Chapter Forty-Nine of 'Starfall'- Loads Lifted
Chapter Forty-Eight.
Title: Starfall (49/50)
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.
Thanks again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty-Nine-Loads Lifted
“I don’t see why you had to give them another chance if they were only going to snipe at you when you did it,” Draco muttered. He was face-down on the bed currently, and he could hear Harry moving around behind him, putting on the casual robes he thought were important for a day at the office.
Draco rolled over and watched him. Harry snorted as he drew his head through the collar. Draco thought idly that these robes made him look more handsome than the Auror uniform.
“I wanted to give them another chance because we’ve been through a lot together,” Harry told him, and bent down to pick up his boots from the floor. He’d kept the dragonhide boots because they weren’t specifically part of the Auror uniform, and Draco could admit that they looked good on him. “If I just turned away from them because of Ginny, then that would give her another triumph.”
Draco grunted. He hated to admit it, but he could see the merit of that line of reasoning, little as he liked sharing Harry with Granger and Weasley. He sat up on the bed and murmured, “Scorpius is wanting to visit Teddy when you’re there.”
“Oh, we can do that this weekend,” Harry said, and gave Draco the smile that most endeared him to Draco. It looked like a kid excited by life. Draco had wondered, a little, whether he’d be able to smile like that after the problems with his friends and ex-wife and the media. “And I thought I might take them to see Hogwarts.”
Draco blinked. “Really?”
“Well, Neville is working there, now, and he loves to show off his greenhouses.” Draco rolled his eyes, and Harry laughed. “There are plenty of dangerous plants that Neville can control but which still ought to thrill a five-year-old and a nine-year-old.”
“And if someone were to want to stay outside and enjoy the sight of the castle…?”
“He could do that,” Harry pointed out tolerantly, and turned towards the door. “All right, I’m off. Say hello to Scorpius for me.”
“I will,” Draco promised. Usually, Harry ate breakfast with them, but today, he wanted to be off early. Some new client, he’d said, who’d requested absolute privacy.
Strange that all of them want the one gift they won’t give Harry. But Draco didn’t need Harry’s case to tell him how hypocritical the British wizarding public was.
When he left the room, he could hear the house-elves fussing around Scorpius’s room. Draco covered the distance between the two parts of the house at not-quite-a-run, but paused before he opened Scorpius’s door. He would only upset his son further by appearing as if he was flustered himself. He had learned that lesson from the way that Scorpius had reacted to Draco’s own rage after the divorce.
“No. No! I feel fine!”
Scorpius was screaming that at a few house-elves who were trying to get him to lie down on the bed. Izzy stood near the door wringing her hands, which made dread mount in Draco’s stomach. He couldn’t remember the last time something had upset Izzy.
“What is it?” he asked, keeping his voice even as he moved forwards. Scorpius hadn’t noticed him yet, too busy struggling with the house-elves. Draco wondered if that wouldn’t be the best state of affairs, at least until he knew what was going on.
“Oh, Master Draco!” Izzy turned and almost collapsed at his feet. Her face was covered with tears. “Young Master Scorpius is being sick!”
Draco nodded as if he was unaffected, although he was reeling internally. Scorpius had only been as flushed as he was now a few times in his life. “What symptoms does he have?”
“Young Master is feverish, and he woke up screaming from what he is saying is pain,” said Izzy, and pointed at Scorpius’s side. “But now he is saying he is fine.” She looked at Draco again, anxiously.
“I’ll take a look at him,” said Draco. He knew he wasn’t a Healer, but he thought he at least knew when he should take Scorpius to St. Mungo’s and when he shouldn’t. He hadn’t been a parent for five years for nothing.
He stepped up beside the bed, and Scorpius went quiet and blinked at him when he saw Draco there. Draco smiled at him and put his hand on Scorpius’s forehead. He hoped he hid his wince. Scorpius was already as hot as the infection from a wound, and the skin felt oddly tight and stretched.
“Daddy,” said Scorpius, and grabbed his hand, and closed his eyes.
“I can’t let you go to sleep just yet, Scorp,” said Draco, and his voice was as gentle as he knew how to make it. Don’t let it shake. That’s the most important thing you can do with your voice right now, is comfort him and not let him see how afraid you are. “Izzy said that you were hurt, and then you said you were fine. Can you tell me how it feels right now? Are you in pain, or not?”
