Broken
The first thing that Draco noticed when he woke up was the anxious, writhing mess that was Potter’s magic. It filled the room heavily, thick with worry.
The second thing that Draco noticed was that he couldn’t feel anything else. It felt like every nerve ending in his body had disappeared. There was no pain, but there was also nothing else— not the feeling of a bed beneath him, blankets covering him, or even clothes on him. For all he knew, he was floating in a vacuum, completely starkers.
He pried his eyes open, suddenly afraid that was the case, and felt relieved when he saw he was in a bed in the infirmary, covered in white bedding.
Right. One question answered, but many more were raised. Why was he in the infirmary in the first place? He thought back. He remembered falling, then darkness. Was he paralyzed? He focused on his left big toe, then tried to wriggle it. While he still couldn’t feel anything, he could see the bedsheet move near his feet. Slowly, he tried moving his head side to side, satisfied when his field of view moved with it. He considered trying to lift an arm—a task that seemed monumentally difficult for some reason—but disregarded the idea when he felt another heavy wave of Potter’s magic sweep over him.
Potter. It all came rushing back—returning from a visit with his mother, finding Potter asleep and floating in their piano room, trying to reach him, being swept into the fiery tornado, Potter waking up, him falling.
Was Potter alright? Draco could feel his magic, so he must be nearby, but was nowhere in sight. Draco wondered if he could speak and decided to try.
“Cloak, Potter.” It was hoarse, but it worked. After a tense moment of silence, there was a rustling, and Potter appeared. They stared at each other a moment, and Draco searched for something to say, clearing his throat. “Are you alright?”
It was a stupid question— Potter looked terrible, if Draco was being honest. Rumpled clothes, baggy eyes, and bad posture (more so than usual) all suggested a sleepless night. His worry manifested in a hard set to his jaw, a furrow to his brow.
But what concerned Draco more than anything was how uncharacteristically still Potter was. None of his normal fidgeting or bouncing from foot to foot. He looked like he was holding himself carefully. Draco’s eyes caught on one of those glowing marks peeking out from under one of Potter’s sleeves and wondered, not for the first time, if they were painful.
“I’m fine,” Potter said, shaking his head with a tortured expression. “You’re not.”
“Wouldn’t know. I can’t feel anything,” Draco said with a huff of a chuckle. Potter didn’t laugh, somehow looking even more concerned instead.
“You can’t—I mean, I think you fell pretty hard, but you can’t feel anyth—”
“Potter,” Draco interjected, “It’s from the potions that I’m sure Madame Pomfrey shoved down my throat while I was out. I can still taste them a bit.”
“Oh.” He didn’t look entirely convinced, but nodded slightly anyways. “I didn’t know. She kicked me out right after I brought you here.”
“So naturally, you retrieved your Cloak and returned,” Draco said with a hesitant smirk. He wanted to see some sort of mischievous glint in Potter’s eyes, but all he got was another hollow look and another moment of charged silence.
Finally, Potter ducked his head. “I should go, Pomfrey will be back any second.” Draco would have protested, had he made any effort to leave, but he stayed, fiddling with the Cloak. He looked towards the door, then turned back to Draco, taking a small step forwards. His hands formed fists in the Cloak as he dragged his eyes up to meet Draco’s. “Malfoy, I—”
Just then, the office door of the hospital wing banged open, startling them both. Draco looked over to see Madame Pomfrey appear, looking slightly frazzled. “My apologies, Mr. Malfoy,” she said as she bustled over. “I didn’t notice that my monitoring charm had detected that you were awake until now.”
Draco’s eyes darted back to the spot Potter had been standing a second before, relieved to find it empty. “Quite alright,” he said.
“Now, let’s take a look at you,” she said, arriving at his bedside.
Straight to business as always, she flicked her wand to pull back the bedsheets, and Draco discovered he was dressed in only his boxers, much of the rest of his body covered in white bandages. Working from his feet upwards, she began to cast diagnostic spells, making notes as she went. He lay quietly, staring up at the ceiling and letting her work.
Despite the fact that his sense of touch was still gone, he could feel the tingle of her spellwork. Draco frowned. He had always been able to sense magic, he supposed, but had never thought it was something abnormal. In classes, they talked about how magic felt all the time, describing Alohomora as ‘freeing’ or Stinging Hexes as ‘sharp’. But now that Draco thought about it, perhaps those descriptions were about how they were meant to feel to the caster, not necessarily observers or recipients. He made a mental note to research his newfound sixth sense later.
Draco decided to test it out a bit now, centering on the feeling of Potter’s magic. Merlin, now that he was focused on it, he realized the air was full of it, hanging around them like a thick fog of anxiety and fear. He could interact with it by playing the piano, he knew, but could he do so without playing? He prodded at it mentally, pleased to discover that it almost felt solid.
He was distracted from his musings when Madame Pomfrey finished her diagnostic spells and began removing the bandages covering his arms. A spike of horror followed by waves of guilt in Potter’s magic made Draco look down.
Oh. Oh, fuck.
Stay calm, Potter, he pleaded mentally.
Madame Pomfrey pursed her lips and Summoned half a dozen jars of potions. “You can’t feel anything, correct?”
“No.” Draco drew a breath, held it, and let it out. “Madame,” he said, keeping his voice level with extreme effort, “Is it as bad as it looks?”
“Worse, I’m afraid.” The brusque professionalism of her usual tone was marred by pity.
Draco gave a pained laugh. “How much worse?”
