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Part 2 of Saviour
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Medwhump May 2024
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2024-05-15
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2025-01-14
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34/?
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Survivor

Summary:

He lied.
Everything he said was a lie.

 

Draco has escaped from years of gaslighting, abuse, and captivity at what he thought was Harry Potter's hands, only to find that everything he believed was a cruel lie. His parents are alive. He isn't a fugitive. The public doesn't hate him and want him dead.

Now he has a long road of physical and mental recovery, figuring out what is real, and eventually getting justice.

(Reading the first story not entirely required)

Notes:

The previous story had some really hefty chapters, up to like 13,000 words, which I imagine is pretty offputting 😅 I'm going to try to keep these at more reasonable lengths. The previous story was also 100% from Draco's POV, and this one switches between his and either of his parents'.

For this story, I've mashed up the last 4 years of prompt lists from Comfortember (month-longer hurt/comfort challenge event on Tumblr) and created my own prompt list, but it's not official or anything.

Chapter Text

Harry had lied to him. 

Harry had lied to him about everything.

If this was real…

His mother rubbed his half hand in both of hers, and he looked at her against the sickly green backdrop of hospital curtains, and it felt like it was ripping his heart out. She was real. She had lost weight, and her eyes were bright and wet instead of hard, and her hair was loose when her hair was never loose, but she was real. She was here.

But that meant everything was a lie, and he couldn't understand that. He couldn't reconcile that with reality. A nightmare… a fantasy… a delusion… But not this. This wasn't supposed to be real…

He wasn't supposed to be able to look at her. She was supposed to be dead, murdered by his own hand controlled by the Imperius. Or that was what Harry said. 

He wasn't supposed to be able to be here in the hospital. He was supposed to be hated, wanted for crimes, sentenced to be fed to Dementors. Or that was what Harry said.

But if she was real, then everything he had known… everything he had done

How could he have lied to him, about everything?

How could he have believed him?

How could he live with that?

 

—-

 

In twelve hours, Lucius' life had turned upside down. 

Twelve hours ago, his son had been dead. He had been spending another pointless night awake so late that it become early, alone with his wine and a dying fire, putting off beginning another pointless day. 

Eight hours ago, an owl had arrived from the Aurors that had once perfunctorily investigated his son's suicide, with the news that Draco had been found, alive, and was under care at Saint Mungo's.

Eight hours ago, he had exchanged his first words in months with his wife, to make sure she had the news, and found her already leaving without him.

Three hours ago, they had been allowed to see Draco for the first time. The sight was sobering. He was so frail it was hard to believe he was alive, starkly pale with a sickly greyish hue, half of his right hand crudely amputated, beset even in his sleep by a horrible wracking cough that occasionally brought up blood. 

One hour ago, Draco had woken for the first time. He should not have done; the healers had placed him under sleeping spells to keep him calm and resting, and yet he had woken completely and suddenly. He had recognised his mother immediately and clung to her with more strength than his wasted body should have been capable of, for some time, until he cried himself out and she helped him lie down again.

In those eight hours, Lucius had felt the most useless he ever had. He could do nothing. Time was, he would have walked into the hospital director's office or the Ministry and demanded answers, demanded more resources for his son, demanded any sort of action… but he no longer had that luxury. In all honesty, even if he had, it wouldn't have truly accomplished anything but make himself feel that he was doing something. 

He stayed out of Narcissa's way so she could draconically guard Draco's bedside without his distraction and watched from afar. Standing there and doing nothing was intolerable, so he occasionally prowled the halls in search of information, and then being away was intolerable so he came back to watch him, and it repeated. There was nothing he could do and everything he did felt like the wrong decision. 

He had managed to glean some dribbles of information by interrogating Draco's nurse — the facts that his dangerously low temperature, his cough, and even feeding him were difficult because of a complicating factor she either could not or would not explain. That seemed to be the common theme of the day, a refusal to share information for no perceivable reason.

He had fallen out of the habit of casual Legilimency after the war, not least because anything useful was now usually obscured by distaste for him that his unobtrusive, surface-level browsing did not penetrate, but he brought it back out now when he sensed she was withholding.

