Warning: The Following Story Contains Scenes of a Sensitive Nature that may be Triggering to Certain Individuals. Reader Discretion is Advised.

A Companion Piece to: Broken Dreams

.o0o.

Healing Nightmare

"When you go searching for imperfections, you'll find them," she whispers.

.

He's damaged.

They've lied and told him that it doesn't matter, that he can be fixed like all broken things could. He doesn't see this to be true.

He knows that their words are false, so he wears a faux smirk upon his face and tries to show the world that he doesn't care. The nights are cold and lonely, the days colourless and devoid of all that once made his life worth living. Then, one day, when he's tired of wasting away beside two graves on the family plot, he packs a bag and disappears into the gathering darkness.

At midnight he leaves, surrendering the Manor to the flame before bidding his childhood home adieu. Precious artefacts and priceless heirlooms burn to ash in seconds, swallowed by the writhing Fiendfyre. He isn't there to see it though. In fact, he's already left his world in search of one less painful. There's no telling where he's going, but what he does understand is that Britain – home – has lost its savour. There's just too much blood staining his family tree for him to ever heal.

All he owns is the wand up his sleeve, a knapsack of clothing, a small fortune in Galleons tucked within a pouch (charmed to be light as a feather) and his broomstick – though he isn't sure why.

Hours pass him by as he soars across the heavens, boredom and fatigue plaguing him, urging him to sleep. He can't. It's completely certain that he'll dream, and he just can't bear the thought of seeing their faces, frozen in the first stages of rigor mortis.

Their eyes follow him wherever he goes, condemning him for living when they had not. He weeps, even though there are no more tears left to shed.

The Dark Lord is dead, and he should be happy, but the price of freedom has been too steep. The truth of the old saying gnaws at him, like a starving dog given a bone, and he swallows to fight back the scream that threatens to break free. In all of history, there has never been a war when only one side has bled . . . but this has never really been a war; it's been a bloody massacre.

He's starving but there isn't much to eat save for a few packets of crisps that he's purchased before taking to the skies, and there's even less for him to drink – just a bottle of half-frozen water that he's keeping for a time when the dry burning in his throat becomes unbearable. He tries to smirk in an attempt to bolster his spirits, to remember what it is to be a Malfoy, but his lips are bruised and his teeth are chipped, whilst a jagged scar runs down the length of his cheek.

His vision is blurring when he finally spots land in the distance, the lights of a thousand buildings winking up at him as he descends from the skies, muscles aching in half-a-hundred places. His landing upon the beach is much more akin to a freefall, yet somehow he manages to collapse off the broom in one piece before curling up upon the sand, asleep before his eyes close.

.

There's a flash of light and he's screaming, hurtling down the corridor with panic evident in his eyes.

"Protego," he yells, slashing his wand through the air, even though he knows that this dark curse cannot be blocked or deflected. The jet of crackling violet strikes the woman in her chest, right above her bosom, and then she's falling, blood blossoming across her robes as her lips part in a grimace of surprise.

Even in death, Narcissa Malfoy is regal . . . and beautiful.

"No!" he shrieks, stabbing his wand through the air like a knife and screeching forth the words of the most lethal curse known to their kind. Like a serpent, the stream of crackling jade tears through the air and catches his assailant in the throat.

The Weasel crumples like a dragon speared through the eye, haphazard and ungainly, eyes losing their sight long before he hits the ground.

Breathing deeply, he falls to his knees beside his mother and shakes her, even though he knows, dammit, he knows that she won't wake, tears streaming down his cheeks and splashing against her own as he begs to take her place.

.

He's torn awake, screaming, the horrific beauty of his dead mother etched upon his mind forever more. Thrashing out at the rough sand and seashells around him, he struggles to calm himself as the waves lap at his boots. As soon as he's aware of the encroaching ocean, he leaps back in alarm, blinking at the molten slash of dawn across the horizon.

Not long after, he's back on his broom, even though his arse is sore from the twelve-hour flight he's just made, and his crotch aches more than his entire body because of the uncomfortable position. It doesn't matter – physical pain has long since lost its ability to hurt him, not now when his memories cut sharper than knives.

In Britain they call him a war hero for changing sides just hours before the war ended, for going after the Death Eaters one by one, killing them when their backs were turned, and saving dozens of lives in the process. Just like the screams of his body, their salvation at his hands doesn't mean anything. Instead, he's tormented by those he couldn't save, the people who meant the most to him. They're his parents and his childhood friends, his first girlfriend and even the cousin he's never gotten the chance to know.

The only family he's ever known, all fluttering from his grasp like ashes in the wind.

He's a survivor who's lived through the war, but he's sure that the peace will be his end.

He'll see his father with a twisted shriek of agony carved upon his face, and Pansy with the resigned look of hopelessness upon hers. He's tortured, in his dreams more than his waking hours, by the lifeless eyes of Crabbe and Blaise and Daphne, their burning glares cursing him for the sin that was his living in a world that they didn't.

Soon, he finds himself on the outskirts of a city, and, with a weary sigh and a flick of his wand, he shrinks his broomstick to fit into his pocket. It's highly doubtful that Muggles are accustomed to seeing an adolescent boy walking around with a broomstick over his shoulder, and he does wish to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Reading the signs and billboards, he realises that he's travelled a long way in a single night and is quite a distance away from what was once his home and hearth.

He's in New York, and he knows that it's a city of vices that can easily help him numb the pain.

Years ago, when he was still a child, he remembers thinking that the world would one day bow before him. Born with a drop of Felix Felicis on his tongue, his life has been one of luxury, letting him waltz through life on the merits of his family fortune. Had it not been for this pointless war, he's sure that his path would have gone in an entirely different direction, but not anymore. He's oh so very tired of living.

