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Title: Tasting Salt
Author: me
Pairing: H/D
Rating: R
Summary: Harry's seventh month.
Warning: MPREG. The wombless have wombs, ye ken?
Notes: Part 4 of the Under Fingertips universe.
Part 1: Under Fingertips
Part 2: The Thought of It Otherwise
Part 3: Over the Threshold
...
Tasting Salt
It took Harry longer to turn toward him tonight, easing one hand over his chest and pressing his thigh against Draco’s leg. Draco left the lamp on and curled an arm around Harry’s shoulder, drawing him closer. The yellow light shed soft shadows across the slope of Harry’s chest and face.
“You’re feeling better then,” he said dryly. Harry gave a soft snort muffled by the slow, laving kisses he was bestowing upon Draco’s throat. Draco felt the murmur of his lover’s answer just under his chin, but couldn’t make out the words. If there were any.
“You want to be on top?” he asked, curling the fingers of one hand through the tiny hairs on the back of Harry’s neck. The other man didn’t answer for so long that Draco frowned. “Harry—?”
“I don’t care, Draco. Just—”
Draco hesitated, caught in the strange lilt to Harry’s voice. Weary, but that was fairly normal lately. There was something else in it, something bordering on exasperation, but with a sharper edge. Draco drew a deep breath. Felt the firm roundness of Harry’s belly against his own stomach.
A single, soft kick. Draco pulled back and found Harry looking at him.
“He’s active tonight.” There was a tiny smile on his lover’s lips, belying the dark smudges beneath his eyes. Draco stared, caught yet again in the changes that had been wrought on that familiar countenance. Lines around his eyes and mouth that had never been visible before, and a hollowness whose location Draco could not rightly place. Harry glanced down. His breath hitched for a moment and he squirmed slightly, the fingers of one hand brushing over his belly. “Do you want… You can feel him.”
Draco caught himself before his eyes darted away. “I felt it.”
Something curious flitted through Harry’s eyes, but Draco was already moving. He shifted, rolling Harry onto his back, then eased down next to him. Harry let out a soft sigh and reached up, but Draco took his face in his hands and kissed him slowly and thoroughly. Harry’s hands stilled in the air beside his head. Draco saw his fingers curl slightly.
His body began to go limp as Draco kissed him, sinking down into the bed. Draco lifted himself until he was lying across Harry’s chest and stroked his hand down his side, tracing along his hip and over the top of his thigh. Harry bent his knee into the caress and a slight sound broke from him, almost a whimper. Draco felt a wave of delicious dizziness spin through his head.
It had been too long since they’d had the time or willingness to do this. Draco lapped up the sounds Harry was making as if they were elixir, and he a doting addict. He was, he supposed. If only it weren’t so hard to simply respond to that. So much else pushed into his sight lately. He’d come to loathe the smell of garlic for what it meant for Harry’s days, and for his own nights.
The potions were tucked away in the bathroom. Draco passed right over that cupboard as often as their weekly ritual would allow, but still he knew they were there, waiting to be uncorked and used again.
Waiting to push Harry’s pain away for a few scant days and remind Draco of things he missed so much it hurt, and other things he longed to forget about. But then, that was impossible, when one could feel the evidence beneath one’s fingers. Against one’s carelessly draped arm during the night.
Harry’s legs parted under the slightest brush of Draco’s palm. A hand found his wrist and squeezed as Draco slid his fingertips over the hollows and rises of Harry’s hips and thighs. He whispered a spell and took Harry’s lower lip into his mouth. A moment later, a touch lower with his hand, and he felt the tight, soft heat he’d been looking for. It was easiest to pretend there; it was so familiar a sensation.
A breathless moan broke against his mouth. Harry quivered at the touch inside him, muscles clenching. Draco brushed his lips over Harry’s forehead and came away tasting salt. He looked at Harry for a moment, wondering at the sweat so early on, working at opening him up, caressing gently, thoroughly. Harry’s hand tightened over his own against the bed sheets, and Draco lowered his head to kiss him again.
“Draco…” Harry’s voice was soft, hardly there. “God, I want…”
Draco rubbed Harry’s chest with one hand, sought with the fingers of the other, and Harry arched beautifully, giving a tiny gasp. He stretched down, his other hand hovering over Harry’s belly before reaching his erection.