That was how he found that a partially-emptied phial found in Draco's pocket had been identified as Lethewater, a narcotic forgetfulness potion. The five hours they had been kept from him had been spent not only on examining his physical state, but on inducing vomiting and feeding him purifiers to combat an overdose of it. In controlled doses, it eased difficult memories; he didn't like it, but he understood how Draco could have fallen into using it. In large quantities, the sort of amounts they had apparently found in Draco's stomach, it permanently damaged memories, potentially years worth. In the worst cases, it could cause complete amnesia and eradicate the drinker's identity. 

He told himself he was confident that hadn't happened to Draco; he had been treated quickly and decisively. And he had recognised his mother, after all. 

Realistically, though, he could not help calculating the dangerous dosages for the various amounts of time he might have been absorbing it before he was found. By his numbers, if it was less than an hour, Draco should suffer minimal ill effects; if it had been over four, everything they had done was futile. He had no way of knowing which was closer to the truth, but he was too cynical believe it had been on the shorter end. 

Trying to distract his mind from worrying at the fact and everything he had no way of knowing, helpless in the face of Draco lying unresponsive in his hospital bed, he left again, trying to ignore the fact that he had no plan. 

In the waiting room, he found a copy of the day's Prophet. He hadn't looked at it today, nor would he have bothered if he hadn't seen his name on it. There was a very short blurb at the bottom of the front page about the fact that Draco had been found, likely hastily added at the very last moment before it was printed; that would fit with the timeline. 

MALFOY ALIVE — BUT WHY?  

Everything about it was infuriating. The accusatory tone of the title, the fact that it described Draco as a 'pardoned Death Eater', the fact that Rita Skeeter somehow had information he did not — he hadn't yet found anyone who would tell him anything about where Draco had been found, and the article pinpointed it to the gardens in Hogsmeade — and the quote from someone who had no idea what they were talking about and decided to run their mouth anyway.

"I'll tell you what happened," a source close to the investigation revealed. "He got tired of everybody knowing what he did, so he faked his death and [left] the country. He tried to cover up the Dark Mark, got a drug habit, got into it with some actually dangerous people, and now he came running back to daddy when he couldn't hack it."

His focus narrowed sharply on that offence, latching onto something even tangentially productive. Someone who lived in Hogsmeade who had witnessed his rescue, or was pretending to have? A healer or ar an auror? More likely the latter, more likely an auror; the general public's opinion of Draco had been by and large swayed the other direction in recent years, enough that anyone voicing these opinions would be going against the majority, and that didn't sound like a given public busybody to him. 

All the better. There were avenues to make an official pay for their poorly-considered words. Even if his social influence was at a nadir, his money still held sway. This auror was going to learn a very uncomfortable lesson…

"Auror!" the Welcome Witch at the desk behind him said brightly, and for a split second it was unsettlingly like she had plucked it from his thoughts. He looked up sharply and found her attention on the doorway to the adjoining room, where the floo brought new arrivals. An auror was coming through it, a portly wizard in a bowler and with a generally affable demeanour. Lucius knew him: Jansen, who had been a Slytherin prefect when he entered school, so he found him… slightly less intolerable than most aurors. At least he understood how to work the system. 

"Rosalind," Jansen greeted mildly, and then, "Ah, Lucius! How fortuitous."

"Jansen," he said coolly, folding the Prophet to take it with him. "You're here for Draco, I take it."

"Quite so. Shall we?" 

Lucius wordlessly joined him to bring him to Draco's room.

 

—-

 

107.

784.

6.

0.

One hundred and seven pounds. Her twenty-one year old son weighed one hundred and seven pounds. He had wasted away to almost nothing. He could scarcely move, and the simple act of holding his hand felt like she would break his fragile bones. It was terrifying to behold. 

Seven hundred and eighty-four days he had been missing. He had been missing and no one had been searching for him, because they all blindly accepted that he was dead on the flimsiest of evidence. Over two years he had been suffering, abandoned, while the world went on and never even spared a thought for him. She would never forgive them. She would never forgive anyone.

