retrocirce: Thank you!
septemberbeauty13: Thank you!
Miss Kandy Whitlock: Thanks! I've read a lot of younger Teddy's but I wanted him to be older and more independent, and I can imagine Harry being a sort of sentimental and almost indulgent parent after his nightmarish upbringing.
Ok so I haven't given this a good read-through yet so I apologize for the inevitable errors, which I probably won't be able to fix until tomorrow.
Part Five: Treatment
Some is screaming next door, and the boots are outside his door. And now the door is swinging open with a bang, and the wandlight is blinding him, and they're in the room, looking for him, wood splintering as they blast open the closet door and he stares wide-eyed but he can't see them in the shadows because the wandlight is blinding him… someone grabs him roughly by the arm and pulls him out and then…
Another hand, a warm hand grasps his, fingers running softly over his palm, blocking out the pain, replacing the forceful touch with gentle, soothing warmth, and a voice whispers his name…
Friday morning Draco woke to the usual bellows about the school bus and the pounding and slamming of Teddy leaving the house. He pretended to sleep when Potter slipped in and dropped off a vial of potion. The house was silent, then, and Draco decided it was safe to get up, dress, and go down to breakfast. The whole business still took him nearly an hour.
When he rolled down into the kitchen, he was surprised to see Potter sitting there in muggle jeans and a brown corduroy jacket open over a red t-shirt, sipping tea.
"Don't you have work?" he asked, before remembering that he wasn't talking to Potter at the moment.
Potter looked up surprised, and shook his head. "Not exactly. You have an appointment at St. Mungo's today," he said.
"And I guess the Golden Boy can take off work whenever he wants, right?"
"Exactly," Potter answered, and Draco, miffed that his bait had failed, decided he wasn't hungry after all. As he rolled out of the kitchen Potter called after him, "we have to leave in twenty minutes," but he didn't answer. Instead he just sat in his room and waited.
They flooed into St. Mungo's together but Draco outright refused to let Potter push his chair, and so their progress up to the Curse Damage floor was slower than it might have been. When they arrived, Maggie came bustling over to embrace him and ask him how he was doing, and was he still in pain, and why hadn't he flooed to check in, and would he like some pudding. Draco answered politely, a little flustered by the attention, and tried to pretend that Potter wasn't standing by, watching him. Maggie seemed to perceive the awkwardness and shot Potter a scowl. Draco smirked, then, and accepted that pudding, after all.
They were greeted by Draco's Healer, who led them into a cordoned space and did a cursory check up with her wand and asked several questions, most of them hideously invasive. Potter excused himself when Draco gave him a pointed stare.
"Pain?" she asked.
"Yes." She jotted that down.
"Improvement?"
"No." She jotted that down.
"Bladder control?" she asked in an impersonal tone.
Draco blushed, and gritted his teeth, and answered, "sometimes."
"Could you be a little more specific?"
"At night…" he started, but the humiliation was absolutely too much, there was no way Draco was going to say anything remotely like 'I wet the bed.' Absolutely not.
She frowned at him, expecting him to continue, and then supplied: "Bladder control during sleep remains an issue?" He nodded. She jotted that down.
"Sexual function?"
"Sorry, what?" Draco asked, convinced he had heard that incorrectly.
"Are you able to function, sexually?" she rephrased, though this was only minimally helpful.
He stared at her.
"Mr. Malfoy, are you able to achieve an erection?"
Draco blushed crimson and blurted, "yes!" as though he felt the need to defend his masculinity from this absurd woman.
"And are you able to achieve orgasm?"
"Of course!" he answered, now convinced that this Healer was having a laugh at his expense.
But no, her tone was as impersonal as ever as she jotted down this down, remarking, "sexually functional. That is good news for your quality of life, Mr. Malfoy."
