Chapter Text
The Before
“Petrificus Totalus!”
His wand still pointing up at the luggage rack where he was sure he had seen movement, Draco watched as a body appeared in the air, the invisibility cloak that had been wrapped around it pulling free. The body landed with a thud and Draco looked down into the vivid green eyes of one Harry James Potter.
He should feel gleeful, he thought to himself numbly. Jubilant even, to have caught his schoolboy nemesis spying on him and have him at his mercy. But he didn’t. It was hard to feel anything anymore when he was so burnt out with terror. Because that’s all they were. Schoolboys. It had been easy to rage against Potter in Madam Malkin’s with his mother there to defend - everything seemed easier when it was in defence of his mother. But now? Alone? In a rapidly darkening train compartment? Things were less clear.
Draco sighed to himself and closed his eyes for a moment. The urge to stomp on the other’s face was fleeting but strong. A powerful wave that had his calf flexing in anticipation but his foot didn’t move. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of it. He opened his eyes and pointed his wand at Potter. Potter stared up at him defiantly, not a trace of fear to be seen. Draco couldn’t help the twitch of his lips - the ghost of a smirk. If there was anyone alive who could face the Dark Lord and triumph, it was the fierce boy below him.
And then the smirk fell.
“Finite.”
Potter arms, that had been held rigidly to his body, relaxed and landed on the floor with a soft thud. Potter was half sat up in an instant, his body coiled and prepared to strike.
And so they looked at one another. Potter waiting to attack, while Draco only felt increasingly irritated by Potter’s indignant expression. He was the one who had been spying! What did he have to be self-righteous about? It was Draco who broke their stalemate with a hand held out for the other to take. Potter eyed it suspiciously.
“Get a move on, Potter,” Draco snapped. “Unless you’re planning on riding this train back to London, we need to get off.”
Potter accepted his hand cautiously and was starting to look faintly embarrassed now, straightening his clothes and pulling his invisibility cloak up off the floor. Draco watched him, cold and detached, eyeing the cloak’s odd ripple. He frowned a little. He’d never seen a cloak quite like that before.
“Dare I ask why perfect Potter has an invisibility cloak?” Draco drawled. “Or rather, should I ask why you were spying on me?” he added more harshly.
Potter scowled at him, rolling up the cloak and stuffing it under his top and out of sight. “Jeez, I wonder why I’d be interested in what the son of a Death Eater talks about when he thinks no one’s listening?” he said, all sarcasm and rolling his eyes.
“You didn’t hear anything I care about,” Draco answered with a lazy shrug and a considering tilt of his head. “And you didn’t answer my question. The cloak.”
“I don’t have to answer questions from you.”
Potter turned to leave and almost of its own accord, Draco’s hand was snatching at his arm to yank him back. He let go quickly, surprise and shock loosening his grip when Potter’s fist collided with his face. He wasn’t on the back foot for long though, throwing his own punch. The fight only escalated from there, punching and kicking and grappling, until they were on the floor between the seats with Potter pinned to the floor beneath him.
Draco grinned viciously at him, knowing by the metallic taste in his mouth that his teeth were stained red but Potter didn’t look much better. His glasses were crooked and broken and blood poured freely from his split eyebrow up into his hair. Potter panted furiously, snarling and trying to throw Draco off of him but without success. Draco had his wrists pinned by his head, one in each hand, his knees on either side of Potter’s waist. His sure grip and weight advantage meant that Potter was going nowhere.
Draco chuckled to himself, feeling almost deranged with the adrenalin pumping through his veins as he leered down at the boy beneath him. And then Potter abruptly stilled. Draco tensed, half expecting another attack. Then he understood.
Draco could feel something hard pressing up against him where he was half sat on Potter’s groin. He was prepared to lean back and mock the other boy when he realised that Potter wasn’t the only one with an erection. His own shame and confusion silenced him. His eyes found Potter’s lips, pretty and red, though he knew it was because they were stained with blood rather than it being Potter’s natural colouring.
