Chapter Text
What’s worse than a forced partnership with the greatest bane of your wretched existence (after Pansy, of course) and the world’s most insufferable golden boy (to whom you have the huge displeasure of owing your life)? Well—
“I understand that you all are quite familiar with one another at this point.” Their new professor stands imposingly, front and centre.
“What an understatement.”
“Mr Ronald Weasley, is it?” Voice crisp and refreshing with a no-nonsense but not altogether discomforting lilt. Her lips are set in a thin line punctuated by a steeply cresting cupid's bow.
Spots of laughter.
“Well, let’s all not waste time with pleasantries or icebreakers. Pair yourselves in an orderly fashion; No two members of the same house together, thank you kindly. These will be your assignments all year.”
“That’s complete bollocks—” Someone whispers. A voice of reason.
“Shut up, you’ll get all of us in trouble!”
Awkward shuffling. Pansy ends up practically wilting next to Granger, whose smile looks more forced than genuine. Not that her new boyfriend is faring much better next to Gregory. But Potter is stranded alone and making eye contact—oh, that can’t be good.
“Harry Potter! What curious happenstance brings us all together, three lonesome musketeers left to fend for ourselves in a roomful of lefts and rights! Shall we?”
—it would probably have to be the sick, sick smile that spreads across one Blaise Zabini’s ugly mug to mark the beginnings of what must be a very long and convoluted scheme.
And in turn, it would be even more fittingly worse if Saint Potter himself responded with some blissful and unwitting—
“Lefts and… rights? Er, I mean. Yeah, sure?”
“My thoughts precisely, Potter.”
Merlin only knows what is going through Blaise’s head, let alone what he also says out loud.
“Malfoy,” Potter gives a tight and awkward smile, more of a grimace really, and gives him a curt, painful-looking nod.
—To hell with dignity. Draco knew he should have just taken a late penalty and gone back for the silly charmed-lucky locket he’d been stubbornly carrying around since first year, dammit.
“Now that we have that all settled, welcome to your first potions lesson of this year. You may refer to me as Professor Merryweather, and only Professor Merryweather. I’ll not hear a ‘Professor M’, a ‘Professor Merry’, nor will I accept the shortened ‘Merryweather’. And despite the fact that you are all now legally of age, we are not on a first-name basis. Please take out your books.”
“Draco, all I’m saying is that if we’re all three going to be partnered for the next nine odd months, we ought to make the most of it,” Blaise crosses his arms, punctuated by a disgusting grin.
“Don’t you look at me like that. Not everything I do is some convoluted scheme, you’re just projecting, honestly. And stop being so quiet. That silent brooding shit you do when you’re mad at people is so two years ago.”
Words spoken like a man who wants to be smacked in the face with a textbook. And far be it for Draco to get between a man and his dream.
Blaise jerks back, hopefully in excruciating pain. “Did you really just hit me in the face with that blasted tome—”
Draco’s brows lift into their practised, haughty set, “Blasted tome? I’m sure there will be no ‘making the most of anything’ if Merryweather hears you describing our wonderful enrichment reading in such an unbecoming manner.”
Blaise grumbles and rolls his eyes as if Draco is acting unreasonably upset, which he is definitely not. He hasn’t even gotten a chance to apologise to Potter yet, and all of a sudden, they are committing to a whole year of Potions together. Less than two feet away from each other for two hours out of the day, three days out of the week… and to make matters bleaker, Blaise will be there too. He’s really not sure who is worse. Blaise or Potter.
It seems Mercy is taking a long holiday after all her hard work at Draco’s trial, although he can’t really blame her for that. Still, neither Potter nor Blaise have ever been recognised for any academic talents… when it comes to studiousness they would both be accurately described as subpar, maybe average at best. Honestly, Draco would have preferred Granger as a partner over the two of them—though he still shudders a bit at that thought. Gregory, whose potions work is even worse than abysmal, would have been his best-case scenario. He would at least allow Draco to take over without strife.
“That’s beside the point, Draco. Look, I get you’re doing your best, but you’ve sort of fumbled the bag at every possible chance for peace with Potter. And now you’re being a huge wimp who won’t talk to any of your friends, let alone him. Somebody has got to do something, or we’re all just going to live in awkward misery for the rest of the year.” Blaise sighs dramatically, but his words are not without a note of seriousness.