Draco glared at her with open contempt. How could she possibly talk about his quality of life? What good is it going to do him to be functional without bloody legs? Who cares if he can get off? He might be better off castrated if it would keep him from having to live in unrequited need with no prospect of relief except by his own hand, alone, for the rest of his miserable life, because crippled people do not have sex. Or, rather, people do not have sex with cripples. They pity them, clean up after them, they may even love them, but people are not attracted to them, and they do not sleep with them. Draco was officially in the realm of other creatures that you care for and clean up after, like babies, dogs, and really old people. In other words, people you do not have sex with. In fact, people it's illegal to even want to have sex with.
'Quality of life' my bollocks, he thought bitterly.
He looked up to see that she was watching him with something like pity, and Draco could barely contain the sudden, urgent desire to ram her in the shins with his chair.
She appeared oblivious, though, and scribbled away on her scroll, tapped it with her wand, and handed it to Draco saying, "take this with you down to Patil on Four," before shaking his good hand and wishing him the best of luck.
Potter was standing outside looking lost when Draco wheeled out, but he didn't ask any questions, and simply followed Draco. On the elevator, he handed the scroll to Potter and grudgingly informed him that they were supposed to meet 'Patil,' hoping Potter would know if, as Draco guessed, the Healer in question was in fact one of the Patil twins.
"Yes, Padma. But she does something with Experimental Treatment, I think. Why are we going to see her?"
Draco shrugged, and the elevator dinged.
Patil stood waiting for them in a suspiciously muggle-looking white lab coat. Potter walked up and shook her hand, then hugged her warmly, and asked several questions about various children and relatives, before handing her the scroll and stepping back.
Draco rolled up to her rather warily, but she turned to greet him with an apparently genuine smile, and offered her hand, "Malfoy. It's been a long time."
"Healer Patil," he answered, shaking her hand with his right to gauge her reaction. She took it without faltering, smiled, and said "it's Dr. Patil, actually," as she led them into a nearby room.
The room was white with a wall of mirrors along on side, and light-wood flooring. Free-weights and medicine balls lined the walls on one side, and a stack of rolled up mats stood in a large wicker basket in the corner. Natural light poured in from the open windows on the far wall. In the middle of the room lay a massage table of sorts, although Draco was alarmed to see large leather straps.
"Doctor? You went to Muggle Medical School?"
"Yes, a year after the War. It was a challenge, with a Hogwarts transcript, but it's not unheard of. Three years of med school and another three years specializing in neuro, then two years in Healer training here."
"Neuro?" Potter asked, and Draco was glad he did not have to.
"Neuroscience. I work with spinal cord injuries. The magical medical community has a lot of advantages but we are far behind in our understanding of the brain and nervous system, because we just don't have the funding or manpower for the kind of research that Muggles are doing."
"So, what do you do?" Potter asked.
"Why don't you take a seat, Harry," she said, and summoned two chairs and a little coffee table from the other side of the room, for them to sit around. Potter sat to Draco's right, and Patil sat facing them across the little table, a clipboard materialising out of her white coat.
"I have read your case file back to front, Malfoy, and I have discussed the case with your Healer and the Ethics board, and we believe that we may be able to help you with a course of treatment that is still very experimental, and possibly quite painful, but it may be your best hope."
Potter shifted uncomfortably in his chair and made a small move like he wanted to reach out for Draco's hand, but didn't.
"Please explain what you plan to do," Draco said calmly, although he was growing increasingly nervous.
"Well, traditional magical medicine would require a countercurse, which we cannot provide because we cannot identify the curse that was used, and your memory of the attack remains incomplete, does it not?"
"Yes," he answered. Incomplete, but that didn't stop him from seeing it replayed like it was happening all over again in half of his dreams lately.
"In lieu of a countercurse, we can try to identify and treat the symptoms of the curse. Your condition suggests that the spinal cord was not severed, because you retain sensation in the lower limbs, and yet you do not have muscle control. I believe that the electrical signals are simply scrambled, and that we may be able to realign them, through the use of another curse."
"Wait, what?" Now Potter was on the edge of his seat, looking agitated. "You're going to use a curse to treat him?"
"Not exclusively, no," Patil answered calmly, her posture unfaltering. "We will use a combination of curse-treatments and adapted Muggle physical therapy. And we will have to begin right away. You'll be strapped to the table while I administer the curse, and you will need to repeat treatment again within twenty-four hours."
