honestly: it’s a bit funny. It’s a bit funny, that after all those near-death experiences fighting the most powerful Dark wizard in a hundred years— after he actually did die, however impermanently, at that maniac’s hands—he’s going to bleed out here on the floor of Grimmauld Place, murdered with his favorite knife.

He tries to stay awake, because—because. Because Kreacher’s not here, and Kreacher would be here if he wasn’t going to get Draco, and Slughorn thinks Draco wille. Harry’s not so sure; Harry hopes, actually, that Draco doesn’t care about him at all, that Draco leaves him here to die, because that would mean he’d stay away. It would hurt, but not for very long, and Draco would live, so that would be fine.

Harry keeps closing his eyes and then—opening them again, and it feels like blinking, but Harry’s pretty sure that it’s not. He’s pretty sure that every time his heavy eyelids fall he’s falling too, away from the consciousness he’s trying to cling to; he’s having some trouble remembering the problem with that. It would be such a relief, wouldn’t it, to just—go to sleep—deal with all this fuss in the morning—

“Harry, you absolute fuck, don’t you dare be dead, I swear to god if you’re dead I’ll— I’ll—”

Draco.

Harry’s eyes open.

Draco’s kneeling in front of him, his eyes wide and looking everywhere but at Harry’s face; his own is deathly pale. His hands are moving too quickly for Harry to really— understand, reaching for him and pulling away and doing it all over again, never quite managing to land a touch. It tugs at a muscle in Harry’s chest, the solid truth of Draco’s painfully frantic face, and Harry’s selfish, he is, because it turns out he’s glad Draco didn’t leave him here to die. He’s probably still going to die, of course, but at least he gets to know this before the end, this fluttering, hesitant tenderness he’s never felt before.

But—

“It’s—a trap,” Harry says, gasping a little at the pain of drawing the breath to speak. Draco’s head whips up, and he stares at Harry, facepletely immobile; stricken. Harry can’t help the small smile that creeps onto his face, and doesn’t want to, anyway. Maybe Draco doesn’t love him, but this might be Harry’s last chance to smile at him, and he’ll take it, goddamn it, before he goes. “You’ve got to get out of here, it’s— ”

He doesn’t get to say the word Slughorn, because Draco kisses him.

It’s not—Harry knows it can’t be a good kiss. He can barely even remember how to kiss right now, and anyway he thinks Draco might be biting him, a little. It hurts, too, even though Draco is carefully not touching him anywhere but at his lips, because it makes Harry’s breathe faster and each breath is a game of Russian roulette, agony-wise. It’s not a good use of their time and it might be what gets Draco killed and any Auror worth their salt would call him stupid just to look at it, and Harry’s still so glad of it he could cry.

“Of course it’s a trap, you imbecile,” Draco says, sounding near tears himself, when he pulls back. He rests his forehead against Harry’s for a second, bracing his hand on the cab next to them. “Do you think I don’t know a trap when I see one? What kind of reckless Gryffindor idiot do you take me for?”

Harry looks at Draco through his lashes again, trying to drink in every inch of him. Trying to affix Draco to his memory, like he did with the house. “You’re…not wearing shoes.”

“Fine, maybe I am a reckless idiot,” Draco admits. He pulls away and gives Harry a helpless once over, slides both of his hands into his own hair as he does. “God, I’m useless, I —my wand was gone the minute I walked through the door, I just looked down and it wasn’t there and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Harry! You’re covered in blood! You look like—when I came in, you looked like—and all I can think of is—is a stupid fucking Caesar joke, and that you’re not allowed to die!”

“Hey,” Harry says. He fumbles around, a little blindly, until he gets a grip on part of Draco—the upper arm, he thinks. He doesn’t want to put himself through the nightmare of moving to look down and see. “It’s okay. Breathe.”

“Oh!” Draco says, incredulous. “Breathe, should I? I should breathe, is your professional assessment of this situation? You, bleeding out on the floor, think that I should breathe? That’s great, Harry, thank you. That’s so helpful.”

“Or you could call me some more names,” Harry suggests, his smile going wider. He knows that this is bad, that it’s really bad; he knows what really bad feels like and he doesn’t want to die, not with Draco sitting here in front of him, looking like he’ll fall apart if Harry does. But—god, but he loves this crazy idiot, who never makes any sense except for when he makes all the sense in the world, and finally, if only for a few minutes, he doesn’t have to hide it anymore.

