5) 'I know it is very cold in this dungeon. I will not pass judgment.'
The X-Files.
Draco did not move as Slytherin took another step back, away from the spot where Harry lay on the floor, on his side, his head on his arm. He looked as if he were asleep. His glasses were still on. Draco thought that didn?t look very comfortable, and would have knelt down and taken them off, except that he was hampered by the fact that he couldn?t move. He stood where he was as the bloodstained sword dropped out of his loosening fingers and clattered on the clear adamantine floor. Draco didn?t hear it. He was looking at Harry.
<He saw Harry when he was eleven years old, sitting astride his broomstick, reaching his hand out for the Remembrall, telling Draco to give it back, the clear light of dislike and defiance burning in the back of his green eyes>
Slytherin took a step forward over Harry where he lay on the floor, and came up to Draco. He took him by the arms and seemed to be saying something to him. Whatever it was, he was saying it very loudly. Draco looked at him without expression; at the center of the static motionless whirlpool he had fallen into, there was no room for any words. He heard no part of what was said to him, nor did he care. It didn?t matter.
<He saw Harry on one side of a cage whose bars were made of light.
And Harry slashed his palm open with a knife that flared silver in the darkness, and held his bloody hand through the bars, his face white with pain and determination>
Slytherin shook him, hard, hands on his shoulders, and the next words he spoke broke in through the confusion flooding Draco's mind like pebbles striking through water. 'Don?t tell me you never wished he was dead,' he said.
<He saw Harry standing at the edge of the quarry, half-transparent with the stars shining through the outline of his hair and face and hands and Harry took a step towards him. You wouldn?t hurt me, he said>
'Ungrateful child,' said the Snake Lord. Draco felt Slytherins grip on his arms loosen as he stepped back and looked from his Heir, to Harry, and back again, and smiled a smile laced with poison.
'Wherever he is gone now,' he said, indicating Harry with a jerk of the chin, his eyes on Draco, 'remember that it was your hand that sent him there.'
And having released his grasp, he turned his back on Draco and walked towards the wall. The dark opening appeared, and he vanished through it.
Now Draco did move. Not so much out of volition as out of the fact that his legs had given out. He hit the floor of the cell on his hands and knees, and crawled to kneel next to Harry. He reached to touch Harrys shoulder, to straighten the dark head, turning Harrys face towards him. As he did so he saw that his own hands were splashed with tiny flecks of blood and the blood came off on Harry where he touched him.
'Harry,' he said. It was reflexive. Not quite having managed to accept it, he still assumed Harry was already dead. And yet it was impossible. Surely, if Harry was dead, he would feel it, surely that part of Harry he had carried inside him since the Polyjuice potion had linked them together would die, would sputter and be extinguished, and, having dwelled as two souls in one body for these past months, surely he would feel that amputation with the pain of a physical wound. Instead, all he felt was a pattern of this deadly numbness that seemed to go on and on and on without stopping.
Don?t tell me you never wished he was dead.
He remembered standing on the Quidditch pitch, fifth year, and the crowds shrieking in the stands as Harry landed, the sunlight striking sparks off the Snitch in his upraised hand, and Harry smiling, looking towards Ron and Hermione in the stands, smug in his victory. He remembered Dex Flint saying 'You?re an exceptional Seeker, Malfoy, the best we could hope for, but Potter will always be just that little bit better than you.' And he remembered loathing Harry for that, and maybe he had wanted him dead, and over such a stupid thing, such a stupid little thing as Quidditch.
A coldness seemed to be spreading out from his stomach, coupled with nausea, and he fought it down, not thinking about watching Hermione run towards Harry across the grass in front of Slytherins castle and hurl her arms around him, even though Draco was the one who had rescued her, Harry hadn?t done much of anything but stand there, and even with love potion in her veins it still wasn?t enough, it was never enough, and had he hated him then, had he wanted him dead, had he wished it?
He felt his own voice bubble up from his throat as if he had no control over it. 'Harry.'
And Harry moved. His eyelids flickered and raised themselves, his eyes widened, and he looked around him, as if he had just woken up from a dream.
Draco felt his hand spasmodically close on Harrys shoulder, fingers digging in. Harrys eyes flicked to his. They were wide, the green irises peculiarly lambent, like far-off and unreachable water. 'I don?t feel anything,' Harry said, and the blood ran out from under his body across the floor, more scarlet than the Gryffindor lion, crimson jewelry against the adamantine blue. 'Did…did it miss me?'
Draco remembered the sensation of his fist striking against Harrys chest as the sword buried itself to the hilt there. He said, rather wildly, 'Yes. Yes, it must have.'
Harrys eyes narrowed. 'You?re lying.' His voice was bizarrely steady. 'I felt it go through my chest.' He coughed. 'Your hands are all bloody,' he said.
Draco looked down at his hands, then back at Harry. Pressure like a shriek of anguish beat behind his eyes. Somehow it seemed very important to him to stay as calm as possible and not alarm or startle Harry, who perhaps had gone to a place where pain couldn?t reach him. It seemed to him almost as though if he could keep Harry from knowing how badly he had been, must be, hurt, then the hurt, ignored, might go away. He remembered suddenly Helgas voice, which was like Ginnys, speaking to him in that vaguely gray place of shadows, Be kind to him. He is only a child, and he has his death wound.
'Its all right,' he said to Harry. His hands went to his own throat, and undid the bronze pins that held his cloak together. He took it off, folded it flat, and slid it under Harrys head. Harry didn?t say anything. Nor did he move, only his eyes, passing over Draco, over the room itself, as if these were things he had never seen before. He was very white.
'Just stay still,' Draco said. He wished desperately there were someone else here with him. Sirius, or Hermione, or someone, as he had when faced with the shades of Harrys parents. Knowing that while he had words for almost every occasion — brittle words and clever words and words that cut like steel — he had no words to comfort or to console, had never been taught comfort or consolation or the telling of necessary lies. You ?ll be fine, he should say. Hang in there, Potter. But he couldn?t.
