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When Draco came to there was blood in his mouth. He could feel it coating his tongue, which felt too heavy in his mouth. Like it had been replaced with a boulder while he had been unconscious.
Slowly, painstakingly slowly, Draco opened his eyes. His eyelids felt horribly heavy and lifting them was such a herculean effort that it seemed impossible. Everything was too much, too bright, too loud. As though he was staring directly into the white hot of the sun.
Draco squinted, trying to make some sense of his surroundings. All he could see was a blurry mass of indistinguishable colours and distended shapes, as though someone had taken a dirty sponge and wiped it across his reality. There was a strange ringing in his ears, high pitched and whining. And another sound, just beyond it, but it was muddy and distorted and he couldn’t focus on it enough to identify it. His thoughts felt like shredded cotton wool, torn apart and feather light. Every time Draco tried to focus his brain seemed to blow on the clouds of his thoughts until they no longer formed anything cohesive.
He was lying on something cold and solid. Clumsily, he tried to feel it, but his hand wouldn’t obey him properly and his treacherous fingers wouldn’t move. Did it belong to him? The numb hand banged uselessly onto the cold floor.
Floor. He seized onto the thought, holding it tight as he could before it could drift away again. Draco tried to turn his head but the effort of doing so was herculean. The noise wouldn’t stop, the strangely pitched, distant one. Suddenly, a light touch on the back of his hand. An electric burst of alarm managed to penetrate his wispy, cotton thoughts and he tried to pull it back in panic, ripping his eyes open as wide as he could to try to take in some information through his blurry vision.
The touch stopped and he felt less panicked. Less like walls were crushing in on his throat.
Once again, he tried to move his head. Something moved in his periphery, and he tried to follow the sudden motion, but his eyes wouldn’t move fast enough. The rusty taste of blood was sickening. Draco tried to move his hand again and came up against something sharp. He nudged it numbly and it slid away from him like a pebble skittering across the surface of a frozen lake. Then the sound was back, louder than before, and something was grabbing Draco’s shoulders and leaning over him, and he couldn’t control the panic that coursed through him again, bolder than any confusion and he fought blindly against whatever it was, trying to push them away from him with his numb, useless hands. The sound got louder and there was another sound now that he could not place, deeper than the other. Then the touch ceased once more, and the sound did too.
The blood in his mouth made Draco sick and he tried to spit it out, not able to cope with the copper taste on his teeth any longer. He felt it run down the side of his face from his mouth, dribbling towards the floor and he hated it even more. The sound, voice he suddenly realised, was back, and then something soft was dabbing at the mix of blood and saliva on his face. Draco didn’t feel panic this time. He tried to move his head to the right so he could see who was with him and, to his dulled surprise, his body responded and he looked up. The dabbing stopped and there was the voice again, and this time he almost recognised the single syllable it said. He couldn’t with certainty identify where the voice was coming from, whether it was one from outside his head or inside.
Draco tried hard to concentrate but there was a sharp pain suddenly shooting through the back of his skull and for a split second he felt feather-light and as though he would slip away into the velvety blackness that still hovered at the edges of his vision. But then something was shaking him, and he jerked back painfully. It was a person, Draco realised suddenly. The person suddenly grabbed his shoulders again and he was being pulled up into a sitting position.
Draco’s world spun around in wide, lazy circles and the velvet blackness, silvery stars and bursts of white light once again threatened to swallow him whole. But the voice was back, and the person kept a warm hand on his shoulder. Something about the voice was familiar, but he couldn’t be certain who it belonged to. He squinted up at the person, trying to rearrange the bewildering blur of colours in front of him into a face. There had been someone with him in the kitchen, he recalled suddenly. They had been making dinner, he remembered now, the clouds beginning to join up once more.
The voice spoke again, and this time Draco understood.
‘Dad?’ the person asked, quietly but urgently, and, with a jolt, Draco recognised them.
‘Scorpius?’ he said, or tried to. His tongue wouldn’t obey him properly and the sound he made barely resembled his son’s name.
His eyes were focussing marginally more successfully now, enough that he could make out the fear etched on Scorpius’s familiar pale features and an icy surge of guilt ran down his spine. With great effort he turned his head to examine the extent of the damage and the sight of the shattered plates scattered across the floor, table, and hob didn’t make him feel any better.
‘Did I hurt you?’ he slurred at Scorpius, trying to see, trying to confirm through his blurred vision that he hadn’t accidently injured his son.
