TTTB 3
Chapter Three: Observing the Past
Hermione had tried to calm Harry down Monday morning, and she had succeeded to a degree. She knew him better than almost anyone and was one of the only people he could count on not to just tell him to kill Malfoy and hide his body and have done. Honestly, there was just enough sense left in him to be sure that that was not something that he should be encouraging-but there was a large part of him that simply wanted to explain what had happened to Ron and let the other man rage against Malfoy for a while and maybe come up with a few outlandish plots to make him suffer.
Seriously, though, Harry just didn't get it. It would seem as though they were making at least a little bit of progress, and then Malfoy would say something completely awful, and it would be right back to ground zero.
It was definitely taking its toll on Harry; he wasn't sleeping very well and now spent his time in his own house feeling like an intruder as he carefully cleaned up after himself and refused to think about the Dursleys. He was feeling the strain of trying to make everything appear normal to Teddy, and his concentration was shot at work. It was one thing when this meant it took him three times longer than it should to fill out paperwork. But he was an Auror. They went into dangerous situations all the time.
"Harry!"
The crunch as Harry landed-breath knocked out of him-told him that he'd broken something despite the Cushioning Charm, but Harry used reflexes that had been honed by years of Auror training, crazy school extracurricular activities, and a formative life with people who hated him to roll out of the way, which at least meant that the spell sent after him exploded into the ground next to him.
He scrambled to his feet and tried to Apparate, but he'd felt himself falling through several layers of wards, so it wasn't really a surprise when he failed. His ears were ringing, which was probably not a good sign, but it wasn't as though he hadn't been through worse.
Slipping off the roof was embarrassing, but the fact that he'd fallen into the middle of this particular ambush meant both that they'd found the wizards they were looking for, and no one else was going to stumble in all unsuspecting. It was just him and Smith-no relation to Zacharias-tonight; if not for Harry, it might have gone quite badly.
He dodged another beam of spell fire and then another and sent off his own in return. In the distance, he heard a sudden roar and realized that Smith didn't seem to think much of Harry's chances and had transformed into his Animagus form and was trying to distract the two who were trying really determinedly to kill Harry.
Harry Disillusioned himself. It wouldn't last, but it gave him a moment to get to better cover and toss out one of the twins' new inventions, which mirrored spellfire. It took at least twice the energy from the caster and normally only gave one good spell, but it meant that when Harry cast the Stunner, he did it from two directions and momentarily confused his targets, as well as giving him the chance to see where they were casting from.
He slipped away from his current location and sneaked far more quietly than ever he had managed when he was at Hogwarts, climbing up the fire escape and listening as Smith got closer to their location, the roaring making it quite easy to do.
He let the Disillusionment fall off of him as though it had worn out, still creeping stealthily and watching out of the corner of his eye, or maybe feeling the weight of eyes following his movement.
The roaring stopped, Harry's signal that Smith was human again, which sucked a bit, because Harry had really hoped to be above the wards for this part, but he was two storeys up and still hadn't passed them.
Here went nothing.
Harry launched himself across the alley.
Spells whizzed through the air where he had been, Harry hit the window ledge on the wall opposite, smacked his face into the brick, and scrabbled at it desperately. The sound of bodies dropped by Stunners made Harry heave a large sigh of relief.
A moment later, he reflected that apparently he should be working out more, never mind extensive Auror training, because clinging to this ledge wasn't nearly as easy as it should be.
"Give us a moment, Love."
"No problem, take your time," Harry gritted out.
There was a huff of laughter but muttered spell work, and Harry felt the wards fall.
"Good to go," Smith told him. "You first."
Harry Disapparated, hitting the ground with a thud but opening his eyes again to find himself in the Ministry-and being regarded with some amusement for his graceless entry.
Harry had always found it difficult to Apparate from a non-standing position to a standing one; his body had completed the fall that would have occurred if he'd stopped holding onto the window ledge; fortunately, he was much closer to the ground, so he was just embarrassed, not injured.
Climbing to his feet, pain shot through him, and Harry amended, not more injured.
Smith Apparated a moment later with the two stunned and Mobilicorpused wizards, more graceful than Harry could ever hope to be, and immediately stepped forward to wrap an arm around Harry, which was just as well because Harry realized that the world had begun to spin rather crazily.
