Chapter Nine of 'Starfall'- A Series of Complications
Chapter Eight.
Title: Starfall (9/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, manipulation
Summary: When the truth about a seemingly minor Dark hex Harry has suffered leads to the dissolution of his marriage with Ginny, Harry spins into a downward spiral. His private consolation is creating a fantasy life for himself in his journal as Ethan Starfall, a normal wizard with a big family. When he receives a random owl Draco Malfoy has cast into the void as a plea for help with his son Scorpius, Harry replies-as Ethan. There’s no reason, he thinks, for an epistolary friendship with Draco to go further. But Draco might have different ideas about that.
Author’s Note: This is likely to be a long story, updated fairly regularly. It is, however, very angsty.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nine-A Series of Complications
“Auror Weasley asked me to talk to you because he thought that perhaps you had adopted a deliberately self-destructive pattern.”
Harry stared at Kingsley across the desk, and then ruined all the careful formality he knew Kingsley was trying to bring to this conversation by slumping forwards with his head in his hands, and snorting. “Ron thinks that I’m trying to kill myself or something?”
Kingsley shifted in his chair and cleared his throat with a delicacy that Harry usually appreciated, but not now. “Auror Weasley is concerned that the number of injuries to your leg in the last few months, combined with the news that your former wife is-er-awaiting the birth of a child-”
“She’s pregnant, Kingsley, you can say it,” said Harry, and grinned a little as he watched Kingsley’s face color up. Then he snorted again. “And I’m not trying to deliberately hurt myself. I’ve had a run of bad luck, like so many Aurors do now and again.”
“But so many injuries to the same area.” Kingsley appeared relieved that he wasn’t going to have to talk about Harry and Ginny’s former marriage. “Auror Weasley thought that perhaps you were not allowing the first injury time to heal properly.”
Harry shrugged. “I did everything the Healers told me to. Perhaps they overestimated how healed I was.”
“Very likely.” Kingsley nodded, then paused. Harry braced himself. “Regardless, you’re still going to be behind a desk for the next month.”
“A month?” Harry stood up and pointedly flexed his legs. “The Healers said that a week of bed rest at the most would make me well, and I’ve had a fortnight!”
“Being behind a desk isn’t bed rest,” said Kingsley, and his faced filled with unholy glee. “Particularly as you’re going to be dealing with applications for our next class of trainees.”
“Kingsley,” said Harry, and tried his best to assume a pathetic appearance, which would have been easy if he wasn’t feeling really healthy after all the enforced relaxation and potions the Healers had piled on him. “You want to take someone you think is fragile and put them through that?”
“Don’t worry,” said Kingsley sweetly. “If you can’t stand up under the rigors of it, I can always send you back to hospital.”
*
“Draco, can I talk to you?”
Draco glanced up from the diary he was reading, one of his Great-aunt Honoria’s. She had described, in some detail, how her parents had raised her much-younger brother; she had already been almost twenty when he was born, and of an age to enjoy the raising and note details without being blinded by resentment or immaturity. Draco thought that he might find some valuable suggestions for training Scorpius there.
Now Blaise hovered in the doorway of his private study, face grave. Draco stood quickly. “What is it? Has something happened to Scorpius?”
“No. He just said something today that I wanted to talk to you about.” Blaise walked into the room and closed the door behind him, but didn’t say anything after that. He only stood there, apparently listening to the quiet flickering of the fire, until Draco brought his hand down in a slashing motion.
“You’re still talking like it’s an illness.”
“You don’t have to worry about him,” Blaise said dryly. “He enjoyed the day, and right now he’s eating cake and happily playing with the house-elves’ illusions and this little charmed lion that we bought today.” He hesitated. “He said that he doesn’t want to be a Malfoy, Draco.”
Draco sagged into his chair hard enough to make Blaise yell for a house-elf. Izzy appeared, squeaking and concerned.
“It is not a heart attack,” Draco said, holding up one palm to prevent her from overreacting. His father had had a heart attack immediately after the war, stress exacerbating a heart defect they hadn’t known was there, but Draco thought his friends and servants too likely to jump to the wrong conclusions here. He looked up at Blaise. “What was the context for this…”
He stopped. It was so horrible that he didn’t even have a word for it.
