FIC: Things That Change, 11/?
Title: Things That Change [11/?]
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][Part 7][Part 8][Part 9][Part 10]
[Part 11]
1.
“Hermione’s still working,” Ron tells Harry.
“She’s huge, though,” Harry says. He checks off another box on a report and skims the details before looking up across the desk to Ron. “What, eight months by now?”
“Yeah,” Ron says, twisting the end of his bright orange tie. “She insists on working, but she can hardly get around. I thought she’d be a bit more like,” Ron shifts his eyes, then leans in and says, “You Know Who- didn’t he just lie on the couch and moan all day about swollen feet?”
Harry snorts and smiles a little. “Sometimes, yeah.” He piles his papers together and tucks them into a folder. “I’m tired of all this bloody office work. I want a field assignment soon.”
Ron shrugs. “We’ll get one soon enough, I’d reckon. Especially with Newberry and Wilkinson retiring after Christmas.” Behind him, the office clock chimes twice and Ron stands up. “Better be back to paperwork, then,” he says as he sits down at his desk across from Harry with a long sigh.
He spends his afternoon in a monotonous blur of checking boxes and sending files to the filing cart to be shelved by the filingwizards, who grumble at their job so much that Harry sometimes wonders if they do some of it for show. When the clock chimes and the department files out, Harry is left alone after he nods to Ron and says his goodbyes to a few other Aurors.
Shifting his eyes, he picks up his own coat and grabs his wallet and wand. He walks away from his desk, but away from the corridor towards the elevator, instead slipping into the filing room.
It is vast and lined with shelves, all lined respectively with boxes. It is more than a room, it is bigger than a wharehouse. And it is empty at this hour.
Harry charms a box down four aisles to the left and perhaps twenty feet down a corner and peeks under the lid. It is filled with documents. This is the box. He looks at it every now and then, ploring over the documents that all say the name “Draco L. Malfoy” somewhere- the margin, the paragraphs, the scribbled-in blanks.
This isn’t the only box where Malfoy’s name is mentioned. Harry has located most of them, but this is the next on his list. He glances over his shoulder, then places the lid on top. He pulls his wand out, tapping the box and whispering, “Damnatio Memoriae!”
The box is engulfed in yellow light, then it fades. Harry pulls the box top off, and checks the documents inside.
All traces of Malfoy’s name are gone, leaving white blanks in their stead. Harry smiles and charms the box back onto the shelf.
He walks down five aisles right and fifteen rows down before he finds the next box. He charms it off the shelf, and as it hovers in the air above his head, he whispers the spell, placing it back on the shelf with barely more than the hollow sound of something sliding across metal shelving.
And then there is a noise behind him.
Harry whips his head around.
“What are you doing?” a woman asks. She steps out from a row of shelves. She is young, younger than Harry and smiling lop-sidedly. Her heels click on the floor and her robes swish.
“I work here,” Harry says.
“Aurors don’t do Damnatio Memoriae unless they have a good reason,” she says. “Especially boxes with documents pertaining to Draco Malfoy.”
Harry’s insides wither, cold and frozen as the woman steps closer, smiling even wider.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asks. When Harry doesn’t move, she adds, “I’m Romilda Vane.” She extends her hand, but Harry doesn’t touch it.
He swallows, the lump in his throat thick and dry. His stomach has flipped over and his innards twist again and again and he feels ill. He doesn’t say he doesn’t really remember, instead he croaks, “Wh-what do you know?”
Romilda leans on a shelf and sighs heavily. “I know that Draco Malfoy is still on the Ministry’s list and that you seem to be trying to erase his name from all documentation that ever existed here. To erase the memory of him. And I’ve seen you come here at least a dozen times, maybe more.”
Harry tries to remember to breathe through the crushing feeling in his chest.
“So what I’ve wondered is why on earth a hero like you would try to do something like that,” she says sweetly, “unless he was trying to hide something very, very important from the public.” She winks at him.
Harry’s eye twitches.
“What do you want?” he asks.
2.
“This is blackmail,” Harry says.
Romilda hums as she pushes him up against the shelves and kisses him. Harry sighs. His arms are slack at his sides and his lips just the same, but Romilda pushes her tongue inside anyway.
He hates this. He hates this sneaking around. He hates the floral musk perfume Romilda wears. He hates that she’s using him because she’s found out he’s using Damnatio Memoriae on Malfoy’s trial records, his birth records, his everything.
