Chapter Text
There was something deeply unnatural about seeing Draco Malfoy lying still.
He had never belonged to silence. Even asleep, he fidgeted, stole blankets. When he was awake, he occupied every room he entered as though it had been waiting specifically for him. The hospital wing had stolen all of that. It had left only white sheets, neatly folded bandages, and a boy who looked far too fragile for someone who had spent years convincing the world he was impossible to break.
His hair had fallen across his forehead, and someone—Madam Pomfrey, probably—had wiped the blood from his face until there was nothing left except a thin cut disappearing beneath the bandage on his cheek. His hands rested outside the blanket, palms relaxed, fingers slightly curled, stripped of the constant tension I had grown so used to that I had forgotten it was there. The same hands I still caught myself staring at every now and then, even after all these months.
My eyes found the slow rise of his chest. Then the fall. Then the rise again. I counted each breath without meaning to. Some irrational part of me believed that if I stopped counting, he might stop breathing.
I sat beside him with my hands clasped so tightly together my knuckles had gone white, afraid that if I reached for him and found his skin too cold, something inside me would finally shatter beyond repair.
Madam Pomfrey moved around Draco again, checking the bandages. “He is stable.” She had said that already. Several times.
I looked at Draco again. His hair was still damp near the temples and someone had tried to smooth it back. They had done a terrible job. He would have hated that. He would have made some sharp little comment about hospital lighting and incompetent care and how dying was one thing but looking undignified was another entirely.
“You look awful,” I whispered. No answer. “You would be very offended.” Still nothing.
It wasn't true. He looked beautiful. Lately, I'd realised I preferred him like this. Hair refusing to stay in place, shirt half-buttoned, morning voice still rough with sleep, the careful Malfoy composure nowhere to be found. My eyes burned, but no tears came. I had spent too many already, or perhaps I had simply turned whatever was left into something harder in the corridor with Potter.
Then the memory of Potter’s breath catching under my spell returned, and the almost-smile died. “I nearly did it,” I said quietly.
Daphne’s voice came soft. “But you did not.”
I stared at Draco’s bandaged hand on the sheet. “That is a very thin mercy.”
“It is still mercy,” she said.
“No,” I said. “It was Snape.”
Pansy stepped beside my chair now. “It was you too.”
I laughed once, empty. “You did not see it.”
“I saw enough.”
“No.” I looked up at her then. “You saw the end. You did not feel it. You did not feel how easy it would have been to say it.”
I hated myself for saying it. I kept going anyway, because the truth had already found blood and apparently wanted more. “I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to feel even a fraction of what Draco looked like on that floor. I wanted to use the thing I hate most because for one second it felt right.” I swallowed hard. “So perhaps everyone can stop pretending I am better than what they tried to make me.”
Draco’s fingers twitched. So small I almost missed it. But I did not. I leaned forward at once. “Draco?” Nothing. Only the slow rise and fall of his chest.
Madam Pomfrey was beside me immediately, wand out, checking him with a practised frown. After a moment, she lowered it. “Reflex,” she said.
Reflex. I wanted to hate the word. Instead, I took his hand. Carefully. His skin was cool, but not cold anymore. That mattered. It had to matter. “I am here,” I said, because I did not know what else to give him. “You are in the hospital wing. Snape healed the worst of it. Madam Pomfrey is being terrifying, which I assume is a good sign. Blaise has not made a joke yet, which means you owe him the courtesy of waking up before the world ends completely.”
Blaise’s voice came from the wall, quieter than usual. “I am saving my best material.”
Draco’s hand remained limp in mine. I squeezed once. “You do not get to sleep through this,” I whispered. “You have to wake up and be unbearable. You have to wake up because your hair is a disaster and I refuse to be the only person here bothered by it.” Still nothing.
“You have to wake up because I did what you asked. I stayed,” I whispered. “I stayed when I did not want to. I stayed because you asked me to. So now you stay too.” My throat tightened so hard the next words barely came out. “That was the arrangement, Malfoy.” Still nothing. I pressed his hand against my forehead and closed my eyes. “Do not break the arrangement.”
