A/N: Draco Malfoy is bisexual and there are gay characters. If that isn't something you want to read, please exit the ride at this time. Additional trigger warnings are listed below.

*Strong, crude language
*Suicidal ideation
*Purging/Vomiting
*Food Restriction
*Emotional Abuse
*Day Drinking
*Explicit (Consensual) Sexual Activities
*Violence

Draco stared at the lump of white-blond hair in his hand, not quite believing his eyes.

He was proud of his hair; it fell to the middle of his back and he could do all sorts of elaborate things with it. Draco's mother taught him, of course, since his father only seemed to know two different styles: up and down. When Draco ran his fingers through his hair, one or two strands used to come loose. That was normal; it happened to everyone. When he started pulling five or six he shrugged it off as a curiosity. On that freezing February afternoon, however, he looked down at what had to be fifteen strands of blond hair in his open palm. Draco's stomach fell to his toes and he counted them individually, just to be sure.

Sixteen. Sixteen strands sat there in a clump, shuffling as Draco's hand shook beneath them. Something was wrong. Something had to be done.

Draco tossed the hairs into the basin and braced himself against the sink. The rest of his body shook, too. He felt tears threaten to spill over and forced them back, tightening his hold on the bathroom sink. He needed to have control of this. If Draco could control it, he could fix it. After all, there was one certainty about whatever was happening to his body:

He had done this to himself.

Draco looked up at his face in the mirror and figured he looked the same as he always had. He was a tad puffier, the dark circles below his eyes had not faded with time as he insisted they would. Everything was just one degree off. This was unfamiliar and, Draco allowed himself one moment of honesty, fucking terrifying. He tapped the toe of one shoe against the bathroom tile then kicked one of the cabinets.

"Fucking hell!"

Draco needed to fix this and had no idea how. No idea where to start or how to stop. He half-ran out of the bathroom and almost immediately stuttered to a halt, staring at his bed. Perhaps if he laid down long enough he could wake up and everything would be alright again. But there was no nap that could undo the years of wreckage that lurked beneath his skin.

Draco had to go to someone for help, and the only person he trusted was the last person on the planet he wished to tell. Someone who understood the need for discretion in finding a way to make him whole again.

He stood there, staring at the floor for several minutes as he weighed his options. He could tell no one and pray this would stop before he lost enough hair for it to matter. He could seek out help on his own, but how long before he would fall right back into the part of himself he was so desperate to leave behind? The only true way to fix this was to break himself open and hope someone would be there to help pick up the pieces. Draco walked to the door at the end of the hall and flung it open before he could stop to think about it.

His father did not bother looking up from his parchment. The quill in his hand never even paused.

"Not now, son, I am busy."

Draco ignored him and walked to the edge of his desk. His father was busy and part of Draco felt horrible for interrupting, but if he didn't do it right now, right that moment, he never would. Draco pulled out one of the chairs, folded his hands in his lap, then realized he had no idea what to say. He heard his father place the quill in the inkpot and the silence dragged on. His hands shook in his lap so Draco twined his fingers together. Without looking up, he finally said,

"I need help."

His father sighed and asked, "With what?" As though this was a burden to him. As if it was no unusual occurrence for Draco to be incapable of solving his own problems, even though it was all he ever did.

"I cannot ..." No, Draco decided to rephrase. "Something is wrong with me. I do not really eat like normal."

His father's eyebrows knitted together.

"What is normal?"

"Like a person."

"You eat like a Vampire? Werewolf? Centaur?"

"I don't eat, father!" Draco shouted. He clapped a hand across his mouth. Immediately, he was coated with dread because somebody knew. He could not take it back. Draco could not find it in himself to look up, terrified of the disappointment he would see on his father's face.

Lucius Malfoy softly asked, "How long? We can get you checked in at St. Mungo's within the hour. A diagnosis soon after, hopefully a simple fix."

Draco shook his head and looked up.

"You don't understand, father. Nothing happened to make me like this. I am doing this to myself and I need to stop, but I dunno how. I just ... I dunno how ... to stop."

His father frowned and shuffled the parchment on his desk before pushing it off to one side.

"Are you telling me you do not know how to stop whatever is going on inside that head of yours?"

Draco nodded.

"Well Merlin knows I understand that. Twenty-six years of understanding." Lucius Malfoy leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and looked Draco up and down. His frown deepened, like he had spotted something he hadn't seen before. "This is serious?"

Draco swallowed thickly and insisted, "I was handling it, father, I swear! It was fine until ..."

"Until now?" His father guessed. "What changed?"

"My hair is falling out." Draco bit down on his lip, forcing the tears back yet again. Saying the words aloud made it real. "I do not have a word for this, whatever it is, but it is like everything I have ever feared takes the form of food and it becomes this ... this weight in my stomach I have to run off or vomit back up. And it is not magic, not a curse, just me." He paused, unsure how to explain any more. "I don't know how not to be like this."

"How long has this been happening, Draco?" Worry lines creased his father's forehead. "How long have you been hiding this?"

