BLIND SIGHT - drarry

Ch. two

He thought he wouldn't survive it.

When the battle was over, when Harry screamed and fell, Draco felt his heart stop, only to have it start again when Madame Pomphrey said Harry would live, he would wake up.

Endless nights spent by Harry's bedside, watching the parade of broken and bleeding bodies travel back and forth. Hermione's arm had gone to a werewolf, untransformed, driven mad with pain; but she had still managed to use her wand with the other to stop her own bleeding and Neville's beside her. They would both survive, but the boy would never talk again. Weasley had been lucky in comparison, knocked from the battlements of the tower, he fell to the ground and shattered both legs, but it would heal. Hermione's arm would never grow back, and neither would Harry's eyes.

Draco had made it through the final battle relatively unscathed, and that almost made it worse. To watch his friends, the people that he loved, hurt and trying to recover, when all he had were some new scars to add to his collection, cut him deeper than any curse had managed.

After Harry woke up, the boy spent the first few days crying, over lost friends and his lost vision. For that first week, Draco never let go of his hand, at Harry's insistence.

And it felt so good to have the boy awake, alive, that Draco would have held on anyway

After they both managed to pull themselves together, Draco tried to get Harry interested in learning how to be a blind wizard, how to find his way around, to use magic without his sight, but the Griffindor wasn't interested.

The truth was, as much as Draco loved him, he was frustrated. He'd spent hours researching ways for Harry to live something like a normal life, and almost lost his voice trying to convince his love that there was still a world outside of the hospital wing.

But all the boy wanted to do was sleep, and cry. Part of Draco understood, and wanted to hold Harry and let him cry, let him fall apart. But the other part was scared that he might end up losing his black-haired love completely.

After Pomphrey said there was nothing to be done, Draco continued his research, not just for tricks and spells to make life easier for Harry, but for something that could cure him.

And he found it.

Some scholar had taken the muggle idea of organ transplants and applied it to the magical world. With the aid of certain spells to prevent the body's rejection of the new tissue, a new heart, or spleen, or lung could be gotten from anyone without the worry over blood types, and implanted with protection against the infections that could end up killing.

All that was needed was to find a donor, a new pair of eyes, but Draco never really searched, though he knew there would be scores of volunteers.

Perhaps it was selfish, but this was something he could do for Harry, something he could give his love. It wasn't the moon and the stars, but it was the world, in full color.

Pom argued ferociously against it, told him to give up such an insane notion, that it was better for Harry to learn to live as he was.

But Draco insisted, and Pomphrey eventually gave in.

He spent the night before the surgery holding Harry as the brunette boy wept tears of joy in his arms, memorizing the Griffindor's features and engraving them in his mind's eye. When the morning came, Pom put Harry to sleep, then Draco.

Draco knew he wasn't just losing part of his eyes, but the whole thing, so he asked Pom to seal the empty cavities when she was done, finding out what he'd done would be hard enough on Harry without seeing the scars it left behind.

(12345)

He thought he would wake up immediately after the operation, but it had taken a greater toll on him than expected, and he woke up the night after Harry had.

It was almost funny, to wake up in a darkness that would never end.

He tried again, to get Harry's agreement to his proposal, but the boy put it off. He couldn't see Harry's face, couldn't tell how he was feeling, but his voice was cold. The harsh edge it had held since the boy woke up blind was gone, but there was still something... distant.

The next morning, when Harry discovered Draco was blind, the Slytherin wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

Harry thought he had been blind along?

There would have been something poetic in that, romantic, the two of them sharing the darkness, but instead Draco froze.

He could feel Harry getting up, the mattress shifted under him, and the cool brush of the sheet as it was pulled away.

Reaching out, he grabbed it, tried to stop Harry, to explain. But what would he say? If he confessed, Harry would stay, but Draco didn't want him to stay out of pity, or guilt, or even gratitude.

He said the only thing he could, the only words that were real to him, "I love you."

And he heard that voice move away from him, away into the darkness, "I know, but I can't look at you right now."

Harry... couldn't look at him?

Draco got up and out of the room carefully, he found Pomphrey waiting just outside the door. Draco knew how much she loved a good romantic moment, and felt bad for ruining this one for her.

But then, it had been ruined for him too, hadn't it?

"Pom, I- I need to go."

The older woman gripped his arm and led him to the Headmaster's office.

McGonagall sounded as though she understood, but she didn't try to dissuade the Slytherin boy. Another time, another day, Draco would assume it was part of the greater bias against Slytherin's in general and Malfoys in particular and pitch a fit, but he was too tired. He'd been awake for a bare hour or two, and already he felt as though he'd aged years, decades.

The Floo opened with a roar, and Draco announced his destination clearly.

"The Burrow."