Draco is silent again.
“Hey, you know he can’t hate you, though, yeah? Despite everything, he spoke for you this summer, so—”
“I am well aware of his role in my trial, thanks,” Draco replies coolly.
The image of Potter standing there, dead on his feet, looking all of what Draco felt. Yet still standing.
“Okay, pissy-pants. But my point is that you don’t have to look that constipated at the thought of speaking to him. Besides, you know I’m a great mediator.”
Witness for the defence, Harry James Potter, do you solemnly swear that the evidence you give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
“Your mother’s fourth husband might just beg to differ.”
Draco Lucius Malfoy, your sentencing is as follows,
“Right, well, that was different, obviously.”
—and in addition, complete one year of community service under the supervision of the Ministry of Magic.
“Sure.”
If Draco’s being a bit curt, well, it's a necessary thing. The longer he is back on these grounds, the harder it gets to go more than five minutes without some kind of damper on his mood. He can tell by the way that Blaise shuts up and goes back to reading that he’s noticed too and is choosing to ignore it.
Blaise has always been a pushy and annoying bastard, but going on fourteen years of friendship has taught him when to leave the hell off, at least when it comes to Draco’s moods.
It’s all in the small mercies, really.
He turns a page in the textbook. It truly is a little bit awful. It’s rather difficult to enjoy reading any kind of textbook, even if potions is his favourite subject. On more than one occasion, Severus had implied (he was never a man to say outright) that Draco may even do well if he were to pursue a career as potioneer.
Circumstances would never allow such a flight of fancy then, and they certainly wouldn’t now.
Fluxweed. A magical plant derivative from the mustard family. Known for its healing and mutable properties. Found natively throughout North America and most of the contiguous United States, this purplish budding plant can be found in many complex brews, most notably in the Polyjuice Potion.
Professor Merryweather had announced their first unit as the study of medicinal potions, which isn’t entirely a bore. As a specialisation, it was a bit more interesting than he remembered it the first time around, but that’s not a surprise. Once you got into complex work like this, the brewing was much easier than the theory.
Yes, certainly much easier, but definitely not safer. It doesn’t take an expert potioneer to know that healing potions and tonics are the least difficult of all high-level brews to get right, but they are also some of the most disastrous to get wrong.
Death Eater professors, who didn’t take so kindly to failure (even less so than the famously derisive Severus Snape), certainly took advantage of such student mistakes for their own pleasure. The healing unit at the start of last September had quickly and effectively introduced them all to the cruelty they would be seeing for the rest of the year. A quick glance at Longbottom now and you could never imagine the sickening, bubbling, popping mess of his failed Burn-healing paste gurgling over the same pale, unmarred stretch of skin and muscle that lifted so nimbly the sword of Godric Gryffindor into a smoke-filled sky.
He closes his book with a snap. He ought to quit studying while he’s ahead. It’s only the second day of term, so there’s no reason to start drowning in the stacks just yet. And there's absolutely no need for memories of any kind.
“Dinner?” Blaise asks.
The first week back is a relatively quiet affair following that, although Draco finds himself on the receiving end of quite a bit of staring, gawking, and insult throwing. Understandable, really, but he can’t help the sneer that slips over his face when it happens. Old habits die hard, but at least he has developed enough restraint, and a burning sense of shame to boot, to stop him from firing back like he used to. After all this time, father might’ve almost been proud of him for that. Not that Draco needs something so worthless as Malfoy pride anymore.
Perhaps a bit naively, he had attributed some of the success that week to that silver, charmed locket his mother had given him all those years ago. It wasn’t as if he really believed the charms were still working seven years down the line. The unstable charm work of luck magic could never last that long. Twas but a simple and short-term gift to reassure an anxious child who was leaving home for the first time.
Regardless, it was a great comfort to have it on his person, and since that first potions class, he hadn’t again made the mistake of leaving it behind.
That is, until today.