Draco thought about it. He frowned and looked down at his hands as he searched his memories. When was the last time he ate two meals in a row and didn't hate himself for it?

"Ten years."

Lucius Malfoy blinked. He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand across his face.

"Would your mother be better suited to help you?"

"Absolutely, but she will blame herself for not noticing sooner or not helping, and I cannot think about that. I cannot bear the responsibility of her failure in this. I am coming to you because you are my father and I am frightened and I have no one else, so if you could please just help me!"

Draco anxiously ran his hand through his hair and three strands came out between his fingers. He watched them fall toward the floor and his entire world seemed to follow. He could no longer hold anything back or so much as pretend to keep himself together. Draco shoved a fist between his teeth to quiet the sobs wracking his body. Tears blurred his vision and he regretted this beyond measure. Losing control was painful enough, but to expose his vulnerability to his father like this just placed more shame upon his shoulders.

"Son, come here."

Draco hadn't heard his father move, but stood up and allowed himself to be pulled into a hug.

"I am so sorry," he mumbled. He couldn't stop trembling so his father tightened his arms around him. "Never meant to fail you like this."

"My son, the only way for you to fail me would be to go bald."

Draco hiccupped.

"I have failed you many times, but the only failure here would have been you living one more day like this. It is done and we will find a way to get you well."

.oOo.

Draco hadn't booked an appointment, just stood outside Weeoanwhisker's Barber Shop and peered through the window. He'd always gone to the same man in Ravenclaw Valley, but this needed to be different. Making a change in one area might be helped along if he made another drastic move.

It had been four days since he broke down in his father's study. This morning, his father summoned him to say,

"I contacted some friends, and the Patil girls run a small office that focuses on illness of the more, shall we say cerebral variety? You will see Penelope Clearwater on Thursday to determine whether this is the proper course."

"Contacted some friends" generally meant "threatened them until they gave me the answer I wanted." Regardless, Draco had a plethora of questions. Namely, What the hell are they going to do to me? and How do they plan to fix this? He hated to admit it, but this was the first time he trusted his father and hadn't been disappointed. It was too good to be true.

In contrast to everything Draco was feeling, Weeoanwhisker's was calm. It was a mix of cool browns and greys, with white and navy trimmings scattered about the place. One of the barbers caught sight of him through the window and waved him in. Draco bit down on the inside of his cheek to steady himself and jumped up the steps before he could think to run away. He opened the door and was immediately pulled into a hug.

"Merlin's arse, Malfoy! Years I've been begging for you to come and you finally have!"

Draco patted him politely on the back and said, "Nice to see you too, Gabriel."

Gabriel Truman took Draco by the shoulders and stepped back to take a look at him. Draco returned the gesture and found himself smiling at what he saw. Truman had shirked all traditional wizarding style in favour of something Draco didn't have a word for. (A worryingly common occurrence, as of late.) Truman had one ring through his left nostril and one through the right side of his lower lip. He wore a black button-down shirt and dark jeans, and appeared truly happy to see Draco. But even he could discern something was not right. Gabriel frowned as he met Draco's gaze. He shook his head warily then asked,

"Time for change?"

Draco pulled his hair out of its bun and repeated, "Time for change."

Gabriel walked to a barber's chair situated between two others and nodded for Draco to sit down. No sooner had his bum met the seat cushion than Gabriel had the styling cape around his neck. He placed his hands on Draco's shoulders, so Draco slouched backward until he was resting against the chair. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to convince himself this would feel right ... eventually.

"Alright, mate, how much of this am I taking off?"

Draco opened his eyes to catch Truman's gaze in the mirror and said, "I like the length you have."

"Yes!" Gabriel shouted, pumping his fist in the air. He ran his fingers through Draco's hair and grinned. "Draco Malfoy without product in his hair? I must be dreaming. So we're gonna cut it, shorter on the sides and taper it a bit but leave it longer up—"

Gabriel paused and looked down at his hand. Draco sighed and hung his head in shame. Merlin, the hardest part of this wasn't making a change. The most difficult part was letting people in, letting them know he was ill. Once they knew, he would be forever tainted in their eyes; the man who can't do the most human of things. Gabriel caught Draco's eyes in the mirror once again and let the tiny clump of hair fall to the floor.

"Draco, is this something you truly want to do, or are you just looking for immediate relief? I don't want you to look at yourself three days from now and feel even shittier than you do right now because you've lost something that means a great deal to you."

"Well," Draco replied, his voice a bit strangled, "now you know I am losing it either way. This is the only way to change the way it looks as it falls out in my hands. If it is shorter, if there is less of it, perhaps it will hurt less."

"Right, well, good news is that it's not patchy and is thinning evenly across your scalp. You Malfoys have some great fucking locks." He grabbed a bobble and wrapped it around Draco's hair. "Are you ill?"

"In a way."

"Food, yeah?" Gabriel asked right as he cut off the hair right at the top of the bobble. He smiled at Draco's shocked expression and offered him the severed ponytail. "D'you want to hold it?"

