When The World Keeps Spinning Round…
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own any of this whatsoever.
Spoilers: Books 1-4.
Pairing (if any): H/Hr, D/G
Author's Notes: Again I must apologise for the delay in the chapters. I've been moving rooms and so fourth, having it disconnected for ages and just sat on the floor of my parent's house. Well, I got it back and have pumped out more chapters than I can deal with.
Summary: This chapter, although quite strange in places, is a bit out of character. Granted that two years on a Mercenary Squad would change you, I think that my Harry in this chapter isn't all I thought he could be…
Anyway, another small piece of H/Hr interaction and I mean small…like tiny…It's coming…don't worry.
~*~
Harry felt strange when he woke up the next morning. The night had been filled with laughter and eating and conversation most of which he couldn't remember. The most he could remember was sitting with Hermione Granger in Draco Malfoy's living room debating whether he'd suit a frilly purple cravat and lace up 6-inch heel boots.
And to his knowledge, that had been the extent of a good evening, topped off with heavy sleeping on the sofa of the living room.
Sleeping alone mind you.
The week he'd spent at Draco's house hadn't gone too well. It'd started off perfectly; everything was going to plan. Harry was being phased back into the family of friends, which he'd missed. Whenever he had to go out, he went as Draco, suiting himself up with a Polyjuice potion brewed (with much hesitation) by Hermione. She insisted on telling them with every stir of the big wooden spoon that she disliked the fact that they were disobeying the law. Of course, she'd been brought round to believe in Harry, to believe his story but she thought that if he was indeed innocent (which he clearly was) then the law would straighten itself out. This was met with very heavy laughter from both Harry and Draco.
Draco proceeded to tell her that the Wizarding Law was as straight as a London roundabout at 9 am on a Monday morning. Taking this into consideration, Hermione decided to read everything she could about the Wizarding Law between sleeping and working. She had a degree in Charms, Herbology, and Transfiguration and was a qualified Magical Psychiatrist yet she was amazed at how much she didn't know about the legal system. Turned out that a Higher Court Judge in Muggle Courts was the same as the Minister for Magic's desk polisher. The Muggle world was inches away from having its legal system run by the Ministry and this appalled Hermione. The Wizarding world could be so careless with it's laws that even Mince Pies were still banned at Christmas, ever since the disastrous reign of Fingel Baxter, who'd presided over the Ministry in the early sixteen hundreds. He had an intense fear of Mince Pies and banned them throughout the Wizarding world.
To this, Hermione raised her eyebrow at the very large book and uttered a 'hmm' before carrying on ploughing through the book within her lunch hour.
Harry and Draco tried almost effortlessly to get a foothold on the case but nothing was becoming available. The Ministry worked in such funny ways. Harry had found a way to clear his name then found that 'suicide', although quite legal, was not an option. When Hermione arrived home, she explained that 'Suicide' was legal because if you did it properly, you couldn't be tried for it. Hence no case. Ginny then went off on a tandem about how suicide was an appalling thought and how she hoped that it would never come to that.
But, just in case, Ginny had been waking up every two hours every night just to check whether Harry was still living and breathing in the other room.
With no case and further more no tangible or living witnesses to prove that Harry didn't do it, the case file was left on Draco's desk, unopened and untouched by man nor beast. Until Friday obviously, when Draco had almost convinced himself blind that if Harry was to appear in court carrying a wad of balloons, he was free to go. But, Draco was also convinced that a pink cloud in the form of a very large elephant was following him around the room.
It took three of them to wrestle the wine bottle from his hands.
~*~
No reports had come through about deatheater attacks. No news was reported about Harry Black, apart from a strange woman Ohio who believed that Harry Black was the father of her unborn child by power of his menacing thoughts. It was printed in the Quibbler under the by-line of Rita Skeeter.
For some unknown reason one morning, Harry felt the need to alleviate his tired lungs with some air. He was sick of being stuck indoors and needed to get out somewhere. To a park maybe or even just across the street to the local pub. He needed to be around people who chatted about their cats and dogs like they were real children or something. He needed some information about life in the city and he needed to get some views on life. He was fed up with reading, writing and going over his stupid case with Draco. His brain ached for some human civilisation so, downing the Polyjuice potion, he set out for the pub.
