'I am dying. That sword can kill anything,' Harry said then, and his restless eyes stopped roaming and fixed on Draco. 'I must be dying.
But I don?t feel like I?m dying. I just feel cold.'
'I could get you something-a blanket — '
Harrys hand closed on Dracos arm, above his wrist, just below where the Dark Mark burned like a black sun on his forearm.
'Don?t. Stay here.' He half-closed his eyes. 'Somethings happening to me.'
Dazedly, and with a curious certainty, Draco thought, but it can?t happen now, not with me watching. As if anxious vigilance could hold back the inevitable, as if his own gaze was all that stood between Harry and death. He could feel a pulse beating weakly in the hand that held his wrist, and wondered dimly if he would feel the moment that it stopped. He wanted to pull away from Harrys grasp on him, take him by the shoulders and shake him, shake him as if he were merely falling asleep and could be startled awake, shake the life back into him. But you couldn?t go around shaking people who had just been stabbed through the heart. He heard his own breath catch, as if he couldn?t quite get enough air, and there was a burning sensation behind in his eyes, as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper, and the faint pulse in the hand that held his arm beat and beat and beat steadily and then not so steadily as it suddenly sped up like a jackhammer and he nearly jumped back, shocked, as Harrys eyes flew open and he gasped suddenly, his hand tightening convulsively and with incredible force on Dracos wrist, nails cutting into his skin.
Draco stared. Instead of leaving Harrys face, color seemed to be flooding into it, a hectic red like a fever, the shades of life returning, the vivid eyes, and the chiaroscuro of the skin. His face was as it had been in the minutes before the sword ran through him — anxious, flushed, alive. A shudder passed through him, his shoulders lifting off the floor — he jumped as if something had stung him, and with a hitching gasp — sat up.
Draco grabbed at his shoulders, trying to steady him. But Harry didn?t need steadying. Draco felt the wetness of the cloth under his own fingers where blood had soaked through the back of Harrys shirt. And yet. Harry was sitting upright, wide-eyed, gasping a little.
They stared at each other, both dazed with the impossibility of what was happening. Harry couldn?t be sitting up, he couldn?t, it was sheer impossibility. By all rights he should be dead, and by the look on his face, he knew it.
Harry stared at Draco. 'It went through me — ' he said. 'It went right through me — '
Draco tightened his grip on Harrys shirt, the blood-soaked material knotting between his fingers. 'Can you breathe? You can breathe?'
Harry looked bewildered. 'I can breathe fine.' He blinked up at Draco. The ghostly look was gone from his eyes. He no longer looked as if he were gazing at some invisible country no one else could see.
There was a vivid high color in his face, as if he had been playing Quidditch in cold weather, but there was something missing from his expression and Draco realized with a jolt that he no longer looked as if he were feeling any pain.
'Harry,' he heard himself say, 'Whats going on?'
Harry shook his head, then let go Dracos arm, and his fingers went to his shirt, scrabbling at the buttons, nearly tearing the material. It came off and he had a t-shirt on under it. There was a rip in the shirt where the blade had gone through, just over his heart, and the rip was lined with blood. With shaking hands, Harry took the hem of the shirt in his grasp and pulled it up to his chin. And looked down at himself, eyes wide and brilliant with disbelief.
The Epicyclical Charm glittered on his chest, at the end of its chain, just above his heart, where a dark red line was all the evidence that remained to show that a blade had been driven in there with enough force to pierce the cage of his ribs and drive itself out through his back.
And as he looked, and Draco looked, in utter insurmountable astonishment, the mark faded even more. Now it was a faint red line.
Harry spun around, craning his head over his shoulder. 'My back.
Look at my back.'
Draco looked. The back of Harrys shirt was cut and bloody, but —
'Nothing.' His voice sounded faint and tinny to his own ears. 'Not any mark at all.'
Harry turned, tugging his shirt back down. His face was childlike with disbelief. 'It doesn?t make any sense.' He looked down at his t-shirt, and touched his fingers to the bloody rip in the cloth. He began to get to his feet, and staggered. Draco stood up himself, and caught Harrys arm. Harry let him, seemingly too bewildered and preoccupied to even notice the contact.
'Harry, maybe you shouldn?t — '
'I?m fine.' Harry gave a little choking noise between a laugh and a gasp. 'I?m fine, you saw me. What happened?' He turned to Draco, as if seeing him for the first time. 'Was it some kind of trick?'
Draco looked at him with wary and astonished concern. 'Don?t you remember?'
'I do remember. Thats the problem.' His eyes suddenly widened, staring over Dracos shoulder. Draco let go of him and watched him as he walked a few steps away and knelt down next to Slytherins sword, which lay where Draco had dropped it, still scarlet with his blood. Harry reached out a hand, touched the blade, and then retracted his fingers, staring. When he got to his feet and turned around to look at Draco his eyes were burning with an intense green fire. 'I felt it go through my heart,' he said. 'It went right through my heart but it didn?t kill me. What does that mean?'
Draco shook his head. He couldn?t shake the feeling that this was some peculiar dream he was having and that Harry really was dead.
Peoples minds did snap when events became too much for them to cope with, didn?t they? Perhaps they?d let him have his fathers old cell in St. Mungos. 'I don?t know,' he said, with complete honesty.
'You are the Boy Who Lived. Its not your first time…surviving something.'
'This is different,' said Harry, and the dazed wonderment made his eyes look cloudy. 'I felt it go through me. Like white fire.' Suddenly he reached down and seized the sword by the hilt. He stood up, and held it out towards Draco, point-first.
'Do it again,' he said.
