Do you recall the first prisoner to be brought?

Yes. Draco shuddered Yes, I remember.

She had been barefoot when the snatchers dragged her in. Blood had caked on the souls of her feet either from running too hard or trying to kick her way free. Or both. She still had her Hogwarts robes on though they had been torn deep in the front as he recalled her desperately trying to cover herself to no avail. Two men had pulled her into the dining room and tossed her before Lord Voldemort's feet; an offering for a blood thirsty god.

"My my. What do we have here?" The Dark Lord had cooed. "Seems like dessert will be early tonight, Nagini."

"Lovegood's brat, my Lord." One of the snatchers had chimed. "You said you wanted her alive."

"That I did. Excellent work, gentlemen. I suppose our evening will be much less dull than I had originally assumed." He'd poured out of his chair, standing to retrieve his wand before addressing the Ravenclaw girl. "Now, what to do with you?"

Luna Lovegood had taken a visible gasp when the Dark Lord ran his fingers down her neck and lifted her chin to get a better view of her. "Certainly are a pretty little thing, aren't you? Well, we can't be having that, now can we? Your father would be very upset if my men took advantage of you. Nothing a few scars and a good scalping can't fix."

He'd lifted his wand.

Draco had screamed.

"NO! No, you can't!"

"Excuse me?" Lord Voldemort had shoved Lovegood to the ground, forgotten, glided across the marble floor as though on ice, and stood before Draco. A long pale hand had shot for his throat like a viper and lifted Draco from his chair in one graceful arc. Instantly he had been pinned to the wall, nearly a meter above the ground while that corpse cold hand clawed his windpipe closed. "You dare tell me what I can and cannot do, boy?!"

Draco had kicked and scratched as he choked until he couldn't anymore. Until his legs had gone numb and his arms were too heavy to lift. Yet even as his body started to fail he couldn't stop seeing. Couldn't stop staring into those scarlet eyes with snake like pupils that slowly dilated from slits to deep inky bulbs. A vague recognition of a woman screaming had penetrated his brain even if she sounded underwater.

I'm sorry, mother. He had thought. I'm so, so sorry.

"No! Please, my Lord, he didn't mean it!" Her cry had pierced through, "He's young, he doesn't know better, please!

Somehow the grip around his neck had loosened enough for him to take one shallow raspy breath before being completely dropped into a heap of sputtering sobs on the floor, retching up the small amount of dinner he had been able to stomach. She had him in her arms as soon as he had collapsed.

"I hadn't realized you cared so much for your nephew's wellbeing." The snake lord had hissed, his pupils had returned to slits.

Draco had quivered when he saw that the woman holding him was not his mother.

3 years later

Blurriness.

Pain.

Exhaustion.

That was it. All he could manage understanding were those three things. Sometimes he was distracted by hunger but that quickly faded into nausea after consuming the horrid food he was given. Sometimes he would be overwhelmed by past memories and nightmares that were respite from the pain but not the relief he craved. It was an endless carnival of waking, crying, confusion and finally sleep before waking again to repeat the agony.

I must be in hell. Draco figured. That or a torture chamber.

Time was strange. He couldn't place if he had been there for hours or days, maybe even weeks. Slowly the fogginess started to ease and he could see his surroundings. They kept him mostly in a bed. It wasn't cold like he had heard Azkaban to be described but it certainly wasn't comfortable. Strangely, the people here- his prison guards- pretended they were helping him. He was spoken to kindly, given blankets and glasses of water in funny cups with blue caps and straws. The majority called themselves nurses, although he never saw them nursing any babies. That must have been some sort of cruel joke. For all he knew they were Crucioing infants in the next hall.

He had been stripped of his clothes long ago and was forced to wear miserable blue shrouds that made his skin itch and left his backside uncovered. Potions were administered directly into his veins with a fucking needle. No joke, a needle! When they first tried that stunt on him they held him down and shoved the sharp metal object into his arm without even a how do you do. It was connected to a vial that contained enough potion to knock him unconscious in seconds. They would repeat the entire process whenever he tried to retaliate against them. If he attempted to escape he would be tackled back into his bed by two or three 'nurses' who were usually muscular tall men.

