But I'm still alive underneath this shroud.

Rain.

Patty Griffin - "Rain"

Harry Potter - 17 M - sanctioned and admitted 09/06/08 described a profound belief that he is dead and haunting the living as a ghost. Delusion accompanied by a visual hallucination of a younger version of the man who killed his parents and anorexia. - Additional symptoms of catatonia during dissociative periods and acute social anxiety while lucid, as well as depression, guilt for the casualties of a war in which he was centrally involved, and regular nightmares and night terrors. - H refuses to eat solid food or drink water on the basis that he is already dead and doesn't need to eat. Must be given food and medication via a nasogastric feeding tube. - No family or past medical history was available, although H's acquaintance mentioned possible childhood abuse or neglect and confirmed traumatic experiences over the past several years including attempted murder, witnessing of murder both in and out of combat situations, witnessing of physical torture, and several months of homelessness. - Diagnoses: Schizophreniform disorder with Cotard's Delusion, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, psychotic depression, Anxiety - Attempted treatments have included: Talk therapy, haloperidol 10mg/d, zuclopenthixol acetate, biperiden was added to treat extrapyramidal side effects of haloperidol at first 4mg/d then increased to 6mg/d. Antipsychotic medication was changed to quetiapine 800mg/d - H has shown no signs of improvement after 6 weeks. CT, MRI, and SPECT showed no brain abnormalities. Because of the severity of the presentation and the lack of response to medication, H was referred for a course of ECT.

Date of Exam: 11/07/08

Patient: Potter, Harry

History: Harry has shown no response to treatment over the course of the last 6 weeks.

Test Results: First treatment of ECT resulted in temporary lucidity along with the presentation of a migraine headache and nausea resulting in vomiting.

-Dr. F Warren

Harry lay curled on his small bed, whimpering as the light seared through the thin barrier of his eyelids. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, the pressure exacerbating the throbbing pulses of pain in his skull. One of the nurses had given him a shot in his hip, ostensibly to help ease his headache, but whatever the medication was, it had yet to take any effect.

With a groan, he sat up, reaching behind himself to grab blindly for his pillow in hopes of shoving it over his face, either to block out the light or to smother himself, whichever came first. Unfortunately, the motion was too much for his overtaxed body, and he had just enough time to lean over the side of the bed before he was chucking up his liquid lunch. Whining, Harry wiped his mouth with his sleeve, staring helplessly at the pile of sick on the floor.

Thankfully, as though alerted by the sound of his vomiting, which he probably was, an orderly soon appeared in the doorway, taking quick stock of the situation. Leaving only briefly, he returned with a mop to clean up the mess, leaving a trash bin in easy reach in case of another episode, while a nurse approached him with a paper cup full of water.

Harry took the proffered drink gladly, swishing the water around his mouth to remove the acrid taste of bile, spitting the mouthful into the bin and then downing the rest of the cup's contents.

"Try and get some rest, dear," the nurse said when he had tossed the paper cup, patting his shoulder lightly and urging him to lie back down. Harry went down without a fight, curling up on his side, facing the wall and burying his face into the pillow he'd gone to so much trouble to procure.

As the medication finally began to take effect, the ache in his temples decreasing and the tension in his body releasing, Harry was finally able to fall into a restful doze, the quiet sounds from the hospital corridor almost comforting as they lulled him to sleep.

Date of Exam: 22/07/08

Patient: Potter, Harry

History: Cotard's Delusion with hallucinations, anorexia, and psychotic depression

Test Results: at the end of the second round of ECT treatments at 3x/wk, Harry has experienced longer bouts of lucidity at a higher frequency. During one of these lucid periods, we were able to discuss his delusions without Harry becoming defensive.

"You know you could join the others in the common room if you wanted. You don't always have to isolate yourself in your room," Doctor Warren said as Harry stared at the closed office door, listening as a group of patients passed in the halls.

"I don't want them to see me," Harry admitted, wrapping his arms around his small frame as if to protect himself from prying eyes.

"Because of your involvement in the War?" Doctor Warren asked, and Harry shrugged, the question making him tense as nervous goosepimples rose on his skin.