Luckily, Blaise understood what he was trying to say, and supplied an answer for it. “It was when we were coming back through Muggle London and he stopped and watched one of those flying devices they have. Aeroplanes?” Blaise spoke the word with relish, and Draco grimaced and nodded. He had seen one once. That was enough. “He said that Muggles had a lot more fun than wizards, and sometimes he didn’t want to be a wizard. I reminded him that we had magic and they didn’t. He said, ‘That’s right.’ Then he was quiet for a while, and then he said, ‘I don’t want to be a Malfoy.’”
“Did he say why?”
“I assumed,” said Blaise, “by the power of my fabulous and brilliant intellect, that it was connected to what he’d said already. You do rather deprive the child of fun, Draco. You can’t even take him to have fun yourself. It’s always me or Pansy who has to do it.”
Draco stood straight up. “If you resent me asking you to take my son somewhere, just say the word, and you’ll never have to do it again.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Blaise said, making Draco flinch a little again. Draco had never known someone who swore so casually. “I don’t mind taking him anywhere. He’s a good little kid, and I like spending time with him.”
Draco frowned some more and opened his mouth to ask what the problem was, then, but he didn’t get the chance. Blaise was charging on and spinning out sparks of that intellect he liked to talk about. “What I don’t like is that you take every sign of the way he talks as though that means he’ll hate everything about you by the time he’s seven.”
“What? I don’t-”
“You think he has to be a little adult now, and you’re terrified that he might grow up and reject his heritage.” Blaise eyed him measuringly. “I told you what he said not because I really believe that, you know. That’s because certain people in the world are smarter.”
Draco held onto his temper with a vengeance. “Then why did you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want him to innocently repeat it later and have you yell at him.” Blaise slid his hands into his pockets, and asked, “Can I get a drink around here?” Izzy promptly appeared with a glass of champagne, which Blaise liked for some reason, on a tray. “And I wanted you to know something about what he really thinks and feels. He’s developing that mask you think he should, all right, but you’re the one who can’t see behind it.”
Draco turned his head away. “Well, that’s a gentle way of telling me that I’m doing a horrible job raising my son, I suppose.”
“And that’s another reason that I don’t often say this to you, because you take it all so personally,” said Blaise. He reached out and picked up the diary Draco had been reading. “All you do is sit in your house all day and brood on what Scorpius is going to become, and how you’re going to train him, and the lessons you’ll give him. You’re always thinking about when he’s older.”
“So did my father.”
“And his choices always worked out so well.”
Draco flinched again, but Blaise had known him too long and well to be put off by that. He just stood there, looking Draco in the face, and then continued in a quiet, penetrating voice Draco hadn’t heard in a long time.
“Listen to me, Draco. You need to spend some time doing something other than just sitting around the house. Come out with me more often. Go out with Pansy for longer than an hour or so. Accept one of Theodore’s invitations. He’s told me that he’s asked you to Switzerland and India and Thailand, and each time, you spurn those invitations as though he’d asked you to dredge through that muck he finds so fascinating. You know he’d just want you to lounge around in the houses he stays in and have some fun with him in the evenings, when he’s cleaned up.”
Draco shook his head, feeling his mouth form a thin line. “I don’t despise Theodore for working with-the dirtier sorts of potions ingredients. He makes good money enough. It’s the other part of his life I can’t stand.”
Blaise stared at him in what seemed like genuine confusion. Draco sneered and started to make a remark about fabulous intellects, but then Blaise said, “Ah. Because he has love affairs and actual passion in his life, I suppose.”
“I have passion!”
“For tradition. I hate to break this to you, Draco,” Blaise said, and leaned forwards to whisper ostentatiously, “but traditions can’t love you back.”
Draco stood there, boiling with the passion that Blaise had told him he didn’t have, and wanted to snap, badly. Blaise thought that he was too calm, that he was too devoted to tradition? Well, Draco would start a tradition right now of punching smug friends who thought they could talk to him that way in the face, and see what Blaise did about that.