Then Potter was shoving at his chest and he found himself falling back against the seats. He expected Potter to reverse their positions. To punch him in the face some more. But he didn’t. Instead, he stormed out of the compartment, slamming the door behind him and making the glass rattle loudly.
Draco lay on the floor for a moment and gave himself the chance to get his breath back and himself under control.
Fuck. What had that been?
He followed Potter out of the train in a weary trudge, his trunk floating obediently behind him. It was only as he stepped out onto the platform that he realised how quiet it was. They’d been so busy fighting he hadn’t noticed the train emptying. Stepping out of the station, the sight in front of him had his heart sinking in his chest.
There was only one carriage left and Potter was in it.
Potter, who had been watching him, looked away quickly. He said nothing as Draco loaded his trunk onto the back, and kept his silence still when Draco hauled himself into the carriage next to him. They didn’t speak the entire journey back to the castle, each pressed as close into their side of the carriage as possible.
Draco couldn’t help but steal furtive looks of the other and though he never caught him, he knew that Potter was looking too.
The Now – July 1998
Draco landed heavily, losing his balance almost immediately with his tiring arms and Harry’s weight in them. His hands clutched Harry tightly to him, cradling his head protectively, but he needn’t have worried. Harry landed on top of him knocking the wind out of him. Harry settled with his head in the crook of Draco’s neck. For a moment, Draco simply laid there, staring into the darkness and feeling Harry’s shallow breaths puffing against his cheek as he came to terms with the reality of their situation.
Weighing nearly nothing, it was easy to roll Harry off of him and onto the floor below them. He was painfully careful about it, his hand cradling Harry’s head as if he were a newborn babe and settling him carefully on the floor. He paused, his eyes fixed on Harry’s chest, checking its movement, before he turned to investigate their environment.
He was quick to spot a small cushion nearby on the floor beside them, its faded pattern near indistinguishable in the dark. He grabbed it and positioned it beneath Harry’s head. When he was sure that Harry was alright, his chest rising and falling still and no grimace of pain on his face, he folded Harry’s hands onto his chest, checked the pulse in his neck, and then pushed himself gingerly to his feet.
They were in the centre of a small sitting room. It was musty and gave off an air of abandonment, every wall lined with books and with no obvious way out except for a single door and window. He checked Harry once again, almost compulsively watching for his breathing, before stepping cautiously towards the window. Its wooden frame had been painted white once upon a time but now only flakes of the paint remained. He peered through its warped, grimy glass.
Outside he found a miserable front garden, though calling it a garden felt generous. It was surrounded by a dark brick wall that would have come up to Draco’s hip, with a rickety wooden fence, grey stone slabs, and not a blade of grass in sight. The view beyond the garden was equally miserable. Rows and rows of identical houses, each more depressing than the next. Industrial and narrow, he couldn’t tell if the bricks were black because they were made that way or because they were covered in a few decades' worth of soot and smoke.
He leant back from the window and pulled the yellowing net curtains closed. He knew that they were under the protection of the Fidelius charm and so there was no more security that the curtains could offer, but irrationality won out and he felt better for the extra barrier between them and the rest of the world.
He turned back to the room behind him, looking for a light and finding only a half-melted candle surrounded by a thin lamp shade dangling from the ceiling. He lit it with a whispered spell. The light it emitted was dim and near useless, though it did reveal that there wasn’t much to see in the dark room in the first place. There was a threadbare sofa pressed up against the only bit of wall not covered in books and an equally worn armchair beside it in the corner. The dim light also revealed what looked like an explosion of splinters across the floor and he realised abruptly that they had appeared directly on top of a rickety coffee table that had promptly disintegrated beneath them.
Concerned about splinters and wanting to place Harry somewhere more comfortable while he explored the rest of the house, he carefully hauled Harry up into his arms. Draco’s lower back protested and his tired arms burned, but he ignored them. There would be time to rest but it wasn’t now. Harry groaned the smallest amount upon being moved and then continued to breathe shallowly in Draco’s arms.
