Harry returns to a dark, silent house. Though it’s dark outside, it’s barely nine thirty in the evening and he wonders where Draco can be. Tired and uncomfortable and still a bit damp, Harry frowns. The living room and kitchen are both empty, save for the smell of toast and an unlaced pair of shoes sitting next to the sofa.

“Draco?” he calls ahead as he drags himself up the stairs and along the landing, but there’s no answer.

He can’t help thinking that actually, if Draco has gone to bed without him, it’s sort of a good sign; he must feel pretty comfortable and... stuff. Harry thinks it’s been far too long since he last slept, and he also thinks that particular sentiment is becoming all too familiar.

Anyway. He rubs his eyes, yawns, and grabs the door handle, musing blurrily. They haven’t talked more about the drawer and its inevitable significance, but Harry knows there are now several pairs of trousers, boxers, and socks in there, as well as an array of pastel and dark-coloured sweaters and assorted bits and pieces that only Draco understands.

He also knows that what he thinks of as Draco’s wet-dream overcoat is hanging in his wardrobe, and he knows this because he has tried it on in front of the mirror and concluded that unfortunately, he can’t pull it off.

He steps into the room and the soft blue light from his crackle-glass sphere immediately soothes his tired eyes. Draco is lying on top of the sheets with his head at the foot of the bed, his long, bare legs sprawled out across the pale linen, and his eyes closed. He’s wearing his usual white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, arms stretched out at his sides in beautiful abandon and relaxed fingers curled ever-so-slightly toward his palms.

Harry stares, dry-mouthed, fighting the feeling that he’s intruding in his own bedroom; he knows it’s silly but he’s never seen Draco so unguarded and he can’t decide whether to admire him or love him or protect him but whichever way, it’s as though a tiny sharp seed is being pressed into his heart, forcing everything to swell and hurt and ache around it.

And he’s only lying there, Harry reasons from the doorway, but his eyes are closed and his breathing is soft and his hair is shiny and glowing almost silver in the blue light. That light is soft but does not forgive the many marks on Draco’s skin or the faint, pale stubble on his chin. Not perfect. Thank god.

Taking one step into the room, Harry smiles as grey eyes open and Draco’s nose wrinkles.

“No,” he says flatly as Harry approaches the bed, and his heart sinks. “You smell like pond. And fish.”

Harry has to concede that point, because even his average nose can pick out the mildewy smell of his skin and clothes. Draco doesn’t move an inch, and Harry itches to touch him. “And when I don’t?”

Draco smiles and closes his eyes again. “When you don’t, you can come to bed.”

And even though it’s not even ten o’clock yet, and it’s his bed, and once again he’s essentially being bossed around by a Malfoy, Harry hastens to comply. He leaves his dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, turns the squeaky dial in the shower to the hottest setting and scrubs himself all over, using a generous amount of Draco’s fancy citrus-scented shampoo to cleanse the mysterious crunchiness out of his hair.

In a cloud of fragrant steam and a towel, Harry drifts back into the bedroom to find that Draco has not moved from his decadent sprawl. Warm and clean and sleepy, he’s drifting in a delicious haze and could quite easily crawl between the sheets and pull Draco with him, but something about the day they’ve had makes him want to take just... something from this moment of fragile calm to keep with him.

Silently, he kneels by the foot of the bed and looks down at the pale eyelids and lashes until a water droplet splashes from his dripping hair onto Draco’s skin and those eyes snap open. Slate warms to pewter as Draco regards him upside down, the rest of his face expressionless. Not that it matters; those eyes always tell him what Draco can’t say.

“That better?”

“You smell like me,” Draco observes.

“Better than pond and fish,” Harry whispers, reaching out and sliding his hands up Draco’s arms to his shoulders, damp palms dragging on smooth skin and soft cotton.

“Goes without saying.”

Goes without saying, Harry thinks absently, should be Draco’s motto.

The flickering blue light illuminates the brief flash of a smile and Harry suddenly has, right in front of him, what he’s craved all day. Carefully, and with a tenderness that surprises him, he reaches out and cradles Draco’s chin, tipping his head back and leaning down, dripping hair and all, to fit their mouths together in a slow, upside-down kiss.

