Two Sides of the Same Coin(DRARRY)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Why is it that hate comes out so easily, yet...love? It gets trapped inside." - Unknown

After the tears and shaking that followed his nightmare had subsided, Harry dozed fitfully until Hermione's arrival roused him once and for all.

"Er'mione? What'chu doing here?" He slurred sleepily, blinking in the wan morning light.

"Sorry, Harry. I didn't mean to wake you. I just wanted to stop by before classes," she said.

"Oh... what time is it, exactly?"

"Half seven." Harry noticed she looked cross; due to the distemper he owed to the earliness of the hour, he attributed the same cause to Hermione's mood.

Harry groaned.

"Oh, dear. Maybe I shouldn't have come," she fretted. "You need your rest..."

"S'fine," Harry assured her. "S'fine."

She pursed her lips in concern, but moved to making small talk about classes and fellow Gryffindors. It wasn't long before she had to leave and the corridors filled with the sound of students making their way first down to breakfast, then to class. Harry wondered vaguely if the incident outside the library yesterday was contributing to the chatter he could hear mutedly from inside the echoey quiet of the hospital wing. More than that, though, he wondered about the conversations of two students in particular – Draco and Ron. He wondered whether his name was on their tongues or in their thoughts and, if so, what effect it was having.

Madam Pomfrey came in a little while later and gave him a quick examination. To Harry's frustration, she deemed a few more hours of napping in order before he'd be fit to be released; he'd hoped to convince her to release him straightaway. His injuries felt fine, really, and if she would just excuse him from the hospital wing, he could go... well, he wasn't sure what he intended to do, but sitting here stewing about things wasn't going to do anything but drive him mad. He fell back into a fitful doze, waking from shallow sleep in cold sweats, roused by fragmented dreams of pursed lips and vacated spaces and quiet voices that jarred him like shouting.

Finally, at half four, Madam Pomfrey bustled into the room carrying a large chunk of chocolate identical to the one she'd fed him and Hermione third year the night of Wormtail's escape.

"Good afternoon," she said cheerfully, pulling a small knife out of her pocket. "How are you feeling?"

"Great!" said Harry, with just a little too much enthusiasm.

She laughed and began hacking at the mass of chocolate. "Eager to leave, are we? Well, you're in luck. A little chocolate, I think, and you'll be right as rain."

"So I can go?" Harry sat up and straightened his glasses.

"Soon as you eat this." She held up a hunk of chocolate as big as his fist. He took it and set in to devouring it so quickly he caused a rogue bite to lodge in his throat and start him coughing dramatically.

"Take it easy there, Potter!" Madam Pomfrey exclaimed. "You've no need to rush it so. Classes are finished for the day and dinner's not for a couple of hours yet. You're not missing anything right now."

Harry disagreed; each passing minute seemed to be slipping away from him before his eyes, dissolving into the same oblivion that Sirius – and now Draco – did in his dream. But he took her advice and slowed down. He'd survived the darkest wizard of all time, after all. He wasn't about to let a wayward chunk of chocolate do him in now.

"There now," Madam Pomfrey clucked approvingly as he bit off a smaller bite and sucked on it carefully until it was soft enough to chew and swallow. "Easy does it."