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The first thing Draco focused on when he opened his eyes was Harry Potter on the next bed. He was sitting hard up against the headboard, his knees drawn up. In the hollow between his knees and chest, where the bed covers formed a precarious hammock, he had a thick textbook propped open. He was frowning as he read.
Draco ached all over. He felt too weak to lift a cup of tea without spilling it all over himself; his bones felt as though they'd been wrung out with the tendons attached. His head was swimmy too; too fogged to really let him think. For a moment he struggled with remembering how he'd got into the hospital wing, but he hurt too much. It was easier just to let it go and spin himself a new daydream.
Harry was biting his lower lip, a crease between his eyes. His hair was tousled and mussed up at the back where it had been rubbing against the hospital pillows. He looked tired around the eyes - the black lower lashes too dark against the white-blue circles underneath. His elbow, guarding the heavy textbook from sliding off the bed and onto the floor, was thin and somehow fragile, the bones too close to the skin; even though his forearms were tanned and sturdy.
In the fantasy, Harry would smooth the bite of his teeth over his bottom lip with a sweep of his tongue. Draco's eyes would be caught and he'd follow the rough drag of tongue over lip, the flash of bone-white as Harry caught the lip in his teeth again; frowning over the textbook once more.
Draco would want him more than he'd ever wanted anybody in his life.
He'd make some sound - maybe just a scrape of the sheets as he shifted, because he couldn't help it - and Harry would lift his head, startled.
He'd say, You're awake, and that wouldn't be much on its own, but he'd be smiling while he said it, happy and uncomplicated, and the smile would seep into his voice so that it was rough and pleased.
I guess you didn't fall on your head, then, Draco would say (because Potter would be here for a Quidditch accident; he fell off his broom every year, one way or another). Your keen intellect hasn't been affected.
And Harry would make a face at him and say, Git. He'd slide his legs quickly out of the side of the bed, padding over to Draco in his pyjamas. He'd crawl onto Draco's bed, while Draco struggled to pull himself up into a sitting position, and he'd shove at Draco's arm, adding, Wanker, so that Draco yelped.
Potter, would you stop being a brute? I've been beaten most of the way to death by Bludgers, here.
(Draco frowned. Bludgers wasn't right; he felt too stretched and achy all over for it to be a Bludger hit.)
Harry would lean close to his neck and laugh, the breath and vibration making him shiver. Draco's hands would come up almost without his permission, touching Harry's shoulder blades, sliding down to his waist, holding him there.
Harry would grin, pulling back far enough that Draco could see it. He'd tilt his head forward, his forehead on Draco's, his knees comfortable on either side of Draco's lap.
Oh yes, you're obviously on your death bed, he'd snicker.
Draco would be too busy breathing in the warmth of his neck to reply - his blood humming and the air almost too thick to breathe when Harry was so close like this. Intoxicating and irresistible when he smiled, cocky, sure he had Draco's attention, and leaned in to nibble at Draco's lower lip.
"Oh god."
It took Draco a moment to realise that the small voice had come from the real world.
Harry - the real Harry - had abandoned his book and was curled into a ball, his face pressed into the arms folded over his knees.
"Not again." He lifted his head, turning hunted eyes towards Draco. "Have you stopped?"
Draco gaped at him. "I ... what?"
It wasn't the peak of eloquence, but his head still felt as though it was clogged with toffee. He was also still blinking away the edges of the fantasy - but he was so used to switching between daydream and reality that he didn't think it could really throw him anymore.
Harry peered at him. "You are awake, aren't you?" he said, checking. "That one was different, so you must be."
"That what was different?"
Now Draco did pull himself into a sitting position. He glared at Harry. "Bad enough that I apparently have to share the Infirmary with you, Potter; do you need to talk in tongues as well?" He wished his voice weren't so weak. It was hard to project much vitriol when you sounded like a dying kitten.
Harry gave a laugh with a groan in it. He drew his knees up closer against him.
"You've had a fever, Malfoy," he said, sing-song. "Madam Pomfrey said you had Doxie 'flu."
Draco hesitated. He tested the muscles in his back, feeling the hot, stretched ache. That made sense, he supposed. No wonder he felt as though he'd had two dragons pulling him in opposite directions.
"Yes, a diagnosis was exactly what I asked for, Nurse Potter. Ta."
"A fever," Harry said again. "You had - delusions. Fever dreams. Whatever. Your magical core is all off-centre, Pomfrey said, so they started spilling out. They played out around your bed. All ... all night."
Draco stared at him for a moment. There was a twist of cold gathering in his stomach; but Harry couldn't be saying what Draco thought he was saying.
