Draco startled awake in the early hours of the morning by the sound of his Floo flaring to life in the living room; a voice he didn't recognise called his name. Throwing a robe around himself, he staggered into the sitting room, wondering what in the hell was going on. There were very few people who had access to his Floo.

He slowed when he saw that the ghostly head in the fire was blue instead of green: an emergency Floo signal.

"Are you Mr. Draco Malfoy?" the man's disembodied head asked, wasting no time on frivolous introductions.

Confirming his identity, his heart raced as he frantically tried to piece together what this call could be about.

"You're needed at St. Mungo's immediately. Apparate to the emergency ward and give them your name when you arrive. I'm sorry, but I can't provide any more information over unauthenticated Floo." The head disappeared, and the flames winked out.

Hesitating only a moment, he raced back to his room and dressed as quickly as he could. Had something happened to his father in prison? His mother? She'd seemed fine when he'd stopped by for tea yesterday. His thoughts spiralled and he Apparated with a loud pop, appearing in the middle of the busy emergency ward of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Paying no mind to the people he jostled as he quickly made his way to the Healer station.

"Draco Malfoy," he said breathlessly, by way of introduction. "I received an emergency Floo call and came right away. Is my mother alright?"

The Healer looked confused for a moment before reassuring him. "Oh no, no, it's not your mother, dear. You're listed as the emergency contact for a—" she checked her chart, "Theodore Nott. Is that correct?"

Theo… what the fuck? Why does he have me as his emergency contact?

The woman, Healer Fogarty, led him down the hall, and he passed under a sign revealing that he was entering the Intensive Care Unit. He braced himself, not knowing what he would see when they arrived at their destination. The stout Healer walked swiftly, making it a challenge for him to keep up despite his much longer stride.

Bloody fucking hell, this is bad, he thought to himself. He'd lost touch with Theo after Hogwarts, but they'd recently reconnected. Theo had owled him last week, expressing an interest in "that nonsense Blaise keeps going on about." Apparently, Theo and Blaise had been out drinking together, and Blaise had drunkenly recommended that Theo contact Draco to work through his "issues" (Theo's words, not Draco's). They had lunch scheduled later this week for an initial evaluation.

Draco followed Healer Fogarty into a large sterile room with multiple beds, separated by curtains. Magical readouts displayed each patient's status at the foot of the beds. It was quiet… too quiet for a shared hospital room, especially one with so many occupied beds. It put him on edge. Healer Fogarty came to a stop in front of one of the curtains. The name "T. Nott" was visible at the top of the readout, with "Critical" displayed beneath it in bold red lettering. His heart jolted, and he felt sick.

The Healer paused before opening the curtain, looking at Draco seriously. "We don't know exactly what happened… but we strongly suspect it was self inflicted, the poor thing."

"Self-inflicted?" he whispered, hardly able to breathe.

Fogarty nodded. "One of his staff brought him in about an hour ago. She said that he'd given the lot of them the day off. The young lady had forgotten her coat and gone back to fetch it — found him pale as death and unconscious on the floor. Apparently he's been taking quite a bit of Dreamless Sleep lately, and she thought he'd taken too much and hadn't made it to bed. She said it's happened before... She thought it was best to take him here to detox, and it's a good thing she did. Thank Circe she had the foresight to bring the empty potion flask she'd found near him too… it wasn't Dreamless Sleep."

Shaking her head sadly, she clucked her tongue. "We're keeping him sedated to allow his internal injuries some time to stabilise. Whatever it was he cooked up nearly melted him from the inside… terrible way to go, that."

Draco swallowed hard, his blood turning to ice in his veins. Perhaps if he'd met with Theo sooner… No, he couldn't blame himself. He reminded himself that he wasn't responsible for the actions of others, that this was not his fault. Repeating it over and over again in his head did very little to ease the guilt coursing through him.

When Healer Fogarty opened the curtain, Draco held his breath, not knowing what to expect. Theo looked small and vulnerable, lying too still in the hospital bed. He had always been thin, but now he was the sort of thin that came from not eating regularly. He wondered how much Dreamless Sleep he'd been taking. There were rumours of people starving themselves to death without realising it, too addicted to the potion to function. Previously, he'd discounted it as a scare tactic — now he believed it. Theo's thin face was waxy and, even in his sedated state, he furrowed his brow in pain.

"What did he take?" His voice sounded odd to his ears — strained.

