It dissolves in the air between him and Draco, who is staring at him, eyes wide. For the second time tonight, Harry doesn’t think; he stands, grabs Draco by one of his wrists, and Apparates them both out of the house.
Chapter 8
“What the fuck, Potter, you complete lunatic!” Draco exclaims, the minute they rematerialize in the lobby of St. Mungo’s. He looks around wildly, as if he can’t believe where he is. “Do you never stop to think for even one second, you can’t just grab somebody like that, neither one of us is wearing shoes—”
Then he gets a look at Harry’s face, and stops talking. He stares at Harry with wide eyes for a moment, and something seems to—settle over him, almost, this sudden shift that wears in his expression, in the set of his shoulders and stance.
“Potter,” Draco says again, and this time it’s low, urgent. “What do you need?”
Harry needs—Harry needs to have gotten Ron’s call earlier. He needs not to be here in the first place, because he needs Hermione to be fine, home asleep in bed, safe. He needs not to have said all that stupid, selfish shit to Draco about Ron and Hermione not two days ago, because he was sad and he was scared and he never expected to be here, right now, not knowing anything except that Hermione was attacked and is in the hospital and Harry hadn’t been there the answer the call, to help.
“I need to find her,” he says, and his voice sounds shredded, a little frightening. He doesn’t care. “Right now.”
Draco nods sharply, grabs Harry’s sleeve, and drags them over to the front desk.
“Hello there,” he says to the witch behind the counter. She looks up calmly from the report on her desk, and then her eyes widen. “My name is Draco, and this is—well, I’m sure you know who this is, and—”
“Sure, yes, of course,” she says, without waiting for the rest of the sentence. “You need intake forms, give me just a moment, we’re a little backed up tonight but I’m sure,” her eyes flick to Harry, and then quickly back to Draco, “we can get you right in.”
Draco stares at her for a second, thrown, and then snaps, “Oh, for the love of—I don’t need to be admitted, I need to find somebody you’ve already got. We’re looking for Hermione Granger-Weasley, and it’s imperative for—oh, let’s say national security—that we find her.”
“I,” the witch says. She gives Draco a considering look. “Are you sure you don’t need to be admitted?”
“Lives hang in the balance!” Draco says, throwing his hands in the air. “My god, woman, look who I’m standing here with! When they write about this day in the history books, do you want to be preserved forevermore as the reason evil brought Wizarding Britain to its knees?”
“No, sir!” the witch squeaks. “Sorry, sir!” She gives Harry a panicked look and then flees towards a door marked Records, calling, “I’ll be right back with that information, Mr. Potter, sir!”
“Typical,” Draco mutters, rolling his eyes. “You stand there like a lump while I do all the work and still it’s ‘I’ll be right back with that information, Mr. Potter! You can use my body as a shield, Mr. Potter! All I’ve ever wanted is your love and adoration, Mr. Potter!’ Honestly, it’s enough to turn your stomach.”
Harry doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t really trust himself to speak; his mind is a yawning blank space, all hissing static with the occasional wild thought—She’s dead! They’re both dead!—screaming through too quickly for him to even tell himself he’s panicking, and they’re probably wrong.
Draco sighs, and knocks their shoulders together. “Harry,” he say, quiet, but then the witch is back, waving a folder over her head.
“Fourth Floor, Mr. Potter, sir,” she says, breathy from running, while next to Harry Draco mutters something that sounds a lot like, “Enough to make someone lose their bloody lunch.”
At a proper volume, and in ingratiating tones, he adds, “Thank you so much for your assistance, madam. Your country will thank you; history will thank you; Mr. Potter and I will just be off on our way in pursuit of truth and justice now.” He drags Harry off down the hall.
“You should’ve had her admit you,” Harry say, hearing the words as he says them as if from a great distance away. “You’re still—I could have—”
“Oh, honestly, Potter, is it so hard for you to just shut your bloody mouth?” Draco snaps. “And walk faster, I think we’ve got about twelve seconds before someone realizes we’re barefoot and in pajamas and we both get admitted, since we’re clearly insane.”
Harry nods. He walks faster. Draco’s right; by the time they get on the lift, there are at least three people looking at them strangely, and he thinks he hears someone calling, “Hey, you two! Hold on a moment!” as the doors shut.
There’s cheerful, tinny music playing inside, which just feels wrong.
“Fourth Floor’s spell damage,” Harry says, hating the way his voice sounds. It’s miserable and frightened and too quiet against the humming spellwork of the elevator, the horrible little tune. It’s small.
“Yes, and that’s good news,” Draco says, equally hushed. “Your other choices are creature-induced injury, magical disease, and poisoning. Would you rather she was in one of those wards? Spell damage is best-case, you moron. Perhaps she just got hit with the wrong end of a Tickling Charm, and has spent the evening doing nothing more painful than laughing hysterically.”
“I thought we agreed to stop humoring each other,” Harry says, wearily.
Draco knocks their shoulders together again. “You agreed to stop humoring me. I agreed to no such terms and I don’t intended to, either. You’re difficult enough to deal with already, I’m not taking any of my tools out of play. And anyway I have, myself, been hit by a Tickling Charm—by a truly unconscionable bastard, I might add, who had no sympathy for how humiliating it might be to make a twelve year old nearly soil himself with laughter in the middle of what was supposed to be a character-building adversarial experience—”
“I’m not apologizing for that, Draco,” Harry says, and ignores the startled look Draco gives him at the use of his first name. Harry forgot to filter it; he’s too tired and worried to bother, and it’s not like Draco didn’t just call him Harry out in the hall, anyway. “You hexed me first, and again afterwards, and you were cheating. You threw that first spell before the duel had even officially started.”
