4
But the sixth time it happens, Harry does not go to Draco, because he remembers what happened before. He doesn’t want to risk anyone getting hurt again. He doesn’t want to see that frightened look in Draco’s eye, or the blood on his mouth, and—he doesn’t want Draco to look at him with fear in his eyes or speak to him in that cold, disappointed tone.
He doesn’t want to disappoint Draco ever again.
So when Harry wakes up one cold morning midwinter feeling that horrible chill in his body, that slow-moving fog in his mind, and his hands are shaking, his jaw aching terribly—
He doesn’t go and find Draco.
He doesn’t look for Ron or Hermione.
He just sits up in bed, very slowly, and blinks hard. He finds his glasses on the side table and shoves them on. Then he stumbles over to his wardrobe, pulling out the soft, fuzzy sweater Mrs. Weasley had sent to him just the previous week.
( “I know it’s not quite Christmas yet, of course,” she had written in her letter. “But I thought we could all do with a bit of extra warmth this winter. Sending all our love, dearie, can’t wait to have you come and stay for the holidays.” )
Harry had been so overcome with emotion upon opening the package and encountering the soft green sweater that he had fled from the great hall, racing back to his room and shoving the fabric over his head, climbing underneath his blankets and basking in the feeling for hours.
He wants to feel that comforting warmth again. He thinks maybe it will make some of this haunting chill dissipate. So he pulls on the sweater, and a pair of loose jeans that used to belong to Dudley, cinching them tight with his belt and then pulling on some mismatched socks that Dobby gave him in sixth year.
But Harry doesn’t feel any better after that. So he drags himself painstakingly to the seventh floor.
He is panting by the time he reaches the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. His chest hurts, and he can’t feel his fingers, and there is a sharp, hungry magic building behind his eyes and in the balls of his feet and inside his ribcage. He paces slowly. Back and forth, feet dragging, eyes fixed carefully on the floor in front of him.
-
Somewhere quiet, he thinks desperately. Somewhere dark. Somewhere I can be safe. Somewhere I can’t hurt anybody. Somewhere I don’t have to think, or feel, or speak, or exist.
-
The door takes longer to appear than normal.
It’s like that sometimes, after what happened last year when they fought over the diadem and Crabbe had cast fiendfyre and everything had been swallowed up in angry green flames. The room of lost things still has not reappeared, and Harry doesn’t know if it ever will again. But most other requests, the room makes an effort to fulfill—seeming to almost have a sort of soft spot for Harry.
The door finally pops into place after a few more turns and Harry stumbles toward it, flinging it open and staggering inside.
He can't see anything beyond the light spilling into the room from the hallway. The room is dark and silent, but—there, further in, he spots the dancing of light across smooth water, like a hidden pool at the very bottom of an unending cave system. Harry walks further into the room and the door shuts behind him, swallowing up the last of the light and sound that had been suffocating him. It’s exactly what he asked for. Harry sinks into the damp darkness, shaky feet stepping into water, deeper and deeper, to his ankles and calves, his knees and thighs, to his ribs and then his neck.
It envelops him like an old friend.
-
Harry drifts.
The water is warm, and the air tastes faintly of clay. Light and sound are nothing more than distant memories. Silence presses in hungry and cavernous, greedy beyond measure, swallowing up every little splash of water, every uneven breath or strained swallow. It quiets Harry’s mind until he can hardly remember his own name, nor how he came to find himself here.
-
The magic is still humming, buzzing angrily, stinging beneath his skin but Harry doesn’t have to worry about it anymore. He leaves his body there, floating placid in the water, skin submerged beneath liquid that tastes of salt and—he soars above it, pressing every inch of himself through the dust motes in the air, the rough edges of the room that feel like the bottom of the Great Lake.
Harry decides that he is just going to stay here. Just like this.
For an eternity or maybe more, tethered to his body by only the thinnest tendril of soul, one strand wrapped stubbornly around his ankle—like in third year when Sirius was trapped beneath the hungry maws of a hundred dementors and somehow, against all odds, maintained control of his sanity.
Harry doesn’t know that he really needs his sanity, or his soul. But he doesn’t mind leaving them be, for now, as long as he is allowed to exist alongside them as something separate, unconcerned with the minutiae of daily life and not required to feign any sort of normalcy.
-
Time passes in the room like heavy sand through an hourglass, pouring endlessly with no true direction or meaning.
Harry only knows faintly that his skin has begun to wrinkle, his eyes stinging from salt, and his throat rasps with a drying soreness, but he can’t bring himself to care. Those are physical problems, temporary, and not important to him. Not while he is floating far above all of it.
And so Harry very nearly becomes the darkness. He feels himself seeping into it. His magic wants to morph change, deepen, to turn him into something—
Other.
He welcomes it.
-
But then—
Right before Harry completely loses himself, there is something—
A crack in the darkness, startling his slumber—a sound, piercing through the long silence, and—
Harry feels— something, eyelids fluttering, hands twitching, and—a sharp inhale, air rushing through lungs, coughing, spluttering, limbs splashing through water, and—
More light—
It hurts his eyes, stings, Harry squeezes them shut, he curls away from the brightness, he wants to hide, he wants to float again, he wants to—but no, he can’t because something is—
Grabbing, yanking, pulling at his wrists. Shaky palms pressed to his cheeks, hoisting him from the water, and—
Someone is swearing, shouting, fingers pressed to the pulse of his neck, feeling at the inside of his limp wrists, and—
“Harry,” they are saying, over and over and over. “Harry. Harry. Harry.”
-
Harry doesn’t like being out of the water.
He feels himself start to shiver. His teeth clack together. His arms and legs are numb, soaked, wet clothing clinging to cold skin, lips stinging, and mouth tasting of salt and bile. He can’t breathe, not really, his lungs are filled with something thick and wet and he can’t inhale enough to expel it, and he shudders, curling instinctively forward into the warm arms that have wrapped around him.
There is more swearing, a quiet oath in the damp, echoey chamber, and then there is a rush of magic spreading through Harry’s body and he chokes, spine arching, coughing up fluid and gagging, and then he can finally breathe again.
“Harry,” they say again.
“Dr— Dra—?”
Harry dissolves into coughs again.
Draco is trembling too. His breaths are coming out uneven, panicked, and Harry can feel his pulse racing.
“Dra— Draco,” he mumbles again, his voice hoarse.
“Save your breath,” the other boy says harshly, clutching Harry close to his chest. “Two days, Harry. Two fucking days. What were you thinking?”
“Two—?”
Draco makes a sound of frustration and then they are moving. Draco is tugging Harry fully out of the water, and Harry whines a wordless complaint and tries to free himself.
He doesn’t want to get out. He wants to stay in this warm, quiet darkness, to be alone, and Draco is trying to pull him out where it’s dry and bright and loud and he’ll have to think, and speak—
“Hold still, you prat,” Draco hisses angrily.
“Don’t— Draco, just—stop—” Harry chokes. He coughs. He fights weakly against Draco’s hold but Draco continues dragging him out of the water until they both collapse onto a floor that is rough and damp and smells of earth and salt and stale musk.
“Two days,” Draco says again through gritted teeth. He sits up, pressing Harry to the ground and patting him all over, starting with his face and working his way down, prodding at Harry’s chest and ribs, his stomach and hips, and his knees, and then even his toes.
“I… you… what are you…” Harry can hardly get the words out. He feels disoriented and he is still shivering, his teeth chattering and there are goosebumps pimpling constantly all over his body.
“Quiet.”
Draco sits Harry up and then peels the soaked sweater off his shoulders, setting it to the side. He mutters something under his breath and it feels as if a warm breeze blows through the room, ruffling Harry’s curls and drying the dampness of his skin. Harry wraps his arms around himself and makes a nervous sound when Draco’s hands move to undo Harry’s belt.
“Dra— Draco, what are— what are you—?”
Draco ignores him. He yanks the belt off and tosses it to the corner of the room, and then does the same with Harry’s pants, and then—still ignoring Harry’s weak protests—pulls Harry back into his arms.
“Your skin is like ice,” Draco mutters. He carefully stands, keeping Harry tucked up close to his chest, and trudges straight to the exit of the room where Harry can see light spilling in through the open doorway.
“No,” Harry pleads, when he begins to realise what is happening.
He wasn’t supposed to be found. He was supposed to be safe in the room, and he was supposed to stay there forever, or at least until he was fixed.
“Yes,” Draco says. “We’re going to the hospital wing, Harry.”
“Put me back,” Harry says. “Put me back, Draco. It’s not safe. I’m not—I’m not—you shouldn’t—”
“Hush,” Draco says.
“But—my—my sweater—!” Harry thinks wildly, craning his neck to stare back into the room that has begun to feel like home. “It’s—Mrs. Weasley sent it, please, let’s go back in and—”
“Not now,” Draco says. “I’ll get it later. You’re not going back in there, Harry.”
He steps out of the doorway and back into the hall of the seventh floor, and they are immediately accosted with overlapping exclamations. Harry flinches.
“Oh thank god,” Hermione is saying. She presses close, runs her fingers through his hair, and her hand is trembling. “Is he—”
“Bloody hell,” Ron says beside her, his face sheet-white. “Malfoy, how did you know—”
It’s all too much for Harry. Their words drive into his skull like needles, pricking at his sluggish consciousness, making his head ache and his eyes tear up. He turns his face and presses it into Draco’s chest, and Draco’s arms tighten around him. He overhears a bit more conversation, something like “sensory deprivation,” and “water inhalation,” and “dehydration,” and “hypothermia,” but they are all swimming out of order in his head and nothing makes sense. Before long Harry gives in to the encroaching blackness in the corners of his eyes and he slumps in Draco’s hold, losing consciousness.