FIC: Things That Change, 6/?
Title: Things That Change [6/?]
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5][Part 6]
1.
He moves into Potter’s bedroom, and Pyrrha takes over the spare. He buttons his robes up to the neck during the days, his shirt collars just as high. The baby keeps him busy, but she sleeps through the night (even though she rarely naps anymore). Potter stops buying as much take-away, and instead he cooks bacon sandwiches for supper, chicken and potatoes and whatever else he happens to find at the grocer’s. He brings home chocolate cake and Draco more than happily eats half when Potter is at the Ministry.
The other half, he and Potter eat in bed.
He doesn’t want Potter to touch him. He doesn’t want Potter to see him starkers, not like this, or to fuck him like a man fucks a woman, or even up the arse sometimes. But Potter’s hands constantly seek him out when they are alone. Potter constantly is unbuttoning his robes and his shirts and his trousers, his tongue is everywhere, tasting, claiming, his hands everywhere, touching, teasing.
He gives into Potter because he wants it. He craves it. He’ll sit at home sometimes, Pyrrha playing in a pen nearby, and he’ll flush at the memory of Potter’s hands, clenched around his cock the night before, tugging him until he moaned as he came. He comes with Potter’s name on his lips sometimes. He groans Potter’s name when his lips close around Potter’s cock, hot and full and bitter in his mouth, choking and burning, but when Potter calls his name, he shudders and his cock spurts too.
Draco has stopped being embarrassed. He still finds it queer that Potter’s hands search him out. They can be watching that awful talking box after he puts Pyrrha down to bed, and Potter’s warm hand will wiggle its way down his trousers and Potter knows that he can have him squirming and moaning and wet and practically pleading to be fucked before long.
They’ll shower together in the mornings, and he’ll lift a leg around Potter’s hip and lean into the tile wall and Potter will fuck him there. The water muffles the sounds they make, as Potter thrusts in and out, pacing himself before he pushes in with a grunt and his teeth pressing into Draco’s shoulders. The moans echo and the evidence swirls down the drain with the water and glistening bubbles of soap.
Pyrrha has her first birthday. Draco regrets that neither of his parents could see her, their only grandchild, their only heir. She could care less. She grins, chocolate cake smeared around her mouth. She calls Draco Daddy and Potter, well, Draco doesn’t know what to call him, but she calls him Dada. Draco reckons it’s all right.
He combs her silken blonde hair. It’s darker than his was as a baby, but she is still very fair. Her eyes have changed from a muddy slate gradually into green, like Potter’s. He stares at them sometimes. She smiles and grins and babbles nonsense to him, and he thinks that he is glad she has Potter’s eyes because they are much prettier than his grey.
Weasley and Granger and Weasley’s sister and a few other of Potter’s friends, namely Longbottom and a girl with stringy blonde hair and bugly eyes come to visit and wish Pyrrha a happy birthday. She grins at them all, the same way she grins at him and Draco is envious. He doesn’t bother to hide his envy, either and he glares at Granger when she holds onto the baby.
“Why did they all come?” he hisses at Potter, who serves punch in the kitchen. “Why did you invite them all?”
“Am I supposed to keep her a secret?” Potter asks.
“Well…what about me?” Draco insists. “You bloody told them all and if the Minist-”
“They’re not going to tell the Ministry, Malfoy,” Potter says as he charms a row of punch glasses to dance across the air into the living room. “Besides, Hermione is the secret keeper. They’d have to ask her, not Neville or Ginny or Luna.”
“I don’t like your friends,” Draco grumbles. A year ago, he would have added that he didn’t like Potter, either. But Potter knows better than that now, even if Draco himself might not admit it.
Potter shrugs. It infuriates Draco and he sulks in the kitchen the rest of the evening until the very last of them, Granger and Weasley, go home for the night and the baby is asleep upstairs.
“So,” Potter says in a low voice. He stands in the doorway of the kitchen, with his arms crossed as he leans on the doorframe. He pushes himself off and walks up to Draco. “Do you plan to skive off to the kitchen every time I have friends over, Malfoy?”
Draco says nothing. He glares at Potter and snorts.
“It might not mean anything to you,” Potter says, “but all night I was thinking about you, in here, with the door closed, and how I could have you right here while they were all in the next room and you’d let me.”
“No, I-” Draco starts to say, but Potter’s fingers brushing the top of his ear make him stop, and shiver and he can feel his cock swell because Potter’s whispering words in his ear, hot breath and hotter suggestions.
“I could take you here now, and show you that I want you to stay. That I could care bugger all if you like my friends or not because I like when you call my name when you…when you come,” Potter sighs and Draco bites his lip because he will moan soon if Potter doesn’t stop tormenting him. “Draco…”
He moans, a breathy “Potter” that escapes his tongue. He feels naked and silly, but only for the briefest moment because Potter is kissing him, pushing him into the counter, hard hard and his hands are fumbling with Draco’s pants, furiously tugging at the buttons as their kiss comes and goes, sloppy and wet and tasting of chocolate cake and fruit juice.
