wide and gaping at Malfoy. Harry foolishly thought for a moment that she, too, had noticed how he radiant he was in the moonlight, but then his stomach sank to his feet, his heart furiously pumping when he realized it was not a good thing at all for a medi-witch to freeze and shock when she saw a patient.
She bustled over, dropping her wand twice in the process before waving it swiftly over Malfoy's body, not waiting for the results of the spells quietly undulating through the air like multi-colored nets casting green and blue glows over Malfoy's wan face as if he was underwater. She was already at the other side of the hospital wing when Harry watched them fade, listening to her shrill whispers and an odd buzzing in his ears as he stood helplessly while she rifled through a potion's cabinet.
"It could be permanent! I've insisted, but no one listens! Severus has been lucky, but he's older, stronger! Mr. Malfoy, he's just a boy that can't take that amount of pain, prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus Curse is certainly not healthy for at all healthy for just a boy!"
The buzzing stopped and Harry's churning, guilty mind froze on the words 'Cruciatus Curse'. What did Pomfrey think? Did it appear that Harry had hit him with an Unforgivable? Was whatever damage he'd done that severe?
"It was just a Stupefy!" He exclaimed, largely to himself and the curse that was wriggling and writhing in want for Harry's punishment, but his outburst silenced the clinking of potion phials behind him.
He turned to see Pomfrey staring at him as if he hadn't been there before, her brows knitted together, standing up slowly and muttering to herself, rather like Hermione after another failed meeting of the three of them in Malfoy's corner of the library.
"Just a Stunner?" She inquired under her breath as she passed Harry, casting another rainbow of spells over Malfoy's still form and nodded to herself, a look of comprehension and relief dawning on her face. Harry felt the need to confess, the calm on her face was not enough to satisfy his own twitching worries. The Cruciatus Curse still echoed like the slice of a knife through his mind.
"I hexed him. We got in a row in detention and were fighting and I—I'm sorry."
Madam Pomfrey magicked pajamas onto Malfoy and placed the sheets over him, waving dismissively at Harry, who had a feeling she hadn't heard a word he'd said, too caught up in whatever thoughts Harry suddenly desperately wanted to hear.
"You may go Potter, he's fine."
She shuffled back to her office and Harry had a mad notion that she was going to go scribble something in a leather-bound notebook as she was still whispering to herself. He missed those evening spent in the library, tiredly countering Malfoy's snide remarks and trying to follow Hermione's sprawling trains of thoughts and theories on the curse. They were boring and infuriatingly useless but Harry somehow longed for the warm, stagnant air between the towering shelves, the familiar drone of Hermione's voice and the sharp, if not pleasant feel of Malfoy's stare on his skin.
Now the air was cold and sterile, the silence deafening, and Malfoy's eyes shut. Harry's hands stung from where his fingernails had dug into his skin, making it bleed as a belated punishment, but the curse seemed sated and Harry was glad. It was still very much alive however, binding him to the spot because it's what he wanted, his smarting hands itching to claim the rest of his desires that his terrified heart refused to let him have.
The curse was going too far, making him go too far and he was afraid. He knew what he wanted, what he should and should not want, what the world expected of him. He was afraid because what he wanted and what he was expected to want were two very, painfully different things.
In the end it was Madam Pomfrey that made his decision, poking her head out from her office and glaring at him.
"You may leave now, Mr. Potter."
"No," Harry responded instantly, springing from his spot and taking post at Malfoy's sleeping side, and hand darting out at its own accord to brush the pale fan of hair from the Slytherin's slightly sweating forehead.
"I want to stay."
He didn't see the way Pomfrey pursed her lips, stifling both a frown and a smile all at once.
~o0o~
Draco was alone, come morning.
He woke however with the distinct feeling that someone had been there, his left side feeling unusually empty and hairline tingling as though under the touch of another. That in itself was foolish, because he'd never been…stroked, not like that anyway. There were quick, animal fumblings in closets and nothing more, he'd never been held, or any such tender, touchy-feely nonsense.
He wasn't about to go whining that his mummy and daddy didn't love him enough however, he wasn't a Muggle-born after all.
Yet, a niggling in the back of his head told him that he had been held, and stroked, and all that touchy-feely nonsense. It was like a memory had been blurred and darkened, seen through squinted pain-hazed eyes and dim senses…
That's when he remembered Potter and the memory turned into something resembling the mortifying sort of nightmare you were thankful were only dreams, showing up naked to class or singing and all that tripe.
