Beginning Over the Summer

Over the Summer:

Harry was having a lousy Summer, as always. Dudley had just managed to corner him in the playground where he was thinking and had beat the shit out of him. So basically same old same old.

Harry, wincing, trudged up the stairs to his room after the long trek back. He laid down on his bed, aching all over, and fell into an uneasy sleep.

When he woke up, it was morning and there was a night black owl at his window. It was the pecking at the window that had woken him.

Harry hopped out of bed, then he gasped as a wave of pain washed over him. I must have a million bruises. He groaned as he realized he was right.

Harry moved to the window, despite the pain everywhere, and opened it. The owl soared over to Hedwig's empty cage (she was delivering a letter to Ron) and dropped the letter on Harry's bed on the way.

Harry picked up the letter and looked at it, his face confused. The letter was scarlet and gold, and it looked handmade. It had, in tidy black cursive, his name and address. None of his friends wrote like that. He opened the envelope and read:

Potter,

You let slip that the Dursley's treat you badly. I may or may not have heard you talking to that owl of yours by the lake... Anyway, I thought I would send you some medicine for bruises. Rub it twice a day on the bruise. The green bottle is for internal bruising, and you drink a tablespoon of it an hour or more before you eat.

Sincerely,
Draco Malfoy
P.S. If you run out, owl me.

Harry looked at the two small bottles on his bed that he hadn't noticed. He gingerly placed a hand on his ribs and felt immediate pain. He looked at his legs and arms and noticed bruises in every color.

He took what he estimated to be a tablespoon of the green medicine. It tasted like pea soup. Strange...

He opened the other bottle, this one blue, and dabbed some of the medicine on his leg. It smelled like vanilla. Also strange. The second the vanilla medicine made contact with his bruise, the pain went away.

Harry walked over to his desk, this time with little pain, and wrote a letter back. He gave it to Draco's owl, and the owl took off.

^^^

Draco was reading in the library, and he looked up when he saw his owl at the window. He quickly opened the window and the owl landed on his arm.

"What is it Draco?" Lucius asked from his favorite reading chair.

"Nothing, Father. Simply a letter from Pansy." 

Lucius looked over the top of his book, his eyes slightly narrower. "Hm. You two seem to be spending and awful lot of time together..." 

Draco immediately shook his head. "Please, Father. She is not my type. I'm going to go take Ulysses to his perch."

Draco strode away to his room and placed his owl on his perch. Ulysses immediately fell asleep. He had had a long day.

Draco sat down on his large bed and opened the letter. He knew it wasn't from Pansy, but he hoped his Father would never find out he had owled Harry Potter.

Malfoy,

Thank you for the medicines. They are a real life saver. You caught me on the perfect day. And by perfect I mean...well, Dudley just was in a really bad mood and he found me. It worked wonders I don't know where you found them, but thank you!

Sincerely,
Harry Potter

I don't know why I did that, but I hope he's happy, Draco thought, and he smiled to himself for a moment, then he hid it like he was used to doing, and returned to the library.