A Throne of Blood and Stars

Chapter Twenty

It's quiet again, in the Infirmary, after Ron finishes hauling a protesting Blaise through the doors. He sits down in the chair next to Harry's bed and puts his elbows on his knees, knits his hands.

In the light of the waning moon and the dying embers of the torches, Harry's skin glows. He looks ethereal, with his dark lashes and his uneven eyebrows. His face is turned away from Draco but he doesn't mind because he finds the curve of his neck mesmerizing, the way it dips into the hollow of his throat and spreads over his collarbones.

Or collarbone.

Draco can only see one, with the way Harry is sleeping, he's moved so the hospital robe he's wearing reveals his entire shoulder. An entire square inch of tan skin, unmarked and unscathed.

He thinks he should question why he thinks this way but at the same time, it feels so natural. It feels so good to look at Harry all the time and not think about what the world would say about him because what can they say that they haven't already?

The Slytherin shakes his head to clear away the thoughts. He exhales and leans forward, pushes his lips into his hands so he won't make a sound, afraid he might stir the sweet creature sleeping before him.

He's startled out of his reverie by a Poppy Pomfrey, who gently smiles at him. "You know you don't have to stay. He's safe in here. If anything happens I'll owl you immediately."

Draco remains silent. He keeps his eyes on Harry for a few more seconds before turning to the Medi-Witch. "Tell me again what you found in me?"

Madame Pomfrey sighs. She summons a chair and sits on it curtly, folding her hands in her lap and looks to Harry's unconscious form. "When you first came back from that first time in the Room of Requirement, you fell asleep. And you slept, and slept, and slept as if you hadn't slept before. Out like a light, you were.

"Blaise became concerned it was an aftereffect from being in that room. He thought it depleted your magic so he called the Headmistress and I to investigate. Perfectly healthy. No scratches, no scars, no broken bones. The only thing that stuck out were your magical signatures.

"And we say we have one in general, but really, it's a whole system. You have a magical signature for travel, a signature for energy, a signature for light and dark magic. Every signature is supposed to measure at a certain level of interaction and awareness to its surroundings. And yours were all over the place. It was like someone tampered with your core and tried to reset it."

Draco frowns. "Reset...my magical core?"

"Yes. At first, I just thought it was your signature adjusting back to the normal setting of the castle, as you know the magic in the castle and the Room are very different. But then, upon closer inspection, your magical core was the one with the glitch. That's what was making your signature go haywire.

"You see, when someone tampers with your magical core, it's dangerous. Fatal, actually. But whoever did this to you, quite literally reset your magical controls and somehow managed to intertwine another magical signature into it, to trick your core that it's part of it."

"Is that bad?" Draco asks, leaning froward again. "Will I be alright?"

"That's the problem," she sighs. "We don't know what it means. I've consulted several Ministry trained medics and they have yet to respond. I've also contacted some old friends that have more experience than I do.

"I do want to let you know something, though," Madame Pomfrey leans forward as well, her eyes set and her forehead crinkled. "Whoever did this to you has done it many times over. The precision that went into this operation is meticulous. They had to have known what they were doing."