Chapter One:
"In time, they tell me, I'll not feel so bad. I don't want time to heal me. There's a reason I'm like this."
China Mieville, The Scar
The days blur together when you've gone mad.
He has a calendar on his fridge, but it's still on January. He doesn't know how long ago January was, but he knows it hasn't snowed in several weeks. He knows this because there's a window in his shower and every morning, when he stands under the scalding hot water for three minutes, he checks the weather outside through it. There's been a long string of cloudy days, but the snow has melted.
He spends his days doing so much nothing. He doesn't get the Prophet these days, what with all the rubbish they print about him and his friends, but he likes the Muggle newspaper. He reads it in the morning when it comes (he's never been quite sure how it arrives, since his house at Grimmauld Place is still Unplottable and invisible to the Muggle eye), the whole thing, even the comic strips and the ads and the obituaries. When he finishes with the paper, he puts it in the trash. Sometimes he sits on his sofa and stares blankly at a television that isn't always switched on. Sometimes he goes back to bed.
Someone always visits in the evening to fuss over him. Sometimes it's Hermione, and there's incessant talking and homemade food and she puts him to bed at nine o'clock. Sometimes it's Ron, and there's less talking and greasy takeaway and they stay up watching crap telly— Ron is fond of Muggle soap operas, and he only gets to watch them at Harry's flat because he and Hermione don't own a television. Sometimes it's Ginny, and there's food from Molly and talk of Quidditch and parties and Ginny's endless string of lovers whose names Harry can't keep track of. Sometimes it's Neville, and there's talk of Hogwarts and amusing stories about various students and there is no food because Neville forgets. Very, very rarely it's Luna, and there's an understanding silence.
Harry glances at the clock, wondering who it will be tonight. As if on cue, the front door opens.
"It's me," calls Hermione by way of greeting. "I've brought someone with me, hope you don't mind."
Harry doesn't respond. Hermione can do whatever she wants, as far as he's concerned. She's been cooking for him and doing all his laundry ever since the Shit, and if she wants to bring an uninvited guest to dinner, she's perfectly within her rights to do so.
"Hello, Potter," a curt voice says from the door.
Harry turns, because it can't possibly be who he thinks it is.
Draco Malfoy is closing Harry's front door behind him as he steps into the flat, dressed in a smart set of robes. Harry, in baggy pajama bottoms and a faded Beatles t-shirt, suddenly feels underdressed. Then he shakes his head because it's ridiculous for him to feel underdressed in his own home simply because a Malfoy has invited himself in. He turns back to face the television, and is humiliated to find that this is one of the times when he hasn't bothered to turn it on. Still, he resolutely refuses to look at Malfoy.
Malfoy comes over and sits on the sofa beside him, though there is enough space between them that Dudley could wedge himself in the empty chasm. He coughs and studies his fingernails. "Hermione invited me," he informs Harry.
Harry shoots him a look, but he doesn't answer. She must think this is going to get him to talk, that Malfoy will be able to goad him into speech. Well, he's not going to fall for it. He crosses his arms and sighs, perhaps more loudly than he'd intended.
Malfoy's mouth seems to twitch. "I don't know how much she's told you," he says apologetically. "I'm a healer these days—"
Harry stiffens. So that's what this is. She thinks he's mad. She thinks he's mad and she's brought fucking Draco Malfoy to his home to—to what, exactly? Be his shrink or something?
"Ah," says Malfoy quietly. "So she didn't tell you."
Harry snorts.
"I see." There's a pause, then, "If you'd like me to leave, I will."
Harry looks at him suspiciously, sizing him up. He wonders if Malfoy really means it. He looks like he does, but looks can be deceiving. Harry knows that now.
Malfoy gives a small smile. "I mean that, Potter. Nobody here wants to force you to do anything."
Harry looks at him doubtfully, but he mulls over the proposition nonetheless. It's not that Harry doesn't think he's mad— people who aren't mad don't generally lose track of what month it is or refuse to speak, and they certainly don't let other people do their laundry and cooking at the ripe old age of twenty-three. It's the fact that nobody has bothered to ask him if he'd like any help at all. They never ask, they just help, whether he wants them to or not.
But then, if that's the problem, Harry supposes Malfoy has made an attempt to rectify it, so Harry looks at him and slowly shakes his head.
"You don't want me to leave?"
Harry shakes his head again.
Malfoy nods. "Alright then."
The last thing Draco had expected was to have his lonely, pathetic lunch in the mostly empty St. Mungo's canteen interrupted by one of Potter's friends, but then again, his horoscope had mentioned something about shadows of his past haunting him. He hadn't really been paying attention; Mother had taken to reading their horoscopes aloud at breakfast, and he had found it was better to hum and nod than to argue with her these days.
"There you are, Malfoy." Hermione dropped her briefcase to the floor with a dull thud and seated herself primly across from him.
"Weasley." Draco continued to stir the peaches in his disposable fruit cup contemplatively, barely looking at her. What had Mother said? Something about… retrograde?
