Title: Something Blue
Rating: R
Summary: After the war completely breaks Harry down, can Draco help piece him back together again?
Spoilers: up through HBP
Warnings: Slash, suicide attempt
Disclaimer: Do you see groupies following me around begging for my signature? No. Therefore we can rule out the possibility of me being a famous singer, actor or JK Rowling.
Author's Note: I won't even go into explaining how chaotic the last two months have been, and, regardless, it doesn't atone for the fact that I pretty much abandoned this fic for a month and a half. Hopefully, I will be much more on the ball for the next chapter. I'm about to send it out to my beta right now in fact.
Chapter 2
Every finger in the room is pointing at me
I want to spit in their faces,
But I'm afraid of what that could bring
I've got a bowling ball in my stomach,
I've got a desert in my mouth
Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now
I'm looking for a savior in these dirty streets
I'm looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets
-Tori Amos, Crucify
-
The Daily Prophet
Harry Potter Institutionalized: Our Savior Gone Mad?
Rita Skeeter
On November 20th at approximately 9:30 in the morning, an anonymous source saw Harry Potter leaving London Psychiatric Hospital, a Muggle facility for the treatment of sufferers of mental illness. Drawn and haggard, he carried a duffel bag and was in the company of Hermione Granger, head of a relatively new department in the Ministry, the Department for the Welfare of Magical Creatures. The same source saw Potter enter the facility a week prior, also in company of Miss Granger. They left in an unmarked Ministry car. Why they did not admit Potter to St. Mungos and chose a Muggle facility instead is unknown to this reporter. Has the war finally caught up to Harry Potter?
For greater depth into Harry Potter's history of mental disturbance turn to the page 3.
-
It was noon when Hedwig flew through Hermione's window, clutching a bright red envelope. She dropped the envelope on Hermione's desk, then retreated as quickly as she could back through the window. Smoke began to rise from the corners of the envelope, and Hermione opened it tentatively.
"Hermione Granger!" the Howler screamed in Harry's voice which was amplified tenfold, "Do you have any idea what you've done? Look at the paper! You don't even need to open it up, just look at the front page! The whole world thinks I'm crazy! Again! So thanks ever so much for doing something 'in my best interests' - because it really worked out, didn't it! Just... just stay away from me."
The Howler crumpled into ash on the report Hermione had been working on, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. She was broken hearted to think that she might be losing her friend, but more than that she was furious - at his ingratitude, his pigheadedness, and more than anything the way Rita Skeeter was targeting him like this. When the tears finally stopped, she had a determined look in her eyes and a hardness to her voice.
"I will not let this destroy him."
-
Of the many things that Harry had learned during his stay in the hospital was the magic of makeup. Namely concealer. He squeezed a dollop of the cream colored liquid on to his forefinger and smoothed the makeup over his telltale scar. He'd learned this trick from one of the other men on the ward; the man had cut and burned himself and in order to hide the scars he rubbed concealer over them.
After 'getting rid of' his scar, he popped in a pair of blue colored contacts. He was looking for anonymity today, and if it meant changing his appearance, then so be it. He only hoped that covering his most telling features would be enough to keep the public from knowing his true identity. He slung a cloak over his robes and apparated to Diagon Alley.
The anonymity felt fitting to his mood; as long as he was someone other than Harry Potter, he could escape from the lingering traces of the war - memories, losses, emotions - even if it was just for a day, an hour, a minute. And that respite kept him alive. Even during his rare moments of escape, Harry could still see the mangled corpses on the battlefield from a war that he had led them into. Still heard their screams. Still felt the agony from each loss. Hermione couldn't understand that, and he didn't want her to. He just wanted her to leave him alone. Wanted everyone to leave him alone. But it would never happen, at least not while he lived.
Diagon Alley was bustling as always. Everywhere he looked witches and wizards were chatting and haggling with shop keepers. Weasleys' Wizards Wheezes was packed with kids looking for the next great prank to pull on their parents. No one paid any attention to the blue eyed wizard as he turned into the apothecary. Harry always hated the apothecary. It reminded him of detentions under Snape's supervision - cleaning cauldrons or chopping rat spleens. It also smelled as if something had crawled under a shelf and died months ago. All in all it was a rather revolting place for Harry but he braved it anyway; he was on a mission and he wouldn't let the memories or the smell distract him from it.
There was no line, and the witch behind the counter quickly fetched the ingredients Harry requested.
"Would you like these whole or ground?" she asked, wheezing slightly.
"Ground, please."
She nodded stiffly, pulling a mortar and pestle from a drawer, and began to smash the plants together with the pestle.
An icy hand rested on Harry's shoulder and a smooth drawl whispered into his ear, "My, my, my, Potter, what could you be doing with nightshade and belladonna? Poisoning someone perhaps? No, Saint Potter would never do something so sinister. Then what are you doing with this?"
"Malfoy," Potter ground out through his teeth. "I'll have you know I'm just making a... uh... sleeping potion. I've become somewhat of an insomniac recently."
"Well, that's one lethal sleeping potion. If it were anyone but you, I'd think you were trying to kill yourself." He slipped his hand farther down Harry's arm, now grasping his bicep loosely enough that it didn't hurt, but tightly enough that Harry couldn't escaping his grasp.
