Release

"Damn!"

The black-haired man shifted the weight of the grocery-bag he carried with both hands to his left hip as he fumbled in his pocket for the key to his apartment. He could hear the phone ringing beyond the door, but, knowing his luck, he wouldn't reach it in time. He found the key in his pocket and tried to stick it in the lock, but missed twice. The phone rang again. "Damn!" he muttered a little more vehemently as he missed the lock again in his haste to open the door. The grocery-bag was titling precariously on his hip, ready to fall and spill its contents all over the filthy concrete floor of the stairwell at the slightest wrong movement on his part. Finally, he managed to stick the key in the lock and turn it once, twice, three times just as his answering machine clicked to life.

"Harry Potter's place. Please leave a message. *beep*."

"Hello Mister Potter, This is Janine Richards, head nurse of the intensive-care unit at Epsom General Hospital in Surrey. We have a patient here that has been identified as a Mister Draco Malfoy. It is vital that you call us back as soon as possible." Click. She had hung up.

Harry Potter stared dumbly at the the phone in his apartment in Norbury, muggle London. It couldn't be.

Draco Malfoy. It was like the name was being dredged up from the bottom of a deep trench where it had been buried in the mud. It was accompanied by other names and memories, all of them unpleasant, which also came from a place deep within, like a box that had been locked up and pushed down, suffocated with commonplace, everyday-activities until Harry had actually thought he had forgotten it existed. How stupid of him. He would never be able to forget.

He shook his head to clear it. This had to be some kind of mistake. The Draco Malfoy he knew didn't live in muggle London. The Draco Malfoy he knew didn't allow people to call Harry on his behalf. The Draco Malfoy he knew - no. He knew no Draco Malfoy. Not anymore.

He put the grocery bag down next to the small table on which the phone was, and picked up the receiver. He pressed the backlog button, then dialled the number that showed on the screen and waited nervously, chewing his lip as he listened to the phone ring on the other end of the line.

"Hello, Intensive Care Unit, Epsom General Hospital in Surrey. Janine Richards speaking, how may I help you?"

"Hello Ms Richards, this is Harry Potter. You called a minute ago - "

"Yes. Mister Potter, Mister Malfoy is very seriously injured. He is in a coma, on life support."

Harry didn't know what to say.

"Mister Potter?"

"Yes."

"Your name has been listed on the documents in which the patient has determined the person to be in charge of the of the life-support - "

"What do you mean?"

"Draco Malfoy is fatally injured. It really is essential that you come to hospital as soon as you can."

"I'll be there in half an hour."

He put the phone on the hook mechanically, his mind working overtime. He didn't believe the man in question could be the real Draco Malfoy, it wad too implausible. Too many things that didn't fit into the equation. Still, the sound of the name as the woman on the phone had said it for the first time had been enough to throw him into shock. He had not heard the name in years. He said it quietly to himself as he put the grocery-bag on the counter in the kitchen and fished his wallet out.

"Draco Malfoy."

The name left a bitter taste in his mouth. He grabbed his keys from the phone-table and walked out of the apartment he had walked into just ten minutes before. He knew the way to the hospital, it was half an hour's drive from where he lived.

Hermione had given birth to her first child in the maternity ward of this hospital, and Harry had had to accompany Ron on every visit there because Ron wouldn't face the strangeness of muggle-science alone.

"Draco Malfoy."

The name did more than make Harry remember; it made him want to forget all over again. He had adjusted successfully to the normal muggle-life, better, even, than he had thought he would. Of course, living with the Dursleys, he had sworn to never return to the muggle-world longer than necessary, and had kept that vow until five years after leaving school. Then things had changed. Things had happened that had made him wan to get as far away from the wizarding world as possible.

~*~

He circled the hospital parking-lot twice before finding an empty space, but maybe that was just because he wasn't concentrating. He got out of the car and walked through a sea of vehicles to the front-entrance of the hospital.

A sense of emptiness overcame him as he walked through the door; the smells of this place, the hard plastic seats against the white wall across from the white reception-desk behind which a young woman in a white smock sat, doing paperwork. He felt faint. Maybe his happiness for Hermione had overpowered the bleakness inside these walls last time he had been here, or maybe he had simply forgotten. But it hit him now, and he felt uneasy.

He walked over to the reception-desk, trying his best to smile naturally, but his face must have betrayed his state of mind, because when the woman behind the desk looked up, the expression on her face changed from one of concentration to one of worry.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Yes, could you tell me the way to the Intensive Care unit, please? Janine Richards is expecting me."