“My point,” Draco snaps, ignoring the rest of it the way he usually does when Harry is right, “is that a Tickling Charm is no walk in the park, which I know from horrible, scarring experience, so I wasn’t even humoring you anyway.” The elevator doors slide open on his last word, and Harry can see Ron sitting in a chair at the far end of the hall.
“Ron!” he calls, and takes off in his direction. Ron stands to meet him and they hug, a little awkwardly—Ron starts it and Harry just sort of goes along, even though this is one of those times a hug turns out to happen where he would never have guessed a hug might go, and he feels a bit strange accepting one.
“Where the hell have you been?” Ron demands, as they pull apart. “I sent that damn Patronus across half of London before I thought to try…” He pauses, looks Harry up and down, and gulps, before he glances over his shoulder and his eyes go wide with surprise. “Malfoy! Merlin’s saggy tit, what happened to you?”
“Oh, everyone’s a critic,” Draco snaps. Harry slides a look over his shoulder—Draco can snap at him all he likes, but not at Ron, not right now—and Draco makes a face, but then says, in a much more pleasant tone, “I mean, good evening, Weasley. Hello, and so on.”
“Grimmauld Place was attacked again,” Harry says, his voice low. “Kreacher came and —we’ll talk about it later. Where’s Hermione? What happened? Is she all right?”
Ron’s face falls. “She’s in with the Healers. I don’t know very much yet—when I found her, it was—” He pauses, swallows. Pales. Looks away. Harry thinks he’s going to be sick. “It wasn’t good, Harry. She’s alive, but…they won’t tell me anything right now.”
Harry takes the words like a Stunning Spell to the chest; he knows too well what it means, when the best you can say is that someone’s not dead. He knows too well how wrong that means things could go. He sways a little where he stands, sure for a moment that it’s all going to overwhelm him, this whole night of terror and panic and heavy, helpless rage. Ron doesn’t notice, his eyes fixed on a set of swinging doors with Staff Only written above them, but Draco must—he puts a hand on Harry’s back, steps forward so he’s not behind Harry anymore, but right next to him.
Slowly, holding Harry’s gaze, he draws in a deep, slow breath, and then narrows his eyes at Harry, holding it in, until Harry does too. It helps, the clean air rushing into his lungs, the warm weight of Draco’s fingers through his thin pajama shirt. It makes it easier to keep going.
“What can I do?” he asks Ron, and then, recalling Draco’s words from earlier: “What do you need?”
“I,” Ron says. He shakes his head, gives Harry a lost, helpless sort of look, and then stares down at his hands. “Uh. Some company, maybe? I got my mum over to the house for Rosie when I couldn’t reach you, I really didn’t—I probably shouldn’t have kept sending the Patronuses, but.” He shrugs a little without looking up. “It’s. A bit horrible, as it turns out. To just sit and wait alone.”
“Sure,” Harry says, feeling awful and guilty and sorry. “I’m so sorry I didn’t—that I wasn’t there to get your message, I—”
“Oh, stop,” Ron says. His eyes cut to Draco, and he sighs, shakes his head. “Seems like it was rough all around tonight; I’m sure you had your hands full. You all right there, Malfoy?”
Draco seems badly startled by the question; his hand tightens around Harry’s shirt, and then drops away almost at once. “I, ah. Sure, Weasley. Certainly.”
“No, you’re not,” Harry says, remembering, and turns to face him. The bruising on his face is really miserable in this light, and his stance is going a little lopsided again; Harry’s spells are probably starting to fade. “God, we should have had them admit you, I don’t know what I was thinking—”
“You were thinking that I was fine,” Draco snaps, “because I was, and I am, and anyway, Potter, they can’t admit me. I have things to do. Someone has to go back to the house and deal with the Aurors we called.”
“Oh,” Harry says. “Fuck; I forgot. I—I’ll just send a Patronus—”
“Saying what, that you Apparated away from an active crime scene with the victim of said crime twelve seconds after calling them to come?” Draco says, exasperated. “Come on. They’ll think we’ve been taken and you’re sending it under duress. It’s what I’d think.”
“He’s right, Harry,” Ron says, and sighs. “You should go. I’m sure I’ll still be here waiting when you get back, anyway.”
“I,” Harry says, looking desperately between them. He can’t leave; he can’t just abandon Ron here, abandon Hermione, after he wasn’t around to help in the first place. But he can’t let Draco leave, either—Draco needs medical attention, and he’s been through enough tonight, and also Harry’s not sure he can stand to have him out of his immediate line of sight just yet.
“Potter, for god’s sake,” Draco says softly. Harry’s eyes fix on him, and Draco gives him a crooked smile, the same one from the bridge in the glen a few nights before. “You should stay. I’m all right; I’ll go talk to the Aurors, make sure they don’t start up some kind of all- hands-on-deck Boy Who Lived manhunt. Stop looking like that. It won’t even take very long.”
“But,” Harry says, because it’s important, “you’re hurt, you need—”
“Yes, fine, all right, I will come back afterwards and get admitted like a good little assault victim,” Draco says, rolling his eyes. “Does that satisfy your horrific savior complex, or shall I cry a bit about how desperately heroic I find you in your Golden Snitch pajamas? A song and dance routine, perhaps? Maybe I should build a shrine to your bravery out of medical supplies.”