‘I’m fine,’ Scorpius responded quickly, shuffling forward a bit and peering worriedly at Draco’s face. ‘It was only the plates that broke. And the cupboards.’
Draco tried to nod but it hurt a lot, and he winced.
‘You hit your head when you went down,’ Scorpius explained, front teeth nibbling nervously at his lip.
Scorpius suddenly got up and went to the sink, returning after a few moments with a glass of water. Draco tried to reach out and take it from him, anything that would rinse the taste of blood from his mouth sounded excellent, but his fingers were too stiff, and he couldn’t force them to grip the glass properly. Translating thought to action still seemed impossible.
‘Wait, I’ll help,’ Scorpius said, shuffling forward on his knees. Draco allowed him, fighting down the wave of self-hatred and shame threatening to envelope him at the thought of his son having to help him drink. The water was ice cold and he ignored the fact he was swallowing blood in favour of concentrating on how much cleaner his mouth suddenly felt.
‘Do you know where you are?’ Scorpius asked haltingly, putting the half empty glass carefully back on the floor. There were streaks of blood across the front of his blue jumper, Draco noted hollowly. Or maybe it was tomato sauce.
‘Kitchen,’ Draco responded, thickly and indistinctly.
Scorpius nodded, the relief clear on his face. He still looked rattled. Draco hated himself for scaring him.
Scorpius raised the glass to his mouth again and Draco took another sip. He felt exhausted, all the way down to his bones.
‘How long?’ he asked, heavy tongue catching on the vowels, tripping on the consonants, words so garbled that it was a miracle Scorpius understood anything he was saying.
‘You went down really suddenly,’ Scorpius said slowly and clearly. ‘And then all the plates on the table and the cupboard exploded and you had the fit for around five minutes. I think. Then you were out for about fifteen minutes.’
Draco nodded as carefully as he could but even the slight movement sent fresh waves of pain coursing through the back of his skull. At least it hadn’t lasted too long, for his standards.
‘You were screaming,’ Scorpius added quietly. ‘And you had a nosebleed. And your hands were doing that thing again.’
The thing with his hands, where his fingers cramped into claws stretched back as far as possible. He’d mentioned it during his last hospital visit. There was nothing anyone could do.
The nosebleed at least explained why the lower half of his face felt damp. Draco suddenly realised he must look terrifying.
‘Sorry’, he tried to say but it got stuck on his swollen tongue.
Scorpius shifted his weight awkwardly and shook his head at the apology.
As best he could, Draco scanned the kitchen again, taking in the mountains of shards on the table and floor, the cupboard doors all thrown open as though a tornado had blown through their tiny flat, the shattered dish on the hob that was mixing with the pasta bake they’d been making before his rogue magic had ripped through the kitchen. There were some new cracks in the tiles behind the hob. Draco suddenly felt fragile, unstable.
‘Do you want to try to get up?’ Scorpius asked hesitantly. His hands were oddly raised, mid-gesture, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. Draco recalled pushing someone away in the blind panic of not being able to tell who it was that was with him, and the guilt reared its ugly head again.
He should get up. Draco knew he should. But he didn’t think he could stand. He still couldn’t feel his feet and his whole body hurt. It felt like someone had put the curse on him again, the flames of pain devouring him until he barely felt human anymore.
Draco nodded grimly and allowed Scorpius to take his useless hands to pull him up.
The kitchen once again tilted alarmingly, and Draco felt his eyes rolling back. He grit his teeth together until his aching mouth was enveloped in a sharper, knife-like pain and concentrated on staying conscious. The room felt too hot, and it hurt to breathe. Everything was spinning. He moved one foot in front of the other in a robotic fashion, allowing Scorpius to steer him over to the couch. Glass and china shards crunched beneath his feet. Once he was sitting again, things felt a bit more manageable. The nausea receded slightly and things stopped spinning around him.
Scorpius hovered by the couch, pulling at his fingernails nervously. He still looked pale, Draco noted, much paler than usual. He shouldn’t be dealing with this. Shouldn’t be dealing with him.
‘What time?’ he slurred, unable to get his eyes to focus properly on the cheap plastic clock above the door. Through his blurred vision it seemed to have at least eight hands. A wave of nausea rolled over him and Draco grit his teeth hard to stop himself throwing up.
‘It’s quarter to nine, dad,’ Scorpius said quietly, with a tinge of concern colouring his words.
Draco’s surprise must have shown on his face because Scorpius continued.
