Prompt/Title: Disease
Character(s): Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy
Summary: Draco sees a Mind-Healer after the war.
Rating: T
Word count: 696 according to wordcounter . net
Author's notes: Part of the 20 Prompts, 20 Drabbles challenge. Applied to Your Favorite Hogwarts House Boot Camp Challenge for Contagiouis, Your Favorite Character Boot Camp Challenge for Hate, The Family Bootcamp Challenge for Injustice.
Thank you to my lovely beta, tygermine, who is South African and ensured I had my facts right.
All drabbles are part of the same timeline but not in any particular order.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize, and maybe even some of the stuff you don't.
He's dealing with it. It's a disease. A disease.
His Mind-Healer repeated those lines whenever Draco brought up his father, which was a lot.
Apparently he had daddy issues. He didn't need to pay fifty galleons to know that.
He was surprised that when he suggested seeing a Mind-Healer, his parents quickly acquiesced. He figured it was a guilt thing, and that was one of the first things he and Mind-Healer Hale discussed.
She was a pretty brilliant Mind-Healer, she was a squib, and when his family found out before his second month, he waited for his father to blow up. All he got was a twitch. That was all they talked about for a week.
His father. His diseased father.
"You need to forgive him."
Sure, he'd forgive him when he no longer had nightmares of Dumbledore falling off the Astronomy Tower. He'd talk to him again when he no longer saw the Muggle Studies teacher being eaten by a snake whenever he closed his eyes.
During his third month, his father asked to speak with Mind-Healer Hale after one of Draco's sessions.
Draco didn't know if he was afraid that his father was going to stop allowing him the sessions, or kill her for being a squib. He felt it was more for the latter, and if the time was right, he would have laughed. He was more worried about the life of a squib then getting what he wanted.
Apparently, the sessions werehelping. Fifty galleons well spent, he thought.
The next time he saw her, he had to ask what his father wanted. She told Draco that he wanted to start having sessions as well.
Draco wasn't sure what he expected, well he did, and that was not for her to answer. He definitely didn't expect that.
She said it was progress.
They spent the rest of the session talking about how, if his father could heal, Draco should be able to too.
The first time they do a group session, Draco had been seeing her for six months. He sits far from his father on the leather chesterfield. He hasn't spoken to him since that fateful night during Easter holidays.
They sit in silence for what seems forever, but really only five minutes.
"Have you ever heard of Apartheid?" the healer asks.
Both men shake their heads.
"Discrimination isn't something contained just to the Wizarding World. In the Muggle World, it's called racism, and it is very common."
Draco looks to his father, expecting him to shout he is nothing to Muggles, but he simply nods his head for her to continue.
"There are two parts of history that we can compare this war to. The war was very much like Adolf Hitler's genocide of the Jews."
Draco, again is puzzled, and wants to ask for further explanation when his father answers his unasked question.
"During the 1940's, the Germans established extermination camps to rid the population of those they deemed undesirable."
"Like us and Muggleborns?" Draco asks.
His father simply nods. There are cracks in his mask starting to show. This is not a subject he's comfortable talking about. Be it the subject matter, or being in front of his son, Draco did not know.
Mind-Healer Hale continued, "Right, yes. That is the war. But we're not at war anymore. What I want to talk about is South Africa. Since the 1930s, it was impossible for non-whites to be in office. To help shape their country's future. They were treated as second class citizens. You could say they were treated as you would have treated a Muggleborn or a squib."
Sheepishly, both men bow their heads in shame.
"In 1990, there was an official abolishment of Apartheid, but it wasn't until 1994 that South Africa had its first non-white representative." Hale takes a deep breath, "Even if it's only been four years, even without Apartheid, there is still racism. Do you know why?"
Draco again shakes his head, but his father speaks up looking directly at him, "Because racism is a mentality passed down from one generation to the next."
Draco spoke to his father for the first time that day.