FIC: Things That Change, 21/?
Title: Things That Change [21/?]
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][Part 12][Part 13][Part 14][Part 15][Part 16][Part 17][Part 18][Part 19]
[Part 20][Part 21]
1.
It is a cold, clear day in March. Draco cracks open the attic trapdoor and climbs up the stairs, irritated with the house elf because it is too lazy lately to bother feeding the owl. He’s sick of climbing up here, mostly because it’s dirty and full of owl shit, because the house elf hasn’t bothered to clean either.
“Goddamn useless thing,” he grumbles.
The owl is equally useless. Draco wanders through the stacks of boxes, filled with clippings from The Prophet about Potter, or fanmail to Potter, or even some old Quidditch gear and baby clothes. Under the rank smell of owl shit and heavy must, Draco can almost smell the talcum powder and sour milk. He closes his eyes, remembering the feel of tiny hands gripping his as they curled up to his chest, staring up at his face with unseeing slate eyes.
He almost misses it.
And he almost trips over an old scarf of Potter’s. He kicks it across the floor, scowling and picking up the scattered owl treats he’s dropped across the floor when he notices the white scarf isn’t actually so much a scarf as-
“Bugger,” he mutters, poking the owl in the side. It is as stiff and dead as the world outside. He sighs and levitates it downstairs in front of himself before depositing it in an empty cauldron box of Viola’s that has lain in the hallway since Christmas.
He thinks Crap and How am I going to tell Potter I found his owl dead? Draco prods it with a spoon, not wanting to get sick from worms or maggots. He has no idea when the owl died- didn’t he just hear it flapping around the attic last night? Or was that last week? He doesn’t even remember the last time someone fed it.
The feathers look a bit patchy on the side of the owl he tripped over, so he waves his wand and uses a quick glamour charm, but a few more feathers fall off into the bottom of the box, leaving the wing nearly bare.
“Bugger bugger bugger,” he hisses, spell-o-taping the box shut. He shoves the box into the bottom of the linen closet for now.
The house elf does manage to make chicken stew for supper. Draco sits across from Potter, James in between them, and he cuts James’ chicken into small pieces for him. Potter asks, “How was your day?”
“Oh, the same as ever,” Draco lies, waving his hand. “Nothing of note.”
“That’s good,” Potter says as he flips through yesterday’s Prophet.
Draco bites his lip. The words sit heavy on the tip of his tongue- by the way, Potter, your owl is dead, but he can’t bring himself to say anything, not in front of James, at any rate.
After Potter gives James a bath, Draco lingers in the doorway of the kitchen, watching Potter watch the telly and eat a slice of chocolate cake off a napkin. Potter coughs. “Is something wrong?” he asks.
“Well,” Draco sighs. He can’t say anything more, so he takes the box out from the closet and shoves it into Potter’s arms. “I- I found her like this. I’m…er…sorry and all.”
He expected Potter would be sad, maybe say a few words, maybe shed a tear or two, but he doesn’t expect the unending silence that follows as soon as Potter pulls back the flaps of the box lid and simply stares at the dead bird.
Draco tries again when Potter doesn’t answer. “Sorry about your bi- er, Hedwig. I-”
“Just shut up,” Potter snaps. His eye twitches once, then twice. The telly starts to flicker and smoke, then with a sickening crack, the screen splits in two, smoking and smelling of burned rubber. Potter picks up the box and walks out.
Draco hears the back door slam shut. He scowls as he stares at the telly, the smoke tingeing the ceiling black. “Scourgify!” he says, pointing his wand. Sparks fly, red and amber, shooting across the room as he rushes out. When it stops, he tiptoes to the back door and follows Potter out onto the porch.
The sun has set, barely. The London skyline to the north gleams bright, a hundred thousand tiny stars combined together into buildings in the distant. Potter sits on the bench, the box on his lap, staring out blankly. Draco can see the sheen of wetness on his face, glimmering like the reflection in his lenses.
He sits beside Potter and folds his hands on his lap.
“I’ve had her since I was eleven,” Potter murmurs, his voice cracking over the words.
Draco inches closer on the bench. His teeth chatter from the cool wind, cutting through his robes. He leans against Potter, careful, and says, “I know.”
“She was a good bird,” Potter whispers. “And I hadn’t- the last while I didn’t- I ignored her. She sat up in the attic and I didn’t ever even want to go up there and pet her.”
Draco says nothing. He stretches his fingers out, stroking the skin on the back of Potter’s hand slowly. He tries to feel sad along with Potter, but mostly he thinks about how inconvenient it will be for him until they buy a new bird, and he feels guilty because Potter seems miserable. His skin is cold and his voice is peppered with the remains of hitched sobs.
He watches as Potter points his wand and levitates the box. He watches as Potter hesitates on the spell, slipping up twice before he manages to say, “Incendio!”
He watches with Potter as the box burns in the air, a floating fireball before them. The smoke rises up and the ashes flake and flutter when the wind stirs the world, carrying them away in flight.
2.
Draco tries to bring the matter up tactfully at first.
“I need to order some sphinx toenail clippings for a Sweet Dreams potion I want to brew,” he tells Potter. “How should I send my order in?”
Potter’s eyes cloud over. “I’ll pick some up after work tomorrow night,” he says.
Draco frowns when Potter turns his back and curses under his breath.
“I need some Maltese figglehorned batwings,” he mentions another evening.
“Why?” Potter asks. He watches the television, James sitting between his legs on the floor. Potter’s hands comb through James’ hair, damp and dark from his bath. Draco shakes his head when he sees the whisps start to fly about, like Potter’s untidy hair, only worse by ten.
“Er…” Draco racks his brain. “Er…I need to…I need them for- menstrual things,” he hisses.
Potter blinks, his brow scrunching in deep thought. “But- you haven’t- I mean, it’s been since before James since your last one. I thought that you were…er…menopausal since then.”
Draco feels his face burn, caught in the lie. “Well…well, yes,” he drawls, “but Pyrrha and Viola will be home in a couple months and if I need to brew tinctures to ease cramps then-”
“I can just buy some pills at the chemist for them,” Potter says.
A week of dropping hints and Draco gives up. “You’re so bloody thick,” he says in bed, just as Potter sets down the Quidditch magazine he had been reading, and his glasses too, folded up on his night table.
“Why?” Potter asks, yawning. He turns off the light and rolls over to face Draco, his eyes wide and shining, reflecting the dim pearly light from moon through the window.
