Healer Malfoy

Chapter 11

Healer Malfoy

Luna lay on her uninjured side with Draco straddling her waist. They had managed to gently peel off her robes and had discarded them on a nearby chair. He had a grip on her wrist and her elbow. Her arm was limp in his hands. "Do it quickly, Draco. Swing my arm up in one fast movement hard enough to force the shoulder back into place. Are you ready?" she asked.

"Am I ready to hurt you? No."

"Please, Draco," she said, and he could hear the pain and weariness in her voice. "You must understand how I feel." He did, and it pained him so he released a defeated breath.

"On the count of three, then?" he asked.

"Uh, I guess so . . ." she meant to say, but he had already counted to two, so all she managed to get out was, "Uh, I gue..." before he yanked her arm up towards her head. In that moment Luna was blinded by an abrupt assault on her shoulder joint that felt rather like the impact of an ice pick. Because her voice was already in use when it happened, her words dissolved but the sound didn't stop and she cried out.

"Luna, are you okay?"

She couldn't speak yet, but she nodded and tried to keep breathing. After a moment she tried to move her arm and was delighted to find that she could. "You did it!" she cheered, still breathing harder than normal.

Draco looked down at her and managed valiantly to draw his face up in a shaky imitation of his customary sneer. "You see? I'm almost a Healer."

"That's a lucky thing for me, Healer Malfoy, because I'm going to need a little more help from you. This next thing is gonna be a little harder for me to ask. I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"You need me to do something that's going to make me more uncomfortable than listening to you scream and knowing you felt that pain from my hands? Bloody hell, Luna," he said, running those same guilty hands through his hair.

"I was already in pain, Draco. You ended it. And you saved me a great deal of humiliation." Draco knew how important it was to him to keep his shame or moments of weakness private. He had gone to great lengths to keep his humiliations to himself and had largely succeeded. That is, until he'd unintentionally shared them with Luna. "Draco, you have done so much for me already tonight. You don't have to do this, but . . . remember you told me my hand was cold?" He nodded. "It's all of me. My body is confused from the shock and it's working so hard to figure out what's broken that it's forgetting to keep me warm. It's like what you said in the Astronomy Tower...that sometimes your body does things your mind is trying to tell it not to." Draco thought he must have failed to express what he had meant in the tower that day, but that was an explanation for another time. "Will you lie down with me to keep me warm? I'm so cold."

"Ah, so you do want to 'play Healer'," he teased with a mischievous glint in his eye. If that was all she was asking of him, that he get close enough to hold her, then he was a lucky man.

He stood and looked down at her, trying to figure out how to get the blankets out from under her so he could cover her up. Sensing his dilemma, she rose gingerly, swinging her feet off the bed, and grabbing his arms for support, she stood. She reassured him that she would be okay so he would release her long enough to pull down the covers. Shakily she sat and smiled crookedly at him. "I'm quite the mess tonight, aren't I?" she asked.

"Yes," he said in almost a whisper, but his eyes were burning when he looked at her.

A violent shiver racked her then and her gaze was pulled from his as she closed her eyes against it. Kicking off her shoes, she turned to slip into the bed. He pulled the duvet up around her, covering all the way to her poor injured shoulder, and then went round to the other side of the bed. He lay on top of the covers; thinking that even with his bawdy teasing Luna would probably be uncomfortable tucked into his bed with him. She was an innocent, he was sure of it. He knew she had just asked him to lie with her because she had needed to snuggle under the blankets for warmth. He lay alongside her, perched precariously on the edge of the bed. She was wrapped in the cocoon he had made for her but she continued to shiver.

"I wish I had some warmed butterbeer here for you now," he said softly, so close to her ear that she could feel his breath.

"Draco," she called, her teeth chattering, and he could hear that she was in pain. She looked at him and it was clear she was in agony. Her voice quavered terribly as she faced him to say, "It hurts me to shiver." Her words were a little hard to make out through the tremors. "I wouldn't want to make you feel uneasy, and I would repay your kindness with only discretion. But, Draco, I can't share your body heat through the bed clothes. Could you come beneath the blankets to heat up this bed for me? Because I can't right now."

It was the oddest invitation to get into bed with a woman that he could imagine. He smiled to himself to hear that through all her pain she had been worried about his sense of propriety. Apparently she was worried that he would feel his virtue would be besmirched. It would have been laughable if the situation weren't so serious. Certainly it could bolster his reputation if people knew Luna had shared his bed, even if nothing happened. People's imaginations would do the rest, and he would be regarded as something of a playboy. The thought made his stomach turn. He would never use Luna for that; it was monstrous. But now it might be unavoidable. How many people had seen him carry her in here? That was a problem of epic proportion that he was going to have to figure out. And quickly.

His thoughts raced as he rolled off the bed and lifted the covers to slip under them. Just the breeze that assaulted her from the unintentional fanning of the blankets had her gasping from the cold. He climbed in and found that his bed was just not intended for two people. "Budge up, birdie," he said. The best she could do was to roll onto her left side so he could lie behind her and press the length of his body up against her. "Merlin's teeth," he cursed to himself. This was going to be torture, but he'd endure the discomfort if it would take the pain out of her voice and help her.