Scorpius rolled towards him and murmured. He already seemed half-asleep, but he managed to reach down with one hand and prod at his side. He looked as if he was poking himself right under his ribs, Draco saw, memorizing the sight of the place. “It hurts here, Daddy,” he said, and drifted off with a sigh, cuddling towards his pillows and the side of the bed. Draco reached out and gently rolled him back into another position so he could see the area Scorpius had pointed to better. At least Scorpius looked as though he wasn’t in active pain right now, although his breathing was rusty in a way Draco didn’t like.
When Draco lifted Scorpius’s shirt, he winced again, and barely managed to keep a hiss of panic from escaping his lips. There was a swelling there, one that stuck up from between Scorpius’s ribs. If Draco had simply seen Scorpius in pain without seeing the feverish symptoms, then he would have been sure he was looking at a broken bone. But this was something else, and when he reached out and just gently let his fingertips rest on the bump, he could feel how yielding and spongy the top was, how hard it was right beneath.
I have to get him to St. Mungo’s.
Draco gently cast a charm that would lighten Scorpius’s weight-no dropping him on a tricky turn of the stairs or anything else, since Draco wasn’t about to go through the Floo with Scorpius feeling like this-and another that would keep a thin cushion of air between Scorpius and Draco at all times. Then he scooped him up and turned to Izzy. “You’re to go straight to Harry,” he said. “You can find him?”
Izzy drew herself up in what would probably have been offended pride from anyone but a house-elf. “Izzy is knowing the trace of Master Harry Potter’s magical signature,” she said. “Izzy is having cleaned his room.”
Draco nodded shortly. He had never understood exactly how house-elf magic worked, how they could follow magical signatures and Apparate even inside places they shouldn’t have been able to Apparate, but right now, he wasn’t concerned with that. “Good. Then you can find him. Tell him I’m taking Scorpius to St. Mungo’s, and I need him to come to me as soon as possible.” With any luck, Izzy could catch Harry before he got too far into the meeting with his new client, or before he went to their house to see their children.
“Yes, Master Draco,” said Izzy, and bobbed her head. She cast an anguished glance at Scorpius as she straightened that Draco knew how to read.
“Scorpius will be fine,” he told her. I won’t let him be anything else.
“Yes, Master Draco,” Izzy said again, and vanished.
Draco headed straight towards the stairs. He could Apparate the moment he was outside the gates.
The distance had never seemed so long.
*
Harry was looking once more through the letter that this new client, Mrs. Wormwood, had sent him when he heard her knock on the door. She really hadn’t sent him much information. She only said that her child was threatened, and she could use his help on making sure that the situation became less threatening.
I might have to tell her to contact the Aurors, Harry admitted to himself as he went to open the door. On the other hand, I have Auror training, so-
The thoughts all became so many ashes and leaves on the wind when he opened the door and found Ginny standing there.
She looked at him with distant eyes for a long moment before her eyelids began to quiver and she looked away from him, focusing down the street with immense interest. “Can I come in?” she whispered.
Harry felt as though someone had hit him with a Stunner. He closed his eyes and took in a breath deep enough to make his chest hurt. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “Not when you don’t have anything to say that we haven’t already said to each other.”
“I have something new.”
Harry opened his eyes. “Not if you’re going to accuse me and Draco of threatening your child.”
Ginny’s eyes dropped. “It’s more complicated than that,” she said. “I think-I think I really need to talk to you. Please?”
Harry tapped his fingers on the door. He decided that he had to set conditions. “The minute you start arguing that you were right in what you wanted to do, or start telling me I should feel sorry for you or you feel sorry for me because I can’t have blood children, out you go.” He paused, then added, “And the minute you say something horrible about Draco and Scorpius, out you go, too.”
Ginny swallowed and nodded. “It’s complicated. Can I come in?”
Harry stepped back and let her come in. She wandered around the office for a minute, touching the chairs that his clients sat in and peering out the window. Harry watched her and felt strangely numb. He would have said that he would have felt awkward, odd, to have her there. But he had never thought about it, and now he just didn’t care.
He finally cleared his throat, and asked, “So. What do you mean?”
Ginny turned towards him. “I’m worried about what the negative publicity could do to my child,” she said, and rested one hand possessively on her stomach. Harry’s eyes were drawn to the soft swell of it, of course, and he looked away. “I know the public always turns on the ones they’ve supported. And they supported me.”
“Only one paper,” said Harry, in his numb voice. “Only for a while.”
Ginny didn’t respond. Harry turned around, and Ginny was standing with her back to him, looking out the window.
“How do you stand it?” Ginny whispered, her voice soft and distant. “I wanted-I wanted children so badly. I never knew I did until I thought I’d never have them. And then I wondered what it would do to Mum and Dad to know they would never have grandchildren.”
