Clarity

Chapter One

Stage One

If our love is tragedy, why are you my remedy?

If our love's insanity, why are you my clarity?

Nobody was surprised when Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley married within a year of the war.

Everyone agreed it made sense; the war had proved nothing if not that life was precious.

The wedding was lavish and borrowed heavily from Harry's savings. It was not at all to his liking, but Ginny liked it.

And if Ginny was happy, so was he.

Harry booked a surprise honeymoon in Paris. At first it was perfect.

But by the third day Ginny was complaining she was feeling weak and drained.

At the end of the first week she could no longer leave the hotel room.

Within two weeks she was dead.

Harry returned home a broken man. He locked the door and kept the world out.

He took comfort in bottles of gin, finding they could erase pain like nothing else could.

At first, it was like a game.

One glass for every person important to him who'd died.

James. Lily. Sirius. Dumbledore. Lupin. Ginny.

Then it was just drinking enough to numb the grief that stole across his chest.

The first glass took the edge off. The second made him feel a bit better.

The third made things look not as bad as they were.

The fourth made him only hurt a little.

The fifth he barely hurt at all.

The sixth he forgot what it was to feel grief.

The seventh he was unconscious.

This became a daily routine, a part of his day that he was dependent upon in order not to sink in the grief that threatened to overcome him. Every morning he would wake up on the cold flagstones in his kitchen.

Every morning but one.

For one morning, he didn't wake up again.

.-.

Beep.

Beep.

One morning Harry vaguely wondered where the beeping came from. Later, he realised they'd always been there, as long as he could remember.

Beep.

He could no long discern the passing of time; whether that thought had come a moment after the first, an hour later, or the following morning, he did not know.

Beep.

Yes, the beeping had always been there...

Beep.

It was almost comforting. Something beating along with his heart, constant, always constant...

Beep.

.-.

Beep.

Beep.

.-.

Beep.

Beep.

The problem with the beeps was that it was easy to lose count. Easy to lose track of time...

Beep.

I could count them, Harry thought vaguely.

Beep.

One...

Beep.

Two...

Beep.

Three... Three what? What was he counting?

.-.

Beep beep.

Harry's world was thrown into disarray. Everything he knew changed. The world as he knew it was topsy turvey.

Beep beep.

His world was now two-beeped.

Beep beep.

What did this mean? Harry didn't have the capacity for panic but there was an insistent edge to his thoughts.

Beep beep beep.

Three beeps? He thought wonderingly, in a voice somehow detached from his own, somewhere else in his head.

Beep beep beep.

He concentrated on the beeps as best as he could..

Beep beep beep.

But what was that? Things were changing again...

Beep beep beep.

For once, there was more sound than the beeps. Just discernible, flickering quietly was another noise. Harry tried to listen carefully, but he soon forgot what he was trying to do...

But then there was no need. The noise cut in across his brain, drowning out the beeps and his thoughts, drowning out the only noises he'd ever heard...

"...coming round soon...

...showing positive signs...

...a month, that's right..."

Harry could make neither head nor tail of what these words meant, they might as well have been in the wrong order for all the sense he could make of them.

He now had a third noise to add to his collection, with the beeps and his own thoughts. It reminded him of the latter, it made the same type of noises...

Beep beep beep.

But the strange thing was that the words weren't originating from his head...

They were someone else's thoughts - perhaps the same thing that made the beeps...?

Beep beep beep.

The thoughts had a tone to him that felt strangely... familiar to Harry... they felt as familiar as his own...

He knew that tone...

Suddenly other things began to break into his consciousness, in fact his brain was overloaded with noises - there were beeps that weren't his beeps, voices that weren't his, and noises that be couldn't even relate to.

Above all, the second tone, the familiar one, continued to crash in through his thoughts, getting progressively louder and more understandable.

"-can you hear me Potter? Potter? If you can hear me, I'd like you to open your eyes-"

Harry suddenly became aware of a part of his body he didn't know he had. Eyelids, sitting below his thoughts.

He flexed them, experimentally.

WHITE.

White flooded his eyeballs, seared and burned, it was all he could see and think, the blackness he'd been so comfortable with, he'd known all his life had gone-

Part of the white was moving. Eyes watering, Harry saw a figure in a white coat leaning over him, with skin and hair almost as white as the ceiling and walls that surrounded them.

His mouth was moving and Harry knew, knew, it was his tone that had invaded his head, and kept him company, and Harry tried to listen-

"-how are you feeling Potter? Like hell I'd imagine." He smirked and the sight of that hit Harry like a brick wall, and in that instant a torrent of information flooded his brain, one word brighter than the others, branded into his brain and slipping through his lips.

"Malfoy."

Draco Malfoy smirked down at him, tugging on the white coat that fell around his slim, lithe figure.

"Actually, Potter, it's Healer Malfoy now."

Harry stared at him blankly. Unperturbed, Draco carried on grinning deviously.

"We're going to be getting very well acquainted over the next six months- or haven't you heard?" he asked with a delighted smirk.

"I'm your specialist Healer, Potter. The next six months of your life, at the very least, will be spent with me."

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