“When are you going to buy a new owl?” he snaps. “We need one to use rather than those Ministry standards you keep borrowing.”
“I thought you wanted to send sweets to the children,” Potter says.
“And I don’t want to use those owls,” Draco replies. “You have the money- buy a new one.”
Potter falls silent, save for the rustling of the bed sheets as he flops back against his pillow.
“Potter?” Draco asks. “Harry?” he tries, leaning over Potter’s face.
“Hedwig just- last month- and you’re asking me to buy another owl? She was…like a family member,” Potter whispers after some time.
“She was more like a pet,” Draco corrects.
“It doesn’t matter!” Potter shouts. “She was my friend and I miss her!” He sighs through his nose, a whistling sort of melancholic noise, before he rolls onto his side away from Draco, staring at the wall.
Draco hates the sounds of Potter’s voice, accusing him subconsciously of being a selfish brat once more. His stomach twists as he reaches out and pulls Potter’s shoulder, rolling him back supine on the bed.
“I didn’t…mean it like that,” he mumbles.
Potter says nothing.
“Honest!” Draco insists. He leans down, pressing his lips to Potter’s. Potter is still beneath him, unmoving even when Draco runs his tongue along Potter’s bottom lip, slow and enticing him, deliberately encouraging him when his hands slip under the sheets down Potter’s belly and under his waistband.
Potter twitches when Draco grabs his cock, tugging it, as he kisses Potter’s jaw and chin. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he repeats.
“I thought-” Potter jerks his head away from Draco’s mouth, exhaling. He reaches out with blind hands to touch Draco’s hair, making Draco smile at him in the darkness. “I thought that maybe it’d work if we waited until June and give Pyrrha an owl as a present for finishing Hogwarts.”
“That’s if she passes her NEWTs,” Draco says.
“You know she will,” Potter says, sighing again.
Draco would rather not wait, but he grunts in agreement regardless, before he starts to unbutton Potter’s pajama shirt and run his hands across Potter’s chest, searching out nipples to kiss and nip at, to touch and tease.
3.
Pyrrha passes her NEWTs in May.
Draco wants to frame the letter on the wall in the kitchen, the living room and his bedroom. He smiles when he walks by, seeing the O in Muggle Studies, and the rest Es across the board.
“She certainly got her brains from my side,” Draco drawls.
Potter rolls his eyes. “I did manage an E in Potions, too, Malfoy. And in Transfiguration and Defense, neither of which you did.”
“They weren’t important lessons,” Draco scoffs.
“You say the same thing about Pyrrha’s Muggle Studies,” Potter counters.
Draco prefers not to think about that. “Well, considering you live in a Muggle neighbourhood and considering practically everything in this house is Muggle, it seems rather…redundant.” He folds his arms over his charm and smirks at Potter.
Potter shrugs, his mouth twitching. “Dunno about you, Draco, but I see a cauldron bubbling in the back room there.”
Draco wanders back to the room to stir the potion he is brewing. A simple solution he cut out from a page of The Daily Prophet last week on the women’s column- the sort one brews to get one’s husband to communicate better. Draco brushes it off airily when Potter leans over his shoulder and asks what it is.
“Oh, nothing important,” he says.
“I was just wondering why I needed to buy some dehydrated mouse ears was all,” Potter says.
Draco could tell Potter it was a cleaning solution and he wouldn’t know the difference. He mumbles something about pain killers and headaches and waves his hand as he turns back to his notes, checking the consistency, rereading the words Child-friendly.
He lifts the ladle and pours it back out, the soupy yellow potion splashing back into the cauldron. He can hear James wandering about, probably following Potter around. Sweat dribbles down his forehead, which he wipes away with the back of his hand. The low-burning flames of the fire under the cauldron make the room even warmer and in the heat of the late spring.
Potter charms a frame and cuts the edges of another photograph with his wand. Draco walks up behind him, untying the belt of his apron as he rests his chin on Potter’s shoulder. “What are you doing?” he asks.
Potter flips the frame over and shows him.
Draco can hear his breath catch in his throat. He knew Pyrrha owled the photographs once they were printed, but he didn’t pay much attention at the time to the post that night because Potter had him pinned down in the kitchen after James had gone to bed, one hand in his underpants, the other fisted in his hair.
“This is from…Christmas?” he asks slowly, as if he didn’t recognize the sparkling, glassy icicles behind her, as she stands, posed, but not unnaturally stiff, her smile widening and falling as she looks at the camera, checking her wrist corsage.
Draco doesn’t know what to say. She looks beautiful, her hair swirled up off her neck, curled in some sort of girly up-do, pale and smooth. He can see that she wears a gold necklace he and Potter gave to her last Christmas, which hangs close to the swell of her breasts. She looks older than eighteen, and timeless at the same time.
And so much like his mother it hurts. His chest swells, his heart pounds uncomfortably as he stares at her. She holds herself tall and proud like his mother did when she lived, before everything went awry and his father went to Azkaban, when they were a happy family. Pyrrha’s shape, too- she has his mother’s willowy figure, but she’s curvier in her purple gown, which hangs off her hips almost a bit too provocatively to make Draco entirely comfortable.
“I thought maybe we’d put this one in our bedroom,” Potter murmurs, his fingertips grazing the frame.
Draco swallows the lump in his throat. “All right,” he says. He watches his daughter turn in the photograph towards the Great Hall behind her, where countless young couples dance and swirl. He wants to pluck her out of the photo and bring her home and hold her close and force her to stop growing up.
But then his pulse stops for a moment when he notices that she isn’t turning to the dancers, she is turning to look at someone inside, one person among the many who catches her eye and makes them light up more than anything Draco has ever seen before.
Love, he thinks, narrowing his eyes, frowning. Something starts to rise in him and he feels a little green.
“Is she- seeing someone?” Draco asks Potter.
Potter stares at the picture, but the scene has reverted to the start once more, with Pyrrha smiling steadily at the camera. “Dunno- why?”
“It was nothing,” Draco mutters, but in a tone that he knows Potter will catch that it isn’t nothing, that it is something and he knows it.
Draco puts James to bed, tucking the sheets tight about his face, his small hands curled around the edges. Potter stands by the door, his hand on the light switch, flicking it off when Draco pulls back and says, “Good night.” Then he adds, “Do you need a glass of water?”
“Don’t- he could have an accident still,” Potter warns.
