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“Oh,” Draco says, and frowns. “What if…you brought me the tea?”
Harry hates to say it when Draco’s so obviously not in a state to do much more that sit in a heap, but: “I don’t, er. Sorry, but…I don’t know that you should be in here by yourself, just now.”
“Oh,” Draco says. He nods, a slow, distant sort of movement. “Yeah, that’s probably right.”
Harry stands. Picks up his wand. Helps Draco up. Keeps himself firmly between Draco and the agonized, horrible hole in his house. Turns him around. Guides him out into the hall.
“You need St. Mungo’s,” Harry says, after about six steps. Draco’s still favoring his left side, heavily enough that Harry is afraid to step more than a few inches away, his hands hovering nervously in the places he thinks Draco looks most likely to fall. The bruising on his face alone is a horrorshow, and Harry doesn’t want to think about the injuries his pajamas must be concealing, what they might have done to Draco in the time it took Harry to show up.
“I don’t take medical advice from people who aren’t wearing shoes,” says Draco, still distant. “Contact me again when you’re properly attired.”
Harry makes a face at the back of his head that he’s glad Draco can’t see. He’s not sure what it must look like; he knows he’s never made it before. “At least let me—”
“Shhh,” Draco says.
Harry shuts up, if only because it’s the only time Draco’s ever missed an opportunity to tell him viciously and actively to shut up, and Harry thinks that probably means something. He just trails Draco down the hall, down the stairs—which is nerve-wracking, to say the least—and into the little sitting room with the wet bar.
When Draco can’t sit down without gasping, Harry’s patience wears thin, and he snaps, “Malfoy, for fuck’s sake, it’ll take me two seconds.” Draco hesitates and then nods, weary, waves a hand. The vague permission is all Harry needs, and he spells the blood off Draco’s face, casts a couple of pain relief charms that he learned early on in his career, mostly from other field Aurors who’d come, over the years, to rely on them. They’re only a stopgap; they’re not really fixing the problem, but they’ll give Draco a couple of hours, at least, to gather himself back together before he submits to the indignity of being seen by an actual professional.
“You still need St. Mungo’s,” Harry says, because he does.
“You know what I have always imagined about you,” Draco says, closing his eyes, “is that you’re the kind of horrifyingly stubborn imbecile who won’t go to hospital even if one of his bones is visible. I’m right, aren’t I? You’d rather bleed to death in an alley, probably, than just go to a Healer and admit you’re made of flesh like everyone else.”
Harry’s not really sure what Draco’s getting out of turning it around on him like this, but, hey, if it helps. “Yeah, well. It’s not the same when it’s me.”
“Why not?” Draco’s eyes are still closed. His voice is very neutral.
Because I don’t feel like this when it’s me, Harry doesn’t say. He thinks it—the truth of it scrabbles wild, dangerous, inside of his chest—but he doesn’t say it. It doesn’t make enough sense right now for him to admit it out loud.
“Because I’m not made of flesh like everyone else,” Harry says. “I’m, er. A very convincing hologram?”
Draco doesn’t open his eyes, but his brow does furrow a bit. “What on earth is a hologram?”
“A Muggle thing,” Harry says. It’s such an incredibly bizarre topic in the circumstances that he almost laughs. “Like—television, sort of, except more…solid, I guess. You have seen a television before, right?”
“Of course I’ve seen a television,” Draco says. He’s still neutral—no, Harry realizes. Not neutral; flat. Affectless. It’s awful. “Pansy has two. I’m not sure I see the appeal.”
“Er,” Harry says. He thinks about it, and then—because he thinks Draco would be honest with him, if their places were reversed—he says, “Well, actually they’re pretty great for moments like these. Distracting, you know?”
“Hmm,” says Draco, more of a hum than a word. “Perhaps I’ll get one. For next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time,” Harry says, trying to sound soothing and not like the thought of this happening again makes him want to set things on fire, and Draco’s eyes open.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Potter, of course there’s going to be a next time,” he snaps. It’s nice to hear a bit of tone coming back into his voice, even if that tone is somewhere between ‘withering’ and ‘full up with abject despair.’ “They didn’t get what they wanted, and, as I’m sure you overheard, they’re perfectly happy to murder me for it. Maybe it’s silly to buy the television after all,” he adds, voice going scathing, bitter. “Seeing as I probably won’t live long enough to use it.”
“Nobody is murdering anyone,” Harry says, too harsh, the very idea sending a flare of white-hot fury down his spine. Then he catches sight of Draco’s trembling hands and takes a deep breath, tries again for soothing, for calm. “Look, we’ll—we’ll put a detail on the door again, and—”
“Oh, what, for another week?” Draco sneers at him, eyes hard. “Well, isn’t that lovely, a few days to get my affairs in order! I’ll owl my solicitor, I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
“I’ll stay, then,” Harry says. The words come out of his mouth unbidden, but it’s what he wants—he knows it the minute he hears it. He doubts, now that he thinks about it, that he could find it within himself to leave Draco here alone. “You said yourself that there’s plenty of rooms. I’ll stay until it’s done.”
Draco’s mouth, which was open around whatever inevitable diatribe he meant to come next, snaps closed. He blinks at Harry, inscrutable, for a long moment, and then says, in a voice smaller and stranger than any Harry’s ever heard him use, “Potter, you can’t.”