‘We were having dinner later because I was late back from Archie’s house. You had said it was fine.’
Draco couldn’t really recall any of it properly. It was normal, and he knew that the memories would return tomorrow. Possibly. Probably. Sometimes they didn’t. He could remember Scorpius telling him that Archie had a new baby brother and that he had been grating cheese. But nothing more. It was like a black hole had opened up in the middle of his brain.
‘You don’t remember?’ Scorpius asked uncertainly.
Draco shook his head. He stared down at the cheap laminate flooring beneath his feet and tried to concentrate. It didn’t work. His thoughts wouldn’t link up the right way.
‘None of it?’
‘Bits and pieces.’
‘Maybe I should call someone at St Mungo’s,’ Scorpius started hesitantly, still fidgeting with his hands.
Draco shook his head again, this time more emphatically, which hurt immensely. It hadn’t been bad enough for that. There was nothing he hated more than going to St Mungo’s after an episode. There was nothing anyone could do for him. His disorder wasn’t, at present, curable, so Draco failed to see the point in recovering in a hospital bed when he could do the same thing at home, away from everyone and everything.
‘Dad,’ Scorpius started, then stopped, frowned, went to the kitchen and came back with the damp tea towel. Draco held out one of his still useless hands to take it and then awkwardly dabbed at his face. He must look like a murder victim from one of the gory crime dramas Scorpius liked to watch. Scorpius seemed uncertain, as though he wanted to help but knew that Draco would refuse.
Even with his poor attempts to clean his face, there was more blood than he had been expecting. He couldn’t find the energy to worry about it properly. Draco had become desensitised to the sight of his own blood long ago.
Scorpius went back over to the kitchen and grabbed a bin bag from the cupboard beneath the sink. He began to gingerly pick up the shards scattered on the floor. There was so many. And Draco had only bought the plates a few months ago. Following a similar plate-smashing severity level episode.
‘No, Scorpius’ Draco said, with difficulty. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’
Scorpius slowly picked up two more pieces of broken porcelain, put them in the bin bag and kept going even as he answered.
‘Dad I can’t leave it like this-‘
‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’
Draco tried to sound stern, but suspected that the disjointed syllables stumbling from his mouth and blood-smeared appearance weren’t exactly convincing.
‘At least the stuff on the floor. Someone is going to step on something,’ Scorpius protested, still continuing to pick up the shards and cracked teacups.
‘No.’
Scorpius sighed and finally dropped the bag on the floor with a loud clank that jarred its way through Draco’s brain. His wince caused Scorpius to mutter a quiet apology.
Draco suddenly remembered that Scorpius hadn’t eaten dinner yet. He most likely hadn’t eaten much all day, Archie’s mother was a big believer in not eating too many snacks between meals. And she, like them, struggled to put food on the table when the end of the month rolled around. He could hardly send Scorpius back there at nine in the evening for a meal. There would be too many questions. He already had the feeling that Archie’s mother thought he was a useless parent. Most days he had that feeling himself.
‘Fridge,’ he managed finally, after some thought, gesturing with a numb and useless hand in the direction of the object in question. Stringing thoughts together was still challenging. Scorpius screwed up his forehead and stared at Draco with concern and bewilderment.
‘You need to eat,’ Draco said as firmly as he could, dropping his hands back into his lap. ‘Soup from Wednesday.’
Scorpius walked carefully over to the fridge, stepping over particularly large heaps of shards. Draco wished he would wear his slippers so that he wouldn’t accidently cut his feet, but Scorpius had never been the type to wear them, even as a toddler. For the first time, he noticed how damaged the laminate was, how it badly it fit around the bottoms of the cupboards. Scorpius carefully closed the fridge door as quietly as he could and poured the cold soup into one of the few remaining bowls to put in the microwave.
‘Do you want some?’ Scorpius asked with his back turned, now rummaging through the cutlery drawer for a spoon.
‘No.’
The thought of eating made the nausea rise in his throat again. Eating anything seemed an impossible task and the chances of it coming back up again were too high for Draco to risk it so soon after an episode.
‘You should eat,’ Scorpius responded tonelessly. Behind him, the microwave buzzed, the sound grating on Draco’s ears.
‘No.’
Scorpius sighed and he suddenly sounded far too old and careworn for his fifteen years. The shame curled in Draco’s stomach seemed to suddenly inflate, crawl up into his throat.
‘I’m going to leave you some out,’ Scorpius said, with conviction.