When he didn't say anything else, Hermione huffed impatiently. "Well?"
Draco dropped his fork. He'd never liked the hospital canteen's fruit cups or, if it came to that, any of their food. He didn't know anyone who did. "Well what?"
"Don't you know why I'm here?"
It took a great deal of restraint for him to refrain from asking her if the reason was obvious, but he managed. "I'm afraid I don't."
She glanced around, as though worried someone might be listening in. She needn't have; it was well past the usual lunch rush and, even if it were the customary time when people who weren't extraordinarily overworked generally consumed their lunch, there would have been about six people eating in the dingy room at most. "This is about Harry."
Draco arched an eyebrow. She must be having him on. "What about him, Weasley?"
Hermione looked rather unimpressed. "You're a lot of things, Malfoy, but thick isn't one of them."
"Thank you for that assessment," he replied, perhaps a bit more bitingly than he'd intended.
She blessedly ignored this breach of etiquette. "You were here that night, weren't you? At New Year's?"
Ah. That. Draco had, in fact, been on duty on the night in question; or rather, just getting off his shift. "I fail to see what that has to do with me."
Hermione wrung her hands. He'd seen her in frenzies like this before, when they were at school. She'd had that same expression most of the year when Harry wound up competing in the Triwizard. "Look, Malfoy… I know you and Harry have never exactly been friends, but the Prophet's been saying that you're one of the most qualified healers in this field—"
He scoffed. "You know better than to believe anything the Prophet says about me."
"You founded the psychiatric ward of this hospital nearly the moment your residency was up," Hermione said, her voice taking on a more lawyerly tone as she made her case. "You've been applying Muggle research on various mental health conditions to the way wizards treat their own psychiatric patients. You've helped countless survivors of the war. You've single-handedly revolutionized the way wizards look at mental illness—"
"That's enough." Draco squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Merlin, Weasley, I just gave money to the right people. I've only been here in an official healer capacity for three years; don't do the people of this hospital the disservice of making me out to be someone I'm not."
Hermione folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. "You can help Harry."
"Even if I could," Draco replied wearily, "what makes you think he'd accept any help from me?"
"You know, Malfoy, you really shouldn't believe everything the Prophet says about you, either."
He winced. "I'm a Death Eater. Would I be right in guessing that Potter's issues are related to trauma he endured in the war?"
Hermione nodded slowly. "Most from the war. Some from… after."
"Harry Potter is the exact opposite of a Death Eater," Draco said. "I owe him my life, and I'm grateful he exonerated my mother and me, but I am quite sure there's relatively little I can do under the circumstances." She opened her mouth to protest but he continued. "People with these illnesses… they're caught between the past and the present. Being around me would only make him worse."
"How could he get any worse than he is now?" Hermione argued. "He's not even talking anymore—"
"Well, for starters, my presence could trigger a flashback so intense that he somehow harms himself," Draco shot back icily. "The Prophet would have a field day with that. 'Ex-Death Eater Malfoy Drives Harry Potter Deeper Into Madness.' Isn't a media shitstorm something you're taking pains to avoid right now?"
Once she had the decency to look chastened by his words, he crumpled up his napkin and dropped it into the half-eaten fruit cup, sighing again. "Hermione," he said, less harshly, "you're the youngest member of the Wizengamot in a century, but you're not going to convince me otherwise. Not this time. I'm sorry." He started to gather the rest of things and made to get to his feet.
There was a silence in which Hermione did not move. Then, Draco heard her whisper in a choked voice, "Please."
Hermione Granger-Weasley, ministry hotshot, who probably hadn't said the word "please" since the day she'd gotten her internship in the courts, was begging Draco Malfoy, a known Death Eater, for help.
Merlin damn his wretched bleeding heart.
He sat back down in his chair, resigned. "I'm willing to try," he said slowly, "but if he has a bad reaction to my presence, I'm not going to force him to be my patient. There are plenty of other qualified healers in the wing with a semblance of discretion who would be more than willing to take him on."
Hermione took a moment to collect herself. She nodded her assent and picked up her briefcase with both hands, but rather than leaving as quickly as possible, she fiddled with the handle for a moment. "You're not a Death Eater anymore, you know."
Draco blinked. "Sorry?"
"Voldemort's dead," said Hermione, and it was the first time she'd ever looked at him without that fierce sort of defiance, the unique anger she harbored toward him. "The war's over, so you're not a Death Eater anymore."
Draco could do nothing but stare at her, slack jawed, as though she had just expressed the desire to tap-dance on the table. The idea had never crossed his mind in the six years since the war. He couldn't just stop being a Death Eater, like a child discarding a costume. People didn't stop being what they were, and they had to pay for the choices they made, which was the whole reason Draco was eating lunch in this shitty hospital canteen and not back at the Manor sipping merlot with his mother at three in the afternoon and ordering Hoppy the house elf to wipe his chin.
But before he had been able to find the words to explain any of that to Hermione, she was gone.
