HP fic: "A Season in Hell," 4/5, Harry/ Draco, R

[ishafel]

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Sport of Queens- verse on A03

Summary: Anything can happen in a World Cup year.


The Cannons won the final for the first time in any of their lifetimes. Watching Draco hold the trophy up, his ring catching the light, Ron said, “I don't know whether to kiss him or kill him.”

“Neither, please,” Harry answered. They had watched the game from the team's box, and they had a fantastic view of the trophy presentation. He wondered if he was the only one who could tell just how fake Draco's smile was. Even Greg, who'd broken three fingers in the last ten minutes of the game, looked happier. Then again, Greg was done; he'd announced his retirement last week. Draco still had the World Cup.

They got the news as they came into the flat after the game. “Turn it down,” Harry suggested, when Pansy texted to say Draco had been selected. “It's just quidditch. It's not worth being miserable for.”

“It's the Cup,” Draco said, not looking at Harry. “It's a hell of a lot more than just another quidditch game. You can't turn something like that down. Not without burning a lot of bridges I can't-- we can't-- afford to burn. If I don't play, and play well, treason is the least of what they'll accuse me of.”

Melodrama, the curse of the Malfoys. Harry kissed him to stop him talking about quidditch. He was trying to be a good sport about it all, the Commonwealth Games, the European Championships, the endless hours of practice, the thousands of game videos Draco watched when he wasn't in practice--. The fact that their plan to get out of England seemed to be on indefinite hiatus.

He'd been suspended from Justice for six weeks, and he hated it. And if he fought back, if he went to the papers or sued--. He'd never wanted to be a poster boy for gay rights, never wanted his relationship public, never wanted anything but to be left alone.

And it wasn't Draco's fault that he couldn't have that, but Harry had to consciously remind himself to be gentle when he pushed Draco down onto the couch and ground their hips together, gentle when he bit Draco's neck just where it joined his shoulder. He had no reason to punish Draco, and this was no way to do it. He came before Draco did, and then he dragged Draco's jeans down and gave him as slow and careful and good a blowjob as he could manage.

Afterward Draco blinked at him, his eyes half-open and his mouth swollen from Harry's kisses, tired and soft as Draco rarely was, his edges blunted. Usually it was Harry who felt that way. “Not that I'm complaining,” Draco said, “but what brought that on?”

“Felt like it,” Harry answered flippantly. “It must be the bling.”

Draco held up his hand obligingly so that they could admire the big, flashy ring. “I've got two more, you know.” He sighed. “But I'm not sure I could handle two blowjobs. Never mind three. Old age, I guess.”

“Did you ever-- you know-- with Sergei?”, Harry asked. It was stupid, and none of his business, but the words slipped out. Sometimes he felt like he'd missed something, and he didn't even know enough to know what.

Draco blinked, but the edge of his mouth turned up a little, a precursor to the familiar Malfoy smirk. “I'm not sure what the question was there, Potter.” He slid the ring off and tossed it on the coffee table. “He never blew me three times in one night. I'm not sure he did it three times in two years. But he fucked me up against the wall in the locker room after everyone else had gone home, the night the Hornets won the last time. And after that he went home to his girlfriend and I went home to my wife. If you want me to be more specific--.”

“Did you ever feel guilty?”

“Is that-- do you think I'm cheating on you? Is that what you think? Every time I went from Serge to Astoria I felt like the biggest shit in the world, Harry, yes I felt guilty. And I always promised myself that it was the last time, and I always knew I was lying.”

“That wasn't what I meant,” Harry said quickly. “It wasn't.”

“Look,” Draco said, and he didn't look soft or satisfied at all any more. “Sergei picked me because he could see I was easy and he thought I had more to lose than he did. And he bolted as soon as things got bad. You stayed, Potter. That makes you the better guy. You don't have to compete with him because as far as I'm concerned you won. You won the minute you called me your boyfriend on live TV in front of half of Britain.”

Harry didn't just want to be loyal, though. He wanted to be hotter and more adventurous in bed and more fun, and he had a feeling that he wasn't. Sergei Ivanovitch was ten years younger than they were and had been the best quidditch player to come out of the Russian Federation, maybe the best player of his generation-- and even Harry had to admit he'd been attractive. Blaise Zabini had been basically sex on legs at seventeen and he'd only got better with age. It was a bit lowering to think about.