Potter fucks him on the floor, hardly more than their trousers and robes hastily pushed down, his limbs are caught in a tangle of clothes and Potter, he clings to Potter as he climaxes, spilling himself against Potter’s belly, grunting and writhing under Potter as he thrusts deep and fast and hard and it’s almost painful if it didn’t feel so good, if he didn’t feel so full, if he didn’t feel so desired.
2.
It is in the early springtime when he realizes it. The days have been progressively waxing, brighter and warmer, and so has Draco, all this while. The April showers bring more than May flowers, bright blossoms of red and yellow and curled parrot tulips, popping up in every garden of every home lining the street except for Potter’s because neither he nor Draco garden, though Potter does hire a Muggle who comes round once every while to trim the privet hedges.
Malfoy Manor would be awash in smiling daisies and canary daffodils, perfume-laced lavender and lilac, pale purple plumes that his mother would decorate the house with, until his father complained that they gave him allergies, but because they were so pretty and mother loved them, he let her keep them in vases, so long as they had a Petrificus on them. The roses would come later, but for now, blue hydrangeas and ground-hugging crocuses, crushed under foot when they crept onto the endless pathways of the grounds.
Draco never liked flowers them, but his hands itch to dig into the dirt and push a few fat bulbs in before the season is out, when his hands aren’t snaking across his middle.
He didn’t notice at first. It was a day or two, sour milk or mouldy bread and he was vomiting, head hunched over the loo, the sink, whatever was closer. But the food poisoning didn’t pass, not even when he used an anti-nauseam charm- it only grew worse, until he’d be rushing from Potter’s bed, every morning, to beat Potter to the loo because his insides roiled so much he felt he would never be well again.
And then it was his hands, constantly spreading over his stomach. He hated touching his stomach the first time. He avoided touching the bloated skin, looking at the distortions it caused in his body, the scars that have faded, but never enough. Not even now, a good year and a half later. He finds himself doing it everywhere, any time, after the nausea passes, usually by mid-afternoons. He can be watching Pyrrha play with her toys, the little broomstick Potter gave her, and his fingers will be splayed across his belly.
And he always has to piss.
It isn’t a dawning realization, but a slow series of slow changes. When Potter touches his body, his nipples, they are always so sensitive, and he’ll hiss when Potter hardly even ghosts his breath across them and moan “No”, taking Potter’s hands down between his thighs where he wants to be touched more, where it is less sensitive, and more, and once. He doesn’t wake up one morning and think his hips look wider- they don’t. They aren’t feminine, they are narrow and boyish like Potter’s, but Potter doesn’t have the faint stripes of stretched skin like he does.
And now they’re stretching out again.
It is a week before his birthday, and he tells Potter one Saturday, a lazy sunlight morning spent late in bed as the baby watches the drawn pictures on the telly. He doesn’t want to wait anymore, he can’t wait anymore. His fingers feel his stomach swelling, almost imperceptible under his robes and shirts and trousers, but he can feel it now and before too long, Potter must too.
“Potter,” he says. Draco has a rehearsed speech, planned out days in advance, as much as he’d hoped for aching cramps and a rush of blood between his legs, nothing came. I’m pregnant again and it’s yours and do you really want another one? The first was on purpose, but this one was an accident because you wanted to seem to fuck me the girl-way more often than up the arse, so really, it’s more your fault than mine.
Except, it doesn’t come out that way. He opens his mouth to finish, but bile rises in his throat, scorching acidic, making him heave and he rushes off to the loo. He heaves into the toilet bowl and he can feel Potter’s fingers pushing his hair off his forehead, even though his vomit has sprayed up high enough and the smell makes it worse and he can’t stop for some time, until he curls on the cool bathroom tiles, his stomach muscles aching.
Potter stares at him, looking sad, but smiling, only with his mouth. “I didn’t think you could again,” he says slowly, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose and exhaling. “I thought- I mean, didn’t you use a fertility potion with Pyrrha?”
Draco moans, nodding a little. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he mumbles. “I don’t get- like women, every month…”
“But there’s been once or twice,” Potter says.
“Just spotting,” Draco insists, sitting up slowly. “Not like much.” He shudders at the too-real memory. Once or twice was more than enough: waking up with blood between his legs, his stomach cramping, feeling like he was going to die. But it wasn’t as long as the bleeding after Pyrrha was born. He didn’t think anyone could ever bleed that long and live. He was amazed that his cock still worked after that, always having to use…
He shudders again.
Potter sighs again, but his smile has spread. He sits down against the shower door next to Draco and stretches his feet. “I reckon I shouldn’t believe you,” he says. “Because I never thought about kids. Not until Pyrrha, and then I never thought about more of them.”
“Potter aren’t like Weasleys, are they?” Draco asks. Potter rolls his eyes, but Draco is serious. “They don’t have households full of black-haired four-eyed saviors of the world, do they?”