The last thing he sees before he closes his eyes is the slide of blond strands across Draco’s forehead as he lifts and arches against Harry’s mouth. The angle is different and a little messy but not without merit, drawing a satisfied sound from both as lazy tongues flick together and bottom lips are enclosed and caressed at the same time.

For once, Harry doesn’t know what he wants. His energy is somewhere on the floor with his discarded clothes, but he doesn’t want to stop.

So he doesn’t.

Pausing to lick warm shower-water from their lips, Harry once more dips into the hot mouth below his. He slides his free hand onto Draco’s chest, fingers splayed over the strong, erratic heartbeat and immediately covered and held in place by a cool palm.

His thumb strokes under Draco’s swollen lower lip and drags over saliva-slick points of fine stubble, not needing to demand the contact of Draco’s mouth but doing so anyway, each smothered sigh and caught breath a balm against insecurities stretched thin and painful.

He kisses Draco until he’s trembling and opening his eyes. Demanding more in a harsh whisper and submitting to only a minute or so of further unhurried kissing before he’s rolling onto one side, hair everywhere and eyes burning. He hauls Harry onto the bed by his wrist, forcing him to scramble on his knees over the sheets to align their bodies, and immediately he reaches out for Draco’s mouth, mumbling his hazy approval as a hand encloses both of them and all he has to do is keep breathing.

Harry’s arousal is a slow, languorous hum in his veins, and the force of his release takes him by surprise; he spills himself with a gasp and a shudder over Draco’s hand and forces his eyes open just in time to watch Draco’s eyes as he loses control seconds later.

“You’re a horrible tease,” Draco whispers, as soon as he gets his breath back.

“No... I just like kissing you.”

“Sap,” Draco insists, with as much derision as he can muster. Which, Harry thinks, is not very much at all, considering the sleepy half-smile and the fingers tracing patterns on Harry’s bare hip.

As soon as they curl together under the sheets—the right way up—Harry feels the heavy comfort of sleep at last begin to claim him.

“He’s gone home now, you know,” Draco offers into the back of Harry’s neck.

“Hmm?”

“Marley. He’s afraid of the painter and decorator. You’ve got to feel for someone who’s afraid of a man with a paintbrush and a regional accent.”

Harry smiles against his pillow. “’Night, Draco.”

**~*~**

The next morning, with Aquiline’s permission, Harry takes Clive over to the Manor before nine am. They have both agreed that it’s best if he’s not there during the experimental treatment; even though he’s too young to understand the specifics of what’s going on, the little boy has a tendency to pick up on distress and Harry thinks it’s far better for all concerned if he spends the morning with Narcissa and Zeus.

Mrs Malfoy accepts this proposal with what Harry suspects is eagerness, but it’s difficult to tell with her. Flimby is summoned and, as Harry leaves, he watches the blonde woman, the little boy and the rebellious not-dog sharing an impressive Continental breakfast, the likes of which Clive has never before seen if his wide eyes and stacked plate are anything to go by.

Aquiline’s permission and a last-minute pep talk are about all Harry gets out of his in-demand mentor before she disappears into yet another meeting. She makes a fair point when she reminds Harry that the spells he’s planning to cast are well within his abilities, and she’s also uncomfortably close to the truth when she suggests that the reason Harry is so nervous about the whole thing is that he’s had almost two months as Romilda’s Healer and he’s perhaps a little too invested in the outcome.

When Harry enters her room accompanied by Nurse Bates, Romilda is sleeping. She looks peaceful, fingers curled around the sheets and hair spilling over her face, and not only that, she doesn’t need to be awake for this, so Harry makes the call to leave her be.

“Congelo Sedo, cast and hold,” Harry instructs, turning to the nurse and she nods, wand drawn. “Please,” he adds after a moment, and she smiles.

As soon as the stasis is in place and Nurse Bates’ face is set in concentration, Harry does one last mental run-through of his casting sequence.

‘Don’t doubt yourself,’ Draco’s words echo inside his head, and Harry glances down at his wrist.

“OK. Here we go, then,” he mutters to himself and sets to work.

**~*~**

Having completed the sequence and run his usual diagnostics twice over, just to check, Harry is encouraged that the spells are holding and allows himself to concentrate on his other patients. He plans to check back on Romilda as soon as morning rounds are completed, by which time he hopes she will be awake and able to tell him how she feels.