"Time for St Mungo's, I think."
Dizziness swallowed Harry up, and he knew no more.
~*~
By the time Harry got home, it was almost four o'clock in the morning, and Harry's ears were now ringing not from the pain but from the comprehensive dressing down he had been given for being an idiot.
He'd been ordered to take tomorrow off, and if it wasn't quite a suspension, it was a near thing. Harry needed to get himself together, and he knew it.
Seeing a light on in the library, Harry headed in-and froze at the doorway at the sight of Theodore Nott sitting on the couch next to a sleeping Teddy.
He hadn't thought that he'd landed that hard, but maybe it had been going face-first into that wall…. Still, the mediwitch would surely have mentioned if he was prone to hallucinations, wouldn't she?
Nott had been reading but looked up at Harry's entrance.
"What happened to you?" he demanded blankly, but the question was asked quietly, in deference to the sleeping child, Harry imagined.
"Ambush," Harry said succinctly, really not wanting to get into the details right now. "What are you doing here?"
"Draco got called out, and you weren't back yet. I think he judged me least likely to be sleeping."
Harry could feel the swirl of anger tightening his gut, but he'd just been chewed out for being an idiot, and it wasn't like this was Nott's fault. It was true, at least, that Malfoy certainly shouldn't have just left Teddy alone.
"What's Teddy doing down here?"
Nott was watching him carefully. "Nightmare. Wouldn't go back to sleep upstairs, and this was the best I could do."
Harry nodded; it must have seemed very strange and probably alarming to the little boy to have neither Harry nor Malfoy respond to his nightmare.
Harry took off his cloak and then Banished it back to the peg by the door before Malfoy could get into another damn hissy fit about something of Harry's being somewhere inappropriate.
He crossed the room and scooped Teddy up into his arms, trying not to wince at the strain to his aching body. The little boy stirred sleepily.
"Hawwy?"
"That's right, Teddy Bear," Harry reassured him, kissing the top of his head. "Just putting you to bed. Go back to sleep."
Chubby arms clumsily wrapped round his neck, and the little boy curled more fully against Harry.
"'Kay."
Harry carefully carried Teddy up the stairs, not thinking about how much more slowly he was doing this than normal or what Nott was thinking back in the library. Not dropping Teddy was definitely the priority here.
He carefully unwound Teddy's arms from round his neck, got him settled under the covers in the bed and pressed another kiss to his messy hair. He waited a few minutes to make sure that Teddy was settled-he missed that ability to sleep so easily, even taking childhood nightmares into account-stopped off in his room to change out of yet another ruined set of clothes, and came back downstairs to see if Nott was still there.
Harry definitely wasn't going to be able to sleep if the man was just sitting down there, despite the fact that he was exhausted.
Nott was, indeed, still in the library, and maybe it was the exhaustion, but the surreality was hitting very hard again.
"Tea?" Harry asked.
There was a silent moment where they both considered one another, and then Nott nodded and rose to his feet to head into the kitchen with Harry.
Harry wasn't sure whether he'd been expecting Nott to do that or if he'd been hoping that the other man would just stay in the library so that Harry had a few minutes to gather himself together, but it was done now.
He put the kettle on, but then he found that Nott was guiding him to a seat at the table. He sat down and apparently looked as confused as he felt because Nott's lips tipped up a bit.
"You look as though you're going to keel over, Potter. I'm perfectly capable of making tea."
There was something wrong with this scenario, Harry was certain, but sure enough, Nott brought the kettle to a boil, found them mugs and tea and milk and sugar and managed to combine everything quite correctly in order to make them tea.
Harry sighed as the first mouthful slid down his throat. It was a little too hot, but that just meant that it burnt a trail of warmth down to his belly, and he'd been feeling cold for ages.
"This seems like a dream."
Harry hadn't meant to say the words and looked up, embarrassed, but Nott just let out a bark of laughter.
"Tell me about it. I don't think we exchanged two words at Hogwarts, and here I am making you tea in your house."
Tilting his head to one side as he really looked at the other man, Harry considered.
"You know, I think you're right," Harry repeated slowly.
"Hard to notice anyone else when Draco's got your attention."
