Time out of place

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Chapter Seven: Cheer somebody else up

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He blinked, and wondered if he´d come to heaven. Everything around him was white, white, white... Then the pain assaulted him, and he realized that this really couldn´t be heaven. He groaned softly.

He felt someone wrap a hand around his. Another hand was placed on his forehead. Harry felt warmth spread through his body; he moaned and moved, trying to get closer to the hands in question.

"Lay still, Harry, or things will only get worse," a voice Harry knew all too well said.

Draco´s face appeared above him, his mouth formed in a slight smirk. Harry was surprised to say the least at the sudden change of heart in the blonde´s behaviour towards him. He definitely remembered how Draco had acted before... before the kidnapping. The memories flooded him, and he remembered the Hanawalts, the little crying children, the mother, Mr Hanawalt, the Death Eaters, how Mr Hanawalt had been forced to shoot him, and he remembered pain, pain and pain...

He shut his eyes tightly, trying to block the memories out, but they just kept coming.

"The Hanawalts are all at a Muggle hospital," Draco said, seemingly reading Harry´s thoughts. "We´ve put wards up so they can´t be touched, and Muggle men in uniforms are watching them."

Draco sat down and took his hands away from Harry. The Boy Who Lived moaned as the warm feeling disappeared.

"Come back," he muttered quietly, his throat dry as a desert. He could imagine the smirk on Draco´s face growing as Harry admitted that he needed him. Still, the words had the desired effect, for Draco put his hands on Harry´s again, this time placing them on his side. He winced as Draco touched the sore, painful area where the second bullet had hit him.

"Relax," Draco said. "It´ll hurt at first, but then it will be good for you."

Harry let himself follow Draco´s words and he relaxed. Soon enough, the pleasant feeling of warmth moving through his body was back. The pain diminished as the healing energy made its way up to the other bullet wound.

He felt himself become sleepy again, his eyes shutting against his own will. He heard Draco´s soft voice whispering, "Sleep, Harry. I´ll stay right here," as he drifted off.

He awoke again what must have been hours later, for the light in the room had changed. Or perhaps it had only been his muddled brain that hadn´t seen correctly before? He didn´t know, but according to the clock on the wall - a Muggle one - it was now five in the afternoon. He also realized, from the look of the room and the feel of the bed he was in, that he was at a hospital - most likely St. Mungo´s Hospital. Harry doubted they would put him in a Muggle hospital. The walls were painted in a dull grey colour, the sheets thin and white. The hospital gown he was wearing matched; white as well. On the table next to the bed stood the only thing that gave any colour to the room at all; a bouquet of white gardenias, with small blue flowers and green leaves all around them.

He gave a big yawn, stretched and then gasped in pain as the sore areas around his wounds pulled painfully.

He saw a figure out of the corner of his eye, standing by the window.

"Lay still, Potter," Draco said to him, "Or you´ll only make the wounds open again."

Harry muttered beneath his breath.

"No," Draco answered him, "I may not be your mum, but I am the one who´s been watching over you for three days in a row, and it´s not all that much fun to sit and stare at a comatose person."

Harry smirked at him. "You´ve been worried then."

"Everyone´s been worried," Draco said, avoiding the question. "And everyone´s been here. Granger and Weasley, Dumbledore, the twins -"

Harry sat up abruptly, and gasped as the pain stabbed him yet again. "They´re alive then?"

Draco glared at him, ignoring his question. "Do you want to stay here for another week with bleeding wounds, or are you just doing this to annoy me?"

He took a potion from his belt and poured it onto a piece of cloth, then he dabbed Harry´s wound with it. It closed itself, but still throbbed. Harry didn´t think it would be worth it to ask Draco for painkillers. The blonde didn´t seem completely... stable... at the moment, he thought.

After Draco made Harry lay down again, the raven-haired boy asked again, "The twins, they´re alive?"

The blonde shot him an odd look. "Yes, they´re alive."

Harry stared out the window. He felt immensely relieved by the news. He said quietly, "I thought the Death Eaters may have killed them when they took the Hanawalts. How else did they manage to do that?"

Draco looked down at the floor. "You are partly right, for the Death Eaters did kill someone. The twins managed to trick the Death Eaters into thinking they were dead, though, and so they got away. But... Rhonda is dead."

Harry closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He had wanted so badly for the twins to live that he´d hardly given a second thought to the Hufflepuff girl. He felt horrible knowing that he hadn´t even really considered her.