In the meantime, Nurse Bates has offered to check on her from time to time. Kelly’s level of enthusiasm and gratitude to have been allowed to assist with ‘proper Healer stuff’ is humbling, and Harry is almost able to forget anything she may or may not think about his backside.

“I know it hurts, Mrs Moore, but if you can stay very still, I’ll be finished a lot quicker,” Harry advises his patient, as she twitches away from the healing but stinging touch of his wand. His brisk tone belies the inward wince that comes with each touch to her raw skin; he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to causing pain, even when it’s all for the patient’s own good.

“Sorry... Healer.” She grits her teeth and stills with some effort. “I’m trying.”

“I know,” he soothes. “Nearly done.”

“Where do... these people learn... Dark spells?” she rasps, eyes tight shut. “In my day... in my day if you wanted to rob a shop you’d just... Incarcerous and a... M-memory Charm.”

Harry pauses for a moment and she opens one bloodshot eye. She’s trying to joke with him. Fucking hell. Admiration for the old battleaxe rises and Harry smiles at her as he attempts to finish the work as quickly as possible.

“Dark magic is everywhere, I’m afraid.” Harry inhales the stale-sweat-pine-soft air of the ward, pensive. “At least we can—”

“Sorry to interrupt, Healer Potter,” cuts in Nurse Bates from the door.

Conscious of Mrs Moore’s discomfort, Harry doesn’t stop healing the lesions in her skin but addresses the nurse without looking up. “What’s the matter?”

“There’s something wrong,” she says, voice strained. “You need to examine Ms Vane as soon as you’ve got a minute, I just...” she trails off, clearly not wanting to say any more in front of another patient, and cold dread makes his heart hammer against his ribcage.

“Did you run the diagnostic sequence I showed you?” Harry asks, keeping his voice even with a massive effort, and focusing hard on the task in front of him. He can’t leave in the middle of this, much as he wants to right now.

“Yes. Healer, I think the progression has been, um... encouraged.”

Mrs Moore’s squirming is almost non-existent and she’s looking at Kelly over Harry’s shoulder with interest. Horrified, Harry manages to heal the last two wounds in record time. He turns.

“Are you saying I’ve speeded it up?”

Kelly nods, anguished.

“Oh.” Harry scrubs a hand over his face, fingers just about keeping in the ‘Oh, fuck’ that rises up in his throat. “Would you excuse me, Mrs Moore? I’ll make sure someone comes back and checks on you very soon...”

He doesn’t catch the affirmative response but is out into the corridor and slamming into Romilda’s room before he knows what he’s doing. She’s still unconscious and looks otherwise perfectly fine, but as he furiously casts the well-worn charms he realises with a sickening jolt that the deterioration has indeed accelerated alarmingly and is continuing to do so.

“Can you get Healer Aquiline?” Harry asks the nurse in desperation.

She said she was busy this morning, but she also said he should fetch her if he needed her, and this definitely qualifies.

As he waits, fingers clenched around the cold metal of the foot-board, all he can think is that he did this. It’s his fault. She was... well, she wasn’t fine, but she was hanging on, until he came in with his experimental spells and now...

Harry stares at the flickering fields he’s cast around her motionless body. She’s dying.

Aquiline appears minutes later looking harassed but businesslike, and she fixes Harry with a steady, dark stare that reminds him to breathe.

Within seconds, she has assessed the situation and turned her eyes to Harry. “It appears that the curse itself has reacted unexpectedly to part of the treatment.” She pauses, and when she speaks again, her words are pointed and deliberate. “This was the risk we took, Healer Potter. All of us. You and I, Nurse Bates, and the patient. Do you remember what I said to you about taking risks?”

Harry forces himself to hold eye contact and grips his wand tightly. “That I won’t always get it right?”

“Yes. But this was not one of these times. Your choice was the correct one—even though you could not save your patient, you were giving her a fighting chance.”

Throat constricted, Harry nods, not really hearing the words. He turns to watch the blue energy field as it twists and fades, and still she does not wake. She’s dying. Kelly had suspected it, he had known it, and now Aquiline is confirming it but telling him it’s not his fault. Harry finds that impossible to swallow; all he can see is the shadow of this horrible, twisted, desiccating curse racing down upon a person who’s far too young to die, and there’s nothing, fucking nothing he can do to get her out of the way.

