Disclaimer: First of all, I don't own the characters or any of the canon details, those are the wonderful Ms Rowling's. Secondly, sorry Ms Rowling for corrupting your boys in this way.

Pairings: HPDM

Warnings: Slash, obviously. Swearing, sex, etc etc. Rated for a bloody good reason - do not read this if you are under the age of consent in your country.

Draco chewed the side of his hand and gazed up at the towering shelves of books overhead. With his eyes fixed on one particular tome he toed off his slippers and socks, swayed a little, and got to work.

He dragged over a desk to sit beneath his target and perched a chair on top of that. He gripped the edge of the desk and pulled a foot up onto it's surface, deft toes spreading out to steady him as he hauled the rest of his body up. He climbed onto the chair and stretched himself tall, using the shelves as handrails. Coming level with his book at last, he edged his fingers around it and began to prise it free. It was thick, sour smelling and coated with decades of grime; the markings on its spine were sticky and left red marks on his hands as if they were written in half-dried blood.

"What's happening?" Harry whispered in his head.

"Just. Gimmie-" Draco let his reply fall away as the wrenched at the book with as much force as he dared to use; beneath him his makeshift scaffolding teetered precariously. He bit onto his tongue and persevered until finally it came away.

He gingerly manoeuvred himself back to the ground with the book clamped tightly under his arm. He settled himself down on the floor and began to leaf through it only to see that page after page was blank.

"Did you get it? Is it the right one?" Harry pressed. "Is it the one your grandfather's portrait described?"

"I'm not sure..."

Draco pressed his hand flat on the page. Some of the sticky red substance he'd picked up from the book's spine transferred onto the parchment and then disappeared; within moments the colour was back but arranged in an intricate tangle of lines.

"Hang on," Draco instructed. He closed his eyes, counted to three, and bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. He swilled the fresh blood around his mouth and spat it out onto the page.

It didn't take long for the book to transform the mess into series of glowing red images, each as grotesque and vivid as the last. Writing also began to appear here and there - labels to explain the horrors he was being shown.

"Well?" Harry demanded.

Draco didn't reply at first. He manoeuvred his way around the book, flicking the pages back and forth, confirming his worst fears.

"Draco!"

"Dead end," he murmured, sitting back and pushing the book away slightly with his foot. He hadn't slept in two days - been too wrapped up in research to notice - but now the full weight of it crashed into him like a wave.

"Bullshit."

"There's nothing here that can help us, Harry. I promise you."

"It's frightening how honest you sound when you lie."

One side of Draco's mouth reflexively curled into a smirk as leaned back against the wall and let his eyes rest for a moment. "Not a slytherin for nothing," he mumbled, half to himself.

"Tell me." Harry's voice had taken on that tooth-grinding quality that it had often made use of in the final weeks of the war.

"No. It doesn't matter, alright? We'll find something else."

"I don't imagine there are multiple ways out of the fucking underworld, Draco! Spit it out!"

Draco glanced at the book warily. A drawing of a man scratching out his own eyes taunted him.

"Whatever it is, I can take it. You said you wanted me to defy some odds, so let me."

"Not like this though... This is..."

"Alright, start with the basics. This godforsaken pit is hell, yeah?"

Draco turned a few pages back to a diagram of concentric circles. "Yeah. I think one of the outer rings."

"Well that's good isn't it? If I'm in some outer ring I must be closer-"

"The book says the only way out is through the middle," Draco cut him off. "It says you need to travel through each of the rings and convince death himself to set you free."

"Right," Harry said. "Right. Okay. So how do I-"

"You don't," Draco told him firmly.

"This is starting to get pretty fucking tedious now, Draco."

"You need to die. Are you happy? The book says to get from one circle to the next you need to die."

To Draco's surprise Harry started to laugh.

"You think this is funny?"

"Well I'm already dead, aren't I? It's not like I can get any deader."

"Actually, I think you can. I think that's the point."

"Well what does it matter? If it gets me closer to home..."

"But what would be left of you when you finally got back, huh? There are nine circles here, I think that means you have eight barriers to cross before you get to the centre. And this book, Harry, it's pretty graphic about what that entails. It's..."

"Irrelevant. There's a way back, you found it. That's all that matters."

"There are pictures in here of men peeling off their own skin. Of men bludgeoning in their own skulls..."

"You need to get some rest," Harry said at length."What is it? Four in the morning there?"

"Closer to six."

"Go to bed."

"But-"

"If you don't get some sleep soon you're going to start hallucinating for real. I don't want to get back to find you in a straight-jacket. We can talk about this later."

