Harry Potter and all its indicia are © JK Rowling, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. I own none of the copyright, and this fanfiction makes no money

Pairings: Harry/Draco, Hermione/OMC
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash sex, language, possible Ron bashing if you squint, depending on your view
A/N: This will be a novella-length story. The title of the story comes from the Muse song Sing for Absolution. All the chapter titles are lyrics from other Muse songs. Chapter one is from Starlight. There's something about Muse's lyrics that is perfect for Drarry. I hope you enjoy the story.

Chapter One: Black Holes and Revelations

"There. Done."

Harry finishes securing the dressing to the newly-stitched gash on the inebriated man's forehead, then pulls off his latex gloves and throws them into the clinical waste bin, before ushering the patient out of the examination room. It has been an extremely long night, and triage, as was usual for a Saturday night, has been full of injured drunks and junkies, with wounds not serious enough to merit quick attention by the medical team, but loud and annoying enough for Harry to wish they'd all just sod off home. If he never has to smell stale alcohol on someone's breath ever again, it will be too soon. He glances at the clock and heaves a sigh of relief; it is six in the morning now. Only one hour to go. He discharges his patient with a lecture about the dangers of excessive drinking, then calls his next patient into the treatment room: one of only about three non-substance-related admissions he's dealt with all night. It is an elderly lady who had got up to use the loo in the night and tripped and hurt her ankle. Harry quickly establishes the joint isn't broken, and sets to work making it comfortable for her.

By the time he's finished strapping the elderly lady's ankle and asked the registrar to write a prescription for Tramadol for her, it is seven in the morning and the day team arrives. Harry and the rest of the night shift hand over to the day team, then with a collective almost-gasp of relief they pull off their dirty scrubs, throw them into their rucksacks and pull on clean clothing, and head for the exit in record time, pleased that it is a whole twelve hours before they have to see the place again. Harry fully intends to spend the majority of that time sleeping.

He makes a show of walking to the car park with the others, then waits until his colleagues are all busy or have driven away before dashing out of sight, pulling his wand discreetly from his own rucksack and Disapparating. Harry usually does drive to work, but the morning after the night shift leaves him in no mood for cars. He's exhausted, and dirty, and hungry, and he just wants to get home as quickly as possible. He arrives in the alley at the side of his house, walks to this front door, wearily pulls his key from the pocket of his coat, unlocks his door, and all but slams it shut behind him, before collapsing into a chair in his living room. Merlin, he is tired. Knowing he should just go to bed, but feeling like he needs a few minutes to unwind first (otherwise all he does is work and sleep when he's on nights), he picks up the remote for the TV which is lying next to him and turns it on.

BBC Breakfast blares onto the HD screen, and the female presenter is reviewing the front pages of the Sunday newspapers, most of which are talking about some scandal in which a famous Hollywood actress has left her husband to live with another woman. Harry knows about this of course. It had been a popular topic of conversation during his break the previous night. He tries to focus on the news headlines, but it is no good; he feels his eyelids drooping and the words begin to make no sense in his sleepy brain. This has been Harry's fifth night shift in a row, and Saturday nights are always the second most heinous of all shifts in the Accident and Emergency department at the Royal Sussex County Hospital where Harry works as a senior staff nurse, thanks to the amount of people coming in with alcohol and drug-related emergencies and injuries. The only shift worse, in Harry's opinion, is the night shift on New Year's Eve- a shift he always volunteers to work (along with Christmas Day), because it isn't as if he gets to spend it with people he loves anyway.

Harry knows he's fighting a losing battle against sleep, but he's a stubborn bastard if nothing else, and he tries valiantly to remain awake, pretending to be interested in yesterday's Premiership football results. But sleep ultimately wins out, and Harry drifts off on the sofa.

When he awakes a couple of hours later, the living room is full of bright sunlight, and Songs of Praise is on the telly. Harry watches the congregation singing 'The Lord is my Shepherd' for a couple of seconds before grabbing the TV remote and putting the telly on standby. Then he realises what has woken him up- there is a large seagull screeching right outside the window; a frequent peril of living so close to the sea. He yells a curse at the seagull, but it doesn't budge. Instead it perches on the windowsill and shoots him a look of utter audacity. Harry flips it the finger, which achieves absolutely nothing except making him feel slightly better. Once awake, Harry realises he's fallen asleep with his left arm underneath him, which is now completely numb. Braving himself for the inevitable pins and needles that will be following soon, he extracts the floppy limb which feels strangely unattached to him from underneath his stomach, and lets out a grimace as oxygen-rich blood flows back into the limb reawakening it from its slumber, bringing with it dagger-like fiery bursts of pain stabbing him unrelentingly.