Her expression changed again,this time from worry to understanding.

"Your name, please, and I'll call her."

"Harry Potter." He tried his best to keep his voice steady.

She shot him a glance before she picked up the phone.

"Hello. Miss Richards? A Mister Harry Potter is here to see you. He says you're expecting him. Mh? OK, good."

She hung up the phone and looked back at Harry.

"Someone will come and fetch you in a minute."

Harry nodded and padded over to the uncomfortable-looking plastic seats. He sank into one, grateful to be sitting at all. His knees were weak.

He didn't have long to wait, for which he was also grateful. He was trying to close off his mind to the bitter memories that threatened to swamp him and it was becoming harder by the minute with nothing here to distract him.

He followed the stocky nurse that motioned him to do so meekly, mentally going over what he would say when he had to explain that he had never seen the man in the bed before in his life. After all, it had to be some kind of misunderstanding.

"Mister Potter?"

They had arrived at the Intensive Care unit. He nodded and tried to smile at the middle-aged, blonde woman introducing herself to him as Janine Richards. She led him along a corridor and into room three-hundred and thirty.

Three had always been Draco's favourite number.

Harry didn't realise what he was thinking until the thought had already flitted back into he shadows of his mind, but it didn't matter one way or the other. The man lying here would not be Draco Malfoy.

As soon as Harry looked into the face of the man in the bed, he knew there was no mistake. There was no other person on this earth with hair that colour. There had been, once, but Harry had killed him...

That wasn't important now. What was important was the identity of the man lying there, unconscious, in a white night-gown that made his pale skin look almost healthy in contrast, and his chest, left arm, both legs and face in heavy bandages, surrounded by tubes, some of them ending in his body. The walls suddenly seemed much whiter, and closing in. They were no longer pristine and unpleasant; they were sterile and threatening. They were a paler shade of colourless that blinded him, forced him to look down, down at the man lying there, down at his mouth; the slightest bit of colour in a pale face surrounded by paler bandages.

Harry closed his eyes.

Tears of relief leaked from between his lashes as he savoured the cool blackness that suddenly surrounded him.

"Why am I here?" he whispered.

"Mister Malfoy was hit by a bus. Both of his legs are broken in several places. Eight ribs are crushed. His spine is damaged in three places and his skull is fractured. There are bone-splinters in his kidneys, and damage to vital organs including the brain. He has less than a three percent chance of waking from his coma, and if he does he will never live a normal life again. He will be a paraplegic, and mentally challenged. Over fifty percent of his brain-tissue has been irreparably damaged, and will have to be removed. You are here to decide how long he will stay on life-support."

Harry could feel her gaze on him, but refused to open his eyes. She felt sorry for him because she thought this man was important to him. He had heard it in her voice. She had tried to keep it sterile like the walls around them, but pity had crept into it over and over again like the treacherous emotion it was. Well, this man was important to him, but not in the way that Janine Richards might think. There was no need for pity.

"Could I be alone with him for a while?" he asked quietly.

Her reply came late and a bit hasty; he guessed that she had nodded before realising that he couldn't see her.

"Thank you."

He listened to her receding footsteps before titling his face to the ground and and opening his eyes just enough to see his feet. He walked slowly to the bed, sat down on the chair next to it and closed his eyes again. Then he let the memories come.

The most recent came first, after the war, scribing the death-toll and other casualties. Parvati had been killed. She had been his girlfriend at the time. Lavender Brown had been killed. Hannah Abbott. Ernie Macmillan, Dennis Creevey, Tonks, Arthur Weasley, Lee Jordan, Susan Bones, Bill Weasley, Severus Snape. Names came thick and fast, of those dead and injured. Ginny Weasley had been almost gutted, she now had a scar running from between her breasts to down below her right pelvic bone. He had seen both ends of it on several occasions.

Mad-eye Moody had lost three fingers. Professor McGonagall had lost an eye, Fudge had lost a hand. Kingsley Shackebolt had a scar running from the top of his bald head to below his chin.

Harry knew that at least five deaths had been caused by Draco Malfoy.

A leap backwards. He remembered killing Voldemort, as everybody had known he would. As was expected of him. It had been neither exhilarating nor horrifying, not after so much fighting and death. By then, he had seen enough death, caused enough death, to be almost unaffected by it. Voldemort had to die, and die at Harry's hand. By then, it hadn't mattered anymore.

