Bury It

The first day of seventh year was grey and damp, the kind of morning that seeps into your bones and stays. Harry stood by the window in the Great Hall, watching rain streak down the enchanted ceiling, trying to remember what it felt like to be hungry for breakfast. He wasn't hungry. He hadn't been since the night Dumbledore fell.

Around him, students chattered and clattered plates, but the noise felt distant—muffled under the weight of the war. McGonagall's opening speech had been brief and grim: security protocols, restricted travel, familiar faces missing. Half the Slytherin table was empty. The Weasley twins' usual prank energy was gone. Even Peeves seemed subdued.

Then Draco Malfoy walked in.

Harry's breath caught. For a second he thought he was looking at a stranger. Draco had always carried himself with that particular arrogance—shoulders back, chin lifted, sneer permanently in place. That boy was gone. The figure sliding into a seat at the far end of the Slytherin table was thin, hollow-cheeked, with shadows under his eyes that looked like bruises. His robes hung loose on a frame that had lost too much weight over the summer. He moved carefully, like every step cost him something, and his eyes—once sharp and mocking—were flat. Dead.

"Blimey," Ron muttered. "Malfoy looks like he's been dragged through a hedge backwards."

Hermione frowned, fork halfway to her mouth. "He does look ill. Maybe he's been sick."

"He's always been a sick git," Ron said, but his voice lacked conviction. He watched Draco tear a piece of toast into tiny pieces without eating any. "Still. Something's off."

Harry said nothing. Couldn't stop staring. Draco's hands were trembling—faint, barely visible, but Harry had spent six years watching those hands flick wands and scribble notes and twirl quills. They'd never trembled before.

Over the next two weeks, Harry watched.

Draco attended classes with mechanical precision—answers clipped and correct, essays flawless but dead. He spoke to no one voluntarily. When other Slytherins approached—Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson—he flinched. Harry saw it from across the library one afternoon: Pansy touched his arm, and Draco jerked away like he'd been burned. His face went white. He muttered something that made Pansy recoil and stalk off.

The flinching became a pattern. A professor's raised hand to call on a student made Draco's shoulders hunch. A sudden noise—slammed book, dropped cauldron—sent him rigid. Harry noticed how Draco avoided crowded corridors, pressed himself against walls, never let anyone walk behind him.

But it wasn't just the flinching. It was the recklessness.

Harry first saw it near curfew at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He spotted a pale figure slipping between the trees. Followed, heart pounding, expecting a Death Eater meeting or some dark plot. Instead he found Draco with a seventh-year Ravenclaw named Marlene, her back against an oak, his mouth on her throat. Harry froze behind a bush, appalled. Draco's hands were everywhere—rough, desperate, not tender. Marlene moaned, but Draco's face was blank. He looked like he was performing a chore.

Harry retreated, stomach churning. Told himself it was none of his business. Malfoy could snog whoever he wanted. But something about it felt wrong. No joy in it. Only desperation.

The rumors started soon after. Draco Malfoy had been seen with a sixth-year Hufflepuff, then a fifth-year Gryffindor, then two Slytherins at once. He was doing things in abandoned classrooms that would earn detentions for a decade. He let people call him names—"easy," "whore," "Malfoy's little bitch"—and didn't react. Just smiled, and the smile was worse than any sneer, because it didn't reach his eyes.

"He's gone off the deep end," Ron said one night in the common room. "Seamus says he's been—well. Selling himself, almost. For favors."

"That's disgusting," Hermione said. "And you shouldn't spread rumors."

"It's not a rumor if it's true." Ron shot back. "I saw him with my own eyes. Corridor near the Astronomy Tower. On his knees for some Durmstrang exchange student. Looked like he was enjoying it."

Harry's stomach turned. He remembered Draco's trembling hands, his hollow eyes. "It doesn't look like he's enjoying anything," he said quietly.

Ron and Hermione exchanged glances. "Are you defending Malfoy now?"

"I'm not defending anyone. I'm saying something's wrong." Harry stood up, restless. "He looks like he's been through hell. And we're just sitting here, calling him a slag."

"Merlin, Harry, you've gone soft. The bloke's a Death Eater. Or was. He deserves whatever he gets."

Harry wanted to argue, but didn't have the words. Didn't know why he cared. He only knew that when he looked at Draco now, he didn't see an enemy. He saw someone drowning.

The discovery came by accident.

Harry had been avoiding the Forbidden Forest since the battle at the Department of Mysteries, but after a particularly restless night he found himself walking its edge, unable to sleep. The air was cold and smelled of damp earth. Moonlight filtered through the canopy, casting silver patterns on the ground.

He wasn't looking for anything. Just trying to clear his head. Then he stumbled over a root, fell into a small clearing, and saw it—a shimmer in the air, like heat haze, only there was no heat. It hung between two ancient oaks, a ripple in reality. Harry approached slowly, wand out. The shimmer didn't react.