“Pyrhha has blonde hair,” Potter says. “Like you.”
Draco sticks his head back into the loo.
3.
This time it is different.
This time he is not alone. He feels like a whale. He feels ashamed every time that Potter reaches out to touch him, to put a hand across his belly, to touch his arm or his leg. No one was around to see him like this with Pyrrha. Draco misses that, because he had no mirrors, no one to see his swollen feet, his waddling, his wincing, his massive belly. He hates that he can’t see his feet. He hates how he always feels like rubbish, then he’ll end up lying on Potter’s bed with a pint of ice cream and a spoon and it will be gone within an hour and he doesn’t know how he eats that much in one sitting or how Potter puts up with chocolate stains on the sheets.
This time he isn’t hungry. All he has to do is whine to Potter about how he wants some Chinese take-away or peanut butter or tapioca pudding with corn crisps and mayonnaise and Potter will off and buy it. Draco likes this, not having to wonder if he’ll collapse of starvation in his home, not wondering how he’ll feed the baby if he can’t feed himself.
And all the food Potter buys him only makes him eat more. And get bigger. And complain more.
Pyrrha pulls at his leg. “Up, up,” and Draco can only shake his head because he can’t pick her up, first off, and secondly, he can’t bend down to pick her up. He can’t reach over his belly. She glares at him, the perfect little Malfoy glower filtered through Potter’s eyes, and he feels glad inside because he can see his family all trickling down to her and he’s proud of that.
Granger comes over on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, sometimes alone and sometimes with the Weasel. “Pregnant women- er, people- oughtn’t be doing strenuous magic,” she says, puttering around Potter’s house like she owns it. She plays with Pyrrha, reading books and playing pat-a-cake and other strange Muggle things, like the talking box Potter seems so fond of always. Granger does the dishes and picks Potter’s dirty underpants out of the hallways where he sometimes seems to leave it still. Draco sits down and glares at Granger, watching her every move because he doesn’t trust her. And also, he doesn’t want to touch where she touches after she leaves.
Mother uses to say that Muggles carry strange diseases and they spread them through their dirty hands. Draco, being pregnant, knows that if he gets sick, the baby could be harmed. It’s very pragmatic, this sort of thinking, even though when he tries to explain it to Potter once, Potter accuses him of being a bigot and a prick.
Draco shrugs and rolls over in bed. He can never get comfortable anymore. He likes to sleep on his stomach usually, but ever since Pyrrha, he’s been either too big or his chest hurts. “You’ll still sleep with me, though,” he mutters.
The warm touch of Potter’s hand on his thigh makes his skin shiver, especially now. When Potter touches him like this, he is much more aware, of every feeling, of every sensation. His whole body feels like Muggle eceltricity- he buzzes and hums with energy.
“Let me touch you tonight,” Potter whispers in his ear after dinner. Draco rolls his eyes and sneers, but Potter simply sits at the table, smiling as he spoons pureed food into Pyrrha’s mouth.
“Why?” Draco asks, when Potter has locked the doors and turned off all the lights in the house, save his bedside lamp.
Potter’s lips move across his neck. Draco gasps. The hot kisses make him shiver, every pore of his body breathing in Potter. Potter laughs against his skin, his teeth pressing gently. “Because I just want to,” he murmurs.
Potter knows his body and he knows where to touch to make Draco moan. He knows that Draco likes his nipples touched, because they are sensitive now more than ever. He bites his lip as Potter’s tongue flicks against them, and he clutches the sheets under his hands, his feet straining and wrapping around Potter’s legs.
It’s not sex, not always. Sometimes Potter will undress him, touch him, make him come, then lie there beside Draco, his hands splayed across his belly. Draco doesn’t like Potter touching him there. He can feel the scars from Pyrrha, he can feel his stretched skin again. He sees the ugly marks in the mirror, unnatural and vivid, and he hates them. But he hates that he feels he owes it to Potter for getting him to do this.
Draco lies back in bed. Potter has wormed his way up next to Draco, his fingers making lazy eights over his belly under the sheets. He can’t sleep. The baby is kicking again- it never seems to stop. Pyrrha was decent about letting him have a good night’s sleep, but this baby is awful. His bladder is prodded, his intestines are poked. He feels nauseous half the time and that he’ll piss his pants the other half.
“Do you pretend I’m a woman, like this?” Draco asks.
Potter’s hands stops moving for a moment, then the circles pick up again, but rougher. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you imagine someone else when you fuck me, or sleep with me? Like that Weasley girl or the bug-eyed blonde?”
“Luna?”
“Whatever her name is. Do you?”
Potter’s hand stops completely and he sits up in bed, frowning. “What are you talking about?” he asks slowly. “I don’t- I know you’re a bloke, Malfoy. You’re the one who took the potion to give yourself a v-”
“Shut up!” Draco snaps. “I didn’t know that it wouldn’t- I thought- shut up! Just fucking tell me, Potter, do you imagine I’m a girl?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Now Potter gets out of bed and puts his glasses on. “Where the hell did this come from? I know you’ve got a cock! I’m not blind, Malfoy!”
