A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

**That\'s when you stu-stu-stutter something profound

To the support on the line

And with the way you\'ve been talking

Every word gets you a step closer to hell**





--





“What the hell did you give me?!”





“Calm yourself, child. What are you talking about?”





“You know damn well what I’m talking about! What was that potion you gave me?! What did I just give Harry??”





At this Lucius smiled; his first possible since the entire fiasco began. At last, he was getting somewhere. His impertinent snit of a son had disarmed him and locked himself in his bedchambers, completely overthrowing his entire plan. And of course he couldn’t get in and give a proper stunning, so he was forced to walk away until another time. The wards were set to alert him if the door was opened anyhow. He would succeed in the end.





“So Mister Potter has taken the potion? I assume he’s lying down.”





“He fell down, you bastard! Probably cracked his skull wide open! Dammit, I KNEW not to trust you. What the bloody hell did you do?!”





“I can assure you my dear, nothing is wrong with him. His body is just adjusting to the… effects. He’s likely to be very confused for a while.”





“Confused my arse! He’s completely out of his mind! You should have seen the look on his face!”





“You’ll need to come through for your successive dosing, Miss Weasley. Otherwise all our plans will have been for naught.”





“I’m not getting anything else from you; I’m staying far the hell away from you, in fact. I don’t want you contacting me OR HARRY ever again, do you understand me?”





“And how exactly do you intend to explain to our Mister Potter why he is currently incapacitated, and not where he last remembers?”





“I’ll think of something. I’ll come up with something far better than what you managed, at the very least. This entire plan was bollucks from the beginning, I never wanted… THAT, whatever it was. He wasn’t even in his own brain, he was all far away and cloudy. Hardly even recognized me, certainly didn’t know who he was.”





“Miss Weasley, may I offer some information without sounding too… forward?”





Without waiting for her assent (for this was definitely something that needed to be said if he were to get his way) he continued on in a silky voice Severus Snape would have been proud of.





“The very first act of the potion you’ve now committed to giving Mister Potter is to sort of break down the general mental faculties, but only temporarily. He’s had his memory wiped and a suggestion implanted. That of you, connected greatly with a sensation of intense emotion, namely love.”





“But he was practically a blithering idiot. Mindless with… er, amorous intentions.”





“As is to be expected, given it’s only the first round. The deep sleep he is no doubt experiencing as we speak is meant to rebuild his senses. If you were to leave off now, you’d never have him. He would have a foggy sense of whatever he did to you, but think it were nothing short of a dream. That is where the rest of the doses come in. You have to keep him medicated, as it were, long enough for him to accept what the potion is telling him he wants to do. Once he does, he’s yours.”





Ginny was quiet as she took everything in. Finally thinking maybe she could give it another shot, she looked into the eyes of the man she’d just fire-called in a fit of rage and desperation.





“How long will it all take?”





“As long as it takes. It just depends on how much you want him, and how hard you work.”





A moment passed before her resolution set and she nodded once.





“Alright, clear out. I’m coming through.”





--





A week had passed, and Draco still had not come out of the small room he’d rented in Diagon Alley. He was surviving off sympathetic house-elves and the sustaining energy extreme emotions seemed to offer. The night he’d relaxed the wards in his room and apparated out and seen what he’d interpreted to be his Harry cheating on him with that Weasel Bitch, he’d fled for the closest place that was NOT his father’s home he could think of that would protect him from prying eyes.





And promptly locked himself away. He just didn’t see any point in going any further.





Not that he was going to offer himself up to his father, either. He was a Malfoy, after all; a Slytherin to the core. There was no way in hell he would ever just give himself over to anyone who wished him harm or death. A part of him knew he’d grow out of his depression eventually, and then how would he feel if he were dead?





His father had seemed to forget all about him, though, so for the time he just relished in his empty solitude, trying hard not to think about anything.