Harry was staring at the space around Draco's bed, the under siege look back in his eyes. Draco cast a quick, panicked look around. There were no images now. It - well, fever dreams. Well, that could mean anything, couldn't it? Maybe Draco had been dreaming about pineapples, and the images had manifested there: a tiny Draco-figure chased across moonlit fields by enormous pineapples. Maybe Harry was frightened of pineapples; maybe that was why he looked so hunted.
"Dreams," Draco said.
"Or maybe daydreams." Harry still had his eyes fixed on the empty air at the foot of Draco's bed.
"Day..." Draco coughed. "Daydreams." He pushed himself further upright, the dull twinge in his head jolting into a full headache. "What the hell are you talking about, Potter?"
Harry darted one look at his face, his cheeks flooding with colour.
Oh.
Draco's stomach clenched tight and painful.
Those daydreams. Not pineapples.
The dreams that he told himself were safe; that he pulled up like a blanket to ward off Harry Potter's hatred, indifference, contempt - whatever the flavour of the moment was. The ones that were supposed to be alright, because nobody would ever know, and what harm could they do? How could they hurt if they helped Draco walk on past Harry in the halls each time without breaking into pieces; without dying of the cold?
Those daydreams had been playing out around his bed. In front of Harry. Who'd watched them with haunted eyes, round with disbelief and horror.
Draco was going to be sick.
Harry wasn't meeting his eye. Part of Draco wanted to disclaim the images. I don't know what you thought you saw, Potter, but believe me, it was nothing but your own sick imagination on overdrive. Another part of him wanted to curl tight around the dreams, hold them safe, because god, Draco was bleeding and they were growing ugly and blood-sodden in front of him.
Probably the calmest part was the little Draco voice in the back of his mind, laughing and laughing. Harmless? A cackle of glee. Oh, very good, Draco. Very good indeed.
His face was all wrong - it hadn't found an expression yet, anybody could see anything on it.
"What did you see?" he asked. His voice was harsh in his own ears. "Did you see - did you see us kissing?"
Harry made a terrible face at his knees. Draco kept going because he couldn't stop.
"Did you see us studying out on the grass, laughing and trying to concentrate? Did you see us swapping notes in class like first years? Did you see us fighting Death Eaters together?"
The words cut at his throat; he wanted to protect the images but he couldn't seem to keep from dragging them out, ugly and ridiculous in the light.
"Not - not really. Not just that," Harry said. Draco had to strain to hear. "It - you're really messed up, you know that, Malfoy?"
Obviously Draco knew that. He sneered. Harry still wasn't looking at him.
"You showed me your Dark Mark," he said. Draco curled a hand over his right arm. Harry laughed a bit, wobbly and not happy. "You just kept coming back to it, all night. If something was going well, like - like what you described, studying together or laughing or something, or - or the other. You'd always show me your arm and I'd - the me in the scene would be shocked and disgusted and, and betrayed, whatever, and he'd turn away, and ... God, I never want to see it again."
Draco couldn't speak. Harry looked at him suddenly, quick and searching. "I asked Madam Pomfrey. She said all the Death Eater children have it on their right arm. She said -" another darting glance, and then he stared determinedly at the window to Draco's left "that you all came back with them after fourth year."
Draco reflected surreally that he and Madam Pomfrey really must have had quite a cosy chat.
He was spared having to come up with any kind of answer by the entry of Madam Pomfrey herself. She went first to Harry.
"Let's see your arm then, Mr Potter. Any twinges left?"
He shook his head, holding his arm out to be prodded. "No. None." Madam Pomfrey made humming sounds, checking over the area from his wrist to his elbow.
"The bone's grown back in nicely," she approved. "You must have had an uncomfortable night, yes?" She spoke with the professional compassion of somebody who hadn't been up all night regrowing bones. Harry grimaced.
"I don't think it was as bad as last time," he said, politely and patently untruthfully.
Madam Pomfrey dropped his arm and patted his shoulder. "Well, you're free to go. Exercise that arm a little to make sure the new bones settle properly."
Harry nodded.
There were school robes spilling out of a satchel next to his bed. He shrugged into them over the top of his pyjamas, slinging the bag over his shoulder.
He almost glanced at Draco as he went out, then changed his mind and turned his head the other way. Draco could see the edge of a fierce blush on his cheek.
He closed his eyes for just a second. Then he curled his arms around his knees and turned to Madam Pomfrey.
She was drawing her wand and looking him over. She lifted his chin, then lowered it and looked into his eyes.
"There now," she said. Surprisingly, she sounded gentle. Usually Draco got the impression that she didn't approve of him. "It's good to see you yourself again, Mr Malfoy."
"Potter said I had Doxie 'flu." Years of practice meant that he could say the name without splintering into pieces, even after what had just happened.
Pomfrey nodded. She was running her wand over his chest now, distracted by her tests. "You're over the worst now, though. Your magical core's got a bit disrupted - Mr Potter probably told you about that."