Draco nodded and placed the hair across his lap. He didn't feel any sadness to see it gone, only relief. This was good. This was control. It felt like the past ten years had been literally lifted off his shoulders.

Truman revealed, "My girlfriend had the same problem."

"Romilda?!"

He nodded and said, "Yeah, mate. Sneaky bitch about it, too. Said it'd been happening for a couple years." Truman sprayed some water on Draco's hair then twisted the portion on top and pinned it to the crown of his head. "She'd eat a meal then chuck it back up right after when nobody was looking. Just excuse herself to the loo and all the food'd come back up."

As Gabriel began cutting the hair on the back of his head, Draco asked, "Is she okay now?" Though he was more than a little nervous about the answer.

"In a way. She went to a Muggle Healer but they never actually healed her, they just talked."

"Talked?"

Gabriel nodded.

"She spoke with the Healer once a week and things began looking up. Romilda would hardly speak to me at the beginning, I think it hurt her pride, but weeks turned into months and she started opening up about it. She thought I wouldn't love her if she didn't look a certain way, I guess. Which is bollocks! Romilda is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I felt like a complete twat for doing anything to make her feel that way. The more she talked to the Healer, though, she started to realize it had nothing to do with me at all."

"Do you mind if I ask why she wanted to get better?"

"She didn't." Gabriel revealed. "We were snogging on the bed one night. Just snogging, you know, not planning to go any further than that, I just wanted to be with her. So I moved to put my hand on her neck, pull her closer, and instead a couple dozen strands of hair came loose between my fingers."

Draco cringed internally. He felt for Romilda, having been so deep in whatever fresh hell it was that she had no hope of pulling herself out. He knew exactly what it felt like.

"After that I pulled away to take a good look at her and it was like I saw her for the first time. Romilda hadn't lost a lot of weight or anything, she just looked thinner in the slightest ways. Places I wouldn't normally notice. Every part of her looked weak, her eyes were purple around the bottom, and I hated myself for not having seen it earlier. She told me immediately about what she was doing then I got angry at her." Gabriel began cutting the sides of Draco's hair. "How could she do that to herself, you know? How the hell could she ever think I would want that for her?"

"It does not sound the same," Draco admitted. "I never did this for anyone but myself."

"That's just it, though, innit?" Truman said. "Romilda hated herself, and that was the root of it. She thought nobody could love her the way I do, and she would do whatever it took to remain exactly the same so I wouldn't find a reason to hate her, too."

"How could she believe that?" Draco asked. "Romilda is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. Smart, too, outside of falling for your sorry arse."

Gabriel laughed.

"Right you are. As for why it happened, I don't care. It isn't my job to figure out why, it is my job to help Romilda learn to see herself the way I see her. I am going to marry her one day, if she'll have me, and I never want her to believe I won't be there for her when life gets difficult. It has been about two years and she only goes to the Healer once a month, now."

"So she doesn't—"

"No." Gabriel shook his head. "She hasn't purged in over a year. That's what they call it, the upchucking."

Wow. Draco used his eyes, not his head, to glance down at the hacked-off ponytail between his fingers. To think someone else had gone through this and come out the other side ... There was hope. Gabriel unpinned the tresses at the top of Draco's head and began to cut. They didn't speak for awhile, content with the sound of scissors snipping and the faint crooning of Myron Wagtail coming from a radio in the corner. Eventually he switched to a razor blade, shaving down the sides and humming along with the music.

Gabriel mumbled a Drying Spell as he ran his hands through Draco's hair. More strands came out between his fingers, only two or three, but he let them fall to the floor as if it was of no concern. Once Draco's hair was no longer damp, Gabriel grabbed a jar of paste from a shelf by the mirror. He rubbed it between his hands and said,

"You need to use a matte paste because it will add volume to your hair. I know how difficult it is to stop doing what you're doing, mate. Believe me, I know . But if you keep going you will lose more and it will be noticeable. Until then, the matte shit will give the illusion of thicker hair to offset what you're losing."

Draco nodded. Truman styled his hair so it was quite fluffy up top and it looked rather good. Draco stared at his reflection, not quite sure how to feel. He had grown it out after the trial and never thought about cutting it off. He looked different, less like his father, and that was as good a step as any. He stood up and pulled Gabriel into a tight hug. Gabriel's hands fell into place along Draco's spine and just held him there.

"Can I tell Romi about this?"

"Yes," Draco said. "I might like to speak to her. I never knew someone else was like this, let alone that someone has gotten through it."

"She's not through it, Draco. Recovering is more than stopping. Romi is still learning to love herself the way she is and I dunno when that battle will be over. God, I hope it's soon, though, because I hate seeing her suffer like this. But you will need friends, someone to hold onto that you trust with this."

"I don't have anyone I trust with this."

"You told me."

"We aren't close enough for it to matter," Draco insisted. "You won't judge me, but Blaise and Theo and, oh, God, Pansy ... I dunno what to do."

"Just know that you are doing the right thing, mate." Gabriel let him go and said, "But I'm always here if you need a haircut or, you know, someone to talk to who won't try to shove Bertie Bott's down your throat."