There is a snort of what sounds suspiciously like laughter from Ron, which Harry manfully ignores.
“Piss off, Malfoy,” he says, and if it comes out grateful—well, then Harry just doesn’t much care, does he, right now. “Look, I mean, are you absolutely sure that—”
“I swear to god,” Draco declares, “you are the most obstinate man on the face of the earth; it beggars belief, it really does,” and then he Apparates directly out of the hall before Harry gets the chance to respond.
“Shut up,” Harry says, reflexively, into the silence that follows.
“I didn’t say anything, mate,” Ron says, the amusement in his voice in fact saying quite a bit, and Harry thinks he would probably have said a lot more if a team of Healers didn’t choose that exact moment to rush someone by on a stretcher.
It’s sobering for both of them, the reminder of where exactly they’re standing abrupt and awful, and for a second they just stand there, making miserable, uncertain eye contact.
Then Ron sighs. “Come on,” he says, and spreads his hands in a helpless, what-are-you- going-to-do sort of gesture, which is all the more wretched for how Harry is used to seeing it after Hermione’s gone off on one and covered the house in buttons and pamphlets for some new cause. “Let’s—let’s go sit down, I suppose.”
They go sit down. Ron drops heavily into a chair, balances his elbows on his knees and puts his head in his hands. Harry sits carefully, looks at the ground, counts the threads in the patterned beige carpeting, and quietly panics. He’s not—he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say to Ron, in this moment; if he should ask again what happened or tell him she’s going to be fine or just say nothing, give him the space to talk if he wants to. It was easier with Draco, Harry thinks a little wildly, which is just—crazy. It’s crazy, because Draco is a childhood enemy that Harry’s only really known about a month and Ron’s his oldest friend, his comrade-in-arms, and his partner of seven years, whatever job title Ron’s holding now.
They’re your family, Harry thinks, in Draco’s voice, and wants, with the pointless longing of a man who hasn’t done so in years, to cry.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened with Malfoy, then,” Ron says, without lifting his head, after a while. His voice is flat; it’s not really a request. “Since we’ve got the time, and all.”
Harry starts a little. “Ron, we don’t—I mean, you can’t want to talk about that right now.”
Ron sits up only to collapse backwards into his chair, press his palms against his eyes for a second, and then shake himself a little, drop his hands back to his sides. “Harry,” he says, “right now, what I want to do is talk about anything but—this.” He closes his eyes briefly, swallows. “Just—just honestly anything else.”
He sounds like he means it—he looks like he means it—and so Harry tells him about the attack on Grimmauld Place, about waking up to Kreacher’s call. He tells Ron about Apparating to the house blindly, without even stopping to get out of bed; about finding Draco tied to the wall; about hearing that rat bastard threaten his life; about catching the intruders only to lose them to Portkeys. He even tells Ron about Draco’s panic attack, though doesn’t mean to, and feels awful the minute he does—it just kind of slips out with the rest of it, because Harry can’t stop thinking about it, but Draco would hate for Ron to know. Ron waves away his pleading and says of course he won’t say anything, and who does Harry think he’s talking to, and Harry lets out a long sigh and tells him about the hole in the wall, the way he and Draco just sat a while, after, and watched the fire, before they called the Aurors.
“I shouldn’t have let him leave,” Harry says, finally, frustrated with himself. He shouldn’t have, he was just—distracted, and overwhelmed, and Draco was being so insistent, and Harry didn’t have it in him to fight. “He was—I mean, you didn’t see him right after, Ron. I cast a couple of pain spells just to take the edge off, but he could barely walk. It was awful.”
It was awful. The whole thing was so awful, this whole night has been so awful, that Harry kind of can’t believe he’s sitting here right now, talking to Ron under the too-bright lights. It’s just—bizarre, the uncomfortable chair, the ugly beige carpeting, the way all of this has happened and they’re still just…the same people they were yesterday, in this place they never expected to find themselves. Two Healers in hospital robes walk by chatting about their plans for the weekend, some party each can’t believe the other one is going to, and as they pass Harry feels a hysterical laugh bubble up inside of him at—just—at the way he and Ron are sitting here in impotent, frantic terror, killing time to avoid thinking about what could be happening, as around them the world simply carries on.