Draco lowered him gently down onto the sofa, catching his arm before it could slip from his chest. He pressed a kiss to his forehead and lingered there, taking a moment just to breathe the same air as him. He sighed at the familiar scent. How was it that he still smelt faintly of broom polish after all this time?
Draco spoke to him, even though he expected no answer. “Stay here, okay darling?” They’d never used pet names before but Draco couldn’t help himself. He found the word tripping off his tongue almost compulsively. “I won’t be far. I’m just going to take a look around... figure out what we’re working with here, okay?” Harry didn’t stir though his eyes flickered behind his closed lids. “Okay.” He pressed another kiss to the other’s brow. “I love you.” Harry didn’t make a sound.
Draco stepped over the broken table only to freeze. What was there for him to look around? As far as he could see, this was it. Though surely not? Old terraced houses like this surely contained more than one room? He knew he had lived a life of extreme privilege but he refused to believe that this house had only one tiny sitting room without even a bathroom in sight. He pursed his lips and held his wand aloft.
“Revelio!”
With a slow creek, the bookcase directly in front of him swung open to reveal a staircase and two doors: one at its foot to the left and one behind it to the right. His wand held out in front of him, Draco ventured forwards.
The door to the left, white and paper thin, opened into another staircase that led down into a dark cellar. He wrinkled his nose at the damp smell that floated up towards him and closed the door immediately. He’d explore that last. Instead, he turned his attention to the door behind the staircase and opened it to find that revealed the true depth of the house.
Draco stepped through into a small dining room. There was a circular table in the middle, surrounded by four wooden chairs. Tall cabinets stood flush with the walls. There were three, one against each wall, while the fourth held a large window that looked out onto a patio. The cabinets held not only plates and mugs and cutlery, but cauldrons, scales, a mortar and pestle, and vials and vials of potions that glowed out at him in the gloom. They were organised into neat rows and columns. There were perhaps ten different potions but they were all replicated at least another ten times, so that they practically bulged out of the cabinet. Someone had been hard at work brewing. Snape, he expected.
There was a purple, glowing potion that had nearly twenty identical copies. It was one that he was painfully familiar with. Nutritional potions. The kind that Severus had smuggled to Harry as often as he could without raising suspicions. They’d be key to getting fat and muscle back onto Harry’s bones.
It was this gentle glow that made Draco stop. Why was he wandering around in the dark? Another murmured spell had the candle that hung from the ceiling spluttering into life, revealing the room’s pockmarked, white walls. The white should have made the room feel bigger, he was sure, but all it did was make the room’s shadowy corners appear smaller and darker.
He carried on through the room to the door at the back and found a narrow galley kitchen. Having learnt his lesson, he turned the lights on immediately and discovered walls that might have once been a lemony yellow colour but were now faintly sickly looking. There were counters and cabinets, an oven, a sink, a pantry built into the corner, and two doors. One to another room and one that opened out into the garden. He sighed a breath of relief when he found the cabinets and pantry all fit to burst with food and all of it held under strong stasis charms.
They wouldn’t starve any time soon, at least.
He continued through the deep house and found a kind of utility room. It was filled with paraphernalia that Draco knew existed in his own home (in what had once been his home) though their operation had been left to the house-elves. An enormous metal tub, a washboard, a dolly, a mangle, and an airer. In the corner, there was a log-burner and two wooden chairs that matched those in the kitchen. No doubt the burner was to help the clothes dry in the winter. Almost pointedly, a book on domestic and household spells had been propped up against the washboard. Its meaning was clear. Draco would need it.
At the very end of the house was a bathroom. The suite appeared an odd colour in the darkness. A quick lumos revealed what the darkness had tried to hide. The bath, sink, and toilet were all a matching olive green. The shower curtain was new though. Bright white and clean with plastic rings. It must have been changed recently. He paused over the bath before he turned to leave, considering it critically. He would clean it again before he used it, he decided.
