Vonne: Chapter two! I was so happy from all the reviews that I thought I'd make this a multi-chaptered fic. My first, too! So please don't hesitate to leave me your thoughts/comments/questions in a review. I respond back, I promise!
Orchard Omniscient
Encore
Lights dim, curtains close; behind the scenes, he hears them cry: "Encore."
Encore, like the strange sound he hadn't expected to hear. Encore. Like the fuzzy sort of sensation as it creeps back up to his innards and pools out the openings of his every single pore. He hears it underwater, hears it beneath the tide- and as the flush of excess bubbles pop and blister in front of him, Draco Malfoy hears it in his chest. Then something feverishly drags him from the haze of what he only assumes to be the sweet place between life and death and around him it begs, "Encore."
Ladies and gentlemen, Intermission.
Still. It's a strange sort of feeling, being stuck within in the in-between. Draco feels no sense of pain besides the rush inside his ears and the whirl about his veins. And he's floating, too, within the mossiness of his afterlife; pre-devoured, he thinks, inside the fire-filled pits of his all-consuming Hell. But it's the next bit that gets him- for just as the waters swoosh over his eyeballs, right as the heat swells up in his lungs, something hard, strong, and steady suddenly anchors him. Underwater, he feels the brush of hair against the nape of his uninterested neck and, around the blur of blue-green, a great, shaded object wraps tightly around his shoulders. Nevertheless, its the fade of consciousness that he welcomes next; for the very moment he pulls away from the white-light bulb of everlasting death, he just about loses it.
All at once the air runs back to his lungs as flick, go the lights on his center stage. Flick.
"Come on, you stupid git!"
Flick.
Draco Malfoy thinks how funny it is, to die. Come to think of it, he supposes, it's quite a lot like not dying, all things considered. Granted, the whirl of air in his lungs certainly confuses him and the voice of someone angry only makes him worry. But perhaps, he thinks, the after-life will be a lot more stressful than he'd once considered. Perhaps he'd only saved himself from the easy part and, all along, his audience had been hiding from him the truth about it all. For, maybe death wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Maybe death was just a bunch of time spent in graves and occasionally visiting those in the midsts of their suicides. Draco thinks he's not too sure he wants to live (or not live) out the expanse of that sort of awful existence; and then a rough hand slaps him hard on the cheek.
"Wake the ruddy Hell up!" says the voice of wrath around him. And ow, okay, that one hurt.
It's the sound, though, that travels harshly through his entire throbbing skull. Unpleasant, the vibrations of each enunciated syllable send tiny bouts of blisters in his brain and fry the molds existing there. But it's odd, too; for the earthquake of his stature makes his vision go all funny and he sees the view of what only looks to be the clearing by the pond.
Draco tries to think back to the moment he'd felt dry wind graze his neck, to the second his back had hit the dewy grass below him. It had happened, apparently, but the fuzz of his memory prevents his mind from identifying the exact occurrence. And what he knows now is white- scolding, but chilly white. All intermixed with the voice of the demon that's roused him. While, "F-Fuck," comes the utterance in itty-bitty parts. "Fuck, Malfoy... Stay with me."
Draco doesn't try hard to oblige. Rather, spots of black flash frantically around his iris and he thinks perhaps he's falling until a pair of steady, warm arms lift him up from the ground to press him protectively to a broad, heaving chest. "Professor...?" he croaks wishfully, taking the silence as confirmation rather than much of anything else. "I don't hate you."
And an odd sound emits from the wind all about him as the voice from above clears his throat to tense-up and say, "Err...?" like an idiot; but Draco's too cozy to notice. Instead, he sighs tiredly into The Potions Master's arms and turns his torso so that he's breathing right into his lap. It's not strange or even the slightest bit embarrassing folding into him like a child, for Draco remembers that he's dead and how nothing can even phase him anymore. So with that he permits the slump of his shoulders, turning towards the man's sopping wet stomach and shutting his eyes for the second time in the nightlight. And though he hears the ominous voice through the depths of what seems to be a never-ending tunnel, Draco strains slightly just to catch the very last bit.