He learned fast not to refuse orders from these people. Early on he had refrained to take any potions they gave him to drink and he wouldn't eat any of the weird colored pebbles that were obviously potion related. They threatened that they would be given rectally instead.

He had been stupid enough not to believe that threat.

On the second day of not eating the little pink pebbles, a woman old enough to be his grandmother flipped him over on his stomach, put some transparent gloves on and shoved a marble sized stone up his arse with her index finger.

It was not an experience that Draco wished to repeat. After that, he tried to be a good little prisoner and do what he was told.

No one beat him. Besides the extremely bland food it didn't appear that they were trying to starve him. He wasn't shoved into a freezing cold dungeon and there were no chains. Surprisingly no curses either. His wand had been taken from him and if he asked for it he was told that magic wands didn't exist. After hearing that a few times he started to notice that no one here had wands. His head was fuzzy from the potions so it took a few days to register that he was, in fact, in some sort of Muggle institution. A hospital.

The realization was horrifying. If they were Muggles than it couldn't be potions they were giving him. What could they be instead? Poisons?

Before that he had been adamant in telling them who he was. He was Draco Malfoy! His father had a seat on Wizengamot as well as the Board of Governors for Hogwarts. Didn't they know that what they were doing was illegal!? Now he terribly wished he had kept his giant mouth shut. It was obvious the Muggles thought he was unstable; insane even. How incredibly stupid he had been to say so much. The more he had talked about Galleons or broomsticks or wands the more they had diagnosed him with whatever Muggle illnesses they knew.

About two weeks into the nightmare Draco was pulled into an office to talk one on one with a doctor.

"How are you feeling today, Draco?"

"I feel like monstrous load of shite that's been dumped into a well."

"Really? I'm sorry to hear that. Could you rate your pain on a scale from one to ten? One being no pain at all and ten being the worst pain possible."

This doctor was a pompous gentleman who spoke to Draco like he was seven. He had one of those strange clicking machines that had a button for every letter and every number. As Draco spoke the man pushed buttons to copy down whatever words he was saying into a large window that sat on the desk. It was a bit distracting to watch him doing it.

"Definitely not the worst pain possible." Draco mumbled to the Muggle. Had he been able to tell the doctor what sorts of pain he had been accustomed to a couple years ago he was sure the man would faint.

"Could you give me a number?"

Draco sighed. Muggles were crazy for their numbers. "I don't know, maybe a six."

"A six. And is that mostly from the head injury?"

The head injury. That was what they were calling it now. Yes, he had hit his head. He had hit his head very very hard on a concrete sidewalk outside an office building in east London. He knew he had fallen off of his broom; to the Muggles it had been a suicide attempt. Anyone falling from a height like that must have jumped.

"Yes."

"Alright, so maybe a little better than last week. Nurse Maggie says she saw you playing the piano after dinner today. She says you play beautifully."

Draco shrugged. The piano had been the only thing of worth in the entire place. The other patients were bothersome and talking to the nurses made him irritated. They had tried to get him to play some idiotic board game with fake money and little green houses. When he had insisted on sulking in his room instead they had bribed him out of it with the option of using the music room. He secretly thanked his mother for forcing him to take all those hours of piano lessons with Mrs. Lovewitz breathing down his neck.

"So, when did you learn how to play the piano? Did you have a teacher?"

"I started when I was five and took lessons until I was eleven." Draco answered blankly.

"Did you take any piano classes at your boarding school?"

The man was trying to divulge more into Draco's past. Whenever they brought up the boarding school bit it was clear they didn't believe any of his grand stories he had said about Hogwarts a few days ago. Now that he knew they were Muggles he had stopped the magical talk and the doctors were confused with the sudden change in discussion.

"No, they didn't teach piano at school." Draco stated.

"But they did teach you how to fly a broomstick?" He stopped clicking buttons to glance at the swollen lump protruding above Draco's left ear.

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand how this is relevant."

