Author's Notes: For the slythindor100 advent challenge.

Warning: This is a three-course meal of angst, with a side of angst. But there's no character death, so don't be too alarmed.

Without warning, a hundred or more glass ornaments exploded around him. Glass remnants rained down on the floor all over the shop, causing the sales assistant to yelp in surprise and scramble for cover so as not to be cut by the shards. Harry didn't need to worry about injury himself, though, because the glass all shattered outwards in a nearly perfect circle, with him standing untouched at the eye of the destruction.

Any idiot could deduce that he was somehow the source of it.

Harry offered to pay for the ruined decorations, of course, but a few wasted Galleons seemed rather unimportant next to the major issue at hand: why it had happened at all.

It was Harry's first clue that something was horribly wrong. He just didn't yet know what.

While the Aurors liked the idea of having a poster-boy, the reality was something quite different. Harry Potter had always refused to be just a famous name, sent out to be nothing more than a mouthpiece or ribbon-cutter. He was a law enforcement officer, and he'd always insisted on being allowed to fully act like one, nearly constantly going out into the field, where even he had to admit his fame was more of a hindrance than a help.

So he was no stranger to hearing the word 'liability' thrown bitterly around in relation to him at work. This wasn't the first time.

But it seemed it would be the last.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Kingsley said quietly, and signed off on Robards' request to put Harry on indefinite medical leave.

Harry's fists clenched at his sides, and felt so out of control that he was surprised to make it clear of the Minister's office before anything around him spontaneously burst into flames.

Degenerative. Incurable.

Harry wasn't sure he'd ever heard a scarier combination of words.

Oh, the staff at St Mungo's had danced around those specific terms, never being properly forthright about his chances, determined to use nothing but 'positive phrases', as if keeping Harry's spirits up was really going to help much of anything under the circumstances.

No, it was Hermione who'd given it to him straight, and even then she'd only done so reluctantly.

"But the Healers keep telling me they don't even understand the damn disease," Harry said. "How can they be so sure it can't be cured if they don't even know what causes it in the first place?"

Ron refused to look at him. Hermione's expression was pitying.

"I won't give up, of course," Hermione promised, but Harry could hear the caveat plain as day: she didn't expect to actually succeed. This was coming from Hermione, who'd pretty much never met a challenge she couldn't at least partly conquer.

If that wasn't properly demoralising, Harry didn't know what was. He felt like someone had knocked all the air out of him along with most of the magic, and he didn't know how he could possibly recover from such a solid blow.

Maybe the Healers were onto something after all with their 'force of positive thinking'.

Harry desperately wanted a hand to hold. Hermione would have let him clench hers in a heartbeat if he asked. Even Ron would have, though it would have been awkward as all get-out. And Mrs Weasley, once she arrived, couldn't seem to stop touching him, barely restraining tears as she hugged him over and over again.

Theirs weren't the supportive touches he really wanted right then, though.

And Draco was nowhere to be found.

As Harry's magic grew progressively more out of control, it became inevitable that sooner rather than later he'd end up in complete quarantine, where his involuntary lashing out couldn't hurt anyone but himself.

At that point he wondered briefly whether it might not be better for his magic to turn inwards, ravaging him. As it was, though, he barely even felt any pain. Just helplessness.

His friends could only stop by occasionally and wave to him from behind a powerful shielding charm. Even the Healers and their assistants rarely came any closer than that.

And still Draco didn't stop by.

When he'd gone more than twenty-four hours without an outburst, after so long of his magic zinging dangerously through the air almost constantly, Harry felt optimistically hopeful.

The Healers didn't seem to share his enthusiasm, though. Healer Smythwick handed Harry his wand hesitantly, and they all waited, tense and silent.

Harry swished. He flicked. He said the incantation perfectly. But the cup he was pointing his wand at didn't budge in the slightest.

Harry felt like there was something too-thick stuck in his throat as his beloved wand clattered uselessly from his fingertips.

The quarantine was declared unnecessary, finally, but even being able to properly interact with his loved ones for the first time in weeks didn't really improve Harry's mood.

The knowledge that he was a wizard had been the first good thing he could remember having in his whole life.

And now, for all intents and purposes, it was gone.

"You'll survive," someone said, not without compassion. Harry was glad he didn't recognise the voice, though. He might have punched them, for all that they were clearly just trying to help him by getting him to look on the bright side.

Of course Harry would survive. It was what he did.

But it so wasn't the point this time.

Harry was out of St Mungo's, having been released when he refused outright to waste his time keeping up with their idiotic version of 'rehab' ("Look, I know what bloody electricity is, all right?" Harry said tersely to his Ministry-sponsored counsellor. "Probably better than you do, since you mispronounced it. Just sign off on me being able to survive the Muggle way and let's have done with it, already.")

When Draco finally showed up, it was two months too late.

Harry desperately wanted to tell Draco that; that he was too late, and so he should just leave the way he came. He wanted to throw something (in lieu of hexing him). He wanted to scream and rant the way he would have done when he was a teenager, and to accuse Draco of being even more completely gutless than he'd been as a kid. He wanted to lash out with words rather than magic, and hurt Draco as badly as Draco had hurt him by not being there for him.

But Harry could see from Draco's red-rimmed eyes that he was already hurting. He'd never been particularly good at reading Draco's mind – theirs was a history of misunderstandings, wilful or otherwise, which hadn't lessened much once they'd started dating – but even Harry thought he could tell that Draco had been much harsher about torturing himself over his actions than Harry could ever bring himself to act towards someone he loved. (Yes, still. Always.)

And damn it all to hell if he didn't just want to curl up in Draco's arms, despite everything.

He could let Harry down time and time again, and Harry still didn't think he'd ever stop needing Draco.

It was the first time since he'd first suspected that something was very not right with his magic that Harry had cried at all. It didn't feel good, of course, but it felt utterly necessary, and long overdue. Draco held him throughout, curled together on the couch, and though he wouldn't let Harry see his face to confirm it, Harry suspected Draco might have been shedding his own tears as well.

It wasn't a complete catharsis or fix-all; not by a long shot. Things were not suddenly all right between the two of them. Maybe they never would be again.

After all, Harry knew how Draco felt about Muggles and Squibs, even now. He'd never really accepted that side of Draco, but he'd managed to live with it well enough. He'd understood that it was difficult to overcome a lifetime of pureblood fanaticism, and it was ultimately enough for him that Draco at least tried to be open-minded, even if he failed more often than not. Or it had been enough, when Harry's indignation was only on behalf of other people, and strangers at that; when it was still an issue that bothered him, but not on an overly personal and everyday level.

Now it was intensely personal. Too much so, Harry couldn't help but think. There was no chance that this wouldn't change things.

Perhaps only slightly less than getting his magic back, Harry would have liked nothing more than to hear Draco assure him that, after everything they'd been through, they could survive this. He loved Harry enough to stay with him through it, and they'd be stronger for working through it together. It didn't matter to him, because Harry was still Harry, even if he was no longer a wizard.

But then...

Well. Draco had taken such a very long time to come and visit him for a reason, hadn't he? It was surely better to pretend that Harry didn't know what that meant than to be told for sure exactly why Draco couldn't stand to see him.

So silence stretched between them.

Harry specifically didn't ask: "Can you still love me without my magic?"

He didn't dare risk inviting Draco to answer: "No."

~FIN~