Unless there is.

“Healer Aquiline, do you think we could try some...” Harry falls silent at her quelling expression.

“We have no known counter-curses. She has hours, that’s all. She may have some conscious time left... I’d advise you not to waste it submitting her to pointless treatments.”

“OK. God, I... alright.” Harry nods briskly, hoping the stern Healer cannot see the way his hands are balled into painful fists beneath the cover of his long green sleeves. “I just... I thought this would work or not work, I suppose. I didn’t think my treatment would...” he sighs.

Aquiline’s eyes soften momentarily as she glances over at Romilda and then back to Harry. “The Dark Arts are, by nature, unpredictable. We don’t always win. I believe that you did your best, Healer. I’m sorry about your patient. Truly.”

“Thank you,” he manages, and then with a final incline of the dark head, she’s gone.

“Where’s her son?” Kelly asks suddenly.

Stomach turning over, Harry glances at her; she’s still hanging back in the doorway, purple streaks glowing under the harsh lighting.

Clive. Fucking hell.

“He’s... I’m going to go and get him,” Harry replies and Disapparates on the spot.

**~*~**

He wavers for a moment outside the gate, having chosen Apparation on instinct, but wondering now if he should save ten minutes by Apparating back to the hospital and using the Floo, but then the gates slide open without a word and Harry makes a snap decision. He sets out down the drive at a brisk stomp and the cold wind whips through his hair and flaps his robes around his legs.

Sadness, disappointment and frustration combine to create this hard ball in his stomach and just this once, he wishes he had something to kick. He tells himself he was listening to Aquiline’s words, at least he heard them, even if they didn’t register, but he’s still fucking furious with himself. He’s lost patients before, but not like this. Not because of something he’s done.

“Fuck it,” he spits into the cold air of the empty grounds. “Fuck it... god!”

When he spies the slink of blue and green feathers in the middle distance, his heart lifts.

Come on then, he thinks, hands in pockets and head down. Come on. Just give me an excuse.

But his foot doesn’t connect with Evil Peacock because, for reasons that Harry can’t explain, the spiteful little bugger doesn’t make any attempt to approach him. The off-kilter crest bobs as the bird tips its head on one side and regards Harry from across the lawn with tiny black eyes, but Evil Peacock stays exactly where he is, and it doesn’t matter how many times Harry looks over his shoulder, he doesn’t move from the spot.

Harry shakes his head, and it hurts. Scowling, he makes for the front of the house, where he’s dismayed to see Fyzal, Marley and Draco standing out on the front steps. Fyz is smoking a cigarette and flinging his arms out to the sides in some kind of demonstration, Marley is laughing and prodding Draco in the ribs, and Draco is folding his arms and shaking his head, which is reassuring in its own little way.

Marley sees him first. He rakes a hand through his shiny hair and grins. Until he notices Harry’s expression.

“Wow, who died?”

Harry closes his eyes briefly and when he opens them again, Draco has stepped closer and is searching his face intently, concern written all over his sharp features.

“Marley, don’t be a prick,” interrupts Fyz, grabbing the younger man’s sleeve. “Someone probably did die,” he adds helpfully, before shooting Harry a look and dragging a cringing Marley inside the house.

Harry watches them numbly, almost amused that Fyz, within weeks of meeting Marley, has managed to adopt this pseudo-parental role, even though Harry doubts if he has even five years on Marley.

“It didn’t work,” Draco surmises, keeping a careful, respectful distance. He leans against his favourite pillar and gazes at Harry. Waiting.

“No,” Harry chokes, feeling silly and small and suddenly like he’s trying not to cry in front of Draco. “It didn’t. I made it worse. There’s nothing... I need to get Clive now.”

Because he’s a professional. Not a very good one, apparently, but all the same. And his patient deserves to hold her son before... Harry swallows hard.

“Harry,” Draco says, voice low.

Harry blinks hotly and watches Draco push a hand through his hair, and then reach out for a fraction of a second, dropping the outstretched hand to his side, grey eyes uncertain.

“I need to...” Harry points vaguely at the front doors.