Being called Malfoy stings. Draco winces. “I’m not a girl,” he says at last.
Potter simply stares at him, slack-jawed for a long while before he finally shakes his head once and leaves.
In the early morning before dawn, Draco can hear Potter stirring in the spare room.
4.
He’s angry at Potter. He’s angry at Potter because Potter is angry at him and he’s feeling spiteful, so he doesn’t tell Potter how he feels like rubbish inside and he doesn’t tell Potter he saw blood on the sheets this morning and he doesn’t floo Potter at work to tell him that he was sitting at the kitchen table this morning, eating a cold piece of take away pizza and peanut butter and he felt that disgusting, disturbing rush of fluid between his legs.
Also, Potter is at the Ministry and if Draco flooed and someone saw him in the flames, well- Draco would rather not think about that right now because he’s having contractions.
“Up,” Pyrrha says, scrambling up onto the bed next to Draco. She puts her little hands over his belly and smiles, asking about the baby in her toddler’s words.
“Don’t- bother me…right now,” he tells her, panting. “Go and play with your toys, baby,” he says. He wants to be sweeter, but he wants to scream at her to get out because he’s going to have another contraction soon, and he’d rather just lie there and scream in peace without an almost two-year old asking him these asinine questions. That, and she knows how to use the Floo because Weasel and Potter showed her a few weeks ago.
Damn them, he thinks. Damn them damn them damn them.
“Please go play with your toys,” he pleads. “Go turn on the talking box, all right?”
When she finally toddles off, Draco barely allows himself a sigh of relief before the contraction comes. If Pyrrha hears his screaming, she doesn’t do anything.
He doesn’t want to do this alone again, but he’s too stubborn and too proud. He glances to the clock, but the more he does that, the more he worries about when the next contraction comes and that only makes the pain worse. He tries to peel off his robes- he’s too hot, he’s sweating through them- but his fingers shake and he only manages to rip one button off in frustration.
His wand lies tempting on the bedside table. It wouldn’t be hard, to use a quick pain-relieving spell. He did that last time, once, and Pyrrha turned out all right, even if she hasn’t done any magic yet on her own.
“Potter, where are you?” he moans, squeezing his eyes shut.
He gets up after the next excruciating pain, trying to walk around the room, to pass time, to ease the pain, anything. He grabs his wand and holds it in his fist, but then the next contraction comes and before he can cast a charm, he squeezes the damned thing so hard it snaps in two.
“No,” he groans, falling onto his knees, trying to force the pieces together. “God, no…” Draco lies on the floor, wanting to curl up and die. He thought things were supposed to get easier the second time, but instead he feels as though there is a dragon inside him, trying to claw and chew its way out through his middle. “Potter, where the bloody hell are you?”
He lies there, whimpering and grabbing at pieces of the carpet. The next contraction, he shatters the lightbulb in the lamp, and the next, the window cracks. His magic is erratic, flying about the room in flashes of purple and blue and red. If it weren’t for the pain, he’d be blinding himself with the natural magic.
Something shakes him. He opens his eyes and sees bright green flashes, huge and garish behind two lenses. It takes him a moment to realize Potter is there. Potter’s mouth is moving, he’s saying something, but Draco doesn’t hear what it is and he doesn’t care either.
“Do something,” he moans, clutching Potter’s arms as Potter lifts him up from the floor.
“Tell me what to do,” Potter says. “Tell me what to do, Malfoy.”
“Do something,” he says again. He shakes his head. “It’s coming,” he whispers, leaning against the edge of the mattress.
“I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do,” Potter says. “Tell me what to do, Draco.”
Draco doesn’t know what. He doesn’t care. He makes a noise, strange to his ears, like the whine of an animal. If it wasn’t for the humming in his throat, he wouldn’t think he is the one making the noise.
Potter takes his robes off. Potter holds his hand and doesn’t wince too much when he squeezes it and screams when there is another contraction. Potter must have flooed Granger, because between contractions Draco can hear her downstairs with Pyrrha, talking. He grits his teeth and glares at Potter and says, “What’s she doing here?” but Potter simply shakes his head and says “Push, Draco”.
Draco wants to slap Potter. Potter doesn’t know what to do, Potter has never done this before, and yet when the final push comes and Draco feels that numbing relief, stunned from the loss of fullness below, it is he who is crying, not Potter.
Later, maybe the next morning, because filmy light seeps through the curtain edges into the bedroom as Draco lies there, exhausted and sore, Potter asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Draco closes his eyes. He doesn’t have the energy to answer. His body feels as though it has sunk into a hole and it keeps falling, but his mind is elsewhere, floating floating.
“Did you think I’d be angry? Tell me these things, Malfoy- Draco,” he says. “I l- I want you to be safe. And the baby, too.”
He takes Draco’s hand and holds it, barely a touch but enough to make Draco crack open an eye and mutter, “All right.”