"What curse?" Potter asked, not a bit appeased.
Here Patil faltered slightly, but she recovered quickly and answered in measured tones, "it's a carefully modified variation of a cruciatus."
"What!" Potter practically yelled. "Are you insane? An Unforgiveable?"
Patil remained calm, though Draco could see by the way she was fidgeting with her clipboard that this outburst, though not unexpected, was alarming. Potter did have quite the temper. She answered him quietly, "It is highly modified." And then turned to Draco, "You have been subjected to cruciatus," she said. It was not a question. She had sat in the front row of the Carrow's seventh-year Dark Arts class when Vincent had crucioedhim until his voice was hoarse.
He nodded mutely.
"This curse will concentrate the attention, or direction, of the magical energy, rather than spreading out all over your body. The pain is intense, I'm told, but the objective it to correctly rewire your nervous system.
"What are the risks?" Potter asked, before Draco could even think that far.
"Primarily, failure. But further damage is also possible, which is why we can only try it a few times. Two, possibly three times is the absolute maximum number of treatments. There will almost definitely be a psychological component, too, so we will need to monitor your dreams very closely."
Potter looked like he was about to say more but Draco cut him off, "Ok. Let's… try."
Potter turned at looked at him nervously, biting his lower lip like he was trying to restrain himself from commenting. Draco momentarily forgot that he was supposed to be mad at Potter, and almost reached out to take his hand, but changed his mind. Why should he comfort Potter, anyway? Draco was the one about to be cruciated.
"This will be painful and invasive, Malfoy. Someone will have to learn to perform this curse for you in your home most likely, if we want to be aggressive and start today, and he or she will need to help with the physical therapy. Do you have someone who can do that for you?" she asked, looking at Draco, and for a moment Draco wasn't quite sure. Potter was already doing more than anyone in their right mind would have expected of him, and they were on shaky terms right now, and he had a kid, after all, and a job, and this sounded like much more work than any one person could possibly be willing to do...
But before he could answer, Potter spoke up, "Yes, he does," and he reached out and grasped Draco's mutilated right hand and held it, almost possessively.
Patil didn't take her eyes off of Draco, though, and asked him, "is that ok will you, Draco?" Her voice was warmer suddenly, and the switch to his given name didn't escape his notice.
"Yes. It's fine," he said quietly, too overwhelmed by everything going on to really process the flood of emotions washing over him.
"Good," Patil nodded, apparently satisfied. "Because we don't know what kind of reaction you will have, I propose we start the treatment by focusing on recovering the use of your hand, first. You are much more likely to recover the use of your hand than your legs, because of the nature of the damage and to size of the curse site. This treatment is really designed for damage of this kind, so I'm optimistic. However, if this works, do not assume you will regain the use of your legs. For all we know the two injuries are from two entire different curses."
Draco nodded. Potter fidgeted.
"Alright then," she said cheerfully as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet which she unshrunk into a massive stack of forms. "Sign these."
Nearly an hour later, Draco's left hand, unaccustomed to writing, was hanging sore from the side of his chair. A nurse came in with a gown and conjured a curtain to hang from the ceiling in a circle around the massage table, and offered to help him get changed.
For some reason, Draco sent her away, though, and called for Potter, who stepped bashfully into the curtained space.
"I figure I'd rather keep the list of people who've seen me naked as short as possible these days," Draco said dismissively, and Potter snorted, as he bent down onto one knee to remove Draco's socks while Draco pulled his grey sweater and the shirt underneath, over his head. Draco slipped his arms into the gown sleeves when Potter held it out for him. He fumbled with the buttons on his trousers, though, and Potter reached out, almost nervously, to help. He paused, his hands covering Draco's and looking up until Draco met his eyes.
"I'm nervous," Potter confessed. Draco rolled his eyes to cover the fact that was, too.
Together they managed to get his trousers and pants off and Potter lifted him up onto the table on his side, and began to tie the fiddly little ties. Draco reached reflexively behind him to cover his bottom, even though he felt stupid doing it. But he felt stupid doing almost everything, at the moment.