Suddenly, Draco’s expression snaps from hesitation to exasperation and he wraps cold fingers around Harry’s wrist, draws him close without a word and leans back against the pillar with Harry pulled tightly against him. Harry protests against the strong arms wrapping around him for all of five seconds before he acquiesces and drops his head to Draco’s shoulder, exhaling hard against the pale fabric and inhaling the comforting scent.

“Don’t say anything,” Harry pleads, and it’s almost a whisper. He doesn’t want to hear any reassuring words, were Draco inclined to begin offering them.

“What makes you think there’s anything I could say?” Draco murmurs against his ear and holds him tighter.

“Just for a minute, then,” he mumbles into warm cashmere, guilt-flooded even as he allows Draco to comfort him. The wind lifts his hair and stings his skin as it slants into the portico. Harsh.

“That’s all you’re getting, anyway. I don’t want my staff thinking I’ve gone soft.”

Harry laughs, and it hurts. He braces one hand against the cool stone and seeks out warm skin with the other.

Just one more minute.

**~*~**

“You’re back soon, is my mummy better?” Clive asks, looking up from his spot on Narcissa’s knee, picture book forgotten, when he spots Harry.

Harry stands frozen to the spot as every word in existence flies out of his head, perhaps never to return. In desperation, he catches Narcissa’s eyes over the top of Clive’s head, and silently pleads for help. Ice blue eyes widen in horror as the message hits home.

“When?” she whispers.

“Soon.”

Narcissa smoothes the fine hair with gentle fingers. “Your mother needs to see you,” she says simply.

After a moment, Clive seems to nod his assent, and he climbs down to the floor, allowing Harry to scoop him up easily.

“Thank you.”

Narcissa inclines her head. Her sudden words stop Harry at the door. “Don’t—don’t lie to him. Mr Potter,” she adds, and then falls silent.

Harry nods and leaves as quickly as possible, striding through the twisting corridors and out into the grounds. He crunches down the gravel path with Clive in his arms, head spinning.

“Is she better, Harry?” he asks again.

Harry sighs. He doesn’t know how to talk to a child about death. Having seen an obscene number of people die in his relatively short life has done nothing to prepare him for the innocent question of a four-year-old boy who’s worried about his mummy.

Don’t lie. Keep walking.

“No, Clive, I’m afraid she’s not. She’s very ill and she needs you to be with her right now,” he says.

Clive says nothing, but he turns his face into the shoulder of Harry’s robes and takes small, snuffly breaths.

As the wind rips his face raw and threatens to blow his glasses off, Harry feels tempted to join him.

**~*~**

She doesn’t cry when he tells her.

As Aquiline had predicted, Romilda does indeed regain consciousness halfway through the afternoon. He manages to pry a silent, clingy Clive away from her long enough to explain, haltingly, what has happened. That they have even used reverse-diagnostics to work out exactly which part of the original tangle of spells caused the reaction, though she waves away his pointless information, asks him how long, and then doesn’t speak for a long time.

Eventually, he returns to his other patients, throwing himself into his work. Avoiding Kelly’s sympathetic glances and accepting her endless cups of good, hot coffee.

“I’m sorry, Romilda,” he keeps saying. Can’t seem to stop saying it, in fact.

Funny, those words. ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s what you’re supposed to say when someone’s loved one has died, or when you’re just plain out of options. ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do.’ Harry’s said that countless times before, but this is perhaps the first time he’s meant it as an atonement as well as an expression of professional sympathy.

It’s my fault, he wants to say. I’m sorry, Romilda. It’s my fault. But he knows better than that. They had spent almost an entire day during their first week with the St Mungo’s legal team, learning that above all else, Healers must never say ‘It’s my fault’ to their patients.

He doesn’t know if she blames him or not; she did sign the bit of parchment, after all. But he gave it to her, and he made it sound like a good idea. She trusted him. People always trust him, that’s the problem, Harry thinks. It’s with a mammoth effort that he pushes away the images of those lost in the war, those he tells himself could have been saved.

This, he tells himself firmly, is not the same. And even if it were, self-flagellation is hardly going to help.

When his shift ends, Harry hesitates only for a moment before slipping back into the room. Dragging his heavy robes over his head, he conjures a chair for himself and settles in it in his scruffy black trousers and thin t-shirt. Almost without thinking, he starts casting diagnostics and energy fields as he has done so many times before, and the familiar colours and scents are comforting.

