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Part Six: Nothing

Draco woke in the late evening to searing pain in his back and pelvis, and he groaned and tried to figure out where he was without opening his eyes.

He could feel the back of the couch against his back, and a cushion under his head, and someone deliciously warm was curled up in his arms. He could hear the steady breath where his cheek pressed against the space between Potter's shoulder blades. His arm was thrown over Potter's waist and tucked under his shirt, and he realized with a jolt that his hand was brushing against bare skin, tracing over a few wiry hairs on Potter's chest.

Potter stirred, and snuggled closer, and Draco became acutely aware that he was completely hard because Potter was now gently rubbing back against his cock, which was conveniently aligned perfectly with the groove of Potter's arse. Despite the layers of Draco's briefs and Potter's trousers, the gentle friction was agonizing, and Draco would have given anything, truly anything at all, to be able to grind against him but his legs gave him no leverage, and all he could do was lie there trying not to whimper.

"Potter, you're killing me!" he finally burst out, and Draco felt the vibration travelling through Potter's back when he chuckled.

"Mmm sorry…" he mumbled sleepily, "it just… it feels good" he said, wiggling down a little and rubbing himself against Draco more deliberately now, and Draco growled and stretched up to bite the back of his neck.

"You are a bloody tease and you should count yourself lucky that I'm still crippled," he whispered.

Potter shivered in his arms, "first of all," he said, and Draco listened to his voice rumbling through this his broad back, "tease implies I'm not planning to…" he wriggled against Draco, "relieve you... and frankly I don't see what you're condition has to do with it…" and now he was grinding against Draco again, and Draco was starting to feel dizzy,

"Relieve, you say?"

Potter chuckled, the sound vibrating through his back, and then he turned himself around so that they were face to face, and kissed him. It was soft, at first, but it quickly grew more heated as he fumbled with Draco's briefs and Draco struggled with Potter's trousers and finally wrapping his fingers around a thick, hot shaft just as he felt Potter's calloused hand grasping his. They stroked with the feverish urgency of much younger men, gasping and panting against each other. Within mere minutes Draco felt himself rolling over the edge of bliss and pulsing into Potter's hands just moments before Potter's cock pumped out into his.

They lay there dazed, breathing slowly returning to normal, and Draco tried to allow himself to just feel… happy… for now.

They stayed on the couch for the rest of the evening, dozing and reading quietly, until Teddy came home.

"Guess what we did? You won't believe it, Dad, I learned how to do a roll in the air while holding a Quaffle, can you believe it?"

"That's amazing, but… you were wearing a helmet, right?"

"Da-ad…"

"I'm serious, Teddy, it's no joke. I can't tell you how many times I almost died playing Quidditch,"

Teddy raised an eyebrow under his bright-orange hair and said, "don't exaggerate," in an imperious tone that sounded suspiciously like Granger.

Potter looked like he might defend himself but Draco jumped in, "he's not. Your dad has a terrible habit of falling off of brooms. He can barely stay in the air some days." Teddy laughed.

"You play seeker, too, right?" he asked suddenly. Draco winced at the present tense.

"I used to," Draco answered, hoping he was keeping the bitterness out of his voice.

"Can we go flying next week?" he asked, turning from Draco to Potter and back. "Daddy hardly ever wants to fly anymore."

Draco glanced at Potter, who gave him an encouraging smile, but Draco wasn't sure what he was trying to encourage, exactly.

"We'll see," he said appeasingly. Teddy raised an eyebrow.

"Come on, it'll be great! We can play three on three Ron, Hermione and Rose!"

Draco turned pleadingly to Potter, who sighed and turned to Teddy. "Draco can't fly at the moment," he said.

Teddy nodded. "I know, but you're going to fix it, right? I mean, your hand is all better, right?" he pointed at Draco's right hand, currently rapping the three remaining fingers on his knee nervously. "So when your legs work again, we can go flying!"

"Sure, Teddy," Potter answered, and Draco nodded, and tried to ignore the growing anxiety in his gut.

Potter ordered Chinese takeaway for dinner and Draco demonstrated his considerable prowess with chopsticks despite the loss of two fingers, with Teddy's loud, cheering encouragement. The boy extracted countless promises of Quidditch matches and trips into London and a visit to Hogwarts during the spring term and Draco obliged, hoping he was hiding the nagging doubt that any of it would ever happen.

When Potter vanished the leftovers and pulled out a pack of cards, Teddy fairly leapt onto his chair and they played round after round of exploding snap for what felt like hours. Draco even won a few times.

Potter smiled a lot.