Six missing digits. Three fingers and three toes. Someone had cut pieces off of her child, to stop him from using magic, to stop him from running away. Some twisted sadist had mutilated him to control him in the cruellest way possible, and the wounds were so old and healed there was nothing to be done for them.

Zero words. He had woken an hour past but he hadn't spoken at all. He would barely look at her; his eyes for the most part stared at the curtain directly ahead of him. He held onto her tightly, and she knew he knew her, but he didn't respond or even seem to hear her words, or the words of the healer who came to check on him. In a way, it was reassuring that he had cried a bit, because at least it was a reaction. 

She brushed his long hair off his forehead, trying to encourage him to look at her, and he didn't. "Talk to me, Draco," she murmured. He didn't respond. She thought perhaps he tried to squeeze her hand more tightly, but she wasn't certain she wasn't imagining it because she wanted it so badly. 

The door behind her opened, and let in several distinct sets of footsteps. No, absolutely not. She stood swiftly, still holding Draco's hand behind her, shielding him from prying eyes. Lucius, the ward matron, and an auror she vaguely recognised. Lucius could not be banned and the healer was allowed, but an auror? No. 

"This is not the time for your questions," she said firmly. 

"He hasn't spoken." Draco's nurse was hovering around in the background, and she butted in unasked-for. 

"You don't have to leave," the matron told her, "but we do need to see him." 

"Let him rest."

"You have my word, Mrs. Malfoy, that your son isn't in any trouble," the auror said. At least he was properly respectful. "I won't push him to answer anything he can't. If I could just have a moment of his time…" 

She still wanted to throw him out — all of them — but clearly they weren't going to leave him alone, no matter what she said. "Make it brief." She set Draco's hand down on the bed gently, but she wasn't going to leave him to their mercy; she only stepped back to the top of the bed and rested her hand on his hair. He needed to know she was still with him. 

The matron took over her spot and started moving his arms in a businesslike bustle. The auror leaned closer to look. "Splinched?" he guessed.

"I might have thought so, except that he's also down several toes," the matron said. "There's no clear physical reason for it. We'll be treating it as potentially curse damage."

It was painfully obvious that someone did that to him, to hurt him, and if they were refusing to see it, if they insisted on dancing around the idea, then they were useless. Her fingers ran through Draco's hair. 

Draco's face turned down into the pillow as the matron pulled out his left arm and said, "Here it is." She pulled up his sleeve to show his arm.

Narcissa drew a sharp breath through her nose. The entire inner face of his arm was black, and in the middle of all of that, the Dark Mark was outlined in clear skin. It was crisp and dark, like it was brand new. 

Draco's nurse pulled away uneasily, and Lucius shifted into her spot at his bedside to get a better look. The auror, though, just said, "That's troubling," and prodded the mark with a finger. "It's real?"

"As far as we've been able to determine." The matron turned Draco's arm to show it better.

"I've never seen one of these react in isolation," the auror mused. 

After a moment, his eyes rose to Lucius, and the healers' soon followed suit. It took a moment for him to realise it. "It hasn't changed," he said flatly. When the attention didn't leave him, he actually drew up his sleeve to expose the bottom edge of the Mark. Of course it was blued out and faded.

"Curious." 

"Then it isn't… him," the nurse breathed faintly. "What does it mean?"

"I'm sure it will come out," the auror assured them. "And this, around it?" 

"It's not a tattoo or magic. From the scarring, it seems to be a burn, perhaps a decorative brand. He's lost significant weight after it was applied, but I think…" She turned his arm to show something near his elbow that was clearly a head, "...it's meant to be a dragon. Perhaps an attempt to disguise the Dark Mark?" 

A brand. A mark of ownership. That was disgusting. Narcissa wordlessly pulled Draco's sleeve back down to give him his dignity and took his hand away from the healer, holding it. This hand had all of its fingers, but his grip was weaker than the other.