He touched it with his wand tip. The world lurched.

Suddenly he was no longer in the clearing. He was standing in a dim, cold corridor, and it took a moment to realize he was inside Malfoy Manor. The marble floor gleamed under his feet, but he couldn't feel it. He was invisible. A ghost. The scene played out around him like a Pensieve memory, but sharper, more immediate.

Draco stood before the drawing-room fireplace, back straight, face a careful mask. Lucius Malfoy sat in a high-backed chair, snake-headed cane resting across his knees. The Dark Mark on his forearm was almost black.

"You will do as you are told," Lucius said, his voice cold and smooth. "The Dark Lord has honored us by offering you the chance to prove your worth. You will not disappoint him."

"I won't, Father." Draco's voice was steady, but Harry saw the slight tremor in his jaw.

"No," Lucius said, rising. "You will be more than obedient. You will be eager. You will smile and open your mouth and do whatever is asked of you. And if you hesitate—if you show a single moment of weakness—I will ensure that your mother pays the price."

Harry's blood went cold. The scene shifted.

Now Draco was in a cellar. The air smelled of wine and dust, and a group of men in Death Eater robes surrounded him—Fenrir Greyback, yellow teeth glinting in the torchlight, Antonin Dolohov, and a woman with a cruel smile, Bellatrix Lestrange.

"On your knees, little Malfoy," Greyback said, and Draco dropped.

Harry watched, unable to look away. Watched them do things—terrible, degrading things—and watched Draco take it. Watched his face go slack, his body a puppet under their hands. Saw the moment his soul detached, floating somewhere above the ceiling, leaving a husk behind.

Scene shifted again. Night. Draco alone in his room, a mirror hanging on the wall. He stared at his reflection, and his eyes were the eyes of a dead thing. He took off his shirt, and Harry saw the bruises—fingerprints on his ribs, bite marks on his shoulders, a line of welts across his back. Draco touched them with trembling fingers, then pressed his palm over his mouth and let out a sound—high, keening, inhuman. He crumpled to the floor, shoulders shaking, and made no sound at all after that. Just rocked.

Harry couldn't breathe. Wanted to reach out, pull Draco from the floor, but his hand passed through the image. He wasn't there. He'd never been there when it mattered. No one had.

The vision ended, and Harry was back in the forest, gasping for air, tears streaming down his face.

He knew now. Understood the flinching, the recklessness, the desperate hunger for touch that could never be loving. Draco had been taught that his body wasn't his own. That his only value was what others took from him. And now he was recreating that lesson, over and over, trying to make it something he could control.

The next day, Harry cornered Draco in an empty corridor.

Draco's face went pale when he saw Harry block his path. His eyes darted to the sides, looking for an escape route. His hand twitched toward his wand.

"What do you want?" His voice was flat. Drained.

"I know," Harry said.

Draco's face went blank. "Know what? That I'm a disgraced Death Eater? Everyone knows that, Potter. If you're here to gloat, do it fast. I have better things to do than listen to you."

"I know what they did to you. Over the summer. In the Manor."

The color drained from Draco's face. He went utterly still, like a deer before the hunter's arrow. His lips parted, but no sound came out.

"I saw it," Harry pressed, voice low and rough. "Found a time-portal in the Forbidden Forest. It lets you watch the past. I didn't mean to—wasn't spying on you. But I saw. I saw everything."

Draco's knees seemed to buckle. He caught himself against the wall, one hand pressed to the stone. His breath came in short, ragged gasps. "You saw." He repeated the words as if testing them. "You saw."

"Yes."

"You saw me on my knees. You saw them—you saw what they did."

"Yes."

Draco's face twisted. He let out a sound—half laugh, half sob. "And now you're here to pity me. Offer me your fucking sympathy. How noble, Potter. How Gryffindor. I don't want your help. I don't want your pity. I don't want anything from you."

"I'm not offering pity. I'm offering help. Real help."

"I don't need help." His voice cracked. "I'm fine. This is working. Don't you see? I'm surviving. That's all that matters."

"This isn't surviving. This is dying by inches."

Draco hit him. The slap was sudden, sharp, and it stung. Harry didn't flinch.

"You don't know anything," Draco hissed, eyes wild. "You don't know what it's like to have your own father sell you. To have your mother watch. To be passed around like a bottle of wine until you're empty. And then to come here, to this school, and everyone looks at you like you're the monster. So yes, I let people use me. It's all I'm good for now. So leave me alone."

"I won't." Harry's voice was steady. "I'm not going to leave you alone. You're going to let me help, or I'll follow you everywhere. I'll tell McGonagall. I'll tell the whole school if I have to. You deserve better than this, Draco."

Draco's resistance crumbled. He sank to the floor, back against the wall, buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook. Harry sat down beside him—not touching, just present.