Harry was sure that this was not a statement that he wanted to agree to, but on the face of it, there didn't seem to be any possible way to deny it. Malfoy had kind of eclipsed all the other Slytherin students put together.
"I had a lot going on in my life."
"When do you not? You look as though you lost an argument with the Hogwarts Express."
Harry's lips twitched up. "Kind of what it feels like, too. It was loads worse before I went to the hospital." He shrugged and offered philosophically, "Least I'm getting paid now."
Nott laughed again. "You know, Potter, you're not at all what I expected."
"You're not really what I expected, either," Harry agreed, since this seemed better than admitting that he hadn't really ever thought about the other man before at all.
Nott looked as though he knew what Harry was thinking, though, because he suddenly held out his hand.
"Theodore Nott. Nice to meet you."
Bemused, Harry nevertheless shook his hand and offered, "Harry Potter. Uh, likewise."
Despite what most people seemed to stupidly think, Harry wasn't at all opposed to Slytherins on principal; he'd just met a few that really, really annoyed him. He knew exactly what his reputation and theirs was, however, and he tended to find that many of them weren't interested in anything to do with him.
Nott, though, at least at five o'clock in the morning in Harry's kitchen, seemed genuinely willing to chat. Maybe he was just waiting until Malfoy got back, feeling the need to stay until the same parent who'd asked him over returned, but there could have been far less talking if that was the case.
And the other man certainly hadn't needed to introduce himself and get them going as though they'd never met before. Harry wondered if this approach would work on other Slytherins or people he'd made a bad impression on?
Harry had lost count of the number of cups of tea that he'd had by the time he was relaying to Theo Harry's first attempt at the stealth portion of the testing for Auror training.
"They seriously wanted your autograph?" Theo said incredulously, laughter threading through his voice.
"Still trying to figure out who put them up to it," Harry said darkly, though he was having trouble suppressing his smile. "I mean, I got mobbed, mobbed by people who just wanted to touch a hair on my head. How the hell was I supposed to move, never mind sneak anywhere?"
Theo dissolved into laughter, and Harry gave it up as a lost cause and grinned at him. This was when he realised that Malfoy was standing frozen in the doorway.
He cleared his throat, amusement dying into a bundle of nerves in his stomach at the look the other man was giving him.
"Hi, Malfoy."
Theo, whose back had been to the door, twisted round.
"Draco! Everything all right? You look a sight better than Harry, here."
Malfoy was looking at Harry with the singular suspicion you normally reserved for someone you suspected of Imperiusing a friend.
"I am perfectly fine," Malfoy drawled.
Harry wasn't even sure who that was insulting; Harry for getting injured, Theo for talking to Harry…. Harry felt suddenly exhausted again, the lightness that had come with speaking to a Slytherin who didn't hate him fading away like a balloon that had been punctured.
"Well, that's good to hear," Theo said good-naturedly as though he hadn't noticed the increased tension in the room. "Guess I'll be going, then. You two make sure that you get lots of sleep."
Harry was pretty sure that was Theo's way of telling them not to get into a fight when they were both tired. If only Harry knew how to not get into fights with Malfoy.
Theo squeezed Harry's arm and offered a, "Hope you're feeling better soon," before drawing Malfoy out into the hall with him.
Harry waved up a Silencing Charm so that he wouldn't have to hear Malfoy demanding to know what was going on or Theo excusing himself. He seriously considered dashing for the stairs while Malfoy was otherwise occupied, but with a sigh, he finished his tea instead.
He took the empty mug and tea things over to the sink because that at least gave him something to do. It was only once he'd tidied everything away that he realised that Malfoy had been gone for a long time.
Cautiously, he poked his head out into the hallway and discovered that there was no sign of the other man. Harry'd been gearing himself up for a confrontation that was apparently happening only in his mind.
He ached to go to bed, but looking at the clock, he realised that in less than an hour, Narcissa would be here to take care of Teddy. He had no idea if Malfoy had also been given time off given the late hour of whatever he'd been called in for, but it seemed unlikely that if Harry also went to bed now either of them would be up for the change over.
It was less than an hour, after all.
~*~
Narcissa woke Harry with her arrival through the Floo, and Harry looked up blearily to see that Teddy was sitting across the table from him eating cereal without milk that he'd mostly managed to pour into the bowl. It was clear that he'd tried to be as quiet as possible, and the little boy shushed Narcissa before he saw that Harry was awake.