“It’s hard, isn’t it,” Ron says. Harry turns his head to look at him, but Ron’s eyes are fixed on the Staff Only doors again, don’t look like they’re really seeing anything at all. “When you care about someone, and they’re hurting.”
“I don’t—” Harry starts to say, but, of course, can’t finish the sentence. He can’t say he doesn’t care about Draco; it’s not true, and he knows it’s not true, and he doesn’t even want it to be true, is fiercely glad that it’s not. His life is better for Draco, even if the obnoxious little git drives Harry up a wall half the time. He wouldn’t trade it. He wouldn’t begin to know how to let it go.
That doesn’t mean he wants to admit it to Ron, though. But before he can think of a work-around, some answer to Ron’s question that won’t involve that particular concession, Ron sighs.
“Oh, come on, Harry,” Ron mutters, and it’s not the words that get to him—it’s the tone. He sounds exhausted, not just physically, not just emotionally, but by Harry, or maybe for him. He sounds fed-up, and Harry…Harry thinks about Draco leaning against the bridge, talking about carving out a place for yourself and holding onto the people you love. He thinks about the way he said, “You’re not disqualified just because you’re not a particularly well-adjusted person,” and smiled, that crooked one Harry saw again not half an hour ago. He thinks about Hermione, behind those doors, and the new baby Weasley that’s in there with her, and about Ron, out here, waiting. He thinks about Draco’s back heaving under his palm, the bleeding hole in Grimmauld Place, and…he wants to try.
“Yeah,” Harry says, voice rough, and looks at his hands. “Yeah, it’s really hard.”
They wait a while—Harry couldn’t say how long—and then a Mediwitch walks out and asks Ron to come back with her. They both stand, but the Mediwitch says, “Family only, I’m afraid,” with a pointed look at Harry’s bare feet.
Ron looks a little outraged, a little flummoxed, and Harry says, “No, mate, go on, it’s— of course. Go.”
Ron goes. Harry sits and waits alone for a bit, and then Ginny turns up, and George. They’re both wearing shoes, and coats, and scarves, and Harry bites back the uncharitable thought that they would have been allowed to go back with Ron, even though they took the time to dress themselves, the way Harry didn’t. Harry’s who Ron called, whether he got the message when he should have or not; Harry showed up first, but that doesn’t matter, because they’re family, and Harry isn't. It’s not fair, and, just for a second, he honestly hates them for it.
But then they sit, and Ginny squeezes his hand, and George cracks a couple of vaguely desperate jokes, and Harry is glad for them after all. Glad for their specific warmths and weaknesses; glad not to be alone.
He wonders how Draco’s getting on, and then Neville comes in, and then Arthur and Molly and Rose. Harry holds the baby for a while, passes her to Bill when he shows up, says hi to a haggard-looking Percy and Penelope, leans his head back against the wall. The Weasleys are a force to be reckoned with in any circumstance, and even their low-voiced conversations drown out the sounds of the hospital around them; Harry closes his eyes a minute, tries to let it soothe him. He wonders how long it’s been, thinks he should go check pretty soon—that if it’s been more than an hour or so he needs to go make sure Draco isn’t —well. Whatever. In trouble, or avoiding medical attention, or trapped in endless nervous conversation with Trent, or something.
He doesn’t realize he’s falling asleep until someone’s shaking him awake, hesitantly, a warm hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” Draco says, when Harry opens his eyes. He’s leaning over Harry and looking rougher than when Harry saw him last; there’s a grey pallor to his skin, dark circles under his eyes, and a crookedness to the way he’s standing, because he’s got all his weight on his right side. He’s smiling, though, small and a little fraught, his eyebrows up over the slice across his cheek, and Harry aches just to look at him, a tight, coiled knot in his chest.
“Hi,” he says, and stretches a little in his chair. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“People usually don’t, in positions like that,” Draco agrees. Harry realizes a little fuzzily that Draco’s not in pajamas anymore—he’s dressed, wearing soft-looking black trousers and a navy blue sweater that’s too big for him, sleeves hanging down by his thumbs. “Some of us didn’t have time for uncomfortable cat napping, of course. Some of us were much too busy dispatching your deeply tiresome new partner—honest to god, Potter, you could have warned me, he is so terrible. Talking to him was itself an assault.”