I did not know what Snape had said to Madam Pomfrey to convince her to let me stay overnight. I did not ask, partly because asking questions seemed dangerous when the answer might be no. Partly because Madam Pomfrey looked as though she regretted the decision every time she passed my chair and found me still sitting there, one hand wrapped around Draco's.
I also didn't know what Snape had done after dragging me away from Potter. By every rule Hogwarts had ever pretended to enforce, Dumbledore and McGonagall should have come for me long before the castle settled into silence. Half the school had watched me chase Potter through the corridors, watched curses tear stone from the walls, watched me lose whatever little control I'd still possessed. They never came. I never asked Snape how he had managed that either.
“You are not to disturb him,” Madam Pomfrey said for the fourth time.
“I am not.”
“You are not to climb into the bed.”
“I had not planned to.”
Her eyes narrowed in a way that suggested she thought my plans were unreliable. “You are not to perform any healing charms, give him anything, wake him unnecessarily, argue with him if he wakes, threaten Mr Potter from my hospital wing, bleed on my floors, faint, collapse, or otherwise create additional work for me.”
I blinked at her. “That was a very long list.”
Behind me, Pansy made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh if any of us had been in a room where laughter belonged. Madam Pomfrey gave her a look. “And the rest of you are leaving.”
Pansy’s expression changed at once. “Absolutely not.”
“Yes,” Madam Pomfrey said. “Absolutely yes.”
Theo was the last to leave. He stopped beside Draco’s bed and looked down at him for a long moment. Then he looked at me. “He will wake.”
The door closed behind them a few moments later, and then it was only me, Madam Pomfrey and Draco breathing beside me like every inhale had been negotiated with death and won narrowly.
Madam Pomfrey dimmed the lamps. The room turned blue around the edges. I stayed awake. At first, it was easy, my body had too much fear in it to understand exhaustion. I listened for any change, any hitch.
Eventually, though, tiredness dragged at me. My head dipped once. The second my eyes closed, I saw him on the bathroom floor. Blood in the water. Blood on his mouth. Potter frozen with his wand in his hand. Draco’s eyes wide and shocked and in pain in a way I never wanted to see again. I jerked awake so violently the chair scraped against the floor.
I pressed my free hand over my mouth and forced air through my nose until the hospital wing stopped tilting. It happened again an hour later. Then again. Every time I began to fall asleep, the bathroom took me back. Tile beneath my knees. Water soaking my skirt. His hand cold in mine. The red opening across him like the world had decided to split him apart in front of me and see what I became with the pieces.
I did not sleep after that. I sat forward, elbows on the edge of the mattress, forehead resting against Draco’s hand. Madam Pomfrey checked on us twice. The second time, she stopped beside me for longer than usual. “You should rest,” she said quietly.
I did not lift my head. “I tried.”
My fingers were still around Draco’s when his hand moved. Barely. So little I thought I had imagined it. Then it happened again. I lifted my head so fast my neck hurt. “Draco?” His lashes moved. His face tightened, pain finding him before consciousness did. I stood, chair scraping back. “Madam Pomfrey.”
My voice came out hoarse. Draco’s eyes opened. Grey, unfocused, glassy with pain and potion haze. But open. The air left my lungs all at once. “Oh,” I whispered, stupidly, because apparently nearly losing someone reduced language to its least useful parts. “There you are.”
His gaze moved slowly, dragging itself across the ceiling, the dim lamps, the bed, then finally to me. For a second, I was not sure he knew where he was. Then his fingers tightened weakly around mine. “Kath?”
The sound of my name in his voice nearly broke me all over again. “Yes.” I leaned closer at once, careful not to touch anything Madam Pomfrey would murder me for touching. “Yes, I am here.”
His brows drew together faintly. “Blood.”
My throat closed. “It is gone.” His eyes shifted to my robes. Right, not all of it. I looked down at myself and realised I was still wearing the skirt stained dark from kneeling beside him and my white shirt marked by dried blood where I'd never bothered to clean it properly. Madam Pomfrey had cleaned my hands, my arms, the worst of it, but the fabric still remembered. “I am fine,” I said quickly.