He lingered in the kitchen on his way back to the stairs to stare out of the window and into the garden.
Where the front garden had been bare, the back was positively wild. It was completely overgrown with brambles as tall as he was and so densely packed that, in the dark at least, he could barely see through them. He thought maybe that he could see a rotten shed just peeking out above the branches but without the sun to see by he couldn’t be sure. The only part of the garden he would currently be able to access was the miserable stone patio.
Draco paused at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes fixed on Harry’s silhouette on the sofa. He stared and he stared, watching for the rise and fall of his chest. He had been just about to turn into the sitting room again, a thrill of adrenalin in his gut, when he finally spotted movement. He let out a stuttering sigh and closed his eyes for a moment. Harry was alive. He was alive. He’d still be alive when Draco came back downstairs. He was alive.
It was only this mantra that allowed Draco to push on.
The upstairs landing was tiny. It would have taken two or fewer steps for him to travel from one room to any other. The walls were the same sickly yellow as the kitchen and the carpet was so thin that he could feel the floorboards through his shoes. There were four doors on the landing. He barely had to turn to open them and inspect the rooms beyond.
He quickly realised that the first housed an ancient boiler, dark grey and rusting at the joints and unnervingly silent. Above it, stored on shelves, were sheets and towels, clean but clearly old, as well as a spare duvet.
The next was a small box room that Draco couldn’t have laid out flat in without bending his knees it was so small. Much like the living room, the walls were covered in books and the one that wasn’t (though Draco was sure it was only because of the window) had a desk pressed up against it with a wireless sat in its middle. Every square inch of the room was covered in dust and Draco closed the door with a sigh.
The other two rooms were, thankfully, significantly cleaner. Both had a double bed in their centre and tall, ornate looking wardrobes in the corner. Draco opened them with interest and was surprised to find clothes inside - shirts, trousers, jeans, coats, shoes, underwear, everything. They were muggle and suitable for every season and, much like the sheets, they were old but clean. He paused to peer curiously under the beds. In the smaller room he found nothing but in the larger he found a chipped, ceramic chamber pot.
He grimaced a little but he could understand the necessity of it. He imagined that traipsing all the way downstairs in the depths of winter for a piss would be unpleasant. They would be there long enough to experience at least one winter, he was sure. And then… then there was Harry to consider. He wouldn’t be able to make it to the bathroom at all. The thought made Draco want to cry but he shoved it down and focussed on other practicalities. That being winter. He pushed himself to his feet.
Heating charms would only go so far and despite the boiler he had found, there were no radiators on the walls and so it likely only provided them with hot water for the taps and the shower. Though the heat that emanated from it when it was on would maybe heat the upstairs. Regardless, there must be something in the house somewhere that would keep them warm beyond the coats in the wardrobes and the duvets on the bed.
He headed downstairs and paused once more to stare at Harry before continuing down into the damp cellar. He entered with more trepidation than when he had ventured upstairs, which he knew was absurd. They were alone and he wasn’t a child anymore, afraid of the dark. He steeled himself and buried the feeling. If there had ever been a time for him to put aside childish things, it was now.
He was relieved to find that the musty damp smell only existed on the staircase as he passed the exposed insulation in the walls. The space below was no bigger than the sitting room above though it felt significantly more claustrophobic. Strangely, it was the only room in the house not lit by a single dim candle and instead two gas lamps burned in the room's far corners. The space was filled haphazardly with more blankets, cleaning supplies, more old coats, and - thankfully - heaters, three of them, the magical kind. He inspected them with skepticism. They were cast iron with flakes of rust peeling away. He ran his thumb across the small oval cages at their bottom left-hand corner where the user would cast incendio to turn them on. He hoped they still worked. He wasn’t quite sure what he would do if they didn’t. Still. He had months until that might be a problem.