She squeezes a hand under the waistband of his trousers. He’s hard and his cock twitches as she laughs a little at him. “I knew you’d want it,” she murmurs against his neck. Her hot breathe is a sticky brand that Harry desperately wants to scrub off. Instead, he’s too busy moaning and fisting his hands in her hair as she sucks him off after hours in the Ministry filerooms.
Romilda wipes her mouth after and says, “Have I ever told you I used to dream about doing these things to you as a little girl?”
“Every time,” Harry says. He winces at the sound as he zips his trousers closed and fixes the hem of his robes. “I have to go.”
She grabs his arm and yanks him close, kissing him hard and long once more. “She’s lucky to have you.”
“I have to go,” Harry says again, his face burning and his body crawling. He hasn’t been clean in months. He ought to visit Ron and Hermione and their new baby tonight, but instead he hops the Underground to get home as quickly as possible.
When he gets home, he takes a deep breathe just before he turns the doorknob and opens the door. He barely takes a few steps in before there is someone plastered to his shin and another talking his ear off. He smiles at them, looking up to see Malfoy standing in the stairwell with his arms over his chest.
He crumples inside, but the smile remains frozen to his face.
At night, he prays that Malfoy won’t find the marks on his neck- Harry doesn’t know who they are from anymore. He prays that Malfoy won’t smell the perfume lingering on his robe collars, prays that Malfoy won’t taste the traces of coffee on his lips. Harry doesn’t like coffee and Malfoy doesn’t drink it, but Romilda must drink it like a fiend because the taste never leaves his mouth.
I’m doing this for Malfoy, Harry thinks, to protect him.
In the early evenings, he cringes and winces as Romilda sucks him off. He hangs his head as she guides him inside her before he chokes out an unwanted release. Her breasts jiggle and bounce and are there, so very different from the flat planes of Malfoy’s chest. There is no familiar cock pressed against his belly, no stubbled cheeks rubbing against his. Inside, Harry is eaten away a little more each day, each time Romilda passes him in the Ministry hallways and winks, each time she whispers, “Do you want me to go to the Department Heads with what I know?”
He lies awake at night sometimes and watches the ceiling, where the plaster forms Romilda’s face in the shadows. She mocks him, beckons him and when Malfoy reaches out a sleepy hand Harry sometimes cringes at the touch. He wants things to be the way they were again.
He could do it; he could use an Obliviate, except he remembers what happened to Lockhart. He passes each day with the hope Romilda will let go of it and leave him alone, but months have passed. He’s nearly finished with the Damnatio Memoriae. Malfoy is nearly erased from everything. Soon, he thinks, soon…
3.
“So,” Harry says, “how is Peter?”
Ron cracks on eye open and lifts his head off his desk. “Not quite as sick as yesterday.” He yawns and sits up straight. “Hermione’s mum is coming down today to help out. We haven’t bloody slept in nearly a week.”
“It gets easier,” Harry says. He pulls a file from the drawer and sighs. “Bugger, we have a new stack this morning. It gets easier as they get older and sleep through the night.”
“So everyone tells me, but I don’t believe them yet,” Ron croaks. He hardly blinks as Harry tosses him a file and papers flutter across his desk.
Harry’s own desk papers flutter as an owl lands in the middle of his desk and squawks at him loudly. He takes the letter and shoves it in his pocket for later. The owl flies off.
And then as soon as it flies off, another flies onto his desk. Then a barn owl. Then two snowy owls and a hoot owl.
He scratches his head. His birthday is still months away.
And then an owl zooms overhead and something drops into his lap. He stares down at the image, there on the front page of The Daily Prophet, is the his blurry, grainy face and-
“Bloody hell!” Ron says over Harry’s shoulder. “Is that you and Romilda Vane?”
Harry whips the paper open fully. Emblazoned across the paper under the photograph is the headline: HARRY POTTER CAUGHT IN THE ARMS OF ANOTHER WOMAN.
He can’t breathe anymore. Bile rises in his throat, scorching and bitter. Aurors glance out from their cubicles to see what Ron is shouting about, then someone yells, “What’s this then, Potter?” and everything around Harry starts to crumble.
His only consolation is that Malfoy won’t know. No Daily Prophet is delivered at home. Malfoy doesn’t have any friends, and no one but Ron and Hermione ever really come over and visit.
He spends his day wincing at his desk until the leers and winks and “Oh my goodness!”es pile too high along with the owls of outrage on his desk and he shouts “Would you bloody all shut up?” and all of the newspapers within a fifty foot radius spontaneously burst into flames.
