Drarry One Shots

Nightshifts

A/N First of all, Happy Christmas, Happy Samhain, or Happy Yuletide to those of you who celebrate the festivities many disguises, and wishing all my readers the best for 2025.

This story has come from a lovely prompt from @ArcanePeverell from way back in August. Sorry it took so long in creating because once I got going I really enjoyed writing it and it really suited being a Christmas story so sometimes these things work out.

I will say here that there's a lot of song mentions in this one shot. All the songs were released pre-2005 (the time of the story) and based around the Soul genre for a reason. That is, all apart from the inclusion of Andra Day's 'Rise Up' which was released in 2015 but it's a beautiful song and I needed something suitable for the situation (please ignore this inconsistency).

I've approached this one shot a little differently because it's broken down into sections of about 1000 words. Each section moves the story forward into a day or week. There is one section that refers to rape and abuse. It is marked and you may wish to skip this part.

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3.10am, Saturday 5th November 2005

Draco sighed as he threw his long coat over the back of the sofa and began to unbutton his pale-green healer robes. He was exhausted but his brain was buzzing after a difficult Friday night shift in St Mungo's Magical Emergencies and Accidents Department. He knew sleep wouldn't come easily despite being well into the witching hour of the Saturday morning but shifts like the one he'd just completed were both the blessing and curse of the MEAD and he always preferred being assigned to the late-night shifts despite the antisocial hours.

He sighed once again and stopped mid-way in his unbuttoning, instead moving into the small kitchen area of his open-plan flat to switch on his kettle. He also threw two slices of toast in the toaster. He had purposely taken a flat on the outskirts of magical London, somewhere where he could benefit from both magical and muggle worlds because it nearly went without saying that sometimes muggles were bloody geniuses and muggle-style toast was always far superior to anything cooking spells could offer—his father would shudder in his grave if he knew how Draco viewed the world these days. Actually, the main reason for his chosen location was the proximity to Great Ormond Street Hospital. MEAD at St Mungo's may mean Draco would treat everyone and anyone who came through into the department but the renowned Great Ormond Street and the sick muggle children there were his passion as he split his time between the two hospitals. Yes, his father would be positively roiling around six-foot under if he knew.

Draco moved to switch on his small radio only to be greeted by a constant crackle of the void. The radio had been a present from Blaise and Pansy to placate the silence between his irregular shifts and the exhaustion. He found the constant bubble of background noise soothing as it filled his otherwise quiet life. He'd been listening to Lee Jordan's slot on Magical Radio FM before his shift but unlike the muggle radio stations, Magical Radio shut down for the night. He turned the small knob on the side of the obnoxiously-red box until the crackle and then whine convoluted into a song. It was a muggle channel he didn't usual listen to but fatigue meant he didn't much care, he just liked the Marvin Gaye song that was playing through the low-quality speaker.

His toast popped and he turned away to find a plate before retrieving a jar of Marmite from the cupboard. The song finished just as he sat down on a stool at his counter end with his tea and toast. The radio played out a quick smooth-jazz jangle that declared it was the 'Harry Peverell's Late-Night Tunes and Chat Show on Heart and Soul Radio 94.1 FM'. 'Tunes' was said like 'Chunes' in an undoubtedly cheesy play on alliteration.

Draco nearly dropped his mug of tea when a familiar voice declared that the last tune was Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' and one of the DJ's favourite songs of all time. The next song was Soul II Soul's 'Back to Life'.