“To start, the burns go more than skin-deep. They came from magical fire, I presume?” Draco nodded once in confirmation, remembering the floating lanterns exploding as they connected with his hands. “By the time you were brought to me, the fire had burnt through to the bone in some places, but especially your hands. Once it reaches bone, magical fire can travel along the bone, underneath your skin, to places where you did not come into contact with the fire. Along the way, it induced dozens of small heat fractures, which as an isolated issue, would be entirely treatable.”
“But it wasn’t isolated,” Draco said quietly.
“Indeed. To begin with, your arms were also riddled with deep puncture wounds from shattered glass. I have extracted all of the shards, I believe, but they interacted with the magical fire and caused quite a bit of muscular damage in your forearms. Furthermore, some reached bone, causing further problems.
“Lastly, Mr. Malfoy, you fell. It appears that you attempted to break your fall and protect your head with your arms—as you should have. However, in addition to a couple of clean breaks in your upper arms here, and here, you have completely shattered every bone from your elbow down.” Madame Pomfrey paused, once again looking distressed on his behalf. “And that is just the summary of the injuries sustained on your arms.”
“Ah,” Draco said, trying desperately to ignore the panic that was manifesting both in himself and in Potter’s magic. “And the healing process?”
“Fortunately, I expect everything to heal completely.”
Relief flooded him. Could have led with that, Draco thought.
“Most of your injuries, with the exception of those on your arms, should be healed properly by the end of the day. They were fairly minor. You should expect your arms, however, to take significantly longer to heal. The skin, as you can see, was severely damaged, but it has begun its regrowth process nicely. Scarring, if any, will be faint.
“However, your bones… the heat fractures and subsequent shattering complicated things greatly. It’s not so simple as mending a break, or even removing your bones and regrowing them. They must reform somewhat organically. We will use magic to speed along the process, of course, but it will be several days before you are able to hold your wand, and perhaps a few weeks before you can regain the fine motor skills required to use a quill again.”
Or play the piano, Draco thought with a pang.
Draco closed his eyes and they lapsed into silence. Madame Pomfrey cleaned the wounds, rubbed a few potions into them, had him swallow a couple, then wrapped them in new bandages. Once finished, she sent her supplies flying back to the cupboards they came from.
She pulled up a chair and sat. Draco got the feeling that she was gearing up to say something important and waited patiently.
“Mr. Malfoy,” she began, peering at him over her spectacles, “I understand that you are in a difficult position here, and that not all students have taken kindly to your return to Hogwarts.”
“It’s been alright,” he said slowly, confused as to where she was going with this. “I’ve kept out of trouble.” She gave him a pointed look. “Until now, I suppose.”
“I would like to emphasize that unfair treatment towards any student is never condoned, no matter who is doling out that treatment. Say the word, Mr. Malfoy, and I will speak with the Headmistress. Celebrity status and past good deeds protect no one enough to commit crimes against—“
“You think Potter attacked me?” Draco realized with a laugh. “Golden Boy, Saviour of the Wizarding World, Boy Who Lived? That Potter?”
She bristled. “Well, Mr. Potter was the one who brought you here, looking like this.”
“Oh,” Draco said sarcastically, ready to make a smart remark about how bringing him to the hospital wing proved very thoroughly that Potter wanted to hurt him. He stopped, reminding himself that Madame Pomfrey was only looking out for him. Draco reeled in his tone, speaking again only once he was sure he could be polite. “I appreciate your concern, Madame Pomfrey. Rest assured, Harry Potter would never try to hurt me like this.”
His words were partly for Potter’s sake, said with the hope that Potter would understand that he meant it. Potter would never try to hurt him. Not anymore, anyways, and never to this extent. Judging from the way Potter’s magic continued to drip with guilt, Draco wasn’t sure that the message got through to him.
“Very well. Mr. Malfoy, my point still stands: as a student here, you are entitled to the same protections as any other. I need names of the students that did this.”
“I would give them to you if there were any. As it was, I was really just being quite clumsy using one of those back staircases on my way back from visiting with my mother. I tripped and knocked into a couple of the lanterns that light the passage and must have fallen down several flights of stairs. I’m lucky— and grateful, I suppose— that Potter was able to find me and bring me here.”
For a moment, Madame Pomfrey looked like she would press him for more. It wasn’t a very good lie, and they both knew it. Fortune seemed to favor him in that moment, because her eyes drifted back to the bandages covering his arms and she just shook her head to herself.
“This is not the end of this discussion,” she said, standing. “The Headmistress wishes to speak with you, as well as Professor Slughorn. We are here to help, Mr. Malfoy, and you would do well to remember it. However, for now, it would be best for your healing if you slept.”
With a flick of her wand, the bedsheets covered him and the curtains around his station drew shut behind her.
Draco let out a breath once she was gone. She was right, he was exhausted, but there was the slightly more pressing matter of a certain invisible Savior.
“Cloak, Potter,” he whispered.
If Potter looked terrible before, he looked positively broken now. He hung back, as far from the bed as he could get without leaning into the curtains.
“It’s not your fault,” Draco said quietly, trying to convey how true he believed it to be.
Potter shook his head, looking horrified. “Yes, it is.” Potter abruptly took three long steps and was standing right in front of him, suddenly so close. Draco drank in his presence, taking momentary comfort in the protective expression on Potter’s face. A shaking hand reached towards Draco, as if to cup his cheek, then retreated quickly.
Potter swung the Invisibility Cloak over himself in one quick, jerky motion. Draco felt Potter’s breath on his cheek and froze. “Draco,” Potter said, voice breaking, “I am so, so sorry.”
With that, Potter was gone, leaving the hospital wing and taking his agitated magic with him. Draco lay there in shock, wishing that he could get up and follow him, afraid of Potter getting hurt because of his accidental magic, angry that Potter left him there alone.
It took Draco a long while to fall asleep.