Inspired by the headcanon by PocketPadfoot, you should be able to find it on their tumblr if you're interested in having a look.
Also, this has a few mentions of suicidal thoughts, so if that's something that triggers you, please don't read this.
"The thing about accepting the fact that you've done terrible things," Draco's therapist says slowly and wisely, as though she's revealing the secrets of the world and she's a thousand years old, "is that you need to first accept yourself."
She was always saying utter shit like that and had it not be mandatory for him to attend those sessions of hours' worth of torture; he probably would've told her to get fucked quite some time ago. He hasn't though, and he's very proud of his restraint thank you very much – one of the first sessions he had with her was to be proud of the things he'd accomplished, though he's not exactly sure that this was quite what she had in mind.
"Draco have you thought about writing about your feelings?" She like she hasn't asked it the previous ninety thousand sessions but he feels bad about the kicked puppy look that's on her face when he snaps at her because he's sick of that stupid question and he's actually feeling kind of good today for the first time in weeks so he figures he might as well try to make her job a little easier on her.
"I've thought about it." He says evenly. "That's as far as I've gotten."
"Draco-"there she goes again, saying his name. She'll say his name almost every sentence as though he's forgotten it. He hasn't. It's five letters long and has two syllables; he's not going to forget it anytime soon. "Maybe a journal or a blog?"
"A blog?" That's a new word.
"Yes Draco, it's a Muggle invention that's on the internet. You can do it anonymously of course." The word Muggle doesn't sound as filthy as it used to do. In fact, when he says it, it tastes cleaner than his own name. "Your flat has internet right?"
It does but Draco's used it exactly once and that was a traumatising experience and he vowed to never do it again and he tells her that but she just laughs and says "I'll teach you. It's not too hard when you learn. Is it okay if I come over when I finish up here? Will you be home?"
Draco wants to tell her that no, it isn't okay. He doesn't want the likes of her in his apartment with her red hair that reminded him far too much of his school days and her loud voice and American accent but he says "yeah, alright. Might as well."
So that's how it started, her coming into his apartment at fifteen minutes to six and wonders around for a little while, nodding approvingly and smiling at him and complimenting on the interior design choices that he didn't even make before wondering over to the computer and starting the task of trying to show him the internet.
She was the person who fought black and blue against the Ministry to allow him for a computer when he'd never even wanted one. To be perfectly honest, he didn't even know what a computer was and he was fine without one but she had insisted and once the Ministry was sure that he was in his right mind and wasn't going to chew on the keyboard and choke on it or look up ways to die online, they had granted him one.
It really just took up space in the already small apartment and he often wondered if he was strong enough to pick the entire setup up and throw it out the window but fought against the urge to do so. The last thing he needed was to have all this taken away from him because the Ministry or someone else who was in charge of his 'case' would assume that he had completely gone mad and was a danger to Muggles.
"Alright so we'll download a decent browser for you before we even start to look at using the internet." She drones on and on about the internet, sounding passionate and fierce about it, as though it were some invention that saved the world. When he mentioned that, she gives him a wry smile and tells him, "it could quite possibly be considered magic."
An hour later and he's still confused as he was when he started, but she just laughs and says that he'll get the hang of it eventually because it isn't all that hard, but that's easy for her to say because she's not weighed down with the stress and guilt that ate away at her and didn't wonder how quickly she could end her life with one of the knives sitting in her kitchen. She doesn't have to worry about seeing people she once knew from school or one of the other former Death Eaters that had been released into the Muggle world. He feels sick all the time and he thinks that maybe he might just stop functioning because of everything and sometimes he'll tell her that, but she merely tells him that he'll have good days and bad days and though it might feel the bad days outweigh the good ones, they'll be forgotten and the good ones will be remembered.
It sounds like a horrible piece of poetry.
"Okay, we'll set up a blog for you now. It'll have to be anonymous because the last thing you need is for people to recognise you. What do you want to name your blog?"