Satisfied with his inspection of the property, he headed back upstairs to Harry, a plan forming in his head as to what to do next.
The sight of a small figure gently stroking Harry’s hair had him freezing in his tracks though. His wand was out at once.
“Stop!” he barked, fear making his voice tight. Enormous, watery blue eyes turned to peer at him and he lowered his wand a little. A shuddering breath escaped him. He swallowed. “Hello, Dobby.”
“Hello, Draco Malfoy,” Dobby said mournfully, turning to look back at Harry and stroke his hair. “We is needing to get Harry Potter into a proper bed.”
Dobby offered to levitate Harry up the stairs but Draco refused. He found it near impossible to trust that anyone else would be able to safely get Harry up the stairs and the idea of giving up his control over their situation left him feeling territorial and defensive. He had been carrying Harry on and off for nearly an hour now, and his arms burnt and protested with their labour, but he ignored them. Harry didn’t weigh much. Draco could feel the edge of his spine cutting into his forearm. But it wasn’t Harry’s weight that posed the challenge. Rather, it was the narrowness of the staircase itself that had him struggling. Still, he persevered, Dobby hovering at his back, his hands stretched out and prepared to catch both of them should Draco fall.
It would have made more sense for Dobby to levitate Harry, Draco knew, but he was grateful to the elf for allowing him this. To let someone else care for Harry now, after everything, felt like falling at the first hurdle. He couldn’t rely on anyone else in this. If he couldn’t do this for Harry now, what would he do when things got really tough?
He chose the larger room for Harry. Dobby rolled back the duvet with a snap of his fingers and Draco lowered him carefully onto the mattress. He slid his arms free from behind Harry’s back and legs carefully, as if Harry were a baby that Draco had spent an hour rocking to sleep and was trying to avoid waking. There was no risk of waking Harry though. Not now. Maybe not ever, and again, Draco tried not to cry.
He slipped the crooked glasses that had been clinging valiantly onto the end of Harry’s nose off and he closed them and set them on the bedside table. Draco stroked Harry’s cheek with the back of his knuckles and pressed a kiss to his brow where there existed a scar that Draco himself had put there once upon a time.
“We is needing to get Harry Potter cleaned, changed, and fed,” Dobby said firmly, a determined look in his eye. “Dobby will teach you to do these things. Then Dobby will teach you how to maintain your new home. Dobby is here to help but Dobby cannot come often when August comes.” The look in his eye turned suddenly fierce. “You is not to be allowing Harry Potter to live in filth and squalor while Dobby is gone, Draco Malfoy. One day… one day-.” His lips trembled a little but he steeled himself. “One day, Dobby might not be able to come back. You must learn to do these things by yourself.”
Draco heard the words that he didn’t say. In times like these, death waited eagerly in the wings for all of them. He straightened and nodded.
Dobby returned his nod. “Let us begin.”
Dobby was a patient teacher. Together, they stripped Harry of the rags that had been barely clinging to him. They cleansed his body and brushed his teeth and trimmed his nails, and shaved the unkempt beard from his face and tidied his hair. This Draco spent an unnecessary amount of time on, but he was determined that Harry would be as groomed as he would have been had he been awake. He would not settle for Harry simply ‘not looking a total mess’. He would look as if someone cared for him because Draco did. Draco loved him and he would write it on his skin in the only way that he could.
With Harry clean, Dobby taught Draco the spell that would press a nutritional potion past Harry’s lips and down his oesophagus.
“The headmaster is saying there is a thousand calories in each potion and all the vitamins and minerals that Harry Potter needs to live. For Harry Potter to be more than skin and bones, you is needing to give him one three times a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When Harry Potter is a healthy weight again he may need less, but not until then. They will help him build muscle quickly when he is able to move again and help heal his hurts.”
Finally, they dressed Harry in worn, cotton pyjamas. A t-shirt and thin shorts appropriate for the July heat when combined with the duvet pulled over his hips.