A normal start, altogether. He dresses in his old robes, not a newly-bought and specially tailored pair like he had worn for the start of each year previous; casts perfunctory glamors; and takes a crucial moment to debate which of his socks seems like it belongs on his left foot and which one on his right before he shoves his feet into the shoes he keeps perpetually at his bedside. Quill and ink are tightly sealed and spelled for leaks and all completed coursework is well-ordered and filed away in his satchel.
He forgets all about the locket he took off the evening before, at the elves’ insistence it needed polishing.
Don’t get him wrong. He’s not exactly saying that if he had spotted the locket lying on the desk and looped it back around his neck, it would have prevented the series of events that followed. But then again, he would never know for certain that it wouldn’t have… would he?
He walks alone to class. The halls are mostly empty, with most students at breakfast or in bed setting another five minutes to their alarms. He has always liked being the first to wake up, though. The morning sun has a special quality that seems less like an ‘I’m going to burn your skin off’ and more of a ‘bask in my warm dewy glow,’ and Draco knows which one of those he prefers to start his day off with.
He steps inside the classroom and is unsurprised to find Granger already present, along with a bleary-looking Weasley and Potter. Their twin expressions indicate equal parts displeasure at such an early time slot and also, most likely, Granger’s forceful insistence they arrive early. It’s almost comforting to see that some things never change.
Some things, unfortunately, also must include Blaise, who refuses to tone down his plays at charisma and an unbothered affect.
“Good morning, ladies and gents,” he tips his head with a grin as he walks through the door.
There was a time when that line might have been tinged with mockery, a smirk in the direction of Potter and friends, punctuated with some stupid taunt from Draco himself, but it appears that Blaise fancies himself a reformed man. At least in that way.
He takes a seat next to Draco and whacks him firmly on the back.
“There’s my favourite potions prodigy.”
Draco rolls his eyes, “Don't think that I’ll let you slack off today just because you know how to suck up.” He can’t completely smother that small part of him that wants to gloat at the praise, but he can't help but cringe at the thought. Images of a younger Draco who just didn’t know when to shut the hell up haunt him, for many reasons.
Soon enough, Professor Merryweather appears from her adjoining office chamber, briefcase opening flat and the magic smoothly lifting and stacking papers across her desk. Her robes sweep just short of the floor with their perfectly pressed, not a crease in sight, nor a fold out of place quality.
Draco can’t help but recognize the contradictory warring of delicacy and tension strewn across her features and writ in all the lines of her form. Her classroom reflects a sameness and reveals to him perhaps more than she intends. Possessions litter the space already. It’s nothing like the barren and impersonal space that Severus kept. Purposefully, there are relics, hanged from the walls. Agony, ornamental. Garishly comforting. Home-sickeningly nostalgic and tinged with hollowness all the same.
It reminds him—a slice of home, away from home. This is what his mother had told him to expect from his own material comforts, sent along with his school things. After all these years he finds that this has never quite worked for him, not quite as well as it works for her.
“Please take your seats,” Professor Merryweather instructs.
Draco’s eyes catch with Potter’s as he and Weasley begrudgingly rise from their spots next to Granger and he looks resolutely away. They can get through this lesson just like the last two: quietly ignoring each other while Blaise talks their ears off.
“If you have been keeping up with the syllabus, as directed, today’s exercise will come as no surprise. Abasi’s Binding Solution is a relatively simple potion that I will use as a means to gauge how your brewing skills have held up and where we all need some extra work. This is still advanced brewing, so I expect your best effort and concentration.”
As usual, Potter is sitting to his left, but nearly at the edge of their bench, like he would prefer to fall onto the floor on his arse rather than chance making accidental contact with Draco’s arm. Not even his actual arm. Just the sleeve of his robes, meeting Potter’s arm, also covered by his robes.
It does not help the uncomfortable atmosphere at all.
“Please open your books to page forty-three and review your instructions. Ingredients are in the back.” She gazes out at the room and with a deft flick of her wand, sharp writing begins a slow sprawl of instructions across the board.
“You may begin.”
Draco stands at the same time as Potter, who had clearly meant to retrieve the ingredients as an excuse to get away. The idiot probably didn’t even know what ingredients he was meant to retrieve. Draco could feel his face twisting into something ugly before he schools it back into neutrality. And Blaise is just watching them—like it's some kind of show.