Harry felt tears prick his eyes and came round the table to kiss Teddy on the top of the head.
"You don't ever have to be quiet so that you won't disturb me," Harry told him thickly.
He recognized that this wasn't exactly what he wanted to say. It probably set a bad precedent; surely there would be times where he wanted the little boy to be quiet. He knew that it was different, that Teddy had chosen to do it, and Harry hadn't ever ordered him to and wouldn't ever punish him for disturbing him, but it still … it still hit far too close to home.
Teddy twisted up so that he could kiss Harry's chin.
"You looked sleepy," Teddy said simply.
"I was a bit sleepy," Harry agreed, forcing back tears that the little boy wouldn't understand and which Harry had no interest in explaining to him, especially as Narcissa carefully watched the interaction. "But I'm still here to take care of you, and if you're hungry, then it's my job to get you food, all right?"
"All right, Hawwy," Teddy agreed with more solemnity than Harry thought, on balance, he actually wanted the little boy to display.
But he couldn't have it both ways, and he'd just hope that he'd got his point across in a friendly and non-confrontational manner.
"You want some milk with that cereal?" Harry asked.
Teddy nodded, so Harry moved to the fridge to retrieve it.
"Morning, Narcissa," Harry greeted the woman, pretending that he couldn't tell that she had heard and seen too much.
"Good morning, Harry. May I say that you look a little the worse for wear?"
Harry sighed.
"I've not looked in the mirror yet, but I can imagine. I've got the day off, so if you want-"
Narcissa didn't let him finish the sentence.
"How sensible of the Auror department to give you time to recover."
"But-"
"I want you upstairs and asleep within the next ten minutes, and I don't want to see you all day, do you understand me, young man?"
Harry was torn between laughter and something that was distinctly not laughter because this was so clearly a parental order-and how on Earth had he managed to acquire Narcissa Malfoy as a mother?-but one that seemed to be grounded in concern, one that was ordering him not to help out but to take care of himself instead.
So Harry drew a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth. Then he repeated the motion a couple more times for good measure. The Auror department had ordered him home to rest. He was lucky that Smith hadn't been badly injured, that things hadn't gone disastrously wrong because he was exhausted and ill-tempered. Here was Narcissa to do exactly what they'd asked her to do, and if he went to sleep now, then he could get up in the late afternoon and actually spend time with Teddy, which couldn't happen when he was out on stupid raids.
"Understood," Harry agreed finally, and Teddy was looking at him with wide eyes but that solemn expression again, nodding his head as though to say that he thought it was the best thing that Harry could do.
Harry sniffed again, kissed Teddy once more on the top of the head and told him to be good for Narcissa and then headed upstairs, passing by Malfoy's floor as quietly as he could, hoping that the other man got lots of sleep as well.
Maybe they could be civil to one another if they'd both had lots and lots of sleep. It was a nice dream, anyway.
Harry was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
~*~
Despite Harry's best intentions, the evening was spent sniping at one another with increasingly snide barbs. Harry really hadn't meant to get into anything contentious, but he was still tired and in pain, and before he knew it, he was needling at Malfoy for getting through easily on training exercises, Malfoy was arguing about his need for attention any way he could get it, and Harry lost his temper.
The stack of dishes he was gathering from the table was slammed back down with a rattle of pottery.
"At least I don't have to hide in the Department of Mysteries!"
"Please!" Malfoy whirled back from the sink. "As if you'd go anywhere where you didn't get to stand in the limelight like the attention-seeking prat that you are!"
"It's not my fault that people pay attention to me!"
Harry waved the dishes over to the counter so that he wouldn't have to get any closer to the other man.
"Random chance, is it?" Malfoy sneered.
"I damn well didn't ask Voldemorrt to come and kill my parents and mark me as his equal, now did I?" Harry snarled dangerously.
"Hawwy?"
Harry froze and then turned to see that Teddy was standing in the doorway into the kitchen clutching his stuffed owl, Hedwig. It looked as though neither he nor Malfoy had been paying any attention to how loud they'd gotten or how long it had been since they'd told Teddy they'd meet him in the library as soon as they'd cleaned up.