Draco stood quietly at Harry´s side. The silence of the room wasn´t broken until there was a knock on the door. Harry forced himself to open his eyes as Draco said, "Come in."

It was Hermione and Ron. She was carrying a bouquet of crown daisy flowers and looked at him happily. He tried to return her smile, but he knew it wouldn´t look sincere. Hermione put the flowers in a vase next to the bed and sat down on Harry´s other side with a concerned look on her face. Ron stood behind her while Draco moved to the back of the room. Harry instantly missed the warm feeling that the blonde brought as the pain returned.

Hermione pushed a strand of hair from his face.

"How are you, Harry?" she asked.

He gave her a small, sad smile. "Rhonda is dead. The Hanawalts were kidnapped and tortured. I´m great."

She held his hand, her eyes showing sympathy. "It´s not your fault," she said, knowing that Harry was blaming himself for everything that had gone wrong. "It was... an operation gone wrong, and we all had parts in it. It wasn´t you."

The memories of the kidnapping flooded back over him in full force. First in the darkness, in the first smaller room, where he and Mr Hanawalt had woken up... The frightened look on Mr Hanawalt´s face as the Death Eater lit the room... And later, the children, the little girl, unable to speak... Their mother, screaming as the Death Eaters raped her and tortured her... He wanted to throw up.

He saw Draco flinch as he shared Harry´s pain, but the blonde stayed away from him this time. He knew that Harry needed to get through the memories without the help of Draco´s healing energy.

"Is the girl okay?" he asked finally, though he refused to look at the others.

Hermione nodded. "George broke the curse, and Draco calmed her down," she said. Harry saw Draco´s cheeks turn a bit pink.

"I didn´t do that much," he muttered.

"You calmed the whole family down," Hermione said. "You did do a lot. And that was after you healed Harry..."

The Boy Who Lived looked up at Draco, but didn´t say anything. He guessed that he now owed his life to the Slytherin, from the way Hermione and Ron looked at Draco and how the blonde refused to meet their gazes, and instead studied the floor intently, his face blank. He wondered what he thought about being in debt to the blonde, but decided not to think about it, not now.

"How did you find us?" Harry asked after another couple of minutes of silence.

Hermione smiled. "That was Draco´s work as well. He followed your Heart Bind, and the others just followed him."

Heart Bind? Harry wondered. What was a Heart Bind? Something strong obviously if Draco could follow it and find Harry when he was being kept somewhere underground. He looked at the blonde, but Draco shrugged in response and Harry assumed that he didn´t know any more about the Heart Bind than Harry did. Most likely, he had just followed instinct at the time, just like they both did when they healed.

"It took a while for us to get there though. Voldemort and those goons of his do like to use the most inconvenient places," Ron said, trying to lighten the mood a bit. "And then we had to actually get in there. Luckily, the guards weren´t very... awake, so we managed to stun them. Then we had to find you in there. Draco was hurting from the Bind so much he could hardly walk, `cause by then, they´d shot you the first time. We ran, and we heard the second shot as well."

"I heard... voices," Harry said uncertainly. "Someone told me to hold on. Then there was warmth, and I thought I was really dying."

Ron grinned. "Nope, not letting some petty Death Eaters take you just yet," he said. "That was all Draco. He ran over to you as soon as he saw you there and put his hands to the bullet wounds."

Draco wouldn´t meet Harry´s eye, and continued to stare at the floor as though it was the most interesting thing in the world. What Harry could see of his face was still a blank mask, but Harry could sense his discomfort.

"Then when we were fairly certain that you wouldn´t bleed to death, I Apparated with you to here. The medi-wizards were a bit surprised at your wounds; they don´t get a lot of bullet wounds."

"They might be getting more soon," Harry muttered.

"Yeah, although I can´t for the life of me understand what he would want with guns all of a sudden," Hermione said and Ron looked equally confused.

"I´m going to take lessons," Harry said when silence once again fell over the room.

Draco´s head shot up and he met Harry´s eye for the first time in half an hour. "You´re going to do what?" he asked.

"I spoke to Mr Hanawalt, and decided to take lessons," Harry said and shrugged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time. Though I don´t know if I´ll ever do it now - I doubt Mr Hanawalt will ever want to see me again."

The only blonde in the room looked at him, slightly surprised. "Mr Hanawalt and his wife asked about you the whole time while I was... um, healing them," he said. "They were very worried. I´m sure that if they knew where St. Mungo´s is situated, they´d be here right now."