Bastard.
Potter stands there for the moment, his body awkwardly stuttering in place before
Draco steps past him and makes for the storage shelves. Then, probably out of some Gryffindorish commitment to action, Potter trails after.
Fluxweed, dittany extract, copper—
“I’ve already got the beetles,” Potter interrupts, holding up a tube of what indeed appears to be scarab beetles.
“Okay,” Draco replies stiffly, pulling his hand away from that compartment.
Students are bustling around them, trying not to shove, but failing in such a cramped space. Most people rush through the cabinets, as usual. Granted, the sooner you start brewing, the sooner you can escape from the fumes of an inevitable botch-job—not to mention, there’s only so much you can do to keep a storage cabinet full of volatile and, needless to say, intense, ingredients smelling even slightly bearable.
Draco grabs a slender vial of peppermint essence, which he knows—through cathartic, mindless experimentation—will improve the final taste. It’s the result of Severus all those years ago, although thankless and unappreciated in his time. Words near-forgotten if not for escapism’s remembrance amongst the throes of horror.
Do not mistake mere proficiency or pride for success, Draco. Greatness is not found in that textbook but in your mind.
So many mindless drills—distractions. Running through the potions over and over until they’re perfect—and then doing it one more time. Because he can still add something to make it better. It might all blow up in his face, but he can just run it again, again, again. It’s a compulsion. It’s never really perfect, it’s never really enough.
Peppermint, peppermint. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn’t.
Then, Draco suddenly remembers its very real weight in his hands and the equally real emptiness at his side. Potter has already disappeared from the shelves with everyone else and returned to their station.
Blaise has set up the cauldron and workspace the way he knows that Draco prefers it (has thrown fits over before) and is flipping through the instructions when they return. Meanwhile, Potter seems to have dumped his collection of herbs and bugs haphazardly onto the table in favour of staring gormlessly at the pages in his book. Draco cringes—can’t have it all.
He retakes his centre seat and begins to rearrange Potter’s mess into something more manageable. But there still remains the problem at large: finding something to keep Potter busy—something non-essential enough that he won’t be able to ruin their grade.
“Potter, why don’t you—”
“So how should we—”
They start at the same time.
“Er, go ahead,” Potter says, almost like a question.
“Draco is a bit of a control freak at the brewing table Potter, I’m sure you’ll find,” Blaise interrupts before Draco has a chance to speak, “Please divvy up the work as you see fit, your highness.”
Potter smiles a bit, then looks like he wants to take it back.
“I’m pants at potions, so whatever gets it done with minimal pain,” he concedes.
“That's the spirit, Potter.” Blaise flashes a grin. Draco wants to rip it right off his face.
“Although, from what I hear, you were somewhat of a prodigy yourself back in the days of ‘ol Slughorn?”
At this, Potter’s face slips right back into that mildly uncomfortable, slightly pained look he was sporting previously.
“Why don’t you stir the pot, Blaise, you have such a talent for it,” Draco cuts in.
Blaise rolls his eyes, but relents.
“Potter, would you just… crush the beetles,” he adds.
Potter gives him some indecipherable look, but nods and picks up his knife—
“Crush, not pulverise.”
“Yeah, okay. I get it.”
Potter follows instructions well enough, all in all. Maybe better than either Gregory or—better than any of his previous potions partners ever had. He even has the grace to sit there relatively unobtrusively, unlike Blaise, and his presence gives Draco an excuse to ignore all of Blaise’s weirdly enthusiastic and friendly attempts at conversation. Better that Potter feels a fish out of water than him.
Draco is perfectly content to zone out and let them decide who can fill out the log and who can wash up their tools—to let their imbalanced chatter fade into the background and to focus on what really matters—
“Oh, shi—”
It happens in slow motion. Something… slips. Falls. Topples. He locks eyes with Potter. Oh, curse the seeker instincts that have him scrambling to catch it. Double curse the seeker instincts that have Draco scrambling to stop him.
Then there’s just a searing pain.
He looks down at his hands. The imprint of a broomstick handle mars the skin of his palm—
He’s not breathing at all.
Something is clawing its way up his arm. It’s on his palm and it's going up. Or it's going out? He’s bleeding? Nothing is there.