"Malfoy," the vibrations say, calling him by his surname in a peculiar sort of fashion that makes his chest ache and his head hurt. "Er... if you see a white light, don't go into it."
But Malfoy doesn't see much light. In fact, Malfoy sees a fairly great mass of just the opposite. Still, when the blackness curls towards him, he moves with the slightest bit of trepidation, smelling thick, wet grass, and a mossy sense of misplaced pond water. Yet he thinks that perhaps he's simply not used to 'The Afterlife' and he finds comfort in the oddly calming echo of The Potions Master's sentences. Though they mold into one thick contraction around the wind, Draco leans into the touch just as he feels the last bit of life rush out of him.
And despite the old saying about flashing lives and relived memories, Draco's curtain call is a great big gust of nothing. From the sidelines of the meadow, his audience doesn't even applause. Rather, one hefty grunt sounds out through the blackness and he's hauled up from the earth before sinking back down down down down down. For, in leu of his departure, its the crickets that fade last in the dark.
o O o O o O o O o O o O o
"Play something beautiful for me, darling," comes a voice so soft that it takes several sanctioned seconds just to reach him. "Mummy needs to hear something beautiful."
She's sitting in the guest room in the moonlight and its raining. It's been three months, five weeks, two days, and seven hours since the end of the War and his mother looks both fragile and composed altogether, like an actress or a mannequin or something else that's unreadable. But she sits, nonetheless, with her back all stiff and her hands in her lap as she watches, quite calmly, the rigid complexion of her son. Her Draco. Malfoy, just like Lucius; the picture perfect of the offspring that's been tainted by war and traumatized by death. Still. She's stoney and still and it irks him- so much so that it picks, and it prods, and it pressures his being as he sits slightly slanted atop the bench of her lovely grand piano.
There's a shock of unexpected electricity that runs through his arms and he freezes for just a moment to avert his eyes from catching the dark, ugly mark that rests there.
And, "Beauty," he thinks with a dismal sort of indigence, "does such a thing still exist?"
He's not too certain he knows much of that anymore, to be honest; and the fleeting sense of diversity only frightens him. Anyway. Atop the roof slips the raindrops and before the glass dribbles the left-overs. As the storm outside continues about the safety of the Manor, Draco Malfoy swallows the heavy sense of confusion in his throat and downs the bitterness with a small touch of determination. When his fingers grace the keys rather gently, its the whole damn living room that lights up with its ghosts.
But that's beyond the point.
Rather, the boy watches with wonder as his fingers move miraculously across the board, trained and suited as if he'd once been a good and proper pianist. He plays her hymns of sweet and simple songs, head cast down above the keys as if he's too scared to look up even once. And yet, each deadpan note slides slipperily down the legs to pool in great, black puddles at his feet. Though Narcissa Malfoy seems none the wiser. Rather, blonde hair spread out around her sleek shoulders, she lets her eyes shut lightly and hums, with all the presence of a specter, to the tune of his pathetically poor attempt.
Years ago, she might have smiled. Lucius might have joined her or stood at his son's side with a grin or a heavy hand placed upon his shoulder. But that was the past and this was the 'now'- not the future just yet, but someplace close to the dwindling, daunting end he'd never seen coming. Whereas, before, Voldemort had spoken to them about planting seeds, it was now that the vines had become the overgrowth. The sick, mossy guard that held the world captive. And it was funny how things only seemed ever beautiful or funny or even hopeful. Strange how there was a time before all of this in which the world seemed fortunate to be a part of...
Now his mother has been left with only the ghosts, the transparent outlines of herself that once were lovely. There is no longer the unmistakable shimmer behind her pair of upturned stone eyes. There is no longer the spark of electricity beneath every slow, suggestive wink. Back when she was young, and naïve, and twenty, she could have had any man she had ever wanted. Now, she is lucky if her left-over house elves come around to pluck up the laundry on late Sunday evenings.
And to himself, Draco poses the question, "What happened?" What happened to her clear skin, and straight teeth, and long lashes? Where had time hidden her poise, and her confidence, and her youth?
