Vonne: If you're reading and enjoying OO so far, please let me know. If you hate it, also let me know. My apologies for such a short chapter. This one took me a long time to write. I've been so busy, but I don't think the next chapter will be this short. Thanks for understanding and thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks for everything else!
Okay, now...
Orchard Omniscient
Lights
"Ron. Stop."
Hermione Granger stands over the couch with her hands strewn tightly across her chest and an equally as uneasy look plastered to her face. Harry notices that her hair is an outright mess, her eyelids are a deep shade of purple- and he probably shouldn't have disrupted her fireplace at four o' clock in the morning to tell her that Draco Malfoy had ended up drugged, unconscious, and forcibly confined to his living room for and undisclosed period of time that only God knows how long would last. He'd panicked- carried Malfoy through his own Floo (sick running down the hospital uniform and all), and practically threw him on the couch as if simply touching him were contagious. Harry didn't want to catch Crazy. And Draco Malfoy was a fucking lunatic.
"Ron. Don't."
Bent over and frowning, Ron Weasley retracts his finger from the pale slab of Malfoy's cheek. He checks his fingernail suspiciously, following his girlfriend's request to 'please, quit poking', and makes a face. Then he turns back to Harry with his diagnosis: "He's gotta be faking."
"Honestly, Ronald!" Hermione gives Ron's hand a little slap and the matter temporarily rests. "What in Merlin's name could Malfoy possibly be faking?"
"Dunno," says Ron, shrugging. "Why's he look like that?"
"Like what?" asks Harry from a distance. He's leaning against the doorframe by the fireplace, keeping his distance. The 'Unbreakable Vow' part of his night hurts his head too much; and he can thank that damn Healer for jittering him up with all that tea.
"Like, a dead body," says Ron, wrinkling his nose. "Bloody reeks like one too."
"Well I'd imagine so," Hermione says, irritated. "He has been strapped to a bed for 72 hours..."
Ron struggles with the blooming smile that plays on his lips. Coughing slightly, he leans back and quirks his brow at Harry. The look on his face is far more amused than it is piteous. "Gross," he says, just a tad too happily.
On the couch, Malfoy doesn't even move a muscle. He rests instead with his long arms dangling off the side, one wound oddly across his chest and the other just centimeters above the carpet. Every so often, Harry spots his torso rise and fall with silent, shallow breaths; and if not for that small miracle, Harry actually would have presumed him deceased.
After a long while of just staring, Ron asks, "Where do we take him?"
And, at this, Hermione snaps her head over her shoulder to glare at him incredulously. "What?"
"Well surely you don't suppose he's staying with Harry," Ron says, shrugging. He looks a little bit tired, too, and the sleeve of his nightshirt dangles in an exasperated way over the fingers of his left hand. He says, "Right, Harry?"
But Harry doesn't look him in the eye when mumbles incoherently back, "Er... not exactly."
Across the way, Malfoy's hand looses the battle with gravity and hits the ground with a thud. On impact, the drool dangling comfortably at the edge of his parted mouth runs down his pale, pointed chin and mingles with the dried vomit on the collar of his gown. Harry winces, but doesn't move. A small part of him wants to grab his wand and put him out of his misery.
"Harry," says Hermione, over the repulsed sound of disgust from Ron at her side, "what did you do?"
For a moment, Harry runs through a list of excuses silently in his head. Of course, the very moment he'd stepped through the Floo, he'd been asking himself the same thing; and yet, the very image of Malfoy makes him sick to his stomach. For one reason or another, looking at him only makes Harry want to keel over and sick up his dinner, too. "They were drugging him," he says, in his defense. "They were going to transfer him to some asylum!" When he tells them about the Vow, he keeps his back facing Malfoy as if a simple glance might turn him to stone. "I don't even think he had any idea what was going on when we were doing it."
"Oh, Harry," says Hermione.
"You can't be serious," says Ron. "Harry, you are aware that this is Draco bleeding Malfoy that we're talking about?
"Ron, stop- Harry, what happened to Malfoy wasn't your fault. You were only doing-"
"My job, I know," Harry interrupts. He feels his face heat up and fights down the urge to be annoyed. He certainly doesn't want Draco Malfoy living with him; and in fact, once the war had ended, he was happy enough simply having the bastard out of his life. "Kingsley already informed me."