“You is needing to be careful how you dress Harry Potter. He cannot tell you that he is getting too hot or getting too cold, and he cannot be pulling the duvet up or pushing it off himself. It is hot now yes, but it might become suddenly cooler in the night. You is needing to be aware of these things, yes?”
Draco swallowed, perched on the edge of the bed and stroking a hand down Harry’s arm and running his fingers along the new scars that now lived there. “Yes.”
“Good. You is needing to be moving Harry Potter too - frequently. With such little meat on his bones, Harry Potter will be getting sores if he is kept in one position for too long. And you is needing to maintain cleansing spells on the bed else Harry Potter will sit in his own filth and will die of infection. And the sheets. They is needing to be changed at least every other day - more if Harry Potter sweats in the heat. Dobby will show you how and how to wash them properly too.”
Draco had no idea what time it was. The summer sun was just beginning to turn the sky orange and blue as he sat down with Dobby in the utility room - but he didn’t care. He’d work until tomorrow’s dawn if that was what it took for him to learn what he needed to know to keep himself and Harry alive and well. Dobby would have to leave eventually and as he had said, he might never come back.
Dobby was a good teacher. Kind and patient and forgiving of Draco’s mistakes. Though Draco couldn’t understand how Dobby knew the book on household spells so well. He flicked immediately to the desired page each time Draco needed to learn a new spell. House-elves certainly didn’t need such books to carry out their day-to-day duties. Had he learnt it all specifically to teach Draco?
“Later, when Dobby comes again, he will teach you how to cook for yourself,” Dobby said sagely as he levitated the enormous stew he had made for Draco up onto the stove top. “Harry Potter will not survive if Draco Malfoy cannot learn to feed him.”
Draco said nothing. He couldn’t help but think that this lesson might not matter in the end. If Harry didn’t wake up enough in order to eat more than the nutritional potions, then he would likely waste away in the bed upstairs. And then Draco would have no need for the cooking lessons either for he would surely follow him soon afterwards.
Still. Draco wouldn’t give up on him. Even if that was Harry’s fate, then he would die clean and safe and loved, and never knowing hunger or pain.
When Dobby left several hours later, the washboard was hard at work, scrubbing at the clothes that Draco had worn to the house, though he doubted he would have much need for his school robes again. On the stove, the stew that Dobby had made him bubbled away. Enough to feed Draco for a few days, he thought, with the crusty bread on the side as well.
Draco found himself stood outside, staring out into the overgrown wilderness that made up the garden while the sun began to set behind him. A chimney, possibly the largest Draco had ever seen (it was surely industrial in nature even if it now stood abandoned) loomed over them in the middle distance. Draco couldn’t help but to stare at it. He felt as if he was vibrating a few inches above his skin as the events of the last twenty-four hours crashed over him.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. He released it in a whoosh that turned into a choked sob on the way out. He allowed himself just five minutes to cry before returning inside and dragging himself upstairs. He nearly tripped twice, barely able to lift his feet high enough to get over the steps.
He didn’t quite remember how he came to be stood over Harry. The sleep deprivation was beginning to get to him but he just needed to last a moment longer. He squinted to make himself focus, refreshing the cleansing charms on the bed and using a spell to push a nutritional potion into Harry’s belly. He sat heavily on the edge of the bed and for a moment he just looked at Harry.
He was on his back where Draco and Dobby had left him, pillows padded under his left side to tip him to his right having been lain flat for a few hours beforehand. Draco swallowed dryly and remembered what Dobby had said about Harry developing sores. He forced himself to move, pulling the pillows out from under Harry and carefully repositioning him onto his opposite side, wedging pillows beneath him and in between his knees so that he was facing Draco now.