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5][Part 6]
1.
He moves into Potter’s bedroom, and Pyrrha takes over the spare. He buttons his robes up to the neck during the days, his shirt collars just as high. The baby keeps him busy, but she sleeps through the night (even though she rarely naps anymore). Potter stops buying as much take-away, and instead he cooks bacon sandwiches for supper, chicken and potatoes and whatever else he happens to find at the grocer’s. He brings home chocolate cake and Draco more than happily eats half when Potter is at the Ministry.
The other half, he and Potter eat in bed.
He doesn’t want Potter to touch him. He doesn’t want Potter to see him starkers, not like this, or to fuck him like a man fucks a woman, or even up the arse sometimes. But Potter’s hands constantly seek him out when they are alone. Potter constantly is unbuttoning his robes and his shirts and his trousers, his tongue is everywhere, tasting, claiming, his hands everywhere, touching, teasing.
He gives into Potter because he wants it. He craves it. He’ll sit at home sometimes, Pyrrha playing in a pen nearby, and he’ll flush at the memory of Potter’s hands, clenched around his cock the night before, tugging him until he moaned as he came. He comes with Potter’s name on his lips sometimes. He groans Potter’s name when his lips close around Potter’s cock, hot and full and bitter in his mouth, choking and burning, but when Potter calls his name, he shudders and his cock spurts too.
Draco has stopped being embarrassed. He still finds it queer that Potter’s hands search him out. They can be watching that awful talking box after he puts Pyrrha down to bed, and Potter’s warm hand will wiggle its way down his trousers and Potter knows that he can have him squirming and moaning and wet and practically pleading to be fucked before long.
They’ll shower together in the mornings, and he’ll lift a leg around Potter’s hip and lean into the tile wall and Potter will fuck him there. The water muffles the sounds they make, as Potter thrusts in and out, pacing himself before he pushes in with a grunt and his teeth pressing into Draco’s shoulders. The moans echo and the evidence swirls down the drain with the water and glistening bubbles of soap.
Pyrrha has her first birthday. Draco regrets that neither of his parents could see her, their only grandchild, their only heir. She could care less. She grins, chocolate cake smeared around her mouth. She calls Draco Daddy and Potter, well, Draco doesn’t know what to call him, but she calls him Dada. Draco reckons it’s all right.
He combs her silken blonde hair. It’s darker than his was as a baby, but she is still very fair. Her eyes have changed from a muddy slate gradually into green, like Potter’s. He stares at them sometimes. She smiles and grins and babbles nonsense to him, and he thinks that he is glad she has Potter’s eyes because they are much prettier than his grey.
Weasley and Granger and Weasley’s sister and a few other of Potter’s friends, namely Longbottom and a girl with stringy blonde hair and bugly eyes come to visit and wish Pyrrha a happy birthday. She grins at them all, the same way she grins at him and Draco is envious. He doesn’t bother to hide his envy, either and he glares at Granger when she holds onto the baby.
“Why did they all come?” he hisses at Potter, who serves punch in the kitchen. “Why did you invite them all?”
“Am I supposed to keep her a secret?” Potter asks.
“Well…what about me?” Draco insists. “You bloody told them all and if the Minist-”
“They’re not going to tell the Ministry, Malfoy,” Potter says as he charms a row of punch glasses to dance across the air into the living room. “Besides, Hermione is the secret keeper. They’d have to ask her, not Neville or Ginny or Luna.”
“I don’t like your friends,” Draco grumbles. A year ago, he would have added that he didn’t like Potter, either. But Potter knows better than that now, even if Draco himself might not admit it.
Potter shrugs. It infuriates Draco and he sulks in the kitchen the rest of the evening until the very last of them, Granger and Weasley, go home for the night and the baby is asleep upstairs.
“So,” Potter says in a low voice. He stands in the doorway of the kitchen, with his arms crossed as he leans on the doorframe. He pushes himself off and walks up to Draco. “Do you plan to skive off to the kitchen every time I have friends over, Malfoy?”
Draco says nothing. He glares at Potter and snorts.
“It might not mean anything to you,” Potter says, “but all night I was thinking about you, in here, with the door closed, and how I could have you right here while they were all in the next room and you’d let me.”
“No, I-” Draco starts to say, but Potter’s fingers brushing the top of his ear make him stop, and shiver and he can feel his cock swell because Potter’s whispering words in his ear, hot breath and hotter suggestions.
“I could take you here now, and show you that I want you to stay. That I could care bugger all if you like my friends or not because I like when you call my name when you…when you come,” Potter sighs and Draco bites his lip because he will moan soon if Potter doesn’t stop tormenting him. “Draco…”
He moans, a breathy “Potter” that escapes his tongue. He feels naked and silly, but only for the briefest moment because Potter is kissing him, pushing him into the counter, hard hard and his hands are fumbling with Draco’s pants, furiously tugging at the buttons as their kiss comes and goes, sloppy and wet and tasting of chocolate cake and fruit juice.