"Yes, Teddy?" Harry asked in a choked voice.
"Why are you so angwy?"
"I lost my temper. We meant to have a normal talk while you were out of the room."
"You and Dwako angwy with me?"
Harry sucked in a sharp breath and fell to his knees so that he was level with the little boy, pulling him into his arms and hugging him tightly.
"Of course we're not angry with you, Teddy. We're not ever angry with you," Harry assured him with every ounce of feeling that he possessed.
"Don't like it when you yell," the little boy confessed.
"We won't yell anymore," Harry promised.
Shit. Could Harry be any more of a screw up if he tried?
Teddy hugged him back, tugged Hedwig back up to his chest, and went back to the library.
Harry turned back to the kitchen to find that Malfoy was still standing next to the sink and didn't look as though he'd moved at all since they'd stopped fighting.
Swallowing heavily, Harry said, "Sorry about that, Malfoy. I've been having a rough few days."
Malfoy sniffed but at least didn't tell him off right then and there.
And then Malfoy surprised him.
"Why don't you head into the library, and I'll finish up here?"
Harry eyed the other man, but he seemed serious. It was definitely safer to get them out of the same room, and it would ensure that Teddy didn't worry in the library for very long.
Harry nodded, but at the door, he paused and turned back.
"I did try, you know," he admitted.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow.
"To become an Unspeakable. They wouldn't let me. Said that I'd make the whole department newsworthy rather than make me unworthy of news."
Malfoy stared at him for a long moment. "Perhaps that was their way of telling the Saviour of the Wizarding World that he wasn't good enough."
Harry suppressed a sigh and left for the library without another word.
~*~
By the time May arrived, Harry felt as though he'd lived the longest six weeks of his life-and he'd lived some pretty long weeks. But he'd never been in charge of a small child before, never needed to be so careful about his own behaviour because it materially affected someone young and innocent, someone who needed to be protected.
Plus, he'd never lived with a Malfoy before, and he was quite sure that that raised any challenge to a whole new level.
They'd been more careful since Teddy had caught them fighting, but it wasn't as though everything was now sunshine and roses. Harry had hoped that as time passed, they would get used to one another. He had even hoped, though he felt like an idiot admitting it even in his own mind now, that they might became friends.
Six weeks had taught him that he was a complete and utter idiot, and the most that he was hoping for now was a cessation of outright hostilities. He was hoping that they would survive the next decade taking care of Teddy, never mind that they'd enjoy themselves or get used to it.
There were moments that were all right, of course. When they both kept a lid on their tempers, when they concentrated on Teddy-and weren't fighting about something to do with him-when Narcissa or Molly were here and acted like the adults that they were that he and Malfoy never seemed able to achieve…. There were whole stretches of time where it was okay, but it felt…. It felt false. It felt as though he and Malfoy, when they were managing to get along, were just faking it, were pretending as best they could to make a bad situation ever so slightly better, and Harry wasn't so sure that they were going to be able to keep it up.
Statistically, they surely had to run out of things to argue about, literally run out of points of raising a child that they hadn't already hashed out to death, and yet it seemed at every turn that there was something new.
"What do you mean, he won't be going?" Malfoy demanded.
Harry swallowed and reminded himself that he had promised not to lose his temper. They could get through this if only they kept their tempers.
"I think I was very clear, Malfoy."
The other man faced off from him with narrowed eyes.
"So, just to make sure I understand: you, Harry Potter, are informing me, Draco Malfoy, that our ward is not going to the celebration?"
Bugger. He could actually hear Hermione's voice in his head telling him that he was an idiot.
"I shouldn't have said it like that," Harry admitted, deflating a little. "I didn't realise we were going to disagree about it. Why do you want to go?"
"Why wouldn't I want to go?" Malfoy demanded as though Harry was a complete idiot.
Harry huffed an incredulous breath. "Oh, let me see if I can come up with a list. Half the people we know died or nearly died? It was one of the worst days of my life-and I'd like to think yours, too."
Malfoy stiffened. Harry should have known better than to make any suggestion that he knew what the hell was going through the other man's head at any point.
"The Dark Lord died that day. That's what people are celebrating," Malfoy bit out. "They're remembering the people who made it possible, including Theodore's parents."