"Draco," The doctor sighed and spun in his chair so he could face him eye to eye. Draco could see the little white badge above the man's heart that declared him as John Wittle MD. "we've noticed that your temperament has changed. You've become much more detached and almost numb to your surroundings. I would normally believe it to be a change in your medications but if that were the case it wouldn't cause you to start changing your stories."

"What stories?" He didn't like the way this conversation was going.

"Delusions, I should say. Did you read any of the information we gave you on your condition? The first step to your recovery is acceptance. Denying that there is a problem is one thing but suddenly pretending that you're no longer having delusions won't work here. We can tell that you still believe in, er, magical fantasies."

"So, you're never going to let me leave. I'm trapped here for eternity unless I can make up some bullshite story of a normal childhood! Which won't matter because you're never going to believe me anyways!" He was screaming now. The rush of blood to his face made his temples pulse and he swayed a bit thanks to the cracked skull he was still recovering from.

John Wittle went back to his buttons. "The road to recovery is a difficult one. We've been over the steps of your treatment plan and with the proper therapy and medication we know that you will be able to return to a healthy life. But we can't help you unless you're willing to try. Start with something small. Just read the pamphlets and we'll work on the harder stuff later."

"NO! Why should I read that crap?!"

"Draco, if you were really a member of some magical community don't you think they would have come looking for you by now?"

And there was the kicker. No one was trying to find him. There were no owls, no Ministry workers striding into his room, no angry rants from his father, and no one from the Profit coming in to humiliate him and question how an international Quidditch star had fallen from his broom.

A terrible spark had ignited in his brain like a scrap of hot iron had stuck into his skull after he had cracked it.

A delusion.

The Muggle -could he even call him a Muggle anymore?- seemed to see that he was making progress and gave Draco a smile.

"Just try your best, son, that's all we can ask for."

Back in his hospital room Draco skipped his usual evening shower and decided to try Apparating one more time. He recalled back to his Apparition lessons, found a destination in mind and with as much deliberation and determination as he could muster, concentrated hard on his mind's eye of that particular location. Without a wand it would be difficult. With a head injury and no wand it was nearly impossible. But Draco had to try. Thirty seconds later when he woke up on the floor, no less than six health workers scurrying over him, that wretched spark of doubt was burning in his mind like fiendfyre.

"Draco! Draco look at me, sweetheart. Can you hear me? It's going to be alright dear, you just had another seizure." An older woman pulled him to a sitting position. His head flopped into her shoulder and she wiped the spittle from his face. He had drooled all over himself again and shoved her hand away in shame.

"Get him in bed." Someone said and he was lifted unceremoniously off the ground and carried to his hospital bed. They had done that thing where they bent the bed in half so he could lay in it sitting up. He was given more water and those weird pills he had to eat before they finally left him alone to rest.

The seizures exhausted him. Thankfully they had become less frequent but he knew Apparition was a risk.

Maybe because you made it up. A shrill voice chided. Maybe Apparating is another crazy idea invented by your madness. Just like everything else.

Draco wanted to scream. He wanted to throw the covers aside, dash across the room, shove the window open and jump. Maybe this time he would be successful in dying instead of bouncing off the pavement like a rubber toy.

He didn't though. Like always, Draco Malfoy was nothing if he wasn't a coward. It wouldn't be the first time he had contemplated suicide. During sixth year he had considered casting an Avada Kedavra on himself not only as a way to escape but also to test if it would actually work. He'd never heard of someone trying to off themselves with the killing curse but he was willing to be remembered as the first to do it. In the end he never went through with it but instead had hurled his wand across the room in a fit of tears.

Now, looking back, he couldn't even be sure that had ever happened.

To have to doubt his own memories was suffocating. He couldn't decipher what was real anymore. Perhaps he was going mental simply because they told him he was. Was being there just making him more insane?

In hopes to appease his sudden mood drop the doctors tried to convince him to read the fucking pamphlets.

He wished they had beaten him instead.

So, you've been diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Now what?