He shrugs. What do people name blogs? Did people give blogs names like they were pets, naming them things like Whiskers or Max?
"Okay well…" She hums for a moment before nodding and typing in a few things. She obviously changes her mind a lot though, and hits the backspace a few million times before turning to him. "Use two words to describe yourself."
The first word that comes to mind is broken.
He tells her this and she gives him a concerned glance and says "you're not broken, Draco." But he is, he's so fucking broken and shattered and even though he feels like he can't break anymore, he is. He's broken.
Broken.
"Okay, how about we just name it 'Untitled' for now and you can change it later." She clicks the mouse several times and tells him how to make a new post and has the empty text box sitting on the screen staring at him. "You don't have to write anything now, but soon. I have to go now but I'll see you next week."
When she leaves, he stares at the computer screen for a long moment before exiting out of the blog and going into his room to throw himself onto his bed and tries to sleep even though it's not even nine yet.
But he thinks and thinks and thinks and he thinks that maybe writing a blog post might help, and if it doesn't, he can just delete it. There's really no harm in trying, so he finds himself sitting at the computer desk, drumming his fingers and biting his lip nervously, like he's afraid that every single word he writes will be spoken to the entire world.
It takes him a moment, but eventually he starts to write. He doesn't know where the words come from but he knows they're the right ones.
'Before all this shit, I've never really had a rough life before. I had my entire life handed to me on a silver platter. Being an only child meant that my parents doted on me a lot, and they always tried to make me feel like I was the only thing in the world that ever mattered to them, and maybe I was. I stay up late sometimes and I think about them a lot, about how their love hadn't exactly been ideal for either of them but it had all worked out in the end in the way that they came to love each other like there were no other people on Earth.
I used to wonder a lot if I hadn't been an only child if this would've happened to me. I maybe wouldn't have been so selfish or maybe I would've grown to like my classmates, rather than scorning them. Now I just tell myself that it's in the past and no matter how much I want to believe that I could've been different, there's nothing to change that.
It hurts.'
He feels vaguely empty but maybe he feels slightly okay when he hits post, and he feels the slightest bit lighter, and maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Making new posts to his blog becomes a daily thing now, and he writes about everything.
'I went out today and I felt terrified. This world is not my home and it will never be so but despite that, I enjoyed myself. I went to a coffee shop today and treated myself to one of their specialties and spent almost the entire day there, drinking a variety of their drinks and watching all the people who were actually normal survive. There were a few hurried business men and woman who got annoyed when it took a few seconds to long for their coffee to be made and they kept on glancing at their watches, as though their time in this world was running out. There were a few couples there, but only one of them stood out to me.
They were two men, happy and laughing and they were there for almost as long as I was and though their conversations were light hearted, I could hear the sadness that they both felt when one of them started talking about the things that they had been through, depression and grief, and I could almost feel their happiness when he said that he was doing okay now, that he was so much better and he was surviving.
It must be a nice feeling.
I wonder if I'll ever feel it or if I'll stay feeling broken forever."
"I've been reading your blog posts." She says, smiling encouragingly. "Are they helping at all?"
"Yeah." And surprisingly enough, he's being honest because even though he still feels like he's drowning, he's feeling lighter now, feels like he's slowly edging closer to the surface of the water and it makes him forget about the bad days long enough to enjoy the good days.
"How are you doing, Draco?"
"I'm doing alright, Anna." He's not lying and he's so proud of himself for coming this far.
'I guess the hardest part about healing is that you have to rip yourself open before you can stitch yourself back together again. It's hard and it hurts so much, but it doesn't always mean that you won't get better. It just means you have to try harder.
It's maybe not the most reassuring thing that I've told myself, but it's a lot better than telling myself that dying might be easier than this.'
He goes out to the store and stops by his favourite coffee shop. The girl behind the counter laughs at seeing him again and recommends an iced tea to him, winking at him and giving him a discount because he was one of the 'regulars' now.
