And again, he began to make those awful noises as his empty stomach tried to empty itself still further.
Remembering what Aunt Petunia would do for Dudley when he used to sick up, Harry went into the bathroom to wet some flannels. Since he really didn't think Draco would want Harry wiping his brow, though, he handed them over with a slight smile. Draco stared at them for a moment like he wasn't quite sure what they were for, but then he sighed and began wiping at his face and neck. His skin looked as dry as paper, even when wet, which Harry took to mean that Draco was badly dehydrated. He wished he could offer his brother some water to drink but knew better than to even mention it.
"My head hurts," Draco whimpered, sitting back on his heels, the damp flannels resting on his knees.
Sensing they were there for the duration, Harry sat down on his bed and tried not to look as sympathetic as he felt. Draco wouldn't like to be pitied, he knew.
Or at least, not normally.
"Didn't you hear me?" said the boy in a plaintive voice as he rubbed both his temples. "My head hurts, Severus. I think it's going to explode! And every time I sick up it gets worse! I can't bear it any longer!"
"Hush, child," said Snape very softly, as though aware that too much noise would only make Draco's head ache worse. He summoned a chair and sat down next to Draco, reaching over to nudge the boy's head to rest against his knee. "I can't give you any potion; you know that."
Draco whimpered again, slumping against his father as though grateful for the support. "But the antidote," he whined. "I've been as brave as I can be, Severus. I need it."
Snape's hand stroked the top of Draco's matted hair. "Shhh, you foolish child. You know there isn't any antidote. You did your research well. You chose Venetimorica because there wasn't any way around it."
Draco shuddered. "I... yeah," he thickly groaned. "But I'd hoped... you know, you said there was one..." He looked up with bleary eyes. "Liar."
"You're almost through it," Snape assured him, his hand so soft and gentle on Draco's head that Harry realised with a start he was staring. "An hour more, perhaps."
Draco's groan said more clearly than words that an hour more of this was more than he could bear. He clung to Snape's leg, actually wrapping his arms around it as he knelt there, leaning against his father, but after a moment he suddenly yanked himself free and literally threw himself towards the charmed bucket.
A horrible rushing sound ensued as a torrent of something thick and foul rushed out of Draco's mouth and into the bucket, and for one instant, the rankest odour Harry had ever smelled choked the air.
Then the charmed bucket did its work and vanished its contents away.
Draco wiped his mouth on his sleeve again, leaving a thick brownish-green stain on the flannel. "Ugh! Ugh! Somebody kill me now!"
Snape conjured a glass of whitish fluid and merely told Draco to rinse his mouth and be sure not to swallow. "Bicarbonate of soda," he explained in answer to Harry's answering glance. "Non-magical."
Draco rinsed his mouth out five times in a row, then promptly threw up again and used the whitish liquid several more times, then sat back with a sigh. "I... oh, Merlin that gives a new meaning to the word nasty. I completely cannot understand why Muggles don't slit their own throats."
Harry might not have understood what Draco had just gone through, if not for Dobby's book which had explained in graphic detail. "Draco, when Muggles sick up they only empty out their stomachs, not their entire digestive tracts."
"Well, still," the other boy muttered, breathing in deeply several times. He looked down as it to take stock of himself, and pulled an awful face. "Ye gods, I'm filthy."
He wasn't, really; he was just sweaty and had the one disgusting stain on the cuff of his pyjama sleeve, but Harry could understand him wanting to clean up, certainly.
"Is it over?" Harry asked his father.
"Oh, it's over all right," said Draco, rising rather unsteadily to his feet. He began trying to unbutton his pyjama top, but his fingers weren't coordinated enough to do the job.
Snape solved that with a single incantation, and as Draco stood there shirtless, began casting a series of diagnostic charms.
Harry bit his lip when he saw the awful scar that was left from the amulet that had gone haywire. No wonder Draco resented the mark so much. His skin was puckered and marred all around the smaller maroon mark that was the same shape as the amulet. The whole area of damaged skin was perhaps the size of Harry's palm.
He didn't want to make Draco feel even worse about the scar, but some part of him just had to ask, "Um... have you tried Scaradicate yet?"
"Doesn't work," the other boy said, shaking his head as he trailed a hand lightly over the mark. "It's like Severus said. This is mainly magical, not physical. Like your own scar."
"I can't understand why the amulet would..." Harry sighed. "It was just supposed to heat up! I'm really sorry."
Draco began rubbing his hands back and forth over his upper arms, as though cold. "Well, I had just hit you. Maybe your amulet thought I deserved something in return."
"It should be safe to spell you with Hydratus now," Snape announced.
The minute the charm had been cast, Draco sighed in relief. "Ah, now that's much better. I'd completely forgotten what it was like to not have trolls stomping on my skull. And my bones don't ache now, either... Well, I think I'll have another shower. A nice long one."
"Are you certain you'll be all right on your own?"
Draco wrinkled his nose. "Well, I'm not a weakling, Severus. I think one supervised shower per day is more than enough. Don't you?"
"He'll be all right," Harry said dryly. "Back to his old self in no time."
For all that though, Snape insisted the bathroom door be left open again, just in case Draco needed something. Made sense, since the Slytherin boy wasn't very steady on his feet, yet. They actually heard him fall and start cursing at one point, though straight away his voice called out that he was all right and not to come bursting in.
Harry cleaned the room from top to bottom, glad that Parseltongue cleaning spells had never presented too much difficulty, then went out to see to dinner. He wasn't sure any of them wanted to eat, actually, but it wasn't lost on him that Draco hadn't had a bite of food in almost two days.
The charmed box, as if knowing something light was called for, gave him chicken soup with little crackers shaped like snitches.
Draco nibbled a few crackers and ate half a bowl of soup, not saying much at all until the end of the meal. "Well, that was positively sickening. Literally. Thank Merlin it's over."
"Thank Merlin some poor first-years didn't stuff themselves with fairy cakes," Harry corrected. "What about Larissa? How would you have felt if--"
"Who?"
Harry stared. "Larissa. First-year. She's about this tall--"
"Harry, what can you be thinking?" drawled Draco, his chin lifted. "I don't socialise with the lower forms."
"You were a prefect!"
"Ah, well that was given to me almost as a hereditary honour." Draco shrugged.
"It was given to you," Snape corrected in a hard voice, "in the hope that responsibility would help you become responsible."
"Well, it's a moot point now," Draco sighed, the sound so sad that Harry wondered if his brother was remembering how Pansy Parkinson had been his fellow prefect. It really hadn't been a good year for Slytherin, with one prefect murdered and the other one expelled. "But speaking of being responsible..."
Draco drew in a deep breath, then announced something Harry had never, ever thought to hear him say.
"I'd like to apologise again to that elf friend of Harry's. You were right, Severus. I wasn't sorry at all yesterday. But now... I think I see what you mean. Some, at least. Anyway, can Dobby hear you if you call him from here?"