"But... why?" Harry asked.

"They think of themselves as just as guilty as you do, especially Mr Hanawalt. He thinks that you got dragged into a kidnapping you weren´t supposed to have any part of, and on top of that, he was forced to shoot you. Oh, by the way, if you would so kindly refrain from doing such things like getting shot ever again; I would be very pleased. It was very messy to heal."

"Oh yes Malfoy, `cause I planned getting shot, don´t you think?" Harry glared at him, and Draco´s eyes softened.

"Sorry," he muttered.

"Don´t worry about it," Harry said. "If I got to choose, I would like to avoid getting shot again as well."

Draco smiled slightly. "Good. Then we agree on that at least."

"We actually agree on something. I´m impressed," Harry said, his smile growing.

Hermione stood up. "We should let you get some rest," she said. "We´ll be by tomorrow. I think you´ll get released tomorrow afternoon, if Draco does his best in healing you."

Harry gave her a small smile. "Thanks for coming, `Mione," he said.

She bent down and kissed his forehead. "Of course."

Harry blushed at the affection she was showing, but she was oblivious. She headed for the door as Ron said, "See you tomorrow, Harry. And Draco, be good and heal him properly, will you?"

Draco smiled slightly at him. "Yeah."

"See you tomorrow," Harry said and his two best friends were gone.

Harry and Draco found themselves alone together again. The raven-haired boy thought the Slytherin looked decidedly uneasy where he stood, changing his weight every so often and looking in every direction but at Harry. Still, he looked better than the last time Harry had seen him, before the kidnapping. That was when he was still not talking to Harry, still ignoring him completely and refusing to even look at him.

"Are you okay now?" Harry asked.

Draco looked up at him, but didn´t say anything. Emotions were flitting over his face at a quick rate, and Harry could read some of them - fear, sadness, worry, but then came relief and, ever so briefly, a bit of happiness. Then he went back to looking dejected and stared at the floor again.

"Talk to me," Harry demanded softly. "I know I´m not the person you´d prefer to spill your innermost secrets to, but right now I´m all there is."

Draco met his gaze, and said quietly, "I was just worried about you."

Harry smiled to himself. "I´m glad you were, `cause otherwise I might have been dead right now."

"It - it just felt so strange," the blonde continued in the same quiet voice, and Harry knew better than to interrupt. "It hurt inside of me, and I could feel you get weaker... And my whole body was screaming at me to find you, to heal you, to... hold you. It was the weirdest thing as we got closer... The pain got worse, but at the same time as it lessened because I was getting closer to you. Then we heard the first shot ring out and I - I fell to the ground... the pain was so intense but I knew it had to be ten times worse for you and that made me continue...

"The second shot rang out just as we were running down the corridor. Ron and Fred were supporting me and I think that was a good thing, `cause if they hadn´t, I would have fallen to the floor with that second bullet, and I wouldn´t have been able to get up...

"You - you were completely lifeless, hanging there from the ropes on the wall... And there was blood and the woman was screaming and the Death Eaters were laughing and you looked dead..."

He was crying, though Harry doubted he knew it. Harry stretched his arm out to Draco, and the Slytherin came closer until Harry could take Draco´s hand in his. He could feel the pain and sorrow radiating off the blonde in strong waves.

"I didn´t even know what I was doing when I put my hands on you; all I knew was that I needed to make it stop hurting... You were unconscious, and I was scared when you didn´t respond at all to what I was doing. I didn´t know what I was doing, and I was so frightened I was doing the wrong thing... that I was only making it worse..."

He trailed off, looking away from Harry, apparently ashamed as he noticed the tears streaming down his cheeks.

"And I remember thinking that you´d tried to be nice to me and I wouldn´t listen, and I didn´t want that to be the last memory you ever had of me," Draco finished, seemingly thinking that if he´d confessed this much, he might as well tell Harry everything.

Harry sat quiet and just watched Draco. Draco Malfoy, his nemesis from school, his enemy for six years. The situation at hand was more than a little surreal, the Boy Who Lived thought. Fourteen days in the future - three of them spent in a coma for Harry, but still - was all it had taken to shake those foundations. Harry wondered if they, if - when, he told himself - they came home, they would be able to go back to their old relationship. He wondered if they even wanted to do that.

Draco just stood next to the bed, trying his best to wipe away the tears on his cheeks as inconspicuously as possible.