Iced tea is perhaps his favourite drink now.
His trips are to the store are usually uneventful but he enjoys them. It might be strange, but seeing Muggles be happy over the little things helps a little. A little girl squeals loudly in laugher as a friendly dog licks her face and he maybe stares a little too long but after a moment he realises that he's smiling – he's actually smiling.
"How does seeing the dark mark make you feel?" Anna asks, and he gets along a lot better with her now since he started writing his blog.
"I feel sick every time I have to see it." It was an ugly thing in the first place, but it had faded since the Dark Lord's death. It's like a blemish to his skin and it looks terrible. Late at night he thinks that he can feel it burning and the sensation is enough to scare him into staying awake for the rest of the night.
"Have you maybe thought about getting a tattoo to hide it?"
It's three days later and he's standing nervously in the tattoo parlour, shifting from foot to foot. Anna had offered to come with him but he had declined, said that he needed to do this on his own. He wished he hadn't now.
"Can I help ya out?" A man not much older than Draco asks impatiently. He's heavily tattooed and has several piercings in his ears and lip but the most striking thing about him is his hair that is the brightest blue he's ever seen and for a moment that hurts a little too much, he's reminded of Tonks.
"I-" He cuts himself off to take a long deep breath before continuing. "I want to get a tattoo to hide another tattoo."
The man no longer looks impatient and looks excited at the prospect of a new customer. "Alright, show me this tattoo ya want to get hidden."
He hesitates for a moment and worries that maybe the man might recognise it for what it is and send him away without a second though, but he shakes his head. The man was a Muggle, he wouldn't know. At worst, he'd just think it was a gang tattoo. So he rolls up his sleeve and presents his arm. The man whistles lowly.
"I can see why ya'd want to get this covered. Looks like a bad tattoo job to me. Let's see what we can do for ya." They spend a good two hours talking about designs and discussing whether or not if Draco wanted a large tattoo that could hide 'the weird octopus snake thing' on his arm or if he wanted to get a tattoo sleeve.
"I don't know." Draco says honestly.
The man shrugs. "Think on it for a coupla days. I can hide that ugly thing with a large tattoo, but tattoo sleeves will look a lot nicer on ya. Buy some of those fake cheap tattoo sleeves and see what ya think."
Draco does exactly that. He buys a lot of them and tries on each one and stands in front of the mirror, and decides that yes, he likes the idea of the tattoo sleeve a lot.
He goes back the next day and tells the man that and learns that his name is Tom. He flinches the slightest bit and has to take a deep breath to compose himself before carrying on with the conversation.
"What design were ya thinkin of?"
"Constellations."
"We can do that. I'll do some designing today. Come back tomorrow and we'll see what you think of the designs.
The next day, Draco gives him a list of the constellations that he'd like on his arm, and the day later he's sitting in the chair and watching the ink stain his skin in the good way.
"These constellations mean anythin' to ya or do ya just like stars?"
"Everyone on my mother's side of the family were named after stars."
"Ah. I see, and what's the story behind that ugly octopus spider snake thing that you're tryin to hide?"
Draco breathes out and says "A really bad mistake."
The tattoo sleeve has a dark blue background with the stars done in white ink. It looks excellent and the Dark Mark is hardly visible. He smiles the entire time that he looks and it. He loves it and thanks Tom a million times over and compliments his hair.
Tom laughs and says "if ya really like my hair that much, I can dye yours for ya."
Draco almost accepts but shakes his head and tells the man "maybe next time." He puts Tom's business card on his fridge and smiles at it each time he sees it.
'Change is a terrifying concept, but I've discovered that maybe it isn't so hard and that everything that comes out of it is worth it.'
He buys himself a camera just to take a picture of his sleeve and posts it on his blog. He's learned how to tag things now, and he tags it under several different things. It gets a few hits and he gets a happy looking notification telling him that he's gained a few followers.