The Department Head hauls Harry into his office.
He sits there, stoic, as Stebbins wheels about in his black armchair, waving a newspaper. “Now, Potter, we normally could care less what a wizard does in his private time-”
“Sir, I-”
Stebbins shakes his finger. “We normally could care less what a wizard does in his private time, but we will ask you to take a leave of absence if you pull stunts like Incendio-ing newspapers in the office-”
“Sir, I didn’t-”
Stebbins shakes his finger again. “You did it anyway. Consider this a warning.” A nods for Harry to leave, but as soon as Harry turns the doorknob, he adds, “And Potter- the Ministry frowns deeply upon workplace dating, especially when it is extramarital.”
Ron leans over this desk onto Harry’s afterwards. “Did you really?” but before Harry can tell him otherwise, Ron whispers, “You didn’t promise you know who anything. You didn’t promise monogamy. You got the short end of the stick with them, mate.”
Harry can’t bring himself to deny it. He did promise Malfoy- he promised protection, he implied that…he doesn’t know what he implied now, but he hopes it was more than just an arrangement of living and sleeping together.
His head pounds. He feels worse than the scum on the bottom of his shoes. He gets up and rushes to the loo, turning on the taps and leaning over the sink, unable to even wash the cold sweat dribbling down his face. “God, what have I done?” he mutters.
And when he hears the sound of footsteps clicking behind him, he closes his eyes. Inside, he almost expected it. “I can’t- Ron, I- it’s not like t-”
“I’m not Ron,” Romilda says.
He turns around. Romilda stands in front of him, smiling wryly and wringing her hands on the hem of her blouse. “I didn’t intend for-”
“You didn’t bloody intend for WHAT?” Harry shouts. “That everyone in the bloody WORLD WOULD FIND OUT?” He shakes his head. “God, what have I done?”
“I really didn’t,” she insists. She takes a step closer and Harry pulls his wand out, pointing it at her. “My friends got suspicious and implanted a photocamera charm on me. I didn’t sell the picture to the Prophet, Harry-”
“DON’T call me,” he warns.
“I didn’t mean to be the scarlet woman,” she says. “I just- I’d always liked you. I was never going to tell anyone, I swear.”
For a moment, Harry almost believes her.
He doesn’t take the underground or the buses home. Instead, he Apparates before anything else can go wrong.
4.
He inhales slowly before he pushes the door open.
The house is quiet. “Hello?” he calls out.
“In here,” Ron’s voice says.
The weight pressing on Harry’s chest grows. He can hear himself breath, shallow and fast, as he walks into the living room. Ron stands there, and Hermione, too, with their son in her arms.
“Oh, Harry,” she whispers.
“Oh God,” he croaks.
Pyrrha sits on the couch crying. Harry can hear her crying, ragged and rough and his heart breaks a little more when she looks up at him with red eyes. Beside her, even Abraxas is sniffling, his chest heaving.
Viola plays on the floor with a set of blocks, oblivious.
“Where’s- where’s Daddy?” Harry asks carefully, unable to form Malfoy’s name on his tongue.
Pyrrha mutters something, but her crying chokes it off. Harry sits down next to her and pulls her close on one side, and Abraxas on the other. “I don’t know,” she repeats.
“Harry, I got here as soon as Pyrrha floo-called,” Hermione says.
If this were any other time, Harry would be so much more proud of her floo-calling all by herself.
“What time was that?” he asks.
“Like five minutes before I got home,” Ron says.
“Has Daddy been gone for long?” Harry asks.
Pyrrha says she doesn’t know.
“Harry, we-”
“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Hermione says. “I’m sure we can find Malfoy and sort everything out. I’m sure this all-”
“Its fine,” Harry says stiffly. “We’re fine- we’ll- I’ll find Malfoy.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s fine,” he says again.
Reluctantly, Ron and Hermione floo back home. Harry doesn’t want to deal with them and his crying children at the same time. He can’t- he can’t face two different people like this. Ron and Hermione don’t know exactly what he and Malfoy have, not really. His headache throbs worse. His insides wither and he wants to wake up from this awful dream.
“Let’s get some supper first,” Harry says, trying to be cheerful. He is rewarded with sniffling agreement and he places an order for delivery pizza on the phone. He walks upstairs. Everything is wrong. Everything is empty without Malfoy here.
And it is all his fault.
He picks his wallet up off the dresser and something on the bed catches his eye. It is a single copy of today’s Daily Prophet.