Hermione smiles warily at him in a last effort to keep the peace. There's a hint of worry in her eyes, and Harry pulls his own gaze away to glance reluctantly back at Malfoy. "Anyway," he says again, "now it's my job to look after him here."
"You've gone barmy," says Ron.
Harry pushes his glasses up to the very top of his nose. He puts his hands in his pockets and leans across the doorframe- still safely keeping his distance. Hermione tells him quietly, "Floo anytime if you need us," and then kindly reaches over to place a kiss on the side of his cheek. "I'll do some research in the morning, okay?" she promises.
"Yeah," says Harry. "Thanks, 'Mione."
They leave him not late after and Harry stands in the doorframe, unmoving. He stands there for what feels like hours; and when his feet start to hurt, he busies himself by walking to the kitchen and making himself a cup of tea for when he drags himself back and stands there all over again. When he gets tired, he doesn't even bother Accio-ing a chair. Instead, he just sinks to the floor and puts his head against the wall, watching watching watching. And Malfoy, who perhaps had died from the sheer monotony alone, doesn't even wake up the next morning.
o O o O o O o O o O o O o
Turns out, Malfoy's a rather heavy sleeper. That, or he really had been given one injection too many.
Harry wakes up around seven and sees the blond in the same position he'd been slumped in the day before. He tiptoes around the couch and makes himself toast in the kitchen. Then he pours himself a cup of coffee and walks to the doorframe to sip it there in silence. Malfoy doesn't budge, so Harry grabs his parka from the coatrack and throws it around his shoulders before stepping out the door and running errands out in Hogsmeade just to keep himself busy.
When he comes back around noon to find that nothing's changed except his once fresh smelling living room now reeks with the poignant scent of vomit, Harry has to cover his nose with the collar of his shirt just to keep his bloody eyes from watering. "Malfoy," Harry says loudly and still admittedly distant, yet with all the disgusted desperation in the world, "wake up."
And it's no surprise, of course, that he doesn't. Nevertheless, Harry takes time by shifting his weight back and forth beside the telly. He's about to turn around and forget the matter altogether, but Malfoy's chest suddenly stops rising and for the first time since his arrival, his brows knit together in subconscious distress. It takes Harry two seconds to realize it before it even happens.
With three panicked lunges, Harry yanks Malfoy up from the couch from under his armpits and narrowly misses the spray of vomit when it hits the carpet by his sneakers. Malfoy lifelessly sags in his grip like a rag doll, and he doesn't wake up but instead falls forwards against Harry's shoulders, blond hair plastered to his dripping, sweaty face. For a moment Harry doesn't even move. Bent over, stunned, and supporting what is perhaps the most ill person he's ever seen in his entire life, he stares horrifiedly into Malfoy's face before breathing out slowly and lifting the body completely into his grip.
It's not surprising how light he is, either. Jumbled in Harry's arms like a mockery of a newly wed, Harry glances down at Malfoy to notice how skinny his ex-classmate had actually become. The collar of his shirt slides down to reveal the protruding collarbone at the end of his neck. With his head bent back and crooked against his arm, Malfoy's cheeks look sunken in, more so even than in their sixth year. And Harry has thought he'd looked so sickly, then...
He feels a slight ping of pity for Malfoy again and the notion unsettles him so much that he has to look away, just to counteract the feeling.
Fortunately, Harry reaches the bathroom quickly. Once there, Harry places Malfoy by the edge of the toilet and lets his head balance against the porcelain. He grabs an old shirt by the laundry, throws his ruined one in the sink, and walks back into the bathroom to find Malfoy, unsurprisingly, still crooked in the same position as when he'd left him.
Nonetheless, still holding his breath, Harry shuffles Malfoy back up into his arms and staggers to the edge of the tub. He doesn't even bother shutting off the running water. Instead, he puts Malfoy into the bathtub, still fully clothed, and stands back in attempt to admire his handiwork.