The word followers makes him sick for half a moment until he realises that Voldemort is dead and he isn't coming back.
"Your tattoo looks absolutely amazing." Anna gushes over it for at least fifteen minutes and looks proud of him, drawing him into a hug and tugging on hair that was getting too long. "You're getting better." She whispers.
"I'm getting better."
'After everything I went through, breathing felt so hard for such a long time. I could never sleep for a full night and eating was a task that I could rarely complete. My father getting locked up and my mother's lack of will to live ate at me for far too long and it still does. I constantly think of them both, wondering if my mother is still alive and if my father is still sane, but the thoughts make me feel sick.
I can sleep a lot better now. I guess making the one thing that had been plaguing me most disappear changed a lot about my life. I feel happier now and safer. I used to fear going out because I was so scared that someone would recognise me as the boy that made all the wrong choices or worse, old schoolmates who would come to seek revenge for all my acts against them back when I was still some stupid kid, but living here I guess I feel free. There is no one here who recognises me accept for the few people that I have conversations with.
This world is not so terrifying after all.'
He doesn't deny himself anything anymore and finds himself looking in pet stores every so often, smiling gently at the sleepy kittens being woken up by their active siblings, or the puppies who were so excited by every single new person who walked into the store, no matter how many people had been in the store that day. He doesn't think he'll ever buy an animal though, really, he had no experience in owning a pet apart from his owl which didn't really count but he's absolutely captivated by the puppy that one of the employees is holding.
It's a beautiful little thing with wide eyes and a dark shiny coat that's the last of his litter and he lets it lick his fingers and he falls in love with him.
"He likes you." The boy who can't be any older than seventeen says, smiling at the excited dog who had taken hold of Draco's heart.
"Hold on a second, I have to make a call but I'll be back."
He calls Anna and maybe he talks a little fast in his excitement but his therapist is really something amazing and deciphers every single word.
"That's not a problem." She says, laughing. "Go buy that puppy, Draco."
So he does.
He names the dog Ace, and Ace is maybe one of the better things to enter his life. He takes about a million photos of the dog and uploads half a dozen of them. He gets quite a few hits and a lot of people writing about how adorable Ace is.
He takes Ace for walks daily, just down to the large park that was absolutely beautiful during all four seasons and always has the sound of children's laughter. Ace is quite the popular dog, getting patted by every single person who has to walk by him and he loves this stupid dog, he loves him so much.
'Everything might be starting to get better.' Draco writes on a particularly bad day where he has hardly any energy. Ace is right underneath his feet and stays with his master for the entire day like he sensed that Draco needed the support. The bad days aren't as frequent as they used to be, but that doesn't mean that they don't hit as hard. 'But sometimes it's just so hard to forget the things I'd like to forget.'
"How's Ace?"
"He's good. He helps a lot."
"I'm glad. Are you doing alright lately? We've talked so much about your successes lately and not so much about you."
"I think I'm getting better. It's not so hard anymore."
"I'm glad to hear that."
"I am too."
He starts to tie his hair back when it gets too long, and when it gets even longer, he pulls it back into something that Anna affectionately referred to as the man bun. He rolls his eyes but deals with the teasing and takes Ace on walks twice a day now.
He really didn't expect a park in Muggle America to be the first place to quite literally walk into an old schoolmate and he almost panics. Almost.
"Malfoy?" The voice asks incredulously, and Draco looks up to see a girl with her fiery red hair pooled around her shoulders. He didn't remember her being quite so beautiful either.
"Draco." He corrects quietly and the girl frowns at him for a long while before getting distracted by Ace. He still a puppy but he's getting to be rather big. She rubs at his head and laughs when he tries to lick her.
"What's his name?"
"Ace."
"Cute."
"Ginny." He says after a long time of watching the redhead play with his dog. The name sound foreign on his tongue and the girl looks surprised. "I know it isn't anything really, but I'm so fucking sorry about our days back at Hogwarts."
