CHAPTER TWO

His head throbbed with pain and it was too hard to open his eyes. All he could do was lie there on the blessedly soft sheets-he hadn't felt such softness in so long, since a half-remembered dream where he was a schoolboy at Hogwarts learning about magic and the world and wanting more than anything to be just like his daddy. But that was a long time ago and he was here now.

"...obviously non-human blood... probably why he was targeted..." Voices floated over him, drifting into his brain like undigested soup.

"...severe sexual assault... signs of rectal trauma and physical abuse..."

"...signs of spell damage too... Cruciatus Curse... has a burn scar on his back consistent with a brush of fiendfyre..."

"...monsters would attack a boy like that... lucky to be alive..."

There were voices swirling all around him, echoing in and out until he honestly couldn't have said how many people were speaking. It made his head ache more and nausea pushed it's way up his throat.

He thought he might have moaned, but the feel of his own voice slamming into his head pushed him over the edge.

Blessed unconsciousness swallowed him back up.

.

The next time he woke, he felt much better, though he was very confused.

He stared up at the white-white ceiling for a long moment, blinking slowly as he just breathed his way back into his own skin. There was a faint noise next to him and he carefully turned his head to see a woman placing a tray of potions vials on the bedside table. From her outfit, he thought she might be some kind of nurse or something.

"Where... where am I?" he asked, his voice cracking dryly.

She smiled at him gently, pressing a straw between his lips. "Here, have a drink," she said, her voice soft and soothing. He sucked on the water until she carefully pulled the straw back, taking the glass away. His mouth worked for a few seconds as he tried to absorb every drop of moisture. "You're at St. Mungos. You've been unconscious for nearly fourteen days. Do you know who you are?"

He drew in a deep gasping breath and blinked hard. St. Mungos? How could he be in St. Mungos? The hospital had been destroyed nearly half a year ago.

"How am I here?" he asked. "I don't understand."

The nurse shook her head. "It's all right, dear," she said. "My name is Nurse Adelina. What is your name?"

He wanted to shout at her that she didn't have to talk to him as though he were a child, but he figured she was simply doing her job. Though how she could be doing her job here was a mystery.

"My name is Draco," he said, not adding a last name. Malfoys were definitely not well-loved by anyone but other members of the family, and then only for form's sake.

"Draco. Well, that's certainly a nice name. Everyone will be so happy to finally have something to call you other than Mystery Guest." She set the glass on the table with a dull clink. "I am just going to go call Healer Merryweather. He'll be happy to talk to you."

More than anything, Draco wanted to tell her not to be so cheerful, but he didn't get the chance. She'd already turned and left the room.

He growled low in his throat, seriously wondering what was going on. Everything was just so blurry in his memory, but he knew for sure that none of this was right.

He couldn't help the low whine that escaped his throat as he pulled himself into a sitting position. The healers had fixed his hurts, but two weeks lying in a bed hadn't done him any good. His very bones seemed to scream in protest at the idea of him moving, but he was persistent.

Draco looked around his hospital room. It was plain, but functional. Not the kind of thing he was used to as a scion of the Malfoy family, but if they didn't even know who he was, it was nicer than he probably deserved.

He choked on a laugh. If they knew who he was, what he was, they would chain him in a cell somewhere and he would never see the light of day ever again.

Just as he was about to completely lose control, the door opened and a tall, black haired man came in, his boot heels clicking softly. He had tanned skin and a robust appearance, as though he spent a lot of his free time with nature.

"Nurse Adelina tells me your name is Draco," the man said, closing the door behind himself. "I am Healer Danvers Merryweather and I have been assigned to your case. Do you know where you are?"

Draco nodded. "The nurse said I'm at St. Mungos. What happened to me?"

Merryweather sighed heavily. "You were found in Diagon Alley; you'd been badly injured. Do you understand?" Draco nodded, not saying anything. "The aurors have been investigating, but they haven't found any information about what happened to you. They think that you were dumped there in the middle of the night and that's why no one saw who did it."

"You seriously don't know who I am?" Draco furrowed his brow.

The healer frowned. "Should I?"

"I don't understand how you don't know who I am. The nurse had to ask me who I am, that's so strange. Shouldn't you know who I am?" Draco hated the whine in his own voice, hated the taste of tears in the back of his throat. He used to be more than this.

Merryweather's look was almost painfully gentle. "Son, something terrible has happened to you. Sometimes the brain tries to protect itself in mysterious ways."

"What do you mean?"

"You've been through a severe trauma." The man reached out a hand to brush Draco's hair back from his face, but only sighed and dropped his arm when Draco flinched away. He didn't know why he'd done that. "Whoever had you, hurt you very badly. We have seen signs of multiple curses and the traces of terrible damage. The aurors tried to find someone that has been missing you, but there hasn't been any response, which isn't so surprising what with the war."

