Sorry it's a few days late, I've been super busy and now have a figure drawing class that started two weeks earlier than what I originally had been thinking... my Saturday mornings are gone for the next 5 weeks. This chapter is slightly longer as a reward for your patience. But just slightly.

Chapter Eight: Feeling Harried

Somehow, Harry always seemed to find himself caught up in messes. Granted, he usually willfully got himself into those messes (the last 5 years of his life were a testament to that). But, on occasion, the messes found him. And this was one of those times. He'd had no intention in meddling in what was clearly no business of his (though that had never stopped him and his friends before). But in the commotion of it all, he found himself, along with Draco, pulled into it.

Arthur had immediately stopped what he'd been doing when he heard the news about his father. The page that had been sent to tell him had made it sound as though the illness may have been life threatening, and therefore required his immediate attention. Merlin, as both the prince's servant and the court physician's assistant was, of course, also needed. Then Harry had been told to run down to fetch Gaius, as the messenger who had come to alert them of the problem also had been ordered, by the guard who'd discovered the king's condition, to tell the Lady Morgana as well. Harry had been the nearest servant at the time, and thus was assigned the job (in the unfairness of it all). Draco then was left standing there for a moment, with no job to do and nowhere to go, but he decided that he was nobility enough to go with Arthur and several of the knights to Uther's room, and did so, finding everyone was too distracted by the urgent news to even question why he was there.

Harry found Gaius in his chambers, as usual, brewing up some foul-smelling cure or other. Suddenly, Harry knew where exactly the origins of modern potion-making were; the room reminded him entirely too much of Snape's potion-filled dungeon (without the depressive air or fear that he would be failed at any moment simply because Snape had had a tiff with his father when they'd gone to Hogwarts together).

"Um, Gaius," Harry called, peeking into the room, "Sir," he hastily added, unsure of how he should address the old physician. Said old man turned away from his bubbling cauldron for a moment to look at the young wizard. "King Uther is ill," he explained without waiting for an answer, feeling awkward. A sudden sense of urgency found its way into Gaius's previously calm eyes. He grabbed his large pack of medical supplies and made his way to the door.

"Is he in his chambers?" Gaius asked, walking rather quickly for his old frame.

"I think so," Harry replied, keeping up with long strides. The page had made it sound that way at least.

When they made it there, several of the knights were waiting outside the room. Inside, Arthur stood by his father's bed, with Merlin standing not far behind him, waiting. Gaius rushed as fast as his legs could take him to the king's side. Feeling out-of-place, Harry went to stand next to where Draco was leaning on the wall near the doorframe.

"The servant who came to change the linens found him like this," Arthur explained, barely able to keep the worry out of his voice.

"And what of the ones who brought his breakfast?" asked Gaius, opening his bag of supplies.

"They saw nothing amiss," the guard in the room answered for the pained-looking prince. "He was still asleep, but there was no sign of… this."

'This' was what was so concerning. The king's exposed face and hands were covered in lesions and bruise-like marks, like multiple blistering burn wounds. Gaius inspected these carefully, flipping through a large book he'd brought with him but seemingly not finding any matches. He tried several times to rouse Uther, but the king was unresponsive. The physician lifted up the unconscious man's eyelids peering into each one. Harry caught a glimpse of the king's eyes as he did so; they were pale and clouded over. For some reason, that felt familiar to the Gryffindor boy, but he couldn't quite place where he where he was seen it.

Gaius continued to flip through his book, his expression growing more and more concerned with each passing moment and re-checking Uther's vitals every few seconds. Harry shifted from foot to foot; something about all of this was bothering him. He turned to look at his Slytherin counterpart, who had a thoughtful expression on his face. Draco then nodded for Harry to follow him out the door.

"I don't know anything about Middle-Age illnesses," Harry whispered to Draco, fearing the guards could still hear them though they were far down the hall by now and still moving. "But this seems odd."

Draco nodded minutely. "You finally figured it out," he sneered back under his breath, "And it only took you eleven minutes." Harry looked at him pointedly over the tops of his oddly-shaped medieval glasses.

"It's magic, right?" said the dark-haired boy.

"I'd bet a Weasley's life on it," replied his pale companion. Harry looked at him dryly, but shrugged the comment off.

"Well, Gaius obviously isn't going to be able to cure it, then," said Harry. "We need to know exactly what the spell was to perform a counter-spell."

"So we need to know what wizard did this."

"And I'm assuming you didn't just get so bored of living like a spoiled rich muggle that you decided the hex the king."

"Me?" Draco asked, trying to sound innocent. "Hex someone? Never." He gave Harry a wry grin; Harry hadn't realized he was capable of making a joke. "Seriously, though, I would have sooner found myself snogging with you than curse the one man giving us a place to stay as we sort out this mess." Harry grimaced at the comment, but agreed with the assessment. "And I'm guessing you didn't accidentally give the king a magical illness through some act of incompetency?"

"Oh, ha, ha," Harry responded. "Who else is there besides us?"

"Well, Merlin."

"I doubt it."

"Obviously."

"What about the Lady Morgana?"

"We don't even know if she's a witch. And how would she― or Merlin, for that matter― profit from Uther's demise?"

"Well, I don't know… who could benefit―" Even as he said it, it hit him like a speeding bludger to the skull, causing him to stop in the middle of a wide stone staircase (but not fall off a broom, plummeting 20 stories, as had been the case during an unfortunate Quidditch practice his third year). The look on Draco's face showed that he realized it as well.

"Cepheus," the blond conceded. Harry nodded grimly.

"How do I know you aren't just going to run away?" Harry asked incredulously, handing Draco the Invisibility Cloak, which he'd taken from beneath his bedroll in Merlin's room.

"Just because I'm not a Gryffindor idiot doesn't mean I'm going to run at the first sign of a fight." Harry raised an eyebrow. That was usually exactly what it meant. Draco huffed. "And I need an excuse to use my wand― but it's so hard with Uther practically spying on you the whole time! Honestly, don't you feel like the magic builds up inside you until you're about to burst when you don't use it enough?"

"What you do in your spare time is none of my business, Draco," Harry replied cheekily. "Now come on, we've got work to do."

Armed with their wands hidden up their sleeves and all snarky comments tucked safely between their tongues and cheeks, the two headed for where Cepheus was staying on one of the lower― albeit nicer― floors of the castle. When they were nearby and, conveniently, there was no one else around, Draco threw the cloak around himself and disappeared from view. The plan was that Harry (obviously, as a Gryffindor, the braver of the two) would go in first and say that he was there to deliver a message about the king being ill, and then gauge his reaction to the news, decided exactly when to confront him on his involvement in the matter. Draco would hide nearby in the room and aid him if things got messy (for he knew far nastier spells than Harry had bothered to learn).

When they got to the room, the surrounding area was quiet. That probably should have sent a red flag up in the Hogwarts students' minds, but they ignored the foreboding feeling and went ahead with their plan. Harry knocked on the door and waited.

A moment later, the door swung inward on its hinges, apparently with no force added. A bit more cautiously than usual, Harry crept into the room and looked around, Draco shortly behind him, invisible and at his heels.

Inevitably, predictably, and oh-so-obviously, the door closed firmly behind them with an audible click.

And this, Harry summed up in his mind, was the reason he wished he hadn't gotten caught up in this mess in the first place.

There you, a chapter hot of the presses― er... hot off the Microsoft Word.

Review, please! (It helps me not to be late when I have a lot of people giving feedback)