"Perhaps so." The auror crouched down beside the bed with an unthreatening demeanour. "Draco, can you answer some questions?" Draco didn't respond or even react; he was tense, but she didn't feel any change in it. His hand didn't even twitch. "Can you just tell me yes or no? Nod for me?" Still nothing, after a moment, and he stood up again with his knees popping. "To be expected, I suppose. What else can you tell me?" 

"His weight is just over seven stone and it doesn't seem he's had any actual food; at least, we didn't find any, although we haven't identified everything he had in his stomach. He has a severe case of Sleeper's Lung; typically you find that when someone inexperienced has tried feeding someone under the effects of a sleeping draught and they've aspirated it instead. He has scars and evidence of broken bones — I'll see to it you have a list, maybe you can piece together the causes, because I can't imagine. I can tell it suggests he has had access to healing magic, but either inconsistently or maybe performed by an amateur. We're having a memory specialist in when he's a little more stable, but there seem to be signs of memory charms on top of the potions."

This was difficult to listen to. Whilst the auror was asking what she meant by potions and she was telling him he had been drugged with a forgetfulness potion, Narcissa sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hand through Draco's hair as he coughed into the pillow. He didn't need to be hearing this. They needed to leave him alone.

"There's no chance he did this to himself?"

The first thing Lucius had to contribute, and it was blaming Draco for what had happened to him? Pathetic. "Of course not," she snapped, and held ran her hand over his hair. She made herself look at Lucius just to make sure she could without cursing him. It was a near thing.

"No," the matron agreed. "Not all of it. The brand perhaps; it would have taken preparation, to prevent the pain and such. Maybe even the Lethewater. But I sincerely doubt he can walk and there's no way he could have gotten himself to where he was found, and it's hard to fathom how he could have broken his own bones."

She couldn't listen to any more of them entertaining the idea that this was Draco's fault. "That's enough." She stood and put herself between the three of them and Draco. "Let him be."

Lucius pulled back immediately, without meeting her eyes, and the others followed suit. She put them out of her mind as the door closed and the room was peaceful again. She sat on the bed with Draco again, rubbing his back gently. "They're gone," she assured him quietly. 

He turned his face up from the pillow and she found he had been crying silently. Seeing that was like physical pain. She hugged him, murmuring that it was okay, helplessly wishing that she had the person responsible for this in front of her so that she could make sure they never made him cry again. 

 

—-

 

They tried to keep him asleep so he could rest and recover, but Draco never slept for long. Even when they gave up on the spells to instead use a potion, he invariably woke after only a couple hours. Almost always with confusion, and often seemingly from bad dreams.

Narcissa was sure to always be there when he did; she dozed a little in the chair by his bed while he slept, so that she didn't have to leave him. It gave her a lot of time to think — too much, perhaps. Progressively more terrible possibilities of how Draco had spent the last two years kept coming to her, trying to fit all of the pieces together. 

The cough and his weight — had he just been kept in an enchanted sleep this whole time? Held until his captor couldn't be sure of keeping him alive any longer?

The Dark Mark — had someone been trying to resurrect or contact Voldemort somehow? Or use the Dark Lord's final Dark Mark to work some other Dark magic?

His injuries — had he been imprisoned and tortured? Held to blame by the family of a student who had died at Hogwarts?

None of them answered all of the evidence, and progressively more horrible combinations of them came to her to try to fit it all together. That he had been held captive by a cult of resurgent Death Eaters and cruelly experimented upon, and mistreated for his failure to commit to their cause — or made to do things he didn't want to, again. Or that he had been prisoner of some mad vigilantes who held him responsible for the actions of anyone with that Mark and made to brutally pay for all the sins of his bloodline. 

It was eating at her. What had she abandoned him to? After he disappeared, she had spent so many nights imagining him hurt, scared, and alone in his last moments, and the darkness he must have felt in the months that had led to him taking his own life, but it had never seriously crossed her mind that he had been taken. It should have. She should never have given up on him. She should have found him. 

She held his mangled hand in both of hers, palm up, fingers twitching to trace the line of a thick scar that ran across it, imagining all the ways it might have come to be. Ritual bloodletting for Dark magic, punishment, torture. Self-inflicted. 