“There’s no reason for you to despise Theodore,” said Blaise, looking him in the eye now the way he only did when he wanted to be serious. “He’s tried to be your friend. He’s said that you can bring Scorpius with you. He’s offered to take care of Scorpius himself. He’s offered to bring you into his business and let you handle the negotiations, because it would give you something to do and he’s as concerned about you huddling alone in this house as I am. You keep refusing. The only reason for you to do that and then languish to Pansy and me about how you never see him is because he isn’t living the sort of emotionless life that you think proper for a pure-blood.”
“I love my son. I’m not emotionless.”
“But you’re trying to be,” said Blaise. “Another nugget of advice, Draco. My mother tried to show me traditions that were beautiful and pleasant, so I’d want to follow them. Dropping a load of dung on your son and calling it tradition isn’t the way to make him love it.”
Draco curled his lip. “Thank you for taking Scorpius to Muggle London today,” he said, and made sure that every word was etched in the sort of clear vowels that Blaise liked to tease him about not having. “I’m sure he had a good time. Now, get out of my house.” He laid his hand on his wand just in case Blaise didn’t get it.
“You’re making so many mistakes that you just don’t see,” said Blaise, not moving, which was most unlike him. Draco knew Blaise was a lot of things, not all of them things one could discuss in public, but he was no hero and no Gryffindor. “You don’t have to give up your life solely to the raising of Scorpius. You’ll just end up resenting the poor kid because you can’t have fun and he won’t follow the pure-blood ways that you want him to, anyway. You might as well let him have some fun, and have some fun yourself.”
“Get out,” Draco whispered again. His hand had closed on his wand to the point where he was vaguely surprised he hadn’t snapped it. “When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.”
“I’ll see you next week when we have that day you’re supposed to actually visit me and Pansy for a while,” said Blaise, and then turned and walked out of the study.
Draco sat down, shaking. Tremors had invaded his body, and he didn’t really know if it was all because he had nearly drawn his wand on Blaise, or because of the news Blaise had brought him. Draco had known he wasn’t doing everything perfectly, but he’d thought he was getting better lately, partially because of Ethan’s advice. Why had Scorpius decided that he would rather not be a Malfoy now, of all times?
He should listen to Blaise, he thought. Blaise was the one who knew more of what it was like to be a pure-blood than Ethan did, who had admitted right up-front that he was an outsider.
But Draco’s head was whirling, and the only solid thing he had to cling to was that Ethan had given him good advice once before.
He dug around for parchment and ink an embarrassingly long time before he remembered that he could command a house-elf to bring them to him. Then he had to sit there some more embarrassing pauses of time before he could come up with the words that would reveal his need to Ethan but not bare too much of his heart.
He was not satisfied with the letter that he sent on its way at last, but at least it would make Ethan understand that the need was urgent.
*
Dear Ethan,
My best friend told me today that my son had said he didn’t want to be a Malfoy. Oh, not to me, but to my friend as they walked through Muggle London, where my friend took Scorpius to see the sights.
I don’t know what to do. My friend thinks that trying to teach Scorpius to love these traditions is going to drive him away from them, but I can’t simply give up and allow Scorpius to do whatever he wants. That’s not a good idea for raising any child, even one who isn’t the heir to a proud family.
Please advise me.
Malfoy hadn’t signed the note this time, but perhaps he thought there was no need. Harry sighed, shifted his weight, and laid the letter on one side of the desk, next to the staggered pile of Auror trainee applications. There were so many that he’d had to bring them home with him, and he still hadn’t reached the end of half the essays.
Malfoy’s letter was almost refreshing, in contrast.
It still took Harry a few minutes to shrug off the Auror mantle and put on the one of Ethan Starfall, untroubled wizard, but when he did, words that were as honest as he could make them spilled onto the page.
Dear Draco,
Yes, that does sound like a bad situation. First, I have to ask: is the thought of Scorpius growing up without becoming a perfect Malfoy such a bad thing?