Draco deflated. He used the last of his energies to pick himself up of the floor and do as he was told.

"Draco?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

At Lucius' request, Healer Tebb now sat by Draco's bedside asking him idiotic questions about Harry and bursting into poignant little coughing fits whenever Draco didn't respond to her fast enough.

She'd arrived at nine a.m. sharp, and in spite of his best intentions, Draco hadn't been particularly successful in getting any sleep up until then.

"Tell me about him," she softly demanded after little more than a 'Good Morning, how'd-you-do?'

"He's dead," Draco replied testily.

"Your father tells me you don't really believe that."

"No, I'm well aware of his deadness, trust me."

She frowned at him. "You're not making the most of this process, Mr Malfoy."

"Well, given that I didn't ask to be part of a process, I reckon I'm good with that."

"Do you know what I think, Mr Malfoy?"

"No, but you're going to tell me, look at you, you've got the same look in your eyes a hippogriff gets before it bites someone."

The healer glowered at him briefly before brushing his comments aside.

"I think you've created this fantasy of Harry to make you feel like you have some sort of control over your life."

"Is that so?" Draco snorted.

"Yes, I believe it is," she said smartly. "But the thing is, you would have more control if you let go of the fantasy, do you see? If you work with me we can get you back out there, participating in society again. There are so many people who'd want to see you well again, Draco."

Draco took in a few very measured breaths while trying to decide how to approach the various assumptions Healer Tebb had made.

"Right," he began. "You say I'd have more control if I was out there in the world rather than hidden away from it having fantasy conversations with Harry, letting other people make my decisions for me - and you're right, I probably would-"

The healer's face flared with vindication.

"-So why would I make it up in the first place?"

Draco watched as the healer struggled to put together a coherent response.

"Further than that, why should I want to participate in a society that engineered the death of the man I love?"

"Aha!" Healer Tebb exclaimed before looking suitably ashamed at her lapse in professionalism. "What I mean to say is, this is about punishment then? You blame the wizarding world for taking Harry away from you so you've created a Harry that they can't take and that they themselves can't have, because you won't let them have you."

Draco rolled his eyes, "Yes, I'm sure that's exactly it. Bravo, Ms. Tebb."

"And you blame them because it's easier to do that than to blame the real culprit – that would be you by the way."

"Excuse me?"

"Well you couldn't convince him to stay, could you? You made that whole big speech before the final battle and it wasn't enough, he left anyway."

Draco felt like he'd been hit in the forehead with a hammer. Healer Tebb was picking at her nails in a manner that reminded him starkly of Pansy Parkinson.

"How did you know about that?" he asked carefully.

"It was in the Prophet of course. The longer you stay cooped up in here the more people talk."

"Right. I'd like you to leave now."

"Well that's a pity because your father wants me here and it's his house."

"Actually, I think you'll find it's my house – it passed to me when he got himself CONVICTED OF CRIMES AGAINST WIZARDRY." Draco yelled the last part to make sure Lucius, who was no doubt standing outside his bedroom door, heard.

"Settle down Mr Malfoy, anyone would think I'd hit a nerve."

Draco ground his teeth together. "I don't blame myself. I blame Harry, and I blame the people who put pressure on him to save them. But he knows that, and we've agreed to move past it."

"Would this be before or after he died?"

"Well after, obviously."

Healer Tebb stared at him with bright, interested eyes.

"What else do you talk about?"

"I don't know, everything, nothing. At first, we argued a lot."

"About how he died?"

"About how he lived," Draco corrected.

"Can I ask you something personal, Draco?"

"Because so far you've been all business?"

"Yes, actually, I have. This is something I'm personally interested to know."

"Why are you personally interested in anything about me?"

The healer gave him a fleeting but possibly genuine smile. "Don't you know what's going on out there in the world, Draco? You and Harry's story… it has people fascinated. They've fallen in love with the idea of you, the romanticism of it: Two heroes, star-crossed lovers from opposite sides of the war. They'll be writing books about it for decades. You're as famous as he was now and their hearts break for you."

Draco's lack of sleep caught up with him in that moment and he suddenly felt like he was being folded beneath a tide of fatigue. He rolled over onto his side and pulled the covers up to his chin.

"So what do you want to know?"

She hesitated until Draco found her eye, "Well?" he demanded.

"Why him? How did you know he was the one for you?"

