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It happened every year. Every September, within the first few weeks of coming back to Hogwarts, Draco and Harry would have a drag down knock out battle in the middle of class. It would start with a few snippy comments, maybe an attempted tripping. This year, it just happened to be a bit more intense than normal.
“Malfoy! Potter! Hospital wing!” Snape smoothly said, gliding past their cauldrons and removing their messes with a wave of his wand.
They glowered at each other, or as much as they could. Harry’s head was tipped up and he was pinching his nose shut, trying to stem the flow of blood coming from it. Draco was scrubbing at his eye, trying to remove the bubbling purple liquid that was absolutely covering his face. Harry wasn’t quite sure where it had come from, but he wasn’t displeased that it had made its way into Draco’s ice blue eyes. They stumbled upwards from the table simultaneously, bumping into each other and grumbling as they did.
They staggered down the stone hallways, keeping a careful distance from each other. Three flights of stairs and Harry maybe but maybe not guiding Draco in the right direction more than once, and they were at the hospital wing.
“Hello? Madam Pomfrey?” Harry’s voice was clouded with blood but it still rang out through the empty room.
A scrap of parchment floated up from the desk at the front of the corridor.
“Away to get ingredients from Professor Sprout. Will be back.” It read to them in Madam Pomfrey’s voice, before returning to its space on the table once again.
“Wonderful. Amazing. I’m so glad that the one person in this castle who is apparently qualified to do healing is never at their fucking post,” Draco spat, rubbing at his eyes in an increasingly desperate manner.
“D’ya think reparo works on body parts?” Harry wondered aloud, totally ignoring Draco’s scathing commentary and instead fiddling with his wand.
Draco scoffed.
“Absolutely not. If I could see, I could fix it, but someone had a problem with my face.”
“Well, I reckon I’m not the only one who does. I’m doing the world at large a favor,” Harry grumbled, walking to a table near one of the beds and trying one handed to dig through its drawer.
“What on earth are you doing?” Draco snapped, feeling around for a bed to sit on.
“I’m trying to find a cloth to get the shit off your face so you can fix my nose and I can get out of here and away from you. Unless you’d prefer to spend the day in here together.”
Draco allowed the silence to hang for a moment before humming agreement.
“Fine. Sit down and hold still,” Harry said, brandishing a damp cloth at him.
He sat down on the bed next to him. When they were younger they had been the same height, but now that they were fifteen, Harry had hit one more growth spurt than Draco and his eyes were firmly placed at his blond hairline. Holding his breath, the dark haired boy leaned in and gingerly swiped at Draco’s eyes. Draco hissed, biting his lip.
“Sorry,” Harry mumbled.
“Are you though?” Draco threw back. There were tears in his eyes now mixing with the purple goop and the sight of them made something in Harry’s stomach twist. He told himself they were because of the liquid and kept wiping.
“I am. Sorry, I mean. I didn’t mean to do this. It must hurt.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel great. But it wasn’t like you did it unprompted. Otherwise I’d owl my father and have you thrown out of here before you could pull any of your celebrity strings.”
Harry didn’t know what he should say to that, so he opted to say nothing and just rewet the cloth.
It was slow work but eventually the cloth started to come away clear. Harry looked at Draco’s eyes. They looked especially blue against the flush of his cheeks and the red irritation against the irises. They were fixed on Harry’s and suddenly he felt very hot in a room that hadn’t been especially warm. Harry quickly stood up, blinking through a head rush.
“I’m gonna go.”
“What?” Draco stood too, his brow furrowed. “Aren’t I meant to fix your nose?”
Oh. Right. His nose. Harry reached up gingerly to touch it and winced. It smarted, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore, and Harry was quite sure he couldn’t last much longer in this room.
“It’s alright. I’ll have Hermione fix it. I’m sure she’ll be able to do it better than you could.” Harry through that biting remark on the end on instinct, and he regretted it the moment he saw Draco’s eyes widen in surprise at the hostility.
“Well, fine then. Go on and have the know it all do it,” the blond threw back.
“I will!” Harry exclaimed, backing up. The red of Draco’s skin was fading, leaving a porcelain behind, and Harry was not in a position to be dealing with that sort of thing. He turned to leave, but looked back at the sound of Draco’s voice.
“You’ve still got Pomfrey’s rag.”
Harry looked down at his hand. So he did. He quickly threw it down on the nearest bed.
“Thanks. Sorry. Bye.” The words spilled out on top of each other, and he felt the blood rising to his cheeks so he turned back to the door and walked quickly out, only barely registering the soft ‘goodbye’ Draco offered from behind him.
What in the hell was that?