"I don't know how to stop," Draco whispered. Small voice. A child's voice. "I don't know how to be whole again."

"You don't have to be whole today. Or tomorrow. But you have to start somewhere."

Harry wrote to Hermione that night. Told her everything. Credit to her, she didn't argue. Didn't ask why Harry cared. Just nodded and started researching.

Three days later, Hermione found a mediwizard—a specialist in trauma named Xenophon Greer who'd treated survivors of the first war. Discreet, kind, unaffiliated with the Ministry. She arranged a meeting.

Draco refused at first. Then shouted. Then cried. And then, finally, nodded.

The process was slow. Painful. Draco sat in the Hospital Wing with Madam Pomfrey and the mediwizard, talked about things he'd never spoken aloud. Harry waited outside, counting the minutes. Didn't go in. Wasn't his place.

But he was there when Draco came out, pale and hollow-eyed, and walked beside him in silence.

The climax came a week later.

Harry had been using the time-portal again—not to spy, but to understand. Needed to see the full picture. He was watching the night of the worst assault, the one that broke something inside Draco permanently. A dozen Death Eaters, including Lucius himself, had taken turns. Draco had stopped fighting after the first hour. Lain on the marble floor, unresponsive, while they did what they wanted. Harry watched with rage and grief burning in his chest.

When the vision faded, he returned to the present. Found Draco in a hidden alcove off the third-floor corridor, on his knees in front of a seventh-year Slytherin. The Slytherin had a hand in Draco's hair, Draco's mouth was open, and there was no life in his eyes.

Harry saw red.

He grabbed the Slytherin by the collar and threw him against the wall so hard the stones cracked. The boy yelped and scrambled away, shouting curses. Harry ignored him. Turned to Draco, who was still on his knees, staring at the floor.

"Get up," Harry said.

Draco didn't move.

"Get up, Draco."

"Why?" Draco's voice was a whisper. "This is what I am now. This is what I deserve."

"You don't deserve this." Harry knelt down, forced Draco to look at him. "You don't deserve any of it. They did this to you, but it's not who you are. You can be more than this."

"I'm ruined," Draco said, the word a stone. "I'm worthless. I let them—I let myself—I'm nothing."

Harry grabbed his shoulders. "You are not nothing. You're Draco Malfoy. A survivor. And you're going to live, do you hear me? You're going to live, and heal, and one day you'll remember that you matter."

Draco's composure shattered. He threw himself at Harry, fists pounding against his chest, and Harry didn't block him. Let the blows land—weak, wild—until Draco's strength gave out and he collapsed into Harry's arms, sobbing so hard he could barely breathe.

Harry held him. Held him while the tears came, while the snot and ugly sounds poured out, while Draco shook and clung and let go of the mask he'd worn for months.

"I've got you," Harry said. "I'm not letting go."

They stayed like that for a long time.

Spring came slowly, reluctantly, like a tenant who knew the landlord wanted them out. Snow gave way to slush, slush to mud, and the Forbidden Forest began to show green shoots among the roots.

Draco started healing. Not a straight line. There were bad days—days when he couldn't leave his bed, days when he flinched at the sound of a door opening, days when he caught his reflection in a window and saw only the ghost of what had been done to him. But there were good days too. Days when he ate a full meal. Days when he spoke a full sentence without his voice cracking. Days when he looked at Harry and didn't flinch.

Harry sat with him in the library, or by the lake, or in the Room of Requirement when the war became too loud. They didn't talk much. Didn't need to. Draco knew Harry had seen him at his worst, and Harry knew Draco had seen him break too. There was a strange intimacy in that.

The mediwizard came every week. Draco took potions for sleep, for nightmares, for the panic that gripped his chest like a vise. He talked about his father, about his mother, about the way the Manor had felt like a tomb long before the Dark Lord moved in. Harry listened. Hermione took notes. Ron learned to keep his mouth shut.

On the last day of term, Harry found Draco standing alone at the edge of the lake. The sun was setting, casting the water in shades of gold and amber. Draco held something in his hand—a leather collar, buckled and worn, with small silver studs that caught the light. The collar he'd worn all year, hidden beneath his robes. The collar they'd made him wear in the cellar, on his knees.

Draco looked at it. His face was unreadable.

"I thought it would hurt to take it off," he said, not turning around. "Thought it would leave a mark. But it doesn't. The mark is already there."

Harry moved to stand beside him. "Then bury it."

Draco nodded. He bent down and placed the collar in the mud at his feet. Straightened, looked at it for a moment, then turned and walked away.

Harry didn't follow. He watched Draco walk back toward the castle—steps steady, shoulders straight. Not the arrogant boy of their first year. Not the broken puppet of their sixth. Something else. Something new.

In the fading light, the dog collar lay in the dirt. A thing of leather and memory. The wind stirred the reeds. A bird sang in the distance. And the sun slipped below the horizon, leaving the world in silence.