Agape

Two-shot

Part 1

There were few good days, most were rainy or cloudy on that time of year, but that day was particularly good. Cedric would look out the window and see the patients wandering around the yard, on good days, like that one, they were allowed to go out for a walk and sunbathe. He took off the pen that he carried in his pocket, the watch and anything else that could be used as a weapon by someone else; he adjusted his gown well where you could read his name and his position, and left his office to go to the patio with the other patients.

— Doctor, would you like to read today's newspaper? — One of the nurses who attended that area handed him the newspaper of the day.

That week the headline prayed for the discovery of another body in one of the most remote areas of the city. This was sad, one less life, one less possibility. For Cedric, minds were possibilities, always the hope that one of them could create a better place, a better world. Maybe new and better people. That was why he had traded a successful career as a neurosurgeon for psychiatry.

Healing the mind, in addition to the body, was something that should be constant in everyone.

He began to walk among the patients, greeting them, talking to them and asking them how they felt being there; saner patients, as he used to refer privately to inmates, responded with soliloquies about their feelings, from back pain to discontent with food. Cedric just nodded his head and that kind smile that was always on his face when it came to his patients.

The less sane patients, those whose minds often wandered between reality or fantasy, responded with whatever they were thinking at the time; some gave signs of recognizing him and saying one thing or another, what they thought he wanted to hear, but Cedric had learned not to get caught up in the words of a madman; the others answered some nonsensical nonsense before hypothesizing why roses have thorns or why daisies are white.

And then there was "he". There was one patient in particular who attracted him in a disturbing way, he seemed to be conscious, sane, even saner than him and when he spoke he did so with an education and manners that anyone would envy; by far someone might think that he should not be there, however, there was a theme that completely dislodged him. A subject that used to vanish all the sanity that the young man struggled to grasp with his fingers.

— Harry. — He greeted him with a smile as he approached him. The aforementioned looked up from the crossword he was solving at one of the tables in that huge garden and smiled when he saw it. — How do you feel today?

It was a polite question as he did to all hospital patients, but Harry, unlike the other interns who answered with soliloquies, was limited to a few words.

— I'm fine, doctor. How are you? — Cedric was careful to keep the newspaper far enough out of Harry's sight that he could only read the headline in large black letters.

— I think I'm not as well as you. — He said with a smile as he sat down across from him.

The way Harry's eyes fixed on the headline of the newspaper was not lost on him, but this time, instead of asking for the newspaper to read it and then saying, with total vehemence that the person responsible for the murders was Lord Voldemort, he was silent for a few seconds.

— I hope they find the killer. — He whispered and went back to his crossword.

This was completely new to Cedric, a reaction he hadn't expected from someone with a trauma like Harry's.

— Do you no longer think that was Lord Voldemort? — He asked curiously, testing his luck for that change in his patient's behavior.

— I don't know, if I say that I still believe that he is real I will still be here, if I start to say that he is not real, I will also continue here. I don't want to leave here, this place is comfortable and they are nice to me, the world outside is in chaos, people kill each other for small reasons or sometimes even for no reason. This time I feel that Lord Voldemort is not real. Try tomorrow, doctor.

Harry had said all this without looking up from his crossword and Cedric was so intrigued by his patient's words that he would buy the newspaper every day just to see if this change in the patient's behavior was real or just a lapse of clarity.

Harry had been a good cop and an incredible detective; he was admired and loved. He was the good cop, the one who was nice to suspects; Draco on the other hand was the bad cop, the one who terrorized suspects to the point of making them regret being born. They were a good team although they both refused to accept it; they were rivals in public and lovers when no one saw them, so Draco couldn't act like the concerned boyfriend that he was and go visit him every day.

Draco would get up, get dressed, and head to work every day. He was engrossed in the piles of papers that he had to fill out and handled the cases assigned to him alone; he had refused to have a new partner claiming that he worked better alone than with someone else. The real reason was because that was how he had started his relationship with Harry, as co-workers, and he was afraid of ruining that memory.

— Another corpse appeared, same marks, same way of dying. We think it's the same killer. — One of his colleagues told him, handing him the folder with the open investigation for this new case.

— Okay, I'll take care of it. — That was his job. Maybe later he would go see Harry, it was a good day; maybe his mood was good too.

Harry smiled when he saw him come in and that made him smile. He missed his smile but was disturbed by the scar on his forehead that seemed like it would never go away. He brought him a new book of crosswords, Harry liked them, he said it kept his mind from atrophying, and Draco saw him smile even more when he handed him his gift.

Seeing Harry after seeing corpses was like balm to him.