Instead, he simply exists, a dry husk of a man who had once held the entire world in the palm of his hand. There isn't much left to him in the way of ambition and goals – the career he had once strove for in school is long forgotten after all. He gets an apartment in a dingy building, where the paint is chipped, and the floorboards creak, but somehow this shabby place isn't in ruins despite being a haven of pimps and drug lords.

But he's content to live here, and even though it brings bile to his throat to keep doing so, he uses the blood-money his family has been accumulating over the centuries to put food on the table and keep the landlady from breathing down his neck. In another life, he's sure that he'd have killed himself long ago for sinking to such loathsome, mundane levels, to the bleak point where he drinks himself into oblivion on a daily basis. His life is hell, though he sees it as purgatory, a way of seeking reparation to his soul for all the sins he's committed.

Life would be so much easier if he ever decides to use his wand again, but somehow that feels like cheating. Using magic seems like the easy way out, and he's too much of a masochist to help himself out of the shithole he calls existing.

His blood may be pure, but that's worth shit to him now, because his heart and soul are rotten to the core.

The years drag on, and he battles to forget, but he discovers that he cannot. Their eyes still dominate his every moment, their voices still screaming at him, condemning him to die whether he's awake or he's dreaming.

He desires death like he's craved nothing else in his entire lifetime but at the same time, the concept of the void terrifies him more than the souls who lie in wait.

There's a strong sense of doubt in his mind, urging him that he'll never be able to look them in the eye again, not when he's the cause of their deaths. At least here, in life, he can try to convince himself that the voices aren't real and that he isn't losing his mind.

In the need to attain perfection, parallel scars begin appearing from wrist to forearm, some white and some vivid pink, but every one of them stark in contrast to his alabaster skin. It's the only thing of his that remains perfect, both arms covered in the same precise tapestry of interweaving cuts. They're punctuated by needle pricks and vivid purple bruising, the marks most pronounced in the crook of his elbows and the gaps between his toes. The jubilant numbness and looping happiness is addictive to him, becoming his greatest escape from reality, the only way in which he's able to attain some vague semblance of peace. The sharp, metallic stings are heaven within a syringe, like shooting stars in the night sky and rose petals in a pool of dew.

He's a skinny, spindly mass of jagged bones and papyrus-dry skin, teeth and tongue turned yellow from the woody cigarettes he's taken to smoking. There isn't the slightest bit of hope left in his eyes. Instead, they're grey, and devoid of everything whilst holding onto nothing.

It is a few years later when he sees a familiar face, barely discernible beneath the shadows of grief, time and hardship. There are streaks of premature grey through her once vibrant brunette curls, and her hair hangs in a brittle clump around her ghastly, malnourished face. There's a broken look in her hollow, brown eyes, and it's so very evident to him that she's missing the know-it-all brilliance that used to sparkle within the chocolate depths. As he stumbles towards her, he sees in her a kindred spirit, someone who's as tired as he is.

He can hardly recognise her as the intelligent, young, Muggle-born witch she used to be. Now she's but a shard of crystal, a complementary fragment to his own shattered soul.

That night, he takes her back to his place. It's a night of wild passion, torrid and wanton, her lips bruising beneath the intensity of his kisses, him hissing in pain as her nails scratch red stripes down his back but for the briefest of moments, he forgets his anguish.

It frightens him, that she's come back into his life, and that she's making him feel again. So he doesn't stick around the next morning, stabbing himself through the heart by sneaking out the door of his own flat and feigning having to go in to work. It isn't as though he deserves love anyway.

He lets the shred of warmth gutter like the flame of a candle caught in a turbulent vortex of energy and yet safely ensconced by the eye of the storm.

It isn't the end though. He finds himself at the bar where she works at least once a week because dammit all, he just can't stay away anymore. They rarely exchange a single word but they still manage to claw away at each other's monsters for just a waning moment on every one of those not-so-rare nights. He's never there when she awakens but the desire to one day wake up in her arms is growing with every moment, and he finds that she's becoming more addictive for him than the acid he's so fond of tripping on.

She's quickly becoming the only way for him to breathe, for his heart to beat and for his eyes to see. After all these years of craving death, she's giving him a reason to live.

He only hopes that she feels the same and that this isn't just something else that's going to be yanked away from his, dribbling from his fingertips like water.

The months pass and they're damaged together, dancing an endless waltz as they try to rebuild their shattered lives and fail. It's a beautiful nightmare that he never wants to wake from, and over the rough passage of time, he finds himself falling in love with her. Despite all of their stolen moments of ecstasy and joy, he can't help but feel that they could have been so much happier in a world not torn by war and grief.

He thinks it's his fault that their world is broken, never seeing that it's been healing right before his very eyes.

.

"You're broken, but perfect to me," he replies.

A/N: I'm really happy with how this story turned out, as 'Broken Dreams' (Through Hermione's POV) is one of my favourite stories that I've written so I was really eager to revisit it and write this one. Thank you so much for reading and as always, reviews are always appreciated

This was written for Round Three of Season Three of the Quidditch League, in my capacity as Chaser #2 for the Falmouth Falcons. (Go Falcons!) My task was to write about my OTP suffering from a Mental Illness, and so I decided to expanded on the Broken Dreams Universe by writing 'Healing Nightmare' which is Dramione (My OTP) with PTSD.

For a chance to see the events of this story through Hermione's eyes, such as the missing moments as to why she's in New York, I recommend reading the Companion Piece.

Prompts: Line: If you search for imperfections, you'll find them. ; Device: Flashback ; Word: Reparation

Also, a big thank you to Lokilette (Seeker for the Falcons) and Gitana del Sol (Captain of the Falcons) for beta'ing this piece.