Cicatrices- Marks That Remain

Blue Whales

Happy Sunday, and Happy Pride Month! And Happy belated birthday to Draco! What a week to be posting a chapter.

Draco is finally out of the hospital! Yay! Time stamp: 10 days before Christmas. I'll be keeping track of the days for you as the chapters continue.

And, my readers, it's going to be a packed 10 days.

Let me know what you all think! And, as always...

Enjoy!

Draco Malfoy has discovered quite a few things in the last few days.

For one, the auror department is a load of Hippogriff dung, and they have it out for his head. The 'protection' he'd been given was out of necessity and an easy way to monitor whether God's Wrath would try to finish him off.

For another, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and their entire team of halfwits were either stupid or severely lacking in bollocks. The lack of spine in Weasley wouldn't have surprised Draco, but in Harry... Draco had, rather foolishly, begun to think that Harry would make an effort to keep him safe, to help... It had been a natural (albeit stupid) assumption. Harry had always helped everyone else. That's who he is... and yet he had merely stood there while Draco was carted away with bound wrists...

St. Mungo's is positively awful, as well, Draco learned. Or rather, was reminded. The rooms are too white, the air is too cold, the robes are made of paper, and the blankets are too thin. Worst of all, they stabbed him with a syringe full of a sickly yellow potion right in his shoulder- which now sported a nasty purple bruise- promptly leaving him sedated and frustratingly incapable of making sense of himself and his surroundings for two entire days.

And back to a certain Harry Potter: whatever he had said to the hospital staff- and Draco knew he said something- had them convinced that something is very wrong with Draco's brain. Draco knew this because as soon as he was capable of accurately telling who he was, where he was, and what time of year it was, they had fed him and handed him off to at least three different mind healers, who were asking questions that made Draco's lip curl in annoyance, like 'do you have thoughts of hurting yourself, or thoughts of death?' and 'Do you ever feel unsafe, even when you know that you are safe?' and 'Do you ever do things to stop a bad thing from happening, even if it doesn't make much sense to others?'

These questions were quite targeted, indeed. They would not have asked him these questions without knowing something, and the only other person who knew anything was Harry Bleeding Potter.

His merry band of idiots were in the hospital with Draco now, asking him if he would be willing to resume auror protection. Draco wanted to hurt them very badly. He sneered.

"Fuck off."

One of them sighed, another one turned around in a huff of frustration. Weasley and Dawlish both rounded on Berrycloth.

"We told you he'd say no-" they spoke in unison at the same time that Berrycloth shouted over them.

"Everything we've done has been because we were told to. It was the best course of action considering the circumstances and the fact that Robards was breathing down my neck!"

"Guys, let's just- pause." Weasley held one hand up haltingly, the other pinching the bridge of his nose.

Why isn't Harry with them? Draco wondered if they'd left Harry doing something else. Then he thought Harry would have wanted to see Draco, especially since he'd been there the day before.

Draco didn't exactly know what happened the day before, actually. Really, all he could make sense of is feeling very far away, falling in and out of consciousness, and feeling infuriatingly incapacitated by his body's inability to cooperate with his fogged brain, ...and Harry, who had sat there and held his hand and cried for a long time. Draco couldn't quite make out anything beyond that.