"That," he conceded. "And because I'm a ghost. I might scare them." He didn't question the doctor's knowledge of the war, accepting him as a wizard and necromancer as per Tom's theory, but had come to recognise that many of the others in the facility were, in fact, muggle. He'd seen them watching television or using the telephones. Had heard Draco's reassurances that it was, in fact, a muggle hospital that he had been sequestered away in. All the better for illegal dark arts, Harry thought. No one would think to look for Harry's body amongst the muggles.

"Right," Doctor Warren nodded. "How would they know, though? What, exactly, does a ghost look like?"

Harry furrowed his brows. "You know what ghosts look like. You're looking at one right now."

Doctor Warren only nodded again. "Of course, but for the record, if you were to explain to someone else?"

"Well…" Harry hedged, "I guess I'd tell them that ghosts look just like people, only they're a bit see-through. They can walk or they can float. Sometimes they come up through the floors or go up through the ceiling or through walls. They can't really interact with their surroundings unless they're very powerful. Or if they're a poltergeist. They can appear and disappear at random, sometimes."

"You've never floated, though," Doctor Warren pointed out. "Nor have you ever walked through walls, or come up through the floor."

Harry squeezed himself tighter, feeling unaccountably nervous. "Well, no, but I try to stay away from people. I'm not going in and out of rooms, because I don't want to."

"Right, that's true. But you also don't appear very translucent. In fact, you are quite solid right now. And I have seen you touch and interact with things quiet often. Your IV-pole, for example. Or the chair, I've seen you pull it out to sit in. Could a ghost do those things?"

Harry shook his head in confusion, trying to remember if Nearly-Headless Nick or Myrtle had ever actually touched things like that. Like he did.

"Well, no, but… Well, with Tom here, there's quite a lot of energy in one place. We might just be, like, more powerful than an ordinary ghost. Since the two of us are tied together, and all."

"Right, Tom," said Doctor Warren. "You know, I've never actually seen him. Is he here, now?"

Harry glanced over at Tom, who was leaning against the window, staring at them. "Of course he is," Harry said in bewilderment. "He's just over there," he pointed toward the other boy and the doctor obligingly looked, but only shrugged his shoulder.

"I'm afraid I don't see him. I've only ever seen you, Harry. The nurses and orderlies as well. None of us have ever seen Tom. Harry, I know that what you are experiencing seems very real, but I want you to consider the possibility that Tom is a figment only you can see and hear. I want you to consider that to me you are not a ghost to be revived, but are rather a living patient of this hospital undergoing treatment for an illness."

Harry stared at Tom who was sneering at the doctor. "No, that's not possible," Harry asserted, but his faith in his reality was shaken.

"Why would a ghost need to be fed through a tube?"

Harry touched the rubber taped to the side of his face, the tube he constantly forgot about. He glanced at the pole he carried with him. "It's just make-believe," Harry muttered. "Just pretend, like Draco said."

"How can you tell?" Doctor Warren asked, and Harry had no answer.

Date of Exam: 29/07/08

Patient: Potter, Harry

History: Cotard's Delusion with hallucinations, anorexia, and psychotic depression

Test Results: After 9 ECT treatments Harry has finally shown a willingness to eat of his own volition, and the nasogastric feeding tube has officially been removed. While the delusion remains, there has been no mention of hallucinations, and Harry has been fully engaged and aware of his surroundings.

It had been five days since Harry had last seen Tom. Sometimes Tom would leave him for hours at a time, or even all day, only to reappear at night when Harry awoke after the night orderly's check-up. Most days, though, Tom was there, shadowing his every move. He'd never been gone longer than a day, and here it was coming up on a week with no sign of the other boy. Harry's long-held paranoia came to the surface then, and he nervously looked around every room he entered, searching for the familiar black haired figure.

He looked around now at the canteen, nothing at all like the Great Hall at Hogwarts and more like his primary school, searching the sea of haggard faces as they tucked into their eggs. Still no sign of him.