Suddenly Harry stiffened. He caught his breath and turned his face away. One hand came up, pushing at Draco’s arm. Draco took a moment to gather his breath, to still the immediate surge of irritation. It came so much faster nowadays. He disentangled himself from Harry, removing his fingers from his lover’s body as gently as he could. Harry turned onto his side facing away from him, tucking himself into as much of a ball as his stomach would allow. Draco thought he saw a shiver whip through Harry’s body, but it was gone before he could be sure. Harry’s face looked very flushed.
“You alright?” Draco asked. He brushed a hand over the skin of Harry’s arm. So warm. Harry nodded. One of his hands came up to press between his eyes.
“Not up for it tonight.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement Draco hadn’t really put into words before. It had always been silent, their moments of giving up. Harry would turn his head from a kiss, squirm a bit against Draco’s body. Or lift himself off and away. And then let Draco hold him until they slept.
“How come you never touch me?” Harry asked quietly.
For a long moment, Draco was puzzled. He rose on one elbow and looked down at Harry’s profile. His lover refused to look at him. “Harry, what are you talking about? I touch you every night.”
The slightest of shivers shook Harry’s frame. Again. “Not… there,” he whispered.
Draco blinked, confused. What…
Harry’s hand drifted down from his arm, coming to rest over his own belly, and suddenly Draco felt sick.
“Why do you never…” Harry pursed his lips, falling silent. But his hand continued to drift, rubbing small circles over his stomach. His palm fit so perfectly around that curve. Draco looked away.
There was a moment of tense and utter silence. And then Harry sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.
Draco stared at Harry’s back, the unsteady rise and fall of too-quick breaths. The lamp shot a wide arc of light that fell into shadow just across the first rounded curve of Harry’s belly. Draco could see the tips of his lover’s fingers peeking above the line of darkness.
His throat tightened, but even if he could have spoken, he would not have done it.
How could he possibly explain the nauseated feeling to Harry? The memory of his lover’s pained groans was only too clear in Draco’s ears, echoing as if they were already embedded in the walls like some restless spirit. It was just easier not to think about the ever-growing bulge in Harry’s body, the strange, ominous flutters that woke them both in the middle of the night.
Draco lay propped on his elbow for some minutes, watching the rhythm of Harry’s breathing as he drifted into slumber. His body was full of twitches and tingles, and for a long time Draco considered getting up. Walking it off. He’d done it before; around and around the house, until the only sound was the soft buzz of the streetlight outside his living room window and the only thing that remained in his mind was the first few months before Harry had walked away from him. From them. Harry’s dark hair and wiry body, his incessant grin lit by club strobes and starlight. Draco often returned to bed in the dark and curled against Harry’s back, wrapping his arms around his chest and feeling nothing but Harry there in that body. His lover. In his bed, and everything was as it should be.
It was impossible not to touch Harry. But Draco couldn’t bring himself to seek out that movement under Harry’s skin. He’d tried, many a night, in answer to the soft light in his lover’s eyes and to the faint, threadbare memory of that first touch three months ago. When he’d reached and felt the smallest of quivers, docile beneath Harry’s skin. When Harry’s hand had closed over his, and they’d felt the squirmy ripple together.
What was wrong with him? It was still the same ripple, stronger, more vibrant, but the same. It was… Draco swallowed. It was Harry who was different. Harry, whose weeks began with a desperate relief that hollowed his face, and ended with the glassy stare of pain too constant for movement or even thought. Harry, whose hands pushed Draco away just as often as they sought him out, whose sallow skin told the truth about the effort he now had to make in the name of intimacy. Harry, who fought with him over what and when to eat. Or to eat at all.
Like an illness eating at Harry’s body, and yet containing its own ability to sustain him. A futile, maddening circle.
He couldn’t think about the ripple, because when he did, he thought of futility. It was a damnable thought, but Draco wanted his lover back. He was desperate for it, desperate enough to count days. Desperate enough to forget himself in the exhaustion of the night’s small hours and think bitterly for a moment before forcing it down deep.
But they’d come too far, and now the only safe way out was through.
* * *
Harry woke him with moaning, a gentle, soothing sound that scraped against Draco’s consciousness. He roused himself, trying to blink past the iron weights his eyelids had become. The bed was too hot, and he struggled vaguely to untangle his feet from the blankets. Something moved beside him – Harry – and Draco rose onto his elbows.
