"I dreamed I was an icicle..." Weakly lifting up his head, Draco glanced toward the windows facing east. "Is that daybreak? Was I sleeping?"
He seemed to have already forgotten he'd talked of having dreamt.
"Yeah, the sun is rising," said Harry as he pushed one of the blankets away from Draco's head. Beneath it, the boy's hair was soaked with sweat.
Draco looked at Harry, his eyes fever-bright. "You're up early..."
"We didn't ever go to sleep."
The other boy's forehead wrinkled like he was thinking hard. "We?"
"Yeah, Dad and I."
Draco nodded, the motion sort of bleary. "Uh, all right. But uh... where is Severus, anyway? He... he wouldn't leave me, or at least I don't think so..."
"You're sitting on me," Snape announced in a deep voice.
Draco jerked wildly, his face flushing red, and tried to get off his father's lap, but wrapped as he was in all those blankets, he didn't have much chance unless he rolled off, and Snape clearly wasn't going to let that happen.
"Relax," he advised. "If Venetimorica runs true to form you're going to need your strength."
His struggles subsiding, Draco muttered, "Well you could put me in bed, you know. I'm not a baby."
"Harry," Snape directed. "Perhaps a freshening charm on Draco's bed would be a good idea."
When Harry went in, the bedcovers were all askew and drenched in sweat. Drops of blood stained them in place, telling Harry more clearly than words just how violently Draco had thrashed while caught in the grip of his delusions. Shuddering, Harry got the bed back in shape to be used.
When he returned to the living room, Draco was moaning that he wanted a freshening charm applied to him, and Snape was patiently explaining that the Venetimorica would object to any magical remedies applied to his person.
"You can have a vanishing bucket when you begin to vomit later--"
"Oh, thanks," groaned Draco, the sound of it thick. "A shower then. I need a shower..."
By then the blankets were unwrapped enough that Draco could shift free of them and try to stand up. Try being the operative word. He toppled straight over and ended up on his hands and knees, his head barely an inch from the edge of the low table where the chessboard still sat.
"Would you allow us to take care of you?" asked Snape in a caustic tone. "You aren't going to have reliable gross motor control for hours yet."
Draco managed to sit up, but after that he sighed. "All right. You can take care of me, then."
Snape scooped him up and deposited him on his bed. "Now, did you want a shower or not? I'll conjure a stool for you to sit on, but you'll have to leave the door open all the same."
"Yeah, yeah," Draco groaned, though he was nodding.
While Snape helped Draco into the shower, Harry found clean pyjamas for his brother to change into, then went to pour himself some orange juice. A few minutes later Snape came out and announced that Draco was fast asleep and would probably stay that way most of the day.
The Potions Master's face was grim. "And then he'll get so sick he'll wish he'd died in his sleep, but after that passes, this will finally be over."
The acid taste of the orange juice surged up his throat when Harry thought of what Dobby's book had said about the last stage of Venetimorica poisoning.
"Are you all right?"
Harry thickly swallowed. "Yeah."
"You should get some rest," said Snape, waving his wand at the couch to transfigure it into a bed.
"Out here?"
"I plan to sleep here. It's been a long night for all of us." Casting another spell, Snape continued, "An alarm charm. I'll wake up if Draco is in distress, though I'll almost certainly waken before he does, in any case."
Nodding, Harry padded into the bedroom and crawled fully dressed into his bed.
------------------------------------------------------
Harry and his father were both awake for lunch, though Draco slumbered on and on. It was late afternoon before the other boy surfaced from his long sleep. At least this time it wasn't hallucinations waking him, Harry thought, though some part of him wondered if Venetimorica was actually more vicious in the beginning or in the end.
Because this was ugly, too.
"I need that bucket!" they heard Draco yelp from the bedroom.
Throwing aside the book he'd been trying to read, Harry rushed to his brother's side. Snape was there before him, having Apparated straight through the wall. He'd also summoned the bucket, a wooden one bound with strips of iron. Really, it looked like it would leak worse than a sieve, but of course a magic bucket didn't need to be watertight.
Draco grabbed it with both hands when Snape held it out, and all but plunged his face inside as a gurgling, retching noise seemed to rush up from his belly.
Snape immediately left the room, urging Harry to do the same with his eyes. Decorum, of course. They left Draco alone, the door open in case he needed help, and began loudly playing another game of chess.
How long it went on, Harry couldn't have said. He'd been sick a few times and could remember that horrible feeling of despair it gave you when it seemed like you'd never stop sicking up.
At one point Draco gave off an awful sound, almost as if he was strangling. When Harry and Snape rushed in, he was kneeling on the floor, his balled fists pressing deeply into his midsection, his hair a wild tangled mess, sweatier than before. "Something's wrong!" he cried, gasping for breath. "There's nothing left to sick up, and I just keep--"
That was all he got to say before his stomach twisted into knots once more, sending him bending down over the bucket, ugly noises echoing through the room.
That time, Snape stayed.
When Draco levered himself back up, his eyes were watering. "It won't stop! It just keeps going-- Something's gone wrong, Severus!" Pausing, he heaved in a breath, his eyes wild with panic.
"Draco, it's just the dry heaves," Harry said, wanting to comfort Draco but knowing that the other boy wouldn't want to be touched. "Haven't you had those before?"
"Oh, please," sneered Draco, though it was a feeble sort of sneer, considering the boy was chalk white and shaking. "The minute I'd feel ill at home I'd get a potion to make it go away. This sicking up business is just too... undignified."
Harry's mouth almost dropped open. "You've never sicked up before?"
"Some pureblooded families don't allow childhood illnesses to progress that far, Harry," Snape explained.
"Arghhhh!" Draco yelled as his features convulsed. A second later he was throwing his body back down to meet the bucket again.
"But Draco used to get sick when he was Apparated," Harry said in a low voice to his father. "Lucius told me."
"Bearing in mind that anything Lucius says may be a gross distortion of the truth--"
"Can you stop saying gross?" Draco moaned, the noise of it pitiful. "Please?"
Snape inclined his head, though Draco almost certainly couldn't see it. "I would surmise that any time Draco became nauseated, Lucius or Narcissa would give him a potion at once."
Harry nodded, understanding why Snape had spoken with Draco alone the night before. If you'd never ever sicked up, it would be a horribly frightening experience.
"I can't believe Muggles put up with this," Draco finally groaned, looking up again. He wiped at his mouth then looked with disdain at the sleeve of his pyjama.
"You're putting up with it," Harry reminded him, voice mild.
"Yeah, once. If I had to do this every time I got sick I think I'd rather die-- Arghhhh!"