Hardly anyone was in when he arrived. The pub was basically empty apart from a few people playing on instruments in the corner. Harry didn't even know what the instruments were. Some looked like a cross between a violin and a piano while others just looked weird. He wondered how much the Muggle world had change in the last two years, or maybe the people sat in the corner were just plain weird. That was the only explanation. There wasn't a pool table in the pub or even a darts board. This was just a pub for pulling pints in, a pub where the local lads met and drank together, singing praises for the girl in the tight skirt sat in the adjacent booth with her rich boyfriend. This was the Muggle way of saying 'let's party like it's 1939'.
And that made Harry wonder what happened in here at night. Suddenly, he was scared to ever venture out again.
With a grin at himself, a rather cheeky grin actually, Harry ordered a run of the mill pint of Guinness and sat at the bar drinking as Draco Malfoy, heir to a flipping fortune. It'd be a kick in the teeth if Draco walked in now to see himself sitting at the bar drinking a drink that Harry didn't think Draco Malfoy would ever drink in his lifetime. He thought that Draco might order a red wine or vodka and coke, some girl drink like that. Harry knew Draco Malfoy had more class than to be sat in the pub at the bar drinking a pint of Guinness on a really decent Thursday afternoon. Unlike Harry, who'd spent the last two years cleaning up the Ministry's sloppy messes.
Then it dawned on him. A light bulb the size of Asia flashed on above his head and he felt like shouting, "By Jove I've got it!" at the top of his lungs.
He had the answer!
All that time wasted, all that time spent on paperwork in the cramped office at Draco's house, all the useless mulling over of stupid A4 wads of trees while all he had to do was let his mind relax.
All the work he'd done for the Ministry, he knew their secrets, their inner most pitiful secrets. He knew what their weaknesses were and he had friends in high places that believed his innocence, that would put his story out there for the world to see as Harry Black brought the Ministry down to it's knees making it cower in fear at the might of the wonderful. Smite the wicked as some might say.
Azkaban was a fortress. One of the reasons it was referred to as Azkaban Fortress maybe but there was something mysterious going on in there. Harry had been and walked around inside. He'd visited every room, made sure it was safe and secure before the madly insane prisoners were dragged back in, kicking and screaming. Harry knew that there was a way of escaping Azkaban Fortress that didn't require a body double, which didn't require fooling the Dementors. This was something that no one had thought about, that no one had found out about. All this required was some deep thought and some initiative.
It required the prisoner to have died in his cell and to be left, rotting in the cell.
Harry stood up, his body moving without the power of his brain as he moved through the bar, past the balmy band in the corner and through the doors until he wasn't exactly moving anymore. He hit someone, who shouted "Ow!" and jumped backwards.
"Draco? You drunk, man?"
Harry looked up and nearly fainted.
It was Ron. It was redheaded Ron-bleeding-Weasley staring at him with the most confused expression on his face. Harry remarked at how older Ron looked now. Two years of playing professional Quidditch, two bleeding years playing that really brilliant game had bulked Ron up no end. He was growing stubble for one. When had Ronald Weasley had stubble? He'd barely had a chin at Hogwarts and now he had stubble. Life just was getting weirder and weirder every minute.
"Draco?" Ron asked shooting Harry back into reality, as he stumbled backwards and collided with the door. The hit made his head spin for a moment before he noticed Ron still in front of him looking more than slightly confused.
Harry stood his full tallness and looked Ron in the eye. "Ron?"
Ron nodded. "Yes, it's Ron. Do you think I should take you home?"
Ron was talking to Harry like he was a child. A very drunk child. Harry waved his hand.
"Don't be daft," Harry said, opening the door and walking out. "I'm fine."
Harry took a quick stumble for second, tripping over his shoelace. Funny, he didn't remember wearing shoes today. Oh God, he really was drunk. How many pints had he had? He only remembered ordering the one then…oh boy. He couldn't remember the rest up to having his brilliant idea then trying to walk out of the door.
"I think I'll take you home," Ron said, helping Harry down the pavement and up to the road Draco's
house was on. "What made you get this drunk anyway? Did Ginny say no or something? I swear man, she'll come
round in time you just have to give her some space you know."
"You really should stop talking so fast," Harry tried to say but it came out as more of a slur and a rasp than actual words strung together.
Ron shook his head. "One day you'll get really drunk and come home to find all you're things and Ginny gone. You know she hates it when you get like this. What'll your kids think one day?"
"I've got kids?" Harry asked, reaching into his pocket for the key to the door to find it wasn't here. "Uh, my keys. She's, err, kinda gone. Not here. Whoa, the floor's spinning. Can you see that Ron? The floor's spinning. Ha! Wow! Look!"
Harry pointed down to the spinning floor that wasn't actually spinning at all. His eyeballs felt like two over flown fishtanks containing two bloated goldfish.
