A/N: Well hello everyone and welcome to my new story, Saudade. For those that haven't heard the word 'saudade' before, it's a Portuguese word that describes "a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return." Hopefully, as the chapters progress, you'll come to agree that it is the perfect word to describe this fic!
This is a sequel to Changes In Circumstance but can be read as a standalone fic without reading the first one. If you're new to this series, Arianwen and Draco met in school and had a very deep but tempestuous relationship due to being on different sides of the war. They were both in Slytherin in school but Arianwen is from a noble family in Wales that Lucius disapproves of. Draco felt he should break up with Arianwen in order to keep her at a distance from Voldemort, but they reunited after the war. This story picks up about 4 years after the Battle of Hogwarts, so they're around 22 and their son Llewyn is 5.
I hope you're all enjoying the holidays and have a bit of spare time to read my first chapter and let me know your thoughts and questions. Now, on to the chapter!
Chapter One: The Half of It
"Hold him down! Hold him down for Merlin's sake!" Arianwen shouted at the three aurors who'd brought the patient in.
"We're trying!" One of the men, Ron Weasley, bit back while wrestling with the man's flailing legs. Finally they managed to hold him still enough that Arianwen could pour the Calming Draught down his throat, massaging his throat in one hand and holding his head down with the other. She watched as the mania slid from his eyes, a look of dull apathy replacing it instead.
"There we are Mr.-" Arianwen looked at the aurors. "Have we got a name?"
"It's Dion Pritchard, ma'am." Answered the big burly one Arianwen knew as 'Stephens'.
She nodded. "Right then Mr Pritchard, you're in St Mungo's, in the Emergency Unit. We're going to be keeping an eye on you until the substance you've taken leaves your system, understand?"
"I don't take orders from no one you silly fucking…" his words tailed off into incoherent mumbles, the Calming Draught taking a firm hold of him.
"Charming." Arianwen retorted. Sighing, she addressed the nurses hovering behind the aurors: "Jenkins, Pitman, pop Mr. Pritchard in the corner bed please, he'll need straps on his arms and legs. If you can clean him up a bit as well, I'll just see to these aurors and then I'll be over to heal him up."
"Okay then," Arianwen clapped her hands together and surveyed the three worn out men before her, "which of you wants to go first?"
"Actually ma'am I need to get this report sent off but I haven't got a clue what that idiot has taken. Can we sort that first?" Stephens butted in.
"Ah yes, of course. Mr. Pritchard appears to have overdosed on powdered Tooth of the Kelpie, or 'Yaga' as it's known on the streets."
The three aurors exchanged bemused glances. The skinny one, Entwistle, scratched the back of his balding head, a practised habit that presumably at some point would stimulate bright ideas. "Never heard of it." He admitted, his hand dropping back down in defeat.
"I'm not too surprised by that," she condoled, "it's a pretty rare one and extremely expensive for that reason. 'Yaga' can be taken in a number of ways, the most popular way being to snort the powder. But if you look at Mr. Pritchard here you can see that there are a number of cuts on his forearms where he's mixed the powder directly into the wounds. The venom within the powder can then actually bind to the blood cells and give the user a much faster and intense high, the effects of which are erratic and violent behaviour. And as evidenced by Mr. Pritchard, you can see that it's incredibly easy for users to overdose using this method of delivery."
"Merlin!" Ron breathed. "So how long before it's out of his system?"
"Hard to say at this point, I'll need to assess him properly but usually Yaga will have left the system within about 3-5 days. His withdrawal and initial recovery period could last as long as three months though, so he'll need to be kept in confinement once he's passed crisis stage."
"Thank you, Healer Gwydion." Entwistle nodded to her and bent over the 'Emergency/Dangerous Admissions' report with Stephens. Ron hung back, looking at Arianwen with ill-disguised curiosity.
"How come you know so much about this powdered tooth thing then? We've never even heard of it and we're trained in illegal substance abuse!"
Arianwen sighed, her eyes falling on the self-inflicted cuts covering her patient's forearms, her mind drifting back to the night before she broke up with Draco.
One Year Ago
Arianwen rolled over in bed, her eyes opening begrudgingly as she woke from a shallow slumber. The fire hadn't quite put itself out yet so she knew the time must be somewhere between 2am and 4am.