The image of the woman in the living room before him, it is the picture of someone he does not recognize. It is only the face of someone who has lost everything. For, gone is the money, and the home, and the yard; gone are summer days at the gala and the nights under the moonlight. She's still as she flicks like cigarette ash to the ground, silently brooding behind the sheath of closed eyelids; so wonders because he must: Is this their life?
Is this the existence that they had been indefinitely damned to now that the world had come to an almighty end?
At the realization that she will never again walk the streets with such confidence, Draco's young heart sinks. He wishes to be able to turn the clock backwards, to watch the wrinkles smooth on her face, to see the stress-lines fade. And another minute passes by; another sixty seconds that marks that now they have become just that much older. In his last few moments in front of the lovely instrument, he prays for a miracle. And then, with his fingers weightless upon the surface of the cold, white keys, he hopes for an afterlife far better than his previous existence.
Yet foreign to the earth like a native, it is the Manor that lives as if a whole new planet, disguised now as his indigenous home. Alien to the land that he's now become a mossy part of, Draco used to treasure it. And he'd hated those people that were trying to overthrow the school that his father had taught him to properly abhor. But what that left was Dumbledore and the half-breeds, as the man had so frequently proclaimed. The Foolish and the Enlightened. Potter and the Mudbloods.
Anyway.
As he slides his fingers along the piano, Draco looks at the mess and the ruin that it's brought and he wishes, beyond everything, he could go back. It's a secret, of course, that absolutely nothing that seemed important then seems even remotely important now. At least, not at the cost of this. Not at the destruction of all of this.
Back then, everything was blurred and blued and bloated. The contents of those nights were absent in his head and he blinks by the bitter bits of the evenings that he was only half-certain had even occurred in the first place. Everything he 'knew' is now a question to himself, a semi-certainty that he can't quite put his finger on. And so the Malfoys became the weed. The undesirables, unproductive. It wasn't as if it were bad, necessarily, but it definitely wasn't good; and really, Draco's desire to curl up in the wreckage and vanish burned so strongly in his core that he could feel it. Nonetheless, he thinks such things even when the sky is blue, even when it's roasted orange, and then burns out to its blackened ash surface. Still. They'd killed and he'd known it. Someplace beneath the deep, dark cellar of his father's precious home, bones lay scattered in reminder of the awful, ugly truth.
Huh. He doesn't realize he's crying when he finishes until his mother makes a noise and he flinches before moving quickly to swipe the tears away. Nevertheless, she's up from the divan in time to console him, arms wrapped around his shoulders to give a small squeeze and draw back again to the chandelier. She runs her long fingers through his fluff of blond hair and she smiles a fixed smile. But beneath the light of the unsteady candles, Draco can see the presence of deep, premature wrinkles. "Oh, my sweet, lovely child," she says to his image nonetheless, "do not ever forget that you were born with beauty."
And she lets slip her gaze to the very front of his face, fingering just there, below the curve of his pointed jawline. "Here," she declares, thumbing the sullen expanse of his cheek, "and here." When she moves, she travels her palm down his arm to intertwine like vines her fingers into his, connecting them- mother and son- for just one moment. "Right here."
His hands. His delicate, slender, feminine hands. Artist's hands. Musician's hands. As if she'd been right all along. But Draco chokes back the lump of self-pity in his throat and he wonders. "What, oh, what, had those hands created? Who, oh, who, were these hands now a part of?"
His hands now look nothing like the pair of extremities that his mother had once praised, for the fading sense of her voice is almost completely drowned out underneath the rush of wind lust that fills his ears and the echo of the night against the wood.
Flick. Then its the memory that's gone in an instant.
o O o O o O o O o O o O o
Words rush out like whispers as they drift along the open expanse of what Draco thinks must be his empty head.
Faceless, formless figures make sentences with mouths that sit gaping upon their jaws like vacuums wanting to suck him up.
They lay him on a cloud and prick him hard with bee stings; and when the buzz in his limbs die down, they snip away his clothes with scissors and let their fingers roam the expanse of his bare, skinny chest. It'd be embarrassing, he thinks, had he the blood left in his body to flush; but he cannot move and cannot speak. Rather, the world all around him moves in fragments as, blurred, it spins both frantically and theatrically through a vision blinded by excruciating light.
Then someone in the distance touches his lips like a ghost.