He might never be able to tell them. Potions, memory charms… He might not even remember himself what he had been through. That didn't matter. Maybe it would be for the best. So long as he was back, he never had to think about it again.

His hand twitched in hers, and she rubbed it gently. His brow was lightly furrowed into the bed, and his cough, weak though it was, made him limp. "You're all right," she murmured. 

The nurse responded to his cough, arriving with another dose of the potion for his lungs. Draco didn't fight it, but was basically passive in accepting it.

"He's in pain," she said, watching his face as the nurse patiently fed him the medication. 

The nurse glanced at her warily. She was properly cowed. "He probably wants the Lethewater," she said, so diffident it was nearly apologetic. "If he's been taking it for any length of time, it's difficult to stop all at once. And it does help with pain," she admitted. "It's gentler on the body than a Pain Pulling Potion, or… basically anything else like it… so it was probably one of the only safe things he could have for pain when he was so weak."

"Then give it to him."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't." She ducked her head and finished with Draco's medication to flee from her attention.

Narcissa let her go, only because she was reluctantly acknowledging the risk of damaging his mind further was too great to rush into, and brushed hair from Draco's forehead. He was in pain every moment he was awake; she could see it every time he moved, and in the way he tried not to move. It was cruel to leave him that way and there was nothing she could do about it. 

This world was always cruel to him. She started humming an old lullaby, one she'd gotten from her own mother and had sung to him until he was big enough to get his father involved so she'd stop 'babying' him. He was her baby, though. It didn't matter how old he was.

She wasn't expecting it to do anything but drudge up memories, but it seemed like the old tune helped him. He relaxed and actually fell asleep on his own, gradually, without the need of a spell, and without any obvious signs of dreaming. That was the next best thing to him waking up and speaking to her. 

 

—-

 

When Lucius returned to the hospital, he was more aware of his surroundings than he had been the first day, or perhaps for some time. He was aware of people's attention on him, but he didn't indulge it, passing through the reception room without pausing to check in, and didn't spare the attention to notice the unfortunates who were waiting to be seen.

He did notice Rita Skeeter nosing around the hallway, currently with a healer trainee cornered, only just held at bay from the wards by the façade of common decency she had to maintain. Rita knew exactly how far to push the line, and wantonly invading the sickrooms of innocents was just a shade too far for most people to tolerate. 

He was not feeling indulgent toward her right now. There had been another substance-free dashed-off article — MALFOY: GOLDEN LAD, OR GILDED CAD? — posing the question of whether the Draco who returned was in fact him, and not some con artist or lunatic transfigured or otherwise disguised to pose as him and prey on the 'famously wealthy family's tragedy'. 

That had obviously been the first thing he had checked. He didn't appreciate the reminder that he had to be suspicious even of what should have been a miracle. 

He didn't escape her notice, unfortunately. She saw him from the far end of the hall and perked up, raising a hand with her acid quill as she hurried toward him without even bothering to excuse herself. "Oh, Lucius!" He only gave her an expressionlessly cool look and disappeared into the stairwell before she could get to him. If she was still skulking around down here, that meant she didn't yet know where Draco was, and he was satisfied with that for now. 

Draco's room on the first floor was quiet and dim to encourage him to rest. Standing in the doorway, looking inside, at the unmoving bed and the fitfully dozing figure beside it, the weight of it felt crushing.

It all did. He had found that it had been the Weasley auror who brought Draco to the hospital from Hogsmeade, and he was probably the source of the Prophet quote, and then the pointlessness of pursuing it sapped his energy. 

He didn't know if he had the energy to spend another day staring across the room at his son's unresponsive body, either.

He found the ward matron who was in charge of him instead. That was something productive to do. She updated him on Draco's condition — largely unchanged — and he pressed her for the day's plans. She thought he was strong enough to try to correct some of the old injuries, particularly the old broken bones, and they would see if there was any help for his missing fingers. He approved of the plan; he approved of having a plan, at any rate.