Potter lifted him up to sit upright and spelled the table to incline for him, and then stood by looking insecure for a while before Patil returned in her lab coat, donning purple gloves.
She spelled the table flat again and together they rolled Draco onto his stomach. The table wiggled underneath him for a few minutes, then solidified such that it matched his form perfectly.
He couldn't see what they were doing, but he could hear Patil issuing wand-waving instructions to Potter, who fidgeted nervously. Then he felt a warm hand between his shoulder-blades, and then a cold leather strap laid across his back, and tightened. And then another, further down, and another, across his buttocks, and two more, to hold down his legs. Cuffs followed, nimble fingers tying the straps, tugging them tight. Panic rose as each extremity was fastened in place, and now Draco's heart was racing.
Finally Patil bent down near his ear and asked, "may we begin?"
He seriously considered bailing at that point, but he didn't want Potter to think he couldn't take it. So he nodded.
First all he felt was a tiny cold prick were the wand tip pressed into his right shoulder, just above the shoulder-blade.
And then: searing, blinding pain shot through his arm from the wand point down to his wrist in an instant, and seemed to pool there. He heard someone screaming and guessed it was he but he couldn't really hear or see or think anything except how the pain was now descending agonizingly slowly, centimetre by centimetre, down into his right hand, further and further, fanning out into the bones and sinews, extending into the knuckles. Slowly, slowly, reaching into the tips of his remaining fingers, blazingly, blindingly hot pain, then pooling in a hateful white-hot fire in the stumps where his lost fingers once were. And then everything went black…
He is standing in a dark room, and then a light comes on, and there is his father, sitting in a chair behind a silencing charm, and he looks like he might be praying or whispering something, his eyes reddened and crazed, but averted from the crowd…. The crowd around Draco and his mother, sitting in black in the black room with the bright beam of light shining of his father… and then everything feels cold, and they all know… the dementor is coming…
And then a warm hand on his shoulder and arms wrapped around him and he reaches out and clings to them…
Draco came to on his back on the table, straps gone, wearing his clothes, with a blanket covering him, and his right hand holding Potter's. Potter was watching him, eyes filled with worry…
Wait.
His right hand… was holding on to Potter's hand. Grasping it. Squeezing it. He pulled free and tried to move his three remaining fingers and… they moved. They were stiff and it hurt, but they moved! He jerked his hand away, and Potter sat up, "are you ok?"
"I can move my hand," Draco said quietly.
Potter beamed at him and watched at Draco stretched and contracted with fingers over and over and over again, marvelling at this thing that was his hand. Potter stood and stretched, and then handed Draco a potion. "It's supposed to facilitate the next part, the… erm… therapy part."
Draco raised and eyebrow at the stuttering but took the vial anyway and swallowed it. And then he looked down at himself. "Did you dress me?" he asked.
Potter looked over at him sheepishly. "You were cold. And I didn't know how long you'd be out."
Draco wanted to feel violated by that, but he couldn't summon the energy. His hand was working, and he suddenly famished. As if on cue, Potter lifted him off of the table and onto the chair and sighed "Let's go find something to eat." Draco nodded.
Potter wheeled them to the floos and in moments Draco found himself in a little Italian restaurant. "Where are we?"
"Diagon Alley," Potter answered, and selected a booth at the back. Draco rolled up to the booth and scooted himself onto the cushioned seat. If it weren't for the chair next to him, he thought, no one would know that he couldn't simply hop up and stroll out of there on his own two legs. He sighed, and tried to repress the bitterness with the glimmer of hope he now had, because his hand was working again.
Across he table, Potter fidgeted.
"What is it?" Draco finally asked.
"Two things, really, that she told me we're supposed to do."
Draco waited for more, but Potter merely fidgeted. "Spit it out, Potter."
"I'm supposed to help you with stretching and stuff in the evenings and, in her words, 'stimulate' your hand." An innocent enough statement, but the way Potter stumbled on the word 'stimulate' and blushed proved highly disorienting.