They pry open his mouth and stick something foreign down his stomach for good measure.
"Found him in the water," says the voice in the back of the nothingness. "Thought he was dead..."
And the inner-most subconscious of Draco's drifting mind asks, "Aren't we all?" but its the inquiry that is left unanswered.
Instead, the end of a long, wooden tree branch pokes him lightly in the front. Under the rush of heavy movement, a muttered incantation fries his innards and, at that, Draco's hand jolts out to wrap around the boney palm of the Potion's Mater. "Stay with me," says the echo at the end of the tunnel. "Stay with me."
But Draco, weak little thing that he is, doesn't.
o O o O o O o O o O o O o
When Draco Malfoy wakes up the second time after drowning, nothing makes sense anymore; for, for reasons he can't explain, he can breathe again.
Granted, it's not the sort of easy breaths that emerge from his lungs and float out his nostrils, however he feels the pump of his system as it spills down the confined space of what looks like a clear white, operation tube.
And the cloud's not soft anymore, either. Nor are the sheets comfortable. In fact, instead of something holy, the light in Draco's eyes burns bright to the point of teary annoyance and he gurgles, panicked, to find the steady equilibrium between consciousnesses. "... M-Malfoy?"
Painful, searing flames torch the lining of his bent torso. When a low and miserable groan tumbles out from the blond's spit-encrusted lips, a frustrated curse is heard. Somewhere in the brightness, a cushion seat shifts. Then a blur of jumbled color says, "Malfoy... Are you awake?" And at the burst of sudden sound, Draco's dams open. Hot against the skin of his clammy face, tears slip from the edges of his eyes and roll down the curve of his jaw. Yet he's still against the padding beneath him, and through the water and hair in his face, a mouth in the distance asks him, "Can you hear me?"
"'Course I can bloody well hear you," Draco's inner conscious tells him, "I'm dead, not deaf." However, what escapes instead from his throat is a full-blown moan and, as his head lulls lifelessly to the side, he mumbles pathetically, "H-Hurts..."
"Well, I'd imagine it would," says the voice, rudely. Draco attempts a scowl for his insolence but after a few short tries, a grimace of pain overtakes the boy's pale face and, rather than looking menacing, his expression crumbles under the pressure in his temples.
But he was wrong, he thinks, about dying. Instead of being painless and easy, he, Draco, had forced himself into an Afterlife full of Hell, and uncertainty, and immobilization. His very Best Friend hadn't warned him, and Father Time hadn't even called. Rather, they'd let him fall beneath the chilly sway of his own demise- now one with the other damned; forlorn, forgotten, and fragmented within the mossy likes of this left-over existence. And Draco wonders if it'll be like this forever. If, for the rest of his days, he'll be forced to lie face-up against the sterile scent of a small, white room, plugged into the Nothingness as if death had never even come at all. And, all self-pity aside, Draco thinks quickly how it's not even slightly fair; how, above all things, he just wanted it to end and, finally, how the sharp jabs in his wrists make it hard to even move. When he tugs upon the unyielding restraints, however, a shock of the most unappealing caliber runs down his spine and he struggles, for a moment, just to successfully inhale.
"OY!"
Calloused, rough hands clasp possessively around the end of Draco's aching arms. It's a strong hold, a commanding hold, and when Draco's head slows down enough to process the too-close figure in front of his sweaty face, a surge of bile rises reactively in his throat. "Shit," says the voice. Then more confidently, it whispers, "Accio rubbish bin!" But before he can dwell too much on the familiarity of the sound, Draco's back is whisked up ever so slightly from the cloud so that his head dangles low over the edge. He feels the cold of a round, sculpted basin beneath his chin and, despite the airy feeling of absence on his back, he's sick, shivering, and seeing stars.
Then the voice says sternly, "Don't move," and, for good measure, plunks him back down upon the bed sheets. In the distance, fast-paced and heavy footsteps clatter against the expanse of echoing tile. They leave Draco alone for a moment in his solitude, face up and pale upon the stiff sheets beneath him, and reach out for a cabinet amongst all the white. And, ignored, Draco's sobs wind around the small space to taunt him still in his head. Yet soon enough the steps return and a set of warm, throbbing fingers rap him quickly on the cheek. "Drink this," says the unidentified figure, presenting a cool, glass vile to the opening of his lips.