Where is he? It’s dark all of a sudden, it's a precipice. He tries to open his eyes.
‘Malfoy? This is yours right, you should have it.’
He blinks. No, it's just his eyes that are burning. Great heavens, it's bright in here.
“Mr Malfoy, please give some indication if you are able to hear my voice.”
He groans and he wants to curl in on himself, but he’s just met with resistance and pain. Like he’s trying to pull out of someone’s unrelenting grip.
“Oi, what the hell was that?” Someone is saying, but they must be very far away or very quiet.
“Mr Potter, I’m glad you’re with us.”
Potter? Potter… Harry Potter. Oh, Merlin.
Draco remembers, suddenly, who he is, where he is, and why he is there.
“You—” He sits up suddenly. Colourful lines are weaving back and forth across his field of vision, but he can just make out a mop of dark hair to his left. It’s all starting to come back to him now.
Everything is fine. Potter is zoning out and Draco is rearranging what’s left of their chopped, crushed, and sliced ingredients alphabetically. And Blaise is stirring.
Quietly. That’s fine.
Then Blaise pauses. Reaches his hand across the table where Potter is supposed to be keeping a written record of their work and waves in his face, “Hey, earth to Saviour—”
Draco suddenly understands why nobody wants to be the middle-man, at least in the potions classroom. Cauldrons should not be leaned over—
Potter snaps out of whatever fantasy he’s in, oh king-of-great-timing. Eyes wide and lunging forward, as if to catch the thing. (Didn’t anyone ever teach him not to try catching spills from an active brew?) Draco is stupidly pulled in two directions: his body toward Blaise but his left hand futilely toward Potter’s right. A stupid attempt to knock Potter’s hand away from a terrible fate. He only succeeds in resigning his own hand to the same tragic consequences.
“Mr Malfoy, you are not to be making any sudden movements!” A firm jolt of magic shoves him back down into the pillows. He feels it reverberate through his entire body and squeezes his eyes shut with it.
“Potter you utter imbecile, what the hell is wrong with you—”
“What’s—What’s wrong with me? Are you serious right now—”
“Boys—!”
“How could you be so stupid—”
“—Oh, everything’s my fault, is it?”
“You are absolutely braindead! I can’t believe you’re in NEWT level potions and you don't know better than to—”
“That is enough.” Draco feels the distinct tug of a silencing charm on his lips, pulling them closed so all he can do is huff indignantly.
He can hear Potter next to giving quite the muffled noise of protest, which Madam
Pomfrey resolutely ignores. He shuts his eyes once more, on principle.
“You have both been involved in a highly dangerous potions incident that will be requiring you both to act more like the adults you supposedly are.”
Draco squints again, wrinkling his nose at the blurry image of Pomfrey that eclipses his view. A few more blinks and the room is still hazy, but it’s beginning to look less like it's filled with approximations of things drawn by a child.
He glances over at Potter, who looks in a similar state of befuddled and angry. His brows are furrowed together so closely they may never be separate again and his glasses have been removed, perhaps set aside on a table somewhere. Blinking seems to be an arduous task that requires most, if not all, of his concentration, which just makes Draco aware of his own blinking.
His eyes are drier than usual, prompting him to blink very rapidly and rub at them. Not that this helps—no. In fact, this is when he encounters the most terrible crux of their situation.
He cannot move his left hand. And why is that? It’s fucking attached to Potter’s wrist. Almost laughable. Like some freakish conjoined twins, they have been fused together in a line, the inside of his left palm glued to the top of Potter’s right hand and part of his forearm.
No fucking way.
He thinks he can hear Pomfrey regaling unto them some speech about immaturity, but honest to Godric, he couldn’t give less of a shit right now.
The exact moment that Potter also realises the extent of their predicament is honestly priceless. Probably just as priceless as the expression on his own face that he’s glad he can’t see reflected back at him in massive, round glasses. The look he sees in Potter’s eyes would have been kindling for the fire of his old evil fantasies, but now it’s just depressing.
“For now, I have given the two of you some mood stabilisers and pain management potions. There are some slight issues with your blood compatibility, so you are both to take a Rhesus Globulus Potion and a few other stabilizers once a day, at least until we determine the best course of action.”
