Chapter 9 of The Bubo
Saturday, November 28, 1994
Harry sat shivering on a rickety chair in the Hospital wing. About six feet from him, behind a wall of portable screens, lay Draco Malfoy, out cold and for all Harry knew, dying.
Already his memory of their fight… and what followed… was fraying around the edges. It had all happened so fast. The entire chase might’ve taken… what, a few minutes? And then they could’ve been face to face—and other things, Jesus—for, say, twenty seconds, for all it had felt like an eternity. Then Malfoy had very nearly pushed Harry to his death down the stairs. It had been such a shock—both that Malfoy had such strength in him and that he would use it so violently after putting up no resistance whatsoever while they’d been… against the wall. And then he just collapsed! Literally crumpled, as if hit with a Jelly Legs Jinx. At first, Harry thought Malfoy was pretending, like he had done with Buckbeak, but when being turned over, shaken and slapped on the face failed to rouse him, Harry grew very much afraid. He put his fingers on Malfoy’s throat but couldn’t find a pulse. Next, he laid his head on Malfoy’s chest and—phew—his heart was still beating. Whether he’d considered—only for a moment!—giving Malfoy mouth-to-mouth before or after that, Harry could no longer recall.
In the end, he had used the spell every student had been made to learn in the first year to call for help in an emergency. An elderly house elf had appeared—Harry didn’t know her name—assessed the situation in a single glance, then Apparated both Harry and Malfoy to the infirmary. Harry had only noticed the blood dripping from Malfoy’s shoes when Madam Pomfrey levitated him to one of the cots. The trail of it still shone wetly from the colorless floor tiles made dull by a million comings and goings.
No one would tell him anything. When Madam Pomfrey had asked what had happened, Harry had confessed to chasing Malfoy to the third floor and slamming him against the wall hard enough to smash his skull. He was pretty sure there’d been no blood on the back of Malfoy’s blond head, but maybe the bleeding had only started later.
Harry squirmed, lifting his feet up on the chair and hugging his knees to stop himself from rocking to and fro. Had he done this? With his stupid rage?
He was so done trying to protect Seamus. He’d had no business interfering in the first place. Malfoy’s pranks had been annoying, yes, but ultimately harmless; definitely more so than Seamus’s own idiotic experiments. Hermione had told him the Hiccuping Solution could be dangerous, but noooo. Dean and Neville practically had to carry him to the infirmary on Thursday night. And when Harry had told Malfoy that Seamus was sorry about what he’d said in the tent after the First Task, it had been a lie. Seamus would sooner eat his owl than apologize. He wasn’t even a little bit sorry. And he should’ve been. It’d been a bloody awful thing to say, especially with Charlie Weasley, who openly declared as gay, within easy earshot.
Harry caught himself rocking anyway. He couldn’t help it. Because it hadn’t been Seamus that set him off on the terrace, or even on Thursday, when he and Malfoy had argued under the stairs. It had been Pansy Parkinson, and the horrible thing that coiled and curdled in Harry’s stomach every time he thought of her. Of her clawed paws on the back of Malfoy’s neck. Of the lipstick stamps she left all over Malfoy’s cheeks like bloodied bite marks. Even now, after everything that had happened, Harry could not stench the burn at the bottom of his chest. The moment Malfoy had kissed her, with eyes locked on Harry in some insane challenge, replayed in his mind on a vicious loop.
The double door burst open, and Snape entered in a cloud of billowing black robes. Because, obviously, things hadn’t been bad enough already. Harry put his feet down and sat up straight, though his neck trembled something awful. Snape slipped on one of the blood stains. He looked down, followed the trail with his eyes to where Harry was sitting, and his perpetual scowl settled into a tired grimace that all but cried, you again.
“Sir,” Harry started, “I didn’t—”
“Silence.” Snape went behind the screens. “Poppy. I came as soon as I could.”
“Thank you, Severus.” Madam Pomfrey spoke in a hushed voice, but Harry was close enough to hear everything clearly. “The boys had a fight. Draco hit his head. But that’s not why he fainted. It was—oh, I better show you.”
Watching the silhouettes through the screen, Harry could see Madam Pomfrey uncover Malfoy. Snape let out a quiet hiss.
“The wound is clean,” Madam Pomfrey said. “It’ll heal by morning, but—”
Snape’s wand was out and he waved it over Malfoy, whispering an incantation Harry couldn’t make out.
“It’s the same as with Natalie Ferris, isn’t it?” Madam Pomfrey said. Harry didn’t recognize the name. “And Philip—”
“Did you take a blood sample?”
“I did.”
“Let me see.”