‘Scorpius,’ Draco began but Scorpius cut him off. He was already pouring the viscous liquid into the only other bowl that had survived the episode without taking any damage.
‘It’s just going to be here, you don’t have to eat it. It’s just in case you get hungry later.’
His tone was so like the one Draco himself used to signal that the discussion had ended that it made Draco’s chest hurt.
The microwave pinged, loud enough to make Draco wince again, and Scorpius took the now steaming bowl of soup and went over to the table. He swept aside some of the shards so that he could place his bowl down.
‘Eat in your room, Scorpius,’ Draco said indistinctly, resting his head in his hands as a fresh wave of pain ripped through his battered skull. ‘I don’t want you cutting yourself by accident.’
Scorpius sighed dramatically again, took his bowl, shot Draco one last concerned glance, and left. They had been through episodes often enough that Scorpius knew Draco needed a little space afterwards. He closed the door quietly behind him, not spiteful enough to slam it and cause Draco even more of a headache. The silence rested heavy on Draco’s shoulders, and he cursed his disorder for ruining yet another evening. He had been supressing the outburst for a while, not wanting to let Scorpius down. They had gone to a natural history museum two days ago, and today, even though Scorpius had been at a friend’s house, Draco had had to run errands. He knew the risk that came with suppressing the outbursts. But when Scorpius was home for the holidays, he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to spend time with his son. Scorpius was almost finished with Hogwarts, which meant Draco would soon see him even less than he did now. Time had a cruel way of seeming to speed up as children got older.
It had been many months since Scorpius had seen the last outburst. It had been during the last holiday, the Christmas one. And it hadn’t been as bad, he hadn’t lost any memories or had his hands cramp up quite as badly as this time. But Scorpius had still seen it. Draco hated it. Scorpius hadn’t complained, he never complained. But Draco didn’t want to scare his son. In his frantic efforts to not become his father, Draco had done his utmost to raise Scorpius without the raised voices or impossible expectations that had haunted his own childhood. Yet there was a growing distance between them nonetheless, and it all came back to the outbursts. And, he knew, his own difficulty with communicating with his son.
Draco tried to get up, pushing up off the couch with his useless, contorted hands. The room seemed to tilt to a forty-five-degree angle, but at least it wasn’t spinning anymore. Slowly and painfully, he made his way over to the kitchen, each step sending waves of agony through his knees, his ankles. But he was able to stay upright, which Draco took as a grim positive. He would be in pain for the next few days, as with every outburst. He picked up the binbag Scorpius had left behind with difficulty and slowly began to pick up the shards on the ground, cursing his disorder for taking his ability to do any magic. A simple reparo would have made the situation so much easier. His hands refused to properly grip the shards and there was a serious risk he would injure himself if he carried on. Draco wondered what his father would have to say about him practically crawling around on the floor with a binbag. Then Draco banished the thought. A childhood spent trying to attain perfection was, unfortunately, not easily cast aside.
Trying to pick up anything small with his hands in the state they were in was impossible. After a few more efforts he gave up. It would have to be tomorrow.
Draco slumped down on the floor and examined the war zone of a kitchen gloomily. There were cracks in the cream wall tiles that would need fixing, and some of the cupboard doors were definitely less firmly attached than they had been a few hours ago. Several of the photographs that had been taped on them had fallen off, and now lay scattered among the shards on the floor. Carefully, Draco picked up the one lying closest to him, struggling to get a hold on it first try and ending up having to balance it on his flat palm. Squinting to make his eyes focus, he found himself looking at a Muggle photograph of Scorpius as a toddler, all big blue eyes and white-blonde locks. In the photo, Scorpius was scooping a large handful of peanut butter from a jar, sat on Astoria’s lap. The photo cut off at her shoulder, but Draco could recall the day in the park perfectly.
Draco placed it carefully back on the floor, away from the shards. Then he pushed himself to his feet and made his way to Scorpius’s room, leaning heavily on the wall to stay upright. He cracked the door to his son’s bedroom open. It was painted sky blue, and Scorpius had taped photos and images cut carefully from magazines and newspapers on the wall beside his bed. A small desk stood by the window, piled high with various dog-eared textbooks and rolls of parchment. The window had cheap battery-powered fairy lights taped up around it, illuminating the room in a soft orange glow. Scorpius was sitting cross-legged on his bed, soup bowl perched precariously on a book in front of him as he leafed absentmindedly through a large textbook. When Scorpius looked up at the creaking of his door, the open expression on his face making him seem suddenly much younger. With regret, Draco thought back to the days when a simple ‘Dad is tired today’ would have sufficed as an explanation.
‘I’ll clean the kitchen tomorrow morning,’ he said, his tongue still dragging over the words like a limping man dragged his injured leg, but it sounded better than before. At least he hoped so.
Scorpius nodded absently and Draco felt helpless.
‘I’m sorry if I scared you,’ Draco said slowly, carefully. His head was throbbing. He could sense the gap widening between them and he had no idea how to bridge it.
Scorpius shrugged.
‘How do you feel now?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ Draco said, far too quickly for it to be believable for either of them. He suspected the way he was leaning heavily on the doorframe wasn’t helping his case either. His head was aching more and more the longer he was upright.
There was a moment of silence between them, a stillness interrupted only by the distant rumbling of cars on the motorway and music from the flat below theirs. Living in a flat near the middle of a large housing block meant they were always being assaulted from noise from somewhere, be it the flats above or below or to the sides. After a while it had all become the normal backing track to their existence.
‘Why do you suppress them?’ Scorpius asked suddenly, meeting Draco’s eyes for the first time since he had entered the room. The reflections in them of the fairy lights made his pale eyes look as though they contained flames.
‘I don’t,’ Draco responded flatly. ‘Not all the time.’
‘I’m not stupid,’ Scorpius said. ‘I read up about PCD outbursts after mum died and I know it’s dangerous to suppress them. And that doing it makes them worse. And yours are always bad. You take so much medication for them that it doesn’t make sense for them to be so bad all the time.’
His tone was laden with irritation, but also concern. Draco could picture his son in the library at Hogwarts, every book on PCD in massive stacks all around him as he tried to learn everything he could. It was a fond, but painful image.
‘You shouldn’t have to see them,’ Draco responded quietly. ‘And I worry about accidently hurting you.’
‘But you won’t,’ Scorpius said, with an edge to his voice. ‘You never do, you just break things or make things move around.’
‘It’s just not something you should have to see.’
Scorpius exhaled noisily and Draco got the impression from his demeanour that he had mentally been preparing what he would say next for some time.
‘But I know how they look, and I know you have them so what’s the difference?’
Draco shook his head. Now wasn’t the time. He didn’t know when the time would be but tonight was not right.
‘Can we talk about it tomorrow, Scorpius?’ he asked quietly. The back of his head had started to throb more insistently, and the fairy lights were irritating his eyes.
Scorpius nodded. He still looked preoccupied, and Draco had no doubt he would press things the next morning. Scorpius could be endlessly stubborn, a trait he’d inherited from Astoria, who had been the most stubborn person he’d ever met.
‘Did you eat any soup?’ Scorpius asked finally, after another beat of heavy silence.
Draco shook his head.
‘I’m going to brush my teeth then head to bed,’ he said instead. ‘Get the blood taste out of my mouth. Don’t stay up too late.’
Scorpius only nodded, eyes back on his book. Draco knew Scorpius well enough to know he was listening, that he was just upset. He tried not to take it to heart.
‘I love you, Scorpius,’ he said quietly.
‘Love you too, dad.’
Draco closed the door softly before making his way slowly to the bathroom, steadying himself against the wall every few seconds. Every step sent flames of pain through his body. Every joint was screaming at him and all he wanted to do was lie down on the hallway carpet and not move for several days.
The light in their cramped bathroom was far too bright and painful, and he squinted up at it. Then he caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror and almost didn’t recognise himself. He shouldn’t be surprised really; he looked the same after almost every episode. There were still streaks of blood on his face, particularly around his mouth and nose. His eyes were bloodshot, his thinning hair was standing out in every direction and his complexion was more grey than simply pale. He looked like someone people crossed the street to avoid.
Draco quickly tore his gaze away from his reflection. The last thing he wanted was for it to start moving or talking to him, like it had done several times in the past. Psychosis was another troubling part of the aftermath of his episodes. It came and went but it was terrifying every time, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t. Scorpius thought he had mentioned it during his last appointment with the specialist. He hadn’t. He hadn’t known how. Draco was deathly afraid of any signs of madness coming out in him. Madness grew like mould on the Black family tree, twisting minds generation after generation. Aunt Bella had been unstable at best, mentally corrupted by her long incarceration. Numerous portraits of long dead family members who had succumbed had hung on the walls of Malfoy Manor. No, Draco was against mentioning the hallucinations to anyone. He wasn’t mad. At least not yet.
Carefully, Draco splashed cold water onto his face, trying to scrub away the remnants of the blood from his skin, turning the water gurgling down the drain pink. Brushing his teeth hurt his mouth and holding the toothbrush was difficult with his still half-cramped up hands but Draco gave it a half-hearted attempt. Anything to get the remaining blood out of his mouth.
Then he staggered down the hallway to his room, dark and blissfully quiet, where he collapsed onto his bed and fell into a confused sleep, punctuated by bewildering, hyper realistic dreams.
In his room down the hallway, Scorpius listened for the quiet click of his father’s bedroom door closing. Only then did he put down the textbook he had been looking at without taking in a word for the last half hour. He turned his gaze instead to the towering apartment blocks and streetlights outside his window. By night it looked strangely stark and alien, like a glimpse of another planet.
The brief conversation he’d had with his father played through his mind. He hated seeing the outbursts, that he couldn’t deny. But Scorpius hated more that his father deliberately made things worse by trying to conceal them from Scorpius. Maybe it had been better that way when Scorpius had been smaller but now that he was older, he hated seeing the toll his father’s disorder took on him as he tried to cope with it on his own. Draco didn’t seem to even know how to talk to Scorpius about them, which meant that while Scorpius knew the rough details of his father’s medical history, he knew very little in terms of specifics.
The one today had been especially scary. He hadn’t told Draco how bad it had really been, how violently his limbs had jerked and slammed off the floor over and over. How he’d screamed and screamed, head wrenched back painfully and bursts of rogue magic cracking tiles and smashing plate after plate while the cupboard doors had slammed open and shut. Scorpius hadn’t even seen it coming. One second Draco had been grating cheese, the next second he had collapsed, cracking his head loudly and painfully on the floor. Scorpius hadn’t had the time to do anything other than take refuge by the couch as things smashed and exploded around him. And then the crushing silence of after, when his father had been unconscious for what had felt like an eternity. However, the part Scorpius hated most was the first few minutes after Draco woke up, when his father didn’t seem to recognise anyone and wasn’t able to move properly. It made Scorpius feel sick and strange inside.
He took his half-empty bowl and made his way quietly to the kitchen. The binbag was sitting innocently among the many shards of porcelain, a sad remnant of Draco’s efforts. Scorpius put the bowl down beside the sink and examined the wreckage critically. There was no denying the fact it looked as though a bomb had gone off. Not for the first time, he wished he was of age so he could cast a simple spell that would return the kitchen to order and make the plates whole again. Instead, he picked up the blood-stained tea towel from the sofa, threw it in the washing machine and, after casting about wildly for a sensible starting point, began to wipe the remnants of the pasta mingled with shards from the hob. Then he placed the bowl of soup he’d prepared for Draco back in the fridge, though it was doubtful Draco would be eating much of anything the next few days. He could hear the upstairs neighbours arguing, so loud through the thin walls and floor that it seemed as though they were in the room with him.
After he finished cleaning the hob, Scorpius fetched a dustpan and brush from beside the fridge and made a start on the shards littered all over the kitchen floor. He would be careful and his father likely wouldn’t even remember telling Scorpius to leave it. He also likely wouldn’t recall telling Scorpius that they’d finally talk about all Draco’s problems surrounding the outbursts in the morning. They’d been dancing around the issue for years now. They would most likely continue in the same way for a few more at least.
Something on the floor caught his attention. It was a photograph, one which had been taped up on the cupboard next to the fridge. A younger version of himself could be seen in it, sat on his mother’s lap. He was clinging determinedly to a jar of peanut butter that seemed to be the size of his head. It was one of his father’s favourite photos, which was why it had been up in the first place. It always made Draco smile when he looked at it.
Scorpius looked around the kitchen, at all the photos. Most of them were of Scorpius at various ages, grinning down from the cupboards in a multitude of school uniforms, in front of museum exhibits or sitting between his parents in photos taken by friends.
Things would be alright, Scorpius thought. Hopefully they would talk things through the next day. Hopefully Draco’s recovery would only take a few days. Hopefully they would finally talk about the things they’d been avoiding for years.
But deep down Scorpius knew they wouldn’t. Draco would keep avoiding the issue, Scorpius would keep feeling bad for pushing him to talk or allow him to help. His father would not get better. There was no cure for his disorder.