I'm not in Denial

Ron - A Scream in the Night

When the redhead woke up, he thought it was primarily because his father’s Muggle alarm clock had gone off or perhaps Seamus was up early (as usual) and singing for everyone else to get up and enjoy the day. Ron, still under the covers, fumbled around clumsily on his bedside table for the clock. If it had been the clock, he’d throw it at the wall. If it was Seamus, he’d throw the clock at Seamus…

However, his clock wasn’t there.

What the hell…?

Opening his swollen and aching eyes slightly and pulling back the covers from his head, which made his hair go static and spiky, Ron Weasley sleepily came to the discovery that it wasn’t either. It was pitch black and he wasn’t actually in his own bed.

He groaned to himself.

How had he managed to get into the hospital wing this time? Had You-Know-Who come back to kill Harry and had Ron and Hermione tried to help their best friend in some insane and unbelievable adventure? His entire body ached and the slightest movement was agony. Turning his head to nuzzle face down into the pillow, the Gryffindor suddenly gave a yelp and lifted his head up again as soon as contact was made. His nose was sensitively sore and he realised, from when he shouted, that his jaw and lips were really tender as well. The vile, bitter taste of a thousand different remedies was sloshing at the back of his throat and the roof of his mouth. God, even swallowing to get rid of the taste hurt and his face was tingling in an oddly numb way.

What exactly had he done this time?

Deciding that it was way too late and that he was much too tired to go into investigation mode, Ron yawned and resolved that the best thing to do was to go back to sleep and figure it all out in the morning, when he reckoned he’d be slightly more bright. However, he had no sooner closed his eyes when two thoughts struck him.

Harry. Hermione.

His eyes snapped open, suddenly fully alert, and he looked desperately around for any trace of his friends in the remaining beds, but only the one next to his was occupied. Ron could hardly see who it was in the dark but squinting his throbbing eyes, he could tell they were blonde; not Harry or Hermione. Turning frantically, though woozily, to face the bedside table, he saw a line of cards and a giant boxful of Chocolate Frogs and breathed in relief when he recognised both his friends’ handwriting on a giant card. They were fine.

At least they were fine.

But why was it always him who ended up in the Infirmary?

With a small and slightly childish pout, Ron sighed, sat up and leaned his back against the wire frame headboard of the bed.

Bugger.

He was now fully awake and had nothing to do but look around the room, which wasn’t very interesting anyway because it was pitch black. Only a sliver of moonlight illuminated Ron’s bedside table and a bit of the next bed but besides that, the view would look exactly the same if he were closing his eyes. However, at that moment, closing his eyes was the last thing he felt like doing.

Sneaking his gaze back to his boxful of Chocolate Frogs, Ron’s mouth watered and he soon began smiling mischievously to himself as a plan hatched in his mind. Then he promptly told himself off because just moving his mouth hurt like hell. Pressing his torn lips together to stifle himself from whooping out loud, Ron reached out and grabbed a handful of his favourite treat. He could practically hear Hermione’s exasperated voice in his head as he guiltily pulled at one of the small packages.

“Ron, it’s 5 o’clock in the morning!”

Ron shrugged his shoulders at the voice in his head.

“Hey, I’m a growing boy…”

However, just as the Frog reached his tattered lips, an agonising shriek from the next bed made him both jump and bellow in fright. Seeing his moment of weakness, the Frog jumped out of his grasp, kicked him on his aching, freckled nose with its little webbed, chocolaty foot and scarpered off; jumping off the bed and out an open window. Ron didn’t even bother watching him go as he was both engrossed and terrified with what was happening to his neighbour. The redhead guessed that that piercing cry was what woke him up in the first place and he was beginning to wonder if the person next door was being tortured or skinned or something.