"Ow," he says with a grimace, heaving himself up from the sofa and padding down the corridor of his Brighton ground floor flat to the bedroom. Once there he strips off his jeans and T-shirt, pulls on a pair of ratty pyjamas that are lying on top of his pillow, and climbs into bed. He doesn't stir until his alarm goes off again at six that evening. When it beeps, ostentatiously and persistently, Harry yells a string of expletives at it before hauling himself out of bed and into the bathroom, where he showers quickly before dressing in a clean set of scrubs, and heading to his kitchen to make 'breakfast'. He fries some bacon in the pan and makes himself a sandwich, which he eats quickly before grabbing his keys and rucksack, then he dashes out of the house, and Apparates back to the hospital. Merlin, his life had become mundane. This certainly wasn't how he had seen himself, years ago, when he had imagined his future life as an adult. For one thing, he never thought he would be living as a Muggle ever again.

When Harry had entered the wizarding world at the age of eleven, he couldn't imagine himself ever wanting to leave it. Here was a place that, for the first time in his life that he could remember, he had found himself with friends, people he thought of as family, and people who actually gave a damn what happened to him. Of course, there were those who had hated him with a passion- Voldemort being top of that list- but for the most part, Harry had felt accepted in the world, and in return couldn't fathom ever wanting to live away from it again.

Then it had all rather spectacularly turned to shit around him. His marriage- the result of a whirlwind romance that swept him off his feet during his "eighth" year at Hogwarts- crumbled around him within eighteen months of saying 'I do', and the Press hounded him day and night and refused to allow him any sort of privacy at all (this was one of the contributing factors to his marriage breakdown), resulting in him finally snapping one time and hexing a reporter so badly they ended up in St Mungo's and Harry was thrown out of Auror training as a result. He had been lucky to avoid criminal charges.

He could have lived with all that, however, had it not been for the monumental fall-out he and Ron had, four years after the Battle of Hogwarts. It hadn't been any one thing which had ended their friendship, but a series of events that had caused them both to bubble away until they eventually both blew up at each other. First had been Harry's jealousy of Ron's continued Auror training, which he had failed to hide properly. Then there had been Ron's complete lack of support throughout Harry's brief and disastrous marriage, and undisguised glee when it all went tits up. But the straw that broke the Hippogriff's back had been when Harry sided with Hermione when hers and Ron's relationship ended, just three months before they were due to be married. Harry had- literally- caught Ron with his trousers down, shagging Lavender Brown over the kitchen table of the small cottage he and Hermione shared. He had told Hermione about it (after much agonising) and she had called off the engagement, and, indeed, their relationship. Ron had been furious, believing that Harry's loyalty should have been to him, and he should have kept quiet. Harry had pointed out that both Ron and Hermione were equally important to him, and that it was unfair of Ron to expect Harry to keep such a secret from Hermione when she was the innocent party in this. Ron then accused Harry of deliberately sabotaging his relationship because his own marriage had been an unmitigated disaster, just like Ron had told him it would be. The pair had fought, there had been very unkind words (not to mention hexes) exchanged on both parts, and Harry, having taken about as much as he could take, had walked out of both Ron's life and the wizarding world with a huge 'fuck you' to both, having not returned in nearly twelve years. He didn't so much as read the Daily Prophet any longer.

Harry had headed for the south coast, wanting a fresh start by the sea. He enrolled in a local college and sat A Levels, reasonably assuming that NEWTs in subjects such as Defence Against the Dark Arts and Potions wasn't going to stand him in very good stead in the Muggle world. To his surprise he did very well in them, and with the support and guidance of the only person he was still in contact with from his old life, Hermione, he enrolled on a degree in Nursing at the University of Brighton. After completing the three years of training there in 2006 he took a job as staff nurse on the A and E ward and the rest, as they say, is history.

Harry doesn't know why he is thinking about his old life tonight, and he frowns as he shoves his rucksack into his locker. He checks the roster for the evening, and this instantly draws him out of his maudlin mood- he's not working in Minor Injuries this evening. He's going to be working in Resus. Good, no time for moping in there. He pins his name badge and ID to his uniform, attaches the small fob watch to the front of his scrubs, and heads into the hustle and bustle of the hospital, ready to receive handover from the day team and start his twelve hour shift. Thank goodness he's got the next three days off, he thinks.

Harry is so rushed off his feet that the first six hours whip by. He sees two heart attacks, a stroke victim (who sadly dies- Harry still cannot stand to lose patients, even after nearly eight years in the job), and some idiot high on marijuana who tombstoned off Brighton Pier at low tide and suffers severe neck and spinal cord injuries. By one in the morning he's hot, thirsty, and in desperate need of a break. Thankfully he gets one soon after this, and he and his friend Emily head up to the staff canteen together, on a quest for strong coffee and chocolate cake.

"You take the biggest slice," Emily says, pushing a china saucer containing a slice of chocolate fudge cake towards Harry from the tray she's carrying. "It looks like you need it."

"Have I told you recently I love you?" Harry replies with a smile, picking up his fork and spearing a large chunk of the cake onto it and popping it into his mouth. It's slightly stale and rather dry; the icing has dried out somewhat, but it's rich and full of sugar and gives Harry a much-needed energy boost. He groans in satisfaction and licks the icing off his fork. Emily laughs.