I take it that you know by now I’m no friend to pure-blood traditions. I don’t despise them, but I do think that people should be free to follow their inclinations, and not scorned all their lives because they chose not to follow one particular one. I don’t know exactly what you’re teaching your son, but if he doesn’t like it and he’s resisting it, then why not try teaching him something else for a while?
I’m saying this for Scorpius’s sake, mostly, but also for yours. You sound so desperately unhappy. Do you really want to be this stern and unbending representation of tradition, yourself? Do you lie awake at night and judge yourself for all the ways you’ve failed? I used to do something similar, though not with pure-blood traditions, of course, and I realized that trying to live up to this impossible standard made me much more unhappy than just giving it up did.
Harry had to pause, and choke back a chuckle. He doubted that Malfoy would suspect he had lain awake at night worrying about not meeting the wizarding public’s impossible standards for a hero.
Let him never suspect it. Such contact and communication as Malfoy had built, after all, was with Ethan Starfall, not Harry Potter.
That was a bit sad, when one thought about it. But Harry was thinking about Malfoy and Scorpius right now, not his own life. He shook his head, and returned to the letter.
Maybe it’s time to think about what’s most important, about what Scorpius likes, about what you can’t bear to give up, and what you can. I don’t think that you should just shrug off all your heritage and devote yourself to pleasure, but what you’re doing right now isn’t working. Why not try something that will? Even if that something is just talking to Scorpius and seeing what happens.
Yours,
Ethan.
*
Draco laid Ethan’s letter against his leg and tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling.
Not even Ethan understood. He was alone.
Well, Ethan was a liar who was only paying court to Draco for his own mysterious reasons, no matter how much he seemed to understand. Draco had been silly for expecting sympathy from that quarter.
He set about systematically ripping up the letter, until small white flakes lay scattered all around his chair. He might have gone on doing the same thing until the flakes were indistinguishable from dust if the fireplace hadn’t flared unexpectedly to life in front of him.
Draco stared. Not even Blaise or Pansy could get through his wards without prior permission. The only people who could were-
“Mr. Zabini informed me that I would find you brooding and feeling sorry for yourself. I am pained to see that he was correct.”
Draco felt a flush of freezing fire travel all through his body, locking his hands into place on the arms of the chair and his legs into place in front of him. “You needn’t have contacted me if it bothered you so much, Mother.”
Narcissa only stared at him in cool silence for a few minutes, as though inviting him to retract the statement. Draco didn’t. They had started out with insults, and that meant she might as well take herself off. At least they had descended to insults in the course of their last argument about Scorpius.
“You need some occupation,” said Narcissa, “other than holding yourself up as a mirror to Scorpius and brooding every time a feature does not match.”
“I also don’t need another argument about Scorpius,” Draco retorted, and reached out to close the fireplace.
“Will you listen to me, Draco? I love my grandson, but I love you, too, as my child. And I am concerned about you.”
Draco hesitated, then stayed his hand. He grunted when Narcissa only paused, apparently awaiting permission to begin. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her do that before. She must be concerned about him, the way she had said.
“Thank you,” said Narcissa, and looked into his face. “I think you worry too much about doing things that no Malfoy has ever done. You told me once that no Malfoy has ever divorced before, or raised their son without the cooperation of another parent, or in a world in which their name was disgraced. That means that you have to be more vigilant what it comes to raising Scorpius, and protect him more.”
“I remember my own words perfectly well,” Draco retorted, but he was a little startled that she had remembered them so well. Most of the time, when he argued with his parents, he had the sense they weren’t listening to him. They were just coming up with their own arguments that they would speak when it was their turn.
Maybe they were listening more closely than he’d thought. Maybe he should listen to them more often.
Narcissa leaned forwards a little. “It’s time for you to know that there were Malfoys in the past who divorced, and there were times that our family name was disgraced. Lucius hushed up those tales because he thought you would have enough to cope with, when it came to living under the shadow of the accusations against him in the first war.”
“I never thought about that,” said Draco blankly. And he couldn’t remember anybody specifically giving him a hard time about that. Most of the children he knew well in Slytherin, or before he went to Hogwarts, had parents in the same situation. And once he got to Hogwarts, the people who disliked him were the ones who were going to hate him because of his name, not because of recent history. “I-you mean some of our ancestors did divorce?”