They talked for a long time, about everything and everyone. How much they missed him at work and how much he missed fighting with him to see who was right; Harry was smiling, telling him that he missed him too but that he still felt that his mind was not completely healed and that he feared that he would never be completely cured. The doctors had said that it was a miracle that he woke up from the coma and that perhaps his mind was never right but it was not, at least at first until the hallucinations began and he began to repeat that Lord Voldemort was looking for him to kill him.

So much had been his fear that, trying to defend himself, he had attacked Draco and his godfather who were trying to calm him down.

—

Cedric began to carry the newspaper with him every time he visited Harry, but he only carried the newspaper that had some violent headline, about murder or some crime of that kind; Cedric hoped that Harry would lose his self-control but at the same time that he would maintain it, that he would remain on the side of the lucidity that he had shown the day they talked in the garden.

It was amazing the way Harry spoke, the way he expressed himself and even, the times he looked in the newspaper at the photos they had released of the crime scene, he would point out the points that had not been seen in the reports. Cedric noticed that each day Harry was improving, even by leaps and bounds and he feared it was a lapse of clarity, so he did not suggest releasing him until he was sure that he could maintain himself in that lucid state.

— Your godson will need to come to therapy once a week. We believe that he is in a stage of recovery in which being hospitalized in this place could cause a regression.

Cedric explained to Sirius, the man who had interned Harry in that place when the episodes of hallucinations had turned violent and had attacked someone else claiming that it was a follower of Lord Voldemort who had come to kill him, before signing Harry's release sheet.

Harry joked at the time about feeling like a prisoner on parole but you could see the happiness in his eyes for leaving that place. He was happy there, but coming back to his life made him happier because Draco was in his life.

Draco had prepared a welcome dinner for Harry, although preparing was a lot for him, the correct thing to say would be that he had bought a welcome dinner at Harry's favorite restaurant; so when Sirius arrived with Harry, who seemed happy to be back home, dinner became enjoyable and fun.

When Sirius left, dinner became private, and dessert was something only Harry and Draco enjoyed to the point where they could only breathe while lying on the living room rug covered in sweat.

— If so will be the welcome, then I will be absent more times this way. — Harry teased and Draco hit him on the shoulder before kissing him again with all the intensity and passion that the moment warranted.

Harry did not return to work, he would not do it until the hospital gave him the document that vouched for his good mental health; so he stayed at his house all day, every day, waiting for Draco to come visit him at night. They did not live together, they could not do so because the work rules made it clear that there could be no personal affective relationships within the staff.

Sometimes he would stay to sleep with him, sometimes Sirius would come to keep him company during the day on days he wasn't going to work, but most of the time he was alone and doing puzzles; Draco had made sure Harry didn't have access to the newspapers and had blocked the news channels.

When it was the date for his first visit with the psychiatrist, he did not do it in the hospital where Cedric works, but in his private office; the doctor had insisted that it be that way to keep him out of the clinic environment and be a healthier transition but that was not entirely true.

Cedric wanted him in his office because it seemed like a more intimate setting. Harry attracted him beyond being an interesting patient, Harry liked him; but what he didn't like was that Harry arrived accompanied by an insufferable-looking blond.

It was not difficult for him to make the blonde stop accompanying Harry, all under the excuse that the sessions were private and that perhaps, what Harry said there still could not be considered something coherent and to his surprise Harry agreed and, for the following sessions, he had arrived alone.

The therapy sessions progressed from office appointments to lunch appointments and Harry seemed comfortable with that, Cedric had suggested it as a way to slowly expose him to the rhythm of city life, always under the supervision of a professional to calm him down if he suffered a nervous breakdown; as he used to say to the violent episodes that Harry had shown when entering the psychiatric hospital.

Harry was still just as lonely and Draco seemed to be busier than usual with work, the murders kept popping up and it seemed more like a racial hate crime than anything else; Draco was always upset and frustrated, they had no clues of the murderer or murderers and he constantly complained that Harry was not working, he was sure that with him they could solve the case faster.

It had taken them a while to detect something that linked them but they had, all the crimes seemed to be carried out by the same criminal organization.

— So there is more than one killer? — Harry had asked Draco one afternoon that he was talking about the case.

— We think so, we think it's multiple killers or at least the killer moves very fast from one crime scene to another. — Draco made himself comfortable on the bed and Harry hugged him.

— Do you want us to have lunch together tomorrow? I will prepare the food you like. — Harry suggested in an animated tone, but Draco just sighed.

— I can't, there is a lot of work. How about if we eat together on Saturday? I will have free that day. — Disappointment was reflected on Harry's face, Draco leaned over to kiss him.

Lot of Love: Lunatic