Black coffee, with sugar

Chapter 4

Daphne had never been so glad Astoria had taken Lilian for a weekend in Paris when she found Harry with blood in his shirt, having burnt coffee once more. She blinked in his direction as he posed a weak smile, a hand over his stomach, the white shirt stained beyond repair.

"St. Mungo's isn't here,", she told him, going for the cabinet where she kept the first aid kit. Harry was still the reason she kept it, since she found cute the way he'd fuss with her if she cut a finger while cutting up anything, putting band-aids carefully and kissing her fingers softly. In turn, the gauze and salves were useful whenever he came home with a cut or an wound from some Dark artifact or another that couldn't be healed with spells. "Is it yours?"

"Mostly, I guess,", Harry said, voice weak, half-heartedly trying to man the coffee machine. Daphne sighed. "A raid to one of the Rosier manors went... A bit wrong. I think it's poison."

"Of course it went,", she told him, the gears in Daphne's mind turning as she went to support Harry, tearing him away from the machine, touching the soaking wet shirt and finding a small wound. "The Rosiers are poison brewers for a trade, so it is probably poison."

Now, the question was what poison - and on a smaller scale, why he had come to her. Daphne guided him to her bed, and laid him there, unbuttoning his shirt, poking the wound with her wand. Harry moaned, feverish and sweating, and she wondered what could have been. When Daphne noticed he wasn't looking, she made the portrait of Lilian by her bedside facedown. He didn't need to see that.

Back to the subject at hand, what did the Rosiers produce, poison-wise? She knew the Zabini family did the undetectable sort of poisons - and Mrs. Zabini was very good at testing her new creations in her husbands -, but what kind of poisons were the ones the Rosiers did?

"Tell me what happened,", she decided, spelling her hair in a bun, trying to remember what spells her father used when he needed to verify a wound for Dark magic.

Harry laughed, eyes wild and unfocused. Alright, it was... Bad. She cast a spell to stop the blood flowing in that area, just to be sure. She had no idea how much blood he had lost, after all.

"We got a tip that the Rosiers were selling some sort of forbidden potions, so off we went after one Auror was able to buy one.", he started, and Daphne's mind started going through a list of forbidden potions. She should know that. Harry proceeded to describe how he was cataloguing a potion when it suddenly exploded, but since he had been alone in the room - foolishly, as he described himself, and Daphne was more than inclined to agree -, no one really noticed as long as he kept his work robes on. At least he had provided her with potion color, which narrowed down the options somewhat.

After that, Harry had gone back to work as if nothing had happened, and Daphne, with an eye on him and another on the potion book, rose up to fully look at Harry, seeing him sprawled on bed. Weren't it for the bloodstain on her white sheets, it'd look familiar, a memory in flesh once more.

"And how, exactly, no one noticed?", she asked, closing the book and picking up another.

"I said I'd go for decontamination and ran away,", he smiled, and Daphne nodded. Decontamination usually took a day, ran by the Unspeakables, and they also enjoyed using them as test subjects for the potions invented in the underground laboratories. It wasn't the most pleasant option - Daphne shuddered, thinking about the poor Auror who had a terrible adverse reaction and had lived to tell the tale, but sadly it had took him a month to do so -, so she could see why he was at her house.

Still, if it hadn't been her luck that Astoria had taken Lilian out of the house...

"St. Mungo's is still a better option than my house. They have better resources than I do, at least.", Daphne grabbed another book, and Harry offered her a weak laugh.

"The moment I step in there, I assure you, there will be at least one extra edition of the Daily Prophet in the presses,", he said, coughing. Daphne found the thrice-damned potion - it sounded like it could be the Erumpent Potion with maybe a protective spell, and cursed when she noticed all it did was give whoever touched it a nasty surprise. Daphne cast a quick analysis spell, and relaxed when she noticed all Harry had was a small blood loss - well, if any blood loss could be considered small. - and a nasty side effect of whatever protections that potion had that could work itself out of his system through sweat, acting much like a fever. No, wait. He was already running a fever. This one was just a new, added bonus.

She rose her eyes to meet his, the love and adoration she had seen before still there. Daphne approached the bed, sitting by his side.

"Are you sick, Harry?", she asked, and when he nodded, Daphne sighed, quickly disinfecting the wound in his stomach. At least he didn't have glass inside. Maybe it was the force, combined with the potion, that had ruptured his skin?

"There's a bug going around the Auror department,", he explained, and she nodded. Lilian had gotten a bug, too, but it just made her sneezes make things change colour. At least Daphne had been able to keep her away from school during the worst period, even if now her decoration clashed awfully. "Can I stay here? I don't want to..."

Daphne shushed him, not wanting him to end the phrase. I don't want Ginny to get it. That... Stung more than what she wanted to admit.

"You're paying the most expensive set of linens I can find,", she told him, and Harry laughed. She put a hand on his forehead, slick with sweat, leaving her wand aside to touch her own forehead, his skin almost sizzling hot in comparison to hers. Daphne hissed, and closed his wound, watching his skin glue itself together. An analysis spell made a few moments later showed that it had only external damage, but he did need a few blood-replenishing potions. That should be easy enough to owl-order.

Daphne rose up, mind already running a list of things she needed for him, but was stopped by Harry's hand grabbing hers. She shot him a confused look.

"Won't your...", he stopped, fingers stroking her palm. "Won't your boyfriend mind?"

Daphne was thoroughly confused for one second, but her mind kindly reminded her of their last interaction, and she smiled.

"No, not at all,", she told him, and he let go of her hand. "Now let me take care of you."

Harry nodded, and she took his glasses off as he closed his eyes. She took a deep breath, and started to work.