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The world is a mess of red splotched with black. It undulates and pulses, the space between colours filling with purple light that forks like lightning and veins.
Harry hates lightning bolts, but not as much as he hates the shock of silver white he spies at the edge of his vision. Isn’t it enough that he got hit by a curse and had to be rushed to St. Mungos? Why does he also have the bad fortune of being graced by Malfoy’s presence in all of his worst moments?
He’s jostled and put onto an ice cold sheet.The cracks around him widen and the slender veins burst, purple bleeding red. Somewhere, a hoarse voice screams. Harry hopes that voice isn’t Ron’s. Had he even been on the mission?
A thousand pinpricks of agony poke him where the cold thing touches his back. When Harry spots the speck of white for the second time—closer now— he is oddly comforted. He focuses on it, wracks his brain in an attempt to come up with a viable insult for when he can talk again, but the screaming is so damn irritating that he can’t concentrate.
Something cold pokes his chest and the world shatters with the sound of breaking glass, red and black separating neatly along the purple cracks and falling to the ground in shards.
White light floods in, too bright to withstand. Harry squeezes his eyes shut.
Finally, the screaming stops, but the people go with it.
Harry is alone and suddenly, he’s cold.
When Harry wakes, he discovers that the bright light hadn’t been a light at all. He’s surrounded by an abundance of white. White wall, white floor, white door, even his bed is white. His tanned skin looks strangely dark against that backdrop, tinged with grey. As if aware Harry has woken up the door opens and a healer strides in.
Harry would not have taken Malfoy for someone who wears camouflage, but there he is; white coat, white skin, white hair, and a white clipboard in a white room.
“Well, Mr Potter,” he says without taking his eyes off the clipboard. “How are you feeling?”
“Mr Potter? Really?”
Malfoy raises his head and lifts an aristocratic eyebrow. His grey eyes provide a much needed speck of colour that drains the harshness out of the white.
“Are you insinuating I should be anything but professional?”
“Are you insinuating we know each other no better than that?”
Malfoy drops his gaze abruptly and notes something on his clipboard then skims down the page.
“I see you are well enough to be contrary, but I assure you, you are not well enough to get out of bed yet. I repeat: do not get out of bed. Be a good patient for once.”
Harry frowns, trying to remember if he has been a bad patient before—or rather a bad patient to Malfoy. He comes up blank, his mind only providing memories from before: Hogwarts, the war, the trial, but nothing more recent. Before Harry can ask why Malfoy assumes Harry wouldn’t do as he is told, the door clicks closed and he is alone again.
Time drags by in a slog. Harry hates being in the hospital and it must have been particularly bad this time around, even if he’s not in pain. They gave him nothing to distract himself, no Wireless to listen to, no books or magazines, and not even a bloody window in the door. There are no visitors either and so, he has nothing to do other than think and wait for Malfoy to come back.
He must have fallen asleep at some point, probably out of sheer boredom. He dreams of never ending screams and violet-red lightning, of curses raining from the sky like fire. There are hazy figures zipping back and forth around him. They look oddly familiar, but they never stop long enough for him to recognise them. There are sounds too, muffled beneath the screaming, but no less frantic. Sometimes they pitch high and then the figures prod him, each point of contact singeing a line of fire through his nervous system. Bit by bit, the pain mounts until it reaches a crescendo. Harry jerks back awake, pulse pounding from the nightmare. He sits back up in his sterile white room and his breath is too fast, and his fingers won’t stop trembling.
Just like the last time, the door opens immediately and Malfoy strides in like a déjà vu.
“Well, Mr Potter, how are you feeling?”
“Bored,” he answers, too shaken by his dream to come up with a remotely witty retort.
“That’s to be expected, I guess. I’d advise you to not try to kill yourself if you want to avoid the tedious boredom of recovery, Potter.”
Ah, yes, that sounds more like the Malfoy Harry has come to love.
Wait. Love?
Harry does not love Malfoy. They hate each other and haven’t spoken since the trial. Huh—maybe there actually is a valid reason they are still keeping him isolated.
“What happened? I don’t remember how I got here.”