Potter fucks him on the floor, hardly more than their trousers and robes hastily pushed down, his limbs are caught in a tangle of clothes and Potter, he clings to Potter as he climaxes, spilling himself against Potter’s belly, grunting and writhing under Potter as he thrusts deep and fast and hard and it’s almost painful if it didn’t feel so good, if he didn’t feel so full, if he didn’t feel so desired.
2.
It is in the early springtime when he realizes it. The days have been progressively waxing, brighter and warmer, and so has Draco, all this while. The April showers bring more than May flowers, bright blossoms of red and yellow and curled parrot tulips, popping up in every garden of every home lining the street except for Potter’s because neither he nor Draco garden, though Potter does hire a Muggle who comes round once every while to trim the privet hedges.
Malfoy Manor would be awash in smiling daisies and canary daffodils, perfume-laced lavender and lilac, pale purple plumes that his mother would decorate the house with, until his father complained that they gave him allergies, but because they were so pretty and mother loved them, he let her keep them in vases, so long as they had a Petrificus on them. The roses would come later, but for now, blue hydrangeas and ground-hugging crocuses, crushed under foot when they crept onto the endless pathways of the grounds.
Draco never liked flowers them, but his hands itch to dig into the dirt and push a few fat bulbs in before the season is out, when his hands aren’t snaking across his middle.
He didn’t notice at first. It was a day or two, sour milk or mouldy bread and he was vomiting, head hunched over the loo, the sink, whatever was closer. But the food poisoning didn’t pass, not even when he used an anti-nauseam charm- it only grew worse, until he’d be rushing from Potter’s bed, every morning, to beat Potter to the loo because his insides roiled so much he felt he would never be well again.
And then it was his hands, constantly spreading over his stomach. He hated touching his stomach the first time. He avoided touching the bloated skin, looking at the distortions it caused in his body, the scars that have faded, but never enough. Not even now, a good year and a half later. He finds himself doing it everywhere, any time, after the nausea passes, usually by mid-afternoons. He can be watching Pyrrha play with her toys, the little broomstick Potter gave her, and his fingers will be splayed across his belly.
And he always has to piss.
It isn’t a dawning realization, but a slow series of slow changes. When Potter touches his body, his nipples, they are always so sensitive, and he’ll hiss when Potter hardly even ghosts his breath across them and moan “No”, taking Potter’s hands down between his thighs where he wants to be touched more, where it is less sensitive, and more, and once. He doesn’t wake up one morning and think his hips look wider- they don’t. They aren’t feminine, they are narrow and boyish like Potter’s, but Potter doesn’t have the faint stripes of stretched skin like he does.
And now they’re stretching out again.
It is a week before his birthday, and he tells Potter one Saturday, a lazy sunlight morning spent late in bed as the baby watches the drawn pictures on the telly. He doesn’t want to wait anymore, he can’t wait anymore. His fingers feel his stomach swelling, almost imperceptible under his robes and shirts and trousers, but he can feel it now and before too long, Potter must too.
“Potter,” he says. Draco has a rehearsed speech, planned out days in advance, as much as he’d hoped for aching cramps and a rush of blood between his legs, nothing came. I’m pregnant again and it’s yours and do you really want another one? The first was on purpose, but this one was an accident because you wanted to seem to fuck me the girl-way more often than up the arse, so really, it’s more your fault than mine.
Except, it doesn’t come out that way. He opens his mouth to finish, but bile rises in his throat, scorching acidic, making him heave and he rushes off to the loo. He heaves into the toilet bowl and he can feel Potter’s fingers pushing his hair off his forehead, even though his vomit has sprayed up high enough and the smell makes it worse and he can’t stop for some time, until he curls on the cool bathroom tiles, his stomach muscles aching.
Potter stares at him, looking sad, but smiling, only with his mouth. “I didn’t think you could again,” he says slowly, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose and exhaling. “I thought- I mean, didn’t you use a fertility potion with Pyrrha?”
Draco moans, nodding a little. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he mumbles. “I don’t get- like women, every month…”
“But there’s been once or twice,” Potter says.
“Just spotting,” Draco insists, sitting up slowly. “Not like much.” He shudders at the too-real memory. Once or twice was more than enough: waking up with blood between his legs, his stomach cramping, feeling like he was going to die. But it wasn’t as long as the bleeding after Pyrrha was born. He didn’t think anyone could ever bleed that long and live. He was amazed that his cock still worked after that, always having to use…
He shudders again.
Potter sighs again, but his smile has spread. He sits down against the shower door next to Draco and stretches his feet. “I reckon I shouldn’t believe you,” he says. “Because I never thought about kids. Not until Pyrrha, and then I never thought about more of them.”
“Potter aren’t like Weasleys, are they?” Draco asks. Potter rolls his eyes, but Draco is serious. “They don’t have households full of black-haired four-eyed saviors of the world, do they?”
“Pyrhha has blonde hair,” Potter says. “Like you.”
