Sleeping Beauty

A/N: This is a little snippet that I just popped into my head when I was down, so enjoy. It's a scene that should have, maybe really did happen as it was before JKR caved to the MN crowd, in COS. To Lady Starlight, thank you, without your help, none of this would be possible.
Sleeping Beauty.

March 20, 1993
2:20 am

The dimly lit infirmary was silent, this cold, late winter's night, near spring. A dozen beds, all set with crisp white linens were half-filled with smaller than adult forms. A few in particular nearest the door, drew the eye, not from their motions, but from their absolute lack of movement.

Even the breathing of the few was suppressed, their chests barely moving as if restrained by something.

A small boy lay in one bed, his hand raised up to his face as if he were using a camera that had vanished, his eyes open and staring towards the ceiling. The boy did not move as the soft scuff of a worn trainer on elderly flagstones carried in the air, followed by a sudden silence, as if something or someone was waiting for Pomfrey to burst forth from her office. After a moment, the air seemed to start moving again, and the faintest rustling of cloth was heard, approaching the bed closest to Pomfrey's office.

A small girl was laying utterly motionless in the bed, her breathing barely detectable as she lay with her arms stiffly at her side. Dark brown eyes stared up at the ceiling from beneath a veritable cloud of chestnut hair, that stuck up in every conceivable direction. Large, white front teeth were visible though slightly open lips, as if she was interrupted in mid-word.

A flutter of silvery cloth caught the faint torchlight as a head of messy black hair appeared next to the bed, and dropped to the empty bed next to the girl. An overly thin boy appeared, as small as the girl was with round black glasses framing emerald eyes, and moved to perch lightly on the edge of her bed.

He sighed softly, the sound one that had been learned over years of hiding any noise lest it be noticed. Looking down, a hand with already long fingers took one of hers, slipping his fingers into her perpetually cupped hand. A thumb started to unconsciously move back and forth across the tendons of her hand as he watched her frozen eyes, desperately hoping for them to softly focus on his, just like they had for uncountable times before. Even a quiet diatribe in her soft, immature soprano on his homework habits would have been more than welcome, but alas, nothing.

"You'll be alright soon, Hermione," Harry whispered hoarsely, "Pomfrey says that you can't hear me...but I know you can...somehow. Ron's a touch spare these days, says that he's going to fail out of Potions without you, but I think that he's probably more likely to just blow himself up really. He's worried about Ginny too, I don't know why, she seems the same to me, but I don't really know her, so maybe he's right."

Harry glanced up towards the dark door to Pomfrey's office, "I revised for McGonagall's exam, but I think that I failed, I'm sorry, but I just don't understand without you to explain to me. I guess I am pretty useless without you." He sighed again as she did not respond to his jab on himself.

He sat back, though he still did not let loose of her hand, the gesture having become unthinking in the weeks since McGonagall had retrieved him from the Quidditch pitch to attend to his best friend. "I don't know what we're going to do, Hermione...something's still out there, and I don't know what'll happen...they are talking about closing the school...I don't want to go back to the Dursleys, Hermione...I don't think that'll I'll survive it for more than a summer. Not now...it would have been better if this had never happened." He swallowed, "But...I'd have rather died than not met you...and Ron."

Harry looked around, a faintly concerned look on his face as if he were worried about the reception to his confession. The few other petrified patients did not seem to mind however and he looked back down at Hermione. Her hair, always the first thing that the uninitiated noticed about her was moving in the wind from her slow breaths, and he reached down with his free hand to pull a curl out from the corner of her mouth.

Growing up, in his tiny cupboard, he had read more than one book that Dudley had discarded, usually by the expedient of throwing it at his head, but right now, one story in particular flitted across his mind. He took a breath, as the bed below him was suddenly a solitary bier in some flowered, wooden glen. But despite the surroundings changing under his gaze, the occupant of the bed did not, instead remaining exactly as she was right now, rumpled pajamas, barely controlled hair and all.

Harry blinked away the sight, leaving Hermione there and he glanced around again before he took a deep breath and fought to control his shaking as his heart suddenly raced inexplicitly. It worked in the story, he rationalized as he slowly bent forward and with only the slightest of pauses pressed his trembling lips to soft, unmoving ones.

He sighed tiredly as she did not respond and slowly straightened back up. Letting go of her hand with one last idle motion of his thumb, Harry stood from the bed and twirled the cloak back over his shoulders, vanishing all but his head. "I h...have to go, Hermione," he whispered, "I...I'll be back later, alright, I can't have Flich catch me again."

He vanished without another word, and a few seconds later, the Infirmary door opened and closed by itself.

On the bed, Hermione took a fractionally deeper breath, as if she was fighting to awake, but settled back down after another moment, her limbs just the barest bit askew, not even enough for anyone to notice, as if the magic was just not quite enough to push aside the poisonous magic of the Basilisk.

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