“Sure I can,” Harry says. “I’m—oh, what was it—a grown man in the prime of my life. I can do whatever I like.”
“But,” Draco says, a little helplessly, “you’re—I can’t ask you to—”
“You’re not asking,” Harry says. He offers Draco a crooked smile, a little shrug. “I’m offering. I want to.”
Draco’s mouth opens slightly, and then closes again. He looks like maybe he needs a minute with that, so Harry walks over to the wet bar, wondering if it will provide him with tea; he doesn’t really relish the thought of letting Draco out of his sight, just now. He puts his hands down on the smooth wooden surface, closes his eyes, and thinks hard about a kettle, two cups, and some teabags.
When he opens them, two steaming mugs of butterbeer are sitting in front of him instead. Harry grins at them, delighted; they’re a much better idea than the tea was.
“I suppose it would get you out of that hovel you insist on calling home,” Draco says. “Temporarily, at least.”
Harry rolls his eyes at the butterbeer—typical—but hey, if acting like he’s the one doing Harry the favor is what gets the job done, then so be it.
“Sure, Malfoy,” he says, carrying their mugs across the room. He hands one of them to Draco, ignoring his raised eyebrow at how very much it isn’t tea, and sits down in the chair he’s come to think of as his own with the other. “Maybe it’ll even force me to see the folly of my ways, find someplace better. Lead by example, and all that.”
“Stop humoring me,” Draco snaps. He sounds genuinely angry for a second, but when Harry glances at him the emotion drains out of his face, leaves him looking nothing more than wan, tired. He takes a long sip of his butterbeer and sighs. “Look. I know…I mean, you saw…I’m aware that I’m not exactly. Doing well. In this moment.”
“So?” says Harry.
“So,” Draco spits, like it’s costing him money, “you’re an insufferable Gryffindor lunatic with a borderline-clinical incapability of leaving well enough alone. You like to save people, Potter. It’s your whole—thing. I will admit, because I don’t have much choice, that I need—” Draco stops, pales, swallows hard. Continues, voice uneven, after a moment: “I’ll admit that it would be better, for right now, if you were here. But what I will not have, what I flatly refuse to allow, is this—this—mollycoddling!”
He gives Harry a severe look over the rim of his butterbeer, which Harry is not planning on telling him is quite a bit less intimidating than he’s clearly intending, what with the cut on his cheek and the bruises blooming across his jaw and temple, and all. “You will talk to me like you usually do or you will not talk to me at all,” Draco declares, and then, clearly as an afterthought, adds, “you horrible one-man assault on self-preservation and sense.”
“I thought I was a savior complex in ill-fitting trousers,” says Harry, mildly, after a moment.
Draco huffs out a faint laugh. “That too.”
“Well,” Harry says, “in that case. Er. Fuck you, Malfoy?”
Draco sighs and seems to relax, his body sinking into the cushions of his chair. “Thank you, Potter.” He reaches for the pocket of his pajama bottoms, pats around for a moment, and then scowls so intensely that Harry startles a little. “Kreacher!”
Kreacher appears with a crack. Before he can even say anything, Draco says, “Good, yes, hello, if you could get me my spare wand from the…”
He trails off, his eyes fixed with horror in the same place that Harry’s are: on the large, angry-looking lump sticking out of the top of Kreacher’s head. That answers the question of why Kreacher hadn’t come to get Harry immediately, at least; they must have cold-cocked him too, to keep him from defending the house. Harry’s not surprised that he didn't see the injury of the darkness of his own bedroom, but he’s furious, and he wishes he had known. He wouldn’t have waited around to go after Draco, of course—he doesn’t think he would have been capable of it—but he’d have summoned or gone looking for Kreacher before now if he’d known he was hurt.
“Oh, Kreacher,” Draco says, sounding sick. He reaches out like he’s going to try and touch the lump, and Kreacher shies away, quivering, with a pained little noise. “No, I’m—if you’d just let me see, one of us can heal it for you.”
“Kreacher does not deserve healing!” Kreacher sobs, collapsing into a heap on the ground. “Kreacher allowed this to happen! Kreacher was laying asleep on the floor while thieves were upstairs blowing holes in the house! While thieves were upstairs hurting Master Draco!” He lets out a long, hiccuping wail and adds, at the top of his voice, “Master Draco should throw Kreacher into the well!”
“I,” Draco says, clearly nonplussed. “I—don’t want to throw you into the well, Kreacher.”
“It’s not your fault,” Harry adds, because he’s dealt with a hysterical, guilt-riddled house-elf a time or two in his day. You got them, sometimes, at the higher-end crime scenes, and also—though it pains Harry even now to think of it—Dobby had been an education. “You weren’t asleep; they hit you. They knocked you out.”
“Then they got the better of Kreacher and Kreacher deserves the well even more!” Kreacher says, and stares up at Harry with desperation in his eyes. “Kreacher is sorry, but Harry Potter does not understand the severity of Kreacher’s crimes! It is Kreacher’s job to sound the Call, it is Kreacher’s job to protect the house, Kreacher failed and the House is wounded and the Master is wounded and Kreacher should be wounded too!”