So he had ducked Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse and flung his own back at him. It had been the first and only time he had used an Unforgivable Curse. Afterwards, looking at the lifeless body sprawled before him, Harry had remembered what Bellatrix Lestrange had said to him in his fifth year at Hogwarts. Righteous anger will not hurt me for long. You must enjoy it. Well, he had not enjoyed it. But he had been devoid of emotion, caught up in apathy except for a dull hatred that throbbed in time with his very heartbeat, which was obviously just as effective.

Another leap back in time. He remembered leaving school, and later, seeing Parvati again. She had been even prettier than the time had had been to Hogsmeade with her in sixth year. He had met her in Diagon Alley, and it had reminded him of the good old days so forcefully that he had asked her out for a coffee and a chat. After that, they had dinner and then sex, and waking up in her bed the next morning it occurred to him that it hadn't been entirely unpleasant. They had met again, and then several times more, before deciding to give a serious relationship a try. She had been a nice girl, and had stood loyally by his side until -

Three years prior, his sixth year at Hogwarts. The reason he had lost interest in Parvati after his first and only date with her. His secret lover, his intense relationship that had lasted almost two years without anyone noticing. Stolen minutes in supply closets and steamy nights in enemy dormitories, guarded only by sound-proofing spells around the four-poster that had become their playground for a few precious hours. Shared moments in in the prefects' bathroom and not thinking about what was to come.

They had played pretend, believing their own games and fooling each other with invalid vows and promises neither was free to give. They had loved each other secretly, desperately, unrelentingly, but still their lives had caught up with them and and their futures lead them in different directions as far away from each other as night and day. They were so close and yet so far, never being able to share a heartbeat the way day and night would never exist within the same moment. Dawn and dusk were the worst time. The time he missed him most.

Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. No-one had ever found out. They had gone their separate ways after school, and even during the war, Harry had not once laid eyes upon his former lover. He had killed his father, yes, and it had been a traumatic experience, even though no-one could understand why had had lain on his cot, shaking, after having killed the blond man, who had only been one of so many deaths on Harry's account.

He heard about the killings. He knew who was responsible for over a quarter of their casualties, but Draco Malfoy himself? No, he had not seen him. Until now.

Harry opened his eyes a crack - the room was bathed in a greyish-yellow light which dulled the glare that had hurt his eyes so. He opened his eyes fully and looked around him: the corners of the room swallowed the opaque light, and dust-mites danced in the backdrop of the window. It was oddly comforting to watch them; no matter how sterile and pristine this place was, dust-mites were everywhere. Something so banal, so common-place and mundane that it brought Harry back to earth so fast it was almost physically painful.

He lost control over the apathy he had surrounded himself with, using it as a shield to ward off the pain of the memories welling of inside him. They couldn't hurt him if he kept them at a safe distance. But his wards shattered; pain swamped him and he fought to breathe.

Slowly regaining control over his emotions, it occurred to him that all the feelings he had been analysing were caused by people different to the man lying lying in the bed before him. He had not dared handle those, they were too fragile. He was too unsure of himself what this man was concerned, and he didn't know if he could trust himself. What did he feel?

Desperation. Deceit, helplessness. This man had killed so many of the people he loved, yet he had loved no-one as he had this man. Irony? Harry sat with his head in his hands.

But was it really love? Had he ever really felt love? Why was he questioning everything right now? Why did he feel so insecure?

He didn't know. He had felt lust. Well, of course he had. So, lust. He had felt compassion, he had felt like. Define love. There were too many emotions that were similar, so many emotions that tried to trick you into thinking you were in love when all it really was caring.

Harry sighed.

It was no use trying to fool himself. What he felt for this man had never been like or compassion. It had not been born from amiable feelings, and therefore could not be an amiable feeling. What he had felt for this man was an insatiable, all-encompassing passion. The feeling was sometimes deep and soothing, a voice in the back of his head. Sometimes, though, it was more of a roaring in his ears, so loud that he couldn't hear himself think which was probably just as well because had he thought about the things he had been doing at those times he would have stopped. And that would have been a pity, wouldn't it? Draco had always liked it best when he lost control.

Harry thought about the other relationships he had had. Parvati. He shook his head. She had been his only serious, lasting relationship. His only other serious, lasting relationship.

Hermione had been a fling. She had already been going out with Ron then, even though they had had a fight at the time. She had never told him and Harry was glad - it was better this way. They had married a year later.

Ginny had been - what exactly? She had not been his girlfriend. She had told him so. She had been The Girl He Laid More Than Once.