Draco bites back a smile when James nods slowly at him. He walks into the hallway bathroom slowly, shifting his eyes as he shuts the door most of the way behind himself. He fishes around his pocket and grabs a glass from the counter, quickly uncapping the vial and pouring in a teaspoon or two of the potion.
He shoves the vial back into his pocket, patting it into place, then fills the cup, swirling as the tap pours, making sure the yellowish tinge of the potion dissipates into the water.
“Here,” Draco says when he offers the glass to James. He inhales carefully as James’ hands wrap around the cup and he takes a sip, then gives it back to Draco.
“All set for bed, now,” Potter says, shutting off the light a second time. Draco smiles at them both.
He smiles even wider when Potter takes his hand and drags him into their bedroom later. He smiles when Potter unbuttons his robes and peels them off his skin as the rain starts to fall outside.
“It sounds like a storm,” Draco says casually when the first crack of thunder breaks and the first peel of lighting flashes across the bedroom, making Potter glow gold for the briefest moment. The digital clock flickers and Draco moans when Potter’s leg presses between his.
“That’s nice,” Potter mutters against his skin.
Draco takes Potter’s hand from his hip and guides it between his legs. Potter gets the idea and pulls back from kissing Draco’s neck to kiss his belly, making him moan and dig his feet into the sheets when Potter’s fingers curl around his cock.
The storm thickens outside, the rain pelting the window, little raptaptaps like music against the glass. Thunder rolls in and out as Draco arches his back again and again, his mouth hanging open, moans rising from his belly to his throat as Potter’s fingers search him out, digging inside his body, pumping and pressing that sweet sweet spot, made only sweeter with the tongue sliding down and across his cock.
Draco gasps, his hands kneading Potter’s hair, pushing him down, down onto his cock. “Don’t stop!” he groans, clenching his teeth as the swell starts to rise in him and his legs clench around Potter’s head.
Light floods into the room and not until Potter pulls back with a hissing gasp does Draco realize it isn’t lightning.
The shadow of James stands in the doorway, his eyes as huge as cauldrons, and just as black.
“Er…” Potter says, eloquent as ever as he lunges over the bed for a pair of discarded underpants.
“Er…” Draco says, frantically pulling the sheets over his swollen cock, now rapidly growing limp with embarrassment.
“It’s all right,” Potter says at last. “Is everything all right, James?”
James shakes his head, clinging to the blanket in his hands as he shuffles into the bedroom. Draco, flushed and flushing, bends over to grab his own pajama pants as James crawls into the bed beside Potter, wedging himself in between the two of them.
“Bad dream,” he mumbles.
Potter wraps an arm around James and pulls him tight. Sighing, Draco flops back on the bed. He sends Potter a frustrated stare over James’ head, but lies unsated as James wiggles down the sheets, inserting himself between their bodies.
As much as Draco wants James to not be afraid of him for once, he’d rather it not be now.
Potter holds him, and murmurs things about sleep and looking for the monsters in his closet, that his dreams aren’t real. He sighs, too, then starts to frown.
“Does- does he smell proper?” he whispers.
Draco sniffs. The potion lacing his tongue emits a sweet, sickly smell, like Muggle medicine, heavy on his breath. “Yes,” he lies.
Potter settles back under the sheets, but his brow remains furrowed. Draco ignores the rise of guilt knotting his stomach, instead reaching out at the end of the bed to poke Potter with his foot.
Potter glances over to Draco, just as Draco starts to feel a sleep hand curl against his chest. Potter smiles and says, “He doesn’t hate you.”
Draco doesn’t know what to say when James’ warm, sticky fingers press across his bare chest, comforting and close as an infant’s, the infant he misses out holding. He says nothing as he kisses James’ forehead, falling back content on his pillow.
4.
Abraxas is the one who lets it slip.
They sit around the dinner table, polishing off the last of the steaks that Draco fried up and leftover beans from last night. Potter asks about the house elf.
“I think I saw his carcass behind the stove last,” Draco says, glaring in the same direction.
“I was thinking we could go to Diagon Alley tomorrow,” Potter tells Pyrrha. “To get you your own owl, if you want.”
Pyrrha smiles and shakes her head. “Sorry Dad- I have plans.”
Draco sets down his spoon and looks up. “What sort of plans?” he asks slowly.
Pyrrha’s flush tells him everything. His worst fears come true.
And Abraxas tells the rest. “She only wants to sneak off with her boyfriend,” he drawls. “You probably arranged it all before classes even ended.”
“He’s a student at Hogwarts?” Potter asks.
Viola looks up briefly at them, then leaves the table, a brief interlude of her slamming her bedroom door shut.
“What’s wrong with her?” Draco asks.
“Viola’s always like that now,” Potter says.
A door cranks open and Viola shouts down the stairs. “I don’t want to be called that anymore! I want a new name! Like Anne!”
Draco blinks. “What is wrong with her?” he asks again.
Pyrrha shrugs as she stands up, pushing her chair in. “Tough year at school, maybe,” she suggests as she starts to creep out of the kitchen.
“Wait- I want to hear about this…this boyfriend,” Draco spits.
“More like professor,” Abraxas mumbles.
Everything goes silent, except for the sound of Viola flushing a toilet upstairs. James sneezes and Potter hands him a Kleenex, silent still.
“What?” Draco hisses.
“Former! Former professor!” Pyrrha insists. “I swear- we didn’t-” She glares at Abraxas, her upper lip starting to tremble. “Why can’t you bloody well shut up, you prick!” she cries. She runs off upstairs to her own room.
The dishes left on the table rattle when a second door slams shut.
“Should I run upstairs too?” Abraxas asks, smirking.
“Don’t bother your sisters,” Potter warns.
“Is it true- a professor?” Draco asks. He shakes his head, his lip curling. “What the bloody hell is this about?”
Abraxas shrugs. “Her Muggle Studies prof- everyone at school knows about it. They’ve made eyes for years-”
Draco feels his throat go dry, choking him as he breathes, as Abraxas goes on.
“Didn’t you wonder why she took that class? What a load of rubbish,” Abraxas says. “Professor Creevey- Alfie Norris told me- is more boring than even Binns. No one took that class except Pyrrha and a few Hufflepuffs who were too dumb to get into anything better.”
“Why don’t you go watch something on the telly,” Potter says in a low voice.
“There’s nothing on tonight,” Abraxas says.
“I think you should go watch something,” Potter says, even lower. “And take your brother, too.”
Abraxas scowls, but does as Potter says, taking James’ hand and dragging him off to watch football, or Coronation Street or an American show, those awful comedies that give Draco headaches sometimes.