However, Ron Weasley was put into Gryffindor for a good reason, though he himself wondered if it was more due to stupidity or nosiness than actual courage. In trepidation, he pulled back his sheets and swung his throbbing and numb legs off the edge of the bed, placing his feet flat on the magicked warm floor of the Infirmary and slowly, creakily, standing up. The immediate, blinding head rush was practically unbearable as Ron’s vision blurred and faded repeatedly in a space of seconds and blood pounded fanatically in his ears. The only reason the weakened and dizzy redhead didn’t fall straight down to the ground was because he’d used both frail hands to steady himself on his bedside table. God, he didn’t even notice that he was attached from a hose thing to a sack of blood, which was hanging limply from the top of a large metal pole. Ron recognised it as a muggle device, recalling when his father had brought one home from work one time last spring in a great fit of enthusiasm and had played with the tubes until well into the next morning. In the end, Mrs Weasley took it away from him, saying it was unhygienic and berating her husband for stealing from a muggle hospital… again.

Ron looked down at his arm and grimaced, unsure with what to do with the painfully long needle going straight through his pulse. He cringed. He always thought muggles were odd, but he didn’t understand why they allowed themselves to do this to their bodies. He would have to ask his father when he got home.

Squeezing his eyes shut very tightly and away from the sight, Ron only opened them again when he had averted his head to look directly forward and shifted his numb, cabled arm slightly behind his back and beyond his view. Now all he needed was a pack of spiders to make him feel even more squeamish. Oh, why did he think of that? He shuddered. Bad thought. Bad thought.

His neighbour suddenly shrieked again, throwing back their blonde head with the pain, which instigated Ron to jump again and bring both his large hands to his chest in fright; he then promptly hid his arm behind his back when he realised it was once again in his eye range.

Ron let out a deep sigh, which he hoped would let loose some courage.

Whoever they were, they needed his help.

He licked his cracked lips nervously and dragged the wheeled metal pole with him as he edged closer to the squirming body on the bed, which was tossing and turning and looked like it was in complete and utter agony. He could hear their strained breaths, the occasional cry of pain and a hissing noise, almost as though the person was trying to stifle the sounds of weakness leaving their mouth. Ron stopped at the side of the bed, pressing his lips together in uncertainty.

“Are… are you alright, mate?” He asked unsurely, gulping loudly and looking around the room for any sort of assistance; none seemed to come to the surface. With his words of concern, the figure immediately stopped struggling and, Ron was convinced, had stopped breathing. They lay there absolutely still, frozen and immobile.

Oh Bugger. He only wanted to help. He didn’t mean to kill them or anything…

However, before Ron began to panic about Azkaban and how good his Chudley Canons posters would look on his cell wall, a familiar sneering, though more pained and small, voice replied.

“What the fuck do you want, Weasley?”

Malfoy.

The redhead felt his fists automatically clench and his blood practically begin to boil inside him, which always happened on complete reflex whenever he unwillingly encountered upon the Slytherin. Damn. And there he was thinking that he’d killed the little shite. Oh well, at least the colossal prick was in pain.

“You’re keeping me up with your crying, Malfoy,” Ron said through gritted teeth. If Malfoy could see him through the dark, he’d see the narrowed, furious eyes and scorching red face. “I just wanted you to shut the hell up so I could get back to sleep.” Ron could hear Malfoy’s growls and found himself smiling in faint smugness to himself. He’d caught the untouchable Slytherin in a moment of weakness… just another memory for Ron to treasure in the ‘Malfoy in extreme distress’ file within his head, right next to the bouncing ferret image.

He didn’t need to wait long for Malfoy to retaliate sardonically.

“Be a good little Gryffindor and trot off back to bed, Weasley,” The Slytherin hissed in his menacing, icy drawl though Ron could hear the occasional wince as he struggled to withhold his pain. What was wrong with the bastard anyway? “And while you’re there, don’t ever bother waking up.”

Ron had never heard Malfoy so serious and strangely sincere. This made him want to push him even further.

Seeing the usually cold and invincible Slytherin in such pained emotion actually made Ron grin instead of Malfoy’s words infuriating him. So, the little rich boy was real.

