Assignment #9 - Creative Technology Virtual Reality: Task 2 - Write about creating a safe haven. Written for the forum Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges and Assignments).
April Monthly Challenge - April Auction - Prompt: Career Healer (word count: 1768)
The Insane Prompt Challenge - 152. Theme: New Beginnings
The war ends. Of course, it ends. It ends—but at the same time, it really doesn't. Draco Malfoy, Slytherin, Pureblood, heir to the Malfoy line, doesn't feel like the war ends. He remembers it, remembers the way he pointed his wand at so many different people and knew it was wrong; remembers the way he snuck down to the cellar with food hidden in his pocket, aware that if he was caught even his family name wouldn't protect him.
In this way, the war remains with Draco even after it ends. The trembling that starts the moment he touches his wand keeps the war firmly in mind.
All of the students who went to Hogwarts during the school year of the Carrows' reign are offered to retake the year and retake any examinations. And Draco? Draco opens the letter and considers his shaking hands, and—with the penmanship that he's cultivated since early childhood—replies no. For many others, they will return and learn to walk their old battleground with loud footsteps and that they don't need to hide in shadows anymore. For Draco, the war presents itself in twisted nightmares, in shaking hands, in flinches at fast movements.
The war apparently ends, but it doesn't end for Draco. The trials that leave his father in Azkanban for a year, that leave his mother paying fines over a hundred thousand galleons, leave Draco unmolested. The result is that Draco has no idea what to do with himself—feeling the need to redeem himself, but unable to. Thus, Draco—with half-a-dozen extra bank accounts in Gringotts due to the death of Pureblood families during the war—ends up donating regularly to various charities and foundations. Still, it doesn't feel like enough, and the war still haunts his footsteps.
Half a year after the war supposedly ended, Draco bids his mother goodbye, pens a letter to the few schoolmates he keeps in touch with, packs his bags and leaves the United Kingdom behind. He visits other European countries at first—Italy, France, and tries to remember the Malfoy roots he had been taught. French eventually falls from his tongue fluently, and so he collects his belongings and travels to Asia to learn about their various potions and herbs.
It is in Asia that he learns his first healing spell. An old couple teaches it to him, kind words and kinder souls, and his wand shakes, but he heals a bruise and that? That's a start. He continues making his way through Asia. His accent and his language marks him as an outsider, a tourist, both in Muggle and Wizard worlds. Regardless, Draco travels and picks up a few more healing spells, makes potions that help.
He leaves Asia steadier, but still his wand trembles in his hand and he thinks—I can't go back, not yet. So, he goes to America and learns how to drive a car, and takes long stretches of highways and back roads, making his way across the states of North America. The people are all different and they all teach him different things. One person tells him that sometimes everyone needs to run, while another shows him how to cast spells with songs. Someone else shares old stories and tales with him and dozens of others. But, through it all, he goes to people and asks what they know of healing. He learns how to stich up a cut, how to apply pressure when someone's bleeding, how to wrap a strain. He learns how to heal broken bones, how to heal nicked arteries, how to turn bruises into clear skin once again. He learns healing, and uses it as much as he can.
His wand doesn't shake when he holds it now.
Draco travels and he sees much—sees laughter, sees tears, sees pain. He sees how amazing the world can be, but also the awful place it could be. Draco knows how terrible people can be, and knows that occasionally one person can be good.
He's twenty-three and he returns to the Malfoy Manor, that isn't home but could be. Standing in the foyer, greeting his parents, he wonders what he will do now, whether he'll stay. After three months, he gains at internship at a little-known magic hospital in London. With him, he brings tricks and spells and potions that he learnt in other countries. His wand doesn't shake and he feels like he's doing some good. At the age of twenty-seven, he's officially registered as a medic and gains a position at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
The Malfoy name falls into obscurity now, but Draco doesn't really care. He talks with his colleagues, would call them tentative friends and acquaintances. When he remembers, he contacts old schoolmates, but gradually falls out of touch with them. He meets his parents every two weeks for dinner at the Malfoy Manor, and then returns home to his one-bedroom apartment overlooking Knockturn Alley.
One day, Draco is walking through Muggle London when he meets a girl with a bruised face. She's crying, hidden in the shadows, but for all that the war is years past, Draco always remembers to check the shadows. It's not difficult to put together the girl's story, not when she hesitantly offers bits and pieces herself. He offers her food, some money, his scarf. She will not follow him anywhere, but—but.
