𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 10

1.

It seems like forever that he feels like crap.

Sometimes he doesn’t even get out of bed in the morning. Potter doesn’t know the difference- he makes the children breakfast before he leaves for the Ministry. He helps Pyrrha dress, and dresses Abraxas and leaves, all before seven in the morning.

His body aches, but it isn’t the same ache he had before. This ache doesn’t ever stop. He stops sleeping at night because it numbs his body, but keeps him awake and he shuffles around, when he does get up, in a perpetual state of half-consciousness. The baby’s screams don’t grate his ears. He barely hears them anymore.

When Granger comes ever few afternoons, she tells him he’s lost weight quickly. He doesn’t tell her that his skin hangs off in strange places and when he looks at his face in the mirror, he sees the same hollowness and grey-tinge as when Potter found him, years ago, in Moaning Myrtle’s loo.

He shivers all the time and dresses in two, three, four layers of robes that bulk his body up. He sleeps in two layers of pajamas and if Potter thinks anything of it, he hasn’t said anything yet.

He bleeds for four months, but he doesn’t mention a word of it to that insipid Brown girl after she stops visiting for check ups in April. He runs out of those Muggle things, so he starts to tear at the hems of old robes and stuff them up between his legs, tossing them into the toilet, the rubbish bin so Potter won’t know.

One day, the toilet doesn’t flush.

He’s too weak for magic. He tries an Evanesco, but his wand backfires and send him crashing into the wall. He lies there, moaning, until Pyrrha finds him and asks if he’s all right and asks if he needs kisses to feel better.

Draco closes his eyes and a choked laugh comes from his throat. “No, Daddy’s fine,” he says.

Potter finds him crumpled on the floor after he comes home from work. He can hear the baby crying in the distance and he is aware of the cold, wet sensation of water floating around him, pooling on the floor from the toilet. He is aware that there is the smell of blood in the air.

If there are any werewolves around, they’d come in for the kill, he thinks. He tries to tell Potter this, but he forgets as soon as he opens his mouth.

Potter disappears and Granger and Weasley’s voices are loud. He must have Floo called them because the baby stops screaming soon, just as Potter’s wand starts flicking and flashing and the puddle lapping at his robes dries and the smell of blood dissipates.

His robes at peeled off, layer by layer. Potter says something, angry and low-voiced and Draco says, “Don’t hate me.” His own voice is distant, an echo in his mind that doesn’t sound right because it is weak and wavering and that’s not how he sounds.

“Why don’t you ever fucking tell me anything, Malfoy?” Harry snaps. He asks Draco other questions- how long has this been going on, why he’s never said anything, why he is so damn scrawny, why he never said anything.

Potter won’t shut up. His head starts to pound, throbbing from a hammer tappingtappingpouding on his skull. His insides start to cramp, that same sharp pain in his belly that comes and comes and never really goes away. He moans and tries to curl up on the bed, but Potter holds his arms splayed over his head. Potter glares, his eyes as bright as the killing curse and his words are no better.

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Potter hisses, but his wand is tossed away and he simply curls onto the bed next to Draco and shakes his head and mutters words into Draco’s ear that he’ll forget soon enough, but in the moment he hears them, he starts to choke because he’s so tired of this and he feels pathetic and sixteen all over again and everything has gone awry.