Potter looked at him almost apologetically, as though he expected Draco to be horrified at the thought. Which Draco thought he really ought to be… but frankly… wasn't. Because if he can't have Potter the way he might have, once, a long time ago, maybe almost had… and given that he was officially a 'fully sexually functional' cripple, destined to live a life of unfulfilled desire… then at least he should get a hand massage.
"Ok…"
"And I'm supposed to get you to talk about your dreams. The ones from after the treatments, and… the ones at night. They think your memories might unlock as treatment progresses."
Draco sighed, and tried to prepare a polite but evasive answer. He opted for: "not all the dreams are about the attack."
"Oh," Potter said, as though he wanted ask more but was afraid to.
"Some are from the War, some are from that night. And then they've been changing when…" he drifted off, realizing he'd said too much, but Potter pressed him,
"When?"
"When I… when you… wake me up… the dream changes. Or ends…" or goes in an entirely new direction, he thought to himself.
"That's good, right?" Potter asked.
"I guess."
"Ok. Well, what about just now, after the first treatment? Did you dream, because you passed out and you were screaming…"
"Yes. But… not about the attack."
"The War?"
"Sort of," Draco answered. That particular memory… the rest of it… was a little too much to add into this already extremely disorienting situation.
Their food arrived quickly: fettuccine in pesto sauce for Potter, a braised veal with lemon tartar sauce on a bed of brown rice for Draco. Draco promptly began experimenting with feeding himself with his newly recovering but still only three-fingered right hand, and Potter looked over worriedly every few minutes.
When the fork fell for the third time, and Draco cursed loud enough for a patron nearby to yelp, Potter reached out and took Draco's hand in his, and began running soft little circles across the palm. Almost instantly, Draco felt the tension in his back and the pain in his limbs releasing, receding, and his eye-lids felt heavy, and he started to feel amazingly warm and almost dizzy. He felt a smile quirking at the corner of his lips and when Potter brushed over the stumps where his fingers used to be, he gasped and a thrill of pleasure shot through him.
He opened his eyes as Potter was pulling away. As soon as the contact ended, he felt almost bereft. But the glow of that little spark of pleasure still warmed him.
Even through his haze he could recognize that Potter looked guilty, which was somewhat disconcerting. And then he explained, "that potion… it makes you more… 'receptive'… to… stimuli."
Draco frowned and then felt his eyes widen as the implications hit him. Potter looked alarmed and seriously worried, though, and quickly started babbling, the way he does when he's nervous. "If it's too weird, and you don't want me to be the one to do it, don't worry about it, ok? We can find someone else. I can hire Philippe to do it, if you would rather someone who…"
But he didn't finish, and Draco's brain quickly supplied him with a variety of suitably depressing stand-ins like 'someone who is actually queer,' or 'someone who likes you,' or 'someone who thinks of you as more than a crippled charity case,' or 'someone who actually wants to make you feel that way…'
"Whatever you want, Potter," he answered, distantly aware that he was mostly lashing out at his own mind than at anything Potter actually said.
Potter looked strangely disappointed at that, though. But then he reached out again and took Draco's hand… "ok, we'll find someone else… but in the meantime…" and he proceeded to stroke Draco's palm again, and suddenly it was like every nerve in his body was connected to the surface of his right hand, and Draco began to lose himself in the swirling finger that was running up the length of each of his three remaining fingers.
He was so absorbed that he didn't even notice the large crowd walking past them to sit at a magically broadened table nearby until the harsh, carrying whisper of "fucking faggots," hit his ear and he jerked awake.
Draco's face reddened immediately and he leaned back into the booth, looking nervously at Potter and expecting at any minute a fierce denial and possible violence from him.
Instead, Potter got up calmly and walked over to the table where the group (predominantly overweight white men in their late-fifties, it seemed) was sitting and flashed them a brilliant smile.
"Hi, there. Harry Potter, nice to meet you. Sorry, didn't catch your name?" he said in a forcefully cheerful way, holding out his hand to the man who had whispered in passing.
