Chapter Seventeen of 'The Descent of Magic'- Breaking the Opposition
Chapter Sixteen.
Title: The Descent of Magic (17/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Issues of disability, angst, epilogue-compliant.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria
Summary: Harry Potter, retired Auror, is also a budding magical theorist who likes a quiet life. When he discovers what seems to be a possible reason that so many pure-blood families are losing their magic and having Squib children, he keeps it quiet, because he knows it would only cause a storm of controversy. But an equally budding acquaintance with Draco Malfoy might change his mind.
Author's Notes: The title of the fic and a few details of Harry's life are taken from the story of Darwin, who was also reluctant to publicize the details of his evolutionary theory, knowing the controversy that would result. Both Harry and Draco are older in this story and have had their epilogue marriages, so avoid if that's not something you like. Chapter lengths will be variable, and this will probably be somewhere around 18 or 20 chapters.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seventeen-Breaking the Opposition
“Master Draco!”
The house-elf’s cry brought Draco bolting back to his feet. He’d spent most of the night in his Potions lab, working with exhilaration on another version of the potion, which ought to help Potter’s leg even more. He hadn’t discovered the solution yet, but it had excited him enough that he’d fallen asleep at a table in the lab rather than in his bed.
Now he blinked, disoriented, and turned his head, looking from side to side, before he identified the house-elf standing in the lab door and wringing his hands.
“Master Draco,” the elf whispered. “Mistress Astoria-she is here.”
Draco swore sharply before he caught himself. It certainly made the elf jump. Draco couldn’t remember the last time he’d used words like that aloud. His father would have said that it didn’t become a Malfoy.
But his father wasn’t here to help him, and the people who would be shocked to hear Draco openly express such emotion weren’t, either. Draco moved away from the table and towards the door, forcing the elf to step aside. “You said that she’s in the house?” he questioned crisply, cocking his head so he could keep the elf in sight as he paced up the corridor. “Which room? Did she enter by the Floo or by the front doors?”
“The Floo, Master Draco.” The elf wrung its hands as it hurried along behind him. From experience, Draco recognized that it was about to bang its head against the wall.
He didn’t really have time for this right now, but he reached out and cupped a hand around the elf’s forehead. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said softly. “She must have exploited some flaw built into the wards allowing her access, one I never removed.” From the way the elf blinked, it understood nothing of what he was saying. Draco didn’t care. “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t want you to punish yourself.”
The elf blinked so hard its eyes watered, and squinted at this unfamiliar concept. Then it nodded. “Yes, Master Draco. Thank you, Master Draco.” Then it tried to squint down its long nose at its own mouth, as though it wondered where the words had come from.
Draco smiled in spite of himself and turned around.
Astoria stood at the end of the corridor, staring at him.
Draco straightened up and waved the elf off with a motion of his hand, hoping absently as he did so that the magic that caused the pure-bloods’ lack of children wouldn’t take the gesture the wrong way. The elf scurried off, and Draco felt no more or less fertile than before, so presumably it was all right.
“Why do you treat your servants like that?” Astoria’s voice was strangled. She put her hand to her neck as though her collar of diamonds was choking her, and closed her eyes for a moment.
“What?” Draco turned his head to the side. “You think that I live to abuse and degrade house-elves?” He paused, but Astoria said nothing, so he continued. “Or you still can’t believe that I care about the cause I’ve come out of the Manor and done publicity for? How long is it going to be until you admit to yourself that I’m telling the truth, Astoria, and that I’m really allied with Potter?”
Astoria shuddered and opened her eyes. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “You’re trying to make yourself look good to Scorpius, so that he’ll consent to become your heir again and do what you want.”
Draco snorted so hard that he could feel his hair ruffle around his cheeks. “Scorpius has never cared particularly about house-elves. Why would this be the way to win his good opinion?”
“Because you’re allying with the father of his best friend and pretending to care about Muggleborns by working with one,” Astoria said, but her lips twitched and she took a step backwards as she spoke.
Draco shook his head. “Some things aren’t about Scorpius, Astoria. You can go on thinking that he’s the center of my life if you want to. But that’s not the same as it being reality. And eventually, that’ll trip you up.”
Astoria reached out and caressed the wall of the Manor for a moment, as though reminding herself about the marble and the smoothness. Her eyes never left Draco. She stood as if expecting an attack, Draco realized, and blinked. He hadn’t ever threatened his ex-wife that way. She was the one who had gone on the attack, if anything, releasing that information about him to the papers and threatening him before she did.
Maybe that was it. Maybe she had lived in opposition to him so long that she couldn’t conceive he wouldn’t want to fight her if she offered him the chance to.
“You certainly cared enough about him being your heir, a short while ago, to threaten to sire another child,” Astoria whispered.
