Chapter Twenty-Three of 'The Descent of Magic'- Homework
Chapter Twenty-Two.
Title: The Descent of Magic (23/?)
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 Twenty-Three-Homework
Draco bent over the flask of the potion and added the last of the crumbled sunflower seeds to it. An innocuous ingredient most of the time, but he had found it worked best when it came to the potions that he was creating for Potter. Perhaps it was because the sunflowers were like Potter, tall and springing and so radiant that it was hard to ignore them when you saw them in the garden-
Draco’s hand flexed on the mortar and pestle that he’d used to crush the seeds, and he reminded himself that those were a dangerous kind of thought. He had to keep his mind focused on the potion in front of him, or he ultimately wouldn’t create anything usable.
When his mind seemed limpid again, he stirred the potion with a single stab of the rod and then stepped back. The potion bubbled and burbled and settled into a calm dark red state, with a swirl of purple near the bottom. Draco watched the swirl narrowly, and it didn’t move. He nodded. He didn’t think he had yet achieved a brew that would last longer than the potion he’d given Potter before, but he thought he was close.
“What are you doing here?”
Draco tensed to keep himself from jumping. Then he turned and looked his son in the eye.
“Brewing,” he said. “And someone with any modicum of courtesy ought to know not to interrupt a brewer who’s in the middle of a potion.”
Scorpius sneered at him and took a step further into the room. His head was quick and angled like a stork’s, snapping around, as though that would let him learn something that just looking in through the lab door hadn’t.
Draco watched him silently. Scorpius wore his Gryffindor house tie and a shade of red in his hair so vibrantly crimson that Draco imagined it probably distracted some of his professors.
But Draco had spent enough time talking about that, and he knew Scorpius wouldn’t listen to him now. Perhaps he should never have objected in the first place. Then Scorpius might have been content to let things die, instead of becoming more and more determined to annoy his father.
I wish I had done many things differently.
Scorpius examined every flask, every vial, every cauldron that Draco had set out in the potions lab at Potter’s house-although Potter didn’t brew himself, he had space for people who did-and then turned around and shook his head at Draco again. “What do you think you’re going to accomplish in here?” he asked. “I mean, really?”
“In this case, easing the pain in Potter’s knee for longer than I did last time,” Draco said, surprised and impressed with himself that his voice was steady. “Last time, I managed five days. This time, I want a week.”
Scorpius took a sudden sideways step, coming near him. He was breathing fast. Draco adjusted his own breathing to slow, deliberately deep inhales and exhales in consequence, as if he was trying to avoid hyperventilating.
And perhaps I am.
“No,” Scorpius whispered. “That can’t be what you want. Not really.”
“Why not?” Draco asked. “I know that I told you I would disinherit you and get another child. But it might be years before I can do that. And I’ve accepted that now. I’ve also accepted that I don’t really want the bother of marrying someone else or arranging for a contractual marriage simply to breed, and then raising another child.” I didn’t do it so well the first time, burned on his tongue, but he managed to change it to, “I don’t know that the second one wouldn’t hate me, too.”
Scorpius stared at him through the red hair, and looked like a Weasley. Well, he had Weasley blood, Draco reminded himself. The pure-blood families were so intertwined that it was no surprise Scorpius might look like one of them, or perhaps even Granger’s children, although the only one Draco had met was Potter’s sullen nephew.
“You’ve changed your mind,” Scorpius said, as though repeating the words might alter their substance in some way.
Draco nodded.
Scorpius took a deep breath. “Then what are you here for?” he said, hard enough that the flask leaped on the table and Draco leaped with it. “What can you possibly want? You’re not going to get someone else to torment out of this! Go home.”
Draco shook his head. “I want to help Potter,” he said. “He’s a good political ally to have, and the puzzle of his knee and how to heal it is interesting to me.” If it was more than that, well, his son was the last person he would confess it to, when he was still trying to figure it out for himself. And Scorpius would only do something twisted with the knowledge if Draco gave it to him, anyway. Draco would have to sound convincing to himself before he hoped to convince anyone else.
Even then, shouldn’t you tell Potter first?
“I hate you,” Scorpius whispered suddenly, his eyes brimming and his fists drumming on his legs, making Draco stare at him. “Why couldn’t you-you care so much about him and about your bloody family legacy, why couldn’t you care that much about-”
He turned and ran, but Draco could read what he would have said as easily as if it were written on the air in letters of fire.
Why couldn’t you care that much about me?
And that left Draco standing there feeling as though he had just survived an earthquake, and only long dedication to the quality of his potions, and his dreams of a week without pain for Potter, made him turn slowly back to the flask.