“Madam Pomfrey, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but why are we still like this at all,” Potter interjects, “Can’t you just… I don’t know, cut us apart or something?”
Sometimes Draco is absolutely dumbfounded that this is the man who defeated the Dark Lord.
“If you don’t mind Mr Potter, I will be explaining further. Normally, yes, we might have done so; however, in this case, it’s not so simple. The potion you were brewing is a bit more complex than your average mending tonic.”
“You mean the healing potion? I thought that was supposed to be something simple?” Potter asks, like he hadn’t read his textbook; or like Granger hadn’t given him the run-down on it five minutes before class.
“For advanced brewers, it might be considered such.” She responds.
Potter grimaces.
“That Binding Solution is advanced in its ability to reconnect severed blood vessels, tissue, and even nerves. For this reason, it is generally used in cases of severe trauma, like severed limbs.”
“I don’t understand; there wasn’t anything to repair when it spilt on Potter and me. We were perfectly whole and unharmed; there weren’t any exposed vessels or nerves for it to latch onto, so any connective effects should have been null. How did we end up…” Draco trails off, glancing toward the cushioned table where their connected arms rest between their respective cots.
“Indeed, Mr Malfoy. It is difficult to say what exactly occurred, or why. Potions accidents are a tricky business. Usually, one could rely on the log of steps completed up until the point of the incident—something your friend Mr Zabini was indeed able to salvage for me,” She pulls from the stack a tattered yellow sheet, “But I do believe this is a suspiciously blank list considering the extent of damages present.”
Indeed, the sheet displays that all of three steps had been completed: heating of the water base, the addition of fluxweed juice, and two-and-a-half stirs, counterclockwise.
“What?” Draco looks over at Potter and the faint chagrined flush on his face says everything he needs to know about that.
Bastard.
He can tell that he’s glaring openly now, but he can’t be bothered to suppress his anger much beyond halting any drastic mutilations. Potter should be thankful that Pomfrey is here. It’s one thing to attempt to save their cauldron—honestly, a move that Draco should have expected from the infinitely self-sacrificial Harry Potter—but it’s another thing entirely to ignore the protocol that has been drilled into their heads for the past seven odd years.
“Whatever the reason, there is not sufficient data to determine the exact cause of your condition. Without knowing the ingredients and intervals added up to the point of exposure, we cannot yet determine the proper counter-potion or spell to safely negate these effects.”
Judging by the gobsmacked look on Potter’s face, it must really be true that no one ever explained to him why they are required to keep a detailed fucking log.
“What does that mean for us then?” Potter asks.
“It will have to be up to the two of you what course of action you would like to take. There is a possibility that some of Mr Malfoy’s probation restrictions might be lifted, given the circumstances—”
His fucking probation restrictions—as if he’d needed another reminder of all the ways his life was shaping up to be one great heaping pile of shit.
“In such a case, you may have the opportunity to be transported to Saint Mungo's for further treatment—”
“No.”
The word seems to fall from Potter’s lips unbidden, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud. Draco gives him a strange look. He would have assumed Potter would jump on any chance to have them separated sooner.
Pomfrey levels him with a stern look. “As I was saying, Mr Potter, this is something that will have to be decided between the two of you. As you both are no longer in any immediate danger, I believe that we have the facilities and capability to treat you here. Regardless, some sort of mutual agreement will need to be reached and I don’t want to hear a word of complaint or protest. No sensational dramatics—”
Draco turns away from her gaze.
“And no blackmail attempts from either of you for any reason!” She huffs. The warning is not unfounded, but it does make him feel like he’s thirteen years old again.
“I expect not to have to come back in here to break up any fights. When I come back, I will run a few more tests. If your results come up stable, I will have no reason to keep you here and you may be released. Headmistress McGonagall will also be in to speak with you both shortly.” She frowns at them both before returning to her office.
They sit in stony silence. A strange feeling has settled over him—he mulls over all of the strange new sensations. His magic is an uncomfortable buzzing under his skin, not at all the blanketing sensation of familiarity and comfort it usually is. Admittedly, discomfort and even pain are not outside of the usual state of affairs concerning Potter and himself, but something… ineffable, perhaps, feels terribly, terribly amiss.