He looked almost peaceful, his eyes shut and his long, dark eyelashes brushing against his cheeks. The effect was ruined by the unnatural narrowness of his face and the sallowness of his skin and the way his collar bones jutted out painfully. Scars, shallow and deep, long and short, littered the skin that Draco could see. He couldn’t help but reach out a hand to trace his fingers along the deepest ones about his wrists where he had been cuffed for months and months. They were thick and red, but were soothed under the effects of the salve that Dobby had rubbed into them. Harry twitched under his touch but otherwise didn’t react.
He slid his hand under Harry’s shirt to press the back of his hand to his breastbone, feeling for whether or not Harry was too hot or cold. Satisfied that he was neither, Draco withdrew his hand. He sniffed wetly, tears trailing unchecked down his cheeks. He leant down and pressed a kiss to Harry’s temple, hovering a moment just to listen to him breathe.
“I love you,” he whispered to him. He kissed him again. “I love you.”
Draco dragged himself to the other bed and collapsed into it. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
Dobby returned just as he said he would and just as the stew that he had made Draco had run out too.
His lessons seemed almost never ending but Draco listened and learnt obediently. The work that he had once dismissed as ‘servants’ stuff, Draco now found himself gaining a new appreciation for. The first time he managed to change, wash, and dry the bedsheets without Dobby’s help, the little elf had clapped and beamed up at him and Draco had grinned back. It wasn’t all plain sailing though. Draco made mistakes and ruined meals and burnt holes in his clothes and stained the sheets.
Dobby was due to come today. His sixth visit that month. He’d managed to come twice a week so far but he’d warned Draco that he wouldn’t be able to visit even half as often from August onwards.
Draco was carefully repositioning Harry in his bed while gentle, mindless apologies fell from his lips. Not that Harry ever made a noise when he did this. Not of discomfort or pain or anything at all but still, Draco felt compelled to apologise as he manhandled Harry about the bed. He had just been wedging a pillow between Harry’s knees when his shorts slipped the slightest amount, and Draco caught sight of something red out of the corner of his eyes.
He froze, his heart pounding in his chest. He glanced to Harry’s still face, muttered an apology, and carefully pulled his shorts down just below his hips. Just over the sharpest point of Harry’s pelvis, where the bone jutted out and stretched the skin, there was a painful red welt. Draco blinked down at it, feeling as if ice had been poured into his guts. But… but he’d been turning Harry constantly. As often as Dobby said and more.
Not knowing what to do, he took himself downstairs and waited for Dobby to arrive. Dobby found him sat at the kitchen table, trying and failing not to cry over a cup of tea.
Dobby blinked at him, alarm on his face. “Draco Malfoy - what’s wrong?”
It took a few tries for Draco to get the words out, shame and frustration catching at his voice. “Harry has a pressure sore I think,” he choked out. “I… I don’t understand. I did everything you said, I swear. I- I’m trying so hard all the time and I don’t think it’s enough. I’m letting him down still, after everything.”
Dobby nodded slowly. “Dobby understands.” He shuffled forwards to gently pat Draco’s hand. “Dobby will go and look, and then we shall see what we can do.” And he disappeared from the room.
Draco allowed himself a few hiccuping sobs. As devastated as he was about Harry’s red skin, he knew he was crying about more than just that. He was crying about everything that had happened. He felt sometimes like he could cry at the drop of a hat if he would only give himself permission to, but he didn’t often. He didn’t have the time.
Dobby returned with a gentle, kind smile. “Do not despair, Draco Malfoy,” he said gently as he pottered about the kitchen. Draco watched him, wondering what he was doing as he dug through the cupboards in the cabinet that held all the potions. “Harry Potter is extremely skinny still - where his bones are so close to the skin, it will be very difficult to avoid him ever becoming even a little bit sore. You are doing a wonderful job.” A year ago, Draco would have sneered at the idea of being soothed by a house-elf, but now he felt his shoulders drop in relief. “You are taking very good care of Harry Potter.”
Draco watched through swollen eyes as a mortar and pestle and a variety of potions ingredients, as well as a potions book, floated up onto the table. The book opened to a page of antibacterial healing salves. Draco pulled it closer. “What’s this?”