“Sorry,” he muttered, because he did have some pride left. “I shouldn't have asked.”

“Fair enough,” Draco said. “I shouldn't have answered.”

For a moment Harry thought they were going to fight about it, almost wanted to fight about it, and then Draco caved, offering him a tired smile. Harry and Ginny hadn't fought, not ever. He and Draco fought all the time, and Harry had begun to prefer it. At least with Draco, he usually knew where he'd gone wrong. He didn't like this forbearance; it was too like the way he'd treated Ginny, as if her feelings weren't important enough to fight about it.

Draco was yawning, clearly exhausted by six hours of quidditch and a blowjob, but Harry grabbed his wrist anyway. “Fight back,” he said. “If I'm being a dick, let me have it, but don't just let it go.”

“Fine,” Draco said, and yanked his wrist away. “You're being a dick, and I was going to wait until tomorrow to tell you so, but since it's so important, fuck you for asking. You know who I am and where I've been and you knew it before the first time you crawled into my bed. You don't get to hold it against me, not any of it.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, and laughed.

After a minute Draco laughed, too, and leaned against him. “Carry me to bed. Please.”

“That would be the end of my back.”

“Fuck you for that, too,” Draco said, but he was pretty clearly half asleep already. Harry pulled him to his feet and dragged him down the hall to the bedroom. It took him a long time to fall asleep, which wasn't unusual these days; he lay listening to Draco breathe and wished that things were different.

In the morning when he woke up Draco was already in the kitchen sitting at the counter. Harry poured himself coffee and opened the refrigerator. He had his back to Draco when the other man started to talk.

“Blaise was first,” Draco said. “When were fifteen or so-- only making out and a couple of handjobs.”

Harry whipped around, staring.

“Then there was Astoria, although that was just fooling around. Pureblood witches used to be pretty careful not to-- at least the nice girls. Then Malcolm, during the war, and Parvati Patil, who wasn't a nice girl, which went on for a couple of years. And a handful of not very serious dates, and then Astoria again. Sergei. Blaise again. A couple of quidditch groupies, and a couple of Muggles, none of whom I slept with more than once. And then you.”

“You don't have to--,” Harry started.

“Oh, I do.” There was a folded newsmagazine lying on the counter at Draco's elbow. He passed it to Harry.

Harry unfolded it. Magic, arguably the worst of the wizarding tabs. The headline story was, “Hydra Black, British Quidditch's Great Black Hope,” and there was a picture under it, with the caption, “No surprise that Hydra Black, the daughter of Bellatrix Black and, rumor has it, a highly- placed Death Eater, is an ace Seeker who has been tapped to play traveling reserve under Draco Malfoy at the upcoming Quidditch World Cup.” The girl-- woman, because Harry knew she must be a few months older than Ted-- was beautiful. She looked like Bellatrix, with brown hair curling out of a tight braid and fair skin, but her eyes were a pale wolf-blue.

“She isn't mine,” Draco said quietly. “Or Dad's. I never slept with Bella and I am damn sure he didn't either.”

“That would never have occurred to me.” It had the virtue of being the truth. “Why--?”

“There are only a handful of people who know who her father is. Me, Mum, Dad. Marius Lestrange, who raised her. So far as I know neither Hydra nor Delphine know. Delphine was conceived by rape and born in Azkaban. But Harry-- Hydra's father was the Dark Lord himself.”

“Jesus Christ,” Harry said, leaning on the stove to keep from falling over. “Jesus, Draco.”

“It can't come out,” Draco said. “But no one in their right mind would believe she was Roddy's daughter. Not with those eyes.”

“No,” Harry agreed. “Which leaves you and Lucius.”

“And Greyback. It's a shame Severus's eyes were dark.”

Harry looked down at the woman. “Even if they hadn't been, no one would believe she was Snape's daughter, either.”

“I'm sorry, Potter,” Draco said miserably. “If I'd known-- I knew she played for a farm team in Morocco but I never even thought about her having British citizenship.”

“Is she good?”