Draco’s eyes sharpened by the smallest fraction. Even half-conscious, drugged and barely alive, the bastard still knew when I lied.
His mouth moved. No sound came out. I reached for the glass on the bedside table, but Madam Pomfrey was there before me, appearing from her office with the speed of a woman who had been waiting for exactly this. She lifted Draco’s head with brisk care and held the glass to his lips. “Slowly, Mr Malfoy. Do not try to speak too much.”
Naturally, he tried to speak anyway. “Potter?”
The room went cold. My hand tightened around his before I could stop it. “Alive. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, everyone involved is alive.”
Draco’s gaze moved back to me. He understood enough. Of course he did. His fingers pressed weakly against mine. “You?”
I swallowed. “I did not kill him.” His eyes stayed on mine. That was not what he had asked. I knew it. He knew I knew it. I looked away first. “I wanted to,” I admitted, because the hospital wing was too quiet for pretty lies. “I really, really wanted to.”
Draco’s breathing caught. Not much. Enough to make Madam Pomfrey’s eyes narrow. “I said no talking,” she warned.
Draco’s mouth almost moved. Almost. The ghost of a smirk. It vanished quickly, swallowed by pain. “You are not allowed to be smug,” I whispered. “You nearly died and your first contribution to the evening is disobedience.”
His eyes closed for a second, then opened again. “You threatened me.”
My heart twisted. His voice was barely there. Broken with exhaustion. But still him. “I threatened Potter,” I said.
His gaze flicked over my face. “You threatened me too.” I remembered then. You stay because I stayed when I did not want to, and you do not get to make me regret that.
A sound left me that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. “Yes. Well. You were being unreasonable.”
“I was bleeding.”
“Exactly. Terribly inconsiderate.” His fingers tightened again.
Draco’s mouth twitched again. This time, I did cry. Only one tear at first. Then another. I turned my face away quickly, furious with myself, but Draco saw before I could hide it. His hand shifted in mine, clumsy and slow, like he wanted to reach for my face and could not make his body obey. That undid me more than if he had touched me.
“I thought you were going to die,” I whispered.
His eyes held mine, clearer now, though pain still sat in them like a shadow. “I heard you.”
My breath caught. “What?”
“In the bathroom.” His voice scraped on every word. “Not all. Some.”
Madam Pomfrey made an outraged sound. “Mr Malfoy, if you insist on speaking—”
“I heard you,” he said again, ignoring her because of course he did, because apparently being split open by a dark curse had not improved his sense of self-preservation at all.
I froze. Everything I had said came back in fragments. You know what I want to tell you right now? I am not saying it either.
Heat and horror crawled up my throat at the same time. “You were half-dead,” I said.
His eyes did something unbearably soft. “Still heard.”
I looked down at our hands. His thumb moved once against my knuckles. For a moment, Madam Pomfrey muttered something about impossible children and checked the potion dosage again, but she did not force me away.
Draco’s eyes began to slip closed. Panic rose in me at once. He felt it. Somehow, he felt it. “Sleep,” he murmured.
“You first.” His fingers loosened slightly as exhaustion dragged him under again. I leaned closer, terrified and selfish and unable to stop myself. “Draco.”
His eyes opened a fraction. I did not know what I meant to say. Do not go. Do not scare me again. I know what you wanted to tell me. I know what I wanted to tell you too. None of it could fit into the room. So I chose something smaller. “Stay.”
His gaze found mine. Then his mouth moved faintly. “Always.” he whispered. His eyes closed again, but this time his breathing stayed even.
Madam Pomfrey watched him for a moment, then nodded once. “He is asleep,” she said. “Properly, this time.” Draco’s hand was still in mine. I did not let go. Madam Pomfrey looked at me. “Now you.”
“I cannot sleep.”
“You can try.”
I looked at Draco’s face, pale and bandaged and alive. “I will try when he wakes again.”