Harry swallowed. "So don't you see why it's better for him not to go?"
Malfoy threw up his hands. "Do you have no sense of family pride? No idea what is owed to your line and your blood?" His lips twisted into a cruel smirk. "Oh, wait. It's not your family or your blood."
Every piece of glass in the room exploded in a shower of sparkling shards. Windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles, beakers, more individual items than Harry could ever have thought about if he'd been thinking at all.
Fortunately for their continued health and safety, the shield that prevented them from being cut to shreds by all the flying glass had been equally unpremeditated.
Malfoy hadn't moved a single muscle since he'd whirled towards the window as it had exploded.
Harry couldn't hear, couldn't think, couldn't seem to stop shaking, knew only that if he stayed in this house one moment longer, he might do something truly unforgivable.
Without thought, he Apparated Teddy to him, and Malfoy had just whirled back to him at the sound of the "pop" when Harry wrapped his arms around the little boy and Side-Alonged them far, far away.
~*~
It took a long time for Harry to realise that his robe and trousers were wet where he was kneeling on the ground. The shaking had finally begun to taper off, and it was only now that it impinged upon him that a warm weight he was holding in a death grip was petting his hair and assuring him that everything would be okay.
Shit.
He sat back, and Teddy looked up at him with huge, solemn eyes, too serious for a child of four.
Harry had helped to put that expression there.
"I'm so sorry, Teddy," Harry exclaimed guiltily. "I'm stupid. I didn't think. I'm so sorry!"
But Teddy was still hugging him, still petting his hair, and still insisted that everything was okay.
As it turned out, it was harder to feel completely bad when a small child was trying to tell you over and over that it was okay. If nothing else, you needed to rally so that you could go back to being the adult and they would stop having to try so hard to take care of you.
Harry practiced his deep breathing for a few minutes. Seriously. The four year old was handling this better than Harry was. No wonder Malfoy thought that he was a complete and utter fuck up.
Thoughts of Malfoy caused anger to swirl through Harry again, but he forced the emotion down into the churning pit that was currently his stomach. Teddy was his first priority.
"You cold?" he asked.
Teddy shook his head. "You kept me warm. Still nice here."
"You remember it?" Harry asked, surprised.
The little boy nodded. "Came last year to see Mum and Dad."
Harry swallowed tears-he'd cried too many today-and nodded carefully.
"That's right. Are you okay to see them again?"
Teddy nodded, so Harry climbed to his feet and then cast a drying charm to take care of the bits of them that had been in contact with the wet grass.
It was quiet, at least, which made for a nice change from the yelling at home. Harry wondered if he should worry that Teddy thought this was a nice place, but then, Harry thought so himself. It was all in how you looked at it, he supposed.
They passed row after row of gravestones until they came to the headstone that proclaimed the resting place of Remus Lupin and 'Dora Tonks.
He was pretty sure that he'd inadvertently insulted Andromeda over this, but he'd been positive that Tonks wouldn't have wanted "Nymphadora" to be carved into rock for all to see. Though Andromeda hadn't explicitly said so and Harry certainly hadn't meant it that way, there was very little people wouldn't do for him in those early days following Voldemort's death. Harry had just been trying to make sure that she and Remus were taken care of to the best of his abilities.
There was aconite in bloom around the gravestone. Remus had asked for it, and Harry wasn't about to deny any request that the man had; Hermione had shown him how to charm the plant so that the flowers were always in bloom no matter the season. The flowers looked pretty, anyway, though Harry remembered to point out to Teddy that the plant was very poisonous and he shouldn't touch it. (Hermione had drilled it into him.)
Harry and Teddy sat down in front of the grave and talked about Teddy's parents. Harry told Teddy as many of the good things that he could remember, as well as talking about the reason that they had died, giving their lives to try to bring peace and freedom to the wizarding world and their son.
It was hard to hang onto even his incandescent rage at Malfoy, almost impossible to feel absolutely gutted about being the outsider once again when Teddy was curled up in his lap remembering his family.
This was what family did, wasn't it? What family was supposed to be? Caring about one another and loving one another? Remembering one another and answering questions?
It did occur to Harry, though, that there had been an easy way to resolve the issue that had led to his losing his temper so spectacularly.