Draco opens his mouth to speak, but Potter cuts him off with a wave of his hand.
“Don’t even say it,” he says. “Don’t even say it, Malfoy. She’s eighteen. She has a job-”
“Not starting full-time until Sept-”
“She could go running off and elope for all we know,” Potter finishes. “She’s an adult and licensed witch now.”
“She’s-” my baby daughter. Draco tries to swallow the lump in his throat, but it only thickens. “She’s- a professor, Potter! A bloody professor! That’d be like me and Snape- or you and McGonagall!”
Potter winces. “I know- Creevey- it has to be Dennis, Colin works for The Prophet- he’s- he’s younger than us by a couple years, it’s not like-”
“You’re defending her!” Draco shouts. He stomps around the table, circling Potter once more.
“You’re being unreasonable!”
“It’s my life!”
They both turn around to see Pyrrha standing in front of them, nearly as tall, with her arms folded over her chest. Her face is red and puffy, streaked with half-dried tears. “It’s my life and who I date is none of your business, Daddy!” she shouts, pointing at Draco. She rounds on Potter and adds, “Or yours, Dad!”
“We only want you to be safe,” Potter mutters. “And happy.”
“I am!” she says. Pyrrha sniffles and wipes her nose with the edge of her sleeve. “I am happy with Prof- Dennis.”
Draco is defeated when Potter bites his lip, then reaches out and hugs Pyrrha, mumbling something about happiness and being glad, but not sounding especially convinced.
He has horrible visions of his daughter becoming pregnant with a Muggle-born’s spawn. He lies awake at night, staring at the ceiling, seeing Pyrrha with a distorted belly, weeping because her- he can’t bring himself to think boyfriend when the Creevey boy must be nearly thirty-five- weeping because he’s left her alone and heartbroken.
“I’ll hex his balls off,” Draco murmurs, “if that happens.”
He feels Potter’s hand fish across the bed, blindly seeking his own. “I know you will,” Potter slurs through his sleep. “We both will.”
He doesn’t like it, but deep down, Draco knows he can’t stop Pyrrha from dating Creevey, or anyone else, as much as he’d like to lock her in the attic in Malfoy Manor and keep her young and child-like forever. He cringes when he thinks of where Pyrrha flits off with him in the hazy summer afternoons. He’s seen the small blue car drive up to their house, he’s seen Pyrrha rush out to greet him with a smile on her face. Once or twice Potter has even gone out to speak with Creevey, but Draco can’t bring himself to do that. He glares out the window and watches them speed off to London, to the beach, to Brighton, wherever. It doesn’t matter where, what matters is that she is with him.
Viola locks herself in her room most days. She emerges for supper, long-faced and pale, her red hair dragging over her face and into her food. She layers herself in baggy old t-shirts of Potter’s and scowls at everything.
Potter can ask her about her day and she’ll shriek, “Leave me alone! You don’t understand me!”
Draco can so much as say her name, and she’ll shriek, “I said I hate my name! My name is Anne now.” He hates that name and he refuses to call her that, which only makes her worse. Abraxas eggs her on, singing stupid little songs that remind Draco an awful lot of the Weasley is Our King song from his own youth.
Abraxas lounges about in the family room, reading tomes on history and defense against the Dark arts, and watching the telly absently with James.
“You could get a job,” Potter suggests. “There are internships at the Ministry.”
Abraxas shrugs. “I’ll look.”
He goes out on Fridays. Draco hopes he goes out to London to look for a job- not that any of them need the money, but he gets rather sick of always stepping over Abraxas, lying on the family room floor, doing nothing, like a poverty-stricken Weasley, lying on his arse.
The Floo display shows London when Draco checks it. Not Diagon Alley, but Knockturn Alley. He doesn’t know whether to be proud, or worried. He says nothing to Potter, who doesn’t suspect anything.
“I think I’ll go out to the beach tomorrow,” Potter says one evening.
Draco looks up from Potter’s chest, sticky with sweat and saliva from where he had been licking Potter’s skin. He hums in agreement. “I’ll stay here. I’ve no desire to go,” he says.
Potter sighs. “Are you sure?”
Draco shrugs. I want to make sure that Pyrrha doesn’t bring that pervert home. I want to make sure Abraxas comes home safely. “I’m fine,” he says. “Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
Potter shifts across the bed, propping himself up on an elbow. “I took the day off. The weather is supposed to be good.”
“I still don’t want to go,” Draco says.
“I’ll take James, then,” Potter says. “He loves the beach.”
Potter is right about the weather. The day breaks a beautiful band of violet and rusty orange across the horizon, giving way to sporadic cotton clouds floating across the sky. Draco wakes to the sound of Potter rummaging about in dresser drawers, pulling out his swimming trunks. He follows Potter and James downstairs for breakfast and watches them eat.
“I should be home before supper,” Potter says as he opens the front door.
“Maybe the bloody elf will cook something decent for you,” Draco says.
“Or you could,” Potter suggests. He leaves, smiling at Draco and waving as he backs the car out of the drive and speeds off down the motorway.
The elf is nowhere to be found come two o’clock. Draco hears the occasional scuffle in the pantry closet, but nothing more. “Ruddy useless thing,” he mutters as he starts to pull a can of beans from a shelf to start supper with.
Abraxas is gone off to London, gone in a flash of green flames by eleven o’clock. Viola is home, but hardly, leaving only Pyrrha and Draco. He watches her from the corner of his eyes.
“Not going out today?” he asks.
“Not today, no,” she says. “Do you need any help?” she asks, nodding to a pile of dishes stacked in the sink. Flies buzz around them.
“I’ll do it,” Draco sighs, flicking his wand to start the water. He pours the soap into the sink and watches the foamy bubbles begin to rise, covering the dishes and scattering the flies.
The bell on the door rings. Draco stops mid-swipe washing a dish. “What the…” he mutters.
Pyrrha shouts, “I’ll get it, Daddy!”
Draco rolls his eyes, knowing it’s her boyfriend. He scowls as he resumes washing the plate, scrubbing the caked-on food with extra force, enough that the plate threatens to crack.
“Daddy?” Pyrrha says. “It’s- it’s for you,” she mutters behind him.
Draco raises an eyebrow. Another bloody solicitor wanting to ask Mrs Potter about some useless Muggle charity. He takes the plate with him, his hands wet and covered in soap, as he marches up to the doorway.
“Yes?” he asks, irritated and scowling.