Late in the evening, after Draco had taken a pain potion and a second shower, Potter came into the room in his pyjamas looking hopeful, and Draco prepared to turn him away gently.

"Draco, I don't care," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "It doesn't bother me."

"It bothers me," Draco explained, resting a hand on Potter's leg to reassure him. "It's too embarrassing."

Potter nodded, and kissed him goodnight, and padded away. Draco lay in bed wondering whether he should have swallowed his pride for just one night with Potter. This was probably his only chance, afterall. Tomorrow he would let Potter curse him, would suffer and scream and pass out, and wake up… most likely… still a bloody cripple. But the prospect of wetting the bed with Potter in it was just too much for his pride to handle.

And anyway... maybe, just maybe, there was still hope. Against his better judgement, he allowed himself to cling to that glimmer of a chance. Allowed himself, for once, to just... hope.

He's kneeling on the floor, and they are kicking him, and cursing him, and pain is shooting through him like a million poisonous spines and he screams but no one hears him, no one cares… "filth!" they call him, and "murderer!"

And then, "Draco…" a soft voice calls to him, and arms wrap around him, and a warm wet mouth pressed against his neck, and he turns to seek out those sweet soft lips, as arms and legs entwine around him, hold him…

Draco woke feeling… warm. He was faintly aware that he wasn't alone. Potter was lying next to him… actually sort of half on top of him, one arm slung across his chest, one legs wrapped around his, nose buried in his neck, asleep.

He also realized that, although he was blessedly dry, he really, really needed to pee.

Which is about when he recognised the pounding footsteps on the landing outside and quickly elbowed Potter in the ribs, "Potter, Teddy's up!"

"Wha?" came the sleepy reply, just in time for Teddy to burst through the door,

"Draco? Have you seen my dad?"

Potter grumbled from deep in Draco's shoulder and said something that might have been, "mmsleeping."

Teddy stepped in just far enough to see Potter's head where is stuck up from under the covers, smiled brilliantly at Draco, and said, "oh, ok! Bye then!" and bounced out of the room and down the stairs, leaving the door wide open.

Potter snuggled closer and mumbled something unintelligible but vaguely affectionate. Draco was too confused by the whole situation to really process what was going on.

"Um… Potter?" he asked.

"Harry."

"What?"

"I like it when you call me Harry," he said, pulling Draco closer, and now Draco really needed to pee.

"Ok, Harry, you need to get off of me or we're both going to regret it."

Potter frowned into his neck… "how exactly are we going to regret it?" he asked, the leg wrapped around Draco drifting a little higher to nudge at his erection.

"It will be wet and extremely unpleasant, I promise you," Draco said.

"Well, I wouldn't mind," he grumbled, but managed to sit up anyway. His hair, normally unkempt, was completely lopsided, one side standing completely on end. He stretched, and yawned loudly, and then turned around to place a kiss on Draco's forehead before shuffling groggily out the door. He turned back at the threshold though, to ask, "waffles or french toast?"

By the time Draco made it downstairs, Potter had made french toast, and Teddy, already fed, was in the living room watching T.V.

"Hi Draco! Wanna watch cartoons with me?" he asked, without turning away from the television.

Draco was still somewhat taken aback by how utterly unfazed the boy seemed to be, but he smiled and answered, "I think I need to eat first, ok?"

Teddy turned and quickly smiled at him and nodded, "ok!" and then turned back to whatever he was watching.

Draco rolled into the kitchen to find Potter sitting at the table sipping tea.

"Does your son often find you in bed with strange men in the morning?" Draco asked, trying to sound amused although he really did want to know, because Teddy was too old, surely, to be oblivious.

Potter looked up with a shocked expression. "No, of course not!"

"Sorry, it's just… he didn't seem surprised just now, when he came in…"

"You're hardly a strange man, Draco," Potter said, standing to fix a plate for Draco.

"He's known me a week."

"He's known about you for a long time, though," Potter said quietly, putting down a plate with toast generously drizzled in syrup in front of him and sitting back down to sip his tea.

Draco blinked. "How?"

"Well, after his grandmother died you were one of his only living relatives. And I knew you were alive, at least until five years ago... so I used to tell him about you. And… well, when I explained to him about… you know…" Potter blushed and Draco held his breath… "being gay…" he heaved a great sigh, "I told him about you."

Draco let the admission slip by unremarked. "Why?"

Potter shrugged, "he asked how I knew, so I told him about us."

Draco chewed his breakfast for a minute and then finally blurted out, "I would never have known. If you hadn't just told me, I'd have been perfectly willing to believe I was just some sort of odd exception left over from your rebellious teenage years."