"Would you like to go to the celebration at Hogwarts?" Harry asked.
"What's a celebwation?" Teddy wanted to know.
"Well, it's kind of like a big party." Teddy perked up, as Harry had known that he would, but Harry was trying to be as fair as possible. "There are lots and lots of people, and they've all come together to remember how the war ended, to remember everyone who died in the war."
"Like Mum and Dad."
"That's right," Harry agreed.
"Are there pwesents?"
Harry huffed a laugh that he told himself didn't sound a lot like a sob. "It's not really like a birthday party. There's usually food, though, but also lots of speeches. Sometimes people ask lots of questions if you know someone who had a lot to do with the War."
"You like the quiet," Teddy said far too wisely for a four year old.
"Yeah," Harry agreed on a sigh, realising that he hadn't ever truly stopped to think about how Teddy would feel about it, he'd just assumed that Teddy would feel the same way that he would.
Harry couldn't imagine ever returning to the party, not after he'd bailed five minutes into the first one. Maybe it was okay for everyone else. Maybe when the fucking Saviour of the Wizarding World wasn't there, it was perfectly fine. But it turned into a freak show when Harry was there, everyone wanting to interview him and talk to him and question him about one of the worst days of his life.
Maybe it would have settled if he'd stayed longer.
But Harry hadn't seen any remembrance for all the brave people who had fallen by his side. He hadn't seen much except a salacious interest in what he had done and a demented focus on him in the face of so many dead bodies. He had sworn never again, and so far, he had held true to that promise.
So he hadn't even thought about discussing it with Malfoy, had assumed that Malfoy wouldn't like the memories any more than Harry did. In his mind's eye, though, Harry could see that Malfoy had been wearing a very nice looking set of dress robes that brought out the colour of his eyes. Clearly, he had been all ready to go to the celebration, and it hadn't occurred to him that there was any question of their going.
Harry and Andromeda and Teddy had always come to the grave on this day, but now Harry didn't know if Andromeda had agreed with him or if she had just been giving him what he wanted.
"Would you like to go see what they're doing at the celebration now?" Harry asked, careful to keep his voice mild and the question unloaded.
Teddy was still curled up in Harry's lap, and he shook his head.
"Maybe Dwaco can take me next year."
Harry let out a shaky breath and held onto Teddy a little more tightly than necessary.
It was difficult to speak through the lump in his throat. "Love you, Teddy Bear."
"Love you, Hawwy."
Before they left, they went to see Harry's parents, because Harry had explained that he came to talk to his, too. He hoped that was normal and he wasn't setting the other boy up to have as many problems as Harry did. But it made him feel better, and while he hoped that Teddy would always feel that he could talk to those around him, none of them were actually his parents, not the ones he'd been born with, anyway.
So Teddy said hello to Lily and James and explained that their son was being a very good boy and taking care of Teddy.
Harry swallowed more tears and realised he was going to have to come back and set the record straight about the piss-poor job that he'd actually been doing.
As if to emphasise this point, Teddy's stomach gave a loud grumble, and Harry realised it had been hours and hours since they'd eaten. Teddy just giggled at the noise and agreed readily to finding a place to eat.
When they finished their meal, Harry found all sorts of suggestions for where they could go next crowding up his throat, but he knew that there was really only one option.
"Ready to go home?"
Teddy nodded, so home they went.
Malfoy was sitting in the kitchen nursing a mug of tea. All the damage that Harry had caused appeared to have been fixed. Malfoy looked pale, and his eyes flashed when he saw Teddy in Harry's arms. Or maybe that was just rage against Harry.
Teddy was yawning and agreed to a nap when Harry suggested it, though at this point Harry couldn't tell if the little boy was truly that tired-normally he was more likely to protest-or if he had the good sense to want to get out of the way of the upcoming confrontation. The latter was more awareness than Harry really wanted Teddy to have of the problems going on at home. Of course, the way things were going, you didn't even have to be very smart to notice.
So Harry went upstairs to lay Teddy down for his nap, and he couldn't blame Malfoy for trooping up the stairs and watching it happen and then trooping back down the stairs so that they could yell at one another in the kitchen once Silencing Charms had been cast.
Malfoy opened with, "I nearly called the Aurors."