"How can you not know who I am?"

"As I've said, you were found in Diagon Alley a fortnight ago." Merryweather knelt next to the bed, putting his head below Draco's, as though he was trying not to startle a wild animal. "Do you remember where you were and what happened to you?"

Draco looked at the man in disbelief. He thought that it was fairly obvious. Voldemort and the Death Eaters had made a game of him.

Seeming to take his silence as confusion, Merryweather sighed again. "I am very sorry about what I'm going to have to tell you, but it seems that someone tortured you for an extended period of time and there were fresh signs of sexual trauma. Some of the spells we removed from you were extremely nasty and might have caused you long-term damage."

"What spells?"

"Cruciatus residue was one of the worst, though there were some unfamiliar curses that we had to call a curse-breaker in to unravel. There were also heavy traces of what seemed to be inexpertly done Obliviation."

"What?" Draco was genuinely surprised. He didn't remember any Memory Charms, though he wouldn't if he'd been the victim. "Do you know what memories were affected?"

The man pursed his lips for a moment, his dark eyes trying to pierce through Draco's brain. "Do you know who hurt you?" he asked. "Do you know where you were and what was done to you?"

Draco just stared at him, wondering what was going on here.

"You were raped," Merryweather said, as though it was a shocking bit of information. He paused as though he thought Draco might burst into tears, then went on, "You were beaten and abused. You were cursed. The damage to your body was so extensive that if you had been completely human you would have died. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Draco whispered. He felt a shudder go through his body and didn't know why. He suddenly felt very vulnerable in the hospital bed. "That's probably why they did it to me. To keep me alive."

"What do you mean?" Merryweather asked.

Draco laughed, though maybe it was a bit of a cry too. "They made me into this so that I would heal all the damage they did so they could hurt me more."

"Made you into what?" The man was genuinely confused.

"This," Draco swept his hand through the air around his face. "They made me into a veela. They did this so the Dark Lord could hurt me and I'd heal right up again."

"The Dark Lord?" Merryweather stood up so abruptly that Draco couldn't help jerking back slightly. "You were being held by the Dark Lord and his followers?"

Draco scoffed. "Who else would have dared do such a thing to me? I understand that my father is dead, but I don't think that anyone else but the Dark Lord would dare touch a hair on my head."

"This is very serious." Healer Merryweather squared his shoulders. "You don't need to be afraid, you're far away from them. I just need to fire call the aurors now. They need to be here."

"Why? What good would they be?" With the Ministry destroyed, the remnants of the aurors were just fools fantasizing about bringing order back to the world.

"Don't be afraid," Merryweather said, nodding his head. "Grindelwald and his followers won't be able to reach you here. Just let me call the aurors and I promise you that your safety will be assured."

Draco just stared after the man as Merryweather hastily said he would be back and left in such a hurry that he didn't even close the door. Though all Draco could see beyond it was the plain hospital walls.

"Grindelwald?" Draco said. He slumped back in the bed. "What does he mean, Grindelwald? Just where the hell am I?"

There was no answer, just the the white-on-white stillness of his hospital room.

.*.*.*.

Even after he'd been called into her private room, he still found it hard to draw in a full breath.

"Here he is, sir, your son," the gentle faced nurse said, holding out the blanket wrapped bundle.

Charlus wasn't completely sure what to do with his hands, but she adjusted his grip so he held the baby safe and securely and didn't drop the newborn. He gazed down into that tiny, scrunched up face. It was both the ugliest and most beautiful thing he had ever seen before. "Hadrian," he breathed. "Hadrian Antares Potter. My son."

There was a breathy laugh from the bed and he looked up to meet the laughing dark eyes of his wife. Her face was drawn in lines of exhaustion, but there was also a look of smug self-satisfaction about her. "What a large name for such a small boy."

He grinned. "He'll grow into it," he promised.

Charlus gazed down at his son and felt his heart grow so large in his chest that it was a surprise he didn't die from the joy flowing through him. He had never known such perfect love before in his life, had never dreamed that such an all-encompassing feeling could ever exist.

He settled onto the chair that had been drawn close to his wife's bedside, holding the fragile young life carefully in his arms. It was so awe inspiring to know that he had helped create this wonder.

Dorea chuckled, a deep, earthy sound. "You look as though someone has struck you hard between the eyes."

"I feel like it too," he whispered, not wanting to startle Hadrian. Those curious brown eyes had looked around a couple of times before drifting closed, safe in the arms of an inexperienced father. "It must be hard being born."

"I think that it was harder for me than him," Dorea said, sounding amused.