“Pansy sent me a video. She will be. In a couple of years she could be world class.”

“Crap,” Harry said. “They already think you slept with Teddy. Compared to that, a little fling with the Black Bitch when you were a kid is nothing.”

“Except for the part where I'm flaming gay and the part where she was my aunt and mad as a rabid Crup.”

Harry sighed and sat down next to Draco. “So what do we do?”

“Deny it, but refuse to take a blood test,” Draco said. “Everyone will immediately assume that she's either mine or Dad's. But I wanted you to know the truth.”

Harry touched his hand. “Hey. I knew the important part already.” Except, of course, that the really important part wasn't who Hydra's father wasn't, but who he had been. Tom Riddle's daughter, with all of her mother's charm and her father's arrogance and unquestionable and formidable intelligence shining from the cool wolf stare.

If Draco was dangerous, a rallying point for the remaining Death Eaters, how much worse was Hydra Black? If Shacklebolt had known, he would have had her killed years ago. But if Harry told anyone in the Aurors College and Draco found out, he'd never forgive Harry. And if Hydra herself didn't know--. All those years with Ginny, he'd put the job first and never counted the cost to his marriage or his family. Now he found himself putting Draco first, and doing it without a second's hesitation.

He hadn't understood why Ginny left, why she said she was tired of never being enough for him. Now he hoped that in Michael she'd found someone who was as mad about her as Harry was about Draco, as willing to break all his rules and burn all his bridges. She deserved that, to be loved the way he hadn't been able to love her.

After a moment Draco said, very quietly, “At least there's something I can do for her. Scorpius wants to change his name to Jack permanently when he leaves school, did I tell you that? Apparently Scorpius Malfoy sounds too Pureblood. There's nothing I can give him and nothing I can do for him that won't make things harder instead of easier. I can't fix things with the Ministry for you, and I couldn't save Ted. But I can give her my name, Harry, we could be her family--.”

“I don't want to be family to Voldemort's daughter,” Harry cut in, and the words came out harder than he'd meant them to, hard enough that Draco flinched, but Merlin. He'd thought there was nothing he wouldn't do for Draco, nothing he wouldn't give up and nowhere he wouldn't go. He'd never thought Draco would ask for something like this.

“Of course,” Draco said. “Sorry. I didn't think.” They fought about almost everything, but not the war. Never the war-- because there was only one right side when it came to the war. And it wasn't Draco's.

“I'll say whatever you want me to. But I don't want to be anywhere near her.”

“Of course,” Draco said again, looking down at the photo of the girl. Now that Harry knew, he couldn't help looking for Voldemort in that pretty face.

“She's not Teddy. You can't expect--.”

Draco was crying; he rubbed the tears away with the back of his hand and sniffed impatiently. “I don't. I really don't.” Harry felt like the biggest asshole in the world. But he couldn't do it, couldn't even bring himself to put an arm around Draco. Before he could think of something else to do or say, Draco's phone buzzed on the counter. It was Pansy, because it was always Pansy.

“They want to interview me and Hydra live together on WQN tomorrow,” Draco said, moving away, shoving the paper into the recycle bin and rinsing his coffee mug in the sink.

“I bet they do. Draco, how sure are you about this? How do you even know?”

Draco fished an envelope from under the microwave and slid a small pile of black and white photos out. They were old, the edges curling, so old that the people in them had stopped moving. A wedding, on a lovely sunlit day in the grounds of a big house Harry didn't recognize. The first photograph was of three men-- two men and a boy, really, one in his sixties, one perhaps twenty- four or five, and the boy sixteen at most. They were austerely handsome, very dark, perhaps Egyptian or Arabic, in sharply cut dark robes. “Marius Lestrange, and his nephews Rodolphus and Rabastan-- his brother Tristan was killed trying to free Grindelwald in 1963.”

Harry flipped to the next photo. “Bellatrix and Rodolphus,” Draco said, though it wasn't really necessary. Bellatrix had been an extraordinarily beautiful bride. The next photo, of the three Black sisters, made Harry's breath catch-- not for Bellatrix, but for Narcissa and Andromeda, their long hair loose, very young and very happy.