He glared at the disgustingly clean parchment that was so smooth it reflected the overly bright lighting that plagued the Muggle hospital.

No. Not Muggle. Just hospital.

Reading the information made him want to retch but he still read it.

Psychosis was more common in men and symptoms didn't usually become noticeable until one was in their early twenties. The cause was unknown and there was no cure and proper treatment could take years.

After that, Draco slipped into a terrifying head game that lasted for days. It wavered between fearing that everything he remembered was a delusion and panicking, or realizing that his life was a lie and not bothering to care anymore. He could either cry all night in fear of his future or he would sleep all day; completely apathetic to the goings on about him. Because if he were completely honest, everything seemed pointless now.

So when a nurse came in to tell him he had a visitor not only did he not believe her, he didn't care to answer her either.

"DRACO!" She snapped after calling him twice before.

"Merlin, woman, you don't need to shout. What do you want?" He didn't look up from the crossword puzzle he was scribbling in. It was only half eleven and he hadn't gotten out of bed yet.

"Like I said before," she huffed, "your sister is here to see you. Would you like me to bring her by?"

"My sister?" He blinked at the nurse, perplexed by what she had told him.

"I'll send her in. She's been very worried about you, what with you missing for almost five weeks. I wish we had been able to contact her sooner." And with that the woman turned around only to return a moment later with a familiar young woman in tow.

His eyelids might have been lost in his sockets from how much he widened his gaze when she walked into his room.

"GRANGER!" He squealed. He actually squealed when he saw her like he was Pansy fucking Parkinson on the day Draco had asked her to the Yule Ball. "Thank the gods above, Granger, is it really you!?" He crawled the length of the bed so he could grab her from where she stood by the door and pulled her into a strong embrace.

Obviously shocked by his outburst, Hermione Granger froze for a moment while Draco squeezed her before regaining composure and prying him off of her.

"Calm down, Malfoy." She shoved him back into the bed before turning to the nurse. "Could you give us a minute, please."

If the woman was surprised by his sister's sudden coldness towards him, she didn't show it. With a grin the nurse returned to the hallway and slowly clicked the door behind her.

"Alright, Malfoy, care to explain how…. Come on now, don't cry!"

He startled at her comment and wiped at his face only to discover the betrayal of the wetness on his cheeks. "I just...I thought I was going to be trapped here forever! They….they convinced me that I was delusional. Do you even realize how happy I am to see you! I was doubting everything. They told me I had made everything up, that I had made magic up! That it didn't exist!" He started to laugh as well as cry harder. She shook her head sadly and sighed.

"Get a hold of yourself." she moved to the side table by the bed to retrieve a tissue for him. "You look like death. What happened, Malfoy?"

"I fell off my broom." He stated before wiping his eyes on the tissue and swallowing a hiccup. She glared at him with disbelief. "Honest!"

Granger bit the corner of her lip. She looked the same as he remembered her, perhaps with a few more freckles and a bit more frizz. In her Muggle clothes she looked exceedingly frumpy. She held onto a packet of papers and stared down at it briefly before looking back at him. Her brown eyes flickered with something close to pity.

"They've diagnosed you with epilepsy and schizophrenia."

A lightening bolt of horror transfixed his spine as he wondered if she were about to tell him there were no such thing as flying broomsticks, that he had indeed made it all up, and that she really was his sister. That the past twenty years were a crazed delusion that he had been fostering.

"Have you been having seizures? Is that why you fell off your broom?"

The relief he felt from her admitting that he did fall off a broom was flushed out by her acknowledgement of the seizures. He had never even heard of seizures until this whole Muggle institution debacle. He had been so focused on the not going crazy bit that he had downplayed the spastic uncontrollable fits he had been suffering from.

"Um.. yes. "

"You were having them before you cracked your skull?"

"Obviously, if that was the reason I fell off the broom."

She ignored his snark and continued to bite her lip. "How long have you been having them?"

Remembering, suddenly, that this was Granger, Draco didn't feel so cheery to open up all his medical history to her. The fits had been embarrassing enough as it is. He didn't need Princess Gryffindor to be stuffing his face in it and announcing to the world that Draco Malfoy, star Seeker and former Death Eater, was plagued with drooling attacks.