Charlus looked up at her. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for giving me a son."

"He's my son too, you know," she said.

"Yes, but I just felt like I should say something."

She laughed again, before yawning and relaxing back on her mound of pillows. "The pain potions always make me so sleepy."

"Then you should rest," Charlus said. "I'm just going to sit with him a moment longer."

"Can you go to the cafeteria and fetch me some sherbet?" she asked, her eyes falling closed seemingly against her will.

He chuckled. "You and your sherbet. Go to sleep, dear heart. I'll go fetch you some in a little while, I promise."

"Good," she murmured. "Make sure it's real, won't you? Whenever you try and conjure it, it always tastes so odd."

"I promise I will go to the cafeteria and demand real sherbet for my darling, exhausted wife. Now sleep," he ordered. "It will be here waiting for you to wake up."

She murmured some more, but there were no words.

Charlus went back to gazing at his brand new son.

.

It had taken him a good few minutes before he was able to tear himself away from his darling son. And he wouldn't have left him at all if the nurse hadn't come to take the baby back to the nursery. So he wandered down to the cafeteria to keep his promise to his exhausted wife.

He cajoled the kitchen staff into giving him a small bowl of orange sherbet and he thanked them profusely. Then he wandered his winding way back up toward the maternity ward.

It was only chance that he was walking toward a light yellow door when a healer came out and left it open behind him.

Not quite understanding why it was happening, his heart began to pound in his chest. The closer he drew to the door, the more he got the sense that something momentous was about to happen.

He drew even with the door and couldn't help looking in.

At first, it just seemed like another hospital room, definitely on the dreary side, especially when compared to the bright warmth of the maternity ward. His eyes were drawn to the only occupied bed in the room, the other still being neatly made up.

White-blond hair and milk pale skin. That was all he saw at first. The boy was wearing a hospital gown just as white as the sheets that covered him. There wasn't really anything interesting in the room, certainly nothing to have Charlus' heart thundering in his ears or his breath drawing quick in his throat.

Then the boy looked up and everything froze. He barely even felt it as the dish of sherbet slipped from his hands to crack on the floor, the spoon spinning down the hallway.

Silvery-gray eyes in a face so beautiful that whole choirs of angels would weep, but Charlus had seen amazing beauty before. This was something so far beyond "beautiful" that he didn't even have words to describe it, the only thing he knew was that it would destroy him.

The boy in the bed had an inhuman gleam to his skin, pearlescent and seamless, not a single pore showing to mar the utter smoothness of his flesh. His lashes were long and dark, much at odds with the color of his hair, and delicately brushed his damask cheeks with every blink.

He should have looked feminine, but he didn't. His face was too angular to ever be confused with a woman's, and though his neck was long and his form lithesome, his shoulders were broad and he certainly didn't look weak.

Charlus met those mesmerizing eyes head on and watched them widen and contract, first with surprise, then with some unnamed yet powerful emotion.

There was a sudden bright flare of light bursting from the boy's skin. It haloed him in power so strong that his hair stirred in an unfelt breeze. Charlus wondered if he should run away, but his feet seemed stuck firmly to the floor and he couldn't even find the strength to move.

A rope of pure energy unfurled, spinning out dreamily to twine around Charlus' hips. He glanced down at it, his mouth forming a soundless "o" and he could only watch dumbly as the light expanded and grew around him, bathing his stomach and thighs in gentle heat.

He looked back at the boy, saw him arching and tumbling back on the bed, his face wrought in lines of desire and gasping pleasure. He watched those long arms stretching over the boy's head as he trembled and jerked, his legs kicking beneath the sheets, sending them tumbling off the bed and exposing his bare feet.

The boy was everything. He was all that Charlus could see and desire. Without saying a single word, he stole Charlus' world from him and replaced it all anew until there was nothing else but him.

Just as the golden light covered him completely, Charlus remembered that feeling of joy he'd experienced just half an hour earlier when he'd held his son. And he felt just a touch of sadness, because he knew that the feeling this boy drew out of him was so much more than that.

What he felt roaring through him was beyond any words or comprehension. It was so powerful and compelling that he didn't even have the strength to know if he should try and escape from it. All he knew was that it was eating him up from the inside out, replacing every fiber of his being with a reflection of the beautiful boy in front of him until the boy was all that he knew.

Some voice deep inside was screaming at him, telling him he should fight it. He should rage and scream and try to battle his way to freedom. But it already possessed him body and soul until there was nothing left to do but wallow in overwhelming perfection and love. To wrap it around himself, breathe it in, bathe in the warmth of knowing he would never be alone again.

Somewhere, he heard his angel speak for the first time, that harmonious voice like music to his ears. "Bloody hell."