"You were a prat." She says amused. "But I like your dog so I guess I can forgive you. Kind of."
He laughs a little and Ginny says "I've really got to run, but maybe we'll see each other again sometime."
"Maybe."
"Draco, I think you should travel for a little while. Some fresh air would help you a lot, and you haven't seen anything of American besides this town. I'll organise something for you and you and Ace can sightsee for a week or so."
That's how Draco came to be standing on top of a hill overlooking the city that he was staying it. Taking a picture. "It's beautiful." He tells Ace and finds a grass patch to sit on and stares out at the lights until the sun rises.
Once he gets back to the motel, he uploads the pictures of the city and writes. 'I used to think that beauty could be bought, but now I'm beginning to realise that no, it can't. It has to be found.'
He sees Ginny in the park three more times before he gets up the nerve to ask her for a coffee. They go to his regular coffee shop and both get an iced tea and sit outside in the sun, Ace lying by their feet. It's awkward for a long moment before Ginny speaks.
"I like your tattoo. Can I have a look?"
He holds out his arm and he half hopes that maybe she won't realised the significance and half hopes that maybe she will.
She does, her thumb brushes over exactly where the Dark Mark used to be and grins at him. "Stars? Never took you for a spacey kind of person."
"Me either."
They meet up at the coffee shop again and before either of them can take a sip, Ginny stops them. "Wait, I've seen Muggles take pictures of the food and drinks they buy all the time. Take a picture."
So he does and uploads it later that night.
'Perhaps this journey has been long and arduous, but it's not over yet.'
"You're seeing Ginny Weasley?" Anna asks, sounding disbelieving.
"We're friends. That's all there is too it." And it's true.
"So are you seeing anyone?" Ginny asks and Draco shrugs.
"No. I'm not really interested in a relationship at the moment. Are you?"
"I'm dating a lovely girl named Natasha."
"Are you happy with her?"
"I'm so happy with her."
'I met up with a classmate that I treated horribly back in school a little while ago. I remember feeling so terrified when I ran into her. Our roles are reversed now, she is better than I am in every single aspect, she has always been so much better than me. She didn't yell at me or throw punches like I had expected her to. I almost wished she had, but talking to her is so much easier. I never expected her to understand, but the fact is that life is not fair to any of us. We all go through something terrible and we truly aren't all that different from one another.
We're all broken in some ways, but that doesn't mean we can't be fixed.'
"Tell me about Natasha." Draco says one evening over coffee. It's a chilly night and he pulls his jumper righter around him and offers the redhead a soft smile.
"She means the world to me." Ginny says passionately. "We started dating when I was about two or three years out of Hogwarts and I think I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I know I want to spend the rest of my life with her."
"Is she a Muggle?"
"No, she's a Muggleborn witch who was in Ravenclaw. She was two years below me."
"How did your family take the news about you dating a witch?"
Ginny laughs. "I think mum almost fell over in shock, but I expected dad to be outraged or scandalised or something. I don't know why because he's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet and he was so easy-going about it. I was like 'Dad, I'm dating a witch named Natasha,' and he was like 'Oh great!'. My brothers were all really supportive about it too. Even Ron and Percy. Hermione and Harry were proud too and everyone approves of Natasha."
"She sounds like a wonderful girl."
"She really is. I'd love for you to meet her sometime."
"I'd like to meet her too."
"Tell you what," Ginny says, nodding to herself like it's the best idea she's ever had. "Come over on Sunday, we'll have dinner. The three of us, you can get to know her, though I must warn you, she loves books more than life itself."
Ginny was right about the thing with the books. Their apartment seemed to almost be made completely of books, both old and new and from both the wizarding world and the Muggle world. Draco's read a few of them and spies his favourite book and points it out and is immediately dragged into a long conversation about it.
