#c:dm

After the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco was in rough shape. Magic frazzled and frayed by overexertion, exhaustion, and emotional fatigue, the boy was admitted to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Placed in the Janus Thickey ward for long term magical rehabilitation, Draco spent a week listening to some nut job screaming every time the lights were turned down at night and there was only so much a bloke recently released from the Dark Lord's tutelage whose father was facing charges in front of the Wizengamot next week and who could physically feel his magic wandering out of his fingertips and starting small, blue fires when he allowed himself to rest could take.

And of course it was Potter.

It was always Potter. And of course the mediwitches placed him there because Merlin was punishing Draco for every awful thing he'd done over the past year and, gods, he was so stupid to think he was free from his old life, so stupid to think he could run away from what he was, so stupid to think he could build himself into someone worthy of a single word from the lips of those who saved him, saved all of them.

And if you asked, Draco wouldn't admit to singing his mother's lullaby across the thin barrier between their rooms at night. He'd never tell you of inquiring after Potter when the mediwitches delivered potions, took his vital information down, attempted to bundle his magic back into his physical body. He certainly wouldn't tell you of the night Potter's whimpering was huskier than normal, when he used the latent magic pooling below his navel to spell himself unseeable, when he slipped into Potter's room. He'd never tell you that he cried right there by Potter's bedside, sobbed his throat raw and clutched at his hand and remembered the way that hand pulled him up onto a broomstick once.