Bitter Transmutation : Cruel Transformation || Drarry

Part 1

His skin was too hot. Too tight.

Draco brushed his hair back, blinking his eyes, trying to get them to focus. His heart raced, and shivers racked through his muscles, leaving him breathless. He stumbled to his feet and headed to the hospital wing.

-

-

"Well, Mr Malfoy, you are warm, perhaps you've caught a fever," Madam Pomfrey said, walking over to her potions stores.

Vials clinked as she pulled open the doors and took out two potions, bringing them back and pressing them into Draco's hand. "Pepper-up. Take one now and the other with you for later. Come back if you need more or it gets worse."

Draco quickly drank the potion, offering a quiet thanks. The thrumming heat ebbed, slightly. Draco left the hospital wing and went back to his room, curled up on his bed and tried to sleep.

-

-

Draco woke in darkness with a grimace, kicking off the blankets tangled around his legs. Too hot. Heat crawled across his skin in prickling, unbearable waves, his muscles twitched with every stilted breath. The fine silk of his pyjamas clung to his skin, tacky with sweat.

He cast a feeble lumos, leaning off the side of his bed to grab his robes where he had dropped them, scrabbling in the folds until his fingers closed around cold glass. He took the other pepper-up potion and dropped back onto his pillow with a shudder.

Draco closed his eyes, dropping into a hazy half-sleep.

He dreamt of his skin tightening until he couldn't breathe and it ripped from his bones while he screamed.

-

-

Draco opened his eyes and squeezed them shut with a groan against the light sneaking through his curtains. He tried to stretch and froze with a hiss of pain as every muscle seemed to painfully protest at the movement, it even hurt to breathe. He shifted uncomfortably as his skin prickled and itched like a half-healed sunburn.

Draco eased himself out of bed, nearly falling on the discarded clothes still strewn across the floor. He gingerly made his way to his private bathroom and splashed water on his face after with a shudder. Draco drank a glass of water, and another, pressing the back of his hand over his mouth as he stumbled back to bed. He grabbed a blanket and clutched it to his chest in a crumpled ball.

He slept again.

-

-

Draco blinked blearily, only half aware he was awake or what had woke him. There was a knock on his door that turned into the door opening. Draco frantically felt around his sheets for his wand, finding it stuffed halfway under his pillow, and wrenched it out as he forced himself up onto his elbow.

"Ah, Mr Malfoy!" Slughorn said with forced joviality as he stepped inside, "There you are! You'd missed a day of classes, and Minerva pointed out it was quite out of character for you."

Draco dropped his wand and shoulders back onto his pillow.

"Sick, then? That would explain it," Slughorn said.

Draco nodded. He swallowed, his throat so dry it hurt.

Slughorn rocked back on his heels, straightening his robe like someone who had to be on their way, "Will you be needing help? Or perhaps just some more rest? Rest is the best medicine as they say."

Draco didn't have the energy to even glare at the old man. He needed to go back to the infirmary, he knew that, but asking Slughorn for help was- he still had some pride.