Draco sticks his head back into the loo.
3.
This time it is different.
This time he is not alone. He feels like a whale. He feels ashamed every time that Potter reaches out to touch him, to put a hand across his belly, to touch his arm or his leg. No one was around to see him like this with Pyrrha. Draco misses that, because he had no mirrors, no one to see his swollen feet, his waddling, his wincing, his massive belly. He hates that he can’t see his feet. He hates how he always feels like rubbish, then he’ll end up lying on Potter’s bed with a pint of ice cream and a spoon and it will be gone within an hour and he doesn’t know how he eats that much in one sitting or how Potter puts up with chocolate stains on the sheets.
This time he isn’t hungry. All he has to do is whine to Potter about how he wants some Chinese take-away or peanut butter or tapioca pudding with corn crisps and mayonnaise and Potter will off and buy it. Draco likes this, not having to wonder if he’ll collapse of starvation in his home, not wondering how he’ll feed the baby if he can’t feed himself.
And all the food Potter buys him only makes him eat more. And get bigger. And complain more.
Pyrrha pulls at his leg. “Up, up,” and Draco can only shake his head because he can’t pick her up, first off, and secondly, he can’t bend down to pick her up. He can’t reach over his belly. She glares at him, the perfect little Malfoy glower filtered through Potter’s eyes, and he feels glad inside because he can see his family all trickling down to her and he’s proud of that.
Granger comes over on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, sometimes alone and sometimes with the Weasel. “Pregnant women- er, people- oughtn’t be doing strenuous magic,” she says, puttering around Potter’s house like she owns it. She plays with Pyrrha, reading books and playing pat-a-cake and other strange Muggle things, like the talking box Potter seems so fond of always. Granger does the dishes and picks Potter’s dirty underpants out of the hallways where he sometimes seems to leave it still. Draco sits down and glares at Granger, watching her every move because he doesn’t trust her. And also, he doesn’t want to touch where she touches after she leaves.
Mother uses to say that Muggles carry strange diseases and they spread them through their dirty hands. Draco, being pregnant, knows that if he gets sick, the baby could be harmed. It’s very pragmatic, this sort of thinking, even though when he tries to explain it to Potter once, Potter accuses him of being a bigot and a prick.
Draco shrugs and rolls over in bed. He can never get comfortable anymore. He likes to sleep on his stomach usually, but ever since Pyrrha, he’s been either too big or his chest hurts. “You’ll still sleep with me, though,” he mutters.
The warm touch of Potter’s hand on his thigh makes his skin shiver, especially now. When Potter touches him like this, he is much more aware, of every feeling, of every sensation. His whole body feels like Muggle eceltricity- he buzzes and hums with energy.
“Let me touch you tonight,” Potter whispers in his ear after dinner. Draco rolls his eyes and sneers, but Potter simply sits at the table, smiling as he spoons pureed food into Pyrrha’s mouth.
“Why?” Draco asks, when Potter has locked the doors and turned off all the lights in the house, save his bedside lamp.
Potter’s lips move across his neck. Draco gasps. The hot kisses make him shiver, every pore of his body breathing in Potter. Potter laughs against his skin, his teeth pressing gently. “Because I just want to,” he murmurs.
Potter knows his body and he knows where to touch to make Draco moan. He knows that Draco likes his nipples touched, because they are sensitive now more than ever. He bites his lip as Potter’s tongue flicks against them, and he clutches the sheets under his hands, his feet straining and wrapping around Potter’s legs.
It’s not sex, not always. Sometimes Potter will undress him, touch him, make him come, then lie there beside Draco, his hands splayed across his belly. Draco doesn’t like Potter touching him there. He can feel the scars from Pyrrha, he can feel his stretched skin again. He sees the ugly marks in the mirror, unnatural and vivid, and he hates them. But he hates that he feels he owes it to Potter for getting him to do this.
Draco lies back in bed. Potter has wormed his way up next to Draco, his fingers making lazy eights over his belly under the sheets. He can’t sleep. The baby is kicking again- it never seems to stop. Pyrrha was decent about letting him have a good night’s sleep, but this baby is awful. His bladder is prodded, his intestines are poked. He feels nauseous half the time and that he’ll piss his pants the other half.
“Do you pretend I’m a woman, like this?” Draco asks.
Potter’s hands stops moving for a moment, then the circles pick up again, but rougher. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you imagine someone else when you fuck me, or sleep with me? Like that Weasley girl or the bug-eyed blonde?”
“Luna?”
“Whatever her name is. Do you?”
Potter’s hand stops completely and he sits up in bed, frowning. “What are you talking about?” he asks slowly. “I don’t- I know you’re a bloke, Malfoy. You’re the one who took the potion to give yourself a v-”
“Shut up!” Draco snaps. “I didn’t know that it wouldn’t- I thought- shut up! Just fucking tell me, Potter, do you imagine I’m a girl?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Now Potter gets out of bed and puts his glasses on. “Where the hell did this come from? I know you’ve got a cock! I’m not blind, Malfoy!”