"Thank you for saving my life," Harry said quietly. He didn´t know what else to say after Draco´s outburst, yet somehow he had to break the ice again.

The blonde looked at him, pain in his eyes. "You´re welcome," he muttered, in a voice that sounded much more like the young Malfoy Harry knew. He smiled slightly at the Boy Who Lived, and Harry gave him the same, tentative smile back.

"Just don´t make a habit out of getting into these situations," Draco said.

"Too late, I already do," replied Harry, catching onto Draco´s slightly better mood.

"I´ve noticed."

"Hey, I´m not the one who fell down screaming because of a vision, so don´t try to tell me I´m the only one in this room who gets into trouble."

"I didn´t get into trouble with that vision; it just, um, hurt."

"Right."

"It did."

"I know it did, I felt it," Harry said, deciding to bring the conversation onto their interesting healing abilities.

"What?" Draco asked, just like he´d expected.

"I said, I felt it," said Harry. "Remember that I said I´d received parts of the vision as well?" The blonde nodded. "Well, I don´t think I really had the vision at all. I think it was just you."

"You´re confusing me, Potter," Draco growled, sitting down on a chair next to the bed.

"It´s not confusing at all," Harry said and the blonde glared at him. "Really, it isn´t! You were in pain - a lot of pain - and I´m a Healer. I felt your pain, and either because you were in so much pain, I had parts of the vision as well or perhaps it was because of this Heart Bind-thing. Either way, you had the vision - I just kind of shared it."

Draco stared at him. "And what made you come to this conclusion?" he asked.

"The Hanawalts," Harry said. "When we were... down there... I could feel their pain. I felt the fear of the children and I felt the pain when the Death Eaters tortured Mrs Hanawalt. I threw up when Mr Hanawalt came in, he was in such a bad shape and I was weak."

"Weak?" Draco wondered. "Why?"

Harry shrugged. "I think it was because I was around so many people in pain, and I didn´t get to heal them, and that made me weak."

"So for future reference, stay away from sick people if we can´t heal them?" Draco asked.

Harry nodded as he realized something. "How can we be at a hospital and not get weak?"

"Oh," Draco replied, "That would be thanks to Ron and Dumbledore. We are in a special part of the hospital, a sort of restricted area. There are no other patients within a five-minute walk. I couldn´t understand why when they took me here, but I guess I get it now."

"Yeah, I would never get better if I were around a bunch of sick and hurt people - and you probably wouldn´t have been able to concentrate on healing me, either."

"It still took me three days to get you to wake up, even when I was basically alone with you," Draco said. "I don´t think I´m a very good healer."

Now it was Harry´s turn to stare at Draco. "You don´t think you´re a very good healer?" he asked, the disbelief apparent in his voice.

"Well," Draco replied, running a hand through his hair, "You were in a bloody coma for three days."

"I was shot! Twice!" Harry exclaimed. "The fact that I´m alive at all is quite amazing, and it is all thanks to you."

Harry felt tired from arguing, especially something as ridiculous as this. Draco was an amazing Healer; he had to be for Harry to still be alive. He didn´t know just what damage the bullets had done yet, but he was sure that if the blonde Healer hadn´t arrived in the exact moment he did, Harry would be dead now. Something told him that he really had been an inch from death. Again.

He sighed, closed his eyes and then opened them again to look at the Slytherin.

"Look Draco, I know you won´t believe it when I say that you must be a great Healer, but I´m going to say it anyway. You are a great Healer. I wouldn´t be alive otherwise. Thing is, I don´t think that this is about being a good Healer or not - I think it´s something else, and I think it has to do with why you - we - got mad at each other before."

Draco looked down at the floor, and Harry continued,

"We need to talk it through, from beginning `till end, but I can´t do it right now. I´m falling asleep as we speak, and it won´t do to have me snoring through such a conversation."

Draco gave him a small smile at his attempt to lighten the mood. "Should I go?" he asked.

Harry shook his head. "No, I think you should stay. And if you want to put your hands on me -" He broke off, realizing what he´d just said. "I only mean if you want to -"

"Save it, Potter," Draco smirked. "You´re in too deep already."

Harry sighed again. "I blame it on getting shot," he mumbled as his eyes fell shut.

"I blame it on you being you," Draco said in a soft voice, placing one hand on Harry´s forehead and picking the boy´s right hand up in his other. A small smile appeared on Harry´s lips as he slipped off into sleep, feeling completely content and secure.

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To be continued

Cosmic 2003