His father stands in front of him.
“Draco?”
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][Part 12][Part 13][Part 14][Part 15][Part 16][Part 17][Part 18][Part 19]
[Part 20][Part 21]
1.
It is a cold, clear day in March. Draco cracks open the attic trapdoor and climbs up the stairs, irritated with the house elf because it is too lazy lately to bother feeding the owl. He’s sick of climbing up here, mostly because it’s dirty and full of owl shit, because the house elf hasn’t bothered to clean either.
“Goddamn useless thing,” he grumbles.
The owl is equally useless. Draco wanders through the stacks of boxes, filled with clippings from The Prophet about Potter, or fanmail to Potter, or even some old Quidditch gear and baby clothes. Under the rank smell of owl shit and heavy must, Draco can almost smell the talcum powder and sour milk. He closes his eyes, remembering the feel of tiny hands gripping his as they curled up to his chest, staring up at his face with unseeing slate eyes.
He almost misses it.
And he almost trips over an old scarf of Potter’s. He kicks it across the floor, scowling and picking up the scattered owl treats he’s dropped across the floor when he notices the white scarf isn’t actually so much a scarf as-
“Bugger,” he mutters, poking the owl in the side. It is as stiff and dead as the world outside. He sighs and levitates it downstairs in front of himself before depositing it in an empty cauldron box of Viola’s that has lain in the hallway since Christmas.
He thinks Crap and How am I going to tell Potter I found his owl dead? Draco prods it with a spoon, not wanting to get sick from worms or maggots. He has no idea when the owl died- didn’t he just hear it flapping around the attic last night? Or was that last week? He doesn’t even remember the last time someone fed it.
The feathers look a bit patchy on the side of the owl he tripped over, so he waves his wand and uses a quick glamour charm, but a few more feathers fall off into the bottom of the box, leaving the wing nearly bare.
“Bugger bugger bugger,” he hisses, spell-o-taping the box shut. He shoves the box into the bottom of the linen closet for now.
The house elf does manage to make chicken stew for supper. Draco sits across from Potter, James in between them, and he cuts James’ chicken into small pieces for him. Potter asks, “How was your day?”
“Oh, the same as ever,” Draco lies, waving his hand. “Nothing of note.”
“That’s good,” Potter says as he flips through yesterday’s Prophet.
Draco bites his lip. The words sit heavy on the tip of his tongue- by the way, Potter, your owl is dead, but he can’t bring himself to say anything, not in front of James, at any rate.
After Potter gives James a bath, Draco lingers in the doorway of the kitchen, watching Potter watch the telly and eat a slice of chocolate cake off a napkin. Potter coughs. “Is something wrong?” he asks.
“Well,” Draco sighs. He can’t say anything more, so he takes the box out from the closet and shoves it into Potter’s arms. “I- I found her like this. I’m…er…sorry and all.”
He expected Potter would be sad, maybe say a few words, maybe shed a tear or two, but he doesn’t expect the unending silence that follows as soon as Potter pulls back the flaps of the box lid and simply stares at the dead bird.
Draco tries again when Potter doesn’t answer. “Sorry about your bi- er, Hedwig. I-”
“Just shut up,” Potter snaps. His eye twitches once, then twice. The telly starts to flicker and smoke, then with a sickening crack, the screen splits in two, smoking and smelling of burned rubber. Potter picks up the box and walks out.
Draco hears the back door slam shut. He scowls as he stares at the telly, the smoke tingeing the ceiling black. “Scourgify!” he says, pointing his wand. Sparks fly, red and amber, shooting across the room as he rushes out. When it stops, he tiptoes to the back door and follows Potter out onto the porch.
The sun has set, barely. The London skyline to the north gleams bright, a hundred thousand tiny stars combined together into buildings in the distant. Potter sits on the bench, the box on his lap, staring out blankly. Draco can see the sheen of wetness on his face, glimmering like the reflection in his lenses.
He sits beside Potter and folds his hands on his lap.
“I’ve had her since I was eleven,” Potter murmurs, his voice cracking over the words.
Draco inches closer on the bench. His teeth chatter from the cool wind, cutting through his robes. He leans against Potter, careful, and says, “I know.”
“She was a good bird,” Potter whispers. “And I hadn’t- the last while I didn’t- I ignored her. She sat up in the attic and I didn’t ever even want to go up there and pet her.”
Draco says nothing. He stretches his fingers out, stroking the skin on the back of Potter’s hand slowly. He tries to feel sad along with Potter, but mostly he thinks about how inconvenient it will be for him until they buy a new bird, and he feels guilty because Potter seems miserable. His skin is cold and his voice is peppered with the remains of hitched sobs.
He watches as Potter points his wand and levitates the box. He watches as Potter hesitates on the spell, slipping up twice before he manages to say, “Incendio!”
He watches with Potter as the box burns in the air, a floating fireball before them. The smoke rises up and the ashes flake and flutter when the wind stirs the world, carrying them away in flight.
2.
Draco tries to bring the matter up tactfully at first.
“I need to order some sphinx toenail clippings for a Sweet Dreams potion I want to brew,” he tells Potter. “How should I send my order in?”
Potter’s eyes cloud over. “I’ll pick some up after work tomorrow night,” he says.
Draco frowns when Potter turns his back and curses under his breath.
“I need some Maltese figglehorned batwings,” he mentions another evening.
“Why?” Potter asks. He watches the television, James sitting between his legs on the floor. Potter’s hands comb through James’ hair, damp and dark from his bath. Draco shakes his head when he sees the whisps start to fly about, like Potter’s untidy hair, only worse by ten.
“Er…” Draco racks his brain. “Er…I need to…I need them for- menstrual things,” he hisses.
Potter blinks, his brow scrunching in deep thought. “But- you haven’t- I mean, it’s been since before James since your last one. I thought that you were…er…menopausal since then.”
Draco feels his face burn, caught in the lie. “Well…well, yes,” he drawls, “but Pyrrha and Viola will be home in a couple months and if I need to brew tinctures to ease cramps then-”
“I can just buy some pills at the chemist for them,” Potter says.
A week of dropping hints and Draco gives up. “You’re so bloody thick,” he says in bed, just as Potter sets down the Quidditch magazine he had been reading, and his glasses too, folded up on his night table.
“Why?” Potter asks, yawning. He turns off the light and rolls over to face Draco, his eyes wide and shining, reflecting the dim pearly light from moon through the window.