So unfortunately, what had happened to him was not a nightmare, it was reality in the form of a sharp Stunner to the ribs. The spot in question was still red and bruised, throbbing to the touch upon further inspection when he lifted his pajama shirt that Pomfrey, that pervert, had likely changed him into. He recalled what he'd said to Potter, it was hurtful, cutting, entirely true, and probably the nastiest thing he'd ever said to Potter.
He should be proud, satisfied, amused even, but he wasn't. He was impossibly guilty, a feeling he did not usually feel and did not at all like. It sat, a live, clawing thing in his stomach, churning and throwing tantrums with every thought of Potter's injured green, green eyes. Its talons dung their way more firmly into his gut when he remembered how he'd gotten to the hospital wing in the first place.
He'd bloody carried him—and not like any bloke should either, he'd carried him like a breakable thing, something to be loved and protected—
Ways Draco didn't deserve to be treated.
So he lay, scowling and scolding the beast in his belly, weakly attempting to tame it without result. It was just as he was drifting to sleep again that Pomfrey came merrily up, thrusting a tray of soggy, overly sugared oatmeal into his lap with a cup of equally over sugared coffee.
She knew exactly how he liked his breakfast.
"Eat up dear, before you're late." She mothered, and Draco stiffly sat up, sleepily spooning at his breakfast. He idly wondered if he could feign pain to get out of class for that day, preferably to avoid Potter.
The creature scraped in protest and Draco also wondered if he could take a potion to kill it.
"You're perfectly fine," Pomfrey announced, as if reading his mind while she supervised his consumption of breakfast, "All that exposure to those Unforgivables at those awful gatherings makes one more susceptible to spells like Stunners and such."
Draco shuddered and took a deep swig of scolding coffee to ward of the chill threatening to settle in his bones. He'd been to two of those gatherings since the term began and each time he'd put in the hospital wing after each one, weak, injured, and shaken to the core from the happenings of that awful, awful gathering. He hated Pomfrey's word for the Death Eater meetings, gathering should be used for fond, friendly things, family gatherings, a gathering of friends, not a gathering of sociopaths and murderers in his own bloody home.
Past the horror, a more numb part of him wondered if the Dark Lord knew that cursing his minions five times an hour made them weak. Knowing him, he'd argue otherwise, and then curse Draco and then everything would go luridly colorful, vision like a knife to his eyes, feeling like excruciating—
"He's gone then?" Pomfrey murmured, mercifully bringing him back to reality.
She glanced around, but Draco didn't pay her any mind as he tucked into his meal and tried to draw some warmth from it. He was suddenly inexplicably cold aside from his forehead, his fringe.
A day later, it was cold in Hogsmeade too, a blistering wind ripping through the village and causing cloaks to flap like bird's wings in the streets. Draco bound his scarf more snuggly about his neck as he ditched Crabbe and Goyle, leaving them to drool over Honeyduke's latest confections.
He walked down a path that was vaguely familiar, his back to the persistent wind and glad that he was blissfully alone at long last. He'd made an art out of dodging Blaise's incessant, convoluted plans for revenge on Potter and Potter himself over the past day, sneakily disappearing into the lesser know regions of the castle and away from plots and green eyes in a flash, cleverly concocted excuses allowing him to vanish for hours into unused rooms with a good book, and, of course, it occasionally helped to have two walls of intimidating muscle flexing at his sides as well.
He was happy to be without Crabbe and Goyle now however, although the chilly air already seemed to crowd with his musings, thoughts he'd avoided facing in the presence of any other, confronted in the dark hours of the night when his dorm mates slept untroubled.
Draco wondered what they would think if they knew that he was thinking about Harry Potter at such hours. For some, terrible reason he had a notion that they wouldn't be surprised.
They—meaning Pansy and her great flapping mouth—had told him many a time before that he was obsessed with Potter, giving him exasperated looks when the repetitive rants about the Boy Who Lived To Drive Draco Mad got old. Only now had they, Pansy and maybe Blaise, started to worry about his supposed obsession with Potter. Draco knew he was quiet now, he knew he had dark circles under his eyes, and his face was sickly wan and drawn, and he alone knew what horrors he stared down in the night when sleep, always a deceivingly peaceful thing, turned against him and supplied him with a blood-freezing terror, sharp, lurid images that left his throat hoarse and skin cold with sweat.