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][Part 7][Part 8][Part 9][Part 10]
[Part 11]
1.
“Hermione’s still working,” Ron tells Harry.
“She’s huge, though,” Harry says. He checks off another box on a report and skims the details before looking up across the desk to Ron. “What, eight months by now?”
“Yeah,” Ron says, twisting the end of his bright orange tie. “She insists on working, but she can hardly get around. I thought she’d be a bit more like,” Ron shifts his eyes, then leans in and says, “You Know Who- didn’t he just lie on the couch and moan all day about swollen feet?”
Harry snorts and smiles a little. “Sometimes, yeah.” He piles his papers together and tucks them into a folder. “I’m tired of all this bloody office work. I want a field assignment soon.”
Ron shrugs. “We’ll get one soon enough, I’d reckon. Especially with Newberry and Wilkinson retiring after Christmas.” Behind him, the office clock chimes twice and Ron stands up. “Better be back to paperwork, then,” he says as he sits down at his desk across from Harry with a long sigh.
He spends his afternoon in a monotonous blur of checking boxes and sending files to the filing cart to be shelved by the filingwizards, who grumble at their job so much that Harry sometimes wonders if they do some of it for show. When the clock chimes and the department files out, Harry is left alone after he nods to Ron and says his goodbyes to a few other Aurors.
Shifting his eyes, he picks up his own coat and grabs his wallet and wand. He walks away from his desk, but away from the corridor towards the elevator, instead slipping into the filing room.
It is vast and lined with shelves, all lined respectively with boxes. It is more than a room, it is bigger than a wharehouse. And it is empty at this hour.
Harry charms a box down four aisles to the left and perhaps twenty feet down a corner and peeks under the lid. It is filled with documents. This is the box. He looks at it every now and then, ploring over the documents that all say the name “Draco L. Malfoy” somewhere- the margin, the paragraphs, the scribbled-in blanks.
This isn’t the only box where Malfoy’s name is mentioned. Harry has located most of them, but this is the next on his list. He glances over his shoulder, then places the lid on top. He pulls his wand out, tapping the box and whispering, “Damnatio Memoriae!”
The box is engulfed in yellow light, then it fades. Harry pulls the box top off, and checks the documents inside.
All traces of Malfoy’s name are gone, leaving white blanks in their stead. Harry smiles and charms the box back onto the shelf.
He walks down five aisles right and fifteen rows down before he finds the next box. He charms it off the shelf, and as it hovers in the air above his head, he whispers the spell, placing it back on the shelf with barely more than the hollow sound of something sliding across metal shelving.
And then there is a noise behind him.
Harry whips his head around.
“What are you doing?” a woman asks. She steps out from a row of shelves. She is young, younger than Harry and smiling lop-sidedly. Her heels click on the floor and her robes swish.
“I work here,” Harry says.
“Aurors don’t do Damnatio Memoriae unless they have a good reason,” she says. “Especially boxes with documents pertaining to Draco Malfoy.”
Harry’s insides wither, cold and frozen as the woman steps closer, smiling even wider.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asks. When Harry doesn’t move, she adds, “I’m Romilda Vane.” She extends her hand, but Harry doesn’t touch it.
He swallows, the lump in his throat thick and dry. His stomach has flipped over and his innards twist again and again and he feels ill. He doesn’t say he doesn’t really remember, instead he croaks, “Wh-what do you know?”
Romilda leans on a shelf and sighs heavily. “I know that Draco Malfoy is still on the Ministry’s list and that you seem to be trying to erase his name from all documentation that ever existed here. To erase the memory of him. And I’ve seen you come here at least a dozen times, maybe more.”
Harry tries to remember to breathe through the crushing feeling in his chest.
“So what I’ve wondered is why on earth a hero like you would try to do something like that,” she says sweetly, “unless he was trying to hide something very, very important from the public.” She winks at him.
Harry’s eye twitches.
“What do you want?” he asks.
2.
“This is blackmail,” Harry says.
Romilda hums as she pushes him up against the shelves and kisses him. Harry sighs. His arms are slack at his sides and his lips just the same, but Romilda pushes her tongue inside anyway.
He hates this. He hates this sneaking around. He hates the floral musk perfume Romilda wears. He hates that she’s using him because she’s found out he’s using Damnatio Memoriae on Malfoy’s trial records, his birth records, his everything.