"I don't know, I just did. Nothing and no one ever got into my blood before. There were times I felt like I was running on pure Harry, like you could take away food and water and sleep and I'd be fine, 'cause I had him. Even if we were just friends, and even if we were fighting, he could make the world make sense. I trusted him. I still do." Draco looked over at her. "Oh for fuck's sake, don't get all misty eyed about it, I was actually starting to respect you."

"Right, sorry. You say you still trust him? That must be pretty hard, after everything that's happened."

"Yeah, well, like I said, we've had a lot of arguments lately."

"And how often do you talk?"

"All day usually, unless someone's here."

"Like me you mean?"

Draco smirked, "To use a relevant example, yes."

"So where's Harry now?"

"He went for a walk."

"Out in the grounds?" Healer Tebb asked, casting her eye over to the window.

"No," Draco said, exacerbated. "He's not a ghost – and thank fucking Merlin because I wouldn't have put that past him - he's in Hell."

"Hell? Fire, brimstone, that sort of thing?"

"Look, no offence, but I've explained this to so many people, and none of them believed me. I hardly see the point in explaining it to someone whose job it is not to believe me."

"Who said I wouldn't believe you?"

"Well you're a mind healer aren't you? You're here because my father – let's face it, probably half the world by now – thinks I'm crazy. Well I'm not!"

"I never said you were. I just think you could use some help is all."

"You could help me by buggering off so I can get some shut-eye."

"You do look tired. Are you at least getting respite from these conversations at night?"

"Usually."

"Usually isn't really good enough Draco, without a good sleeping routine it can be hard to see things clearly."

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Draco yawned at her, stretching his arms over his head.

The healer found herself frowning at him again. "I'm going to speak with your father, just you sit tight."

Healer Tebb found Lucius perched on a conjured stool right outside in the corridor.

"Well?" he prompted.

"You know I can't discuss specifics with you, Mr Malfoy. Not that you'd need me to," she remarked, referring to his proximity.

"Can you help him, I mean?"

"First and foremost, he needs to get some decent rest. His brain seems to be whirring constantly, that won't be helping. I'm going to give him a sedative now, unless you've any objections. It should help him get some much needed sleep – I'm concerned that if we leave him alone he'll fill his time instead with more of these hallucinations."

"And then?"

"Then we'll take each day as it comes I think."

Harry stepped into the flat he'd come to call home, placing Voldemort in his usual spot on the hallway table. He ducked his head around the living room door, "Hey love, are you up yet?"

The curtains fluttered either side of the familiar ethereal light flooding through the window. No reply came at first, then just a simple: "Mind Healer's here."

"Ah," Harry said, "Tell me you at least got some sleep first?"

"Seriously, put a sock in it, she's right outside my bedroom door."

"So, she knows you talk to me, otherwise she wouldn't be there, would she?" Harry said cheekily.

"Yeah, but it's one thing to know, and-"

Harry rolled his eyes, assuming that the Healer had come back. He briefly tried to decide if it was better to leave again and give Draco his privacy but before he could make up his mind Draco's voice rang out through the room: "What are you doing!? Wait, stop! Stop it!"

Harry paled at the panic he heard in that voice. "What's happening!?" he demanded to know, wishing - though not for the first time - that he could see as well as hear Draco in this place..

The room flared with colour and all the things in it seemed to be vying for Harry's attention.

"I'm not crazy, I fucking told you! Get off me, leave me alone!"

Everything around Harry gave an almighty rattle, and an instant later all the light from the window was sucked away, leaving Harry screaming out Draco's name in the dark.

Voldemort began to howl. Harry pressed the heels of his hands to his ears and hustled himself out of the flat, right past the shrieking bundle on the hallway table. Once out in the corridor he slammed the door behind him and kicked at the walls with fury.

Eventually, he found himself in front of Ron's door and started to pound on it with his fists. It creaked under his weight and once again a faint light flickered through the keyhole, but that was all.

"Fuck you!" he screamed at it. "FUCK YOU you sodding USELESS son-of-a-bitch!"

He turned to Hermione's door and continued his onslaught there:

"And you! Where the fuck are YOU in this?!" he demanded of it. "I WAS YOUR FRIEND!" he screamed again. "You were supposed to believe in me!"

He let himself drop, realising for the first time that his face was flushed with tears. He took a deep steadying breath.

"Fine," he whispered, scrubbing a hand down over his face. "Fine," he snarled at the door, thumping his hand off it for good measure. "Fuck-ing-fuck-ing-blood-y-shite-ing-fuck-ing-fine!" he chanted to a whole series of further thumps. "Have it your way."

A/N: Thoughts and comments always welcome.

A/N2: This chapter has been edited since first published.