Harry thrashed, legs flailing out and then curling back up beneath the duvet. His back was turned toward Draco, and for a moment, Draco did not connect the heat radiating into his arm as Harry’s heat.
Much too hot.
“Harry?” Draco swung the duvet away hurriedly and rose to his knees on the mattress. He leaned over his lover, but Harry had burrowed so deeply into the sheets and blankets that Draco could barely see him. He reached out a hand, and two things happened at once.
Harry gave a violent shiver, head to toe.
And Draco’s hand came away from his lover’s shoulder, burning.
“Gods—” Draco fought to turn Harry over, but the other man did not even seem to know he was there. When Draco finally succeeded in rolling Harry onto his back, his lover came with a soft exhalation and a wave of heat. Green eyes opened sluggishly and blinked up at Draco in the darkness.
“What?” Harry said, quite calmly. His voice slurred, drew the word out into a distorted echo. Draco leaned closer.
“Harry?”
“Shouldn’t use that spell.” More slurring. Slow blink. A shake of the head, almost an afterthought. Draco opened his mouth but Harry’s voice came again. “Someone might notice. Might see you.”
Harry’s eyes slid shut and his head drifted to one side on the pillow.
Draco clapped a hand over Harry’s forehead, then his cheek. The fever beat into his palm, raging through the soft flesh of Harry’s face. A single word slid like molasses into Draco’s brain.
Infection.
He jerked himself free of the covers and stumbled out of the room into the bathroom. He’d forgotten his wand, and it was so dark, but his fingers found their way into the second cabinet and the small vials there. Cylindrical… the weekly one? Triangular— Draco felt past it and scrabbled for the small rounded glass in the corner. He made his way back to the bedroom on surer feet and dropped to the side of the bed. Harry hung limply, one arm falling off the bed, palm down. His lips moved and garbled nonsense came from them, wispy as down.
Draco propped him up with one arm and uncorked the vial. He dipped his fingertip in and wetted Harry’s lips and tongue with the black liquid there. Harry’s eyes flew open and he cried out, utterly shocking sounds in the stillness. Draco nearly dropped the vial, but Harry’s gaze fixed on him and his eyes went wide in recognition. The cry dropped into a weak groan.
Draco crawled into bed, pulling Harry into his lap. Harry clenched up into a ball, one hand pawing at his stomach, the other fisting Draco’s pants. “Oh god, Dra-Draco, make it stop, please—”
He shushed Harry, soft shhhhs over the pained whimpers. Slowly, he managed to tip the bottle past Harry’s lips, once, twice, enough for all the liquid inside to drain out, leaving a thin gray sheen over the inside of the glass. Harry’s body began to sweat profusely. His fingernails dug into Draco’s arm and Draco hissed at the pain. He grabbed Harry’s hand, squeezing until it released him. “Harry, stop—”
“I don’t want it anymore Draco please please get it out of me I don’t want it—”
The agony burst into the air of the room and Harry cried out again, trying to curl away from it, into it, around it. Harry’s words had frozen Draco’s breath in his chest, hot and acidic, and he cursed to get it out.
“Fuck, Harry, shut up, listen to yourself,” he whispered. Harry’s face was pinched, contorting horribly, and Draco didn’t think he’d heard.
“Draco…” A shivery whimper. “God, please…”
“No,” Draco hissed, so vehemently he bit his lip, tasted blood sliding into his mouth. He shook Harry’s shoulders, snatched at his chin and forced cloudy green eyes to his. “Don’t you fucking ask me to do that,” all in a rush, like poison, “don’t you ask me, I am not going to lose you to this!”
Harry quieted, harsh breathing wracking his body, shuddering, but staring up at Draco. His face spasmed once, a swift wrench of pain, and Draco let go of him with a start. His fingerprints were livid white on Harry’s shoulder, his chin. Harry’s eyes squeezed shut and a tear slid down one cheek.
“Draco,” he whimpered.
Draco gathered Harry to him, fighting for control over his eyes, his heart, his lungs, and most of all, his fear. Wand, where, where was his wand? Surely he could summon… He had no idea. Loss, utter and complete, stared him down and he bent his head to Harry’s forehead and bit his lip to keep from making a sound.