"We haven't a clue at this point," she said, swishing her wand in front of the readout and causing it to display a more detailed status. "We sent the flask to the lab to identify the components. It will be much easier to treat him if we can figure out what he took. Whatever it was, it's still doing damage. He's critical, but stable. We slowed the poison as much as we could to give us time to treat him, but until we can determine the correct antidote, we can't promise anything." She patted Draco's arm in a comforting, matronly way. "The sleeping potion will wear off soon, but he's still heavily sedated. We can't have him moving around too much and injuring himself further."

Thanking the Healer, he said that he'd like to wait with Theo in case he woke up soon, and settled onto an uncomfortable stool to wait. As far as he knew, Theo didn't have any remaining family: his mother and brothers were dead, and his father was in Azkaban. Theo had been looking for help — he'd reached out to Draco after all — but Draco hadn't grasped how serious things had been. Honestly, he'd assumed things were better for Theo with his father under arrest; Mr. Nott had been a right bastard when the two of them were children.

Theo had always seemed the most well-adjusted of their group at Hogwarts. Despite his father's intentions, Theo had somehow managed to stay out of the more radical pureblood circles, avoiding the worst of the war. Seeing him lying in a hospital bed now caused Draco to experience a strange cognitive dissonance. What the hell had happened to the smiling, flippant boy from Hogwarts?

Some time later (just as Draco's back started to cramp terribly), Theo moaned, and Draco looked up from where he'd been staring at the ground, lost in thought. He scrunched his face in pain and coughed weakly.

"Theo?" he whispered, not wanting to wake him if he was asleep, but wanting him to know that he wasn't alone.

His eyes opened a crack.

"Drake?" he croaked.

He'd completely forgotten the idiotic nickname Theo had used during their time at Hogwarts. After realising how much it annoyed Draco, Theo had never called him anything else. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Draco couldn't help smiling, momentarily transported to a time when things had been happier.

After another brief coughing fit, Theo continued, "You look like shit."

Draco huffed a laugh. It was such a "Theo" greeting that it gave Draco hope that he would recover. Theo wasn't wrong either: Draco was wearing brown shoes with black trousers, and the buttons on his grey shirt were misaligned. That wasn't even considering the state his hair must be in. Idly, he began fixing the misaligned buttons.

"It's good to see you too, asshole," Draco replied in a flippant tone before continuing more seriously. "What the fuck were you thinking?"

As if it was too much effort, his eyes fluttered closed, and he fought off another grimace.

"It's his birthday today… my dad," Theo said in a nearly inaudible whisper. "I don't know what it was exactly, but I… I snapped. I just realised I'm never going to be free of him. He's locked away in Azkaban, but he still haunts me… He's in my head. Even when I look in the mirror—" he laughed humorlessly before it turned into a weak cough and he turned his face toward the curtain.

Eyes stinging, he swallowed down the lump that was forming in his throat. Theo's breathing was laboured, the brief interaction sapping all his energy. Draco wanted to let him rest, but he needed one additional piece of information. "What did you take, Theo?" he asked quietly, reaching out to place a hand on the blanket covering his too-thin frame.

There was no response, and Draco wondered if he'd fallen unconscious again, cursing himself for not asking the most important question first.

"I go foraging for ingredients sometimes, you know. It gets me out of that gods-awful house." His words were halting, and Draco wondered if he should tell him to rest and wake him in a bit, but Theo continued. "I don't always have anything specific I'm looking for. Sometimes I simply harvest the components that speak to me. I hadn't realised what I was doing, actually… It wasn't until yesterday, when I was tinkering with something, that I realised what I had: Wormwood, Asphodel, Sopophorous bean, and Valerian… all the ingredients to Draught of the Living Death. I'd collected them all within the last week if you can believe it, and when I started thinking about it… sleeping forever sounded kinda nice… But I needed to make sure I didn't wake up."

He paused before continuing, "My father enjoyed his poisons, as you know — the prize of his collection was the manzanilla de la muerte. You probably haven't heard of it. Very rare. Very expensive… We had a tree in the greenhouse; it was one of his most prised possessions. Probably the only thing he cared about more was the continuation of the bloodline, so it seemed a fitting way to end it. There was plenty that he'd harvested and dried, so I dumped it in the cauldron as well… Apparently I went and fucked that up, too. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised… my father wouldn't be," he finished bitterly, sounding resigned.

Draco didn't know what to say and Theo lapsed into silence. After a few moments of laboured breathing, Theo's breathing evened out as he succumbed to a drugged sleep.

Brushing moisture from his cheeks, Draco left to pass the information about the potion ingredients to Healer Fogarty. Hopefully, they'd be able to develop an antidote before it was too late.