The bottom photo was of Bellatrix again, dancing with a tall, good looking Englishman. And in this picture she was more than beautiful. There was a light in her face, a softness, as she looked up at him. “Lord Voldemort,” Draco said.

“I see what you mean,” Harry agreed.

The next day he went to Ron and Hermione's, because he knew Ron would insist on watching the interview and he wanted to see what Hermione thought. He and Ron sat on their comfortable overstuffed sofa, while Hugo put crayons up his nose.

Hydra was even in prettier in person. She and Draco were both wearing blue England jackets and she'd streaked her hair blonde. If Harry hadn't known better, he'd have thought they were father and daughter or brother and sister too.

“Lucius Malfoy, you dog,” Ron hissed at the tv, as Hydra described a quidditch match she'd played in in Marrakesh. It was like seeing Draco in drag; even the way she moved was the same.

“Wow,” Hermione said, looking up from her paperwork. “No wonder she dropped the Lestrange name. She is every inch a Black. What does Narcissa think, I wonder?”

Harry shrugged, aware that he came off convincingly sulky. “She probably likes it. You know how Purebloods are about family.”

“Oy,” Ron objected, without real heat. “Not my family.”

“True,” Hermione said, ignoring him. “Mad, the lot of them.”

There was no question that she bought it. And if she did, everyone would. Harry felt a moment of indignation for Lucius Malfoy but then he remembered that he hated him, and that Lucius might not have slept with his sister-in-law but he had almost certainly slept with Snape.

The interview dragged on. Hugo climbed into Harry's lap and smiled at him with turquoise and fuschia crayoned teeth. Harry rested his chin on Hugo's head, while Hugo leaned against him, warm and sticky and trusting. Family.

“She's like a girl version of Malfoy,” Ron said. “I can't believe I'm attracted to Malfoy with breasts, but I am.”

Harry laughed. “Believe it or not, he's pretty amazing without breasts.”

“I guess you really are gay now.”

“Ronald,” Hermione said warningly, just the way she had when they were fourteen.

“I guess,” Harry told him, and it wasn't unthinkable or even terrifying to say it.

He went home and made dinner, and watched Draco eat, thinking of Hydra, of Scorpius-call-me-Jack, of James and Albie and Lily, of Hugo curled in his lap, heavy and smelling of crayon wax and grass and chocolate.

“I think--,” he said, feeling for the words, and Draco turned a little away from the tv to look at him. “What if--,” and it came out in a rush. “What if we had a baby? Now that I'm not working?”

Draco set his fork down, and the tv flickered and went out. Harry bit his lip. Two blenders, a microwave, and now the tv, and it was only April; Draco was tough on appliances. “You want a baby,” Draco said, as if he wasn't quite sure what the words meant. “A baby, baby?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, and to his surprise it felt right, like a puzzle piece snapping into place. Like what he had with Draco.

It was fairly clear that it didn't feel the same way to Draco. Harry tried not to look at the refrigerator. “Yesterday you wanted to move to Texas, and today you want a baby?”

“California,” Harry corrected, even though he knew it was a mistake.

Draco waved this off as irrelevant. “Fuck California. What would you even do with a baby? Where would we even get a baby? That spell is illegal for a reason-- is Granger pregnant and trying to pawn the baby off on you? Is that what brought this on? I'm not having a ginger-haired child, Potter.”

“What? No. I don't think she's pregnant, anyway. We could adopt, maybe. Or get a surrogate.”

“It's pretty hard to find a Pureblood surrogate,” Draco objected. “And most of the country thinks we're deviant child molesters.”

Harry knew, of course; he knew that adoption was a longshot and surrogacy was expensive and children born of mixed parentage had a much higher chance of being Squibs. He knew that this was out of the blue. He was being unreasonable even by Draco’s standards, which were impressive.

“I was watching you with Hydra,” he said finally, starting over. “And thinking about what you said after Ted’s funeral, the first time we talked about moving-- that you didn’t want to run away. I kept thinking that we had to get away, to start over. Be other people, somewhere no one knows who we are,” he said finally. “But today-- I keep thinking I’ve never run away. Neither of has. And I’m not so sure I want to start now. This is home. England is home.”