“What are you talking about?” Harry demanded, even though he’d made a promise to himself not to get involved in whatever crazy thing she’d come to lecture him on. “They already had five grandchildren by then!”
“But none from their daughter.” Ginny turned around, and Harry could see tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. “That’s what Mum told me when I was little, that she couldn’t wait to see me with daughters of my own in my arms.”
Harry had no idea what to say. Ginny had never told him this before. Of course, he thought, he hadn’t really asked. He had known what he had to know about the Weasleys from listening to Ron talk about them, and spending time with them at the Burrow. And Ginny had talked to him about the war and Quidditch and their marriage and how much she loved him and her job. Her childhood before she came to Hogwarts just didn’t show up on a regular basis in their conversations.
“And I panicked,” Ginny whispered, her voice dropping. “It got worse, it didn’t get better. And it seemed like you wouldn’t agree with me because you were just so stubborn, and I knew a way to get pregnant, and have everything be better.”
“You had someone in mind that you wanted to sleep with, didn’t you?” Harry asked. He tried to keep his voice as non-accusing as possible.
Ginny hesitated. Harry pounced.
“Yes, you did,” he said, and his voice was going to get loud if he let it. He looked away, out the window himself, and thought about Draco, and Scorpius, and Teddy, and forcibly calmed himself down. “Someone who was going to give you what you wanted.”
“I only thought of him after I knew that you couldn’t have children,” Ginny snapped. “And then I got divorced, and I found out he didn’t want me back, and I married Michael, and I still didn’t get pregnant for three years. I started panicking that I wouldn’t be able to have blood children at all, no matter who I was married to, and that meant I might as well not have given up the marriage to you. Do you understand what that’s like?”
Harry closed his hands into fists. He had sometimes thought, when he was writing as Ethan, that he understood how to love a wife better than children because of how much he had loved Ginny.
“Yeah,” he said. “Reckon I do.”
Ginny’s head rocked on her neck a little, as though someone had slapped her. Harry hoped it was called reality.
She looked at him with wide, tearless eyes now. “So I was punished,” she whispered, “And I suffered. But I don’t want my child to have to listen to my name dragged through newspapers.” She put her hand over her stomach again. “What can I do?”
Harry wondered if he should even bother answering. After all, she was the one who had gone to the papers in the first place. And although he could understand her motives now-he had done some crazy things himself because of panic, including trying to keep his secret from Draco-he didn’t think that made him ready to forgive her or whatever she was really thinking of.
Then a house-elf appeared abruptly in front of him, and Ginny jumped. The elf didn’t pay any attention to her, just bowed to Harry, and Harry recognized it-her-as Izzy, the one who was always hovering nearby to make sure that Scorpius didn’t make so much of a mess during dinner.
“Yes?” Harry asked, cocking his head and avoiding glancing at Ginny, who had her knuckles pressed against her mouth. “What’s wrong?”
“Master Draco Malfoy is needing you in St. Mungo’s, Master Harry,” said Izzy, and gave a sweeping bow that made Harry think she was about to start punishing herself. “Little master is sick.”
That changed things so suddenly and clearly that Harry felt as though someone had opened a hole in his head to let in daylight.
Standing here and arguing with Ginny didn’t matter. Whether he could understand what had gone through her head before they got divorced didn’t matter. Maybe he would understand later if he still wanted to put in the mental effort. But right now, he didn’t.
“Draco needs me,” he said to Ginny. “Scorpius is sick.” Even though she could have heard the elf’s words for herself, Harry thought it would be more effective said in his voice.
It seemed to be. Emotions moved across Ginny’s face like stormclouds for a second, and then she whispered, “They’re more important to you than me, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” said Harry. “You moved on with your life-or at least it seemed as if you did. Why don’t you go back to doing it, and let me do the same?”
Ginny stood there for a second as though she would say something else. Then she turned and walked out of the office.
Harry wasted no time in locking it up, hanging a sign on the door that would let people know he had been called away unexpectedly, and murmuring words of reassurance to Izzy as he ran down to the Apparition point. He would find Draco and reassure him in much the same way, and they would help Scorpius together.
That was what being with someone meant.
*
“How is he?”
Draco started. He’d been sitting beside Scorpius’s bed and staring at him for so long that he had lost track of time, and he had thought that Harry might get here soon, or not at all. But somehow, Harry had got through what was probably some attempt by Healers at preserving their privacy. Draco reached up and clutched Harry’s hand without looking away from Scorpius’s bed.