"What?"

"You," she says. "I must be sleep deprived, because I'm quite sure I just found that erotic."

"I thought you were a lesbian?"

"Like I said, Harry, sleep deprived."

It's Harry's turn to laugh, but just as he's about to tuck into another chunk of cake his bleeper goes off. There's an emergency coming into Resus and he's needed back in the department straight away. He looks longingly at his cake, before pushing it towards Emily, whose bleeper has not made a sound. Then, taking a final swig of coffee as he goes, he dashes to the lifts and heads back to the emergency department.

He's just finished scrubbing up at the sinks when the consultant and registrar catch up with him.

"Sorry to call you off your break, but we've got a major RTA coming in," says the consultant. "Two male victims, and both in a critical condition. They're being airlifted in now."

"OK," Harry says, all thoughts of cake gone now. He walks into the Resus room and finds two teams of medical staff fully assembled, waiting for the paramedics to bring in the casualties. He's only waiting a couple of minutes before the first victim is rushed in towards the first team, who begin work straight away as the paramedics feed them vital information. About thirty seconds later the victim his team are working on is also rushed in.

"Unconscious young white unidentified male," the paramedic is saying, and Harry takes a good look at the body lying on the Resus table as he pulls on a fresh pair of latex gloves. His heart goes out to him; his face is cut and bruised beyond recognition and his head, which is inside a huge neck support, has matted blood seeping all over it. Harry instantly knows they will have a huge struggle to save this one, as the injuries are clearly severe and extensive. "Pedestrian, hit by a lorry along with another male about thirty minutes ago. BP ninety over forty-five, SATs eighty-eight percent on O2. Pulse fifty BPM. Pupils responsive to light." She continues to hand over to the medical team, listing the known injuries the man has, and Harry's natural instincts kick in. He grabs a pair of surgical scissors and begins to cut away the man's clothing.

"We need five units of O neg," he hears the consultant saying to a junior nurse, who instantly telephones through to get the blood sent. "Harry, I need you to get a cannula into each of his arms."

"Right." Harry finishes cutting the sleeve of the man's shirt and pulls away the material. Just as he has finished collecting the equipment he needs to insert the cannula into the victim's arm, he hears a huge panicked commotion from the other bed, the unmistakeable sounds of a flat ECG, and the mechanical whirring of a defibrillator charging. He cannot allow too much worry for the other man; he has his own patient to help keep alive, so he fights to tune everyone who's not on his own team out. He's just finished inserting the cannula into the man's right arm when the team next to his slow to a halt and the consultant says with a heavy heart, "I think we should stop. Does everyone agree? Time of death, two-seventeen AM. Thank you, all."

Fuck.

The rest of his team all pause for a nanosecond, all having heard the words. Harry can tell it just makes them even more determined to save this man, as they're buggered if they're going to lose two patients, two young men who should have their whole lives in front of them ahead, within minutes of each other. A senior house officer hands the cut-up clothing to a student nurse and asks them to look through the pockets.

"Try and find a wallet, a mobile phone, something that we can use to identify him and maybe find a next of kin," she says to the student. "Harry- the cannula!"

Harry dashes around to the left hand side of the patient, prepares the equipment for cannula insertion on the trolley next to him, and turns the man's left arm over.

And almost drops dead himself from shock. The student nurse won't find a scrap of identification on this man's person, Harry knows this with as much certainty as he knows anything, but that doesn't matter, because he knows who it is. This man has the very faint, but definitely noticeable, red outline of a skull and snake branded onto their left forearm. Harry knows without a shadow of a doubt this isn't just any old tattoo. This patient has the fucking Dark Mark.

There were only nine people alive with the Dark Mark on their arm at the time Harry left the wizarding world, and seven of them were in Azkaban. That leaves only two people who this man could possibly be. And Harry is positive that this man on the table is not Lucius Malfoy, who would be approaching the age of sixty by now. He can taste bile rising as he realises that the man who this medical team are battling to save is Draco. Draco who is critically ill, and whose companion has just died, and was almost certainly a wizard too.

"Harry, are you all right?" he hears someone ask him, and he notices he's shaking violently. He's not yet inserted the cannula.

"I…" he stammers. No, he's not all right. He's not bloody alright at all. He notices the cannula being taken from him as Sophie the staff nurse takes over, inserting the needle into the crook of Draco's left arm. He wonders if he might pass out.

"There's nothing in the clothing," the student nurse says, having finished her examination. "Nothing to say who he is, or who is next of kin could be."

Harry is now standing there uselessly, dumbly, trying to engage his stupid brain and body, but he appears to have seized up. So he offers what he can to be helpful.

"I know who he is," he says, and even to his ears his voice sounds full of disbelief. "His name is Draco Malfoy."

"Are you sure, Harry?" a registrar asks him. Harry nods. "Okay then. And do you happen to know who his next of kin is?"

"Yes," Harry replies. "It's me. I'm his next of kin. Draco Malfoy is my husband."