Ten days. Other than the day he went to visit Narcissa, Harry hadn't left the chair in Draco's room for ten days. The Healers started to bring him meals, recognizing that he wouldn't leave until Draco could. He hadn't slept more than five hours together, twenty minutes or less at a time.
Charlie came by every day to assure him that the boys were fine, to tell him people were worried about him. Harry scoffed. He nearly kills the man he loves, puts him in a coma, and people are worried about him.
Kingsley visited once, to say the requisite sad words. He personally brought Narcissa to spend a day at her son's beside. She talked for hours, telling stories about Draco as a child, but there was no reaction. She promised Harry again before she left that she didn't blame him.
It was ten days of pure misery. A week and a half of raw emotional pain. As each day dragged into the next, Harry began to despair that Draco would wake at all. He didn't go to the Ministry, didn't answer his mail, didn't make any firecalls. Charlie said Ginny and Ron were screeching about Draco having some spell over him, but he ignored the dragonologist. He hardly ever tore his eyes from the gentle rise and fall of his chest or the flicker of his closed eyes.
Through it all, Harry talked. He told stories about school, talked about his opinions on the Ministry, read articles in the paper aloud. He wore his voice out to a hoarse rasp, just talking to Draco.
As the sun set on the tenth day, he was talking about something pointless that had flitted through his mind when he felt Draco's hand twitch. He kept talking, hoping beyond hope it was what he thought, that it wasn't just a random muscle movement.
"I felt that, Draco. You moved. C'mon, I know you can hear me. Please, just wake up. I need to tell you how sorry I am and I need to make sure you know that I love you because the last person I loved died before I could tell him, and I need to hear you make some snarky comment about me bonding with your mother by both of us crying our eyes out like first-year girls." He was rambling now, trying to hold back tears. Draco's forehead wrinkled, his face screwed up, eyes pinched like he was in pain. Was he in pain? The Healers said his body was healed, that he would wake up any moment. "Please, Draco, just wake up!" he sobbed.
Slowly, so slowly, lids peeled back over the silver eyes Harry longed to see. He blinked and squinted.
"Harry?" His voice was rough and faint, but it was there. He was really awake, not just a false alarm the Healers had warned might happen. Relief flooded through his veins and he nearly collapsed, leaning forward to press his lips to Draco's hand where it lay on the covers.
"Where am I?" Draco peered around the little private room in confusion before looking back at Harry. Here goes, he thought, swallowing hard.
"St. Mungo's. You tried to wake me up during a nightmare, and I-" Stabbed you. Almost killed you. He couldn't force the words past the lump in his throat.
"Harry, do you love me?" Draco's voice was soft, in a scared way this time. He couldn't meet Harry's eyes, looking instead at their joined hands on the covers.
"Yes," he whispered. "Yes, Draco, I love you."
Draco smiled, relaxing shoulders Harry hadn't realized had tensed. He let out a sigh of pure relief.
"Not a dream," he murmured to himself.
"What?" Silver eyes met green and flicked away again.
"I…dreamed," he answered vaguely. "How long?"
"Ten days?"
-0-
Ten days? He'd slept for ten days? Was that even possible?
"How?" Harry shifted uncomfortably, dropping his eyes to the floor.
"You tried to wake me, but I still had a knife, and I-" he seemed to choke on the words for a moment, then they all rushed out. "I didn't realize what I was doing and I stabbed you and you were dying and I'm so sorry!"
Oh. He remembered bits and pieces, waves of power and a tiny room and cold steel in his warm body with a sudden pain that was bright and sharp. Tears and rushed words and more blood than he'd ever seen at one time. That one hadn't been a dream, then. His free hand drifted up to his stomach. Suddenly he needed to see it, to prove that it had been real, that everything that came after had only been a dream. He shoved the covers away, pulling up his shirt to expose the mark.
Stark against the pale skin of his stomach was a harsh red line, raised and jagged at one end. He traced it gently with one finger. Harry let out a sob.
"Oh, Merlin, I've scarred you again." Harry's tanned fingers hovered just above the new mark, then drifted up to trace the zigzag scars that were his reminder of bleeding out on a bathroom floor in the middle of his sixth year.
Harry yanked his hand back like it was burned. He stood, haunted eyes on the far wall, both looking at it and through it to something far away and long gone.
"I need to tell the Healer you're awake," he said in a hollow voice, then he was gone, leaving Draco to stare at the door in confusion.
Did I do something wrong?
-0-
"It wasn't enough that I cut him open when we were still enemies in school, now I've done while I was supposed to be his guardian, in my own house!" Harry threw himself in the dusty chair. "Reg, what am I going to do?"
After a short talk with the Healer, Harry found he couldn't handle going back in to face Draco, not after seeing all the scars he had created marring that pale skin. He fled to the old room full of abandoned furniture instead, to talk to Regulus's portrait. Since his out-pouring of personal history on his first visit, Reg was the only one who knew all of Harry's secrets
Regulus gave him a searching look. Then he heaved a sigh.
"You're going to go back to him and love him and let him make the decision."
"But-" Harry began, but the portrait cut him off.
"No, Harry, listen to me. You're so terrified of turning him into another Theo that your fear has blinded you to the fact that you're doing something much worse. This isn't the same situation, understand?"
"I just-" Harry choked, "I just can't let anyone else die." He sounded so weak, so young.
"Oh, Harry," Regulus whispered. "Harry Potter, ever the hero. They trained you well, didn't they? You didn't mean to do it, but if you don't go back to him, he'll think you did. He'll think you tried to kill him on purpose and you rejected him because he didn't die. Or maybe he won't, and he'll just believe you don't want him anymore because he's weak or broken."
"But I don't think any of that…"
"I know, Harry," Reg sighed. "I know, but he doesn't. Go to him, make sure he knows."
Harry was silent for many minutes, thinking.
-0-
Draco was afraid to fall asleep again. Rationally, he knew he wouldn't slip back into a coma now that he was out of it. He would only sleep a few hours. The Healer said he needed it, despite the fact that he had just spent the past ten days asleep. His body was still recovering, they said. The knife had opened the wall of his gut, something even magic could only heal so fast. He was bone-tired and still weak, and his eyelids were growing heavy.
Yet he was still afraid. If he slept, he would dream again. Morpheus had not been kind to him on his last visit to the realm of dreams. Rejected, spurned, scorned by the man he loved a dozen ways in a dozen different lives. He could only recall bits and pieces of his long dream, but they were all painful.
So he stared at the ceiling as the sun rose, trying not to even blink. A new day was dawning outside. The Healers were going to let him out that morning. Since he wasn't comatose anymore, there wasn't anything they could do for him. He would have to recover his strength and energy at home.
In Harry's home.
He hadn't seen the Lord since he all but ran away, just minutes after Draco opened his eyes. It hurt, reminding him of his dream, all the times those lips he longed to kiss had spit out his last name like an expletive. He hadn't even managed to get a good look at him, to see if his ten days' absence had wrought a change on that face. Snatches of their conversation echoed in his ears.
Harry, do you love me?
He had to know, he had to make sure it wasn't just another dream. The possibility that Harry would mock him in his hospital bed, laugh at him or scorn him, spit on his weakness, had terrified him. The answer had washed his fear away.
Yes, Draco, I love you.
He had a faint memory, full of bright pain and cold metal and surprise and the smell of blood, of Harry saying it, tears running down his face, but that was nothing compared to hearing it again.
Then Harry had run, and the fear had come back, and now he was alone in a hospital room bathed in the yellow-white light of the rising sun with a scar across his stomach and no one to hold his hand while he slept.