“Hurt much, does it, Malfoy?” The redhead asked with a very content smile.

“Fuck off, Weasley.”

Not even his scathing and witty self. Just a plain expletive where he would have usually slipped in an intelligently cruel remark. God, he wasn’t even trying. The pain must have blocked out his usual cutting rejoinders. Ron shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest, forgetting about his ghastly arm as he couldn’t help but smile even wider at the Slytherin’s suffering, though it hurt like hell to even speak.

“Nah, Malfoy. I’d rather watch you in pain,” he said beaming, hoping to irritate the hell out of Malfoy by the time this was done. How often did he have such a chance to provoke the pale-faced git alone and when he was in too much pain to retaliate properly? Normally Ron would probably have stomped back to bed and left Malfoy to himself, muttering obscenities under his breath along the way, but he reminded himself that this was Malfoy and just watching him in pain was oddly satisfying. It was compensation for every time he’d called Hermione a Mudblood, teased Ron about how poor he was and just picked on Harry for merely living as the Boy Who Lived. So Ron decided, considering that he was wide-awake, that he wasn’t going to go anywhere. He pulled himself out a chair and sat himself painfully down as he could just about make out Malfoy’s luminous silver eyes glaring at his every move and glinting eerily in the darkness.

Draco – The Slytherin’s First Visitor

Regardless of every fibre of his mind refusing to comply, Draco Malfoy shrieked. He had never been in this much pain before. The Slytherin squeezed shut his eyes and clenched his snarling teeth as he kicked off the covers that were unwelcomingly warming his already sweat-soaked and shuddering body. Despite this, his naturally cold skin soon cooled him down and caused him to shiver with cold sweats and further stabbings of agony. Bloody Madam Pomfrey. Draco was convinced that the old bat made him drink extra amounts of Skele-Gro to leave him screaming in anguish throughout the night just because he’d accidentally broken a few fingers and his knuckles again in clenched fury when Granger had kissed Weasley goodbye. Malfoy snarled again at the thought of her filthy lips on his pale, freckled cheek (among other places) but made sure to keep his fists open. Oh yes, he was going to get her. On his ever-increasing revenge list, she was there right after Potter. And bloody Madam Pomfrey, too. Being faculty staff didn’t make her any less likely to feel the Malfoy wrath, and by God, she was really going to feel it by the time Draco was done.

The bone that was clearly protruding underneath the skin at the back of his hand gave a sudden crack. His already closed eyes squeezed even tighter as his jaw began to numb with his clamping of teeth; a barely audible hiss escaped his lips as he squirmed in pain within the bed, unconsciously twisting the bed sheets tightly around his legs.

Draco knew the deal.

He knew bones had to be shifted, cracked, and regrown several times before they could heal, but it didn’t mean he had to bloody like it.

Fucking Weasley.

It was all his fault.

With his perfectly freckled complexion and stunningly short temper. That bloody muggle-lover. Oh Draco would get him too and in an entirely more enjoyable manner than the others…

Another sharp cracking of bones and dull rotation of muscle commenced. Draco could only manage a feeble whimper and a shudder. It was only a matter of time before he passed out with the pain. He couldn’t wait till he did and, for once, didn’t viciously rebuke himself for any sign of weakness.

It was just when he’d almost pleaded to a non-existent higher being to either just fucking knock him out or kill him, when he heard it.

“Are… are you alright, mate?”

A soft voice suddenly parting through the layers of torture.

Weasley.

Draco didn’t move.

He felt another crack jerk his entire hand violently but he didn’t make a peep. It wasn’t that his breathing was stable or anything; the Slytherin had just stopped doing it altogether. He just lay there absolutely still, frozen, immobile and trying hard not to get hard at the very presence of the boy.

But what the heck was Weasley doing up? Shouldn’t he still be unconscious?

