Canary Creams and New Yellow Paint - (DRARRY)

Chapter Eleven

Draco's getting frustrated. He sits in his office all day fielding letters, trying to comfort patients, and otherwise generally losing his grasp on professionalism. He's never gone this long at work without having something to occupy him, something to tinker on or cast a web of complex charms over.

His hands itch for something to do. Even though he knows there's no use in creating more prosthetic eyes right now, not when he can't trust them to work properly, he takes a base model off the shelf.

Draco reaches for his Reveliospecs and flips the first lens down, studying the latent magic potential of the acrylic sphere in his hand. He rolls it around in a circle on the desktop with his palm, then casts the first spell of many.

A halo of green appears over the eye like usual, but as Draco watches, it splinters and fractures into broken pieces, leaving sharp, jagged edges.

He reaches out with a single finger, half convinced he'll be able to touch the magic, but all he feels is a hot tightness to the space.

Draco flips down the second lens.

He flexes his hand, watching the lines of yellow winding towards the prosthesis again and again, only to snag on something invisible just a breath away.

He rolls the eye slowly, then flicks back to the first lens.

The halo is trying to re-knit itself, cracks glowing solid yellow as they close, only to split open again in new places.

He pushes the second lens back down, then the third and final one.

The room goes dark, until all he can see is the steady pulsing of something in a sea of nothingness. It would be wrong to call the nothingness black. It's the absence of any colour at all. It would be wrong to call the something red. It's more like the sensation of heat creeping up his fingers and in through his eyes, filling Draco's head like an hourglass.

The pulsing gets stronger as he lifts the eye closer to him, until it's barely a few centimetres from his nose.

Hand shaking, Draco raises his wand and casts.

"Profundus."

A burst of heat floods his senses, then the darkness swallows it up so fast he feels dizzy.

Draco rips the goggles off, panting.

Potter. He needs to talk to Potter.

~

He is not expecting Weasley to open the door.

He does a double take, leaning back to examine the house number and make sure he has the correct address. Of course, he does, but that doesn't make it any less strange.

"Oh," says Weasley, "it's you."

He doesn't know how to respond to that. He decides on addressing the topic at hand without any cushioning.

"I need to use my Reveliospecs to have a look at Potter's paintings. And his eye."

"Er..."

"I know you want to figure this out as much as I do."

"More, surely."

"Right," he says, though he doesn't agree. "So, may I please come in and look at the portraits? These glasses here" — he holds them up — "they can see magic. I can look at the spellwork behind the malfunctions, see what's causing them. It might even tell me how to fix it."

"I don't think Harry wants to see you."

"He can close his eyes."

Weasley gives him one more long, wary look, then shrugs, disappearing into the bowels of the house. He leaves the door open behind him, which Draco takes as an invitation. One issued from a person with atrocious manners, but an invitation nonetheless.