Another circuit to assure that Rita had not found her way here and he finally entered Draco's room again. It was still quiet. He recognised the sound of Narcissa's breathing in her sleep. The nurse was gone for the moment, maybe on work, maybe on a break, maybe having a stress-induced breakdown in a closet from being under Narcissa's demanding eye.

Despite his attempts to be quiet, his steps woke her and she straightened in her chair, checking on Draco with a hand on his back even before she checked who it was, and when she did she dismissed him from her attention with barely a glance. 

He kept his distance, but studied them both. Draco was asleep, frowning a little until his mother's fingers through his hair soothed his dreams. 

She didn't look good. She was fraying. He knew she hadn't left since they had heard Draco was here; she must have been snatching what sleep she could in naps while Draco did. Over the last few years, she had been sleeping a lot, and going suddenly to nearly nothing couldn't be good for her. He wondered if she'd even eaten. She was going to drive herself insane like this.

"You need to go home, Narcissa," he said quietly.

"You can go," she said sharply. 

He let her harsh words and cutting tone wash over him without reaction. "It's been two days." He wasn't trying to order her or pressure her; that was impossible. Only one person had made Narcissa do what she was told in the last thirty years, and it certainly wasn't him. Nor was it really possible to reason with her when she had her mind set on something, not without the rare privilege of her trust that he no longer had, but if there was a chance, it was in unthreatening offers of rational facts and alternatives. "Go home and sleep. Eat something." 

She refused to answer or look at him; she stubbornly focused on Draco, brushing back his hair again. There was no reason to keep doing that; it behaved well enough on its own and he was sleeping well right now. She was just compulsively touching him. It was clear she couldn't bear to take herself away from his side.

"It may be some time before he properly wakes up. You're not going to be able to take care of him if you collapse before then. He doesn't—" He nearly said 'wouldn't', but caught himself; that wasn't right, anymore. Draco was alive. Phrasing it to imply otherwise would enrage her. "—want you to have to share a hospital room."

"He doesn't sleep for long," she said, watching Draco's face. 

"He won't be alone," he told her quietly. 

"If he speaks…"

"You know that when he does, it will be to you." She would likely never forgive herself if she wasn't here when Draco started speaking again, but Lucius was reasonably certain that the first word Draco said when he did would probably be 'mother'. She needed to know she wouldn't miss anything by taking at least the bare minimum care of herself, or she never would, and she would waste away here clinging to him. 

She seized Draco's hand, looking at his face. That was such an apt metaphor for her mind she couldn't possibly have realised it, or she wouldn't have done it. She was terrified. Intimidating as she was to the workers, he doubted anyone else saw it — she probably didn't even admit it to herself — but she was. And when she was frightened, she tried to control things. The more fear she felt, the tighter she grasped. If she wasn't careful, she would hurt him by not being able to let go. 

"He will still be here when you come back."

"You can't promise that." 

"I can. He's not in any danger. He'll be here, resting." 

Wordlessly, she looked at Draco's face, brushing his hair back again. Then, only because there was no one else to see, she kissed his forehead before she stood up. It seemed to take her a great effort to gently set Draco's hand down in front of his chest. 

She turned to Lucius, and he looked up at her from Draco quickly. "Don't leave him alone," she ordered. "Not for one instant."

"I won't." 

"No one comes near him."

"No."

She didn't waste breath repeating herself. He knew how seriously to take her.

She couldn't help herself; she touched Draco's head once more before she took herself from his bedside. Her back was ruler straight and she was intensely controlled, the only sign of how difficult it was.

"Rita's skulking," he thought to warn her as she walked away.

"Let her." She managed to leave the room without looking back.

Lucius looked at her, then looked at Draco. After a couple minutes, he took the seat beside his bed for the first time. It was warm from Narcissa's body heat.

It wasn't just the chair, actually. The entire area of Draco's bed was uncomfortably warm, from the heat radiating from the blanket that was meant to keep his temperature up. It was unpleasant to him, but he supposed he would have to trust they knew what they were doing; Draco didn't seem distressed by it, at any rate. 

He had barely been able to see Draco from this close. Before he woke, for a little while, and then when Jansen wanted to look at his Dark Mark. He had stayed back and let him have his mother, who could do more good for him.