“Bastard,” Draco spits, at once. His face—it’s like he’s trying to look angry but not quite managing it, as though somehow he’s misplaced part of the mask. “You really are one, you know, I never wanted—you can’t imagine—to feel this way about someone else, it’s too much risk! I knew it would be, I knew it, and now you’re going to die and I’m going to have to live with that, you rat fuck. You—I mean—it’s everything! Even the simple act of eating is tainted, because now every time I look at food I think about you—food, Harry! That which we need to survive! It’s not right!”

“Maybe you can enchant the storeroom to make it all look like something else,” Harry says, drifting a little. He’s having a very hard time keeping his eyes open. “Like—leaves, or something. Tree ones. Never cooked you anything with tree leaves in.”

There is a long silence, and then Draco breathes, “The storeroom. Oh my god.”

Harry doesn’t totally track on what happens next; Draco calls Kreacher and then he kind of blacks out for a second and then he’s…floating, he thinks, laying stomach-down on one of his bedsheets, being carried through the air. It must be Kreacher doing it, because Draco’s next to him— Draco doesn’t have a wand—Harry can see his socked feet proceeding along the floors of the kitchen, and then the mudroom.

“You have to,” Harry says, remembering in a sick rush, turning his head to look up at Draco even though he can’t hold back a groan of pain at the motion. “You have to go, it’s still a trap, he’ll kill you—”

“Oh, shut up and focus on keeping yourself alive for once in your bloody life,” Draco snaps, and the ground under his feet changes again, to the polished woodgrain of the stairs down to the storeroom.

Harry feels the oddest sensation wash over him. He’s felt…leaky, he supposes, is the best word for it, for this last however-long, as though not just his blood but his thoughts, too, the things that made him him, were pouring out through the wound in his back. But now— there’s this tingling along his veins, centered around the knife, and it isn’t—he doesn’t feel healed, or even any better, just like the slippage has stopped, somehow.

“The Stasis Charms,” Harry realizes. Kreacher said it himself, that Masters and Mistresses used to sleep down here to keep themselves fresh—they can’t heal him or replace the blood he’s lost, but they’ll buy him some time, keep him hovering here, weak but alive, for at least a little longer. “Draco, you’re a genius.”

“Stop talking,” Draco says. He draws a shaky breath, and adds, fiercely, “D’you think I want praise from you while you’re half dead and barely coherent? No, Potter, I do not. I, unlike some people I could name, do not have an ego so unsightly and massive that it needs constant stoking in even the most dire of circumstances.” His facade shatters a second later, when Kreacher gently lowers Harry’s makeshift sheet-stretcher to the ground and, despite himself, Harry makes a little noise at the impact. “Harry? Are you—is it not working anymore, did it stop—”

“It’s working,” Harry says. He can feel it working, and it’s easier to stay awake now, even if he still feels as though he’s taken about seven Bludgers to the face and body, and would like more than anything to pass out and wake up in the hospital wing.

The effect of the Charms doesn’t extend far enough to give him the strength to hold his own weight, however, and after a second of trying to push himself up on his arms, Draco says, “Oh for god’s sake, sometimes you drive me so insane,” and reaches over to help him up. Once Harry’s upright Draco doesn’t pull his hands away; he just kneels there on the floor, one hand on the ball of Harry’s right shoulder and the other curled around his left biceps, and fixes him with an using look.

“You were supposed to keep me from getting murdered, you know,” Draco says severely. Harry’s not sure it really fits, tone-wise, with the way one of Draco’s thumbs is rubbing a steady, soothing pattern against his arm; he’s not even sure if Draco knows that he’s doing it. “Not get murdered yourself! You’re always stealing my bits, Potter, it’s honestly pathetic. I mean, even in school—”

“Slughorn,” Harry remembers abruptly, fury washing over him again.

“McGonagall,” Draco returns, raising his eyebrows. “Flitwick. What are we doing?”

“No, I mean—it’s Slughorn,” Harry says. “Who did this. Who did all of it.”

“What?” says Draco, looking as dumbfounded as Harry was. “Horace Slughorn? The Potions professor? Potter, surely not. I know you’ve lost a lot of blood, but I swear that man once let Blaise trade him half a box of candied orange peels to ‘et’ he caught us drinking in the Slytherinmon room. He can’t be a criminal mastermind!”

Harry laughs a little, regretting it even as the soundes out of his mouth. “Yeah. Came as a shock to me too.”

“Well, I have to say I’m not impressed with his trap-laying skills,” Draco says, looking around. “We could survive for years down here—well, I could.” He frowns at Harry, head tilting to get a better look at the knife still sticking out of his back. “Merlin, that’s horrible. We have to get you to St. Mungo’s—Krea

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