“And now I know that that probably won’t work,” Draco said. “If I ever want another child, I need to fight for it. And you ought to be worried about Scorpius’s heirs, too. If he can’t marry whom he likes, if he can’t marry anyone but a Muggleborn, then what will happen to him? Whether or not he knows it, I’m struggling to give him a free choice as much as anyone else who’s caught up in this.”
Astoria’s mouth was unattractive when she sneered. Draco tried to remember back to the time when he’d approved of that, because expressions of contempt and disdain were among the few emotions it was all right to express openly, if you were a Malfoy. It was hard to remember the time when he had thought that with any conviction.
“You don’t believe that,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t have scolded him as viciously as you did yesterday at that meeting.”
Draco stared, then laughed. “That’s what this is about?” he asked, and felt confident enough to fold his arms and cross his legs and lounge back against the wall as he grinned at her, despite the fact that his hair was mashed flat from sleeping on the table and he probably didn’t smell too good, either. “Scorpius is a big boy, Astoria. You don’t have to fight every single battle for him. Did he ask you to?”
A flush like sunrise deepened along Astoria’s throat, and she shook her head. “This isn’t over,” she said, retreating a step towards the fireplace that she must have come through.
“This is ridiculous,” Draco countered, leaning forwards. Scorpius had the moods and the instability of a teenager, but Astoria had never been like that. She was the one who had demanded a divorce, and in retrospect, she had been right. Draco expected her to have some sense. “Think about it, Astoria. You may not want to believe that I’m sincere, but until the moment when I prove myself otherwise, why not just sit back and wait for me to fall? If you’re right and I can’t believe what I say I do, then I’ll inevitably betray myself. You know I’m not as subtle as a Malfoy should be.”
Astoria went on staring. Draco met her eyes with no trouble. Astoria finally made a choked noise under her breath and flung up her hand as though she would throw a handful of dust at him, but it came down empty, the sharp, shapely fingernails curling into her palm.
“Fine,” she whispered. “What you say makes sense. Though it gives me no pleasure, I’ll sit back and wait for you to fall.”
And she whirled and left the corridor in a swirl of skirts. Draco remained where he was. A moment later, he heard the whoosh of the Floo swallowing her as she left-hopefully to head home and think about how stupidly she’d behaved.
Draco allowed himself a moment to smile and revel in what he’d accomplished: making his son and Astoria listen to him. That hadn’t happened in a long time, and although he doubted Scorpius had felt hurt enough to cry to his mother and enlist her on his behalf, it still meant that she thought Draco’s words to their son were cutting and triumphant.
Then he went to fix the oversight in the wards that had let Astoria in. As interesting as that confrontation had been, it wasn’t something he wanted to happen again.
*
“Master Teddy is being home, Master Teddy is being home…”
Harry blinked his eyes open. It took him a moment to focus on Kreacher, who was bustling around his bedroom picking up the clothes that Harry had dropped on the floor yesterday. Ordinarily, Harry would have hung them up, but he had been too tired after all the questions the reporters asked him.
Then he heard what Kreacher was saying, and he felt as though his smile might split dry lips. He sat up and reached hastily for his dressing gown. “That’s what you’re saying, Kreacher?” he asked. “Teddy came home during the night?”
“Master Teddy is being home,” Kreacher pointed out, stopping and speaking the words slowly to Harry, and then he turned and hurried out of the room. Harry surged up to follow him, then grabbed the bed and bent his head and swore.
His knee had gone stiff again during the night, and the moments of twinging, tingling pain that Harry was getting now represented something that would get monumentally worse in a few hours, he knew. He’d probably overused it yesterday while Draco’s potion was still working and he’d felt so good.
He hesitated, then decided that he’d used it enough in the past few days that the muscles wouldn’t atrophy with some careful use of Levitation and Lightening Charms now. A flick of his wand later, some incantations, and he floated out of the room, his leg surrounded and cradled by a cushion of air. He was glad that Hermione had made him work hard enough at directed Mobilicorpus that he could use it himself and not depend on someone else to pick the way his body went.
Harry floated into the kitchen, and sure enough, Teddy was seated at the table, hungrily eating an enormous pile of biscuits that Kreacher must have set in front of him. He jumped when he saw Harry, then laughed and grabbed him around the shoulders, spinning him in midair. Harry hugged his godson and pounded his back.
“Finally got tired of Brazil?” he said, when he had enough breath to talk.
Teddy pushed Harry gently into the chair across from him and then plopped down and leaned forwards. “Yeah.” He had a strip of shaggy brown beard on his chin. It was already dripping with bits of chocolate and crumbs. Harry grinned and nodded at it; Teddy wiped the crumbs away with an awkward motion but didn’t cast a Depilation Charm, the way Harry had assumed he would. “And of course I wanted to see you. Uncle Ron was writing to me more often than you were.” He cocked his head gently at Harry and raised his eyebrows.
Harry shrugged. “Sorry. I got caught up in what we were doing.” He glanced at the enormous pile of letters on the kitchen counter, which included ones from Neville and Susan and several reporters from papers outside of Britain asking for an interview. “And I was taking a potion that allowed me to walk almost without pain.”
