What If? -Drarry

Part Four: Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

A gasp tore from Draco's throat as his eyes snapped open and he sat up, looking wildly around before finally, realisation dawned. It had all been another nightmare. He was eighteen and in his room in the Moody Institute, not a terrified sixteen year old trapped in the Manor. In the blueish half-dark of the early morning, Draco lay back down on sheets that were damp from sweat, and took deep breaths.

It was just a dream, Draco. It's not real. You're not going crazy. It was just a dream...

Reaching up, Draco wiped a hand over his face and tried to clear his head, and when his heart rate had slowed to a more normal tempo, he looked at his watch. It read twelve minutes past six. He wondered why they hadn't been roused by the alarm yet - which usually went off at six - and then remembered in one big rush what day it was.

What a great way to start Christmas, Draco thought, angrily. Falalalala lalalala.

Not even prisoners were expected to wake up at six on Christmas day, but, lie in or not, there was no way he was getting back to sleep. He pulled back the covers, got out of his narrow bed, and dressed in the black overalls that were standard to all the inmates of the Moody Institute. Charlie, with whom he shared his room, was softly snoring on a bed identical to Draco's, beer-belly creeping over the edge of the mattress. Charlie was a big, gruff man with a heavy North London accent who had gone down for three years after using crucio on a gay couple one night when he'd had too many drinks. Their relationship was uneasy at best. Thank God the man was a heavy sleeper - God knew what he might hear if he wasn't.

The room was something between a cell and a cheap hotel room, with its only furnishings being a bed on each side, a tiny desk and hard chair at the foot of each bed, a cabinet at the head, and a thin window stretched across the top of the back wall. The automatic lights hadn't gone on yet, and Draco could only half see as he sat down at the desk and pulled a notebook and quill towards himself.

Magic is a powerful thing. It can heal almost any physical injury with relative quickness, and it can alleviate pain and suffering with the simple brewing of a potion. But Draco had learned that one of the few things more complex than magic itself is the human mind. There were no spells for the flashbacks he kept on having; no potion to end the tremors that started with loud noises. In the field of psychology, it was wizards who copied muggles. There were, of course, some ways in which magic could be used - anti-anxiety potion, sleep draughts and reliving memories through a pensive all helped to put a bandage on the problems - but when it came down to it, the mind took no shortcuts. It appreciated hard work, not pretty spells.

As Draco had told Harry several visits ago, the psychiatrist he was seeing was called Emma. Emma was Muggle-born, the daughter of a psychologist and a surgeon, and had trained in both the Muggle world and the magic. It had been clear from the minute Draco had walked into the Psychiatric wards of the Moody Institute that she was someone who knew what they were doing. She didn't seem to mind the Mark he bore like a curse on his forearm, and didn't seem bothered by the fact that three attempted murders hung over his head. She had smiled, and then she had started to help him.

Draco began to write, as he did dutifully every night, every single detail of the dream that he could remember. This was one of the techniques Emma had taught him in an effort to stop the flow of nightmares from plaguing his sleep. The dream hadn't been much different from the other ones - just another distorted memory resurfacing and doing its best to drive him insane - but he wrote it down anyway. When he'd finished, he took a new line and wrote the dream again, this time changing the ending to turn out positive. This was the most important part. This was the step which, hopefully, would help his brain gain control over the memories. A small desk lamp helped him see - no wands meant no Lumos - but by the time he'd finished, the day had aged sufficiently for him to see without it. He stood up, stretched, and wondered how much longer he'd have to wait before breakfast.