Canary Creams and New Yellow Paint - (DRARRY)

Chapter Seven

"I know."

"What the hell am I gonna do? Do you know how uncomfortable this thing can get?"

"I've been told."

"Fuck."

"Fuck," Draco repeats, emphatically.

Potter's glower grows dark as coals losing their last memory of fire. "You can't stall anymore. You have to tell all your patients."

Teddy nods vigorously. "If there's even a small fraction of them that won't have put their prostheses on for the day yet—"

"I know." Draco picks up a quill from his desk, but he can't make himself begin writing yet. "Everyone will panic."

"That'll happen either way."

"But if I can figure out what's happening before I tell people..."

He knows even as he says it that it won't work. He has to contact the Prophet immediately, and he has to send individual owls to everyone that has ever received an eye from his clinic. Even they aren't all cursed. Even if it sends patients running to other countries to get treated by competing ocularists.

Draco nearly keels over in panic, because he knows how this will go. His patients won't trust him anymore. It won't matter how quickly he figures out what's happening and fixes it; this won't be forgotten. 'If it can happen once,' they'll reason, 'it could happen again.' Why would they bother with him in the future?

"How bad is this?" Teddy asks.

He wishes he knew. "It's nothing to worry over."

Teddy gets to his feet. "Incredibly bad, then."

"Yes."

"Really, really bad."

Draco snorts dryly. "Ladies and Gentlemen — top of his class at Hogwarts."

"We'll stay to help," Teddy says. "Right, Harry? We need to write the letters as fast as possible."

Potter gives a tense nod.

"I'll get Theia," Draco tells them.

As he exits the room, Draco grips his quill like a weapon. It won't protect him, though. He wishes he had something stronger to hold onto.

~

Draco pounds on Madam Pomfrey's office door as at least a hundred owls swoop towards him at once.

Her arm shoots out just a moment before they reach him. "In, in—" She yanks him past the threshold and slams it behind them.

Thirty indignant squawks sound from the other side before Madam Pomfrey aims a Silencing Charm at the wood.

Her sharp eyes land on him. "Sit, sit, good heavens, boy!

She pushes him into one of her cosy red chairs and ushers him to take a sip of tea. He can tell that it's been placed under a Warming Charm, which isn't surprising, considering that he's an hour late today.

He hadn't known how best to escape his clinic without getting pecked to death by birds.

"Minerva told me about your announcement in the Prophet.

Draco winces. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm fucked, aren't I?"

She thwacks him on the head. "Language, young man."

Draco rubs his cheek in annoyance. "I think I'm entitled to a little cursing, seeing as I've just had what might be the worst day of my life. Which is saying a lot."

"You're entitled to what I saw you're entitled to. Now, if you're well enough to talk like that, you're well enough to help me restock my storage shelves."

She bustles about the snug little office she has just to the right side of the Hogwarts hospital wing, putting away jars of powdered moonstone.

Madam Pomfrey always makes Draco handle the top shelves because she can only reach them using magic, and she doesn't like trying to arrange potions using a Levitation Charm. Apparently, it's made a mess more than a few times.

"How much bloody powdered moonstone does one person need?"

"Hush. I won't be reminding you about your language a third time."

"I'm forty-four. Do you think I'll ever be allowed to curse in front of you?"

"Hardly. By the time you're not a young man any longer, I'd better be well beyond my death bed."

He does not look up from his tea. "What a cheerful thought. Don't suppose we've got long left?"

Madam Pomfrey clucks in disapproval, but her tone is fond. "Watch yourself, boy. You're going to need people on your side through all this."

He'd sent the last of the letters an hour earlier, after begging the Prophet to publish his official warning in a midday edition.

"Has anything like this ever happened to you?" he asks.

"You remember your second year, don't you?"

"Too well."

"I hardly slept for months. Do you think parents were thrilled when students were being Petrified left and right, and I had no answers for them?"

He hadn't thought about all that in nearly a decade. But he could only imagine his reaction if he heard Scorpius had been Petrified when he was twelve. It wasn't worth thinking about, but he's sure he would have ruined whatever burgeoning friendship he and Madam Pomfrey had at the time.

"Exactly," she continues, taking his silence as agreement, as always. "So don't go thinking you've got all the world's problems to yourself, now."

"Yes, yes, that's me told — but what do I do?"

"You just take it as it comes. No way to know what the response will be until it happens." She levels him with a look. "Eventually you should stop hiding out in my hospital wing and go back to your clinic. And you should talk to Potter again, as well. He may be able to help you figure this out."

He ignores the last bit. "But the owls. You have no idea how many Howlers and Floo calls and letters from 'concerned citizens' I'll get."

"You're going to have to face it eventually. There won't be as many right now as there will be later."

"Right now?"

"Well." She draws her wand from her sleeve, and a potion's vial comes flying towards her. She tips a bit into both of their cups. "Drink up."

He gives her a dubious look.

"Don't judge me until you're working with children all day, trying to keep them from escaping their hospital beds when they're supposed to be regrowing limbs. A little Calming Draught can do all of us well, sometimes."

It's true. And it's also a good reminder that his job could always, always be worse.