It doesn't work. Malfoy doesn't even look remotely appealing. On the contrary, actually, because, dosed in the now vomit-laced water with his head tilted back against the sides, he really resembles something of a drowning animal than anything human, anyway. And, for that matter, even looking at him disturbs Harry- who had seen his own fair share of disturbing things over the course of his lifetime. The bathtub water just sways. Draco's head slides down and his chin hits the soaked end of his messy chest.
"Goddammit," swears Harry. He goes into the kitchen to make himself more toast, only to sick it up himself half an hour later.
o O o O o O o O o O o O o
Fortunately, Harry pulls himself together enough to finish cleaning Malfoy and spare him from getting too pruney in the bath water. He arranges him in a spare pair of nightclothes atop the guest bed and doesn't watch him lie there, but instead returns to the living room with his wand to spell the carpet so forcefully clean that he almost burns a hole through the floorboards with the effort.
When he spots the cover story on the morning's paper only to find that its about Draco Malfoy's attempted suicide, he gives up on reading altogether and slinks to the couch exhaustedly. Harry flips in a droll spectacle through the afternoon broadcast on the telly, watching anchormen and orange-skinned teenagers spit the same blah blah blah for hours until he falls asleep on the cushions; and when he dreams, he dreams of blackness.
o O o O o O o O o O o O o
Draco Malfoy wakes up on the second day to a thundering headache and far, far too much red. He sees it when he cracks open sleepy eyes, and the color bleeds through teary vision- violently, after having just experienced the previous amplitude of too much white. For a moment, Draco thinks he's finally, mercifully, met death; and yet, the very notion of his hopeful salvation falls flat upon the moment that he moves his crooked fingers slightly in the bed sheets. Ow. If he had died, then he had very certainly gone to Hell.
But Draco's already fallen for that one before; and, swallowing, he decides that, on a more probable level, he more than likely wasn't dead and instead, cursed. Into a state of permanent immobilization, for that matter. He decides that such shitty luck would suit his shitty life, anyways; so to test the theory, Draco moves one arm along the cushioned lining of the mattress.
It hurts. My God, it fucking kills. And so, instead of attempting to pick himself up, Draco simply lies there beneath the covers in fear of actually dying- death, he thinks, by the daring action of minute movement. He holds his breath until his cheeks turn blue and when his next plan of action leads him to open his eyes again, the first thing Draco sees is Fred Weasley- yet again- as if he'd been waiting for him to wake up since the night he'd so rudely made him faint in the first place.
Fred beams and says, "Rise and shine, darlin'!" and he kicks his swaying feet like an excited child, too antsy to sit the bloody hell still.
Color drains from Draco's face. He goes very, very still on the mattress. His stomach does flips, and he thinks he might get sick again. Wasn't he in St. Mungo's jut a bit ago?
Nevertheless, gray eyes search the new (obnoxiously red) room. Panicked, he locks in on the first heavy object he can find, ignores the overwhelming nausea in his gut, and rips it from the dresser. Sitting upright, Malfoy hauls his weapon over his shoulder and instead of appearing menacing or even just a tiny bit threatening, a tormented whimperer trickles out from the back of his dry, swollen throat.
"A lamp, Malfoy?" laughs Fred. His face is pink and he looks like he might burst from the sheer ridiculousness of Draco's facial expression alone. "Careful with that, you could kill somone." Then he unexpectedly swings his body off the dresser and approaches the end of the bed, hands to his chest as if he really were afraid of the possibility.
"Stay away from me!" shrieks Malfoy. And he means it, too. The bastard just doesn't take him seriously.
Unthreatened, Fred moves swiftly closer to Draco. He opens his mouth to say something, though nothing except a fit of giggles sputter out.
"Malfoy!" says a voice that's not Fred's from across the room, "Over here!" Malfoy swivels his head around to the opposite side of the bedroom, only to be met with the flash of a prying camera. "Ugh," moans Collin Creevey, who brings the thing down from his eyes miserably, "You blinked! Do that again!"
Draco reels back so forcefully that his arse hits the ground with a thud and his body tangles catches in the blankets. For a moment, he just sits there; and then Fred laughs so loudly that the sound practically bounces off the walls and slaps Draco, hard, in the face.
"Bloody!- one more time!" insists Creevey, repositioning his face against the back of the camera, "I didn't get that one, either!"