"Yeah, Draco," Ron replied, fishing his own key from his pocket. "The floor's spinning, yep. The floor is definitely spinning. Jeez, I hope someone's in. Hello?"
Ron banged on the door and Hermione came to answer it. The look of pure horror on her face when she saw Harry, or rather Draco slumped against Ron's right arm, his arm over Ron's shoulder being supported by a very helpful looking Ron in the middle.
Harry looked at Hermione and got a goofy grin on his face.
"You're really pretty," Harry slurred. "Why are you so pretty? It's your nose! You've got your mum's nose!"
Hermione nearly jumped in shock. "Oh Merlin, he's drunk! Bring him in here quick, Ron."
She opened the door a little wider as Ron dragged Harry through and let him down on the sofa. Harry slumped down on the sofa with a bang. The bang was probably the bag of unopened crisp in his jacket pocket that was now making a crunching sound.
"Where in the world did you find him?" Hermione asked coming back from the kitchen carrying a bucket and a glass of water which was green, so Harry decided that it couldn't really be water if it was green. Maybe it was Wizard tap water, Corporation Pop as they call it down in jolly old London. Was he still in London? Didn't he catch a bus up too the North Pole about half an hour ago?
"The pub across the street," Ron replied, helping Hermione lift Harry up from his lying position to a now more seated position on the sofa, bent over a purple bucket that was bubbling with liquid inside already. "He's completely out of it isn't he? I didn't think Draco would ever get this drunk."
"He doesn't…usually," Hermione said as Harry barfed up something from his dinner the night before. "He's been working on the Harry Black case and…"
Ron nodded. "Yeah, yeah. I know all about it already. Lavender knows someone on the Council that tried him. Said he looked guilt as charged."
"Well, he hasn't exactly been charge for it, so he can't look guilt as charged," Hermione replied with her school tone, the I-Know-Everything tone evident in her voice. "So it would be more fitting to say 'guilty as suspected', or 'guilty as suspected by the majority of the council…"
"I get it, 'Mione," Ron said, shaking his head. "I get it. Now can we please get back to the mountain of puke sat on your sofa?"
Without warning, Harry's hair started to turn from Draco's white to Harry's raven black. His hands were changing, his face was changing, and damn it, his whole bleeding physique was changing back into that of Harry Potter! His nose grew slightly shorter, his cheekbones weren't so defined anymore and the bridge of his nose was undoubtedly that of an Evans descendant.
Harry Black, known as Draco Malfoy for about an hour turned back to Harry Black faster than he turned into Draco Malfoy. Within the space of another hurl, Harry had changed back into his old self minus the glasses.
Ron stood, infuriated and frightened grabbing his wand from hi belt and pulling Hermione away from Harry's side. He stood in front of her bravely; guarding her against this terrorist sat on the sofa.
He held his wand at the culprit and said, "Move Black, and I'll curse you back to Azkaban!"
While, trying to get from behind Ron, Hermione was shouting, "Jesus Harry! You scared the life out of me! What
the hell do you think you're doing?"
Harry tried to stand up. He was being forced into a duel for which he must forsake his barfing duty and tally ho to the fight as fast as humanly possible at this very moment in time. Harry withdrew from his belt what looked like a third of a pool cue and pointed it at Ron challengingly.
"You, sir, are a cad!" Harry slurred, pointing the stick at Ron, who was looking more than slightly confused at this odd behaviour even for a drunken wizard. "I'm not about to let you speak to me like that! I'm gonna…I'm gon…gonna…be sick!"
And he was. Horizontally, all over the living room. Exorcist sick.
Then he collapsed onto the living room carpet in a dead faint.
~*~
The first thing he saw when he woke up was a pair of big, brown eyes staring back at him. Big, beautiful brown eyes like two saucers of chocolate milk with a chocolate button in the middle that moved from side to side very time he blinked. Testing this, Harry blinked. Then blinked again. Then blinked some more until he was sure he was awake and was regaining consciousness.
He sat up and the figure with the beautiful brown eyes moved away, sitting down on a chair next to the bed. It was Hermione with a worried expression on her face. Harry swore that that expression must've been tattooed on Hermione's well-trimmed line of facial expressions because that was the one he remembered seeing every time he woke up in a hospital bed.
Which was what he was in at this very moment, a hospital bed.
"You feeling okay?" Ginny asked from the other side of the bed.
Harry nodded slightly then felt his vocal chords vibrating in his throat, making the urge to speak. "I
feel…hospitalised."