She squeezes a hand under the waistband of his trousers. He’s hard and his cock twitches as she laughs a little at him. “I knew you’d want it,” she murmurs against his neck. Her hot breathe is a sticky brand that Harry desperately wants to scrub off. Instead, he’s too busy moaning and fisting his hands in her hair as she sucks him off after hours in the Ministry filerooms.
Romilda wipes her mouth after and says, “Have I ever told you I used to dream about doing these things to you as a little girl?”
“Every time,” Harry says. He winces at the sound as he zips his trousers closed and fixes the hem of his robes. “I have to go.”
She grabs his arm and yanks him close, kissing him hard and long once more. “She’s lucky to have you.”
“I have to go,” Harry says again, his face burning and his body crawling. He hasn’t been clean in months. He ought to visit Ron and Hermione and their new baby tonight, but instead he hops the Underground to get home as quickly as possible.
When he gets home, he takes a deep breathe just before he turns the doorknob and opens the door. He barely takes a few steps in before there is someone plastered to his shin and another talking his ear off. He smiles at them, looking up to see Malfoy standing in the stairwell with his arms over his chest.
He crumples inside, but the smile remains frozen to his face.
At night, he prays that Malfoy won’t find the marks on his neck- Harry doesn’t know who they are from anymore. He prays that Malfoy won’t smell the perfume lingering on his robe collars, prays that Malfoy won’t taste the traces of coffee on his lips. Harry doesn’t like coffee and Malfoy doesn’t drink it, but Romilda must drink it like a fiend because the taste never leaves his mouth.
I’m doing this for Malfoy, Harry thinks, to protect him.
In the early evenings, he cringes and winces as Romilda sucks him off. He hangs his head as she guides him inside her before he chokes out an unwanted release. Her breasts jiggle and bounce and are there, so very different from the flat planes of Malfoy’s chest. There is no familiar cock pressed against his belly, no stubbled cheeks rubbing against his. Inside, Harry is eaten away a little more each day, each time Romilda passes him in the Ministry hallways and winks, each time she whispers, “Do you want me to go to the Department Heads with what I know?”
He lies awake at night sometimes and watches the ceiling, where the plaster forms Romilda’s face in the shadows. She mocks him, beckons him and when Malfoy reaches out a sleepy hand Harry sometimes cringes at the touch. He wants things to be the way they were again.
He could do it; he could use an Obliviate, except he remembers what happened to Lockhart. He passes each day with the hope Romilda will let go of it and leave him alone, but months have passed. He’s nearly finished with the Damnatio Memoriae. Malfoy is nearly erased from everything. Soon, he thinks, soon…
3.
“So,” Harry says, “how is Peter?”
Ron cracks on eye open and lifts his head off his desk. “Not quite as sick as yesterday.” He yawns and sits up straight. “Hermione’s mum is coming down today to help out. We haven’t bloody slept in nearly a week.”
“It gets easier,” Harry says. He pulls a file from the drawer and sighs. “Bugger, we have a new stack this morning. It gets easier as they get older and sleep through the night.”
“So everyone tells me, but I don’t believe them yet,” Ron croaks. He hardly blinks as Harry tosses him a file and papers flutter across his desk.
Harry’s own desk papers flutter as an owl lands in the middle of his desk and squawks at him loudly. He takes the letter and shoves it in his pocket for later. The owl flies off.
And then as soon as it flies off, another flies onto his desk. Then a barn owl. Then two snowy owls and a hoot owl.
He scratches his head. His birthday is still months away.
And then an owl zooms overhead and something drops into his lap. He stares down at the image, there on the front page of The Daily Prophet, is the his blurry, grainy face and-
“Bloody hell!” Ron says over Harry’s shoulder. “Is that you and Romilda Vane?”
Harry whips the paper open fully. Emblazoned across the paper under the photograph is the headline: HARRY POTTER CAUGHT IN THE ARMS OF ANOTHER WOMAN.
He can’t breathe anymore. Bile rises in his throat, scorching and bitter. Aurors glance out from their cubicles to see what Ron is shouting about, then someone yells, “What’s this then, Potter?” and everything around Harry starts to crumble.
His only consolation is that Malfoy won’t know. No Daily Prophet is delivered at home. Malfoy doesn’t have any friends, and no one but Ron and Hermione ever really come over and visit.
He spends his day wincing at his desk until the leers and winks and “Oh my goodness!”es pile too high along with the owls of outrage on his desk and he shouts “Would you bloody all shut up?” and all of the newspapers within a fifty foot radius spontaneously burst into flames.