--





Lucius had NOT, in fact, forgotten about his son. He’d learned of his disappearance about twenty minutes after it actually happened. Namely, as soon as Ginevra Weasley had left his study to go back to try the second dose with her new found lover.





He’d torn the room apart, shouting and creating a fine spectacle of himself; quite un-Malfoy-like.





He’d eventually recovered himself, spun on his heel, and left the room, locking it securely behind himself. He’d deal with his son later, and no longer did he expect to simply obliviate him and force his hand into producing an heir. He’d just have to come up with something else.





--





Ginny held the unruly hair on Harry’s forehead back as he leaned over the porcelain, making obscene yet unavoidable noises. She shushed and soothed, offering comfort by mere existence. When he finally leaned back from hopefully his final heave, she reached for the vial on the sink’s edge.





“Not another potion…”





She grimaced at the weary tone to his voice, but she understood. It seemed to her that he’d not drunk anything BUT Lucius’s potion for nearly three weeks. Not that he knew that.





“Ugh, it tastes just like everything else you’ve given me lately. Maybe my taste buds are going too?”





He missed the blanch that was Ginny’s reaction, for he (thankfully?) suddenly broke for the bowl again, heaving and retching. There wasn’t more in his stomach to lose, but his body didn’t care. Unbeknownst to Harry, his will was trying it’s damndest to reject the influence the potion was trying to exert.





Ginny knew that he simply loved Draco too much to just succumb to something like this. He was not to be easily swayed and with each bout of sickness he had, a small part of her broke inside.





But then she remembered what it felt like when he looked into her and told her he loved her. When he spoke of memories they never shared as the potion constructed a common history to compensate for the sudden and new emotions he was experiencing. When he seemed so excited to see her.





Only when he was drinking the potion did he seem to have any problem with it.





That and the fact that he’d yet to make love to her, though he thought he had; part of the fabricated past. Ginny was patient. When he was kissing her, and holding her, and cuddling her as they spent time together, she knew it would come eventually. She just had to keep shoving potions down his throat and it would happen.





He finally sat back again, leaning his head against her stomach as she stood behind him. She placed a hand to his forehead, just holding herself still from dropping everything again.





“Any word back from the mediwizards?”





Her voice a bare murmur as she responded: “Not yet.”





“Gin, you alright? You’re not getting sick now, too, are you?” He smiled feebly at the very weak joke.





She was still distracted, internal struggle over dropping it or continuing waging strong, “Just worried about you, Harry.”





“You know I like it better when you call me ‘love’.”





“It’s alright, love. Let’s just get you back to bed, maybe a cool compress.”





She straightened as best his legs would allow; an arm over his shoulder, hand against the wall. She managed to get him back to bed before she saw the expected chills settling in.





“Best get a blanket, dear. I’m getting cold again.”





“Of course, love…”





She closed her eyes, grim set, praying for it to be over soon.





--





Harry lay in the bed, Ginny having just left. As soon as the door was closed, he blinked, the room swaying slightly. A fog seemed to have lifted, but the air was still thick and slurry. He felt fuzzy around the edges, numb in a tingly sort of way, and he couldn’t place why. It was if he knew where he was, but couldn’t quite remember how or when he’d gotten there. He especially had difficulty explaining why Ginny was tucking him into bed and not D... Somebody… else...





Who was this somebody else…?





He felt a sudden crushing sense of loss and emptiness. The world had been ripped away and he was far far from the one thing on earth that mattered. He couldn’t place where the feeling came from but he hated it and wanted it gone and if it didn’t go away he was sure to do something drastic.





“Ginny-?”





His voice was barely a croak, and he cleared it a bit, hoping to get through.





A second time worked, and the door opened again, revealing a worriedly smiling red-head.





“Everything alright, love?”





Suddenly his confusion and pain melted away, and he only felt a swirling something that could only be described as love, even though his stomach still clenched and his head swam.





“Just fine, Ginny. Just fine.”





--





**I am

Alone, in this bedroom

She never fixes this

But at least she...

Makes me forget**