"Sorted Too Young"
Dumbledore tells Snape, "Sometimes, Snape, I think we sort them too young."
CHAPTER 12 – THE FALL
Thursday Night:
All of Draco's letters were delivered and all the expected replies came in. he sat on his bed reading through them. Now and then his jaw clenched or he ground his teeth, not at what he read, but at the aching he felt. The chilly rain that started outside must be messing with his injuries.
Friday After Dinner:
The Weasleys were all heading out for a much needed eight day holiday to visit Percy and his new home north at the border of Scotland. Draco reassured them all he would be fine, even with the business things coming up in the week on Tuesday. Harry and Hermione promised to drop in now and then to check on him and make sure he doesn't starve to death. He gave them an annoyed look that he may not have house elves, but he wasn't a complete ninny. Truly, though, they and a few others had been scheduled to ensure his safety in case Lucius decided to dare an attack here. Although, rumour was that Lucius was still in Europe, beyond the British wizarding borders. Draco prayed that a dragon would eat his father, a man he now no longer even called father.
The rain eased for a couple days, but was due to start up again. England, sun 20% of the year and chilly rain the rest. Draco liked his manor with the climate control on the inside. With the Weasleys now gone, he felt even more like a stranger in a strange home, even though he had been here now from end of April till mid-July. He tried not to show how much he ached and hurt to Harry and Hermione. He remembered how he used to play at over-reacting an injury to curry favour from his father and how the Golden Trio would scoff at him as a baby and a whiner. He wanted them now to see he was neither. His injuries were genuine this time, but he deemed them endurable.
He still had stitched and appointment with both wizard and muggle doctors. His next appointment was due the next Friday when he would likely get the remaining stitches removed from all wounds but his left forearm. Gods how he wanted those itching bits of string out of him. The forearm no longer bled, but only a doctor could tell if it was really healed enough to remove the stitches. The break in it was healed for the most part and his arm was strong enough to use the cane. He refrained from picking at the bandaging or at any stitches. It was both a rude and disgusting habit he would never do in public. His ribs still ached a little, but worst was his right knee. There were some sensitive questions he wanted to ask the doctors about. Will I be able to walk normally ever again? Can I fly, on a broom that is? Not asking the muggle doctor that one! Will I be able to have sex? That was a valid question. When your body gets sliced up and bones broken and there are stitches that close to your privates, you have to ask!
Saturday Morning:
He sat in a chair reading through a potions text while Hermione brewed. They debated ingredients and amounts while she and he modified a potion to try to help him with the healing of his forearm.
"It might turn out to be a great pain salve for your other injuries, if we get some ingredients from the hospital to add to it," she suggested.
"I am hoping to not need anything more soon," he tried not to sound so clipped. He wanted to tell her to see about getting those ingredients as the chilly rain threatened again. At least he had a wand and could charm the rooms warm and the fire in the fireplace hot. He hurt and just wanted it to end.
Hermione left around lunch with a promise to come back Sunday night with Harry. He tried to be all "whatever" about it. When she was gone, though, he felt intensely alone. So alone it almost scared him. He kept a light on in every room he would potentially use. He wished he could call her back to stay. That would look and sound so wrong no matter how he phrased it. Besides, he was beginning to wonder as many did if she and Harry were developing into a couple with the amount of time she and he spent alone in Grimauld Place. It wasn't really his business. It just made him feel even more alone.
Sunday Afternoon & Night:
He accidentally spilled his tea on the stairs while carefully balancing it and using the cane to climb one step slowly at a time. In an attempt to counter the overbalance and not spill more, his cane slipped in the liquid on the floor. The cup dropped, his right hand shot out for the rail, the stairs swirled swiftly into view.
Draco regained consciousness who knew how long later at the bottom instead of the top of the stairs. The tea cup was shatters all down the stairs. His cane was out of reach. Agony exploded in many places as awareness of what happened rushed back to his waking mind. He panted in his growing panic. He rolled to his side to try to get up and cried out loudly. Black spots danced before his eyes. Alone in pain on the floor, he could do nothing but lie there and try not to breathe too deeply. His spirit sat on the fence between hating his own body and hating his father for rending him a cripple like this. He dared not move, not an inch, for the amount of pain the slightest twitch gave him.
There was a FWOOSH sound from the main room, soon followed by another. "Draco!" yelled a startled Hermione as she rushed to him. Harry too rushed over. Draco tried to say something but only groaned. "No Harry, don't try to move him. Call the hospital."
Harry dashed back to the fireplace to use the floo to call Draco's wizard doctor.
Hermione tried to reassure Draco and asked him some questions. What happened, not because it wasn't obvious, but more to understand the how. "Spilled… tea… The cane slipped… this after… afternoon." She carefully queried what hurt to get a vague assessment of his state of being which she relayed to Harry who relayed it to the doctor over the floo fire.
A FWOOSH announced the doctor's arrival when he deemed to necessary to see for himself. It was a bad fall down the stairs. Knowing the current injuries and noting that many of the new ones simply repeated the old one's, he advised seeing his squib brother. The squib was a muggle doctor and had been overseeing Draco in the muggle world when magical healing failed to help. Draco would need a full x-ray scan so both doctors could confer. The wizard doctor took the floo to his brother's home and told Hermione and Harry to get Draco to the hospital where they would meet them.
Harry helped Draco up, wincing sympathetically as Draco's pain was impossible to hide at the moment. Hermione raided Draco's room for his muggle ID and hospital cards, grabbed up Draco's cane, then met Harry on the front porch. Harry declined apparating to the hospital as he was not really familiar with it and figured adding a splinching would be bad for Draco. He offered to stay behind and clean up.
Draco leaned heavily on Hermione. He was practically in pyjamas and while a tiny part of him was embarrassed to end up in a public setting like that, everything hurt too much to complain about his pride. He could not lift his right arm at all, the shoulder burned from the neck, over the shoulder blade and through the shoulder. Every inhalation was fire in the right side. He tried to balance on his left a little to ease the stabbing and pinching in his right hip. The right knee, he desperately tried not to think about it and only prayed they did not amputate. He didn't want to be like Mad-eye Moody with one leg, but amputation was a common practice in England, even today. "Don't let them take my leg," he muttered as they apparated.
Hermione assured him she wouldn't and struggled to get him into the emergency room and sitting. She leaned his cane against the chair next to him and brought his ID to the secretary's desk announcing they were here to see Draco's usual doctor. A few questions and the secretary ascertained that Draco had fallen down the stairs and would need x-rays.
He would have said something caustic about the stupidity of muggles if he could have gotten the words past his pain-clenched teeth. He hated the muggle hospitals. Crowded, noisy, lots of flashy lights and strange equipment and no privacy until you were actually taken to a room. It made him nervous, more than, downright scared. His eyes remained locked on Hermione for fear she might end up out of sight and he alone here with no one he knew, stuck in the muggle world in a muggle hospital.
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