Potter laughed. "Yes, well, you would believe that perfectly straight men would make an exception for you, wouldn't you?" Draco raised and eyebrow to confirm that, yes, he did in fact believe that. Or at least, he did when he was young and beautiful.

"But you're not... out... though, are you?"

"To the public? Not really," he shrugged. "The Prophet pairs me with a new girl every week, so I guess they haven't caught on."

"But... there have been others?"

"Not many. And not in the house," he shook his head. "It's hard to date with a baby at home, and by the time he was old enough, I was out of practice. I never was any good at it anyway. Plus… for a while I wasn't really sure… you know…"

Draco nodded, though he did not know. He'd always been sure.

"Ginny and I tried for a while, when he was three. But it didn't last. I think we were both just lonely. And I wanted him to have another parent, you know? When we were in school, I used to think... I thought that if I survived the War, I'd marry Ginny and have a ton of kids. I imagined us running around in a huge backyard... teaching them to fly. I didn't have a real mum, I wanted Teddy to have that."

Draco nodded. He could understand that. He'd grown up expecting to marry a girl from a good family, sire an heir and a spare. He'd allowed himself to grow fond of the idea of marrying a woman, raising children with her... doing his duty to his family. Now... now there were no more expectations... and he felt like we was floundering. Of course, with his disability, he needn't think about it at all... cripples don't get married, after all, unless they have mountains of cash to make up for it.

Potter was staring into his tea, but then he spoke again, "When Charlie Weasley married his Romanian partner while they were on holiday in Canada, Teddy asked me if I would rather marry a man or a woman and I remember looking at him… he was five or six at the time… and thinking it's now or never, either I lie to my own son, and keep lying to everyone else around me, or I just… tell him the truth. So I did."

Draco watched him sipping his cup and thought about the lying. He'd lied, too. For years. For much too long. It was hard to stop. Harder the longer he'd known someone, he'd found.

Presently, Potter continued, "When you moved in, Teddy asked me a lot of questions. He wanted to know where you'd been all this time, and how the chair worked, and who hurt you, and why they hadn't been caught yet. But the first thing he asked me was, 'are you going to get married?'"

Draco held his breath, the ache in his chest threatening to collapse inside of him, and he thought there was no way he could bear to continue torturing himself like this, and yet… and yet he couldn't stop. "What did you say?"

"It's not legal in the U.K. yet."

Draco snorted, and Potter laughed, but it was sad, hollow sort of laugh. Finally Draco decided he couldn't take another moment of this torture, "we should probably try the treatment again, right?" he asked.

"Yeah. Teddy's going to Bill and Fleur's, I'll just go tell him to get ready."

Teddy came in to hug him goodbye and wish him good luck and make him promise that they would go out flying first thing tomorrow morning before school when his legs were all better. Draco's chest clenched as he nodded his promises.

Potter brought out the table, while Draco chatted with Patil's head in the fireplace. "No improvement at all?" she asked. Draco shook his head.

"Then I'm afraid it's anyone's guess whether this round will work or not."

"It'll work!" Potter called out cheerfully, and Draco felt something dropping in his stomach.

He rolled over to the table and waited while Potter conferred about curse application and aftercare with Patil. Something akin to dread was building inside of him. He stilled his mind and tried to banish the feeling, or at least supplant it with the absurd optimism that Potter seemed to have in such supply.

Once Potter had helped him out of his clothes and onto the table, and strapped him down, though, he stopped thinking at all and tried to prepare himself for the pain he knew was coming.

The tip of the wand had barely touched his skin, it seemed, when the searing pain shot through his spine and pooled around the bones of his pelvis as a scream was wrenched from his mouth. The pressure seemed to build and build, white hot burning pain that throbs and sliced but stayed trapped at his hips, pooling and growing and pressing but never progressing and finally the pain was so great that he thought surely now he would die… and then the darkness descended around him.

He's outside now, in the dark somewhere, and they've thrown him on the filthy street in a dark alley somewhere… someone's boot is digging into the side of his face and he is choking on his own blood… and then someone stomps on his side and he feels pain radiating out into his chest… he wants to struggle, he wants to get up, but his legs… they're numb... or not numb, because he can feel them and they hurt… no but he can't make them move… and his hand is bleeding and he can't bear to look at it and find out what they've done…

But someone else is holding that hand now, soothing it, stroking it, and whispering into his ear, and he turns away from the cold dark alley and into a bright, warm place that smells like tea and parchment… someplace like a home…

He woke up on the couch again, covered in a blanket, an anxious-looking Potter sitting by his feet watching him.

Draco closed his eyes again, and summoned to courage to try to move his legs.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

He could feel them lying there, stacked one on top of the other. He could feel the agonizing pain of the curse in his spine and lower back and pelvis. But there was no change.