Yet, for some reason, a gentle whisper of worry passed over her eyes. Not pity, but actual genuine concern. It was something he would have expected from an old friend, not the girl he had bullied for six years at school. Not from the girl who had almost been tortured to death on his drawing room floor.

"I don't know, maybe for a year or so." He looked away when he answered her question.

A lie. Hopefully she wouldn't notice.

Looking out the window for the first time that day he realized it was snowing. Strange, it almost never snowed in London.

He also realized that he was still crying when he felt a hot tear fall on his hand.

"Do you know what causes them?"

Draco wiped his face. After more than two years of the dreaded things he had begun to see a pattern. A horrible punishing pattern.

"Apparating. Not everytime, mind you, but enough that it got dangerous. Then Floo travel became nearly impossible about two months ago." He grimaced, not wanting to recall the time he had woken up in some stranger's house spasming on the floor when he had meant to be going to the Leaky for drinks with Blaise and Pansy.

"And now flying?" She finished his thoughts.

Draco could only nod. He had been denying it to himself for weeks now, had refused to mention it to anyone but still had fled Scotland in a dizzying fury after his last day of practice. It had ripped his soul apart knowing that the only thing that brought him happiness was the thing that would kill him.

"Flying's all I have." He grumbled to her.

Granger watched him for a long moment. Clearly she hadn't expected him to divulge so much to her and frankly, he hadn't expected it either. Perhaps he was so traumatized by the hospital visit that he needed to vent or perhaps he had hit his head too hard. Draco didn't know. He had maybe spoken five sentences to this woman in the past few years but today he had said more to her about himself than to anyone else in that same amount of time.

Granger didn't let the deep sharing session last. With a nasty scoff she pulled out her wand and moved closer.

"You dolt, flying isn't all you have. Now, let me see your head."

He knew with the ridiculous bald patch they had shaved into his scalp that it wouldn't be hard for her to find the wound. He winced when she poked her wand at it.

"Twelve stitches. Impressive, Malfoy, no wonder they had you on opiates for so long. " A flick of her wand and a mumbled incantation had the pain vanished from his skin. He ran his fingers over what had once been itchy angry flesh that was now smooth and flawless. "I'll get your things and we'll have you out of here in no time."

That simple task seemed dauntingly difficult for even the golden trio's Hermione Granger. Draco noted that she almost had to threaten a lawsuit at the receptionist in order to release him from the hospital.

"...highly inadvisable, miss. Your brother is suffering from severe.."

"Doesn't matter! You can't legally hold him here against his will! He should have been discharged ages ago!"

"Unfortunately, in his condition we believe he is at high risk of harming himself. Without a doctor's approval…."

"Well, now that I'm here I can vouch for his safety. Your options are to either let me take him home or to refuse me now and have me come back with my lawyer later."

"Of course, miss, as his sister you are welcome to take him home but remember that it is against the doctor's wishes and we…"

"Very good, could you retrieve his belongings for me please."

His robes and wand were returned to him. Granger had to actually tell him to go get dressed because he was too busy ogling his wand. Had it always been so light? Surely another wooden object of the same size would have weighed more.

"You're not letting him go outside in that, are you?" The receptionist snapped, probably still miffed that Granger had one upped her on getting him out. "Wearing something like that will just further his belief in delusions."

"I think after five weeks in hospital he deserves to wear whatever he wants. Plus, patients are able to understand you most of the time so if you don't wish to further their belief in delusions you may want to talk to them directly."

For the first time in his life, and perhaps the first time for any Malfoy ever, Draco found that he was actually thankful for Muggle borns.

He made a point to tell her so as they exited the building but she brushed him off.

"Don't thank me, I'm just doing my job. If anything you should be thanking Nott."

"Theo did this?" He shouldn't have been too surprised.

