I absolutely adore Drarry, they've become a recent obsession for me. This is a bit of a darker one, it does touch on some metal illness and unhealthy coping mechanisms, so please keep that in mind.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters.
It had been nearly six years since the Battle of Hogwarts and the events that surrounded it, and yet Draco Malfoy was still dealing with it.
He knew everyone was.
So he wasn't anything special.
Which was why he kept quiet.
What was the point?
It was his family that was partly responsible for the pain that was caused to these people.
He didn't deserve to have their pity or their help—and he so he didn't ask for it, from anyone.
Just like his parents, Draco was put on trial for his association with the Dark Lord.
Harry Potter—the savior, as so many witches and wizards simpered—had testified on both his behalf and his mothers.
Which was more than what he could ask for.
His father was a lost cause, and even though Draco hated it, he still loved his father and he still cared about him and wanted him to be okay, but he knew that Lucius Malfoy's place was in Azkaban.
But at least his mother was kept in a low security prison and he was able to pay the warden and the guards to give her some comforts of home.
And he ended up with community service and a charmed wand that restricted his use.
It wasn't his wand, of course, because Potter still had that, but it was better than using his mothers wand, which he had been doing.
Draco had gone back to Hogwarts, mainly because no one expected him to.
He hated the idea that he had been run out of the school, and his pride won out, but as soon as he stepped back into the school, he regretted his decision.
Weirdly enough, it had been Headmistress McGonagall who had convinced him to stay, although by the end of the year, it had seemed pointless.
He had barely passed his N.E.W.T's, and that was really only because he had exceeded in the years before, as expected by his father.
He didn't learn anything in his final year.
At least educationally.
In other ways, he learnt a lot.
Like if he drank enough elf-made wine and smuggled gin, then he could get through the day without throwing up everytime he caught his reflection in a reflective surface.
And if he smoked enough herb and pipe-weed, then he wouldn't try to start a fight with every single person who looked at him wrong or spat something in his direction.
And if he didn't leave his room to eat breakfast or dinner, and just relied on the house-elves to bring him food, then he limited the amount of human contact he had.
And if he mixed sleeping draughts, and calming draughts, and dreamless sleep potions, and draughts of peace, then he was barely aware of what was going on most of the time, and didn't have the presence of mind to register that almost everyone in the school hated him, including himself.
Especially himself.
Unfortunately, the bad habits stuck, and after he finished his eighth year at Hogwarts, he lost about four or five years of memories as he fell deeper into a hole of despair and self-medicating.
They were definitely there, somewhere, buried in the recesses of his mind, and he was sure that he could find them if he really wanted to.
But he didn't want to.
Because Draco hadn't become anyone that he was proud of.
He had never been someone to be proud of.
He had no idea what his mother had seen in him.
No wonder his father had always hated him.
In the beginning, right after high school, he went out a lot with Pansy Parkinson, and Blaise Zabini, and occasionally with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle.
There were clubs and bars and parties and the alcohol and drugs were free flowing and there were plenty of pretty boys and girls that Draco could bury himself in to forget.
Blaise ended up leaving the country all together, to go to America and study there.
Pansy got a girlfriend and was studying potions and even though she came by his place a lot, she was always worrying and fluttering around and it was just plain fucking annoying.
In hindsight, he knew that she was just trying to help, but at the time, she was just a pain in his ass.
Crabbe and Goyle were only around when he was really desperate, but a year or so in, around when he turned twenty, he stopped paying attention because even though he was desperate for something, he wasn't lucid enough to realize that he was going out alone.
Draco remembered a morning when he woke up and there were three men in his bed, all of them handsome, and muscled, and beautifully naked, but all he wanted to do was be alone.
He apparated, right then and there, while in his pyjama shorts and a single blue sock, to a some horrible beach, where the weather was miserable and the wind was whipping at his bare body and the waves were crashing onto the beach.
He didn't leave for a long time—he passed out in a little cove that he found, and when he woke up, the tide had risen and was beginning to lick his feet.
Draco remembered an evening, or it may have been a very early morning, when he was drunk and high and all he could look at was his Dark Mark.
It had happened before, complete and utter focus on the black ink.
The mark felt as though it was going to consume, as though it was this black spirit curling around his limbs and filling his lungs and strangling him and trying to take over him.
But this time, it felt different.
All he felt was this blinding rage, and he couldn't climb himself out of that head space.
He passed out with his arm over the flames of a fire place, burning away the mark that was a constant, physical reminder of the things he had been through.