“It hurts,” Harry whispered. “Draco, it—”
Draco could only nod and hold Harry closer, and thank every god known to wizards that the potion had broken the fever and left only the pain behind. He prayed the Healer would arrive soon.
* * *
She handed him a new bottle, round as a ball and black as tar. Draco stared at it where it dangled from her fingertips for much too long before reaching up to take it.
The Healer exhaled the deep sigh of restfulness. “He’s sleeping. His body is reacting well.”
Draco couldn’t stop looking at the little bottle. It looked so harmless there in his palm. Such a trick. “And his fever?”
“Nearly dissipated.” She smiled at him, but Draco felt nothing of the reassurance there. He didn’t feel that much of anything. “I’ve dosed him with more of the Malattia, so your schedule will have to be altered to accommodate that. How long has it been since he’s had the monthly?”
Draco could see the dates clear in his mind, burned there like brands. “Twenty-three days.”
She considered in silence, tapping one finger on her other palm. “In the morning, he can be woken for another dose of the Titus Cirrus, and then you can mark your month from there, though I doubt if he’ll need it again. It’s the seventh month; he’s very close. The baby is doing fine, Draco.”
He could only look at her dully. A shiver of consternation flitted over the Healer’s face, marring for an instant, then disappearing.
Draco said nothing. The Healer studied him for a long moment, and then reached out and squeezed his shoulder. Her touch was faintly cool. Faintly calming.
“I’ll use your couch tonight, if you don’t mind.”
Draco suspected she was not staying because she felt it necessary, but because she could read a lot more in his face than even he knew was there. He nodded, summoning his energies to find extra linens. Pillow cases. In the end, he didn’t think he’d been of much help. He watched as she moved about the living room, turning lamps down low and charming a modest fire in the hearth. She located his Floo powder and set it on the coffee table beside her wand, then bid him goodnight. Her expression was unreadable when he finally left her behind in the living room.
Draco made it halfway down the hall and was safely in the darkness before he slid to the floor, unable to walk for the trembling in his legs.
...
Part 5
Author: me
Pairing: H/D
Rating: R
Summary: Harry's seventh month.
Warning: MPREG. The wombless have wombs, ye ken?
Notes: Part 4 of the Under Fingertips universe.
Part 1: Under Fingertips
Part 2: The Thought of It Otherwise
Part 3: Over the Threshold
...
Tasting Salt
It took Harry longer to turn toward him tonight, easing one hand over his chest and pressing his thigh against Draco’s leg. Draco left the lamp on and curled an arm around Harry’s shoulder, drawing him closer. The yellow light shed soft shadows across the slope of Harry’s chest and face.
“You’re feeling better then,” he said dryly. Harry gave a soft snort muffled by the slow, laving kisses he was bestowing upon Draco’s throat. Draco felt the murmur of his lover’s answer just under his chin, but couldn’t make out the words. If there were any.
“You want to be on top?” he asked, curling the fingers of one hand through the tiny hairs on the back of Harry’s neck. The other man didn’t answer for so long that Draco frowned. “Harry—?”
“I don’t care, Draco. Just—”
Draco hesitated, caught in the strange lilt to Harry’s voice. Weary, but that was fairly normal lately. There was something else in it, something bordering on exasperation, but with a sharper edge. Draco drew a deep breath. Felt the firm roundness of Harry’s belly against his own stomach.
A single, soft kick. Draco pulled back and found Harry looking at him.
“He’s active tonight.” There was a tiny smile on his lover’s lips, belying the dark smudges beneath his eyes. Draco stared, caught yet again in the changes that had been wrought on that familiar countenance. Lines around his eyes and mouth that had never been visible before, and a hollowness whose location Draco could not rightly place. Harry glanced down. His breath hitched for a moment and he squirmed slightly, the fingers of one hand brushing over his belly. “Do you want… You can feel him.”
Draco caught himself before his eyes darted away. “I felt it.”
Something curious flitted through Harry’s eyes, but Draco was already moving. He shifted, rolling Harry onto his back, then eased down next to him. Harry let out a soft sigh and reached up, but Draco took his face in his hands and kissed him slowly and thoroughly. Harry’s hands stilled in the air beside his head. Draco saw his fingers curl slightly.