“When are you going to buy a new owl?” he snaps. “We need one to use rather than those Ministry standards you keep borrowing.”
“I thought you wanted to send sweets to the children,” Potter says.
“And I don’t want to use those owls,” Draco replies. “You have the money- buy a new one.”
Potter falls silent, save for the rustling of the bed sheets as he flops back against his pillow.
“Potter?” Draco asks. “Harry?” he tries, leaning over Potter’s face.
“Hedwig just- last month- and you’re asking me to buy another owl? She was…like a family member,” Potter whispers after some time.
“She was more like a pet,” Draco corrects.
“It doesn’t matter!” Potter shouts. “She was my friend and I miss her!” He sighs through his nose, a whistling sort of melancholic noise, before he rolls onto his side away from Draco, staring at the wall.
Draco hates the sounds of Potter’s voice, accusing him subconsciously of being a selfish brat once more. His stomach twists as he reaches out and pulls Potter’s shoulder, rolling him back supine on the bed.
“I didn’t…mean it like that,” he mumbles.
Potter says nothing.
“Honest!” Draco insists. He leans down, pressing his lips to Potter’s. Potter is still beneath him, unmoving even when Draco runs his tongue along Potter’s bottom lip, slow and enticing him, deliberately encouraging him when his hands slip under the sheets down Potter’s belly and under his waistband.
Potter twitches when Draco grabs his cock, tugging it, as he kisses Potter’s jaw and chin. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he repeats.
“I thought-” Potter jerks his head away from Draco’s mouth, exhaling. He reaches out with blind hands to touch Draco’s hair, making Draco smile at him in the darkness. “I thought that maybe it’d work if we waited until June and give Pyrrha an owl as a present for finishing Hogwarts.”
“That’s if she passes her NEWTs,” Draco says.
“You know she will,” Potter says, sighing again.
Draco would rather not wait, but he grunts in agreement regardless, before he starts to unbutton Potter’s pajama shirt and run his hands across Potter’s chest, searching out nipples to kiss and nip at, to touch and tease.
3.
Pyrrha passes her NEWTs in May.
Draco wants to frame the letter on the wall in the kitchen, the living room and his bedroom. He smiles when he walks by, seeing the O in Muggle Studies, and the rest Es across the board.
“She certainly got her brains from my side,” Draco drawls.
Potter rolls his eyes. “I did manage an E in Potions, too, Malfoy. And in Transfiguration and Defense, neither of which you did.”
“They weren’t important lessons,” Draco scoffs.
“You say the same thing about Pyrrha’s Muggle Studies,” Potter counters.
Draco prefers not to think about that. “Well, considering you live in a Muggle neighbourhood and considering practically everything in this house is Muggle, it seems rather…redundant.” He folds his arms over his charm and smirks at Potter.
Potter shrugs, his mouth twitching. “Dunno about you, Draco, but I see a cauldron bubbling in the back room there.”
Draco wanders back to the room to stir the potion he is brewing. A simple solution he cut out from a page of The Daily Prophet last week on the women’s column- the sort one brews to get one’s husband to communicate better. Draco brushes it off airily when Potter leans over his shoulder and asks what it is.
“Oh, nothing important,” he says.
“I was just wondering why I needed to buy some dehydrated mouse ears was all,” Potter says.
Draco could tell Potter it was a cleaning solution and he wouldn’t know the difference. He mumbles something about pain killers and headaches and waves his hand as he turns back to his notes, checking the consistency, rereading the words Child-friendly.
He lifts the ladle and pours it back out, the soupy yellow potion splashing back into the cauldron. He can hear James wandering about, probably following Potter around. Sweat dribbles down his forehead, which he wipes away with the back of his hand. The low-burning flames of the fire under the cauldron make the room even warmer and in the heat of the late spring.
Potter charms a frame and cuts the edges of another photograph with his wand. Draco walks up behind him, untying the belt of his apron as he rests his chin on Potter’s shoulder. “What are you doing?” he asks.
Potter flips the frame over and shows him.
Draco can hear his breath catch in his throat. He knew Pyrrha owled the photographs once they were printed, but he didn’t pay much attention at the time to the post that night because Potter had him pinned down in the kitchen after James had gone to bed, one hand in his underpants, the other fisted in his hair.
“This is from…Christmas?” he asks slowly, as if he didn’t recognize the sparkling, glassy icicles behind her, as she stands, posed, but not unnaturally stiff, her smile widening and falling as she looks at the camera, checking her wrist corsage.
Draco doesn’t know what to say. She looks beautiful, her hair swirled up off her neck, curled in some sort of girly up-do, pale and smooth. He can see that she wears a gold necklace he and Potter gave to her last Christmas, which hangs close to the swell of her breasts. She looks older than eighteen, and timeless at the same time.
And so much like his mother it hurts. His chest swells, his heart pounds uncomfortably as he stares at her. She holds herself tall and proud like his mother did when she lived, before everything went awry and his father went to Azkaban, when they were a happy family. Pyrrha’s shape, too- she has his mother’s willowy figure, but she’s curvier in her purple gown, which hangs off her hips almost a bit too provocatively to make Draco entirely comfortable.
“I thought maybe we’d put this one in our bedroom,” Potter murmurs, his fingertips grazing the frame.
Draco swallows the lump in his throat. “All right,” he says. He watches his daughter turn in the photograph towards the Great Hall behind her, where countless young couples dance and swirl. He wants to pluck her out of the photo and bring her home and hold her close and force her to stop growing up.
But then his pulse stops for a moment when he notices that she isn’t turning to the dancers, she is turning to look at someone inside, one person among the many who catches her eye and makes them light up more than anything Draco has ever seen before.
Love, he thinks, narrowing his eyes, frowning. Something starts to rise in him and he feels a little green.
“Is she- seeing someone?” Draco asks Potter.
Potter stares at the picture, but the scene has reverted to the start once more, with Pyrrha smiling steadily at the camera. “Dunno- why?”
“It was nothing,” Draco mutters, but in a tone that he knows Potter will catch that it isn’t nothing, that it is something and he knows it.
Draco puts James to bed, tucking the sheets tight about his face, his small hands curled around the edges. Potter stands by the door, his hand on the light switch, flicking it off when Draco pulls back and says, “Good night.” Then he adds, “Do you need a glass of water?”
“Don’t- he could have an accident still,” Potter warns.
Draco bites back a smile when James nods slowly at him. He walks into the hallway bathroom slowly, shifting his eyes as he shuts the door most of the way behind himself. He fishes around his pocket and grabs a glass from the counter, quickly uncapping the vial and pouring in a teaspoon or two of the potion.
