You Know You Are Loved When A Gryffindor Loves You

29

He rushed in and skidded to a halt, his eyes fixed in the same direction as Harry’s. There was a human body in their bed and judging from the movement of the sheet completely covering it, it was shaking really badly. They both approached slowly sending mental messages to each other, Harry switched his wand to his left hand, (He was ambidextrous, though mainly a rightie), and on a mutual nod they pulled the sheet back.

He was covered in blood and soot and absolutely nothing else. His breathing was laboured and shallow, bubbles of blood blowing and retracting into his nose with each breath. There were long strands of what looked like entrails in the usually perfect hair and there was extensive bruising to the normally milky skin.

They were looking down upon a battered and bloodied Draco Malfoy.

“Bloody hell, Draco, what happened?” Harry sat down on the side of the bed in shock. “He’s not responding, we need to get him to Poppy”, Severus brought him back. Using his wand, he wrapped Draco gently in a sheet and levitated him to the hospital wing, Harry having fire-called her to say they were on their way.

Poppy was close to tears as she examined her patient with Harry and Severus anxiously watching on. “This poor boy has been brutalised”. She made up a new chart and began to list his injuries, “He may not survive this”, she tried not to sob as she applied her most advanced healing powers, “How this boy isn’t already dead I do not know”, she rasped through tears as she worked, applying salves, giving potions, timing everything carefully, staying up all night even when Harry and Severus had fallen asleep, diligently applying her medicines and charms, even when she lost him for a tense few minutes in the dead of night and was overjoyed to hear his heart start again.

The day had well and truly risen before her patient opened his eyes and they darted around in a panic, “Ron, Ron”, came out all scratchy and dry. There was cool water being gently dispensed into his mouth drop by drop, a sure hand under his head holding him up and he felt safe again. He opened his eyes, blinked the mist away a couple of times and looked up into Ron’s face.

Then folded over himself in shame, “They hurt me, they fuckin’ hurt me”, as Ron took him into strong arms and simply held him while he howled out his pain and grief, rocking gently, “You’re not going back to them. I forbid it. I’m sorry if you won’t see the ancestral home again, but nothing is worth what has been done to you, love. And, yes, I mean love. I love you my chibi Dragon”, and Draco howled louder, and Ron held him closer and rocked him harder as his own tears fell.

Sometime in the early morning, the bondees climbed into bed after cleaning it of blood and soot. They stared into each other’s eyes before dousing the candles, “I hope he’s okay”, Harry whispered, curling his head onto Severus’ chest. Severus held his husband and sighed, “Me too”, as the room fell into darkness.

The next day, there was a conference in the sickbay. Poppy, Albus, Severus, Aurora and Ron were in attendance. Draco had been heavily sedated and lay in a bed, looking awfully pallid and delicate. The meeting was in Poppy’s office. She shook her head sadly as she outlined the extent of Draco’s injuries. “He has several ribs that have been broken and shoddily mended, his jaw is also broken. His kidneys are damaged to the extent that he is passing blood in his urine. He has bruising to most of his trunk and buttocks and welts from being beaten across most of his back and the backs of his legs”, she hesitated, blinking back tears. Albus laid a soothing hand over hers as she collected herself, “He has been raped, many times and with a variety of, er, objects. I have spent nearly an hour extracting splinters of what look like a broomstick handle from his, er, rectum. He is badly torn inside”, she lowered her head at the gasps of horror from around her.

“Albus, he has asked for asylum here at Hogwarts and I cannot in all conscience release him back to his family, as they seem to have assisted in the perpetration of these crimes against him if they weren’t in fact the main instigators. A terrible wrong has been done to this boy, many wrongs. This torture has been going on for some time it would appear, some of the breaks in bone are quite old, some fresh and recent. Until I cured them last night, there were ligature marks to wrists and ankles and neck, the hyoid bone in his throat has been nearly crushed”. The medi-witch wiped her face of tears trying desperately to remain objective.

A tiny bell sounded in mid-air. “My patient is awake, I must go to him”, and the matron shot out of the room. She came back a short while later, “He’s asking for you Mr Weasley, you too, Severus”, the two men stood and left. Ron raced to his lover’s side and knelt on the floor by the bed, Draco’s hand pressed to his lips. Draco turned his head slightly, “You don’t have to kneel, my beautiful peasant”, and Ron smiled. He sat up on the edge of the bed and leaned down to kiss his lover’s lips to hear a polite cough from behind him and Severus approached the bed shaking his head slightly, “I don’t know, let you out of our sight for two minutes...”, and Draco managed a weak smile, “You’re safe now, Draco, though we will need as full an accounting as you are able once you’re up and about again. You will be avenged for this”.

He pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and reached for Draco’s other hand which the lad gripped weakly, “Severus, what’s this?”, his thumb was rubbing lightly over the thick gold band on his left hand, his eyes travelling up to those of his godfather. Severus met them levelly although his cheeks reddened. Shit he had never quite got round to informing Draco. ‘What’s up, love?, I felt a spike in your emotions. Ah!!’ Severus grinned suddenly, ‘He’s awake and he’s just noticed my ring’.

Draco looked puzzled and glanced at his boyfriend who was trying to glare ‘significantly’ at Severus. Severus called the blond’s attention back, “Draco, my life has changed drastically in the last almost two years. I’m afraid that I was economical with the truth when it came to the real reason that Harry and I had to go away. There was a potentially huge threat to both of us because of the condition we were in”. Draco moved his hand to forestall further explanation, “I know about Potter’s bra-baby, he was to be swapped for me. So you got him up the duff and shacked up together....?”, he coughed and Ron helped him sip water.

“Draco, I said the condition ‘we’ were in. I have also given birth, we were both ‘up the duff’ as you so graciously put it. Harry and I are bonded Telepaths and we married back in February, we now have a son and a daughter, that was the threat to us, our pregnancies”, he went silent at the shock on Draco’s face, then he turned to his lover with narrowed eyes, “Your ‘brother’s’ wedding on the day we should have gone out? That was the wedding, and the postcard and the shirt from Spain. You devious bastards, the lot of you. Still, I don’t blame you, you never knew what I’d take back to dear Daddy”, he sighed, but there was no malice in it.

“I won’t be ever seeing that bastard ever again unless it’s at the business end of my wand. I’ve asked for asylum here”, he coughed again, then mumbled, “Oh, bugger I haven’t got a wand any more, in fact, I’ve got sod all except my skin and my friends who all hold out on me and don’t tell me things”. They all laughed but Draco coughed again and Ron cradled his head and helped him to drink before lowering him back to the pillows.

“So when do I get to meet the little ones?”, he turned to his godfather and feebly squeezed his hand, “I think I need some reminding of how nice life can be”, his lip trembled and two tears escaped. Severus murmured, squeezing back, “We’ll bring them later, I’m sure they want to meet Uncle Draco. They’re still very small so they aren’t too energetic yet”. Draco smiled again, “So, you old git, married eh? A Muggle marriage at that?” Severus shrugged, “Well we cannot marry in this world. Harry asked me to do it the Muggle way. I’m a Potter-Snape now”, he faded to a pleased silence. Draco smiled as much as his sore jaw would allow, “You look really happy, Severus. I don’t think I ever saw you look truly happy before, it suits you. I think I need another nap and I spy Poppy hovering, but I want to meet the family, see something clean and innocent, unsullied by war and rape and torture...”, he dissolved into sobs and Ron was there to hold him. Severus stood and smiled down at them both, they had come a long way since their rather brutal fucks in the Astronomy tower. Ron looked up in an, ‘I’ve got this’ kind of way. They nodded at each other and Severus left the room.

He collapsed on the sofa and Harry brought him a cup of tea. Severus brushed it aside, “Sorry, love, I need a real drink”, and went over to the cabinet and poured himself a large one. He gestured to Harry, who shook his head and then murmured, “Go on, why not”, and was handed a large brandy as Severus sank down beside him with an equally large whisky and gathered Harry to him, “Oh, God, it’s awful. The things that have been done to that poor boy”, and told his bond-mate, who was in tears by the end, and snuggled deeper into his lover’s side, holding his husband tight as he folded and cried into Harry’s hair, “I know he can be an insufferable little twerp at times, but nobody deserves that, nobody”. And let his own shock and horror out in Harry’s arms.

Harry plucked their drinks and set them on the low table so he had both hands free and wrapped them around his beloved, then felt himself being gently hefted until he was astraddle Severus’ lap, then he was comprehensively kissed into the middle of next week, a hot hand on his back, the other holding his arse, ’Need you, lover. Want you so much’, the soft dark purr into his mind and Harry melted, tipping his head back rubbing their hips and hard-ons together while his love devoured his creamy neck and they fumbled with clothes and layers until skin crashed against skin, tongue over tongue, doing all they could to merge, then Harry stood and the lower layers were stripped away slowly as he revealed how turned on he was watching his beloved rub himself absentmindedly through his pants.

He pounced, stripping Severus swiftly, then lubed and took, that sweet look of pain/pleasure in Severus’ face as he was fucked mercilessly, pounded into, released from all care and the day, the shriek was loud and messy and his husband came copiously all over Harry’s chest and belly and his own. Harry re-angled himself and moved even deeper for a mere three lovely thrusts that had him whispering and gasping then howling aloud as he filled Severus.

“I think we both needed that”, Harry chuckled. Severus gently butted him, “I’ll always need you, Harry”. They moved together and gathered into each other, kissing and touching, coming down off the high, holding, letting breath normalise, lost in the bubble, totally lost.