Malfoy doesn't speak to him again until after they've eaten. Hermione had prepared beans on toast because she knew it was one of about five meals he would eat, but she spoiled it by adding a small serving of steamed broccoli, one of her not-so-subtle hints that she thought he ought to at least make an effort. She's in the kitchen now, tidying up, and neither he nor Malfoy have moved significantly since the latter entered Harry's living room and sat down on his bloody godfather's sofa.
After a long and thorough silence, Malfoy is the first to shift. He rummages in a medical bag Harry hadn't noticed before for something, perhaps parchment. For some reason Harry finds the sight of it comical. The bag could be a prop from an old movie set for a film about a simple doctor from the English countryside. He's so caught up in this detail that it takes him a moment to register how far down Malfoy's arm goes. There's an undetectable extension charm on it.
"Alright Potter," Malfoy says, straightening up again with a clip board and self-inking quill, "I'm going to give you the spiel."
Harry looks at him quizzically.
"Like I said before, I'm a healer from St. Mungo's. I've been working as a psychologist—therapist, counselor, whatever you like—for just over three years now."
This comes as little surprise to Harry, now that he thinks about it. He expects the papers would've loved the redemption story, and it makes him feel sick. Any praise from the press must seem like empty words to Malfoy after everything the Prophet had put his family through when Lucius was carted off to Azkaban without so much as a la-dee-da. Harry had managed to get Malfoy and Narcissa house arrest until their hearing, but by the time the public's thirst for bloodsoaked revenge had worn off and he was able to get approval for Lucius' fair trial, he had died in prison.
"Potter?"
Harry shakes himself, blinking. Malfoy looks as if he's evaluating him, calculating his next words. Only when Harry's expression is once again moderately neutral does he continue. "I've got some experiences with trauma inflicted by the war. Friends of mine. Friends of yours."
Harry isn't quite sure what that means. He can't think of any of the people he considers to be friends mentioning that Draco Malfoy was their therapist. He's quite sure he would remember something like that. Maybe Malfoy is just trying to convey that he's helped people on both sides.
"I know you've been through a lot," Malfoy says. "We don't have to talk about that until you decide you want to. My sole purpose here is to help you; help you understand this mess inside your head, help you learn how to deal with it, help you get on with your life. Not necessarily in that order, everyone's different."
It's a bit odd, Harry reflects, having the schoolyard bully sit beside you six years on and tell you that recovery is a process. Harry feels he could've worked that out without the help of Draco Malfoy.
"If at any point you decide that this arrangement is not working for you, I can either have you transferred to a different healer or stop treatment entirely if you prefer. However much Hermione may wish to be your guardian ad litem, you are an adult fully capable of making your own decisions about your recovery process and the kind of treatment you're willing to add to your regimen. I cannot and will not force your hand unless I feel that you are becoming a danger to yourself or others."
This is the first time someone has looked Harry in the eye and more or less expressed the opinion that he isn't a danger to himself. Well, the first time since the Shit, anyway.
Malfoy seems to be able to read his expression. "Potter, the only thing it looks like you're a danger to at the moment is those pajama bottoms. That looks like a month's worth of stains."
Harry smiles. Actually smiles, for the first time in what must be weeks now. He's so startled by this that it only lasts a split second. Why had he smiled? Malfoy just insulted him.
"This," says Malfoy, passing the clipboard over to Harry, along with the quill, "is the most recently updated version of the St. Mungo's Hospital healer-client confidentiality form, with an addendum that your friend the Weaslette-in-law," he nods toward the kitchen, "wrote up specifically for our contract. Once we've both signed, I will not be able to share anything you say to me or anything that happens in our sessions to any unauthorized personnel, including the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, other healers, and that witch in there who's positively mad with worry for you. Unless you say in writing that it's okay, I can't disclose anything to anyone."
Harry nods to indicate he understands and skims the paperwork before signing his name. He hands the clipboard wordlessly back to Malfoy, who tucks it away in his old-fashioned bag again and gets to his feet.
"I'll need a few days to get your papers in order, but I'll make sure someone tells you before I come over again. It has to be evenings; I've still got shifts for St. Mungo's."
Harry nods again, and Malfoy heads to the kitchen to use the floo. Once he's gone, Harry decides maybe Hermione would be less worried if he turned the television on for a change. He summons the remote with his wand and flicks through the channels, until he finally settles on a reality show that involves various men taking paternity tests to justify renouncing any legal or financial obligations they have for the children in question.
It can't hurt, he decides, to humor Hermione, at least for a few weeks. Perhaps Malfoy was only going through the formalities to make her think he would help, and he planned on leaving Harry to wither away in peace. At the very least, maybe if Harry makes a show of trying therapy, she'll stop her fussing. Well, no, she's Hermione; she'll never stop fussing, not completely. But she might put him to bed at nine-thirty instead of nine.
He'll pretend, like he pretends to watch telly and pretends to believe everyone when they tell him things will get better. But he'll transfigure his own cock into a flobberworm before he talks about his problems to Draco sodding Malfoy.