Warily, Harry took a seat at one of the long tables. It was his first day without the feeding tube in, and Harry hesitantly took a bite of his own scrambled egg. Though he didn't really believe the doctor when he said Harry's ghosthood was only a delusion - Harry certainly didn't feel any more alive than he had before - he still couldn't deny the logic behind the doctor's assertions. Harry could interact with objects, and he could taste food and he'd noticed in himself the feelings of hunger and thirst, along with the pulls of his bladder or the racing of his heart. He didn't feel any less like a ghost, but he was a ghost who was very present in his physical body. To him, it almost felt as if he were possessing himself.

He chased his bite of egg with a gulp of tepid water, longing for a glass of pumpkin juice.

A part of him was afraid that Tom had been right all along, and they had simply succeeded in reviving his body, but surely if that were true, Tom would be there with him, gloating if not as a ghost than with Harry in his own head as he had been during the war. And yet, Harry didn't feel like he had then. His head was clearer and calmer and his thoughts were all his own.

And if Tom were wrong… If Tom had truly never been there to begin with… Then Harry was sitting in a muggle hospital eating eggs and the death he couldn't let go of was all in his head.

Date of Exam: 05/08/08

Patient: Potter, Harry

History: Cotard's delusion, psychotic depression

Test Results: After the fourth and final week of ECT, Harry is fully cognizant, has gained weight and is eating regularly. There has been no sign of hallucinations since the third week, and Harry no longer experiences delusions of being dead.

Recommendation/Plan: Harry is to be released from hospital but should receive weekly outpatient therapy for depression and PTSD along with daily administration of quetiapine 800mg and citalopram 30mg.

Harry hoisted his rucksack higher onto his shoulder as he officially signed himself out of the hospital.

Though the feeling of being dead still overcame him, he recalled now as he hadn't before the actual battle between him and Tom that night at Hogwarts. He remembered dying, of course, but, as if a hidden compartment in his mind had been suddenly revealed to him, he also remembered coming back. The terror as Narcissa Malfoy checked his pulse and found him living before lying to her master. The determination as he faced down Voldemort for the last time and came out on top. He remembered the weeks after the war. The trials. The funerals. Molly Weasley's sobbing and George's hollow stare and Ginny's heartbroken face as he told her they wouldn't be getting back together.

He remembered the feel of Draco crowding up against him in the men's room at the Ministry and the weight of Teddy in his arms.

He didn't remember when the fear and guilt and isolation turned to psychosis in his mind. He didn't remember when the phantom of Tom appeared to torture him. But he remembered when he'd left. He remembered looking at himself in the mirror and for once not being afraid that he could be seen. He remembered waking up and feeling like he existed again. Or maybe for the first time.

He was clear-headed and present in a way he hadn't been in he couldn't say how long. Weeks at least, but he feared longer than that. Months maybe. Years. Years of Tom Riddle's influence in the back of his mind. Years of guilt and paranoia and fear consuming him and everything he did. And while that wasn't all gone, he understood himself enough now to recognise their presence and for once fight against them.

While the feeling of being dead had not left him, it now warred with the clarity and understanding that he was truly a part of the living world and that he was only immaterial to himself.

Putting down the clipboard, Harry bit his lip and glanced behind him at where Draco stood in his now familiar casual, summer clothes, hands crossed over a chest that was broader than Harry remembered.

"Are you ready to go?" he asked and Harry nodded silently, following him out into the summer sunlight for the first time in over two months.

Draco held open the door to a black, muggle taxi and Harry raised his eyebrows at him as he ducked inside, sliding over to make room for Draco behind him.

"Number 12 Grimmauld Place, City of London," Draco listed off for the driver and Harry's arm shot out of its own accord.

"Wait!" he cried out, swallowing nervously. "I don't want to go back there."

Draco frowned, "I've had the place redecorated," he explained consolingly. "It's fully clean and actually looks like a real house again. And the ghastly painting of my aunt is gone. Mimsy also works there full time now, and she's much better at keeping house than Kreature, so you don't have to worry about anything."