"He works for me at the Ministry. When we heard you were missing yesterday, Nott scoured the Muggle hospital records and police reports until he found you. For a pureblood Slytherin he sure knows how to decode confidential computer listings rather well. Of course, I had to be the one to retrieve you." She grinned at him smugly. "Guess you owe me one now."

You owe me, Cissa!

Draco froze and tried to forget the rasping whispers.

"Come on, we can take a taxi to the Ministry since Apparating is obviously out. I'm sure your parents will want to see you as soon as…."

"NO!" He yelled at her sharply. It was loud enough to gain the remaining Muggles' attention who hadn't already been staring at his robes. "I can't see them!"

She turned and scowled at him with a confused scrunching of her nose. "Why?"

He glanced anxiously around the crowded entryway of the hospital until Granger gestured him to a quieter alcove used to hold wheelchairs where they could speak more freely.

"I'm…I haven't been on good speaking terms with my parents."

"Why?"

He glared at her. You know why, you're no idiot. He thought. Though she clearly didn't realize it.

"What, you mean the whole Death Eater thing?" She mused, butcherly slashing the entire War into a short phrase. Yes, forcing him to join a murderous cult when he was sixteen did diminish some of his family affections but that wasn't the half of it.

"I do not wish to see my parents and I do not want to go to the Ministry. It will only take minutes of being there before someone alerts my father of my presence. Avoiding the man will be difficult once he finds out I was injured."

She frowned. "And your father being concerned about you is suddenly a bad thing? I'm going to have to take you to St. Mungo's anyways. Those seizures are a problem and someone is going to recognize you there too. Might as well meet your dad at the Ministry first instead of waiting for him to demand to see you at the hospital. I'm on the line here too, Malfoy, I would prefer not to have your father tearing my office door down when he finds out I didn't bring you straight to him."

"Then we won't go to St. Mungo's" He answered her flatly.

She gaped at him. "What!? You...you're sick, you have to go to the hospital!"

"I have had enough of hospitals for the time being, I think. I'm not sick."

"Then where are you going to go?" She stated. "Back to your Quidditch team? Pretty sure they'll announce your presence to the entire world pretty quick. Viktor's the one who noticed you were missing in the first place. I bet he'll be delighted to let everyone know that you're completely fine and ready to play again. Oh wait, except you're not fine, are you?"

"You're still pretty close to Viktor, I see." He said, trying to derail from his evident inability to fly.

"Closer than you must be, seeing that he didn't even notice you were missing until yesterday."

Draco blinked. "Yesterday?"

"Which is why your parents are going to have my head if they don't see you immediately."

"No."

"Malfoy, you're…"

"Take me to Theo, then."

She snorted at that. "Theodore lives with your parents."

He blinked again. "Really?" At her nodding he considered his best friend and concluded that if anyone deserved to be utterly spoiled by Draco's overbearing mother it would be Theodore Nott, whose own mother had mysteriously passed away during their second year. "I suppose that I'm stuck then. I'll have to stay with you."

"WHAT!" She shook with fury. "NO!"

"You're right. I have nowhere else to go. And since you seem to know quite a bit about medicine you would be my best option."

"NO!"

"And since it's against my will for you to declare my presence to anyone you have to swear to my secrecy."

"WHAT?!"

"Patient confidentiality and all."

If he touched her he was sure her skin would burn him with how red and angry she'd become. "You can have that at St. Mungo's too!"

"You don't actually believe that, do you? With who I am and how rich my father is you really think that everyone who sees me at the hospital will keep it secret?"

"I'm no mediwitch. You need proper treatment."

"But you know enough to qualify amongst the best. I'm sure whatever research they could do you could do better." He purred. She was considering him seriously now. He supposed complimenting her couldn't hurt.

"You really want to avoid them that much, don't you?" She mumbled.

He sighed. "Yes."

"Enough that you want to remain missing to the entire magical world?"

He thought for a moment. This would mean no more Quidditch for a long time. Not that he would be doing much flying anymore. "Yes. At least for now."

"Fine." She reluctantly agreed. "Hope you're okay with living in a Muggle neighborhood."

"After the last few weeks, I think I can handle a bit more Muggle anything."