The Sleeping Beauty Curse

Chapter 3

"What the actual fuck!" Malfoy said – wisely, in Harry's opinion – and wrenched his hand away from Harry's, clutching it to his chest as if he was worried Harry might want to take hold of it again. Harry didn't want to take hold of it again. He wanted to get as far away from Malfoy as was humanly possible. He wanted to—

He lunged at Malfoy as Malfoy wobbled on the spot, for a moment looking like he was going to keel over. Malfoy whipped out his arm to push Harry away, though – hard – and managed to stay on his feet, although he was screwing his face up as though something hurt.

"Um, a little help, please?" Harry called, looking around frantically for a Healer, any Healer. The alarm was still ringing at full volume, and even as he peered through the crowd around him, Harry could see more patients emerging from behind the dozens of doors in the reception room's wall.

"Aren't you . . .?" one man started, before his head vanished behind a cloud of steam billowing from his ears and he was overcome by a coughing fit. "H-Harry Potter?"

The words Harry Potter seemed to be taken up as a choral round, going through the room in waves. Harry craned his head furiously, looking for Hermione – she was bound to be of more help than the Healers in a crisis – but all he could see was pyjama-clad patient upon pyjama-clad patient, a man whose head was furrier than it should be pushing aside a girl who was sprouting leaves to see him better. He yelled Hermione's name, but if she heard him then he couldn't hear her, not over the boom of the alarm and the thrilled murmuring of the crowd. The other patients weren't approaching Harry, but they weren't moving away, either, and he didn't fancy trying to force his way through them when Malfoy could barely stand up. He didn't even know which way was out!

At a loss, Harry looked back at over Malfoy, to check he hadn't keeled over or sprouted wings or anything in the last few seconds. He thought it was decidedly ominous that Malfoy wasn't screaming blue murder and threatening the Healers – what with, exactly, now 'my father will hear about this!' no longer held any weight, he had no idea, but he was sure Malfoy could think of something. It was the sort of knobber he was. Harry opened his mouth to say so . . . and shut it again.

Malfoy had his hand in front of his eyes, and he was moving it backwards and forwards, as if his hand was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. His face was carefully blank.

Harry leaned in a bit closer, so Malfoy could hear him over the general din, and hissed, "What's the matter?" He didn't really want to know. It was bound to be something awful; he could feel it, right in his gut. Malfoy wasn't moaning, and since he was the sort to start sobbing over a papercut if he thought it would get someone else in trouble, it must be something really bad to shut him up like that.

"Apart from the obvious?" Malfoy hissed back, his voice very tight, and he shot Harry a slightly fuzzy look that was . . . fearful, Harry realised. He almost reached to take hold of Malfoy's hand again, but held back; that would be weird, he thought. There was no way that Malfoy would like it. He had to put his hand in his pocket to stop himself, though, the impulse was so strong.

A silence opened up between them, almost as if they'd popped into their own, private bubble outside of space and time, and Harry realised it wasn't entirely a rhetorical question. Malfoy, bizarrely, seemed to be hesitating, waiting for Harry to say something. So he suppressed the dozens of sarcastic remarks that sprung, fully formed, to his lips, and instead just nodded. "Yeah," he said, when Malfoy continued to hesitate. "What's wrong?"

Malfoy moistened his lips nervously, shooting a hunted look at the crowd around them, and then leaned in very close to Harry's ear, his hair falling forward and tickling Harry's cheek. "I can't see properly," he whispered fiercely, sounding panicked.