The Department Head hauls Harry into his office.
He sits there, stoic, as Stebbins wheels about in his black armchair, waving a newspaper. “Now, Potter, we normally could care less what a wizard does in his private time-”
“Sir, I-”
Stebbins shakes his finger. “We normally could care less what a wizard does in his private time, but we will ask you to take a leave of absence if you pull stunts like Incendio-ing newspapers in the office-”
“Sir, I didn’t-”
Stebbins shakes his finger again. “You did it anyway. Consider this a warning.” A nods for Harry to leave, but as soon as Harry turns the doorknob, he adds, “And Potter- the Ministry frowns deeply upon workplace dating, especially when it is extramarital.”
Ron leans over this desk onto Harry’s afterwards. “Did you really?” but before Harry can tell him otherwise, Ron whispers, “You didn’t promise you know who anything. You didn’t promise monogamy. You got the short end of the stick with them, mate.”
Harry can’t bring himself to deny it. He did promise Malfoy- he promised protection, he implied that…he doesn’t know what he implied now, but he hopes it was more than just an arrangement of living and sleeping together.
His head pounds. He feels worse than the scum on the bottom of his shoes. He gets up and rushes to the loo, turning on the taps and leaning over the sink, unable to even wash the cold sweat dribbling down his face. “God, what have I done?” he mutters.
And when he hears the sound of footsteps clicking behind him, he closes his eyes. Inside, he almost expected it. “I can’t- Ron, I- it’s not like t-”
“I’m not Ron,” Romilda says.
He turns around. Romilda stands in front of him, smiling wryly and wringing her hands on the hem of her blouse. “I didn’t intend for-”
“You didn’t bloody intend for WHAT?” Harry shouts. “That everyone in the bloody WORLD WOULD FIND OUT?” He shakes his head. “God, what have I done?”
“I really didn’t,” she insists. She takes a step closer and Harry pulls his wand out, pointing it at her. “My friends got suspicious and implanted a photocamera charm on me. I didn’t sell the picture to the Prophet, Harry-”
“DON’T call me,” he warns.
“I didn’t mean to be the scarlet woman,” she says. “I just- I’d always liked you. I was never going to tell anyone, I swear.”
For a moment, Harry almost believes her.
He doesn’t take the underground or the buses home. Instead, he Apparates before anything else can go wrong.
4.
He inhales slowly before he pushes the door open.
The house is quiet. “Hello?” he calls out.
“In here,” Ron’s voice says.
The weight pressing on Harry’s chest grows. He can hear himself breath, shallow and fast, as he walks into the living room. Ron stands there, and Hermione, too, with their son in her arms.
“Oh, Harry,” she whispers.
“Oh God,” he croaks.
Pyrrha sits on the couch crying. Harry can hear her crying, ragged and rough and his heart breaks a little more when she looks up at him with red eyes. Beside her, even Abraxas is sniffling, his chest heaving.
Viola plays on the floor with a set of blocks, oblivious.
“Where’s- where’s Daddy?” Harry asks carefully, unable to form Malfoy’s name on his tongue.
Pyrrha mutters something, but her crying chokes it off. Harry sits down next to her and pulls her close on one side, and Abraxas on the other. “I don’t know,” she repeats.
“Harry, I got here as soon as Pyrrha floo-called,” Hermione says.
If this were any other time, Harry would be so much more proud of her floo-calling all by herself.
“What time was that?” he asks.
“Like five minutes before I got home,” Ron says.
“Has Daddy been gone for long?” Harry asks.
Pyrrha says she doesn’t know.
“Harry, we-”
“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Hermione says. “I’m sure we can find Malfoy and sort everything out. I’m sure this all-”
“Its fine,” Harry says stiffly. “We’re fine- we’ll- I’ll find Malfoy.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s fine,” he says again.
Reluctantly, Ron and Hermione floo back home. Harry doesn’t want to deal with them and his crying children at the same time. He can’t- he can’t face two different people like this. Ron and Hermione don’t know exactly what he and Malfoy have, not really. His headache throbs worse. His insides wither and he wants to wake up from this awful dream.
“Let’s get some supper first,” Harry says, trying to be cheerful. He is rewarded with sniffling agreement and he places an order for delivery pizza on the phone. He walks upstairs. Everything is wrong. Everything is empty without Malfoy here.
And it is all his fault.
He picks his wallet up off the dresser and something on the bed catches his eye. It is a single copy of today’s Daily Prophet.