Malfoy snorts. “Sure, give me yet another role to fulfill. It’s not enough that they make me your healer and your emergency contact—no—now, I also have to play the resident storyteller.”
Harry waits.
“Let’s see.” Malfoy lifts his hand and starts checking off Harry’s grievances on his fingers. “You went ahead of your Auror squad—again—got separated from them—again—and invited no less, but possibly more, than three dark wizards to use you for target practice. Your squad members found you and brought you to St. Mungo’s.”
“How long will I have to stay here?”
“As long as it takes.” Malfoy pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.
“Will I be allowed visitors?”
“Do you really want visitors here, Potter?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Malfoy mumbles something unintelligible under his breath and turns, leaving Harry confused.
“Wait!” he calls, and Malfoy stops, albeit not without shooting Harry a harrowed look. “Why do you still hate me?”
Something flickers across Malfoy’s face at Harry’s question, but it’s gone in a blink. Maybe it was never there in the first place.
“I don’t. It just hurts seeing you like this. Here.” Another flicker and then Malfoy turns abruptly
This time he doesn’t stop when Harry calls after him.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, Harry settles back against the covers and tries to relax, but can’t shake the restless feeling that he’s missing something crucial.
“You can't keep doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Getting injured just to see me.”
Around Harry the lights dim and the voices steady. The screams have stopped, replaced now by intermittent groans and slow sobbing from somewhere in a corner. It’s that kind of dream where you can see and feel, but you can’t move. Harry hates those. The inherent lack of control is too familiar. It reminds him of looking through Voldemorts’ eyes and waking up in a pitch black cupboard, body wedged into a corner.
Flickers of violet return as he struggles to keep breathing, dividing the space around him into segments of black and red in an organic pattern. It’s strangely beautiful and it distracts him from his paralysis. Harry watches, rapt with attention, as the colours deepen and split, branches multiplying and widening. His world shapes itself into a two-toned mosaic pulsing in the form of a broken heart.
Hearts shouldn’t be broken, and yet, they usually are.
Pity is, even broken, they will do their job.
“Well, Mr Potter, how are you feeling?”
“Again?” Harry draws his eyebrows together.
“My oaths oblige me to ask the same question as long as I find you here.”
“What is that supposed to mean? Where else should I be? YOU said I wasn’t allowed to go through the door.”
Malfoy closes his eyes with a long suffering sigh.
“Yes, I did, but I can only stall for so long before the time for your decision becomes imminent.”
“Decision, what decision? And what do you mean, you’re stalling? Are you holding out on me again?”
Draco flinches back, just slightly, but Harry sees it anyway. He doesn’t even know why he said it, or why his words hold such power over Malfoy. He only knows that the tension in Malfoy’s jaw is familiar and so is the hurt in his eyes. It makes Harry want to call Malfoy Draco and sidle closer. It makes him want to apologize and kiss it all better until he sees his favorite smile again, or at least that little quirk at the corners of Malfoy’s mouth.
The thoughts feel alien.
He wants no part of them.
They should never have been part of him.
His head hurts like it’s broken.
He needs to cut those ideas out before they hurt him more.
Before they cut him deeper.
He has to, he has to—
Harry opens his eyes to find Malfoy watching him with concern that borders onto pity. There’s definitely something wrong with Harry.
He is tired. He is sick. Before the hospital, he last saw Malfoy at the trial.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Malfoy says, and Harry jerks at the feel of a hand on his shoulder, startles at the sound of his given name leaving Malfoy's mouth like a caress. “I would tell you if could, but the oaths—”
A gurgle gets stuck in the back of Harry's throat and it sounds suspiciously like a sob. “What kind of oaths do they make you swear here anyway?”
“The worst kind.”
“If you want us to stop meeting like this, then maybe we should meet elsewhere?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Have dinner with me.”
With a practiced flick of his wrist, Malfoy casts a diagnostic and then stares at it with pursed lips.
“Hmmmm,” he drawls. “That's odd.”
“What now, Malfoy?” Harry groans, sliding from side to side on that blastedly uncomfortable hospital bed.
“Judging from your ridiculous question, I was sure you had sustained yet another head injury, but nothing shows up in the diagnostic.”