He wasn't sure what to do. This was as helpless as standing in the back of the room or prowling the halls, he realised. It wasn't natural to him to talk to someone who couldn't respond, about nothing. He didn't even know what he would say. It all felt so empty. 

He leaned his elbows on his knees, looking at him distantly. It was still hard to look at how thin he was, and how weak it left him. He wasn't coughing for now, though; he wondered if that had been cured.

It startled him to focus on his face and find Draco's eyes open; they flicked away from him as soon as he saw, quick enough he couldn't be sure if Draco had actually been looking at him or if it was a trick of his eyes. He was clearly awake, though. For how long? He wouldn't have thought he would wake this easily and calmly without his mother there. 

Had he been awake the whole time? Long enough to hear them speaking? Had he pretended to be sleeping so that his mother would go home and rest? 

He would like to think so, because that would show awareness and cunning, not merely consciousness. 

"Well done," he murmured, just in case Draco had done that intentionally. Draco didn't answer or look at him, and he found he didn't have anything else to say, and he went back to looking distantly at him.

There was something unsettling in Draco's appearance… more than mere 'appearance', but the state of him. He was starved to the point of death and left with unhealed injuries, but at the same time he was impeccably groomed. His hair was long, but seemingly with intent, not ragged or unkempt. His fingernails were thin, but perfectly clean and short. Perfect, clean teeth that weren't affected by his malnutrition. He didn't have even a hint of stubble. It made him rub his own beard absently.

Actually… 

"I need to see something," he said with some awkward stiffness, in case Draco was listening, as he lifted Draco's arm. He didn't look at the brand and the Dark Mark this time, but at the back of his arm. He'd vaguely noticed before but now he confirmed: completely hairless. He checked the other as well. The same — totally, freakishly hairless. 

He settled Draco's arms back in the bed and left him for a moment, to go investigate the nurses' makeshift desk. He found Draco's file and brought it back, and started going through it, checking the record for all the spells they had used on him. They hospital was bureaucratic enough they should keep those notes…

The day nurse — this one was named Riley… Maureen, maybe? — came in while he was flipping back through the pages. He heard her step falter and looked up; touching the wand in the hand of his walking stick and a quick glance into the surface of her mind showed surprise that Narcissa wasn't here. That was reasonable. "These records are incomplete," he noted, holding up the file. "I don't see any mention of hair removal or grooming generally."

She came closer to look, and took the file out of his hands to go through it. "I don't think we did anything like that… No, we haven't had to. There's actually a note that it was that way when he was admitted."

"I see." He looked at Draco again. Draco wasn't reacting, still looking ahead at the curtains. 

"Do you mind if I get started…?" she asked cautiously. He waved her ahead and she slid herself between him and Draco. "All right, Draco, I have some Skele-Gro here. What we're going to do is vanish some of those nasty old bones and grow you brand new ones, and that should feel much better, yeah? We'll start with a couple of those ribs and get you back in top shape in no time."

She helped him lie back and kept talking to him while she worked. Draco obviously didn't respond, but she didn't mind. She seemed to be good with him. At least someone was. 

 

—-

 

She couldn't be here. The feeling of wrongness started the moment she left Draco's room and heightened nearly to the level of panic by the time she stepped from the floo in her own home. 

This was a mistake. She should never have left him — what if something happened and she wasn't there? She knew nothing should, because he wasn't dying; he was ill, but he was recovering, and he shouldn't be in any danger. 

Shouldn't. But what if he was? 

What if the healers did something foolish, or left him to suffer now that she wasn't there to watch them? What if someone came to hurt him again? What if Lucius left him alone? What if Lucius was harsh with him? What if he woke and was frightened? What if he wanted to speak but she wasn't there? 

She couldn't leave him like that.

The light scent of tea interrupted her reaching for the floo powder to go back. An elf had delivered it to the coffee table in the seconds after she arrived, and it was tempting. She took a cup, fingernails tapping at the china until she made them stop, and the tea did soothe her nerves. She sat down for a moment to rest before she went back. She didn't meant to fall asleep.