His body began to go limp as Draco kissed him, sinking down into the bed. Draco lifted himself until he was lying across Harry’s chest and stroked his hand down his side, tracing along his hip and over the top of his thigh. Harry bent his knee into the caress and a slight sound broke from him, almost a whimper. Draco felt a wave of delicious dizziness spin through his head.
It had been too long since they’d had the time or willingness to do this. Draco lapped up the sounds Harry was making as if they were elixir, and he a doting addict. He was, he supposed. If only it weren’t so hard to simply respond to that. So much else pushed into his sight lately. He’d come to loathe the smell of garlic for what it meant for Harry’s days, and for his own nights.
The potions were tucked away in the bathroom. Draco passed right over that cupboard as often as their weekly ritual would allow, but still he knew they were there, waiting to be uncorked and used again.
Waiting to push Harry’s pain away for a few scant days and remind Draco of things he missed so much it hurt, and other things he longed to forget about. But then, that was impossible, when one could feel the evidence beneath one’s fingers. Against one’s carelessly draped arm during the night.
Harry’s legs parted under the slightest brush of Draco’s palm. A hand found his wrist and squeezed as Draco slid his fingertips over the hollows and rises of Harry’s hips and thighs. He whispered a spell and took Harry’s lower lip into his mouth. A moment later, a touch lower with his hand, and he felt the tight, soft heat he’d been looking for. It was easiest to pretend there; it was so familiar a sensation.
A breathless moan broke against his mouth. Harry quivered at the touch inside him, muscles clenching. Draco brushed his lips over Harry’s forehead and came away tasting salt. He looked at Harry for a moment, wondering at the sweat so early on, working at opening him up, caressing gently, thoroughly. Harry’s hand tightened over his own against the bed sheets, and Draco lowered his head to kiss him again.
“Draco…” Harry’s voice was soft, hardly there. “God, I want…”
Draco rubbed Harry’s chest with one hand, sought with the fingers of the other, and Harry arched beautifully, giving a tiny gasp. He stretched down, his other hand hovering over Harry’s belly before reaching his erection.
Suddenly Harry stiffened. He caught his breath and turned his face away. One hand came up, pushing at Draco’s arm. Draco took a moment to gather his breath, to still the immediate surge of irritation. It came so much faster nowadays. He disentangled himself from Harry, removing his fingers from his lover’s body as gently as he could. Harry turned onto his side facing away from him, tucking himself into as much of a ball as his stomach would allow. Draco thought he saw a shiver whip through Harry’s body, but it was gone before he could be sure. Harry’s face looked very flushed.
“You alright?” Draco asked. He brushed a hand over the skin of Harry’s arm. So warm. Harry nodded. One of his hands came up to press between his eyes.
“Not up for it tonight.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement Draco hadn’t really put into words before. It had always been silent, their moments of giving up. Harry would turn his head from a kiss, squirm a bit against Draco’s body. Or lift himself off and away. And then let Draco hold him until they slept.
“How come you never touch me?” Harry asked quietly.
For a long moment, Draco was puzzled. He rose on one elbow and looked down at Harry’s profile. His lover refused to look at him. “Harry, what are you talking about? I touch you every night.”
The slightest of shivers shook Harry’s frame. Again. “Not… there,” he whispered.
Draco blinked, confused. What…
Harry’s hand drifted down from his arm, coming to rest over his own belly, and suddenly Draco felt sick.
“Why do you never…” Harry pursed his lips, falling silent. But his hand continued to drift, rubbing small circles over his stomach. His palm fit so perfectly around that curve. Draco looked away.
There was a moment of tense and utter silence. And then Harry sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.
Draco stared at Harry’s back, the unsteady rise and fall of too-quick breaths. The lamp shot a wide arc of light that fell into shadow just across the first rounded curve of Harry’s belly. Draco could see the tips of his lover’s fingers peeking above the line of darkness.
His throat tightened, but even if he could have spoken, he would not have done it.
How could he possibly explain the nauseated feeling to Harry? The memory of his lover’s pained groans was only too clear in Draco’s ears, echoing as if they were already embedded in the walls like some restless spirit. It was just easier not to think about the ever-growing bulge in Harry’s body, the strange, ominous flutters that woke them both in the middle of the night.