The infirmary, despite this, is as it always is—sterile and blank. Filled with… nothing. No distractions, no noise, and certainly no students. Pomfrey has an almost criminal record of chasing out all those who dared to upset her carefully constructed stasis (and even innocent bystanders who stood just a smidge too far in one direction for her liking), no matter how preferable a good cacophonous mess would be to the whitewashed void currently enveloping his vison.
But it's a good thing, logically, that no one else is here, no one is injured.
Except for him.
…and Potter.
The distance between them has shrunk improbably smaller than he ever thought it would, barring another incident of fisticuffs or worse. He’s never even touched Potter out of anything other than ill-intent or cowardly desperation. Now, their hands are joined across an ironic chasm between their twin hospital beds. Attached but still separated, as if those ten inches will spare even an ounce of the dignity he has left.
He takes this moment to really look at their… situation. Assess the extent of the damage, if you will.
It’s not grotesque, per se, but it’s nothing pretty either. A fusion that starts where the tip of his pinky now blends into the base joint of Potter’s and extends down to the heel of his hand that is fixed to the top of Potter’s wrist. There’s the discoloured texture of a slowly fading burn and the clear shine of burn salve applied copiously over the entire area. There’s also a sort of stretched and pulled look to the skin around the edges and lines that should separate them from one another; forcefully filling their natural disconnect with all different shades of pinkish-purplish-whitish-ness and the texture of decades-old scar tissue.
And, now that he is really focused on it, he thinks he can feel the echoing reverberation of another heartbeat, just past the flat expanse of his palm that lays flush to Potter’s wrist.
That’s… a bit of an uncomfortable sensation if he’s being completely honest. It’s far too intimate of an experience for either of them to be sharing with each other, and something he wishes he could forget immediately upon realising it. But much like a sudden cognizance of your own breathing or blinking, it’s impossible to ignore once you’ve accidentally discovered it.
Potter is the first to break the thunderous silence. “Look, I’m sorry about the potions log. I… got distracted. Not that it makes up for it. I don’t know.”
He does sound suitably apologetic, so Draco chances a look in his direction. He’s not making eye contact, head turned toward the great windows that frame draping leaves and a clouded sky. Draco doesn’t miss the tight set of his jaw, nor the fidgeting of his fingers with the sheets.
“You just… got distracted?” Draco echoes. Even if Potter sounds sorry, that is the last thing he wants to hear right now. It’s possibly the worst excuse that could have made its way out of Potter’s mouth to justify their situation.
“I don’t know, okay? I just didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I always end up throwing out the log at the end of the class anyway so I didn’t think it was that important.”
“You didn’t think one of the most cardinal rules of potion-making was ‘that important’? Salazar, I really should have known better than to expect you, of all people, to actually do what you’re asked. Just can’t help yourself when it comes to breaking rules can you Potter?” Draco spits out. He wishes he could at least have the dignity of not being stuck holding Potter’s hand while he says it.
“Cut me a fucking break Malfoy. In case it escaped your notice, I haven’t actually attended a potions class since, I don’t know, before Death Eaters took over the school?”
Potter, to his credit, also looks like he would rather wrestle a wild erumpent wearing nothing but his pants than spend another second in Draco’s presence. He’s definitely looking him in the eyes now and his lips are tightly closed like it's taking a physical effort not to say something worse (it probably is), and that hand at his side has gone from light fidgeting to furious twisting.
He seems to collect himself for a second with a deep sigh. “Merlin, okay. Can we just have a civil conversation, please? I already apologised and we’re going to be stuck together like this for who-knows-how-long and I don’t think either of us are going to survive it if we keep arguing over every little thing.”
As much as Draco wishes he could say Potter’s wrong and also an idiot, that is probably the most reasonable thing he’s ever said.
He closes his eyes and leans back into the suffocating pillows. Nothing like the silk sheets he’s used to—and also reminding him way too much of that stunt he pulled in the third year. The universe likes to send him here to put him in his place. Remind him he’s mortal, or maybe just a fool.
“I…” he pauses. Sucks in a breath. Tries again. “Alright.”