“Sorry,” Harry says, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, good, yes, laugh at my suffering,” Draco says. Then he smirks, and holds up a black duffel bag which Harry didn’t even realize he was holding. “I’ll tell you what, how about you keep mocking me and I withhold this perfectly serviceable change of clothes I brought you?”
“You—what?” Harry says, blinking. “I—what?”
“Well, if that doesn’t just take the fun right out of it,” Draco mutters, but he tosses Harry the bag anyway. “Clothes, Potter. Shoes. The things that humans wear to differentiate us from the beasts. You’re welcome.”
“I—thanks,” Harry says, a little bewildered, as he opens the bag. It just gets stranger, though, because inside: “These…are my clothes.”
Draco gives him a narrow-eyed look. “Did you take some kind of blow to the head while I was away? I’ve only been gone a few hours! What, was there a madman roaming the halls with a mallet, striking likely-looking people on the head? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“I meant how did you get them,” Harry says, even as he pulls a sweatshirt on over his pajama top. It’s a red one, old and faded, that he bought at a Muggle museum years ago; it’s one of his favorites, and distantly he wonders how the hell Draco’d known.
“Oh, well,” Draco says, waving a hand. “I went to the hovel. Your security is terrible, Potter, you bring shame to the Aurors, breaking in was not even hard.” He meets Harry’s startled eyes and falters, just for a second, before he continues, “Anyway, I’ll never step foot in that benighted space again, it's genuinely tragic. I regret ever even thinking that you might prefer your own clothes while you waited with,” he looks to his left, and then, faintly, as if noticing them now for the first time, “…the, uh. Entire Weasley clan, apparently?”
“Hi Draco,” says Neville, with a commiserating little frown. “Looks like you had a rough night too, huh?”
“Yeesh, yeah,” Bill says, nodding at him with a grimace. “You all right there, Malfoy?”
Draco looks possibly even more gobsmacked than he did when Ron said it, but it does, at least, jerk Harry back to wakefulness enough to remind him that he’s got things to do. He pulls on his shoes while Draco is saying, “Uh, yes, I’m—just great, thanks,” and then stands, throws his jeans over his shoulder for later.
“You’re not great,” Harry says firmly. “You’re getting admitted. Right now.”
“Oh, fine,” Draco says, sullen. Then he looks Harry up and down and, smirking, adds, “That’s quite a look, Potter.”
“Shut it, Malfoy, I’ll finish changing in a minute,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. To the Weasleys, a little awkwardly, he adds, “Sorry, I, er. He’s got to get—checked in, and things. Can one of you send me a Patronus if you hear anything?”
There’s a moment of silence, in which every last one of the Weasleys, even Penelope, cocks their head to the exact same angle and just kind of…regards them, for a moment. Harry thinks it’s going to haunt his nightmares.
“Sure, Harry,” Ginny says at last. Her eyes are tired and worried, but she sounds like she might be holding back laughter. “You got it.”
Harry and Draco take off down the hall for the fourth floor intake desk at speed. After a few seconds, in a shaken voice, Draco says, “Do you know, I suspect that moment is going to haunt my nightmares.”
Harry laughs, even after this bleak night. He can’t help himself. “Yeah, well,” he says, “you can tell your Healer all about it.”
He waits again with Draco in another section of the fourth floor, watches while Draco fills out some forms, fiddles with his quill, and prods absently at the cut on his face a few times, wincing each time he does it. Harry reaches out twice to grab his hand out of the air and stops himself, both times, but it’s a close thing, and he thinks Draco notices the second one. It stops him doing it, at least, and this time when the Mediwizard comes out and says, “Just family,” Draco puts on his poshest voice and does the whole song and dance about Harry Potter and the safety of the nation again, with more or less exactly the same results.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Harry hisses to him as they follow the Mediwizard through another set of Staff Only doors.
Draco favors him with a large, vicious grin and says, “Not on your life, Potter.”