Draco lay propped on his elbow for some minutes, watching the rhythm of Harry’s breathing as he drifted into slumber. His body was full of twitches and tingles, and for a long time Draco considered getting up. Walking it off. He’d done it before; around and around the house, until the only sound was the soft buzz of the streetlight outside his living room window and the only thing that remained in his mind was the first few months before Harry had walked away from him. From them. Harry’s dark hair and wiry body, his incessant grin lit by club strobes and starlight. Draco often returned to bed in the dark and curled against Harry’s back, wrapping his arms around his chest and feeling nothing but Harry there in that body. His lover. In his bed, and everything was as it should be.
It was impossible not to touch Harry. But Draco couldn’t bring himself to seek out that movement under Harry’s skin. He’d tried, many a night, in answer to the soft light in his lover’s eyes and to the faint, threadbare memory of that first touch three months ago. When he’d reached and felt the smallest of quivers, docile beneath Harry’s skin. When Harry’s hand had closed over his, and they’d felt the squirmy ripple together.
What was wrong with him? It was still the same ripple, stronger, more vibrant, but the same. It was… Draco swallowed. It was Harry who was different. Harry, whose weeks began with a desperate relief that hollowed his face, and ended with the glassy stare of pain too constant for movement or even thought. Harry, whose hands pushed Draco away just as often as they sought him out, whose sallow skin told the truth about the effort he now had to make in the name of intimacy. Harry, who fought with him over what and when to eat. Or to eat at all.
Like an illness eating at Harry’s body, and yet containing its own ability to sustain him. A futile, maddening circle.
He couldn’t think about the ripple, because when he did, he thought of futility. It was a damnable thought, but Draco wanted his lover back. He was desperate for it, desperate enough to count days. Desperate enough to forget himself in the exhaustion of the night’s small hours and think bitterly for a moment before forcing it down deep.
But they’d come too far, and now the only safe way out was through.
* * *
Harry woke him with moaning, a gentle, soothing sound that scraped against Draco’s consciousness. He roused himself, trying to blink past the iron weights his eyelids had become. The bed was too hot, and he struggled vaguely to untangle his feet from the blankets. Something moved beside him – Harry – and Draco rose onto his elbows.
Harry thrashed, legs flailing out and then curling back up beneath the duvet. His back was turned toward Draco, and for a moment, Draco did not connect the heat radiating into his arm as Harry’s heat.
Much too hot.
“Harry?” Draco swung the duvet away hurriedly and rose to his knees on the mattress. He leaned over his lover, but Harry had burrowed so deeply into the sheets and blankets that Draco could barely see him. He reached out a hand, and two things happened at once.
Harry gave a violent shiver, head to toe.
And Draco’s hand came away from his lover’s shoulder, burning.
“Gods—” Draco fought to turn Harry over, but the other man did not even seem to know he was there. When Draco finally succeeded in rolling Harry onto his back, his lover came with a soft exhalation and a wave of heat. Green eyes opened sluggishly and blinked up at Draco in the darkness.
“What?” Harry said, quite calmly. His voice slurred, drew the word out into a distorted echo. Draco leaned closer.
“Harry?”
“Shouldn’t use that spell.” More slurring. Slow blink. A shake of the head, almost an afterthought. Draco opened his mouth but Harry’s voice came again. “Someone might notice. Might see you.”
Harry’s eyes slid shut and his head drifted to one side on the pillow.
Draco clapped a hand over Harry’s forehead, then his cheek. The fever beat into his palm, raging through the soft flesh of Harry’s face. A single word slid like molasses into Draco’s brain.
Infection.
He jerked himself free of the covers and stumbled out of the room into the bathroom. He’d forgotten his wand, and it was so dark, but his fingers found their way into the second cabinet and the small vials there. Cylindrical… the weekly one? Triangular— Draco felt past it and scrabbled for the small rounded glass in the corner. He made his way back to the bedroom on surer feet and dropped to the side of the bed. Harry hung limply, one arm falling off the bed, palm down. His lips moved and garbled nonsense came from them, wispy as down.
Draco propped him up with one arm and uncorked the vial. He dipped his fingertip in and wetted Harry’s lips and tongue with the black liquid there. Harry’s eyes flew open and he cried out, utterly shocking sounds in the stillness. Draco nearly dropped the vial, but Harry’s gaze fixed on him and his eyes went wide in recognition. The cry dropped into a weak groan.