Then all there was left was Potter.
Potter making him grin mischievously when he thought of the curse, Potter returning the haughty spring to his step, Potter digging ruthlessly further into Draco's mind and planting himself firmly there, making everything a little less bleak and a little more…green.
Draco realized that the path was inclining and he found himself trudging up the hill to the Shrieking Shack and he scowled to himself, rubbing the back of his head with a gloved hand. This was the place he'd been splattered with mud, attacked by the force that was the Potter the Floating Head. It hadn't taken Granger to figure out that Potter obviously owned an Invisibility Cloak, just as it was obvious that it was likely a privilege only Dumbledore's favorite could indulge in.
He propped himself against a tree, gazing absently at the ruined building that was the most haunted in all of Britain, only the wind disturbing the ivy draped all about the overgrown garden, not a single ghost interrupting his peace.
Except for Potter, who naturally had to haunt his every waking moment.
He came shuffling up the hill, looking everywhere but Draco as he deliberately refused to notice him. Draco watched with a veiled curiosity from the corner of his eye, ignoring the beast somersaulting in his stomach at the sight of Potter and the eyes he'd hurt and the arms that had held him.
"Potter," he snapped when he'd wandered in a circle half a dozen times, jaw working in suppressed speech, "I believe it's become obvious enough that we both know we're here."
Potter had the decency to drop the act immediately, sighing and shoving his hands deeper in his pockets as he sidled to a tree near where Draco sat.
"So, you're…alright then?" Potter asked more to the wind than Draco.
"Despite my looks, I'm not as breakable as you would think."
Potter went quiet again and Draco had no idea why he had said that. Surely he wasn't complaining to Potter, complaining about something Draco never wanted the sodding Chosen One to know at that?
"Yeah, well, I was kinda worried." Potter said gruffly, then amended, "You know, because my…magic can get a little too powerful at…times."
"Right then, duly noted."
"I'm sorry,"
"Really, are you?"
"Yes, I mean, I didn't mean—"
"Why are you sorry?"
"Why am I—what are you on about? I hexed you." Potter exclaimed, dark brows furrowed together and green eyes flashing. Green eyes that made the thing in his stomach wriggle uncomfortably.
"And you've done that many a time before, haven't you?" Draco said, the blood suddenly rushing in his ears and he stood down Potter, less than a foot away as he glared.
"Yes, I have," Potter hissed through clenched teeth, appearing as angry and confused as Draco at the moment and, likely, just as regretful.
Draco knew he just as likely didn't deserve Potter's guilt.
"Then don't apologize, Potter, for something you're not sorry for."
There, that was what made his blood fizzle like a simmering potion. Potter being his suffering little martyr self when he didn't deserve to—he was a hero for Merlin's sake! Shouldn't that count for something? Shouldn't he be…different?
But he wasn't, he was Potter, who made Draco different, who in all rights should treat Draco like the scum he often felt like, but didn't, Potter who deserved so much more.
Potter who made him happy.
"Fine," Potter whispered to the ground, then faced Draco's gaze with his usual Gryffindor defiance, defiance that almost made him smile, "Fine, I won't."
"Good," Draco nodded, stifling the smile by puffing hot breath into his cupped hands.
Potter froze and shuddered slightly, but Draco didn't take much notice, he felt dizzied when he met Potter's eyes again, it was as if the creature of guilt in his gut was clawing its way out, climbing up his throat to burst out—
"I'm sorry, Potter, for what happened, what I said." He muttered in a rush, still speaking into his hands and gazing at the gloves incredulously.
Potter looked at him as if Draco had slapped him rather than apologized, gobsmacked and wide eyed, but Draco didn't care, he felt better now, incredibly mortified and awkward, but better. Almost happy.
"Um, well, you're forgiven then I guess." Potter fumbled, eyes still uncertain and darting, but seemed to believe Draco either way.
"Good,"
This time Draco took notice as Potter shook, his spine turning to liquid, visage flushing, bottom lip caught between his teeth. The sight made him feel curiously hot in the chill of the day.
"You really like it when I praise you, don't you?" Draco asked, his answer in Potter's glare and shuffling feet and he turned away.
"Well it's not me, it's the bloody curse." He mumbled.
"So then, if I say something like 'bad boy' you'll feel hurt?"
"Well not when you say it like that, and I dunno." Potter looked at him thoughtfully before going red again, "I'd rather not find out from a kinky Slytherin either, so don't"
Draco grinned like a Cheshire cat, "Kinky, am I Potter? What makes you say that?"