He shoves the vial back into his pocket, patting it into place, then fills the cup, swirling as the tap pours, making sure the yellowish tinge of the potion dissipates into the water.
“Here,” Draco says when he offers the glass to James. He inhales carefully as James’ hands wrap around the cup and he takes a sip, then gives it back to Draco.
“All set for bed, now,” Potter says, shutting off the light a second time. Draco smiles at them both.
He smiles even wider when Potter takes his hand and drags him into their bedroom later. He smiles when Potter unbuttons his robes and peels them off his skin as the rain starts to fall outside.
“It sounds like a storm,” Draco says casually when the first crack of thunder breaks and the first peel of lighting flashes across the bedroom, making Potter glow gold for the briefest moment. The digital clock flickers and Draco moans when Potter’s leg presses between his.
“That’s nice,” Potter mutters against his skin.
Draco takes Potter’s hand from his hip and guides it between his legs. Potter gets the idea and pulls back from kissing Draco’s neck to kiss his belly, making him moan and dig his feet into the sheets when Potter’s fingers curl around his cock.
The storm thickens outside, the rain pelting the window, little raptaptaps like music against the glass. Thunder rolls in and out as Draco arches his back again and again, his mouth hanging open, moans rising from his belly to his throat as Potter’s fingers search him out, digging inside his body, pumping and pressing that sweet sweet spot, made only sweeter with the tongue sliding down and across his cock.
Draco gasps, his hands kneading Potter’s hair, pushing him down, down onto his cock. “Don’t stop!” he groans, clenching his teeth as the swell starts to rise in him and his legs clench around Potter’s head.
Light floods into the room and not until Potter pulls back with a hissing gasp does Draco realize it isn’t lightning.
The shadow of James stands in the doorway, his eyes as huge as cauldrons, and just as black.
“Er…” Potter says, eloquent as ever as he lunges over the bed for a pair of discarded underpants.
“Er…” Draco says, frantically pulling the sheets over his swollen cock, now rapidly growing limp with embarrassment.
“It’s all right,” Potter says at last. “Is everything all right, James?”
James shakes his head, clinging to the blanket in his hands as he shuffles into the bedroom. Draco, flushed and flushing, bends over to grab his own pajama pants as James crawls into the bed beside Potter, wedging himself in between the two of them.
“Bad dream,” he mumbles.
Potter wraps an arm around James and pulls him tight. Sighing, Draco flops back on the bed. He sends Potter a frustrated stare over James’ head, but lies unsated as James wiggles down the sheets, inserting himself between their bodies.
As much as Draco wants James to not be afraid of him for once, he’d rather it not be now.
Potter holds him, and murmurs things about sleep and looking for the monsters in his closet, that his dreams aren’t real. He sighs, too, then starts to frown.
“Does- does he smell proper?” he whispers.
Draco sniffs. The potion lacing his tongue emits a sweet, sickly smell, like Muggle medicine, heavy on his breath. “Yes,” he lies.
Potter settles back under the sheets, but his brow remains furrowed. Draco ignores the rise of guilt knotting his stomach, instead reaching out at the end of the bed to poke Potter with his foot.
Potter glances over to Draco, just as Draco starts to feel a sleep hand curl against his chest. Potter smiles and says, “He doesn’t hate you.”
Draco doesn’t know what to say when James’ warm, sticky fingers press across his bare chest, comforting and close as an infant’s, the infant he misses out holding. He says nothing as he kisses James’ forehead, falling back content on his pillow.
4.
Abraxas is the one who lets it slip.
They sit around the dinner table, polishing off the last of the steaks that Draco fried up and leftover beans from last night. Potter asks about the house elf.
“I think I saw his carcass behind the stove last,” Draco says, glaring in the same direction.
“I was thinking we could go to Diagon Alley tomorrow,” Potter tells Pyrrha. “To get you your own owl, if you want.”
Pyrrha smiles and shakes her head. “Sorry Dad- I have plans.”
Draco sets down his spoon and looks up. “What sort of plans?” he asks slowly.
Pyrrha’s flush tells him everything. His worst fears come true.
And Abraxas tells the rest. “She only wants to sneak off with her boyfriend,” he drawls. “You probably arranged it all before classes even ended.”
“He’s a student at Hogwarts?” Potter asks.
Viola looks up briefly at them, then leaves the table, a brief interlude of her slamming her bedroom door shut.
“What’s wrong with her?” Draco asks.
“Viola’s always like that now,” Potter says.
A door cranks open and Viola shouts down the stairs. “I don’t want to be called that anymore! I want a new name! Like Anne!”
Draco blinks. “What is wrong with her?” he asks again.
Pyrrha shrugs as she stands up, pushing her chair in. “Tough year at school, maybe,” she suggests as she starts to creep out of the kitchen.
“Wait- I want to hear about this…this boyfriend,” Draco spits.
“More like professor,” Abraxas mumbles.
Everything goes silent, except for the sound of Viola flushing a toilet upstairs. James sneezes and Potter hands him a Kleenex, silent still.
“What?” Draco hisses.
“Former! Former professor!” Pyrrha insists. “I swear- we didn’t-” She glares at Abraxas, her upper lip starting to tremble. “Why can’t you bloody well shut up, you prick!” she cries. She runs off upstairs to her own room.
The dishes left on the table rattle when a second door slams shut.
“Should I run upstairs too?” Abraxas asks, smirking.
“Don’t bother your sisters,” Potter warns.
“Is it true- a professor?” Draco asks. He shakes his head, his lip curling. “What the bloody hell is this about?”
Abraxas shrugs. “Her Muggle Studies prof- everyone at school knows about it. They’ve made eyes for years-”
Draco feels his throat go dry, choking him as he breathes, as Abraxas goes on.
“Didn’t you wonder why she took that class? What a load of rubbish,” Abraxas says. “Professor Creevey- Alfie Norris told me- is more boring than even Binns. No one took that class except Pyrrha and a few Hufflepuffs who were too dumb to get into anything better.”
“Why don’t you go watch something on the telly,” Potter says in a low voice.
“There’s nothing on tonight,” Abraxas says.
“I think you should go watch something,” Potter says, even lower. “And take your brother, too.”
Abraxas scowls, but does as Potter says, taking James’ hand and dragging him off to watch football, or Coronation Street or an American show, those awful comedies that give Draco headaches sometimes.