There had been more, mostly muggle women, some men; sometimes Harry wondered why he couldn't keep a relationship going. He wasn't looking for love; he didn't believe in it. But he always felt as if there was something missing. Something he couldn't put his finger on. Except, of course, that he could have, had he wanted to.

It was hate. Hate had been missing from each and every one of his relationships save one. The only one that had ever really been important to him.

Parvati had been his girlfriend during a time when he didn't have the spare energy or minutes to tell her it was over, and she had died in the belief that he loved her. Maybe that was a good thing. He didn't know.

Did he want Draco Malfoy to die in the belief that he hated him? He didn't know that either.

It occurred to him what a strange situation this actually was. Why was he being so analytical? This was not the way he had imagined Draco's death, or his own reaction to it.

Up to his fourth year, he would have liked nothing better than to see Malfoy six feet under, still falling. Then Cedric had died, and Harry had gotten a more realistic view of death. A person didn't just disappear. Death left a mark. Maybe Malfoy should just leave; Harry wasn't sure he wanted him to leave a mark on him by dying.

Then came sixth year, Malfoy became Draco when they were alone and Harry knew he would die if Draco did.

During the war, he thought time and time again that Draco had been killed, and time and time again was proven wrong by yet another killing that subliminally but undeniably had Draco's signature on it. That reeked of Draco.

His hurt, his fear and his anger had had been reduced to a dull ache because he hadn't had the time to deal with it. Had he allowed his emotions to run free, they would have overpowered him, and he couldn't let them get to him when he owed to it to the wizarding world to keep his wits about him and defeat Voldemort.

He wondered ow Draco had survived the war. What shape he had been in physically and mentally. He had skimmed the lists of arrested Death-Eaters, but he hadn't really looked, He hadn't really wanted to know.

Some of the had been sent to Azkaban for life, some had been Avada Kedavra'd. None had received the Dementor's Kiss because there were no dementors left.

Harry wondered what Draco was doing here. Hit by a bus. Of all the deaths he had imagined for Draco, whether fearfully or wishfully, this had not been one of them. Not in his wildest dreams would he have believed hat Draco would die due to an accident with a muggle public transportation vehicle. Not even in his wildest nightmares had he imagined that. He wanted desperately to know how long Draco had been in the muggle world. And why. It was another question that he would not get an answer to.

He had made his decision.

"I'm being cruel to be kind." Draco had always said. "If I don't keep you on your toes, who will? You'll turn soft, and who will save the wizarding world then?"

He thought of Malfoy lying on his bed, tickling his stomach with a gentle finger and talking to him about saving the world. Had he already been a Death-Eater then?

It was almost dark outside and the corners of the sterile room had become pockets of shadow that ate up the light when Harry realised what he had to do. He told himself that Malfoy had to die because he, Harry, couldn't live knowing that he hadn't killed Malfoy when he'd had the chance.

But somewhere deep down, he knew there was another reason. He thought of Draco in a wheelchair and felt sick. There was no way he would damn this man, the proudest, most elegant, eloquent, graceful and self-assured man he had ever known to be reduced to something almost brainless, being pushed around in a muggle-contraption and not even being able to hold a wand, let alone mutter an incantation. Provided he woke up.

Harry looked at Draco one last time before calling Janine Richards.

Draco had not been caught and arrested. Now that Harry looked closer, it was obvious that Draco had never been to Azkaban. The lines around his mouth and eyes weren't deep enough. Harry took one pale hand and brought it to his face. The skin felt cold and smooth under his lips, making him think of pure silk draped over marble. It felt like Draco was already dead.

Janine strode purposefully into the room and Harry felt a wave of nausea. She walked around the bed to the power-button of the IV-machine and it seemed to take aeons. Harry stopped watching.

He knew that the body could not possibly go cold immediately after being taken off life-support, but he could have sworn he felt a drop in temperature as soon as he heard the click of a switch being flipped. A tear ran down his cheek, and he tasted salt as he brushed Draco's hand with his lips for the last time.

I love you Draco. I always have. I hope you go to a more peaceful place.

The nausea was still there. The nurse looked at him with a worried expression on her face and he guessed that he was pale. The day had been trying, after all. If not physically, then doubly so on an emotional level. It had been one of the hardest decisions he had ever had to make. But he knew he would not have been able to witness Draco's humiliation and know that it was his doing without coming into conflict with his conscience. He felt bad doing this, but he would have felt worse had he not done it. Maybe sometimes the suffering that came hand in hand with death had to be borne not by the dying, but by the executioner.

I did this for you, Draco. Your release, my final act of heroism. I love you.