Injuri Priori
It must be understood that Harry Potter did not want to set a precedent for doing what his enemies told him to do. However, the truth was that he needed the Forget-Me-Not Tonic more than Lucius Malfoy probably knew, and that was a fact Harry found fit to keep to himself.
As the blond-haired wizard had said, however snobbishly, people with Harry’s condition didn’t necessarily need to take memory joggers, in the sense that they were hardly likely to, well, die without them; regardless, they more than craved them following a severe bleed. Something about knowing that you’ve forgotten the details of something which might have killed you, and all that. It didn’t matter whether the details themselves were merely foggy, as blurry as a bird’s-eye-view of the Miserable Mist of the Moors of Devonshire or blotted out entirely—the Forget-Me-Not Tonic was part and parcel of proper aftercare protocol for every single one of the twenty-seven currently known cases of Hadrian’s Hollow Heart across Britain and the Continent.
And this was only the most basic standard of all such supplementary procedures.
And Harry, who had never gone without it, hadn’t the clearest understanding of the risks which were far greater than just a fuzzy recollection if he didn’t take the tonic as required.
Precisely because his case was uncommonly severe, his potions, tonics and all his other trappings needed to be routinely adjusted to assure that they were working to their full capacity. Any change in the procedure—or so Snape, Madame Pomfrey and a handful of other magimedics sworn to secrecy and charged with his care had quite firmly insisted—could result in catastrophy.
It wasn’t just that Harry’s memory would take longer to return without the tonic—if it even returned at all. It was that his equilibrium would be out of kilter without it, which came with an entire slew of potential problems that Harry had been fortunate enough never to have experienced given the high levels of care that he had received since his diagnosis. In fact, but also most unfortunately, he might not even recognise them for what they were.
Harry Potter was an extraordinary boy by all means, and many witches and wizards seemed to think the wizarding world had merely caught a glimpse of the power he—the famous Boy Who Lived, Hogwarts Champion and all the usual fanfare—possessed. However, sometimes he was, in fact, just Harry.
A boy wizard with bright green eyes, jetblack hair and a life-threatening secret with the eyes of the wizarding world always on him.
Despite the countless number of stays and studies Harry had undergone at St. Mungo’s, he wasn’t a mediwizard, nor did he necessarily plan to become one. He couldn’t even restock his own Medipotions Kit; the magical concoctions in it often contained ingredients that were rather hard to find in the average potions store, and even the simplest of potions required NEWT-level familiarity with the art of potion making. Even less was Harry an encyclopedia on H3; Hermione arguably had him beat in that regard, having read all there was to know on the subject.
What Harry excelled in were the things which he could do best, the things which were reasonably under his control, and that was thoroughly understanding his protocols and procedures and always assuring they were met. He had proven himself capable enough of following them to a tee and kept accurate track of his applications in the medical history journal contained in his kit. Moreover, Nefeli was always there to help him when he most needed it.
Which was all well and good on a normal day but given that Lucius Malfoy had quite suddenly and unexpectedly become his caretaker and interrupted him and Nefeli before they could hardly get started, Harry was left feeling more than uneasy, all potion-primed feelings of peace to the contrary.
And so, knowing only that he needed the tonic to complete the post stage of his treatment procedure, Harry proceeded to go get changed as Lucius Malfoy had asked. He was still covered in bloody robe, which, while dry now, were nevertheless less comfortable than non-blood-crusted clothes.
Besides, it would give him a chance to assess his injuries away from prying eyes.
Harry made his way out of the fake dormitory onto the tower landing. The tower stairs—which he didn’t even try to take, knowing he wouldn’t get very far—looked the same as they always did, but instead of an open archway at the bottom, there was a large wooden door. There was no bridge leading to the second staircase which usually continued on another flight to the girls dormitories, and the only other door that was there led into the boys’ lavatory. To his surprise, it was not actually a warped version of the lads’ toilets in Gryffindor Tower.
Oddly enough, it was most clearly the prefects’ bathroom on the 5th floor, which Harry had first visited before the Second Task.
Glancing around the room, he saw that there too were no windows, no closets, nor any other sort of door or exit apart from the one which led out onto the landing and Gr—not Gryffindor tower where Lucius Malfoy was promptly waiting for him to return. The pool-sized tub took up most of the room, apart from a rather modest changing station, a row of handwashing stations, and a standard set of loos in their cubicles. Surprisingly, the blonde-haired mermaid was not fast asleep on her rock as usual, but combing her hair with a fishbone instead. It was exactly the same as it had been the last time he was here.
Well, not here here, but at Hogwarts.
And yet there wasn’t the lingering scent of aromatic bubbles in the air. In fact, the room smelled of nothing, as if no one had ever used it before or like it wasn’t exactly real, not that that made any sense. He was there now, wasn’t he? There was a memory on the tip of his mind, something Malfoy had said before about the room and its design, but it disappeared before Harry could truly remember it.
At any rate, there was something strange but familiar about the place, and there was something else, a feeling Harry couldn’t quite pinpoint…
With no signs of Moaning Myrtle lurking about, Harry felt no qualms about undressing before one of the mirrors in order to get a better look at his injuries. Nefeli had not got the chance to tell him how he had come to have them, but Harry could tell from the scarring that had yet to clear away—he would need ripe riditio leaves for that—that they had not come from the same source.
Both marks were a dark shade of purple and surrounded by greenish yellow bruising. The wound on his arm appeared to have been the deeper of the two, but his leg had clearly taken the worst of it. It almost looked as if it had been spliced open along the shin; white, hairline markings fanned out from the long central cut as well, making him think that whatever had caused it must have had some kind of bristle-like texture to it. He made a mental note to sketch what they looked like later on so as not to forget, and then turned his attention to other areas.
The only other thing remotely out of the ordinary—apart from his healing injuries and the fact that he was, well, here in this situation to begin with—was that his tongue had a slight blue tinge to it, courtesy of the Filligree’s Fillup blood replenisher. At the same time, his mouth was no longer dry nor did it taste anything of lemon parsnips, a sign that it had been fully absorbed into his bloodstream.
As for the rest of him, Harry looked relatively alright, all things considered. His skin looked neither wan, nor jaundiced, and seemed to have regained its usual vibrance, although he did appear to have faint rings underneath his eyes despite the fact that he had spent nearly two days asleep. If he were to guess from the texture of his upper right arm, Malfoy had applied at least five layers of the Beaupalm salve, although it was really just a guess. Usually, Madame Pomfrey or whichever other mediwitch or wizard had treated him would simply write the number into his charts. Seeing as it was just up to him and Nefeli, he would need to record it himself.
After taking one last close look at his injuries, Harry dressed himself in the robes that were folded on top of a small table, seeing as there was no point in washing now. It would only wear down the top layers of salve on his skin.
The robes were not his own, and Harry wasn’t sure if he had expected them to be or not. However, they did somewhat resemble the ones he had worn to the Yule Ball. Dress robes, almost new or at least hardly worn. They fit him rather well, and were sleek, black with a green hood and collar; in all likelihood they had been worn by Draco Malfoy to some pureblood banquet or other—
‘Dawdling, I see,’ came the voice of Lucius Malfoy from the doorway, and Harry spun around to face him.
‘I’ve done what you’ve asked,’ said Harry, his voice not giving away the creeping sensation that he felt at having been snuck up on with his back to the door. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘You will receive the tonic once you’ve demonstrated you can behave yourself,’ Lucius said curtly. ‘After the celebration dinner, perhaps.’
‘Celebration?’ As if it hadn’t already been confusing enough…
Lucius smirk at that. ‘For a rather momentous occasion. One of a kind, really. Otherwise everyday robes would have obviously been more suitable than your current attire,’ he said, self-satisfied, and Harry didn’t like the mean look of excitement on the man’s face. Turning towards the tower stairs, the blond wizard said in a commanding voice, ‘Now, follow me—'
‘But what—’
‘Ah ah ah,’ said the blond wizard, immediately turning his attention back to the Boy Who Lived, ‘what did I tell you about asking questions?’
‘Er—not to?’ Harry said, perplexed as to why in the ever-loving Merlin he’d been overcome with the sudden urge to actually answer Malfoy’s most likely rhetorical question in the first place.
Lucius Malfoy’s eyes bored into Harry’s, and Harry felt that strange feeling he sometimes felt around Snape, when it seemed like the other was capable of reading his mind—or maybe it was simply loathing—but he refused to look away.
‘Now, Potter, I will tell you something that even you can wrap your thick head around,’ said Malfoy, a hard expression on his face. ‘In this place there are wards and charms all around you. There is nothing you can do that I won’t know about. No schemes you can concoct, no tricks to be pulled. I can bring you comfort, or misery. Learn to do as I say and there need be no reason for the latter.’
‘And you’ll give me my tonic?’ Harry said, watching the man’s face carefully. ‘If I… listen.’ He would not say obey.
‘Listen, behave, not cause me more trouble and irritation than you are worth,’ Malfoy said, lifting his chin indignantly. ‘That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?’
Luckily, Harry’s stomach took that moment to grumble rather loudly, and he rubbed at it absentmindedly with the palm of his hand, trying to still the noise.
‘It is as I predicted, we are right on schedule,’ said Malfoy, checking his pocket watch, not drawing attention to the fact that Harry had opened his mouth to answer his last question. ‘Come along, Potter. Let’s see if you can’t earn this.’ He teasingly flashed the Forget-Me-Not Tonic at Harry, then returned it to his pocket.
Harry glanced at himself once more in the mirror, let out a sigh and, with as begrudging a expression as he could muster, crossed the room to meet his captor.