"Bugger off."
"I really don't feel like it right now, maybe later." He slid his hand farther down Harry's arm so it rested just above his wrist. "Or maybe you are as disturbed as the Prophet says. Maybe the war has pushed you so far that you can't step back. Maybe the great Potter is just as much of a coward as I am." He pulled back the sleeve of Harry's robes, revealing an angry red scar, stretching two or three inches up from his wrist.
"Did Hermione put you up to this? ...Wait. Did you just say you tried to kill yourself?"
"I said I was a coward, Potter, not that I tried to off myself. I don't give out personal information that easily." Draco rolled his eyes.
"Well whatever you did or didn't do, you have no control over what I do or don't do to myself."
"Au contraire. I have plenty of control over what you do. I saved you. I saved your life and I didn't do that so you could just go and kill yourself as soon as you had the chance. You owe me a wizard's debt, Potter, and I intend to cash in on it."
The witch behind the counter passed Harry a brown paper bag containing his purchases. Before Harry could clutch the bag, Draco interjected.
"Thanks for buying these for me while I was getting that book at Flourish and Blotts. I'll just take them from here."
Draco gave Harry a sharp glare and raised his eyebrows pointedly as he apparated away with a 'pop,' carrying Harry's purchase with him.
"That'll be seven sickles, dearie."
-
When Hemione returned to the house she shared with Harry on the outskirts of London, it was silent. She would have returned earlier, but she could not come up with an excuse to get out of her rather pressing meeting with the Minister, and had only just been able to escape home. Upon entering the foyer, the whole house appeared to be empty and nothing moved within the house. She tiptoed through the first floor and up the stairs to the loft above. Her fears gripped her like a vice and it was all she could do to keep from running screaming into the room. She held herself in restraint, scared she would startle him into doing something drastic, but even more worried that he already had. She put her ear to the door.
Silence.
Thousands of scenarios ran through her head - all of them bad. Harry sprawled on his stomach, grasping an empty pill bottle or a flask of poison. Or maybe he'd be curled up in a pool of his own blood. Or maybe, maybe. There were too many maybes.
She opened the door.
And found Harry laying face up on the bed, idly scraping at his scars as he bored holes in the ceiling with his eyes. He didn't move when she walked in, remaining in the same dazed state he had been in all evening. The only change was in the lines around his mouth, which hardened into a scowl.
"Oh God Harry! You're alive! I got your owl and I was so worried; I thought you might have, you know, tried again."
"I tell you to get out of my life and you think I'm suicidal?"
"Well, Harry," Hermione's voice wavered and cracked. "You've been so out of sorts lately, I can't tell what anything you do means anymore. It seems that everything sets you off these days, and I don't know when you'll do something serious."
Harry's scowl deepened as he answered sarcastically. "What? So now everything I do means I'm going to kill myself? 'He ordered the lamb? Oh no, it means he's going to kill himself.'"
"I didn't mean it like that at all and I think you know that. I just mean that I worry a lot about you these days and getting angry messages from you isn't very comforting."
"Did you ever think that I might be telling you to fuck off for a reason? That your incessant meddling has dragged my name through mud -"
"You needed help! You still need help!"
"- And that your mothering is suffocating, There's nothing you do that isn't infuriating to me. Your cheery optimism lost it's credibility in sixth year, and it's not coming back. So unless you have something that will really win me over, just turn around and walk down those stairs."
"I'm sorry."
The scornful lessened a bit; the stiffness in his shoulders seemed to crumple away. His eyes fluttered shut and his head sunk to his hands. Hermione watched as her friend seemed to age by the second. She stared into his eyes as they opened.
"Come over here."
She settled herself next to Harry on the bed. Words betrayed her, and Hermione found that maybe there were some things best left unsaid. Instead she just took his arm, and smoothed her fingers over the line of reddened flesh.
"I'm so, so sorry."
Harry's eyes blinked once, twice and then closed completely. "You already told me that."
"I'm not just talking about what I've done. I mean that I am sorry for whatever you've been through, whatever you're going through."
-
Draco leaned back in his study, perusing the titles of the books around him from an antique library chair. He should be reading and editing articles for the Prophet and working on the layout for tomorrow's paper, but he was too consumed with the day's personal developments.
So, Skeeter's article had been true. It was difficult information to process, even though he had seen evidence first hand and Potter had practically confessed the whole thing to him. Draco's mind was still lodged in his school day belief that Potter was the infallible Golden Boy. He'd always resented the boy for that, but now the illusion had been shattered like the many shards of a broken window pane. Despite the horror of the Golden Boy's descent into what one could easily term madness, Draco found that for the very first time he could acually identify with the man.
Conflicted between morality and prosperity, business and personal, Draco gave one more look to the layout for The Daily Prophet's next edition and drew a large 'X' through a box on the first page with the words 'Potter Story - Rita Skeeter' written in Draco's tight, formal script. In its stead he scribbled 'Potter Retraction - Draco Malfoy.' A few hours of extra work would be nothing compared to what this would bring him.