Teddy’s mouth gaped open, revealing half-chewed food. Harry waved his hand, and Teddy shut it and chewed some more before he said, gulping the words out in the middle of a swallow, “Uncle Harry. Really? You-you can walk?” He looked entranced, and Harry felt a scrape of guilt that he hadn’t taken more time to write to Teddy.
“Well,” he said. “Carefully. But yeah, I’ve done more walking in the past few days and yesterday at Hogwarts than I’ve done in a long time. I only used the spells this morning because I think the potion is starting to wear off.”
Teddy leaped to his feet and waved one fist in the air, giving a whoop that he cut off quickly. That was because, as Harry well knew, it was turning into a howl. He smiled at Teddy and bit his tongue on the advice to explain things to Victoire right now. He didn’t think Teddy would welcome that, and since it was such a big subject change from what they were talking about, Teddy might think he had brought it up just to distract Teddy from talking about his pain.
“You’re wonderful, Uncle Harry,” Teddy said, with the earnestness that Harry remembered from when Teddy was eight and Harry had bought him his first broom.
“I’m not the one who brewed the potion,” Harry pointed out in some amusement.
“But you’re still wonderful, for taking it and taking the risk,” Teddy said. His eyes glowed as he looked at Harry, and Harry almost reared back. That was the way Hugo used to look at him…before. He had never realized that Teddy felt such clear hero-worship. At least he could give some thanks that it was more subtle than Hugo’s. “Do you know how many people would have just given up by now and decided that nothing would ever make them better? Lots, that’s who. I’m so happy, Uncle Harry.” He reached across the table and caught Harry’s hand tight.
Harry squeezed it, then let him go. “Draco Malfoy was the one who actually brewed the potion, so you ought to be thanking him instead.”
“I will, I will.” Teddy put his hands flat on the table and shoved himself back from it again, because apparently he was too excited to sit still. “Do you think he’d like a new broom? Or, I know, a cloak made from the skins of Lethifolds?”
Harry laughed outright. “I think-”
Then he had it. His efforts to reconcile Draco and Scorpius hadn’t exactly had brilliant results so far, but Teddy was closer in age to Scorpius and his cousin, besides. Although they weren’t well-acquainted, since Teddy had been in Hogwarts when Al and Scorpius became friends, they certainly knew each other.
That was something Harry could do, and that Draco might actually like.
“Can you speak to your cousin Scorpius?” he asked. “Please? He really despises his father, to the point where he’s fighting against the way that we’re trying to promote good treatment of magical creatures, because he thinks that we’re all secretly duped by his father and Draco will destroy our movement in the future or something.”
“Well, Scorpius was always a little stupid,” Teddy said casually. “Lighting yourself on fire because you were trying to turn yourself into a dragon-catch me ever doing that!”
Harry had to snort as he remembered the burned curtains that had resulted from that particular adventure, but he said, “He’ll never listen to you if you go after him with that attitude. Try, will you? Something a little gentler?”
Teddy rolled his eyes. “Oh, all right. But it’ll depend on what Al thinks about the issue, too, of course. What does he think?”
Harry winced as he remembered that he hadn’t really spoken to any of his children since he’d talked to Al through the fire. Jamie was out of the country, of course, and he had assumed Lily had a fight on her hands the way she always had, being Harry Potter’s daughter while he did something controversial and famous. His Lils could take care of herself.
But Al-
“I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly. I think he stands with his friend, and that would make sense. They only have a few months left at Hogwarts, and I know that Al and Scorpius plan to go into business together. But I wish that he’d told me one way or the other what he really thought.”
Teddy gave him a triumphant grin. “Then I might have two cousins to trounce. I’m looking forward to that.”
Harry sighed. “And maybe, in the middle of cousin-trouncing and trying to make them see sense, you might have the time to explain to Victoire why you won’t marry her?”
“Wow, look at the time,” Teddy said loudly, his eyes fixed on the wall over Harry’s head. “If I’m going to catch Scorpius and Al in Hogsmeade, if this is even a Hogsmeade weekend, I should hurry.”
And he hugged Harry once and banged out of the house like a whirlwind.
Harry shook his head and turned back to the pile of post in front of him. There was only so much he could do for his children and nieces and nephews and godson, really, he thought. He would push what he could, and if he hadn’t invented a solution to the problems between Draco and Scorpius, then at least he had given Scorpius a distraction from them.
He heard the Floo go off in the next room, and eased his way to his feet, smiling. He knew who that would be. Even the flames seemed to burst out of the fireplace with more enthusiasm when Draco called.
And why do you look forward to seeing him so much?
Harry knew the answer to that question. But, for now, neither question nor answer could help him; Draco would only panic if he knew what Harry thought. They had more important things to do.
But later…
It gave Harry even more warmth than usual as he went to see what Draco wanted.
Chapter Eighteen.
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