He sighed. “This is where our family is. Not just the kids, or the Weasleys, or your parents, but Pansy and Greg and Ron and Hermione. Andromeda--.”

“I get the idea,” Draco cut in. “Harry, you’re my family now. If it makes you happy we’ll go. We can always come back. The kids are away three quarters of the year as it is-- they’ll be at university soon. My parents won’t like it, but they’ll understand. Our friends will understand.”

He wasn’t listening. “I don’t want to go,” Harry said, taking Draco’s hand. “I want us to stay here, to make a life on our terms. Not because-- not to go because we--. I just want--.”

“Stop talking,” Draco said very gently. Harry hadn’t expected gentleness. He did stop, mid-sentence, and Draco’s mind brushed his. Harry thought again of Hugo, warm and solid, of the mixture of pride and terror he’d felt meeting James, of Lucius and Narcissa and Andromeda, making grilled cheese sandwiches, of family. They had never done this; Harry’d barely seen Draco use magic to do more than open wine bottles and set fire to parking tickets since they were at school. He’d forgotten that Draco was talented, well-taught, and fiercely intelligent, forgotten that he would know Legilimency as well as any Auror.

Draco pulled his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he said, “Harry, I can’t.” He looked desperately tired, or maybe only desperately sad. “I-- I love you, you know that, but I don’t want a baby. I didn’t want Scorpius. We didn’t plan for him. I wouldn’t-- do that to a kid, if i could help it.”

Harry couldn’t think of a single thing to say, and it must have showed on his face. “It isn’t fair,” Draco said. “You think this is what I wanted for Scorpius? To be ashamed of his name, his family? There’s a reason most of my friends don’t have children. But when Astoria got pregnant, we couldn’t-- we couldn’t bring ourselves to make it go away. And I love him, I do, but I’ve seen what’s happened to him because of me. I can’t even imagine what they’d do to a child of ours.”

It felt like Cruciatus, sharp and sudden and immense: pain and the promise of pain to come. Harry swallowed against it, remembered to breathe. Remembered this was something he hadn’t even known he wanted until today. “Okay,” he said. It wasn’t like Draco was wrong, after all. “Okay, yeah.” This time he was the one who was crying; he got up and started to clear the table, hoping Draco wouldn’t see.

“I’m sorry,” Draco said again. Harry piled the dishes in the sink and turned on the water, afraid to open his mouth, still trying to choke back tears. Draco went into the bedroom, and came back out, and before Harry could do more than turn around he was out the door of the flat.

He was wearing running clothes, at least. Harry thought that meant he was coming back. The tv was definitely dead and after a while Harry curled up in bed, not even trying to read, listening for Draco. He heard the front door open and close just after midnight, and then the shower in the bathroom off the kids’ room came on. He waited, tense and unhappy, for a long time. Draco never came to bed.

In the morning Harry stayed in the shower until he was sure Draco’d gone, and then collected lattes and biscotti and went to see Hermione. She’d been the smartest person he knew when he was eleven, and nothing had changed.

“I thought you might be by,” she said, looking up from her paperwork. “Sit down, Harry. It can’t be as bad as you think it is.”

Harry sat. He told her everything, more or less. He didn’t cry this time. He didn’t mention blowjobs, or Hydra Black. He didn’t mention Hugo, or Squibs, or the autism spectrum, because unlike Draco he was capable of tact.

“Oh, dear,” Hermione said when he was finished. “You two are such a mess. Look, there’s something you ought to know about, anyway, before you make any decisions.” She handed him a file. “This is Hydra Black’s DNA result. We ran her blood as well as cast a Paternus Charm, so it’s definite.”

Harry flipped it open warily. He’d learned to interpret results as an Auror in the field, and now his eyes slid automatically down the page. Draco Malfoy it read, and beside it, Confirmed by Paternus. Harry shut the file.

“Where did you get this?”, he asked. “She’s only been in the country twenty-four hours and it takes three weeks for the Paternus Charm to work.”

“Apparently we had it on file,” Hermione said. “Marius Lestrange requested DNA tests from a British firm on both girls just before Delphine turned eighteen. He married her as soon as she finished at Beauxbatons. At least he checked to be sure she wasn’t his great-niece first.”

