healing | drarry

six

turning into an ao3 addict

less than a year later i AM an ao3 addict i dont read wattpad no more

~no pov

Draco Malfoy was lonely. Eleven-year-old Draco, right after being rejected by Harry Potter, was lonely. This loneliness felt worse, though. In Hogwarts, he had friends, though two of them were basically bodyguards since Draco was a fucking nightmare, but he still had friends. Magical friends, people he'd grown up with.

Now, he had his friendly neighbours and coffee-shop buddies, but that was about it. He could no longer say he had a best friend, or someone who'd drop everything and run to help him if he needed it. He was lonely, so fucking lonely.

Draco liked being alone, when he wanted to be alone, but constantly being surrounded by nothing but atoms that had to be there, made him feel fucking pathetic. No one wanted him, no one talked to him. He had his son, and only his son. His son was only there because he was Draco's son. He couldn't escape his father that early.

That little child deserved better. Draco felt like a failure constantly, and that meant in parenting too. He tried, tried harder than anything else in his life, to not be his father. To instead be interactive, approachable, warm, and he wasn't. 

Well he was, but there were times when he struggled with his mental health so badly that he had to be cold and distant, like his father. Times like those haunted the older Malfoy, because his child didn't deserve to be shut out. 

So obviously, instead of focussing on the fact that he was a damn-good father, he focussed on the moments where he wasn't. Everyone struggled, but Draco made himself feel shit for it, as if struggling didn't already feel like shit.

Scorpius didn't mind, not really. He knew his father struggled, of course he did, everyone did, and when he was told to go over to the neighbour's for a bit, he didn't mind. Scorpius loved Allie and Megan, the six-year-olds from next-door, and the five-year-old Lily from opposite, and Lily's four-year-old cousin Lyle. 

He especially liked Noah and Beth, because Noah was nine and Beth was ten, and they were funny and a little bit mischievous. Sometimes the two taught the little blond funny pranks that he used on his father, and though the man would lightly reprimand Scorpius for it, Draco always enjoyed them.

But Draco didn't know that. The two had healthy discussions and kept their father-son relationship open and safe, and talked frequently, but despite that, he was unaware of how his son felt about Draco's mental health.

Hell, he didn't even know if Scorpius knew what mental health was.

Anyways, moving on, Draco was lonely. Scarily lonely. Other than his son, he was completely fucking alone with not a single person to talk to about how he felt. He couldn't talk to a therapist, because that meant the therapist couldn't be muggle, otherwise the war would make no sense.

But that was another issue in itself. The person who started the war talking about it? It seemed wrong. The potential therapist would probably turn him away, or listen and publish everything to the Daily Prophet and somehow get him back in Azkaban.

Would therapy just be a war crime confession?

Draco felt like he was drowning in the Black Lake, and the creatures inside dragging him down were his mental health. But he couldn't get worse, he couldn't, because then what would happen to Scorpius?

He always had his mother to rely on if everything failed, but he didn't want that. It wasn't fair on his mother or son to just put them together and escape. It was cowardice. He'd always been a coward.

Weeks passed with these self-depreciating thoughts, and they only got worse. He wanted to relapse in several different things or run away to the ends of the Earth and start a new life there, but he couldn't. He had a child.

It was hard, though. The nightmares were more frequent, and he couldn't rely on Dreamless Sleep potions because they were addictive, and Salazar forbid he suffer from another addiction. Panic and anxiety attacks were happening at least twice a week and sometimes he even had flashbacks during the day rather than in his sleep.

And fuck, the urges were so strong. The urges to harm himself, whether it was by not eating or taking metal to his skin and tearing it apart. Or drinking till he blacked out and then drinking again once he was sober.

He guessed that he had about a month before he gave in to at least one of the urges, and if that wasn't hell, he didn't know what was.

Scorpius didn't notice his father suffering, and that was incredibly relieving for Draco. In fact, Scorpius had been happier than ever. He hated the idea of going to school, but now that he had made a friend and been broken out of his social-anxiety shell, he felt amazing.

He chose not to tell his father about his friend, because he was stubborn. He told his father that the school would be awful and he'd make no friends and he'd cry and cry and cry all day, everyday. Now, he realised he was being dramatic.

Scorpius didn't want to hear an I told you so. So he didn't say anything.

He had become increasingly curious about things, though. Like, why didn't his father ever take his hood down when he came to pick him up from school? Or why his father was always taking potions, making potions, or buying ingredients for potions. 

Or why his father refused to buy himself a phone when everyone else adapted to muggle technology, especially because they lived in a muggle town. And he was rich, rich as hell, so why didn't he buy those things?

He knew it wasn't hatred for muggleborns, no his father was over that years ago, so why not? 

Scorpius had so many questions, but didn't want to ask any. Why bother his father when he could just not? He decided to keep all his thoughts to himself for a while up until the October half-term break was round the corner.

Scorpius' friend wanted to have a playdate. 

This was an issue.