“The Healers don’t know exactly what’s wrong,” Draco admitted, tearing his eyes away from Scorpius with difficulty. Harry had crouched down next to him, looking and listening as attentively as though he was involved in an Auror case. Draco swallowed. Maybe he could think of it that way, the disease as an enemy that Harry was trained to defeat. He wasn’t a Healer, but he knew a lot about magic. “He’s feverish and he has a swelling on his side. I thought it was some sort of buildup of pus, but the Healers said not.”
“They don’t know what it is, though, right?” Harry asked.
Draco nodded. “They didn’t want to cut it open, just in case something happened. They’re coming up with some potions and spells they can use on the skin, and they gave him a pain-killer that would help him sleep.” Not that Scorpius had needed help with that, honestly, except when a Healer had carelessly touched his swelling and he’d sat up with a cry of pain. But then he had slipped back into slumber frighteningly fast, his head thrashing back and forth and his lips making a mumbling, smacking noise.
“Hmmm,” said Harry, and walked slowly around Scorpius. The Healers had wrapped him in a thin garment they could draw away from the swelling without waking him. Harry took hold of the side of it and glanced at Draco for permission.
Draco hesitated. It was one thing thinking instinctively that Harry could help, and another thing to think he was a Healer. But he nodded. He didn’t think it could hurt, and he knew-he knew-that Harry wouldn’t cause Scorpius pain.
Harry pulled the gown back, and stared for a second. His brows drew together. Then he nodded, and turned around to murmur to Draco. “He hasn’t been having displays of accidental magic lately, has he?”
“He’s never had them,” said Draco, startled. “Or only one or two. He’s too young for them, mostly.” He managed to dredge up a smile. “He wouldn’t be throwing things at the walls to break them if he could have just made them float over and shatter themselves, instead.”
Harry didn’t smile back. “I have seen something like this before. When a young wizard was frightened of his magic and trying to suppress it. The magic built up under his skin in this way.”
“But that one was Muggleborn, right?” Draco demanded, knowing he must have been. “Scorpius has never been frightened to use his magic! He’d always know I welcomed it!”
“I was going to say,” Harry said firmly, “that I’ve also seen it in cases where a young wizard had a nightmare and turned his magic inward to fight it. Magic isn’t meant to be used like that, unless you’re a trained Legilimens, and it leaves behind traces, because the children are too young to know when to stop. And it would explain why he’s so sleepy. He wasn’t really resting, he was fighting the nightmare.”
Draco hesitated. “He has nothing to have nightmares about, either,” he said, but he knew that his own voice was uncertain.
“It doesn’t have to be traumatic experiences,” said Harry gently, giving him a quick glance. “It can just be an ordinary nightmare of the kind that any five-year-old could have. But it was worse than most of the others, or he felt worse about it, and that meant he turned his magic inwards.”
It sounded so convincing that Draco wanted to call the Healers back into the room and demand that they listen to what Harry was saying. On the other hand, he reminded himself again that Harry wasn’t a Healer.
“If that’s what it is, why didn’t the Healers recognize it?”
Harry gave him a sad smile. “I had reasons to do a lot of research on nightmares, and means of curing them. I don’t think most Healers here would have done that kind of in-depth research. And if he looks sick-which he does-the Healers would think of that before they thought of accidental magic or nightmares.”
“Do you know how to get rid of it?” Draco held his breath a second later, as Harry’s wand came to rest on top of the swelling.
“I do,” Harry said. “Most nightmares aren’t so easy, but it’s really just the magic that’s the problem here, and I can ease that.” He tapped the swelling with his wand, making Scorpius squirm and frown in discomfort, and whispered, “Tranquillitas, potentem.”
The swelling rippled for a second, and Draco almost opened his mouth to shout. But then it began to sink. It stopped sinking, and Harry withdrew his wand, and shook his head when Draco looked at him. “It takes a while for the magic to stop affecting Scorpius’s mind and dissipate back into his body. But it’ll keep going now.”
Maybe it was Draco’s imagination, but he thought Scorpius’s face was gaining some of its normal color back, and he was breathing more easily. He reached one arm out as Harry started to step past him, and snared him, and dragged him close, and whispered, “You are a miracle.”
“I’m yours,” Harry said simply, and leaned in, and kissed him. “And the two of you are mine.”
As he watched Scorpius’s chest carefully rise and fall, as he felt Harry’s arm around his shoulder, Draco was sure that was true.
Chapter Fifty.
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