"Fuck!" The slurred cry of her absent boyfriend sounded down the hall, accompanied by some almighty bangs and a worrying smash.
"Oh for god's sake, not the crystal again!" She muttered to herself, hurrying down the hall. His hands were too clumsy when he was like this, and she thought she'd hidden all of the crystal bottles! Apparently not.
"Draco!" He was hunched over some parchment on her desk.
"I thought," he started, his voice low, violent, "that you told me you hadn't been bad mouthing me to your friends."
"What?" Arianwen walked forward cautiously. "I haven't been bad mouthing you!"
"I know she's lying to me!" He muttered, his hands scrunching around the parchment. "Shut up! I know!'
"Draco, I haven't said anything bad about you to anyone. That letter you're holding is a thank you note for the wedding gift we gave the Goyles."
"DON"T LIE TO ME!" He swung around and staggered towards her. "I've seen what they say about me, they want you to leave me, they think I'm pathetic, they think you'd be better without me-"
"Draco nooo," Arianwen pleaded, she took his hands gently and tried to peel the parchment out. "Look. See? It says 'thank you so much for the beautiful glasses', nothing bad at all!"
"What? Huh?" His brow furrowed, the waxy skin contorting on his forehead. "I know!" He told the voices in his head again, squeezing his hands together painfully.
"Draco darling, I can see you're in pain, why don't you let me help you?" She begged, her voice unsteady.
"Help-help me how? What are you going to do to me?" He wouldn't look her in the eyes, his attention darting all across the room behind her. "What are they going to do? They're coming for me aren't they?"
Arianwen gulped, placing her hands on his chest as firmly as she dared. "Who can you see?"
"No," he muttered, "no, no no! It can't be!" His eyes snapped straight on to hers, his expression altered immediately into something terrifying, possessed. "It was you wasn't it?"
She gasped and stepped back, alarmed by the strength of rage in his gaze. "Wha-"
"YOU told them to come after me didn't you? You told them to kill me!" He roared. Before she could so much as open her mouth to deny it he'd crossed the gap between them and closed his fist around her throat.
"Stop!" She tried to scream but the hold he had on her throat only allowed for a hoarse groan. She clambered backwards, managing to break free from him for just a second before he was on her again, knocking her off balance into a mirror on the wall, its pieces shattering around her.
A familiar scream distracted them both, but it was much nearer than usual, just in the doorway. "Llewyn!" Arianwen struggled free of Draco and rushed towards the door. "Go back to bed baby," she said hurriedly, pushing him out into the corridor. Draco was shouting again, trying to push past her to their child.
"SHUT UP!" He yelled. "Make that fucking mongrel shut up!"
"Bed!" Arianwen shouted at Llewyn. "Now!" She slammed the doors shut and bolted them from the outside, she and her four year old on one side and Draco on the other - a weak barrier but a barrier nonetheless. He continued to crash about for another few hours before he finally burned himself out and passed out into a deep slumber, pitifully unaware that it would be his last in that house.
Draco pulled his cloak tighter around him, the last of the winter rain lashing against his face. As corny as he knew it was, he couldn't help but allow the bad whether reflect his mood and swore at a woman in front of him for blocking his way. "Damn unobservant muggles!" He growled under his breath.
He glanced around carefully as he approached the disused department store and, when satisfied no one was watching, he murmured: "I'm here for the Emergency Unit" and stepped through the glass. Having weaved through the crowds with some success, he arrived at the unit just five minutes later.
"Weasley," he greeted upon entering, "I'm here for the-"
"Here to see what real work looks like are you, Malfoy?" Stephens called, nudging Entwistle as he did. Entwistle, who disliked Draco just as much as the rest of the Auror Department, laughed harshly at him.
"I'm here for the report." Draco replied evenly.
Stephens' eyes glimmered with delight. "What, you're a glorified owl now is it?" He mocked.
"Nah they don't send out owls when the storms are this strong, they're too important to spare, he's just the office bitch, no glory in that!" Entwistle piped up, gaining a round of merciless laughter in response.