Draco remembered Pansy's twenty-first birthday, where she had begged him to come, and pleaded with him to come sober, and he had promised her over and over again that he would.
Potter was there, which had caught him off guard, but Draco had been completely cordial, friendly even.
He had even offered Potter a drink from the flask that he had tucked into his robes when they both ended up out the back of Pansy's home, on her tiny porch, but Potter had just shaken his head and given him a gentle, sad look.
There were more bits and pieces, but none of them made up for the years that he was missing, even now.
Which brought him to the present.
It was a few weeks before he turned twenty-four, when he woke up in a hospital.
He felt the most sober, the most aware, the most grounded he had felt for as long as he could remember and fuck, it hurt.
Everything hurt.
His body, his mind—just breathing hurt.
He fell back asleep.
The nurse at St Mungo's told him he had been out for nearly a week when he had woken up again, all sorts of IV's and magic whirring gently around him, pumping him with far too few potions and draughts.
He was there for another few days, most of the time asleep, and when he woke up properly the next time, it was because the whole ward was in a tizzy.
Potter was there.
And it turned out, the Boy Who Lived was the one who had brought him in, had found him completely strung out and barely conscious behind a bar.
That explained why he was in a public ward and not somewhere private.
Of course Potter wouldn't ask for the best and just take whatever was available.
Draco tried to leave twice, and both times, Potter had somehow just appeared within just a few minutes, and managed to talk Draco into staying.
And when he left, he ended up at Potters.
He had no idea what the boys—mans, they were men now—fascination with him was, but...He was grateful.
Because he didn't have anything anymore.
He didn't have anyone.
And Potter was reaching out a hand and offering him a life line.
Not drinking sucked.
Not smoking sucked.
The withdrawals he got—even weeks after being in detox at St Mungo's—sucked.
But he wasn't alone.
Potter came into his room when he was shouting in the middle of the night, suddenly dreaming and getting subsequent night terrors for the first time in years.
Potter made him meals and gently bribed him into eating when he was feeling strung out, with promises of foot rubs and choosing what they watched on the weird Muggle box in the corner of the room.
Potter's face was what came to mind the first time in a few months that he felt particularly bad and ended up in a bar, about to order a drink, and it had been him that forced him not to.
Draco had told Potter that as well, and Potter had given him a small, sad smile.
Draco hated that he hadn't looked more proud.
He hadn't ordered the drink!
He had stopped!
The frustration had obviously shown on Draco's face because Harry had leaned down, reaching toward where Draco was sitting on the couch.
Potter had run a few fingers through Draco's hair, which was getting longer, and was nearly at his shoulders now, and then trailed his finger tips across Draco's cheekbones, whisper soft and yet sending sparks through his entire body.
Potter had told him that he was happy for Draco, that he hadn't had a drink.
However, it needed to be for himself, not for Harry.
Draco had blinked up at him, not wanting to say anything, because he didn't Potter to stop touching him—and also because he just didn't know what to say.
And it was as though Potter had known that, because that night, he didn't leave the couch to go sit in his armchair, like he usually did, choosing to sit beside Draco, their thighs pressed together.
It was a few days later that Hermione Granger had stopped by with a few recommendations for mental Healers.
She had done it before and Draco had just waved her off, but this time, he considered the names that she had scratched onto parchment.
It was just weird that Granger was here, trying to help him, when he had never been anything but horrible to her—to all of them—back in school.
He started seeing one of the Healers that she had recommended, and he grudgingly had to admit, that it really helped.
His story was well known by all witches and wizards, even by some Muggles who had affiliations with the wizarding world, because it had been splashed over every single newspaper and tabloid and when he had gone on trial, after his parents, he had needed to admit all of his involvement—all of his crimes.
But Jenna Werriweather never assumed everything, and she let him talk in his own time.
She let him be the one to admit his addictions.
She let him be the one to decide when he was ready to sob over what he had done and what he had lost.
She let him be the one to tell her that his hate and anger and guilt had been eating him alive.
And then she helped guide him on the path that would help his recovery.
Eventually, Draco moved out of Potter's place on Grimmauld Place, but he didn't move back to the Malfoy Manor, where he had been before, nearly eight months ago now.
He found a new place, a new apartment, somewhere that wasn't tainted with any memories other than the ones that he chose to make within those new walls.
It was smaller than the manor by far but it was good.
He didn't feel overwhelmed.
He felt in control.
Draco's father had wanted him to work at Ministry.
Draco had thought about being an Auror at some point.