*
“How did you deal with me without smashing my head in?” Teddy asked as he came into Harry’s bedroom. “For that matter, how did you deal with Jamie and Al up to this point? Teenage boys are ridiculous.”
Harry laughed at him. He had a stomach full of the hot food that Kreacher thought was necessary to cook for an “invalid,” and he had firecalled Jamie that morning about his work with dragons in Romania, and he had Draco in the house. He could bear even more tales of Al’s stupidity.
“You learn,” he said, and waved his wand to pull a chair out for Teddy. “You’ll see it yourself, if you have sons someday.”
Teddy froze in the act of sitting down. Then he coughed loudly and turned his head away. “Of course I will,” he said. “I might. I mean, if I find the right girl to marry, and she doesn’t care about-that werewolf thing.”
“You might have one who wouldn’t care already,” Harry pointed, because he felt cheerful enough to tackle even this. “But you can’t know if you don’t tell her and give her a fair chance to react.”
“I care too much about Victoire to screw things with her up like that,” Teddy said, and then leaped over the obstacle that was Harry’s opening mouth and charged on. “Anyway, I talked to Al and Scorpius again. I think Al’s well out of it. He’s said that he’s going to support his friend and his family, and concentrate on the shop that he’s opening. He said that he was glad you were doing good things for house-elves.”
Harry nodded. That sounded like the sensible son he had raised. Or sometimes thought he had raised; Ginny and Hermione and Ron and Molly and even Scorpius had helped, too.
“But Scorpius…” Teddy ran his hands through his hair, which promptly changed to bright red curls that he could tug on more easily. “I think he’s just more self-centered than I’d reckoned on. He won’t listen. He’s convinced that everything his father does is focused on him, and that means he can freely ignore the good you expect to do for house-elves. Because what his father wants is to inconvenience and embarrass Scorpius.”
“Would it do any good for me to talk to him?” Harry offered quietly. “Because I really do think that Draco came into this intending to have another child, but he knows too much about the problems with that idea now to think that it’s a matter of just sitting down and brewing one.”
Teddy shook his head. “I did say that, but Scorpius said that you’d been duped, and I’d been duped, and everyone but him and Al had been duped. That Mr. Malfoy is some kind of evil mastermind whom everyone trusts.”
“Not everyone,” Harry muttered, thinking of the way Hermione still watched Draco sometimes. “But enough.” He took a deep breath. “There’s someone else I’d like you to talk to. Or at least take an owl to. I would firecall him, but I think he would refuse to do anything but yell at me.”
Teddy beamed. “Sure! Who?”
“Hugo.” Harry held Teddy’s astonished gaze. “I think it’s time we had this out.”
*
Draco sat down at the kitchen table, and blinked when Potter nodded at him and went on writing the letter in front of him as if he had better things to do than talk to Draco. Draco reached for the butter and the honey; Kreacher had made scones, tempting enough to make Draco glad he had decided to stay. If Potter wanted silence at the breakfast table, well, Draco knew how to take a hint.
Potter glanced up once and smiled at him, but otherwise continued writing until he pushed the letter away with a loud sigh. Draco noticed, then, that the plate in front of Potter that Kreacher had put there was still full, and that the level of pumpkin juice in his glass hadn’t changed a bit. Draco started to open his mouth.
Kreacher popped up in front of Potter and stared him down. Potter looked at him with steady eyes for a minute, then lowered them.
Kreacher vanished, point made. Potter started eating, his fingers quick on the butter and honey knives as if he thought that taking huge amounts at once would make up for what he had failed to eat so far.
Draco reminded himself to remember in the future that house-elves were cleverer and prone to notice more than one thought they did, and returned to his own breakfast. When Potter had got down one scone and made a start on the next one, Draco cleared his throat politely. “Whom were you writing to?”
Potter flushed. “I know it should be Highfeather, or one of the Muggleborn families that’s still deciding what to do about this information,” he muttered. “Some of them don’t like it at all, you know. Because they don’t have problems with their fertility, they see it as a pure-blood problem, and they’re determined to ignore it.”
“Until their children want to marry someone who’s pure-blood,” Draco said, rolling his eyes. He knew from experience that some people desired grandchildren more than they had ever wanted children.
Potter grinned at him. “Exactly. And Hermione is working her arse off to show them that, but they don’t always listen, even to her. I know I should write them more letters than I do.” He swallowed juice and dried it with the bit of scone that followed.
Draco shuddered, but horrible manners couldn’t distract him from Potter’s words. “Should does not mean the same thing as the indicative,” he murmured. “You should have been writing letters to them-perhaps-or making a more productive use of your time, but you were not. Whom were you writing to?”
Potter ducked his head, peering at Draco from under his fringe. “I should have known that I couldn’t put you off like that,” he mumbled.
