Not Quite a Love Song, in Ten Scenes

Part 4: The Hospital Wing (or: Watching You)

The night after Potter's spectacular fall from grace - and broom - Draco found himself unable to sleep. He threw himself around in bed, replaying Potter's plunge in his mind, over and over. Potter in free fall, like a shock-frozen Augurey in a thunderstorm, the resounding thud with which he landed on the grass below, the dead silence of the auditorium, the tickle of Snitch wings against his palm...

At last, he got up, pulled his night robes around his lean Seeker's body and made his way out of the Slytherin dormitory.

You're absolutely pathetic, he cursed himself mentally. Sneaking through the castle at midnight to see Potter of all people. It's risky. It's stupid, and what would Father say if he could see you?

He sneaked through the door to the Hospital Wing, ears perked for any sound of Filch, or Pomfrey. But Hogwarts's hero had been left alone to rest, it seemed.

Moonlight shone through one of the windows next to Potter's bed, throwing a bone-white cast over his face and turning his hair to silver. A dark bruise still marred his moonlit temple, and his lips twitched in pain, even in his sleep.

Draco couldn't help it - he gloated.

"I knew you'd come."

Draco near-flinched at the flat, tired voice and wondered how Potter had known it was him, even with his eyes shut. He said nothing.

"Why did you do that?"

There was something... unpleasant about Potter's mildly curious, emotionless tone. Draco had prepared various witty responses to accusations and curses on the way up. Leave it to Potter to take the fun out of it with this display of quiet, barely-concealed hurt. As if Draco was to blame that Potter had been so hideously stupid as to trust a Malfoy!

"Well... I hoped you'd break your neck, evidently," he finally said. "You being my nemesis of six years and a bloody stalker to boot." And will you bloody well look at me when you talk to me? he thought.

"Did you want to get into Voldemort's good books or do you really hate me that much, Malfoy?"

"Both!" Draco shot back, although You-Know-Who had been far from his mind in that burst of excitement he'd experienced when he'd pulled his hand away and let Potter fall to his doom. Arrested doom, he amended. That old tosser Dumbledore had interfered yet again, seemingly intent on single-handedly delivering his boy toy every time Draco came up with a good one.

"So I guess I'll have a bout of detention coming after you've whined about your plight at Dumbledore's shoulder," he sneered.

Even as he spoke, he realised that with his father no longer a school governor and no Hogwarts Inquisitor to intercede for him, there might be worse in store than a few detentions. They couldn't chuck him out, could they? Not after Dumbledore's ridiculous "everybody's welcome" speech at the end of fourth year. Or did that not apply to Slytherins, just like it didn't appy when it came to an unbiased way of awarding the house cup?

"I didn't tell him," Potter said, and at last opened his eyes to confront Draco with a sea of cool green.

"You... what?" Draco noticed that his mouth was hanging open in a thoroughly unbecoming way. Not even this arch-Gryffindork could be quite as stupid as to forego a chance like this...

He remedied his fish-mouthed gape with a touch of effort. "Why the hell not?" he finally ground out.

"You said it was an accident," Potter replied curtly. "You 'missed', right?"

"I did not miss you. I let you fall on purpose." And then he added, to make absolutely sure to drive home the point so even Potter could not miss out on it:

"I tried to kill you!"

There was another one of those sharp lines forming around Potter's mouth, and then he closed his eyes again in a final gesture of dismissal.

"It's long past curfew, even for a prefect. Go back to bed, Draco."

It was only when he was already out in the corridor and heading for the staircase down to the dungeons, that Draco began to wonder just why he'd let that four-eyed git dismiss him like that, without even a parting shot. He hadn't even got around to smother that... that... Potter with a hospital pillow! In retrospect, he glared and kicked the wall for good measure and then limped down to his dormitory.

After he had crawled into bed, pummelling the pillows into submission and punching Crabbe, who'd had the nerve to wake up and ask what was wrong - there was nothing bloody wrong, apart from the fact that Potter was not only still alive, but a complete prick - he consoled himself with the knowledge that at least one of the things that Potter had said tonight bore further thinking on.

~ tbc. ~
Next:Confrontation (or: Under Your Skin)