Clarity
Chapter 14
Stage 2
You are the piece of me I wish I didn't need,
Chasing relentlessly, I still fight and I don't know why
"Sir, sir, can you confirm the rumours?"
"Sir, sir, is it true?"
"Just a quick word, sir, for the Daily Prophet-"
"The Quibbler-"
The man paused, and turned around. A large smile stretched his face, and he nodded importantly. He smirked.
"Yes. I can confirm it."
He adjusted his name tag on his lapel, and gold in his pocket jingled merrily.
"Harry Potter, the wizarding saviour, has indeed, gone."
Cameras flashed madly and the light caught the name tag perfectly. By the next morning, the name was over the front of every wizarding newspaper.
Schintzvell-
.-.
The thing with grieving is that the world doesn't stop around you. Harry knew that better than anyone.
Hospital life continued. Nurses and a new Healer flitted in and out, bustling and beaming. Harry ignored them, lying listless and blank on the bed, day after day.
He didn't know the name of Draco's replacement. Not-Draco had tried to talk to him, at first. But he soon gave up. As they all did. For Harry didn't speak again, not in the hospital walls, not ever again.
He checked Harry's stats in the morning, like he did everyone else's. Exactly like everyone else's. He did not linger, nor read the newspapers to him, nor smirk at him fondly over the top of a cappuccino.
Life carried on as if nothing had ever happened. No one mentioned Him, no one talked to Harry about Him, no one acted as if He had ever existed. Draco Malfoy simply faded away, and ceased to exist in their lives.
Some days, Harry would stare morosely around him and see Draco. Not in person, of course. But in the delicate spells which hovered over patients, which could only have been designed by Draco. He saw Him in the ornate non-regulatory stands which guarded every bed, which could only have been bought by Draco.
He saw Draco in the perfect, managed routine of the ward, the beautiful balance between respite and clinic, the whole structure of the rehabilitation centre.
And now Draco wouldn't remember any of it.
.-.
That was what stung the most, Harry realised over time. All the hard work Draco had put in to this ward. Defying his family, shirking his reputation and delving straight into a world which was at first opposed to him. But he fought against it, and earned trust and respect over time.
Only now he had no idea what he had done. What he had set up. How people's lives were changing every day, because of him.
Worst of all, he wouldn't remember Harry.
.-.
Harry loved him, he realised. He was well and truly in love with the man. The man with no memory of him.
The darkness which lurked behind his eyeballs offered a welcome sanctuary, and he sunk into it repeatedly, as this was where the treasured memories and pictures were. Of him and Draco.
A shaft of sunlight capturing Draco's features unexpectedly. And he shone, oh, how he shone.
His impossibly lean and tall figure, swathed in a white coat, flying beautifully up and down the ward, but his eyes betraying his professional manner, in the way they flickered continuously back to Harry. Wide, grey eyes which contained so much wonder, adoration and promise, even in the days before they kissed.
A dry, satirical joke exchanged over a crisp newspaper, a soft laugh which filled the quiet ward, and filled Harry's heart.
Moments destroyed viciously in a heart beat, real only to Harry. Ludicrous fiction to the real Draco Malfoy, who walked the streets somewhere outside this hospital, unaware that Harry Potter knew the most intimate details about him, loved him, and content to live out the rest of his days without him.
.-.
For that was how it would be. They would grow old, separately.
Draco would fall in love again, marry and live without him, blissfully unaware of breaking another's heart. He would laugh and love with another, sharing whispers and kisses over damp sheets, not knowing that in another life, he had another's heart.
That said person was now living without his heart, an empty space in his chest, because a man owned it, and wasn't even aware of it.
Harry would always carry the burden, the lump in his throat, the pain in his chest which represented the days never had, the experiences never lived, the memories never remembered. He would never be able to fully commit to anyone else as long as he had that. As far as he was concerned, he was no use to anyone. He may as well be dead.
.-.
Time flies when you're having fun.
That's what they say, isn't it?
But they never tell you how time drags when you're heart broken. Or missing your heart, for that matter.
Harry obediently completed his course, of course he did. He owed that much to Him. That is, if lying motionless and wordless day after day counted as an achievement.
The final months flew by, until the day came when he slid out of the warm bed for the last time. He wouldn't remember getting dressed and walking out, when he looked back. He wouldn't even remember the days or months preceding it.
But he would remember one thing.
Standing motionless on the curb, outside of St. Mungo's hospital, the wind whipping past him and the traffic roaring close by. Hurried people pushing past him without really noticing him, as if he were nothing more than street furniture.
The world moved restlessly, continously, fluidly around him, and he stood still, without a clue what to do. In the next hour, the next day, with the rest of his life.
He was to carry on his life without Draco now, he knew that much. But what life was that? Draco had been his clarity in that hospital.
Without him...
Harry had nothing.
.-.
-"What'ja mean, gone?"
"His mind." Schintzvell grinned. "His mind's gone."
awfully depressing stuff for ten minutes to Christmas Day. I'm sorry. If you really want festivities, there is an abundance of that on my profile.