Draco delicately dipped his scone in the melted butter that had accumulated on his plate and then lifted it to his mouth, taking a bite of the soft, dripping bread, showing Potter how it was done without letting him off the hook.
“I’m writing to Hugo,” Potter said, and his lips firmed. “I think this has gone on long enough, the way he despises me. And since I’m walking now, I stand a better chance of healing the quarrel than I did before. And he could interfere in the real business of getting rights for magical creatures and children for pure-bloods. I would prefer that he not take it into his head to do anything serious.”
Draco snorted and laid his scone back on the plate. “He makes my son look like a marvel of compliance. What makes you think that you can get him to agree this time?”
“Teddy’s agreed to deliver the owl,” Potter said, and leaned back on his chair, swinging his legs. A moment later, he paled, winced, and drew the bad one back up on the stool that stood permanently under the table now. Draco raised his eyebrows. He would have liked Potter to take breakfast in bed, actually, but Potter had rebelled against that after yesterday, as if he assumed it was decadent. “I think that was part of the problem before. I tried to talk to him, in person or through the Floo. He could always yell and interrupt me in person, and I felt too guilty to talk for long. But in an owl, I’ll have the ability to talk and he can’t interrupt. And I think that he’ll be intrigued enough to contact me, at least. If he isn’t, well, I haven’t actually lost anything.”
Draco resisted the temptation to praise Potter’s new head for strategy, holding the example of the recently re-injured knee in mind, and said, “Why did you feel guilty? You hardly arranged to have yourself kidnapped and tortured, unless you have the most devious criminal mind the wizarding world has ever seen, in which case I salute you.”
Potter had one of those weird expressions on his face that said he couldn’t decide whether to snort or laugh. He shook his head as a compromise, then murmured, “I wanted to be his hero. I never wanted to let anyone down again, but especially not any of the children. I didn’t know Hugo idolized me that way. And you’re right, I couldn’t have avoided being injured, but I should have noticed that he idolized me that way before all of this happened, and sat down to talk with him about it.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “You aren’t responsible for that, either.”
“I idolized Dumbledore,” Potter replied quietly. “And Sirius. I’ve lived through that kind of disappointment that comes with realizing you’ve placed expectations on an adult and they’ve fallen through every one of them. I should have recognized the disease when I saw it growing in Hugo.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Draco said, and interrupted when Potter opened his mouth to continue, because he was growing bored of this argument. “I received an owl from Highfeather this morning, inquiring after your health. Shall we invite her to visit?”
Potter blinked and looked around the kitchen. “My house can’t compare with hers. Do you think that’s a good idea?”
Draco smiled. “You’ve gifted her with a medal. From now on, she’ll be your ally, unless you do something that offends her mortally, and she’ll also be a bit pleased that you aren’t up to her standards-yet. That will give her the ability to improve you, and her sort does so love to improve things.”
“I don’t think you ever wanted to.”
Draco stiffened. Then he smoothed his fingers out flat on the table and managed to answer honestly. “No. I wanted your attention because it might improve my standing, but I never wanted to-change things. Not in the same way. What did it matter to me how you lived, what kind of manners you had, whether you ate off wood or china?”
Potter leaned back in his chair and watched him thoughtfully. “And now, Draco? Is it all desire to not hold the cause back, that you’re brewing this potion and helping me? I’m grateful,” he added, and quietness of his voice quelled Draco’s fears that Potter was adding that simply to escape Draco’s disapproval. “But I’d like to know.”
Draco curled his fingers into his palms. This was harder than facing Scorpius, than facing the fact that he might have cared so little about Scorpius that he was justified in running away from Draco and turning his back on his father. But he didn’t know why, and as moments passed, his breath and his blood heated until he thought he was going to faint.
“Draco?” Potter’s voice was soft, friendly. He reached out, and his light touch fell on the back of Draco’s hand, his fingers stroking as though he thought Draco would fly apart without the reassurance of that touch.
Draco broke.
He bolted to his feet and out of the room, and knew even as he ran that it was cowardly. Not the kind of cowardice that Potter and his kind had once accused all Slytherins of having, which was really just the lack of the pretend courage that the Gryffindors indulged in all the time. But the kind that went deep, searing, and had been the thing he most feared Astoria would see in him and turn away from.
As she had. As his son had, seen one way.
Now, his fear was that Potter would turn.
But he shut the door of his lab and busied himself with the potion nevertheless. Because his heart was pounding and his face was flushed, and if he met Potter right now, his body and not his words would tell the truth for him, and that was not something Draco wanted to happen.
And because he knew that Potter, unlike Astoria, would wait for him to be able to tell the truth on his own.
Chapter Twenty-Four.
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