Not that he had expected any, really. When it didn't work the first time… still, to have one's worse suspicions confirmed was... crushing. A crushing defeat. Like the last little glimmer of light blown out.

And Potter... Potter had believed… Potter had been willing to start something because he believed Draco would be fixed again. What was the first thing he had asked? 'Is it permanent?'

Draco allowed himself a few moments to absorb the implications. He would never walk again. Never again. In some ways, he felt like he was hearing the news all over again for the first time. Like he'd only just now, lying there, realised that he would never walk again.

Never walk, or run, or fly, or... there were too many things. Never casually put his feet up on a coffee table. Never bounce his knee when he was nervous. Never lean back regally in a chair, legs crossed to display perfect shoes. Never wriggle his toes cold between a pair of warm calves in the middle of the night. Never drop to his knees to swallow a dripping cock.

It was devastating. Worse than before, because there was no more glimmer of hope left. There was no way to undo it. Broken. Unfixable.

Finally, he opened his eyes to see Potter watching him, a ridiculous, hopeless hope plastered on his face, and Draco swallowed, hard, before shaking his head.

Potter's face fell. The disappointment Draco saw in his eyes hurt so much he could barely breathe. He had to get out of here. He had to get away.

"I'm so sorry, Draco," Potter said, and moved closer, but Draco pushed his hands away.

"It's fine. It's not like there was ever any real chance."

Potter frowned, as though he wasn't sure exactly what Draco was talking about, and Draco realized he wasn't sure, either.

He raised himself up onto his elbows and struggled into a seated position, with help, although he quickly shrugged off the hands Potter's placed on his shoulders. "I need my chair," he said quietly, and Potter went and got it, a nervous frown still on his face. Draco moved into the chair and took the pain potion Potter handed him, but refused the rehab potion. "No point, now," he said, and wheeled out of the room. Potter didn't follow him.

Draco sat under the hot shower for nearly two hours before he could bring himself to go out and face the rest of his life. A cripple. A lonely, 'functional' cripple.

When he rolled out into his room, Potter was sitting at the foot of his bed, staring at his hands in his lap.

Draco rolled past him to find himself a nightshirt. No reason to get dressed again today. Although…

"How much longer are you willing to house me?" he asked, without turning around.

"Why?" Potter asked, sounding surprised.

"Because I need to arrange for other accommodations at some point and I'd like to know how long I have," Draco said, his voice every bit as cold he felt.

"You don't have to leave. You can stay,"

"I don't need your pity, Potter. It's not going to fix this."

"Fix what?"

"My fucking legs! Everything! The fact that the one long-shot cure didn't work. And now that we know, I need to move on with my life… and so do you," he finished quietly.

"Draco, the fact that it didn't work… that doesn't change anything—"

"You're right, Potter, it doesn't. I'm still a fucking cripple. Only now, I'm a permanent cripple. So just… just stop." He paused, and then continued, "Last time I was the one who fucked up, I know that, ok? You think I didn't want to owl you? I wanted to, I did. After Mother and Father…" he took a shaky breath and continued in forced calm, "after they died, I wanted to find you…. but... I had nothing to offer you. And now I have even less. So just stop it." He wheeled around to face Potter, hoping he could hold back the tears long enough. "I can't live like this, it's too much. I can't live so close to what I want and know that I can't have it."

Potter looked like he wanted to say something, but Draco turned around. He heard a quiet choking sound, and soft feet padding on the floor, and then finally the door sweeping shut with a click.

And Draco was alone.

Responses to your comments:

SeaBoundOphelia: Thank you for your comments, I'm really glad to hear that you think I've captured some of the experience of disability, it's been a challenge to try to imagine what it must feel like and how everything you take for granted needs to be completely relearned. I think you, of all the readers, will be glad about the way his treatment works out (or doesn't) because irl there is no miracle cure. Draco may have lots of wizarding solutions to help, but no miracle cure - that would be a cop-out on my part, I think.

poptartjuice: Thank you!

Denise0949: I'm glad you picked up on Harry's reluctance to take advantage, because I think it's important. Draco, of course, think it's rejection. Silly boy.

Miss Kandy Whitlock: Yes, I think you're right, but it's probably going to take Draco a while to really believe that.

Umi Minamino: Thank you!

bowsie22: Thank you!

dracodragon101: Thank you! Me too, i was always so glad JKR made him a blusher.

Hanai-kun: Thank you! I wanted to put Draco is a situation that would really challenge him. And so far I haven't read a wheelchair fic yet. Certainly not a wheelchair slash :)