Walking in Light and Shade - Moment by Moment Book #2 (Harry Potter, Drarry)

A Nightmare's Reward

Harry pushed against the floaty feeling that surrounded him and it gave a little. Groggily, he opened his eyes and looked up through a veil of iridescence. The silken fibres reached through him, touching his mind and body in equal measure, and inspired a tiny feeling of claustrophobia as he realised he was encased in magic. The base fear came out in a weak mew and someone reacted. Harry heard a gasp which sounded like it was outside a tunnel, and then there was a young woman leaning over him, wand in hand. Her face showed concern, but no more and then she disappeared again.

The young man couldn't move, even blinking against the strangely physical strands of magic was an effort and he could see nothing more than the ceiling. He was naked and the vulnerability ran through Harry like he was back in the torturer's cell. He needed to react, to get out of whatever surrounded him and panic began to rise in the trapped man as his body remained held. One thing he could control was his breathing, and his chest began to rise and fall irregularly as his helplessness brought back nasty memories. There was no table at his back this time, in fact he could not feel anything but the soft fibres below him, but still he was ensnared and his fear would not be held back. Desperately, Harry tried to flex against his cage.

"Do not try to move, Mr Potter," Pomfrey's sure instruction returned some perspective to his world, and her patient responded to her with another wordless whine. "You are in a stabilising field," the healer told him, her calm face appearing above him. "Don't fight it, we will have you out in a moment."

Harry tried to calm his emotions as he was given a reason for his condition, but he was still very glad as with a stream of Latin from Pomfrey, he felt the sensation of floating begin to diminish. He started as his bare back first brushed and then sunk onto something solid below him, and then he shivered as the all-encompassing magic dissipated. As air prickled over his skin and caused goosebumps, a blanket was thrown around his body by the woman he had first seen on waking and the young man groaned as, with motor control, came a feebleness that ran right through his being. Still, he closed his eyes a moment and stretched unused muscles. He was reluctant to lift his lids again, and he just accepted the hand which came to rest on his forehead.

"Sleep," Poppy's soothing tones suggested: remembering and trusting the same suggestion from only days earlier, Harry had no objection and drifted back into slumber.

~*~

He stretched again, then shivered delightfully as refreshing prickles ran up and down his body, and finally, Harry opened his eyes. The young man rolled onto his side and looked around; the room hadn't changed, everything was still stacked into the bedside cabinet the way he had left it (except that the chess pieces had been gathered back up into their box), the dressing gown was on the back of the door. He was in his pyjamas, curled into the comfortable bed, and the patient wondered if he had dreamed the magical field. However as Poppy Pomfrey strode into the room with her usual psychic timing, he knew he hadn't dreamed anything. The woman's face showed a consternation that Harry had not seen before, and he knew that he was the source. He stayed huddled on his side and just watched her, deciding that pacifism for once was the best course of action.

"Well, well, Mr Potter," she stopped a few feet from the bed, hands on her hips, even as her voice remained scarily smooth, "back with us at last. Just for your information, I have never known a patient so disruptive to his own treatment. Not only did you manage to put yourself into crisis, you forced your way out of the stabilising field three hours earlier than I intended."

"I'm sorry, won't do it again," Harry returned, his voice stringy and dry.

"No, you won't," Poppy continued the scold. "I kept you under this time until the magic had settled, I was not going to let you hurt yourself again. You would have been under for thirty-six hours if you hadn't decided that thirty-three was more to your liking. Since you did come out early I want you to sleep for the rest of today; I am not going to have to sedate you for you to do that, am I?"