"He said my fever dreams had been - manifesting around me."
She frowned and for a moment he hoped she would contradict him - No, that wasn't what happened at all - but she just said, "Well, that won't happen anymore. You might still find people around you picking up things - like sensations - from your own thoughts for a bit, though. It's all a bit skew-if, as I said. It will probably take a while to settle back to normal."
Draco let her complete her checks without any more questions. She seemed content to pretend that she personally had seen nothing untoward in any of his dreams. Draco was grateful to play along.
*
Over the next few days, he managed to argue himself into an even blacker state of mind. Pansy came to visit him and left in tears. Crabbe and Goyle were afraid to open their mouths. They sat on chairs to either side of his bed, twisting their hands and sharing awkward grimaces.
Draco had worked out that the dreams, so matter what comforting things Pomfrey told him about accidental magic, couldn't have been entirely accidental. Animating imagination was damned powerful magic - the kind that needed at least a directing spark of intention.
Part of Draco had wanted people to know - wanted Harry to know. He knew that. Part of him had always hated that Harry never noticed, never saw what was right there in Draco's eyes every time he spat out Harry's name, every time he walked past him in the halls.
He took it back now. He didn't want Harry to know.
He curled into a tighter ball, replaying again the small, horrified noise Harry had made when he felt - whatever Draco's fantasy was projecting, just after he woke up. You're really messed up, you know that, Malfoy?
He realised, quite calmly, that he couldn't ever leave this room.
*
That last proved to be impossible. As he slipped into the convalescence period of the 'flu, Madam Pomfrey insisted that he go out and walk in the sunshine. "For an hour at most, and come in if you're tired."
He went down to the lake.
He'd been kicking pebbles for nearly fifteen minutes, and he'd almost decided it had been long enough that he could go back and tell Madam Pomfrey that the walk had tired him out, when he saw the figure crouching on the bank a little way along. He had his wand out, making passes over the water. Draco could see the bristles of his Firebolt poking out of the grass nearby, thrown haphazardly to the ground.
Draco almost turned around again immediately. After a few seconds' struggle the desire to see what Harry was doing proved stronger than the desire to run away. He edged closer.
Harry was leaning out over the water, one hand keeping his balance on the grass beside him. His hair fell forward over his cheek, the breeze shifting it in fits and starts. For a moment the urge to fold the hair back with his fingers was almost overwhelming.
Draco blinked and concentrated on the water under Harry's wand.
There was a picture there; small and detail-perfect; a moving image. A small boy with downy white-blond hair caught his tongue between his teeth as he wrote a letter. He perched at a desk too big for him, forming rounded letters carefully, his eyes alight with the task.
At the top of the sheet of parchment, in even more careful script, Draco could make out: Dear Harry Potter.
He was moving before he'd more than become aware of the white-hot rage coursing through him.
Harry was too slow to catch himself. His mouth opened in half a shout, the rest of it swallowed in the smack and heavy splash of his body hitting the water.
It was deep-ish here; the bank overhung a hollowed-out inlet of black-dark water. Harry surfaced spitting. He grabbed at the bank, blinking water out of his eyes, focusing on Draco through streaming glasses plastered with the sopping tendrils of his fringe.
"Malfoy. What the hell -?"
"You think you can use it for entertainment?" Draco could barely get the words out through his clenched jaw. "What, you were so bored that you needed to resort to my fucking fever dreams to pass the time?"
"No! That wasn't ..." Harry shook his head, his hair beginning to go spiky as the water dripped off. He pushed his glasses up his slippery-wet nose. "Dammit, Malfoy, will you give me a hand?"
Draco looked at him for a moment. Eventually he stepped forward and grabbed Harry's upper arm, hauling him upward. He was still weak enough that it was a lot harder than it should have been.
He was damned if he'd let on, though.
Harry scrambled to his feet and started wringing out his robes. "God, Malfoy, you're crazy."
Draco immediately regretted helping him up.
Harry fished his wand out of his waterlogged sleeve and cast an Impervio on his glasses. He looked at Draco properly.
"I wasn't trying to -" He pushed his fringe out of the way, frustrated. "I was just trying to understand. Did you really write letters to me when you were a kid? Or was that just a dream?"
"I didn't even know you," Draco spat. After a moment he added, looking away, "I wrote letters to the Boy Who Lived."
Harry let out a gust of air. "OK."
Draco turned back to glare at him.
"OK what?"
Harry glared back. "My god, Malfoy, do you think I know what to think about -" his hand traced a vague circle that took in the lake and Draco, "this?" He closed his eyes. "Bloody hell."
There was a tree behind him. He leaned against it, his eyes still squeezed shut as though that would help.