That was the only word he could think of. What better word than 'hospitalised'. He was in a hospital, a very nice hospital by the looks of it.
"I'm in St Mungo's aren't I?" Harry asked looking around, through the glass window then own at his clothes, which had been switched for a blue nightgown.
"Yep," Ginny replied, sipping coffee from one of those awful polystyrene cups. Something never change despite what world you're living in. People still drink from polystyrene cups when they're visiting someone in hospital. "They had to drag you in kicking and screaming."
"They?" Harry asked.
Ginny pointed to the girl with the beautiful brown eyes who was Hermione, who was one of his oldest and most dearest friend, who was sitting by the hospital bed, who was holding his hand.
"You okay?" Harry asked Hermione, running his thumb over the back of her hand.
Hermione smiled and ran her thumb over his. "I am. I can't believe you yesterday. You were sick all over
the place. Ginny had to use a really strong cleaning spell on the place but I doubt we'll ever get rid of the
smell."
"Trivial details," Draco chirped in finally, back from his insistent pacing at the foot of the bed.
"Seriously Harry, are you alright? You're not seriously hurt? No broken bones, no limbs missing?"
"Not that I know of," Harry replied with a small yawn. "Bloody hell, why did I end up
here?"
"Do you remember yesterday? At all?" Hermione asked.
Harry shook his head. He couldn't remember yesterday apart from waking up in the hospital bed minutes earlier to a pair of the most beautiful brown eyes he'd ever seen in his lifetime. "Nothing further than about two minutes ago. Wednesday yeah, but not Thursday. Thursday is a complete blank. Apart from…"
Draco's face lit up. "Apart from what? What do you remember?"
"Running," Harry said. "Running. I was running from something, down a dark ally. It caught me, grabbed my foot and I was falling. Don't ask me what that means but I know I was falling. Oh! I know how we can win the case as well."
Laughter hung like a hangman.
"Just like that?" Ginny asked, laughing still, dabbing laughter tears away from her eyes.
Harry nodded. "I know, I know. I'm crazy. I think I'll need to get to work on it so if you ladies don't mind leaving while I get dressed…"
Hermione put pressure down on Harry's hand. "Hold it there cowboy, you're not going anywhere. The doctor says you've got to stay in here until he can get things cleared up."
"Cleared up?" Harry asked confused. "Cleared up? What do you mean cleared up?"
"Harry, you had your drink spiked," Hermione answered. "You had you're drink spiked with
something, some substance that the lab is trying to figure out. You had a sip of your drink and that was it. You were
out of it. You can't even remember the entire day yesterday. That got to mean something to you."
"Yeah," Harry replied. "It means that I've got to stop Lucius Malfoy before he spikes the hospital food so let me get up!"
Hermione forced Harry back down against the pillow. "Stay there!" She commanded in her McGonagall way. "Stay there and don't move! You will not leave this bed until you are told to. So stay put."
"Yes sir!" Harry said, saluting. "Jeez, Herm, chill. It's not like I'm contagious or something. Whatever it is will flush out eventually so it's no big deal. I'm fine! Look!"
Harry waved his arm around. "I'm fine!"
"You're not fine!" Hermione replied sternly. "Someone is trying to get to you Harry and until we know what's going to happen next, you are staying in that bed, understand?"
Harry nodded defeated. Hermione and Ginny made a move to leave but Hermione leaned over to Harry and kissed him on the forehead.
"Get well soon," She said picking up her jacket.
Harry smiled. "A card would have sufficed you know."
"Somehow I knew you'd like that a little more," Hermione replied, leaving through the ward entrance with Ginny.
Draco and Harry were left in the ward along with the sleeping old man in the next bed.
"Look, Draco," Harry started. "I don't know what happened yesterday but I do know that something is going to happen soon. That's why I need you to do some things for me."
"I'm beginning to see that there's no upside to being your lawyer," Draco smirked, sitting down on the seat Hermione accompanied only moments before.
"But there's a plus side to being my friend," Harry replied. "All the wild adventures you get to partake in must mean something, so…"
"Fire away," Draco sighed, taking out a small notebook and his quick note quill, which set about writing the date and a suitable title for a note page. It was entitled 'Harry's Hospital Bidding'. Very punny, Harry thought.
"I need you get me the exact charges Lucius went down for," Harry said. "And his sentence record, how
much he's served, how much there is to go, yada yada yada. They have to be the exact ones, not short copies or
something. I need the exact ones."
Draco raised his eyebrow. "It sounds like you've got an ace up your sleeve."
Harry shook his head. "Not an ace, just a few very clever pigeons."