“Gross,” Harry said. “He must be like a hundred and ten.”

“They have four sons together. Apparently he hasn’t ordered paternity tests on them, or at least he hasn’t had them done in England. Do you think Draco knows?”, Hermione asked.

Harry thought of Draco the night before, insisting that he’d never wanted children. “How could he not?”

“Oh, I suspect Narcissa and Bellatrix could have worked it out between them,” Hermione said wryly.

“She was his aunt--.”

“Ron’s grandparents are first cousins,” Hermione pointed out. “On both sides. They don’t think about it the way we do, you know that.”

“But still,” Harry said, shuddering. “You don’t think he--.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure the results were faked,” Hermione said. “Although I think it’s interesting they chose to use Draco’s DNA instead of Lucius’s. The real question is, how could Hydra’s father be so terrible that the Malfoys thought Draco would be a better option?”

Harry swallowed, feeling sick. “I don’t know.” He did know, of course. That was the problem. Hydra’s father was exactly that terrible. “How did they fake the results?”

“Narcissa,” Hermione said. “I don’t know how she did it, yet, but I know it was her. She’s wasted on Lucius; she ought to be head of Gringotts or the Minister of Magic or something by now.”

“So are you running Hydra’s results against the database?”

Hermione shook her head. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. We don’t have any reason to investigate her, and even if we did, most of the Death Eaters were dead before we built the database. Chances are we wouldn’t get a hit anyway. I think maybe the Malfoys just did it to fuck with Marius. Yaxley is listed as Delphine’s father. Yaxley! He wasn’t even in Azkaban when she was conceived.”

“Why would they even do that?”, Harry demanded. “It makes no sense.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “You accused your mother-in-law of murdering a man in a coma in January.”

“Okay, yeah. But--.”

“Harry. I know who Hydra’s father is. Augustus Rookwood was an Unspeakable, and he reported directly to the head of the Unspeakables. It’s classified, of course-- and it’s well above your pay grade.”

It was an old rivalry; Harry didn’t bring up the unfairness of expecting Aurors, not to mention Justice, to do their jobs properly with only half the available information.

“My predecessor made the decision to keep her under surveillance but not to act unless it was necessary,” Hermione said, “and I’ve opted to continue with that policy because frankly, I couldn’t bring myself to have a twenty year old quidditch player assassinated--.”

The door opened, and Goyle came in, carefully balancing two cups of coffee and a bag of pastries with only one good hand. “Hey,” he said, “Ruth said you were taking a break anyway and to come right up--,” he began, and then caught sight of Harry. “Potter.”

Harry was watching Hermione, though. She went red and then white, and Harry knew.

“Fuck,” he said, feeling sick. “Hermione--.”

“I should go,” Goyle said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, stay, Greg,” Hermione said. “Harry, Ron and I are still working out the details, but we’re separating. We haven’t been happy for a long time, you know that, and we haven’t had sex in--.”

“I have to go,” Harry said, “I’ve just remembered, I promised Draco I’d pick up his dry cleaning, I have to go right now.” He did not quite knock the coffee out of Goyle’s hand on his way out, but he wouldn’t have much cared if he had.

When he was safely out in the street he sat down on a bench and called Draco, not really expecting him to pick up but wanting to at least hear his voice.

To his surprise, Draco answered. “Harry? Listen, I’m sorry about last night.”

“No,” Harry said, talking over him. “I mean, yes, I am too, and we need to talk about it, but not over the phone. Hermione is sleeping with your fucking mate Greg Goyle.”

“What?” Draco said, and then, clearly to someone else, “tell him two minutes, please, it’s a family emergency.” And then, to Harry, “Sorry, but I cannot possibly have heard you right, Potter. Please tell me that this is some kind of sick joke.”

“Oh, if only it were,” Harry said. “It was scarring. I may never be the same.” As he talked, he started to feel as if he could breathe normally for the first time since the night before. He and Draco would be okay. Maybe they wouldn’t have a baby-- and he spared a second to think, please God and Merlin and anyone else in earshot, let Hydra not be Draco’s daughter-- maybe they weren’t meant to have a baby. But they were still a family.