"The writing is absolutely breathtaking." Natasha says, and she truly looks alive when she speaks about books, passion laced in her voice. "I reread it again and again and it gets me every single time."
"I loved Max." Draco admits. "I loved all the characters."
"The ending was so satisfying, right?"
"I don't think I've ever read a better ending."
Draco leaves their apartment feeling extremely giddy at almost 2am in the morning and wanders home. Ace greets him at the door, licking at him fingers and barking quietly and Draco laughs at him before going to sit down at his computer. He opens up the blog and leans back in his chair staring at the blank screen for a while and thinks.
The words are slow to come and they stick to his mind like glue, refusing to be typed out the way he wants it to and it takes him three hours to come out with something that was vaguely comprehendible. He sighs angrily, good mood forgotten and closes down the page. He stares up at his ceiling and ponders for a while.
"I guess I'm not so broken as I thought I was." Draco says after a while to an empty room. The words are fulfilling and makes his hear soar the slightest bit and he feels as though he needs to say it again and again and again so the whole world knows.
"How're you doing Draco?"
"Living isn't so hard anymore."
"Good. Your blog is getting a lot of hits. You've got a lot of supporters." He knows. He gets about fifteen messages a day from people sending him supportive messages and telling him that they think he's so brave.
Dinners with Ginny and Natasha become a weekly thing and they'll talk late into the night and Draco will crash on their couch. It's one of those nights that they announce the good news.
"We're engaged!" Ginny tells him, pouncing on him and wrapping her arms around him so tightly that it almost hurts, but he returns it just as tightly.
"Congratulations." He tells the both but Natasha shakes her head.
"That's not all. We were thinking about adopting. Not now of course, but soon, and we were hoping that maybe you would want to be Uncle Draco?"
He grins so hard that his face actually hurts and says 'yes' four times.
He goes home that night and sits in his chair. This time, he doesn't stare at an empty page.
This time he writes.
'There are quite a lot of things that I've learned through this whole experience and to list them all would take far too long, but I guess the main lesson that I've learned is that broken people do not stay broken forever. Before I started this blog, I could never sleep. I could never eat. I felt like I could hardly breathe and some nights I struggled to talk myself out of things that I would've regretted greatly.
I'm not saying that I'm healed yet, that I've miraculously pulled myself together and that I was now whole. I don't think I'll ever fully be okay. I will have bad days, I know this. I will have so many bad days, but I will survive to see the good days.
I didn't think at the start of this that I would feel this way, but in saying that, at the start of this, I wasn't even sure that I would live to see another day.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm so proud of the progress I've made. I'm so glad that I'm alive to see another day. The sunrise is no longer daunting. It's freeing.
Another thing that I've learned that will stick with me for the rest of my life it that it can still rain in the most beautiful parts of the world, and it will. There is no magic that can change that and I'll learn to love the rain one day.
I'll make it through the rest of my life with my friends and my dog. The things that I did are in the past, no matter how terrible they are and no matter the fact that I will still remember them. I am a different person now and it's reassuring to know that I'll never be the same person I was back in school.
Something else I want to say is to address the messages I get from other people struggling through their problems and for anyone else who is too. Recovery is never an easy progress, believe me, and it'll sometimes feel like there is absolutely no hope left in the world, but you're wrong to think that. There is always some hope left, somewhere. Sometimes it might seem that giving up will be easier and it's so tempting to do so but soldiering on is worth it.
It's so worth it.
My words might not mean anything to some of you, but to me they are the things that dragged me out of the darkness.
So soldier on. I believe you'll make it through this even if you don't think so yourself.
I didn't think I would make it through this either.
But I did, and that's all that matters.'
As always, you can squint and imagine that this was edited but you'd be really wrong.
This was actually really fun to write and I'm hoping that I didn't butcher it too badly. Also, the book that Draco and Natasha were talking about was 'The Book Thief' if any of you were interested, because it really is a spectacular book with absolutely breathtaking writing.
Aerotes,
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