“You still here?”

He startles, looking into pained dark eyes as they blink open. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You’re going to sit there until I die?” she says baldly, resting a possessive hand on Clive’s head as he, quite miraculously, appears to be sleeping.

“If you want to put it like that.”

She attempts a snort and then flickers out again. Harry leans back in his chair and fiddles with the string around his wrist, his own breathing seeming inappropriately loud in the small room.

After half an hour or so, Kelly pads into the room and hands Harry a fresh cup of coffee in silence. She looks at the sleeping pair and at Harry’s crumpled robes on the floor beside him.

“Because there’s no one else to wait,” he says, answering her unvoiced question and lifting his head to meet her eyes through the coffee steam.

“You... you’re a good person, Harry,” she says eventually, and it’s the first time she’s dropped the formal address, even though he’s asked her to on repeated occasions.

She leaves the room before he can respond.

“He said he wanted... he said he wanted us to grow old together.” Harry looks up as the sudden words and their chilling meaning hit home. “And I wanted to have a life, so I left. I suppose he sort of got his way.”

“You’ve got to tell me his name, Romilda. What if he does this to someone else?”

She sighs and stares at him for a long time before she gives in and supplies a name Harry has never heard before; he scribbles it on a bit of parchment and stuffs it in his pocket. Ron will know who to give it to, and Harry knows he’ll be happy to use his influence as a head of division to speed things along.

When Clive snuffles awake, she lifts her head slightly and murmurs to him for a long time. Harry stares out of the window into the black night and feels like an intruder, but she doesn’t ask him to go, nor does he really want to.

As he glances around the room, his eyes fall on two glossy brochures sitting on top of the bedside cabinet. They’ve been turned face down, away from curious little eyes, but Harry can read the upside-down writing on the spines well enough. They’re Ministry publications—guides to children’s homes and the adoption system. Harry’s gut twists at the realisation that, if she’s been doing research or making arrangements, she knew this was coming.

“Do you know how much I love you?” she whispers to her son, and Harry closes his eyes. Outside, the rain begins to fall.

It’s after nine by the time Kelly reappears to tell Harry that she’s going off shift and to ask him if he needs anything. He doesn’t, but at Romilda’s slurred request, she holds out her hand to Clive and takes him down the corridor to the bathroom.

He pulls his chair a little closer to the bed and suddenly she’s gripping his wrist with a strength she hasn’t had for weeks, and staring fiercely into his eyes.

“You didn’t have any parents, did you? They died, didn’t they?”

Heart pounding, Harry can’t look away from her. “Erm, yeah, they did.”

“So you understand... it’s important. Harry...” She pauses, eyes burning, and then says something entirely unexpected: “Promise me you’ll find a home for Clive.”

“What?” Harry gapes. “I—”

She shakes her head against the pillow and those fingers only grip tighter. “Promise me. I know you have an important job, I’m not asking you to do it yourself, but I don’t know what else to do. Please. Promise me you’ll find him somewhere safe and comfortable to grow up, people that’ll love him. Promise me. Now.”

Harry swallows dryly, caught up in guilt and panic and the desperation in his patient’s eyes. “If I can only...”

“Say, ‘I promise, Romilda’.”

The field around her glows intensely bright and Harry thinks his heart might explode. “I promise, Romilda,” he whispers.

“I knew I could count on you,” she mumbles with the ghost of a smile, and the bright field flickers and fades. Her eyes fall closed and the grip on Harry’s arm falls away, leaving behind a warm, tight feeling around his wrist. When he glances down at it, there’s a thin band of skin that’s much paler than the rest, and that definitely hadn’t been there before.

He doesn’t have much time to think about it, though; the light is almost gone.

Harry leaps out of his chair, wand drawn. It’s pure instinct by now to cast Ennervate, even though he knows it’s no good. The glowing magical field that had been lighting the room dissolves completely, and he knows it’s over.

Slowly, feeling heavy, he casts Tempus and gazes at the shimmering numbers as they light the face of a woman who once wanted him to fall in love with her. Silent. Still.

“Time of death,” he says to the room. “Twenty-one sixteen.”

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