"Wallis Wibbleton, Mr. Potter, sir," the man answered, typically starstruck. And then Potter, for some reason, shook the bastard's hand and smiled. Presumably this was how he managed the publicity, Draco reflected, and tried to swallow the bitterness. What had he been thinking? Holding hands in a public place like this with Potter, who has a public image and a law-enforcement career to worry about, after all.
"Wibbleton, Wibbleton… why, you're not related to the lovely Wendy Wibbleton, are you?"
The man positively beamed, and Draco felt nauseas.
"She's my wife, she is!" the man said with obvious pride.
Potter smiled back, and then deftly reached into his jeans and pulled out a little note book and self-inking quill and jotted something down, shaking his head with a little, 'tut tut' sound. "Sure would be a shame to lose such a fine asset to the Ministry," he said, and now the man's eyes grew wide and his ruddy face paled. Then Potter simply waved and returned back to sit with Draco.
"Did you seriously just do what I think you just did?"
Potter smirked. "Ten years of working inside the Ministry have taught me a thing or two."
"Do you really know his wife?"
Potter shook his head and smiled, "no, just a lucky guess. Usually I have to fish a little, but almost everyone has someone who works at the ministry."
Draco sat there bewildered as they finished their meal.
They made it home in time to meet Teddy after school. He swooped in like a ball of liquid energy, gave hugs all around, chattered about his friends, gobbled down an entire plate of spinach puffs, and ran up the stairs to play his videogame.
"I can't ask you to do all this for me, Potter. What about Teddy?"
Potter shrugged. "He's ten. He knows his way around this part of town, he's got a tube card, and he can get around the floo network. He practically raises himself at this point. You heard him: everything is about his muggle school friends or little-league Quidditch. Half the time I feel like no more than a personal bank and laundry service."
"When's his birthday?" Draco asked, and Potter seemed confused before dawning realisation spread across his features.
"April. We expect his letter in April," he said, sounding wistful.
"Gryffindor, do you think?" Draco asked, mostly for something to say that wasn't about their time in school.
Potter shook his head. "My galleons are on Hufflepuff."
Draco nodded, "I can see that." And then, for some reason, he blurted out, "the hat almost put me in Ravenclaw."
Potter sat up and looked at him with such a shocked expression that Draco would have been insulted if he had not immediately said, "yeah, I can totally see that."
They paused. And then Potter added, as though on impulse, "the hat wanted to put me in Slytherin. Said I could 'go far.'"
Draco stared at him for a minute while Potter grew slightly pink, but then he permitted himself to smile and nod, "That doesn't really surprise me, actually. Especially after the way you handled that bloke in the restaurant today. A Gryffindor would have started a row."
Potter smirked, the shrugged lightly. "Yeah, well, he would have deserved that, too," he said, standing up as though to leave the room.
Draco nodded and swallowed, steeling himself for his next question. "What I don't understand, though, is… were you just angry on my behalf? Or were you concerned that you might be… mistaken for being…" but he trailed off…
Potter turned around and raised an eyebrow and asked, "mistaken being for what?"
Draco inhaled to answer but none of his possible answers, like 'bent' or 'with me,' came out. Instead he muttered, "never mind," into his teacup, and then Potter chuckled, for some reason, as he left the room.
The wandlight is blinding him and he feels a rough grip around his arm as he is tugged forward and pushed to the floor. Someone kicks him in the gut, and he collapsed onto his, but then hands and pulling him up onto his knees. Booted feet are kicking into him, smashing his body, knocking him onto the floor, and he cries out, begs for them to stop, but instead a whoosh of wind leaves him naked, his clothes stripped from him and he is shaking now, and pleading with them…
And then a warm hand grasps his shoulder, and a second slips into his right hand, stroking it, and he feels warm breath against his neck… the wandlight fades away, the voices die out, and pain recedes, and he isn't on his knees, he's lying on his back, and someone warm and gentle is lying next to him, murmuring into his ear and stoking his hair and holding his hand and he turns to seek out the warm mouth beside him, and he feels soft lips pressed against his as a calloused finger running the length of his arm down to his finger tips and back and soft lips whispering into his mouth, it's alright… I'm here with you…