But for a fraction of a moment, Draco's only waits. Through the blur of his vision, gray eyes desperately pull apart the haze to catch a glimpse- any at all- of the man at his bedside. Nonetheless, the formless lump remains unclear; hand out, two green specs blink in the distance and, with presentation both soothing and powerful, the calloused fingers return to his mouth. "You have to drink this."
So he does. However, the very moment the potion touches his tongue, Draco senses something amiss. Thus, its with a strange taste of bitterness that the liquid slides down to the entrance of his throat. Thin, watery, and subtle, Draco recognizes the tampered drink only seconds before he swallows it whole; nevertheless, before he can properly spit it out, the blur's rough palm slips steadily over the blond's mouth and, with his thumb, pinches the tip of his runny, red nose.
It doesn't even phase him when the boy gives a violent jolt underneath him. Nor does he react when his eyes spill over and his hands tug jerkily at the restraints binding his wrists. Rather, Draco's assailant fades properly into blinding white light as, in turn, its Draco who fades in to the blackness.
o O o O o O o O o O o O o
The third time Draco wakes up after drowning, it's dark out, and he's scared, and its raining.
For a minute, he lies where he's been left, head still against the sheath of a stale pillow that smells terribly sterile and tainted, he thinks, as if with disease. Yet it's the pitter-patter of the droplets outside that coerce him; for his eyes fall to the window and at the window they spot a man. Slouched against the corner and breathing in slowly, the sloppy figure gives a loud, obnoxious snore and, all at once, Draco goes numb. Though he'd been quite sure of it before, the Potions Master is nowhere in sight. Neither is Father Time or the Secret Cousin, or even the Prank Puller. In fact, aside from the sleeping man at the small bench, there's not a soul in sight for miles within the dark space of what now looks to be a blankly bland hospital room.
And, at his newfound revelation, Draco Malfoy panics. Granted, he writhes as much as he physically can upon the uncomfortable sleeping cot, pulling in vain at the bindings and kicking, with his feet, the stained sheets from the top of his torso. Yet he succeeds in going nowhere and when a sad and hoarse cry fumbles out from his throat to dribble with the saliva at the curve of his collarbone, the snoring suddenly stops.
"Malfoy?" asks the voice, yet again; and it's perhaps the most unspectacular, unremarkable, and unimpressive sound he's ever heard. Not only does the utterance lack any sort of noble Potions Master's quality, but it further falls flat in Draco's ears in the process of deliverance. Nonetheless, flat, fumbling footsteps clamor towards him in the moonlight. When Draco pulls hard at the girth of his bindings, the familiar hand grabs him hard around his jaw. "Hey! Malfoy, quit it!" adds the voice, just a bit more sternly. And Draco peers petulantly into the moon light.
All at once, the shapes shift together. Above the man's slumped head, a tuft of messy, brown hair sticks out in all possible directions. Across his torso sits a dirty, dusty sweater. And at last a pair of large, green eyes stand out first among a well-sculpted face, unshaven and blemished in the form of a jagged, lightning scar.
Draco can hardly believe it when he sees it. There, before the bed, stands Harry James Potter- Savior of the fucking Wizarding World and bane to Draco's entire ruddy existence. For a moment, neither of the two opt to saying a thing; yet, as the minutes tick on and Draco's vision clears, it's Potter who seems unable to help himself from pointing out the obvious. "You're awake," he proclaims, stupidly.
Draco takes one more look around the room. He spots a clean, white sink; a bland, white chair; and a hanging, white curtain. Beneath the starch blankets above him, Draco's heaving chest is covered in the hideous display of a cotton, white pyjama garb and, around his shivering wrist, rests the structured paper of a colored, circular guest bracelet. And the only thing not bound to the bed are Draco's legs. Yet, cooked, bent, and aching, they lie out in front of him dumbfounded, as if he'd tried in his sleep to escape without, quite obviously, any such luck.