Draco crawled into bed, pulling Harry into his lap. Harry clenched up into a ball, one hand pawing at his stomach, the other fisting Draco’s pants. “Oh god, Dra-Draco, make it stop, please—”
He shushed Harry, soft shhhhs over the pained whimpers. Slowly, he managed to tip the bottle past Harry’s lips, once, twice, enough for all the liquid inside to drain out, leaving a thin gray sheen over the inside of the glass. Harry’s body began to sweat profusely. His fingernails dug into Draco’s arm and Draco hissed at the pain. He grabbed Harry’s hand, squeezing until it released him. “Harry, stop—”
“I don’t want it anymore Draco please please get it out of me I don’t want it—”
The agony burst into the air of the room and Harry cried out again, trying to curl away from it, into it, around it. Harry’s words had frozen Draco’s breath in his chest, hot and acidic, and he cursed to get it out.
“Fuck, Harry, shut up, listen to yourself,” he whispered. Harry’s face was pinched, contorting horribly, and Draco didn’t think he’d heard.
“Draco…” A shivery whimper. “God, please…”
“No,” Draco hissed, so vehemently he bit his lip, tasted blood sliding into his mouth. He shook Harry’s shoulders, snatched at his chin and forced cloudy green eyes to his. “Don’t you fucking ask me to do that,” all in a rush, like poison, “don’t you ask me, I am not going to lose you to this!”
Harry quieted, harsh breathing wracking his body, shuddering, but staring up at Draco. His face spasmed once, a swift wrench of pain, and Draco let go of him with a start. His fingerprints were livid white on Harry’s shoulder, his chin. Harry’s eyes squeezed shut and a tear slid down one cheek.
“Draco,” he whimpered.
Draco gathered Harry to him, fighting for control over his eyes, his heart, his lungs, and most of all, his fear. Wand, where, where was his wand? Surely he could summon… He had no idea. Loss, utter and complete, stared him down and he bent his head to Harry’s forehead and bit his lip to keep from making a sound.
“It hurts,” Harry whispered. “Draco, it—”
Draco could only nod and hold Harry closer, and thank every god known to wizards that the potion had broken the fever and left only the pain behind. He prayed the Healer would arrive soon.
* * *
She handed him a new bottle, round as a ball and black as tar. Draco stared at it where it dangled from her fingertips for much too long before reaching up to take it.
The Healer exhaled the deep sigh of restfulness. “He’s sleeping. His body is reacting well.”
Draco couldn’t stop looking at the little bottle. It looked so harmless there in his palm. Such a trick. “And his fever?”
“Nearly dissipated.” She smiled at him, but Draco felt nothing of the reassurance there. He didn’t feel that much of anything. “I’ve dosed him with more of the Malattia, so your schedule will have to be altered to accommodate that. How long has it been since he’s had the monthly?”
Draco could see the dates clear in his mind, burned there like brands. “Twenty-three days.”
She considered in silence, tapping one finger on her other palm. “In the morning, he can be woken for another dose of the Titus Cirrus, and then you can mark your month from there, though I doubt if he’ll need it again. It’s the seventh month; he’s very close. The baby is doing fine, Draco.”
He could only look at her dully. A shiver of consternation flitted over the Healer’s face, marring for an instant, then disappearing.
Draco said nothing. The Healer studied him for a long moment, and then reached out and squeezed his shoulder. Her touch was faintly cool. Faintly calming.
“I’ll use your couch tonight, if you don’t mind.”
Draco suspected she was not staying because she felt it necessary, but because she could read a lot more in his face than even he knew was there. He nodded, summoning his energies to find extra linens. Pillow cases. In the end, he didn’t think he’d been of much help. He watched as she moved about the living room, turning lamps down low and charming a modest fire in the hearth. She located his Floo powder and set it on the coffee table beside her wand, then bid him goodnight. Her expression was unreadable when he finally left her behind in the living room.
Draco made it halfway down the hall and was safely in the darkness before he slid to the floor, unable to walk for the trembling in his legs.
...
Part 5
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Date: 2006-09-05 03:06 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-09-05 04:23 am (UTC)From: