Chapter Text
A doctor should never get this close. Draco thunked his head against his diagnostic manual and then threw himself back in his chair. Staring at the pockmarked ceiling he used the tips of his wingbacked shoes to twist his desk chair around and around in a circle.
He’d moved into this home office during the summer. Once he’d taken up what had been his father’s position.
It was amazing how the holiday season will reveal every difficult truth about yourself.
His father had had this patient before him.
Draco ground his teeth.
Before his father had had a heart attack and died two Christmases ago he had made Draco promise - cross his heart and hope to die - that he would continue to look in on the orphan who had captured both his sympathies and his attention.
Orphans, Lucius Malfoy pointed out, are notoriously ignored in psychiatric hospitals. He was well now, but what about the future?
Especially orphans whose family is as deranged as the Dursleys. So married to the idea of "normal" that a tiny, helpless babe in arms foisted on them by social services because Petunia's sister had died in a car accident became a reason to hide the boy away in a cupboard and pretend he didn’t exist.
Harry had been abused for the majority of his childhood while in the dubious care of his vile aunt and uncle. They'd even gotten their son to join in.
The hallucinations had started when he was in his first year at secondary school. He was still living with the Dursleys, as it was a day school but his nights had been unthinkable.
He had been found wandering outside of Stonewall High and babbling about witches, wizards, giants and a unicorn that was eaten by someone called Voldemort. The social worker the school had contacted had simply documented and sent him back.
In second year Harry had fallen off the school roof, getting two puncture wounds in his arm from a pitchfork on the way down and insisted to the A&E personnel that he’d gotten them fighting a giant basilisk. That had earned him a weeklong stint in the hospital where he’d gotten a friendly janitor with a long beard to bring him packages of mixed-up jellybeans and he’d insisted he could find flavours like earwax. The medical notes from that visit had been lost suspiciously - found years later shoved behind a filing cabinet.
In Harry’s third year he’d regaled his teachers with stories of his godfather, Sirius Black. It had taken until just past Easter for his English professor, a rake-thin man with kind eyes named Remus Lupin, to suss out that Sirius Black did not, in actual fact, exist as a person and was wholly built from Harry's imagination.
They’d recommended counselling at the school level to start. Vernon Dursley, a whale of a man - wider than he was tall, protested that any of his hard-won tax dollars go to support his struggling nephew through council mental health services. Then he'd fought with them every step of the way, delaying the inevitable.
And so Harry had been kept from help for one more year.
The NHS had finally called in Lucius during his fourth year at school, when a nearly insensible Harry had been brought in talking about fighting a dragon of all things. He was burnt down one side of his body, bruised up the other and kept mumbling about how a Dumble Door needed to give him his flying broom back.
Lucius had been in a rage.
He’d read the files, screamed at all the adults who had let the orphan down over the years before he’d rolled up his sleeves and started working.
Harry, for all that he was living inside his delusions, was a sweet lad according to his father. Forgiving, brave and set to battle against any perceived injustice. He would happily prattle on about his friend Ron who defended him whenever he needed him or his friend Hermione who knew the answer to whatever question his mind would ask.
He’d concocted quite the fantasy world for himself to fight off the physical and mental abuse he’d endured.
A giant who had given his bully of a cousin a tail just before he started at Stonewall High.
A house that became a home with the Burrow. Something about weasels and a mother who would worry about him being too skinny and tried to feed him his weight in food during the holidays while he was in reality starving in a cupboard under the stairs.
A castle for a school where he had interesting classes and magic that he could control when he waved the polished holly stick he always kept in the back pocket of his jeans to fix anything and everything.
And a terrible evil that must be fought year in and year out and only got worse as he got older.
Years five through seven were the worst of it.
Draco would come home from his elite public school and walk into a darkened living room, the curtains drawn against the sunset as his father sobbed into his palms. A file with a picture of a boy with bright green eyes and shaggy black hair before him. Lucius was putting up a good fight, but Harry was being lost.
New medication combinations that didn’t work. Disastrous group therapy sessions where Harry would press his lips together into a tight line and say not a word or babble and try to recruit his fellow patients into the Phoenix Order. Consultations with experts.
It was only as Draco left for university that his father had burst into the house like starfire and announced that Harry had finally admitted that Hogwarts didn’t exist. He’d waltzed Draco around the living room humming under his breath until he’d scooped Draco into a giant hug that nearly squeezed the breath right out of him.
A year of further monitoring and Harry was gone.
His father had been so pleased. So very very pleased. Harry, med-compliant and mentally sound again, was off in London busily pursuing his adult life.
Draco had gone to university, gotten his degree in medicine and psychiatry and was busily finishing his residency when his father died.
He swallowed harshly against the lump in his throat as he remembered the paperwork. The funeral. His mother’s weeping. And then the quiet knock at the door. He’d opened it, eyes red-rimmed and prickly to find a short, slight person there. Round glasses and green eyes with a mop of black hair that stuck up in all directions.
His words had been quiet as he stared at Draco as though he’d seen a ghost.
“Hey.”
Draco had just stared right back at him. Only noticing after his mother had called that he was standing on the steps of his home, a week after Christmas, with a virtual stranger on his stoop and letting all the hot air out.
The other gave a crooked, shy smile. Ducking his head just a bit. Just for a beat and looked up through his fringe. A lightning bolt scar from where his cousin had hit him with a truck poking out between the clumps of curls that hung over it.
“I was sorry to hear about your dad.”
They stared at each other for a few moments, Draco’s mother calling again about the draught from the door before Harry had nodded, given him a shy smile, and turned to go.
“Wait.”
That he had called out after Harry had shocked Draco. Green eyes as deep as pine boughs came back to meet his and a raised eyebrow had followed.
“Would you like to come in for some Christmas cake?”
It had been the beginning for them.
Draco had been desperate and clung to a person who both knew Lucius Malfoy and had as many stories about his life as anyone else in his family.
The way Lucius would listen, nodding along as he strung paperclips together into a chain then unclipped them one at a time and lined them up along his desk.
How Lucius would check in with the nurses on how Harry was doing, boiled sweets in the side pocket of his medical coat.
How he made sure that when Harry left for London he had access to a new psychiatrist and Lucius’ office number if he decided he didn’t like them and wanted a different doctor.
How Harry had never had a father and that Lucius had been as close as he’d ever come to getting one.
Harry had a new tidbit about Lucius nearly every time they saw one another. So many that Draco started writing them down in a journal and bringing it with him whenever Harry called him up to meet.
Coffee dates at the cafe around the corner from the hospital turned into Harry showing up with his favourite chocolatines and a flat white to his flat when he’d forget to eat while studying case files.
Soft kisses where Draco would press Harry against a lamppost outside of Harry’s flat turned into Harry delicately taking all of Draco’s clothes off before taking Draco on his kitchen floor.
And yet it was only a few years later that Harry arose one day, joggers tented in the front and lopsided across his hips in the morning to pick up a single chopstick from their takeaway the night before and say the word ‘accio’ to try and summon his glasses across the room.
Draco’s heart had sank but Harry hadn’t noticed anything amiss and had gone to wash up after dropping a kiss on his temple. Just giving a light laugh and saying the spell would work better next time, when he grabbed his own wand, rather than mistakenly taking Draco’s.
Two weeks later he’d tried casting lavarops to clean the dishes and Draco had finally been able to persuade him to go back to his psychiatrist to get his medications adjusted.
A month later he’d been admitted into Nightengale Hospital just in time for Guy Fawkes Day and hadn’t come out since.
And now it was Christmas.
Draco padded down the hallway between his office and bedroom, feet sinking into the plush carpet. He passed pictures of himself and Harry on vacation. Frozen in a moment in front of a waterfall or cheerfully trading spoonfuls of gelato at Fortescue’s when they were in Rome.
Harry’s clothes still hung limply on hangers in the closet waiting for his return.
The cheap teabags from Tesco that Harry preferred sat in their dented box on the counter next to the kettle.
And Draco felt he might go mad himself if he couldn’t have Harry back making spaghetti on the stove and splattering Bolognese sauce that Draco would have to scrub up later. He struggled over a lump in his throat as he pulled on a dove grey jumper to wear under a black peacoat and made sure that his Oyster card was in his wallet.
The hum of the underground was soothing as the cars rattled around him. A tube of humanity running underneath London. Draco sighed, allowing his head to touch the window behind his seat, only rousing himself when the Marylebone station was called.
He tucked his chin down into his coat as he fought against the stinging rain and the press of Christmas all around him. The scent of pine needles wove in between the pedestrians and out around Draco as he finally made the last push to get into the hospital.
Being a doctor made it easier to get in to see Harry.
Make an appointment.
Drop your valuables, pens, keys into the bin.
Make sure that you’re wearing slip on shoes so you don’t have to rid yourself of your laces or be forced to wear the rubber shoes kept for those who had forgotten.
Pass through the first door.
A buzz, an alarm.
A grave figure staring at you from behind shatterproof glass before another buzzer sounds and they let you through the second door.
Lift your arms, give a small turn, be led down a corridor to a visitor’s room.
Five or six other patients were sitting at different tables. Harry, impossible hair sticking straight up and green eyes nearly hidden behind smudged lenses, looked up with a smile.
“Hi, Draco.”
“Hullo, Harry.”
Draco felt himself shove his hands further into his pockets as he stared at Harry. Strong fingers gave the cards in front of him a quick shuffle.
“Want to play some exploding snap?”
“What are the rules like?” Draco responded, sliding easily into the chair across from Harry.
“Just like regular snap but with regularly scheduled explosions.” Harry paused for a moment. “I guess without wands we can just poke the cards with our fingers and pretend they explode.”
Draco sighed and slid down the chair a bit, noticing as he did that Harry was giving him a measuring glance.
“Happy Christmas, Harry. Thanks for visiting with me today.”
Harry smiled back like the sun. “Happy Christmas, Draco. I’m happy to be here.”