But the years where he really needed to be deciding what he wanted to do as an adult where filled with far deadlier activities, and so now, he had no idea what he wanted to do.
It was Luna Lovegood who helped him out, in her strange, eerie way.
She asked what him happy, and he said he didn't know.
She asked what he thought might make him happy, and he said he maybe helping people, maybe trying to make up for at least a small drop of the pain that he had caused.
She had told him that he didn't need to make up for anything, that he was the one that couldn't get past the pain, but if helping people was something he thought might help, then he should start there.
Granger and Potter helped him find a few different jobs.
He volunteered first at St Mungo's.
Then he decided to help out with administration work at a counselling office in Diagon Alley.
Then he spent some time working with the elderly at St Oswald's Home for Old Witches and Wizards.
At each of them, he liked what he did, and he didn't feel as though he was being prejudiced against, but none of them just...Really stuck.
Potter came to the rescue...A habit he seemed to have.
Madam Pomfrey was loosing one of the healers that worked with her at Hogwarts, and she was looking for a new assistant.
She was willing to train one up, as long as they were willing to learn and dedicate themselves to the craft.
Headmistress McGonagall had given him a small smile when Potter had brought him into the castle to speak with her, and just before he had apparated away with Potter, she had given his shoulder a tight, comforting squeeze.
Being back at Hogwarts had felt right.
This place had been his home for so long, and even with the bad memories, he had so many good ones there, and now he was just making more.
He was helping people, but it was so much more than that.
The longer he was there, the closer he became with the students, and even though there had been some nervousness to begin with on behalf of the parents, these kids trusted him, and even though his position was technically in the hospital wing as a healer, he knew that it went deeper than that.
McGonagall seemed to realize that as well, and she mentioned a few times that she was going to look into setting up a guidance centre, since the students were beginning to come to the hospital wing just to talk to Draco about their problems.
Draco didn't mind.
He liked it.
He liked that they trusted him.
He liked that he could help them.
Potter was the potions teacher, just a year away from becoming a professor, and although he had been offered the spot as the Defense Against The Dark Arts, he had refused, saying that he would only go in to speak to the students occasionally.
Draco understood that.
The position was fucking cursed.
With Draco and Potter both at the castle, they saw a lot of each other again.
Not as much as they had when Draco had been staying with Potter—which had mostly been through one of the holidays, and then right at the beginning of the first term when Potter was actually coming back every night, which was why he was always tired—but still a lot.
And now that Draco could actually string two thoughts together, they could hold a proper conversation.
Most of them were good.
Some of them were bad.
They cried together once.
Potter became Harry.
The first time that they kissed, it was sitting on the cobblestones of the short wall outside Rubeus Hagrid's hut, and it had been Draco who had gathered up the courage to lean forward.
The second time that they kissed, it was nearly three weeks later, and it was Harry, this time, who made the first move.
They went slow.
Achingly slow.
It had been a long, long time since Draco had had sex.
And it had been longer...Maybe it had been never that he had had sex with someone that he adored as must as Harry.
Harry must have been just as sexually frustrated as he was, but he never tried to push for more, and a few times when Draco had become impatient, Harry had just licked and nipped at Draco's lips and said that they had to wait until they were both ready.
It was almost a year after Draco had gotten the job at Hogwarts when they first began to go further than kissing.
Harry took Draco into his mouth, his movements a little uncoordinated and his tongue and fingers not quite getting the rhythm right, and it was absolutely, incredibly, undeniably perfect.
Draco took his shirt off a few days later, for the first time, and Harry's eyes had flooded with tears when he had seen the burnt mess that even the healers that his house elf had taken him to after the fire hadn't been able to fix.
Harry had fallen to his knees in front of Draco, kissing the scar tissue, hugging Draco's waist tightly and just holding him until his knees gave out and he slumped to the ground beside his dark haired boyfriend.
Draco had taken Harry apart slowly, with his fingers and mouth, watching him as he came with from just that alone.
They had sex a few weeks before school was meant to go back for Draco's second year as a teacher there.
But saying that it was sex just didn't seem right, it wasn't the right word, and it didn't do their actions justice.
Because when Harry pushed into him slowly, braced over him, hands on either side of Draco's head and eyes staring down at him, intense and bright and loving, it hadn't just been sex.
It had been so much more, and Draco's whole body had felt as though it was on fire, and his chest was wound so tight it felt as though it was going to explode.
Harry told him he loved him after their first time having sex.
Draco didn't hesitate saying it back, finally happy with who he was and where he was in life.
It had been a mess getting to this point, but it had been worth it.
Let me know what you think x