“The headmaster is saying that this salve is easy to make and good for small abrasions,” Dobby said simply. “He is also saying you is very good at potion brewing.”
Draco blinked, confused. “You’ve spoken to Snape?” he said stupidly.
Dobby shrugged a little. “Not often. The headmaster cannot be seen to be giving one house elf too much attention. It will raise suspicions. He is telling Dobby about this book months and months ago.” Draco was glad that one of them had been prepared at least. “Dobby will wash the sheets whilst you make the salve.”
Later, when Draco was alone and carefully rubbing the salve into Harry’s sore skin, it was a struggle not to cry again as he watched the redness fade away into nothing. He found a new fear cropping up though. If Dobby stopped coming, Draco might be able to steal food from the muggles but what would he do about potions ingredients? He grimaced a little to himself and resolved to learn what he could about foraging for himself.
As the month progressed, Harry didn’t wake. Not even once. He did toss and turn in the night though - as much as he could at least, his head flinging this way and that in the throes of his nightmares. He’d whimper and cry and let out little aborted screams too. Draco spent more time sleeping on the floor by Harry’s bed than he did in the spare bedroom. He couldn’t bring himself to leave. How would he be able to reach a soothing hand up to stroke Harry’s arm and his shoulder and whatever else he could reach from the floor, if he didn’t sleep beside him? He’d have slept on the bed with him but he was terrified of Harry overheating in his sleep.
Anytime he felt the frustration building in his gut - when the urge to scream and rage at the world threatened to bowl him over - Draco would remember Harry in the bed upstairs and he would hold it in for later. Later being when Dobby had left and Draco could cast the strongest silencing charm he knew around Harry’s room, so that he could take himself out into the garden and scream and rage until his throat was sore and he felt like he could breathe again.
The last week of the month was unbearably hot. Draco existed mostly in a cotton t-shirt and a pair of boxers but Harry suffered the most for it. He was sweating constantly but seemingly finding no relief for it. Draco felt as if all he was doing was rehydrating him and changing the sheets. Some days he changed them twice, and when he couldn’t bear to do it a third time, he carried Harry to his bed instead. The heat at least had the good grace to dry the clean sheets quickly for him but that was the only good thing to come of it.
On the last day of July, Harry’s birthday, Dobby came to visit them again. Only this time, he came with more than food and new lessons about how Draco could keep them both alive and comfortable.
He came with a letter. A short one (loosely) addressed to Draco and (loosely) signed by one Minerva McGonagall.
Draco blinked down at it on the kitchen table while Dobby attended to Harry for him.
‘D.M.
Please find below coordinates, a date, and a time.
I will see you at The Daily Grind.
Rgds.
M.M.’
He read it once, then read it again, and then re-read it a third time. He lifted his chin to stare out of the window and then he read it a final time. Being so short, it was hardly a difficult read.
He looked around as Dobby entered the kitchen. “Are you sure this is from McGonagall?” Draco asked urgently.
Dobby nodded. “Dobby is taking it directly from her hand,” he said confidently.
“And it was definitely her?” Draco pushed. “It wasn’t someone in disguise.”
Dobby frowned lightly at him. “There is more to knowing a person than simply their face,” he said cryptically but his tone brokered no argument.
Draco bit his lip and turned back to the letter. What to do. What could she possibly want with him? He felt compelled to meet with her though. It must have been important for her to ask to meet when it would place both of them at risk to be out in the open. And he owed her. Oh, how he owed her.
But the idea of leaving Harry alone was intolerable.
Then Dobby spoke as if he had read his mind. “Dobby will come and sit with Harry Potter while you are gone,” he said simply, as if the fact that Draco would go and meet with the professor was obvious.
Draco sighed heavily and rubbed at his face, his hands slick with his own sweat. “Well,” he said, attempting lightness, “I guess I’ll be seeing you again in a few days then.”