She sighed like she had expected nothing else. “Ten minutes, then. Close your eyes for ten minutes. If he so much as breathes harder, I will wake you myself.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled. I leaned forward again and rested my forehead carefully against the edge of the mattress, close enough that Draco’s hand remained trapped between mine. This time, when my eyes closed, I still saw the bathroom. But beneath it, quieter, there was his voice. I held onto that instead.
In the morning, Madam Pomfrey finally sent me back to my dormitory. Pansy and Daphne came with me without asking. Pansy turned on the shower, Daphne found clean clothes from my trunk, and I stood under water hot enough to sting until Draco’s blood stopped running off my skin. I dressed, pinned back my damp hair, and returned to the hospital wing before Madam Pomfrey could enjoy the silence.
I stayed there all day. Nothing much happened, and somehow every hour still felt important. Madam Pomfrey gave him potions and threatened him every time he tried to move too much. Pansy came with Daphne and only cried when Draco was asleep, insisting it did not count if he was not conscious enough to be insufferable about it. Blaise brought notes from classes no one had properly attended and said he had informed several curious students that questions about the bathroom would have memorable consequences. Theo stood near the foot of the bed in silence until Draco opened one eye and told him to stop looking like a funeral statue.
By evening, Madam Pomfrey surrendered. Not happily. Not without a long speech about rest, healing, teenage idiots and the fact that if she caught Draco doing anything more strenuous than breathing, she would bind him to the bed with medical charms. I still had no idea how Blaise had managed not to make an inappropriate comment about that. The effort alone deserved some sort of award.
Draco could leave. Directly to his dormitory, she said. Naturally, he ended up in mine. Not immediately. We were not complete idiots, whatever Madam Pomfrey seemed to believe. Pansy and Daphne went ahead first, and Theo and Blaise created enough distraction in the common room for Draco to cross it without half of Slytherin deciding his near-death experience was an invitation to stare.
The others gave us the rest of the evening. Pansy simply opened the door, looked Draco over with the kind of expression that suggested she had several threats prepared and only limited energy to deliver them, then pointed toward my bed. “If you faint, bleed, or die in here, Malfoy, I am telling everyone you did it for attention.”
Draco blinked slowly. “That is very compassionate of you.”
“I am a compassionate person.”
Daphne touched Pansy’s elbow and guided her toward the door before she could decide concern was best expressed through murder. Blaise had already left with a quiet, “Try not to create another school-wide incident before morning,” and Theo had placed a folded stack of clothes on my trunk without comment.
Then the door closed behind Pansy and Daphne. Not fully. Pansy left it open by an inch. Of course she did.
Draco looked at the gap. “She is listening.”
“She is absolutely listening.”
“Should we give her something worth hearing?”
I turned to him slowly. He looked exhausted, bandaged beneath the collar of his shirt, bruised at the edges of his eyes from pain and lack of sleep, with one sealed cut still visible along his cheek. And still, somehow, insufferable. “You nearly died yesterday.”
“Yes,” he said. “I feel that earns me at least one inappropriate comment.”
I hated that my mouth almost moved. Then I looked at the clothes on my trunk again and swallowed. “You should shower.”
His eyebrow lifted faintly. “Are you joining me?”
"Draco."
"What? You were the one who brought up getting me out of my clothes."
I rolled my eyes. "You are unbelievable." A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
His smile softened. "I've missed that."
"Missed what?"
"Her." I frowned. "My Katherine."
Heat crept into my face before I could stop it. "Oh, shut up, Malfoy." One corner of his mouth lifted. "Did the blood loss make you a romantic or something?"
"Near-death experiences tend to clarify priorities." He said it so matter-of-factly that, for a second, I forgot to answer. The teasing smile never quite left his face, but it had softened into something quieter now, something that sat somewhere between exhaustion and honesty, as though almost dying had stripped away whatever energy he normally wasted pretending he did not feel things quite as deeply as everyone suspected.
"That is an incredibly unfair thing to say to someone who can't even hex you properly in your current condition."