Draco had felt almost affronted. He’d given Weasley his best shots and he expected, no… knew that not even Madam Pomfrey, with her brilliance for healing, could restore the boy so quickly.

He could hear the nervous pacing of bare feet against floor.

Draco had never heard Weasley’s voice with such compassion and concern in it… but that was mainly because his very presence usually caused the redhead to growl bad-temperedly at everyone around.

Weasley had obviously mistaken him for someone else. He would never have been so nice had he known that Draco Malfoy, his sworn and frequently ‘sworn at’ enemy, was lying in the bed beside his.

The Slytherin, trying to resemble a hunk of lifelessness, almost debated (for about half a second) with himself whether he should shut up and continue to silently listen to Weasley speak to him as a friend. However, he discovered that his Nancy Boy side was sentimental and stupid and he was much too proud of himself to ever pretend to be anyone but the magnificent Draco Malfoy. With a determined sneer on his face, though Weasley obviously couldn’t see it, he smirked to the best of his ability through the pain.

“What the fuck do you want, Weasley?”

He could practically feel the heat radiating out of the boy. Just a little closer and he could warm the freezing Slytherin up. Promptly realising his thoughts, Draco mentally punched himself for being such a Queen.

Ok, he might have been attracted to the boy but he was not a fucking queer.

“You’re keeping me up with your crying, Malfoy,” He heard the Weasel say with difficulty. He was probably clenching his perfect teeth again as his body trembled with anger. Draco tried his hardest not to feel turned on by the image of a trembling, furious Ron Weasley with pure malice in his eyes… wait a second, he just called Draco Malfoy a fucking cry-baby. “I just wanted you to shut the hell up so I could get back to sleep.”

Draco growled an absolutely genuine growl. Who the heck did pansy-arsed Weasley think he was? Wasn’t he the chicken-shit who ran away screaming for his mummy or jumping like a girl on the table at the sight of a measly spider? Measly fucking Weasley.

“Be a good little Gryffindor and trot off back to bed, Weasley,” The Slytherin hissed, trying to speak icily through the sudden slice of agony tearing through his left hand. Gritting his snarling teeth, he tried to finish the job properly, his hate slowly building up again. “And while you’re there, don’t ever bother waking up.”

Draco didn’t actually silently wish Weasley would trot into his bed and slip in beside him or anything.

Another throng of undiluted torture burst upon the raw nerves in his hands and Draco couldn’t stop himself from reacting; he bit upon his lip hard to stop the extent of the noise but Weasley would still have heard the moan.

“Hurt much, does it, Malfoy?” He could hear the bastard simply glowing with happiness. Draco wanted to say something. Something that would cause the boy to jump him and try and throttle him until he passed out or actually killed him. However, all he could manage was a pathetic,

“Fuck off, Weasley.”

As soon as he said it, he felt stupid. And Malfoys hardly ever felt stupid. He’d get Weasley for that after his hands had recovered… again.

“Nah, Malfoy. I’d rather watch you in pain,” Weasley said beaming, as he sat down and looked at Draco, who was too busy squinting through the black at the way the redhead moved his body to react too much to the comment. In fact, Draco thought it ironically sounded like something he would say.

Draco supposed that Weasley could just about see him because they were simply glaring piercingly at each other through the darkness. It was the blonde who finally broke the deathly silence when Weasley, in something that looked rather like awkwardness, looked away.

“Rather watch me in pain, would you?” The Slytherin smirked at the power he had over the boy’s reaction, then swiftly winced in pain. He could see a flash of Ron’s teeth. Draco scowled. “Are you sure you aren’t a Slytherin, Weasel?”

“How did you get yourself into this, Malfoy?” Ron asked with a look of distaste, ignoring his earlier comment as he leaned back into the seat and crossed his arms. Draco opened his mouth in slight surprise, but quickly recovered. Shit. Weasley didn’t remember. “Do something evil? Did you try to drown a House Elf again and did one hex you this time? Or did they build up a House Elves front against sadistic bastards like you?” Draco nearly snorted.

