'I cannot help but feel that with some unknown magic affecting your health, it would be irresponsible of me not to — '
'Please,' Draco said. 'I'm not that sick, I'm not dying right now. It would ruin the wedding — my mother would panic — and for what? For me to find out that there's something terribly wrong with me a few days earlier? I already know that. Thanks but no thanks.'
Snape looked hesitant. 'Does anyone else know about this? Does Potter?'
'Harry? He knows a little. Hermione knows. She's looking into it.'
'Oh, indeed,' Snape said acidly. 'You're well taken care of then, aren't you?'
'Please,' Draco said again. He could think of no elegant argument, and no grounds on which he could logically appeal to Snape. Snape was probably right; Sirius should know. It was just that Draco hated the idea. Once everyone knew, it would become real. Something with which he would have to cope. And there would be mediwizards and infirmaries and people panicking and none of it would help — of that he was sure — and he wouldn't be any use to Harry after that. 'Isn't there anything…'
'Very well,' Snape said, unexpectedly.
Draco blinked at him. 'Pardon?'
'I said very well. We will wait until after the wedding. It will give me time…' Snape removed the handkerchief from Draco's arm, folded it, and slipped it into his pocket. Draco watched with wide eyes. 'It will give me a chance to run some tests on your blood. I'm hardly a mediwizard, but I can certainly detect if a potion has been used on you.'
There was a long pause. 'Thanks,' Draco said finally.
Snape's coal-black eyes glittered. 'Do not thank me. It is unnecessary. I will return to my laboratory and run some tests on the blood. It will give me an excuse to miss the rehearsal dinner.'
Draco found himself almost smiling. 'Glad I could help out.'
'I do not enjoy parties,' Snape ruminated. 'Unless, of course, there is karaoke.'
'Right,' Draco said tactfully.
'In any case, you should return to the house. You should not be out in the cold when you are ill. Shall I Apparate you back?'
Draco shook his head. 'I'll take a carriage. It's fine. Thanks again.'
For a moment, Snape seemed to hesitate, and Draco had the thought that Snape might pat him on the shoulder — but the moment passed, and the thought with it. Snape released his hold on Draco's arm, nodded briefly, and Apparated away, leaving Draco standing in the snow under the lantern, lost in thought.
Harry had recovered enough by the time they reached the Manor to make it up the stairs to his bedroom without any assistance. He left Sirius and Lupin looking half-worried, half-amused in the entry hall, staggered up the steps, found the door to his bedroom, yanked it open, and half-collapsed inside.
Someone had lit the fire in the grate and the candles bracketed on the walls. Usually this sort of thing bothered Harry, who liked to do things himself, but now he was happy not to have to fumble for a light. Dizzy and swaying on his feet, he stripped down to his boxers, folded his clothes and left them in a neat pile outside the door for the laundry elves, and crawled between the sheets on his bed.
He had thought he would drop off instantly, and he would have, if only the bed would have stopped spinning. He could feel it rotating under him, the world tilting slightly. The buoyant happiness of the Cheering Charm was fading, replaced by a whirling pale-gold dizziness. It felt a little like flying, if one could fly lying down.
Harry would have expected it to fade as he sank towards sleep, but it did not. Instead, it intensified. Eyes closed, he saw again the vast and inky winter sky above him, the shards of stars, the broken clouds; he felt the icy wind in his hair, tearing at him, heard his own voice cry out as he fell.
I cannot die, he had thought, tumbling through the air, I cannot die, because I have not yet done what I must do. Therefore I must be invulnerable. And if he was invulnerable, surely Draco was also immune to harm, because it was impossible that one of them might cease to exist and the other one would still continue. Draco's anger had confused him for this reason. Didn't he understand?
And Harry had not died. Here he was, and he felt better than he had in months and months. He both seemed to have left his body and to be acutely aware of every molecule. The soft rasp of the wool blankets against his skin as he turned over; the loud crackle of the fire popping in the grate, the heat in the room pressing down on him, pressing down, as if a heavy weight had settled on top of him. It was all part of the same dream of ice and fever.
Something brushed against his face. Eyes still shut, he turned his head aside, but the light touch on his face remained. He raised his hand to brush it away, but stopped: it felt pleasant. Where he had been too hot, he felt cool fingers brush across his skin — and they were fingers, he realized that — and the same light cool touch at his temples and at his throat and in his hair. Someone was brushing his hair back, softly. Only one person had ever done that for him. Hermione, he thought, and then, I'm having a dream. I don't want to wake up.
He kept his eyes shut, firmly. He was dreaming, of that he was positive. He had dreamed of her several times since he had come to the Manor again.
Each time he woke up against his will, miserable at leaving the dream world behind. This, though, this felt realer than anything he'd ever dreamed. He felt the light touch of hands on his face again, and then a shadow moved beyond his eyelids, and he felt lips against his own lips, cool and smooth. His breath caught in his throat; he was suddenly dizzy, so dizzy he felt as if he were tumbling off the edge of the world. He fell through a radiating cool darkness; he felt pleasure, and the pleasure was sickening; he felt pain, and welcomed the pain. He hurt, he burned, he froze and shivered; he felt — and he had not felt in a long, long time. This was what he had been reaching for that night in the alley with Hermione; this was what he could not bring himself to tell her he wanted, because she would hate him for it. But now he was dreaming, and he could have this from her in dreams; she would forgive him for that; she would never know.
'Harry,' she said. He opened his eyes; he could see only crazily swinging shadows. Her hair fell down around them both like a tent. She was a genie in a bottle: a dream born out of loneliness and alcohol. It was a dream, and he knew it was a dream, but he did not want to leave the dream, and could not have if he had wanted to. Lassitude like nothing he'd ever experienced had invaded his body; his blood had been replaced by slowly flowing golden syrup. It burned in his veins. 'Keep your eyes open,' she said, and her voice was as sweet as poisoned candy. 'Look at me.'
He tried to, and maybe he did. He would never know, later, if he had. A darkness as black as her hair came rolling down over him; he fought it for a moment, but the current swept him away and he remembered nothing else after that.
Draco woke early the next morning after passing a restless night to find the rest of his Christmas present from Sirius in a small envelope next to the bed. It was the instruction manual for a brand-new Cloudburst broom.
'Here's the rest of your bloody present,' said the note attached. 'Hint: it doesn't fly.'
'That's what you think,' Draco announced rebelliously, and proceeded to make a paper airplane out of the front cover.
He abandoned this amusing pastime when an eagle owl bearing a rolled letter tapped on the window with its beak. He threw the window open, letting in great bursts of cold air, and took the parchment from the bird.
Propping his elbows on the windowsill, he read aloud to himself:
'Mad as a brush,' Draco announced, and tossed the crumpled-up parchment onto his bed. Still, he did feel