Draco just watched him. Even now, even like this, he wanted him. Wanted him to open his eyes and smile, sunny and carefree like blue skies and fresh-cut grass. He wanted to walk over there and smooth his hand over the curve of Harry's hip where the wet robes already clung. He wanted to lick the wetness away from Harry's mouth. He wanted to warm the chilled skin of his neck with his tongue. He wanted to press close to the wet-clothed form until his own robes absorbed the wetness, until his own heat warmed Harry, his own fine dry hair tickled against Harry's cheek. He wanted -
Harry whimpered.
At some time in the last few minutes he'd melted almost bonelessly against the tree. His head lolled back and his neck arched against an invisible touch.
Oh. Oh - just hell.
Apparently Draco's magic was still wonky.
His mind was spinning, terrified; but Harry opened his eyes, dilated and a bit glazed, and Draco couldn't help it: the hopeless drowning part of him still wanted to kiss him until neither of them could breathe.
Harry took a gasping breath and stumbled the few steps he needed to grasp Draco's elbows. He found Draco's mouth by feel, bumping his nose and folding his fingers into the front of Draco's robes.
Draco was dying.
Harry's mouth was warm under Draco's, soft and desperate. Draco's body already knew what to do, he couldn't think but he'd practiced this, he'd practiced it so often. His mouth opened to the tentative press of Harry's tongue. His hands came up, wet cloth and warm body, pushing tangled damp coils of hair away from flushed cheeks. He couldn't touch enough, couldn't feel enough; his knees were going to give out.
A warm hand caught him under the elbow, supporting him when his knees really did give out.
He wrenched away, stumbling backwards. His mouth worked but he couldn't get any words out.
"Wha...?" Harry blinked at him. His lips were rubbed-red, his cheeks flushed.
Draco looked at him, shaking. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I - what?"
Harry had never looked so awkward. He rubbed at the back of his neck. "Didn't you like it?" His tone tried and failed to be nonchalant.
"That's not an answer."
Harry flushed. He looked away, rubbing at his neck again. "I've been - thinking about it," he said quietly. "A bit. Since the hospital wing." His cheeks were bright, bright red.
Draco had to stamp on a bubble of pleasure at the words.
"No you haven't," he said. "You haven't thought anything. God, they were daydreams, Potter. Surely you can tell the difference. You can't have forgotten everything just because you watched a sunshiny fantasy of the two of us making out. You can't just - say the last six years didn't happen, you moron."
Harry was still blushing, but he looked annoyed now. "They didn't happen the way I remember though, did they?" he said, defensive. "Not really. Not when you were thinking - things like this every time we hexed each other."
Draco sneered, vicious and cold. His hand went to his right sleeve. "Not what I was talking about, Potter."
Harry kept his eyes averted. Draco was furious suddenly. "Look at it. I want to show you. You can't think you can just - adopt me like a kitten and ignore the rest. This is what I am." Harry glared at the lake. "Look at it."
Harry whirled. "Damn it, Malfoy, I've seen it."
"So look again."
Harry looked, unwillingly, and Draco took a kind of masochistic pleasure in looking with him so that he could see what Harry saw; the black snake and skull foul against the fair skin of his arm. "I'm bound to him," he said, the words sick in his mouth. "I'm part of them." He raised his eyes to Harry's again. "And they don't want anything but your blood and pain."
He stumbled a bit as he walked away, but he kept his back straight. Harry called his name once, frustrated. Draco didn't answer.
*
Madam Pomfrey clucked over him. She shouldn't have sent him out, it had been too soon; he was worn out, poor thing.
Draco just nodded and let her settle him in bed again. If he started talking he thought, distantly, then he'd start crying.
*
Harry turned up at the Infirmary two days later. Draco was sitting up in bed, trying to read his Transfiguration textbook.
Harry marched directly up to him. He shoved the hair off his forehead, exposing the jagged scar there.
"You have a mark connecting you to Voldemort," he said. "Well, so do I." He kept his gaze level. "Neither of them will be a problem once he's gone."
"Oh," Draco said. His breath was suddenly uneven. "That's ... only you could look at it that way, Potter, honestly."
Harry smiled, a tiny secretive tilt at the corner of his mouth. It made Draco's pulse skitter and then gallop. He stepped closer and pushed a knee up onto the end of the bed, then the other one. "Well, I'm only me," he said. "You'll have to deal, Malfoy."
"You - you're really pushy, you know." Draco wasn't sure what he was saying but he suspected it was ridiculous.
Harry crawled further up the bed. "Yeah," he said. He settled on his heels. "Actually, I want to kiss you again, too, but I don't know whether you'll hex me."
Draco eyed him warily. "I probably will," he warned. Then, "You could try anyway, I suppose."
Harry grinned. (He shouldn't do that, it gave him an unfair advantage; he had to know.) "Well, when you put it like that," he murmured, "you make it sound like so much fun ..."