Ron, who still hated Malfoy with a passion, pointed at a curtained-off bed in the corner. "The Healer's got the report, you'll have to sit over there and wait for her to finish."
Draco nodded curtly, then sat himself down in the uncomfortably straight chair next to the bed curtain, his back to the others. He could hear voices on the other side of the curtain, a woman crying and another one comforting her.
"It's all my fault!" The woman was blubbering. "I shouldn't have moved out and left him on his own!"
"Now now," the Healer soothed, "there's no point in blaming yourself. He put you in an awful position-"
"-but I was his last hope! His wife chucked him out of their house and none of his kids wanted anything to do with him. Our parents live abroad and he doesn't really have any friends anymore so I took him in. But he just seemed to get worse and worse," she confided desperately, as though trying to justify herself to the Healer," and he'd be so destructive, I was so scared he would- well it doesn't matter," she sobbed, "I still shouldn't have given up."
"This was not your fault, Maria, please don't cry." He heard quick footsteps and then the curtain was thrown open to reveal a very tired looking Arianwen Gwydion. Draco's stomach jerked nastily, heat rising to his cheeks. "Jenkins, will you fetch some tissues please?" She called out.
"Here!" The eager nurse handed her a box almost instantly. Arianwen spun back around to re-enter the cubicle, her eyes passing over Draco as she went. She faltered.
"I'm here for the report." Draco muttered, nodding his head towards the patient lying unconscious on the bed.
"Right." Arianwen replied awkwardly. "Give me two minutes."
She returned to the lady she'd been comforting. "Here you are dear. Now, I need you to understand that you did the right thing in taking your brother to the facility. You did everything you could to help him but he was too far down his destructive path to want to accept it."
"Really?" Maria sniffed.
"Yes." She said firmly. "When a user becomes addicted to Yaga they stop noticing the kind of mellowing effects it's supposed to give and instead start to experience delusions such as voices in their head, which leads them to become very paranoid. This paranoia, as in the case of your brother, Mr. Pritchard, can manifest as violence, as the only people the user trusts are the ones talking in their head. The voices tell the user to keep taking the drug but the user's loved ones say to stop - so you can see how the aggression starts through all that confusion."
Maria nodded vehemently. "Yes it was just like that! And then he started hurting himself - cutting himself, and when I tried to get him to stop he would turn the knife on me! But he was so apologetic in the morning, he would cry and promise me he'd change-"
"But he'd always do it again. Yeah, I know." Arianwen said solemnly. Draco's hands started to shake - how dare she?! And in front of his colleagues! "Why don't you sit for a while, Maria, and I'll finish off this report for the Auror." She made a few more notes and signed at the bottom. Flipping the binder closed, she attempted to pass it to Draco but he jerked his head towards the ward doors, telling her silently to follow him out. The eyes of his colleagues followed them, knowing smirks on their faces.
Once outside, he turned on her. "What the fuck was that?" He hissed, not wanting to attract any more attention than they already had.
"What was what?" Arianwen asked simply, folding her arms over her chest.
"That little speech you gave the woman in there!" He growled. "You make a habit of telling people to ditch their families do you?"
"That wasn't about you," she sighed.
"Yeah? Could've fooled me. 'Oh Maria, how selfless you were to give up your precious time to look after your sick brother! How inconvenient of him to not recover instantly!' Sounds pretty fucking familiar to me! Is that what you tell yourself at night to make you feel better for throwing me out when I was at my absolute lowest?"
Arianwen was so ready for a fight, her posture rigid, her jaw tense, but she forced herself not to rise to it. "I don't have time for this, Draco, I have work to do."
"Fuck you!" Draco spat. "Is that how little you care that you won't even talk about it?"
"I'm letting you see your son, aren't I?" She snapped back. "What more do you want from me?"
He shook his head, stepping backwards like she was armed. "Whatever, I don't need this crap from you." He tucked the report under his arm. "I'll see you Saturday." And walked away.
"Yeah, why don't you try being on time for this one!" She yelled childishly at his retreating form but, to her utter irritation, all she got in the return was the back of his middle finger.
"Ucgh!" She dug her fingers into her hair, squeezing at the root to calm herself down. If only he knew the half of it.