“Granger would be pleased.”To his utter shock, the redhead laughed; an absolutely genuine laugh. Draco’s eyes widened in something resembling a mixture of shock and amusement. Weasley looked nice when he laughed. Almost as dazzling as when he was going to punch the Slytherin’s lights out… God, Draco would even tongue McGonagall just to get a fierce look on Weasley’s face. And to his luck, that look came out with his favourite past time; taunting and teasing the boy silly.

The Gryffindor, realising that he was actually laughing at a joke by Malfoy, soon checked himself by coughing it out rather unconvincingly. Weasley could never lie or hide his true emotions. They all just spilled out over his cute, pouting, and often confused, face before he could control them. After years of watching him, Draco knew this better than anyone. The Slytherin suddenly found it oddly fulfilling to know that he caused that reaction. All you needed was to say that Weasley wasn’t very rich to get the boy pissed off but to get him to laugh like that… that was a real challenge.

As Draco analysed all this, he had no idea he was watching Weasley hungrily and smiling with soft spite.

“What the fuck are you smiling at, Malfoy?” Weasley’s growl suddenly snapped him out of his thoughts. He could see he was smiling? It must have been getting a bit lighter outside.

Draco found it amazing how quickly the boy could shift emotions. He was probably being extra scowling because he’d allowed himself to truly chuckle at a Malfoy joke, though Draco noted that his face (which he could now see slightly with the sparse morning light) was also wearing that confused look he quite permanently wore in Potions. Draco examined him closer and grinned wickedly. There was nothing in the world finer than a pissed off and utterly clueless Ron Weasley.

“You, Weasley. I’m smiling at you.” He stared at him intensely with his pale eyes and slightly raised a perfectly arched brow.

“Don’t bloody smile at me, Malfoy,” Weasley’s voice was shaking slightly. This only prompted Draco to continue as the pain stopped for a session - or did he just not notice it? He lips curved even more maliciously.

“Why not, Weasel? You should be used to it. Another face laughing at those rags you call robes and that excuse for a personality shouldn’t faze you…”

The Gryffindor jumped out his seat so fast that the metal pole behind him rattled with his sudden movement. Weasley grabbed Draco’s collar tightly and snarled, his blazing face absolutely clashing with his hair as he jerked the blonde up viciously into a sitting position. The Slytherin tried not to get too excited as his eyes simply devoured the stunning scene in front of him.

Weasley raised his (Draco observed enviously) unbroken fist in the air with such might that the Slytherin actually looked worried but, to the surprise of both, it stayed frozen in the air as the two boys just stared at each other. After a moment of silence and unwavering eye contact, Weasley released his hand from the blonde’s lapel and suddenly backed off. He was still shaking with fury but managed to stumble backwards quite clumsily and looked at the boy wide-eyed and even paler than before.

“Just… just stay the fuck away from me, Malfoy,” His voice quivered slightly, then he abruptly darted back into the darkness.

As he watched the redhead’s retreating back, Draco pondered what transpired with a sick feeling in his stomach. Did Weasley assume anything? Did the little shit even dare to entertain that he could ever have turned a Malfoy on? The Slytherin shook his head. He hadn’t revealed a thing on his face. He knew he hadn’t. Even in excruciating pain, Draco could school his features if he wanted to. After all, Slytherins had control, and Malfoys… shit, they were practically born with it. It was just that one time in the hall that he had lost it, and Draco vowed that he would never let anyone, especially not a fucking Weasley, do that to him again. With a small sigh, he lay back down on his bed again, pushing all of the little doubts from his mind.

Squinting, he could still see Weasley. Draco was satisfied to see that Weasley was hobbling back to his bed; at least he’d done some longer-lasting damage. However, disappointment sunk in when he realised that Weasley was wearing a closed back patient robe. He scowled. Bloody Madam Pomfrey.