He brought his left arm up and she lifted her head so he could slide his arm underneath to cradle her. He reached his other hand gingerly and blindly towards her under the covers, hoping he would find her waist so he could position himself next to her. He wrapped his arm around her; his outstretched hand spanned almost her entire belly and he gently scooted her back towards him. Once she got close to him she instinctively curled her body into his, grinding her bottom exactly against his groin. He let out a sound that an animal might make, but he was pretty sure it wasn't a sound that should've come from a man; especially a man who was supposed to be caring for a sick girl. She reached her legs back to trap one of his between her ankles and her feet were like ice. He sucked in a sudden breath and he didn't know if it was the closeness or the cold that caused it.

"I'm sorry." She shivered. "Am I too cold?"

"No, its okay, Luna. Is this better?"

"Mm-hmm," was all she replied. Carefully, so as not to inadvertently touch her, he moved his hand to the area between her collarbones. This was hardly a suggestive place, and he tucked his arm around her, his elbow resting just at her waist. She was a tiny thing, he thought as he folded her into his body, wrapping her in his heat. She tried to curl into him even more, like a cat stretching its back, to take as much of his heat as she could; but when she pushed against him and tried to curve her back she whimpered and the breath went out of her. He froze, not knowing what had happened, but after a moment she gingerly continued easing back into him, more gently than before, so that when she relaxed she was as close as it was possible to be. His awkward feeling at wanting to warm her but not touch her inappropriately was eased when she wrapped her right arm around his where he held her, making it impossible for him to let her go.

It was just a few minutes later that the chills subsided, but neither of them moved. Soon Draco felt her breathing slow and become rhythmic. She must be exhausted. She probably hadn't had a decent night's sleep in ages. He didn't want to wake her. He didn't want to put her through another ordeal of interrogation either, but he had to know what had happened. He couldn't just let her sleep through the night and hope they'd both wake up tomorrow with no repercussions to face. She had been very open with him; surely she wouldn't hide anything from him. He didn't want to betray her trust or violate her, but he was confident that she would want to share the information with him. The problem was that he needed to know now, and he thought he knew a way to find out without waking her up to ask her. She could show him, even while she slept. He could try to reach her memory and find out how she had come to be on his doorstep, about to collapse in agonizing pain.

She had said she'd fallen, but didn't say where. If she had come to him she had to have passed through the dungeons. He pictured the entrance to the dungeon tunnels and concentrated on the girl pressed furiously against him as if she feared she would be carried away if she allowed the slightest bit of space between them. He hadn't written his essay for Snape yet, so he hoped he wasn't breaking any wizarding laws on Legilimency as he did this, but it was too late now.

Draco saw the tunnel entrance but it seemed taller than usual. He felt like a fool when he realized it was because Luna was shorter than he was. And everything was bouncing. Was she skipping? Oh, good grief. And she was thinking about him. She was thinking HE might be ashamed of her, of being seen talking to her. She had something to give him and she was afraid he would be unkind. Then the bouncing stopped. He saw three figures ahead. He felt her dread.

What was he doing? What was he about to see? He hoped it was something he could live with afterwards, because he was about to watch it without her consent. He saw Katie, the uptight sixth year he avoided when at all possible; Liselle, the mean-spirited one; and Mary, the one with the silly, spiky hair. Luna knew she needed help, and she thought she probably wouldn't get it, but she had to ask because she had to find him. This was entirely his fault, then...how reassuring. The girls were unkind, but Katie had finally given Luna the information she had asked for. Draco was ready to dismiss the nasty trio as rude but irrelevant when he heard the curses.

Luna had known in that very instant that something was about to go wrong, but she was powerless to stop it. He felt her literally hovering in midair for a moment before the crash, when the back of her rib cage had landed on the top stair. That was why she had winced a few moments ago when she pressed her back against him. The wind had gone out of her as she slid down, hitting the ground where there was a sledgehammer waiting to bash her shoulder in. Luna had been glad she was out of breath; it was all that had saved her from yelping.

Draco lay there for a moment, stunned...not only by what he had seen but also by the fact that he had been able to extract the memory from Luna and that he had shared Luna's sensations rather than just observing them. In their encounters of mental sharing, he was privy to her memories as well as her thoughts and feelings, and she seemed to have the same privilege with him. Perhaps there was more to their connection than just the bridge of Legilimency. Could it be that they had some other kind of a link? And how had she mentally called out to him tonight when she had needed him? She had called to him because she had been desperate, this he knew, but it would have to have been powerful wandless magic to reach him.

It was a good thing that her magic was strong because she seemed so small and vulnerable in his arms. Would he be able to protect her or would he be forever trying to put her back together after she had been hurt? He held her more closely at the thought that left him aching. He was trapped in a maze of uncertainty; every path of thought led him to another unanswerable question. But his mind focused on a most pressing revelation. Luna's memory had revealed her head smacking into the ground just above the right brow. That was going to bruise, he thought. That was probably going to cause a concussion, he thought next. Bloody hell.