Delicate glassware clicked and clanked as Madam Pomfrey leaned over the bedside cabinet. “Here.”
“Revelio,” Snape murmured, and Harry felt the spell wash over him like freezing rain. “Yes… it’s the same mixture. How many have there been so far? Three? Four?”
“Two this year. Three, now. Another two last year.”
“Troubling.”
“Talk to the boy, Severus. He might confide in—”
“I tried.”
There was a silence. Then, “Shall I owl his parents?”
“No. I have it in hand.”
“Thank you,” Madam Pomfrey repeated, and the relief in her sigh was almost comical.
The two of them walked out from behind the screens and stood facing Harry, who shrunk in his chair, suddenly feeling like he was on trial. “Is Malfoy going to be alright?” he asked.
“Yes, my dear,” said Madam Pomfrey. “Don’t worry.”
But Harry worried alright. Snape was looking at him with more than his usual disdain. “It is with great regret that I must inform you,” he started, then made a pause long enough for Madam Pomfrey to give him a quizzical look, “that for once, you were blameless, Mr. Potter.”
Harry sagged back and blew out a breth.
“Which is why I will only take twenty points from Gryffindor for attacking a fellow student.”
Harry snapped back up. “He attacked a fellow student first! I was just—”
But Snape raised a hand. “You are both very, very fortunate to suffer such mild consequences of your thoughtless actions.”
Through the veil of freshly stirred anger, Harry recalled the terrible sound Malfoy’s head had made when it hit the wall, and his own fright as he’d fought to restore his balance at the top of the stairs. He swallowed and nodded.
“I have his wand, sir,” he volunteered.
Snape grimaced with distaste. “Can you be trusted to return it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then.” He turned to Madam Pomfrey. “Make sure Mr. Malfoy comes to see me first thing after he’s released.”
Madam Pomfrey nodded, and Snape left, avoiding the blood stains.
“It was brave of you to bring him here after you’d had a fight,” Madam Pomfrey said when the doors closed. “I know for a fact most other students would’ve fled the scene. And it was also brave of you to mention that he’d hit his head. Fortunately, there’s no concussion, but had there been one, it might’ve put him in serious jeopardy, in his condition. So.” She cleared her throat. “Twenty points to Gryffindor.”
“I didn’t know you could give House points, Madam Pomfrey.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “I am staff, am I not?”
Harry grinned. “Yes, m’am. Brilliant!”
“Now. Return Mr. Malfoy’s wand and then take your leave. It’s almost time for dinner.” She turned to leave.
“Madam Pomfrey?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Er.” Harry’s pulse sped up. “What… happened to him, exactly?”
Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips, clearly deliberating on how much—or how little—to tell him. “I think it’d be best if you asked Mr. Malfoy when he recovers.”
Reluctantly, Harry nodded. He watched her amble to her office, leaving the door ajar. Then he stood up, stretched jerkily, his limbs still aflutter from all the adrenaline, and peeked behind the row of screens.
Malfoy lay on his back, with the blanket pulled up to his shoulders. His arms rested by his sides, and his legs sprawled in a wide V. Harry’s gaze caught on the soft bulge over Malfoy’s crotch just long enough to send heat up his face.
He stepped closer to the cot. The straps of a plain cotton vest and a sliver of smooth skin over Malfoy’s collarbones peeked from under the blanket. Malfoy was still out. There was no movement under his eyelids and his breathing was quiet and even. Even in the warm lamplight, his pallor was stark. Not a trace remained of the blush that had painted his cheeks and ears pink in the tapestry corridor.
Harry stared, transfixed. Cho was pretty. Cedric was handsome. Hermione had the loveliest smile, and Ron had very nice shoulders. Charlie was just plain hot. But Malfoy?
Malfoy was… beautiful. In an eye-stinging, chest-aching, toe-curling way.
Harry held his breath and brushed a strand of white blond hair from Malfoy’s forehead where it had caught in his golden eyelashes. Harry’s heart sprang into a gallop. He puffed his cheeks and huffed out. Yeah. He’d been thinking about giving Malfoy mouth-to-mouth way, way before he’d collapsed.
Harry took Malfoy’s wand out of his back pocket and rolled it one last time between his fingers. It felt strange, holding it. Even Ron’s and Hermione’s wands had given him unpleasant, prickly sort of sensations. But Malfoy’s wand felt comfortably cool and solid in Harry’s grip: trustworthy; cooperative. Literally everything Malfoy wasn’t and never would be. With a sigh, Harry laid the wand on the nightstand.
“See you around, Malfoy,” he whispered, so quietly he could barely hear it himself.