Harry squeezed Draco's arm. "I don't want to live there on my own," explained. He was afraid if being back in isolation would drive him back to his delusions. If it would bring back Tom. "Can I stay with you? At least for a little while? I could probably go to the Burrow or to Shropshire with Andromeda if I asked, but for right now…"

Draco blinked rapidly, tiny microexpressions passing over his face as if he were trying to suppress them. "Right. Yes, of course. Of course you can stay with me. As long as you want. You don't have to go to the Weasleys or Aunt Andromeda. You can just stay. With me. Right." Turning to the driver, he listed off another address in the City of London and the car lurched as they got on their way.

They passed the drive in silence, Harry's hand drifting down from Draco's upper arm to lace with his long fingers, comforted that Draco was clutching just as tightly as he was.

The cab eventually stopped in front of a nondescript building of flats and Harry got out as Draco paid the man before coming to stand outside with him, staring up at the brick facade. "It's not much. The flats inside are tiny. You'll more or less be living in the Slytherin dormitories. We can go get the rest of your things from Number 12 tomorrow, if you decide you really want to stay."

"I'm sure it's fine," Harry said honestly. He really didn't care how mediocre the Ministry-appointed lodgings were. He'd lived in a cupboard for ten years. His bedroom after that was a barren prison cell. The tent he'd stayed in over the last year had been a nicer home than he'd ever had on Privet Drive. A flat with Draco and his mum would be nothing.

Draco gave him a doubtful, side-eyed glance before sighing and leading the way into the building. The hallways were cramped with peeling paint and a steep staircase whose tread was worn so thin Harry could see the wood underneath. Draco took them up to the first floor and fished out an unassuming muggle key to let them through one of only two doors on the landing.

Inside was a living space of somewhat similar size to the interior of his and Hermione's tent, overstuffed with large, ornate furniture Harry knew had come from the Manor, or some other Malfoy property which made the space seem much smaller than he suspected it actually was. In reality, Harry couldn't gauge whether the flat was average sized or not, having never seen the inside of a muggle flat before apart from what he'd glimpsed on television. Truly, Harry had less experience with the muggle world at this point than he did with the Wizarding world which he still often failed to navigate successfully. A man with no country, indeed.

"Well," Draco said, gesturing with an ironic flourish, "welcome home. Mother, I hope you don't mind, Harry here is going to be living with us from now on."

Narcissa looked up from a plush armchair where she'd been reading, eyes flitting from Harry to her son and back. "Is he, now?" she asked, the question loaded with a dozen others that even Harry could hear.

"Yes," Draco answered before Harry could step in to defend his presence in her home. "He needs a place to convalesce. You remember he was ill some weeks ago? Grimmauld Place is in no fit state to live in as I told you then, but Harry here didn't want to leave London. And you do recall the debt we owe him, right, Mother?"

Narcissa pursed her lips. "Yes, of course," she agreed reluctantly. "You're doing well now, I hope, Mister Potter?"

"Uh, yeah," Harry floundered, honestly surprised that she didn't seem to know the details of his long illness. Or, apparently, about the renovation of his house "Yeah, I'm fine now. I'm sorry to impose like this, but there's not really anywhere else for me to go right now. And just 'Harry' is fine, really."

"Harry, then. You may call me Narcissa, seeing as you'll apparently be living with us. I do apologise for the cramped lodgings. I assume Draco has given you the full run of his room? I certainly wouldn't want the Saviour of the Wizarding World sleeping on the sofa."

"No, Mother, Harry will not be sleeping on the sofa. We'll be sharing my room," he asserted, pushing Harry through the flat with one hand on his lower back until they reached a tiny hallway, gesturing for Harry to open the door on the right.

"This isn't your room," Harry blurted, staring at the unfamiliar bed and furniture in light, grey wood tones, the bedclothes a dusky mauve.

"It's from my room at the Château in Normandy, not the Manor, no." Draco explained as he took Harry's rucksack and set it on the floor by the wardrobe.

As Harry took closer stock of the room he would be living in until school restarted, Narcissa appeared in the open doorway.

"One question, please, Draco," she solicited, and Draco stood from where he'd been crouched, unzipping Harry's bag. He followed his mother out into the hallway, closing the door behind him, leaving Harry alone in the bedroom.

Through the thin walls, however he could hear clearly as Narcissa asked, "How, exactly, is Harry Potter familiar with your bedroom at the Manor?"