Then Draco notices a pink haired blur at the side of his vision. Nymphadora Tonks leans her head to the side, mulling things over, and says to Crabbe, "Not all that graceful, is he?"
"Now, Mr. Malfoy," murmurs Professor Lupin, who looks as dirty and as grimy as always, "if you would just calm down for a moment-"
But Draco can't 'calm down'. His hands are shaking too much and his heart is beating too fast; and untangles himself from the sheets to clamor to his feet, eyes wide and wild at the vision of The Deceased. He thinks this can't be happening. He thinks, despite his consciousness, that he must be dreaming- and that somewhere, back in the reality of the rest of the world, he was still safely restrained away in the confines of that obnoxiously white room in St. Mungo's.
Fred Weasley looks at him amusedly. He lifts up his shoulders and remarks to Tonks, "Actually, he looks a bit ferret-like, if you ask me."
Crabbe grunts, "Get stuffed, Weasley."
And Fred says to Draco, "Here ferret, ferret, ferret..."
Draco musters up all the strength he can and hauls the heavy lamp over his shoulder. He looks back at Fred, who steps closer with one hand balled up into a fist as if he were offering him a treat. Then he looks back at Crabbe, whose face is still ashy and burnt beyond the unamused expression stamped across it. Creevey just reloads his camera. Lupin searches his breast pocket for a bite sized piece of chocolate. Tonks just smiles and Draco thinks, before he throws his weapon, that they actually do kind of look alike...
BAM!
The tasteless lamp hits the wall behind Fred with a loud bang. Instead of doing the intended and hitting the Weasley twin, however, the thing miraculously surpasses him and breaks into a million pieces.
For a split second, Draco just stands there in complete shock. All the color drains quickly from his face. He doesn't even think he can breathe, his head is spinning so much. Fred says, "You bastard!" and he uncurls his fist to survey the shattered remains of the equally as deceased lamp. "You can't just throw lamps at dead people!" He runs his hands up and down his torso as if checking whether or not he might have been maimed; and if Draco weren't so catatonic, he might have caught on to the sarcasm.
Nevertheless, Hallucination-Lupin takes several of his own steps forward, though admittedly in a more gentle manner. He slips his head to the side and surveys Draco slowly; and, for one reason or another, it appears as if he actually considers the approach he might take in speaking to the boy at all. After a few seconds, he tries, "Mr. Malfoy, if we could just speak with you for a moment, perhaps this whole thing could be... err... a bit less-"
"Amusing?" suggests Fred.
"Overwhelming," corrects Lupin. He reaches out to touch him, and it's perhaps his first real mistake.
The moment Draco sees Lupin's very grimy- and very dead- hand approach him, he reels back, once again falling over the bundled up sheets and ramming his back into the wall. "STAY AWAY FROM ME!" he yells, slamming his hands over his ears in a last ditch effort to block out the sounds of their voices. He slumps down the plaster and presses his forehead against his knees. And then to no one specifically but from himself, he screams wildly, "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!"
He wants them out of his head, wants them gone. Didn't they understand? He'd tried to kill himself just so they would leave him be.
But just when he thinks he might lose it, Malfoy hears a new loud noise coming from his left. It makes the walls shake, vibrating even the floorboards beneath him. For a minute he thinks the earth might have physically shifted, but when a new banging hits, he realizes that it had only been the door- the bedroom door. Someone had shoved it open, and then let it slam, hard, shut again.
Perhaps the ghosts had given up.
"Malfoy!" exclaims a loud voice from behind the barrier of his eyelids. Strangely warm hands reach up and roughly pry his shaking palms from his head. "Hey!" shouts the voice, "Malfoy!"
Draco snaps his eyes back open. The lamp is still broken on the floor, but the ghosts are gone- and Draco thanks his lucky stars before meeting the figure in front of him. As quickly as he'd felt his luck come, the nostalgia of elation leaves his body fast, as if sucked out by a vacuum.
Harry Potter- Harry fucking Potter- is kneeling just centimeters in front of his face and Malfoy doesn't know what he thinks is worse: being haunted by the dead, or being haunted by that bastard Potter for the rest of his miserable, unholy existence.
Vonne: Please take the time to review. I'll die of happiness...