Harry paced the waiting room at St Mungo's restlessly. Back and forth, over and over, white walls, white ceiling, white carpet whizzed by. Healers and Aides dressed in starched white robes rushed past. The white light of the dawn sun rising in the windows warmed his face.
Harry couldn't see any of it through the blood. Bright red, splashed across his vision, drowning out anything else. His hands, clean and dry, clenched and flexed reflexively by his sides, but all he could feel was the blood, seeping out of Draco's body, oozing over his hands, staining his clothes and making huge sticky drying puddles on the floor. He could smell it, too, coppery and tangy. The memory of it stung his nostrils. It coated the back of his tongue like a thick film he couldn't get rid of, no matter how many times he swallowed.
The Healers tried to talk to him, tried to push him into chairs and give him cups of tea and treat him for shock. He shook them all of to continue his mad pacing, brushing past them in his mindless, repetitive path. A few words they said trickled into his consciousness and bounced around his mind.
Critical.
Shock.
Arterial damage.
Unconscious.
Coma.
The rest of it was drowned up by the sound of Draco's choked gasp when Harry buried his knife in him, the sound repeating endlessly in his ears.
Strong arms tugged on him, pulling him down a hallway and into an empty room. There was a rattling, choking noise echoing in his ears. The strong arms pulled him against a stocky body, sinking down to the floor.
"It's okay, Harry. It's okay, just let it out, you can cry here."
Oh, that noise was him. He was letting out great noisy sobs. For the first time, he noticed tears running down his face. Something in his magic said he trusted the stocky man, so he pressed his head against the chest he wasn't aware enough to recognize and cried.
-0-
It seemed like hours before his tears dried. He came back to himself slowly, feeling a hand running up and down his spine, hearing gentle words whispered into his hair. He saw a shiny burn on the top of one arm.
"Charlie?"
Charlie leaned back and gave him a gentle smile.
"Better?" No.
"How did you get here?"
"Draco's tracker went off and the Aurors alerted Kingsley, who told Dad when he couldn't get ahold of you. Mum Floo'd me, knew Malfoy and I got on alright." His face turned cold. "The rest of them aren't too bothered, though. Ron said…well." Harry barely registered his words, still clutching his shirt like a lifeline.
"Charlie, I killed him," he whispered.
"You didn't kill him," Charlie answered fiercely. Harry shook his head, panic rising.
"No, Charlie, I killed! I love him, and now he's going to die." He pushed back from the redhead, clutching his head between his hands, tucking his face into his knees. "Oh, Merlin, it's just like Theo. I loved him and they killed him, they killed him because I loved him, and Draco's going to die and I don't know if he knows that I love him, oh Merlin, I-"
"Stop it." Charlie's voice was hard and stern, his hands insistent on Harry's chin as he forced wild green eyes to meet calm blue. "Draco. Isn't. Going. To. Die." Truth shone in his eyes, sparking hope in Harry's heart.
"Really?"
"Yes, really. He lost a lot of blood, and his guts weren't in a great shape, but you got him here on time. Do you hear me, Harry Potter? You didn't kill him, he's going to live."
Relief was so sweet as it coursed through his veins. The tension left his body all at once, and he collapsed, boneless, to the floor. He vaguely registered Charlie clucking over him in an eerie imitation of his mother as kind, gentle sleep took him.
-0-
Harry had barely moved from the armchair in Draco's room since he woke up there, three days ago. There was no reason to. The note he'd found in his pocket informed him that Charlie was at Grimmauld Place taking care of the boys, and the staff was afraid to even try to chase out the great Lord Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Savior of the Wizarding World
Draco didn't look much better than he had three days ago. He'd gained a little color, but not enough to make him look truly alive. When Harry had first seen him, his skin had looked grey, far beyond his usual pale complexion.
The comparison to an Inferius came to his mind without warning. He'd nearly broken down again on the spot.
His chest rose with even breaths, rising and falling hypnotically. Harry watched the gentle movement obsessively, watched his eyelids flicker, telling himself that Draco wasn't dead, it was only a coma.
Only a coma.
Sometimes comas don't end.
Harry shook away the thoughts. He spoke to Draco sometimes, something the Healers told him to do. He told him about watching him across the Great Hall at meals, about how exciting it was to play against him in the Interhouse Quidditch Cup, about how he'd watched Draco's steps on the Marauder's Map in sixth year until he could find his name before anyone else's, about when he'd stumbled upon Draco crying in the bathroom and how for just a moment he'd thought it was something else, something far more embarrassing, more interesting.
"Harry," a familiar voice said from the doorway. Harry didn't bother to look up.
"I'm not going to sleep, not even if you nag me." Charlie huffed but he didn't fight it. Harry hadn't gotten more than twenty minutes of sleep at a time since they'd come to Mungo's. He was afraid of the nightmares. He didn't need to be screaming and jerking in his sleep in the hospital, trying to kill anyone who touched him. They'd lock him away upstairs in the Janus Thickney Ward, give him a nice soft bed right next to Gilderoy Lockhart.
"Well, you look like shit, Lord Potter." That brought a faint smile to his lips. "No, it's…Lady Malfoy." Harry's head snapped up, pining Charlie with a keen gaze.
"What about Narcissa?" he asked sharply.
"You should go see her," Charlie suggested. "Nobody's been to see her since Kingsley told her her only son was admitted to the Trauma Ward at Mungo's. She's probably panicking."
Harry slumped back. Charlie had a point, but he wished he didn't have to be the one to do it. He didn't know if he could face the kind woman after her son had nearly died in his arms, at his hands.
-0-
The sheathed knife was a heavy weight in his hand. Harry had gone back to Number Twelve to put on clean clothes before he went to Malfoy Manor, but for three years getting dressed had involved at least one blade strapped to his body.
He could barely stand to look at the thing. He was disgusted with himself for even thinking about carrying it. He could still see the blood on his hands, smell it in the air of his tiny cupboard, hear the sound Draco made when Harry nearly killed him-
But.
But he couldn't make himself leave the house without one. He hadn't had one on him in Mungo's, and he'd felt it every moment. It was like a phantom pain, an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, an itch he couldn't scratch that slowly drove him mad, and that was in a place where he knew no one would attack him.
He didn't have such safe memories of Malfoy Manor.
Hating himself, he strapped the blade to his arm, then followed it with the ones at his ribs and in his boots. Only five blades anymore. He'd destroyed the last one, the one he kept on the inside of his thigh. That was the blade he usually slept with.
He couldn't quite seem to get the bloodstains off of it.
-0-
Harry Potter, Defeater of the Dark Lord Voldemort, the Chosen One, dithered shamelessly on the front steps of Malfoy Manor.
What did he say to Narcissa? Would she accept him still? Would she even let him into the house? Would she still approve of his presence in her only child's life, after he'd nearly killed him?
The door opened before he could come to anything approaching a conclusion. Narcissa Malfoy stepped through.
The usually-impeccable Lady Malfoy had dark circles under her eyes, just like he did. Her hair hung loose and wavy, not carefully done up like Harry had always seen. She was pale, but her eyes were sharp as they looked him over, revealing nothing of her mind.
Then she hugged him.
"Oh, Harry." There was no blame or anger in her voice, only relief and commiseration. He felt tears drip onto his collar and he allowed his head to fall to her delicate shoulder, letting tears of his own fall.