"I've heard my share of rumors about you and Zabini."
"Oh, please," he scoffed, "Pansy's ridiculous embellishments, that's all. Blaise is too demanding for my tastes besides."
Potter rolled his eyes, meandering about the trees and Draco watched, a question on his tongue that he wasn't sure if he wanted to know the answer to, wasn't sure if it was his place to ask.
Where was his place anyway? Before he'd have proudly proclaimed it was above Potter, a privilege granted to him by a mistake and a curse, but today he felt oddly on the same ground, a shifting, turbulent ground that he shared with Potter, merely trying to survive and find a stable bit of land to stand on.
"Is it true then?" he inquired, surprised at how grave his voice was and equally so at how Potter seemed to know exactly what he was asking about.
He disappeared behind a tree, just beside Draco; indeed he could even see cloud of breath wafting from behind the thick, mossy trunk. Those clouds were his only answer for what seemed like the slow passing of an eternity, those and the growling of some new creature, something softly fierce that resided in his chest, smoldering like a new born phoenix.
"I can't lie to you," Potter's whisper scarcely carried over the wind, but Draco heard him as clearly as if he had shouted.
"I'm sure you could if you wanted," Draco reasoned, not quite sure why he was, "if you were clever enough."
Potter swung around from behind the tree, a mysterious smirk on his face, something rather like a grimace and almost a grin, "The strange thing is, I don't want to."
The thing in Draco's chest beat its wings madly, sending heat to his face and warding off the suspicion he should have felt. Potter was watching him carefully, but Draco swiftly donned his indifferent façade and said without thinking,
"Good,"
Potter's knees visibly buckled this time and Draco smirked, a few choice words he'd never use springing to his mind, imagining himself making Potter come undone just with his words.
But of course that would never happen. There were too many reasons why that would never happen.
"So then, you really like that?" he smirked, "I'd say you were the kinky one Potter."
"Shove off, Malfoy," Potter snarled without malice, the effect taken away by the red in his cheeks.
"It just makes me wonder about the real power behind this curse," Draco murmured, not at all thinking about the new power he held over what happened in Potter's pants.
"How do you mean?"
"Potter," he paused, a real theory that had nothing to do with Potter's equally cursed libido forming in his head, "Waltz for me."
"What?" Potter squeaked, but the curse was already at work, Potter's feet stumbling from underneath him and dragging his unwilling upper half along with them. Within moments, after he stopped resisting and stared about in disbelief, he was waltzing about with an invisible partner, graceful and gliding.
"I-I'm pants at dancing." Potter stammered.
"I'm well aware of that fact; you were positively pathetic at the Yule Ball." Draco replied dryly, "But it appears that the cure is not."
"You mean that it's because of the curse I can dance like this?"
"A finding I'm sure Granger will have a fit over. I started to assume that her bloody 'enchantment gone wrong' can transcend your own abilities in favor of pleasing me, your master, when you started talking as if you had had a dose of Veritaserum." He explained.
"I hate that stuff. Make me stop dancing, will you?"
"No I don't think I will, it's too fascinating to see you not bumbling about," Draco relented when Potter swung his arm threateningly near his face as he spun away, "Didn't Umbridge give you Veritaserum when you were doing that Defense tripe in fifth year?"
"I hate that toad."
"Me too,"
"Really?" Potter looked skeptical as he took Draco's former seat at the base of the tree, "You were on her Inquisitorial Squad, weren't you?"
"She was awful though, completely mad." Draco murmured, turning away. He thought about walking away just then, but for whatever reason he stayed and answered Potter again.
"How do you mean?"
"She was going to use the Cruciatus Curse on you," he said softly, "That's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."
Then Draco, despite good sense, did not leave, instead he sat on the other side of the tree that didn't seem so wide anymore, just like how the wind didn't seem so cold anymore.
They didn't speak, they didn't even look at each other, simply lapsing into something wary, unstable and coldly friendly, something that could be warmed by the slightest glances or the exchanging of smiles they couldn't see or weren't even sure existed.
Something like an acquiescence.
~o0o~
A/N~ I'm in search for a beta or two, so if anyone is interested please PM me. I could really use the help because…well, if you read with a critical eye, its quite obvious and I'd like to stop disappointing both myself and dedicated readers.
Thanks for reading, please review!