“Yes.” Narcissa gave him a look almost of pity. “Or at least separate, and live apart from each other, with other lovers. Did you think that the failure of your marriage was somehow unique, Draco, that you were lesser than everyone else who ever walked the corridors of the Manor? I cannot imagine why you would think that. Only the other day I was thinking that our labors to instill some pride in you had borne marvelous fruit.”
Draco bristled a little. “I think I deserve to have some pride about all that my ancestors have done.”
“Which includes reality,” said Narcissa. “Marriages that did not work out. Marriages that did not endure. Parents who died or abandoned their responsibilities. Wizards’ duels that did not go as they were supposed to. Foolish investments.” She paused again. “I know that you spend a lot of your time looking up histories and diaries in the library. You never ran across any of this?”
“I had no reason to look for it,” said Draco. “I was looking for information on our traditions and the child-rearing history of our family.”
Narcissa sighed and bowed her head a little, heavy hair tumbling down her neck. “I wish you could believe that you were a good father,” she murmured. “Since it seems to bother you so much.”
“I think I could be better, that’s all,” said Draco. He hesitated, and then decided to tell her. “And now, according to Blaise, Scorpius is saying that he wishes he wasn’t a Malfoy. I have to be better.”
“The things that five-year-old children say are not what they will always believe a year hence,” said Narcissa, and shook her head when Draco opened his mouth to argue. “In this particular case, I think I have more experience than you do.”
Draco fumed silently to himself. He had to admit that was probably true. But he didn’t know what his mother expected. Not to worry so much, to trust her, but still to pay even closer attention than he had to his family’s history, since he had somehow missed so much of it?
He had to deny that knowing he wasn’t the first Malfoy to have a divorce made a shiver of something like cool water run down his spine. But he did wish that his parents could have told him earlier.
“Our offer still stands,” said Narcissa, watching him with careful eyes. “To take Scorpius for a short time. Not to raise him permanently, Draco. I think you must have misunderstood us last time. I would never wish to take him away from his father for good. Only to give you a holiday, and a chance to think things over, and to remember what you care about beyond Scorpius. It is never a good idea to be so wrapped up in your child that you forget the rest of the world exists. The effect of such obsessive attention on the child can be to spoil them, or warp your priorities.”
Draco had a stiff little speech all ready. He was going to tell his mother that he did care about other things, and that he would never spoil Scorpius. He was going to say that he wasn’t warped. He was going to say that perhaps he could have used more of his parents’ attention, since they had kept even basic facts about his heritage concealed from him.
But then he reconsidered. A new idea had unfurled inside his head, and it would use up the anger brewing in his stomach, and keep that anger from spilling out on his friends, or parents, or son. They hadn’t done anything to merit that anger, not really (except perhaps his parents, in lying to him). Someone else had, and it was fitting Draco spend some more time pursuing and punishing him. It would be easier to do that if someone else was looking after Scorpius.
“You have decided to let us take him for a while,” said his mother, who must have been watching Draco more closely than he’d realized. “Although I don’t know why.”
“There’s something I’m interested in,” said Draco with perfect truth, smiling at her. “It would require research and maybe even leaving the Manor for extended periods of time. I can’t do that if Scorpius is here. Why don’t you take him for a time, and see if he minds you and if you really don’t spoil him?”
His mother was still. Then she said, “I know you have a reason behind this change of yours, but I do not trust it.”
Draco spoke a few more sweet, flattering words. He had made his decision. Everyone else kept telling him that he needed time away from Scorpius? He would have it. He would go and satisfy one question, track down one person who had betrayed him, and take out his anger on that person. Then, well, then maybe he could come back and be a good father and a good Malfoy at the same time, and let Scorpius have some distance from him, and include some outside, adult interests in his life again.
He had to do something to get rid of this anger first, though.
And tracking down a liar who called himself Ethan Starfall and who had failed Draco when he needed him the most sounded like a good way to do that.
Chapter Ten.
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