Draco had never been a boy crying because something was wrong. He only cried when he didn't have something, and as a young child, he'd had everything he wished for. Nowadays, he deals regularly with crying patients and also those who don't cry. He donates to charities and foundations, but sometimes feels like it's not enough.
He comes back a second day, and a third day. He comes back everyday for over a month, and the girl begins to trust him. One day, he offers her his hand, and she takes it. She takes it, and this is the beginning of something different.
Initially, they share a one-bedroom apartment and Draco enrols the girl in a Muggle school. All too soon, she asks him when he plans to give her up, when he plans to take everything from her. So, he does the only thing he can think of doing—he goes out and buys a house, a wizarding one hidden in Muggle London. He shows her the house, gives her a bedroom all to herself, and promises to do his best to make sure that she is comfortable and happy and safe.
This? This is a beginning, but it's nowhere near close to the end.
There are so many happy tales of Muggleborns being accepted by their Muggle parents, but Draco knows this is not the truth. He has seen so many cases where Muggleborns are out on the street at a young age, doing their best to survive. He did all he thought he could, back when he was travelling, but only now does he realise he could have done more.
The girl he picks off the streets is his first adopted child. The next two are siblings and magic. Draco does not hide what he can do, and always makes sure none of them are jealous of one another. He treats them all the same, teaches them magic that doesn't actually require magic. At the age of thirty-five, Draco has somehow enrolled six different kids in Hogwarts and five others in Muggle schools. He ends up moving back into the Malfoy Manor, his parents moving to a cottage somewhere in France, and calls it a home.
They all call it a home.
The Malfoy Manor isn't called the Malfoy Manor anymore. The children know it as 'home' and Draco fondly calls it 'my mess of kids'. Still, he cannot do everything for himself nor keep up his career as a Healer. Thankfully, old schoolmates answer Draco's call willingly, in need of jobs for themselves and willing to try and make things better, to redeem themselves for themselves.
Draco's wand doesn't shake when he uses it, and at any one time, someone is shouting in his home or someone is laughing. There's always noise of some kind, and Draco loves it. The home of his childhood, graceful and somewhat stern, becomes something of the past. The house under Voldemort's control, cold and forbidding, is only featured in Draco's nightmares—and those? They don't come so often.
It's Pansy who brings the idea up, to begin with. She helps Draco occasionally, but primarily works as a reporter for some small newspaper business. She jokingly tells Draco he should rename the Malfoy Manor 'Safe Haven', since he takes everyone in who needs a home or isn't safe regardless of magic status, race, gender, sexuality. She means it as a joke, but Slytherins can joke and mean something as well. Hence, Draco hears the joke but also the reality of it. He smiles and raises his glass, saluting his home.
Nothing really changes, but the Malfoy Manor becomes the Safe Haven, capital letters and all. The kids love it, tell Draco that it's true and that their home has always been a safe haven for them. Looking out at the gardens, at the free space, he wonders if he can do more.
His cousin starts it, owling Draco about an injured animal of sorts. Draco, who has retired from being a Healer at a hospital and works part time at a small clinic, naturally Apparates to Luna's current house of residence. There's a Griffin with a broken wing, which he easily heals, and then Luna says she has to travel soon, of course. And, well, Draco really has nothing better to do, and he has the grounds—and so the Griffin ends up living on the Safe Haven's lands. The children, both young and old ones who shouldn't really be called children now, love the Griffin who is christened Godric in a fit of humour.
And then—Draco isn't sure how—he ends up caring for a Crup runt that no one wanted. One thing leads to another, and Draco finds himself looking after animals of all sorts as well as the kids who call the Safe Haven home.
His hands don't shake anymore, and his nightmares lessen. He doesn't really jump at shadows or rapid movement nowadays. He smiles more. He learns happiness in hard work, in caring, in loving.
You know what? He made his own life, created his own safe haven, and then forged a pathway that allowed others to do the same.
Technically, this was meant to focus on the safe haven part... But it really didn't, especially when I started trying to include other challenges/prompts as well. It worked itself out, though. Safe haven kinda works in numerous ways here. Draco creates a safe haven for himself, in a way, but also one for children (and, later, animals of all kinds) who need one. I don't know whether this is any good, but you know what? I kinda liked the idea of it. So that's that, I suppose.