ripi6.cc 
“What’s wrong, Potter? Didn’t get to sign any autographs today?” Draco snipes, without heat.
“I heard you’re thinking of going through with it,” Harry says. “The operation, I mean.”
The news had been all over the Great Hall; Harry couldn’t miss it, not even with his friends doing their best to maintain a Malfoy-free bubble on their end of the Gryffindor table.
Something in his tone must make it clear to Draco how little Harry would be able to handle a sarcastic response right now. Draco sits up, gingerly, to face him.
“Only as a last resort,” Draco says. “Potter, look at me. I’m dying anyway. I’d rather die trying to live than wait for the disease to finish its work.”
“Careful. That’s dangerously close to a Gryffindor sentiment,” Harry says weakly.
“Come off it.” A hint of a smile tugs at Draco’s lips. Harry can’t bring himself to smile back.
“But it’s practically suicide,” Harry says. “The Healers— I mean, that’s what everyone says the Healers told you.”
“There’s no other way.” Draco drops his quill in disgust onto the ground. “We’ve been trying for days, and there’s nothing.”
“There is another way,” Harry says.
Draco frowns at him.
“What? Has Granger found something?”
“No,” says Harry. “The person you’re in love with. You have to tell them.”
Draco’s face changes completely. The openness Harry had become accustomed to, without even realizing, vanishes. Draco becomes Malfoy again, his face all hard angles, his eyes more steel than silver.
“Your ignorance astounds me, Potter,” he says, enunciating each word very clearly. “I am looking, in case you’ve forgotten, for a solution, not a way to die faster.”
“If you confess, at least you’ll know for sure. Maybe they love you back, or maybe they’re at least willing to try,” Harry says, desperately. “If not—I know the rejection will make you sicker, but then you can go ahead with the operation like you planned. You’d be no worse off than before.”
“Oh, it’s that easy, is it?” Draco snaps, face reddening dramatically. “I’m already in pain, so what’s a little more?”
“That’s not what I—”
Draco cuts him off. His expression has transformed into wide-eyed horror; something new and awful has evidently occurred to him.
“Did someone say something to you?” Draco demands.
“What?” Harry asks, bewildered.
“Is that why you’re telling me to—?” Draco cuts himself off. “Because you know who it is and you get some sort of sick pleasure out of watching me embarrass myself—”
“How can you think that?” Harry asks, trying to sound righteously angry but knowing he just sounds wounded. Because that’s how he feels. “I’ve been trying to help you. I’ve spent all this time—”
“Oh, yes, heavens forbid we waste Potter’s precious time,” Draco sneers. “I didn’t ask you to do this. I didn’t ask for your help. You’re the last person I ever would have gone to.”
Harry grabs blindly at the strap of his bag and shoots to his feet.
“You’re right. I don’t know why I thought I could help you,” he says, voice shaking. He is blazingly mad, and there is a dangerous lump in his throat, and he does not want to look directly at Draco for fear of what he’ll see on his face. His eyes land instead on Draco’s sagging collar, where he can just see the thready silver-white end of the sectumsempra scar, almost the same color as Draco’s hair. “But it’s ridiculous you’d think I’d go out of my way to make you sicker,” Harry continues, “when the truth is I don’t care whether you live or die. You don’t matter to me. At all.”
Harry spins around and gets about three paces away before he hears Draco choking behind him. He wavers, waiting one, two, three seconds to see if Draco will stop. But this is a bad one. He keeps coughing, harshly and with his whole body by the sound of it, and Harry can’t leave him like that.
He drops his bag and turns, but the sight of Draco makes him freeze where he stands. Draco is not just coughing. He is vomiting a steady stream of flowers, swallowing hard and gasping for breath every time he has a chance, only to sputter and cough out another wave of lilies as the disease fights him. Most of what he expels are whole flower heads, the rims of their petals and the tips of their inner filaments streaked with bright red blood. Draco is hunched almost in half, one hand flat on his chest where the scar Harry made is hidden under his robes and the other hand clutching his throat, and he is still not stopping, he’s not breathing, and Harry falls at last to his knees and latches on to Draco as if he could somehow hold him together.
His eyes fall from Draco’s open mouth and closed eyes—as though he were screaming— to the carpet of lilies forming around their knees. Somehow that’s what does it, the lilies, before he even gets around to remembering the look on Pansy’s face when Harry had asked her for a name, or McGonagall’s resigned, weary voice as he’d fled the hospital wing.
Harry had actually told Draco he didn’t care if he lived or died.
Harry will never forgive himself for being so stupid.
By the time he kisses Draco’s lips, they’re turning blue. Draco is taking a much-needed, too-shallow breath, his throat already working around another surge of blossoms. Harry pulls him up straight and gets his hands on that sharp, smooth jawline. His hands feel too big and clumsy against Draco’s delicate features, but Draco blinks watery eyes at him and Harry swipes his thumb over his lips, wiping off the blood as best he can, and covers that soft hurting mouth with his own. Everything within him attunes to the places where their bodies meet; everything sleeping sits up and pays attention; he is electrified from the inside out.
It lasts no more than a second or two. Draco fights him. Harry loses his head for an instant and tries to hold on, resisting when Draco’s hands push hard against his chest. Harry tastes blood and feels the silky texture of lily petals and his every instinct tells him to deepen the kiss—
And then he realizes what the hell he’s doing, and he lets Draco go.
Draco falls fully away from him, sprawling on the ground. The flowers have stopped coming, but Draco is still gasping, this time apparently from rage. Harry reaches for him but does not touch.
“Let me,” Harry begs.
“How dare you,” Draco says, voice shaking so hard Harry can barely make out the words. “I don’t want your pity. I’m not just another victim for you to save.”
“It’s not like that,” Harry says.
Draco claws his way to his feet, scoops up a handful of lilies and presents them in vicious, morbid triumph.
“I think it is.”
“It’s because you don’t believe me,” Harry says. “Draco. Please. I didn’t know before, I didn’t understand, but I want—”
“Fuck you,” Draco says, and then he picks up his bag and his book and is gone before Harry can make another move.
When Harry sinks down next to Hermione on the couch in front of the fireplace, she takes one look at him and does the unthinkable: puts down her quill and closes her book.
“Oh, Harry,” she says.
At the sound of her voice, he slumps. He props his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He can still taste Draco. He can still hear his voice, stripped raw, can still see the desperately fearful expression he’d worn as he’d shoved Harry away.
Harry had done this to him.
“I know who Malfoy’s in love with,” Harry mumbles. “Did you know?”
“I suspected.”
“Is it possible—” Harry’s voice wavers; he has to clear his throat and start again. “Is it possible for the victim to stay sick even if their love is returned?”
“It depends on the person. But in a case like that,” Hermione says, gently, “either the love isn’t true or the victim doesn’t think it is.”