The bathroom felt too bright when I lit the lamps, so I dimmed them with a flick of my wand. Steam began to fill the room as the shower warmed. Draco stood near the sink, one hand braced against the edge, trying very hard to look as if standing upright was a casual choice rather than a negotiation.
I picked up the clean clothes Theo had brought and set them on the chair. “Sit down for a moment.”
Draco looked offended. “I am not an invalid.”
“You are currently held together by potions and bandages. Sit.”
His mouth tightened. Then he sat. The movement cost him enough that I looked away to give him the dignity of pretending I had not seen it. “You are being careful,” he said. “I dislike it.”
“I know.”
“I dislike being someone you have to be careful with.”
That made me look at him. His face was turned slightly away, jaw clenched, eyes on the tiles instead of mine. “You were careful with me,” I said. “After the Manor. After my father. After I tried to scratch the mark off my arm. You were careful with me every time I needed it and hated needing it.”
His throat moved once. “That was different.”
“No,” I said. “It was not.”
The steam curled between us. For a moment, he only breathed. Then he nodded once. I stepped in front of him and reached for the buttons of his shirt. My fingers paused before touching the fabric. “Tell me if it hurts.”
“It hurts.” I looked at him. His mouth curved faintly. “You said to tell you.”
My fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt for half a second before I made myself continue. The buttons came undone slowly, one by one, and I kept my eyes on what I was doing because looking at his face made everything too real. My hands went still.
Draco noticed immediately. “Kath.”
“I am fine.”
“No, you are not.”
“No,” I admitted, because lying felt too tiring. “I am not.”
His hand covered mine where it rested against his shirt. “It looks worse than it feels,” he said.
I let out a shaky breath and helped him ease the shirt from his shoulders, careful around every bandage, every healed line, every place where magic had saved him but not erased what happened. He hissed once when fabric caught near his ribs. I froze. “Sorry.”
I helped him stand. He leaned on me more than he wanted to. Less than he probably should have. We compromised silently, because that was apparently the foundation of our entire relationship: disaster, denial, and stubborn balance. The water hit the tiles first, then his hand, then his shoulder as he stepped beneath it with a sharp inhale. “Too hot?”
“No.”
Despite myself, I breathed out something almost like a laugh. His face softened when he heard it. I stood close enough to help but not so close that he felt trapped. He let me wash the hospital smell from his hair first. That was easier. My fingers moved through wet blond strands while he leaned slightly forward, one hand braced against the wall, eyes closed.
For a moment, the bathroom was only steam and water and the quiet sound of his breathing. Then my gaze dropped to the bandages again. My hand stopped. Draco opened his eyes. “Kath.”
“I keep seeing it. I keep seeing the floor. The water. You looking at me like you did not understand why your body was doing that.” My voice thinned, but I forced it to keep going because if I stopped, the image would win. “I thought if Snape was one second later, if Potter ran the wrong way, if I touched the wrong wound, if you closed your eyes—”
“I did not.”
“You almost did.”
“But I did not.” I looked at him, angry suddenly. Not at him. Not exactly. At the fact that he was standing there saying true things like truth had not nearly come too late. “I am here,” he said quietly. I nodded, but the movement felt useless. He lifted one hand slowly and touched my wrist. “I am here,” he repeated.
I finished helping him wash as carefully as I could, more clinical than intimate, more desperate than either of us would admit. When he finally stepped out, I wrapped a towel around his shoulders and pretended not to see how badly his hands shook. He pretended not to see me pretending. That was love, perhaps. Or whatever we were still too frightened to call it.
By the time he was dressed in Theo’s clean shirt and loose pyjama trousers, he looked less like a patient and more like Draco again. A ruined version. But mine.
Back in the bedroom, I made him sit against the pillows while I folded the bloodied clothes into a pile I did not know what to do with. Burn them, some part of me thought. Bury them. Keep them as evidence. Throw them at Potter’s feet. Instead, I set them aside.
Draco watched me. “Come here.”
“You have been discharged for approximately an hour and are already giving orders in my bed.”
“It is your bed. You outrank me.”