But its the persisting, transparent hospital tube that Draco thinks to be the real kicker. There, between the part of his lips, the thing travels out from his mouth to disappear, impressively, somewhere into the beeping boxes that stand at the back of his hazy eyesight. Thus, despite himself, Draco can only gurgle at the frowning figure of the Boy Who Lived. "Is this Hell?" he tries to ask, but manages only to produce an unsightly display of drool down the nape of his aching neck.
"Shit," says Potter, flushing. "Hold on." From his back, he pulls out his long wand and, after muttering the likes of a rather complicated spell, the tube vanishes completely. Then, as if he'd completed some sort of marathon, he stands back as if to admire his handiwork. "Any better?" he asks, and the look on his face is disgusting. Flushing, Potter seems almost insufferably proud of his good deed, but Draco only gasps with uninterested conviction.
Rather than bother to answer, Draco looks at the Potter-like demon through the newfound panic that overtakes his sternum all over again. He wonders what the boy will do to him, if perhaps he'll fry his innards and roast his torso for good measure. But Potter takes through the frantic terror that shakes Draco's entire core; as, instead, noticing a sense of obvious confusion, he adds, "Malfoy... you're in St. Mungo's. You've been out for four days," then waits for a calm that never actually comes.
Short, fractured breaths rattle the skeleton of the blond at the bed. Double-taking, he blinks through the madness in his mind to readjust himself to the white. And, for a moment he does nothing more but simply sit. However, when neither Potter or the hospital space do anything spectacular to prove the statement wrong, Draco makes a quick surge to rise from the bed, only to be predictably stopped by the restraints holding him in. "Release me," he commands the other, eyes narrowed and lips stiff in a manner he'd hoped to be daunting enough.
"Er..." says Potter, making no such movements to do any such thing.
But Draco wrinkles his nose and gives yet another tug to the God-awful bed straps. "Release me, you insufferable twat!"
And in an instant, Potter is back up in his face, fingers latched around Draco's wrists in what seems something like a pathetic attempt to calm him. "Oy!" he shouts, all fire and importance- just the way Draco used to hate him back in school. "Quit it! You're going to bloody hurt yourself!"
And it's the urgency in Potter's voice that makes Draco angry, for he tugs quite impressively at the bonds just to show him he could really give two shits about what Harry Potter thinks is best for him. Thus, despite the heaviness in his head, and despite the wooziness in his chest, Draco Malfoy kicks and flails and struggles while, from above, Saint Potter only stares at him like a bloody moron. "LET- ME- GO!"
"Fucking..." Within a matter of seconds, Potter presses his weight upon Draco's wrists and squeezes over the bindings, and the bracelets, and the clear tubes in between. Rudely, he ignores the petrified yelp that emits from the body down below him and, through the barrier of gritted teeth, asks calmly in Draco's ear, "Now, are you going to stop moving?"
And Draco, stubborn little thing that he is, makes sure to physically spit when he hisses heatedly back, "Like Hell."
"I'll get the Healers," Potter threatens. "For fuck's sake, you listened better when you were half-conscious and drooling all over yourself!"
Draco remembers the night before hazily, feels a sting of horrible embarrassment as he recalls, to his terror, the blurry vision of Harry fucking Potter feeding him some sort of drought and watching him slip into unconsciousness. "Bastard!" he accuses, horrified. "You drugged me!"
Thus, the grip on Draco's wrists loosen. Above him, Potter blanches and, rather quickly, the explanation tumbles from his lips as if only slightly humiliated for having done so at all. "I gave you something to help you sleep," he says hurriedly. And then, to add insult to injury, adds, "you ungrateful little twit!"
But Draco watches him angrily from his spot at the bed. Blond hair construed across his pointed face, the ex-Slytherin doesn't even have time to scowl before he tosses his head back and gives a spiteful sort of laugh at the mere thought. "Ungrateful?" he spits, still slightly straining against the bindings at the ends of his arms, "What in God's name should I be grateful for you for, Potter?"
The pressure on Draco's arms snap away. Then stupid Potter makes some stupid backwards scramble and, standing upon the edge of his heels, seems someplace in between the likes of punching Draco Malfoy square in the jaw or drugging him all over again. "Oh, I dunno," says the mouth on the very face that Draco has grown to abhor for years and years and years on end, "Perhaps for saving your life?"