Being called Malfoy stings. Draco winces. “I’m not a girl,” he says at last.
Potter simply stares at him, slack-jawed for a long while before he finally shakes his head once and leaves.
In the early morning before dawn, Draco can hear Potter stirring in the spare room.
4.
He’s angry at Potter. He’s angry at Potter because Potter is angry at him and he’s feeling spiteful, so he doesn’t tell Potter how he feels like rubbish inside and he doesn’t tell Potter he saw blood on the sheets this morning and he doesn’t floo Potter at work to tell him that he was sitting at the kitchen table this morning, eating a cold piece of take away pizza and peanut butter and he felt that disgusting, disturbing rush of fluid between his legs.
Also, Potter is at the Ministry and if Draco flooed and someone saw him in the flames, well- Draco would rather not think about that right now because he’s having contractions.
“Up,” Pyrrha says, scrambling up onto the bed next to Draco. She puts her little hands over his belly and smiles, asking about the baby in her toddler’s words.
“Don’t- bother me…right now,” he tells her, panting. “Go and play with your toys, baby,” he says. He wants to be sweeter, but he wants to scream at her to get out because he’s going to have another contraction soon, and he’d rather just lie there and scream in peace without an almost two-year old asking him these asinine questions. That, and she knows how to use the Floo because Weasel and Potter showed her a few weeks ago.
Damn them, he thinks. Damn them damn them damn them.
“Please go play with your toys,” he pleads. “Go turn on the talking box, all right?”
When she finally toddles off, Draco barely allows himself a sigh of relief before the contraction comes. If Pyrrha hears his screaming, she doesn’t do anything.
He doesn’t want to do this alone again, but he’s too stubborn and too proud. He glances to the clock, but the more he does that, the more he worries about when the next contraction comes and that only makes the pain worse. He tries to peel off his robes- he’s too hot, he’s sweating through them- but his fingers shake and he only manages to rip one button off in frustration.
His wand lies tempting on the bedside table. It wouldn’t be hard, to use a quick pain-relieving spell. He did that last time, once, and Pyrrha turned out all right, even if she hasn’t done any magic yet on her own.
“Potter, where are you?” he moans, squeezing his eyes shut.
He gets up after the next excruciating pain, trying to walk around the room, to pass time, to ease the pain, anything. He grabs his wand and holds it in his fist, but then the next contraction comes and before he can cast a charm, he squeezes the damned thing so hard it snaps in two.
“No,” he groans, falling onto his knees, trying to force the pieces together. “God, no…” Draco lies on the floor, wanting to curl up and die. He thought things were supposed to get easier the second time, but instead he feels as though there is a dragon inside him, trying to claw and chew its way out through his middle. “Potter, where the bloody hell are you?”
He lies there, whimpering and grabbing at pieces of the carpet. The next contraction, he shatters the lightbulb in the lamp, and the next, the window cracks. His magic is erratic, flying about the room in flashes of purple and blue and red. If it weren’t for the pain, he’d be blinding himself with the natural magic.
Something shakes him. He opens his eyes and sees bright green flashes, huge and garish behind two lenses. It takes him a moment to realize Potter is there. Potter’s mouth is moving, he’s saying something, but Draco doesn’t hear what it is and he doesn’t care either.
“Do something,” he moans, clutching Potter’s arms as Potter lifts him up from the floor.
“Tell me what to do,” Potter says. “Tell me what to do, Malfoy.”
“Do something,” he says again. He shakes his head. “It’s coming,” he whispers, leaning against the edge of the mattress.
“I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do,” Potter says. “Tell me what to do, Draco.”
Draco doesn’t know what. He doesn’t care. He makes a noise, strange to his ears, like the whine of an animal. If it wasn’t for the humming in his throat, he wouldn’t think he is the one making the noise.
Potter takes his robes off. Potter holds his hand and doesn’t wince too much when he squeezes it and screams when there is another contraction. Potter must have flooed Granger, because between contractions Draco can hear her downstairs with Pyrrha, talking. He grits his teeth and glares at Potter and says, “What’s she doing here?” but Potter simply shakes his head and says “Push, Draco”.
Draco wants to slap Potter. Potter doesn’t know what to do, Potter has never done this before, and yet when the final push comes and Draco feels that numbing relief, stunned from the loss of fullness below, it is he who is crying, not Potter.
Later, maybe the next morning, because filmy light seeps through the curtain edges into the bedroom as Draco lies there, exhausted and sore, Potter asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Draco closes his eyes. He doesn’t have the energy to answer. His body feels as though it has sunk into a hole and it keeps falling, but his mind is elsewhere, floating floating.
“Did you think I’d be angry? Tell me these things, Malfoy- Draco,” he says. “I l- I want you to be safe. And the baby, too.”
He takes Draco’s hand and holds it, barely a touch but enough to make Draco crack open an eye and mutter, “All right.”