I looked at him then. Really looked. At the fact that he was in my bed, breathing, alive, close enough for me to touch after I had seen him split open on a bathroom floor. My chest tightened so hard it hurt. “I thought I would not get this again,” I whispered.
The teasing disappeared from his face. “So did I.”
That was all it took. I leaned in, and his mouth met mine softly, almost carefully enough to break me. No desperate attempt to turn fear into something prettier. Just his lips against mine, warm and real, his hand lifting slowly to the side of my face like he was afraid I might vanish if he moved too quickly. I kissed him like I had been afraid to lose him. Because I had.
His fingers tightened at my waist, and I pulled back immediately. “Did that hurt?”
“A little.” I stared at him. He stared back, pale and stubborn and so painfully alive that I kissed him again before I could decide whether to scold him or cry.
This time, the kiss deepened slowly. His hand slid into my damp hair, careful but not distant, and mine found his shoulder before stopping just short of the bandages. I hated the hesitation. I hated that I had to remember where he hurt. I hated that my body wanted to be closer while my mind still saw blood every time I closed my eyes.
Draco felt me stop. “I am here,” he whispered against my mouth.
My breath caught. “I know.”
“No,” he said, his forehead resting against mine now. “Here.” His hand covered mine and pressed it lightly against his chest, above the bandages, above the steady beat beneath borrowed fabric.
My fingers curled into his shirt. For a moment, I could not breathe properly. Then his mouth found mine again, softer this time, and I let myself lean into him. Not enough to hurt him. Never enough to hurt him. But enough to feel his warmth, enough to feel his arm come around my waist, enough to stop seeing white tile and red water for a few stolen seconds.
He kissed my cheek. My jaw. The corner of my mouth. Each touch was careful, almost reverent, and somehow that made it worse. Better. Worse.
“I scared you,” he said quietly.
I closed my eyes. “Yes.”
“I am sorry.”
“Do not apologise for bleeding.”
His mouth brushed mine again. “Then what should I apologise for?”
“For making me care this much.”
A breath left him, almost a laugh, almost pain. “That would be hypocritical.”
I opened my eyes. He was looking at me like the words he had not said were still caught behind his teeth. The same words I had not said either. I touched his face, thumb grazing the edge of the sealed cut near his cheek. He went still beneath my hand, not from pain this time. “You have to stop almost dying before either of us says something stupid,” I whispered.
His eyes softened. “Something stupid?”
“Something irreversible.”
Draco’s hand tightened at my waist. “I think we passed reversible a while ago.”
The words hit quietly. I did not answer. I kissed him instead. Slower now. Less careful in feeling, if not in movement. He pulled me closer until my side rested against his uninjured one, and I let my head fall near his shoulder, my hand still spread over his heartbeat like proof I could keep checking.
His lips brushed my hair. “I am not leaving tonight,” he said.
I swallowed hard. “You should rest.”
“I can rest here.”
I settled beside him carefully, still afraid, still angry at the world, still hearing echoes of the bathroom every time silence lasted too long. But Draco’s heart kept beating beneath my palm, steady and stubborn, and his mouth pressed once more to my temple like a promise neither of us was ready to say aloud.
Then, quietly—
“Kath.”
“Hm?”
I felt him hesitate before he answered, his fingers tracing absent-minded circles against my side as though he could somehow soften what he was about to say. “I don't want tonight to be the last time we pretend things can still be normal.”
“I know,” he murmured. “I know neither of us wants to think about it.” He hesitated. “But tomorrow we'll have to go back.” I didn't ask where. I didn't have to. “The cabinet won't finish itself,” he said with a humourless smile. “And we're running out of time.”
The words hollowed something inside me. Of course we were. Voldemort would not postpone his plans because Draco Malfoy had nearly bled to death on a bathroom floor. Why would he?
He had never cared how many soldiers he sacrificed so long as they kept marching him closer to what he wanted. One more body, one more life, one more name carved into the cost of victory—it had never mattered to him. Not when the finish line was finally within reach.
The Cabinet still had to be finished. Dumbledore still had to die.