“Really?” Harry huffs, and then: “I mean it: Have dinner with me, or lunch, or tea. I don't care which. Just go out with me, please?”
“Put the puppy eyes away, Potter. Even if I wanted to—you know I can't go beyond the wards of this hospital or my home.”
“Can't or won't? You know what? Forget I asked, I really wouldn’t have taken you for such a coward.”
Harry blinks his eyes open slowly, startled to find himself in a hospital room with soft yellow walls, his bed draped with white bedsheets crossed by slender blue lines and a visitors’ chair in the corner. On it, Ron sits slumped, his vibrant red hair a startling speck of colour after all that white. His mouth hangs open in a snore, and his clothes look rumpled, like he has been sitting there for days.
He shifts and moans, surprised to find that every muscle in his body hurts. Still, he drags himself up to rest against the headboard.
“Harry?” Ron groans and then repeats it more loudly as he wrestles his long limbs into order and rushes over.
“Wh—” Harry starts, but no more words make it out of his parched and aching throat.
“Shhh, it's okay, mate. You are in the hospital.”
“I know,” Harry forces out through his resistant throat. Does Ron think he is stupid? “Why did they trans—transfer me to a new room?”
“New room? What are you—Harry, you have been here for three days.” Ron’s features blur in front of Harry’s face and his head pounds. “I’ll get your healer.”
It isn't long before Ron reappears with a middle aged woman in tow.
“Hi,” she says with a warm smile, “I’m Gladys Middleton, your healer. How are you—”
“No,” Harry croaks. “I want—where is Malfoy? He’s my healer, not you.”
“I’m your healer, Mr Potter. Let me—let me run a quick diagnostic, yes?”
“No.” There's a sudden tightness in Harry’s chest that he can't place. “You’re not.”
His fingers spasm, but he balls them into fists. “What happened? Why did you change everything? I want Malfoy. Where’s Malfoy?”
Silence falls and the kind smile flickers. A glance passes between Ron and not-his-healer Gladys.
Something clicks or breaks. Harry’s breath hitches and his arms twitch. His face is wet and then he tilts sideways, unable to move. The pulsing is back, black and red and violet swirling into a vortex of despair.
“Go away, Potter.”
“But I want to be here. With you.”
“No, you don't.”
“Please.”
“Go away. Live. It wasn't your fault.”
It was his fault.
It is.
The streetlamp throws its murky light into a nondescript alley. A weirdly shaped lump in the back of it catches Harry’s attention, and he spares a second glance. The thing is covered by a sodden cloak, the cloth fine but blotchy with dark stains.
Suspicious, he stalks closer. The street is empty apart from the lump that rests in a pool of dark liquid between two large garbage bins. Harry spots the tip of a polished loafer poking out from under the cloak and draws his wand.
With quick, practiced flicks he spells his personal protection bubble in place as well as the one that will keep his body from corrupting any evidence. With another swish, his patronus appears by his side, ready to carry a message to the headquarters. The luminescent stag banishes the shadow and reflects on a glint of white on the opposite side of the lump.
One step forward and Harry recognises it’s white blonde hair.
One step more and he sees it’s tinged red.
The world is falling apart. The broken pieces of his heart lie scattered on the floor and yet, it’s not stopping. Harry's broken heart is beating on and on when it shouldn't—when Draco's doesn't.
He wants it to stop, he wants it all to stop.
He wants to break his body so the pain has a way out.
He doesn't want to be here and live with this for a single second more.
He wants the world to pay.
He wants to go out and raze that robbers’ den to the ground again, letting them riddle his body with curses.
He wants lightning in his chest and glass in his veins.
He wants to be back in that white hospital room.
He wants to tell Draco he loves him.
Just once.
Even if Draco doesn’t say it back.
“Harry.”
There’s pressure at the back of his throat and behind his eyes.
A hand falls on his shoulder, and all Harry can think of is that he will never feel Draco's hand on his shoulder again.
Harry chokes on his tears and drowns in despair, but the world doesn’t bleed red-purple black.
It’s gone. It’s all gone.
And it’s Harry’s fault.