"Saving my-"
"Or if you don't recall, you'd have been swimming with the bloody fishes!" Potter leans back, breathes out once, and glares at Malfoy as he says it. However, Draco's angry expression falters to turn a shade of bright, burning red; and, despite the victory, it deflates Potter again in an instant. "Malfoy-"
Nonetheless, Draco's not one for sympathetics or hurried, wasteful take-backs. He's not one for useless apologies or boys-turned-men with persisting bouts of Hero Complexes far too large for their own good. In fact, Draco Malfoy is quite certainly not one for anything Harry James Potter and, though the look on his face reads heavily with slight sorrow and a tinge of regret, Draco spits back, "Fuck you," and all goes quiet again. "Tell the Healers I'm done here. I want to be discharged."
"That's highly unlikely." It's the first time Potter speaks after having said the wrong thing beforehand. Having forgotten all about his previous slip up, he does nothing to make up for his most recent jeer, either. Rather, the boy sighs and runs a hand through his head of dark, messy hair. He looks, in the glare of the hospital room, as if he hasn't slept in days.
"What the bloody hell are you on about?"
"You're on suicide watch, Malfoy," clarifies the other. "You'll be lucky if they give you a bloody fork, let alone an early release from St. Mungo's."
And Draco can't move, breathe, or even react properly. Instead, his head spins with the revelation that hits him hard, like a ton of falling bricks. He hadn't died, hadn't even come close; for he'd been dropped off in a hospital, tied to a bed, without his clothes or a wand or a bloody clue about the days previously. And every simple movement sends pain into his wrists, traveling up his arms like bolts of aggravating lightning to reach his temples and drip like fountains from the openings of his pores. He hates the sterile way that the room looks bare around him, hates the wafting scent of overwhelming sedative in his throat. But most of all, he hates the fact that it had all been because of that stupid bloody Potter, who shouldn't have even found him at all in the first place.
However, Draco stiffens his back and readjusts himself to appear daunting, despite any minor setbacks. He ignores the dumbfounded way Harry blinks back at him and, instead, threatens darkly, "Untie me right now, Potter, or I'll-"
"What?" retorts his challenger, unfazed, "glare at me sternly from a distance?"
And, truly, Draco Malfoy hadn't expected that one coming. With one, heart-felt tug, he yanks again at the restraints and, predictably unsuccessful, growls at the hardened way the things don't even budge.
"You know," sighs Harry Potter from his spot just feet away from Draco Malfoy's bedside, "this would be a whole lot easier if you'd just stop moving."
It's his comment, however, that does not having the same effect he'd perhaps been aiming for. Rather, with a venomous sort of stare, Draco ignores the lifeless way that his hair falls back in front of his face and, through the fringe, hisses back, "It'd be a whole lot easier if you stayed the fuck out of my life!"
And this time, it's Harry's turn to freeze. Feet flat upon the tile of the room, the boy doesn't move a muscle, save to blink baffled in Draco's direction. Thus, it's with an uncertain sort of glare that he regards the bed-bound Malfoy, eyes still behind the frames of his glistening spectacles, to flush for a moment and regain himself with as much composure as an aristocrat. "Right," he says gruffly, looking far more pissed-off than humiliated. "Nurse?" Without the courtesy of giving Draco another look, Harry swiftly turns on his heel and heads towards the small, white door. He places his hand on the frame of it, sticks his scared face out into the corridors, and hollers, "Nurse!" until the sound of heavy feet come running.
"Mr. Potter!" says a soft, simple voice in the far off distance, riddled with far too much respect and just a tiny bit of infatuation that makes Draco's eyes roll. "What is it?"
"It seems that Draco Malfoy has finally woken up," reports Potter, back stiff and boulder-like before Draco's only means of escape. "He's been yelling like a madman and if I don't say so myself, he's come to in a horribly delusional state. I suggest a sedative."
And just as Potter makes his swift and steady exit, the fools rush dutifully in. Then they prick him with needles, watch his eyes roll backwards, and as Harry leaves the ward on two, strong feet, the men leave Draco Malfoy to rot.