Draco opens his mouth to speak, but Potter cuts him off with a wave of his hand.
“Don’t even say it,” he says. “Don’t even say it, Malfoy. She’s eighteen. She has a job-”
“Not starting full-time until Sept-”
“She could go running off and elope for all we know,” Potter finishes. “She’s an adult and licensed witch now.”
“She’s-” my baby daughter. Draco tries to swallow the lump in his throat, but it only thickens. “She’s- a professor, Potter! A bloody professor! That’d be like me and Snape- or you and McGonagall!”
Potter winces. “I know- Creevey- it has to be Dennis, Colin works for The Prophet- he’s- he’s younger than us by a couple years, it’s not like-”
“You’re defending her!” Draco shouts. He stomps around the table, circling Potter once more.
“You’re being unreasonable!”
“It’s my life!”
They both turn around to see Pyrrha standing in front of them, nearly as tall, with her arms folded over her chest. Her face is red and puffy, streaked with half-dried tears. “It’s my life and who I date is none of your business, Daddy!” she shouts, pointing at Draco. She rounds on Potter and adds, “Or yours, Dad!”
“We only want you to be safe,” Potter mutters. “And happy.”
“I am!” she says. Pyrrha sniffles and wipes her nose with the edge of her sleeve. “I am happy with Prof- Dennis.”
Draco is defeated when Potter bites his lip, then reaches out and hugs Pyrrha, mumbling something about happiness and being glad, but not sounding especially convinced.
He has horrible visions of his daughter becoming pregnant with a Muggle-born’s spawn. He lies awake at night, staring at the ceiling, seeing Pyrrha with a distorted belly, weeping because her- he can’t bring himself to think boyfriend when the Creevey boy must be nearly thirty-five- weeping because he’s left her alone and heartbroken.
“I’ll hex his balls off,” Draco murmurs, “if that happens.”
He feels Potter’s hand fish across the bed, blindly seeking his own. “I know you will,” Potter slurs through his sleep. “We both will.”
He doesn’t like it, but deep down, Draco knows he can’t stop Pyrrha from dating Creevey, or anyone else, as much as he’d like to lock her in the attic in Malfoy Manor and keep her young and child-like forever. He cringes when he thinks of where Pyrrha flits off with him in the hazy summer afternoons. He’s seen the small blue car drive up to their house, he’s seen Pyrrha rush out to greet him with a smile on her face. Once or twice Potter has even gone out to speak with Creevey, but Draco can’t bring himself to do that. He glares out the window and watches them speed off to London, to the beach, to Brighton, wherever. It doesn’t matter where, what matters is that she is with him.
Viola locks herself in her room most days. She emerges for supper, long-faced and pale, her red hair dragging over her face and into her food. She layers herself in baggy old t-shirts of Potter’s and scowls at everything.
Potter can ask her about her day and she’ll shriek, “Leave me alone! You don’t understand me!”
Draco can so much as say her name, and she’ll shriek, “I said I hate my name! My name is Anne now.” He hates that name and he refuses to call her that, which only makes her worse. Abraxas eggs her on, singing stupid little songs that remind Draco an awful lot of the Weasley is Our King song from his own youth.
Abraxas lounges about in the family room, reading tomes on history and defense against the Dark arts, and watching the telly absently with James.
“You could get a job,” Potter suggests. “There are internships at the Ministry.”
Abraxas shrugs. “I’ll look.”
He goes out on Fridays. Draco hopes he goes out to London to look for a job- not that any of them need the money, but he gets rather sick of always stepping over Abraxas, lying on the family room floor, doing nothing, like a poverty-stricken Weasley, lying on his arse.
The Floo display shows London when Draco checks it. Not Diagon Alley, but Knockturn Alley. He doesn’t know whether to be proud, or worried. He says nothing to Potter, who doesn’t suspect anything.
“I think I’ll go out to the beach tomorrow,” Potter says one evening.
Draco looks up from Potter’s chest, sticky with sweat and saliva from where he had been licking Potter’s skin. He hums in agreement. “I’ll stay here. I’ve no desire to go,” he says.
Potter sighs. “Are you sure?”
Draco shrugs. I want to make sure that Pyrrha doesn’t bring that pervert home. I want to make sure Abraxas comes home safely. “I’m fine,” he says. “Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
Potter shifts across the bed, propping himself up on an elbow. “I took the day off. The weather is supposed to be good.”
“I still don’t want to go,” Draco says.
“I’ll take James, then,” Potter says. “He loves the beach.”
Potter is right about the weather. The day breaks a beautiful band of violet and rusty orange across the horizon, giving way to sporadic cotton clouds floating across the sky. Draco wakes to the sound of Potter rummaging about in dresser drawers, pulling out his swimming trunks. He follows Potter and James downstairs for breakfast and watches them eat.
“I should be home before supper,” Potter says as he opens the front door.
“Maybe the bloody elf will cook something decent for you,” Draco says.
“Or you could,” Potter suggests. He leaves, smiling at Draco and waving as he backs the car out of the drive and speeds off down the motorway.
The elf is nowhere to be found come two o’clock. Draco hears the occasional scuffle in the pantry closet, but nothing more. “Ruddy useless thing,” he mutters as he starts to pull a can of beans from a shelf to start supper with.
Abraxas is gone off to London, gone in a flash of green flames by eleven o’clock. Viola is home, but hardly, leaving only Pyrrha and Draco. He watches her from the corner of his eyes.
“Not going out today?” he asks.
“Not today, no,” she says. “Do you need any help?” she asks, nodding to a pile of dishes stacked in the sink. Flies buzz around them.
“I’ll do it,” Draco sighs, flicking his wand to start the water. He pours the soap into the sink and watches the foamy bubbles begin to rise, covering the dishes and scattering the flies.
The bell on the door rings. Draco stops mid-swipe washing a dish. “What the…” he mutters.
Pyrrha shouts, “I’ll get it, Daddy!”
Draco rolls his eyes, knowing it’s her boyfriend. He scowls as he resumes washing the plate, scrubbing the caked-on food with extra force, enough that the plate threatens to crack.
“Daddy?” Pyrrha says. “It’s- it’s for you,” she mutters behind him.
Draco raises an eyebrow. Another bloody solicitor wanting to ask Mrs Potter about some useless Muggle charity. He takes the plate with him, his hands wet and covered in soap, as he marches up to the doorway.
“Yes?” he asks, irritated and scowling.
His father stands in front of him.
“Draco?”