Harry nodded, noticed how the sick feeling in his stomach was more apparent now, though he wasn't sure if that was because the steadying influence of Teddy was gone or because he was now back in front of the person who had denied him any connection to Teddy and to a family.
"You had every right to. I could have hurt you badly."
Malfoy scoffed. "As if they would have done anything about that."
Harry swallowed and decided not to even go there. "I haven't lost my temper like that in a long time. I apologize."
"Have a few anger management issues, Potter?"
Malfoy sounded almost amused rather than angry, but being mocked didn't really make Harry feel better.
"Only with you," he snapped.
Only with people who attacked his family.
Malfoy's eyes were cold like slate. "And what if Theodore is in the room next time?"
Harry swallowed. Malfoy wasn't the only one who'd had that thought; Harry couldn't blame him for bringing it up.
"I wouldn't let anything happen to him."
"You'd snatch him up and take him away instead?"
Harry realized his hands were clenched into fists and made himself uncurl his fingers one by one.
"I realise it was not appropriate," he said carefully. "I wasn't thinking very clearly."
He hadn't been thinking at all, but he recognized that whatever was going on between the two of them, they couldn't hold Teddy hostage.
Malfoy was just staring at him.
Harry cast around for what he was supposed to say. "It won't happen again."
Malfoy rose to his feet. "See that it doesn't."
Harry was left alone in the room. He hadn't felt this alone in a long time.
~*~
Malfoy regarded him with especially watchful, calculating eyes now, and Harry couldn't figure out if the other man was a bit afraid of him or was just even more certain that Harry was going to screw up.
Harry was on his very best behaviour, striving not to rise to any jibe or stray comment that Malfoy might make for fear that he would lose his temper again and inadvertently hurt Teddy. Harry remembered what it was like to always be on his guard, knowing he might need to dodge blows at any moment, and he would do anything to ensure that Teddy didn't live through the same thing.
It reminded him of what it had been like when people had thought he was the Heir of Slytherin, all that careful watching, only this time, Harry was really seriously fearful that the watchers were right. If he couldn't control himself, he wasn't a fit guardian, and if seven years of schooling with Malfoy had taught Harry anything, it was that the two of them didn't bring out the best in one another. He'd thought that he was well-trained and well past the age of reacting magically without thought, but now it seemed like he was better trained to do damage and more inclined to cause it in the one place he should have been striving to keep safest.
Narcissa and Molly had both asked him if he was all right, and he had shrugged them off as best he could. The person he was most concerned with feigning happiness for-or at least not admitting desolation-was Teddy, but the strain was taking its toll, and he wasn't so sure that the little boy was buying it. He was watching Harry almost as carefully as Malfoy was.
What with his personal life falling apart around him, Harry forgot until it was nearly upon him what the end of May brought. Four years ago, in the aftermath of the war, Ron and Hermione had joined a host of others in a whirlwind of weddings and celebrations.
A year and a half ago, everything had fallen apart, and what would have been their anniversary now marked the epicentre of extraordinarily bad temper and pettiness on both their parts, what appeared to be an annual tradition that Harry could really have done without.
Ron was complaining to Harry because the rest of his family had told him to shove it. (Even his mother, though Harry doubted she'd phrased it quite like that.) To hear Ron tell it, the entire world was out to get him.
Privately, Harry kind of understood the rest of the world's point, but he didn't want to start fighting with Ron on top of everything else. He just thought it would go better if Ron maybe acknowledged that what he'd done hadn't exactly been good.
"You don't know what it's like, Harry. Everyone's against me. As if it was my fault!"
Harry stared at him.
Ron's ears flushed red at the tips.
"It's been ages now! When is everyone going to let it go?" Ron blustered.
Harry suppressed a sigh. "It's an awkward situation, Ron. You're all together a lot, and it's hard to just let the matter go."
Especially when no one was willing to accept any of the blame or apologize for what had happened.
"You're so lucky, Mate. No family to cause you troubles like these."
Harry stood there, frozen, and let Ron's words wash over him. Lucky to have no family. Lucky.
He had Teddy who he was a danger to and Malfoy-wasn't that a laugh-who hated him, and not even his best friend thought they counted.
Hermione, by contrast, tended to get quieter and quieter towards everyone, and Harry had to make especial efforts to see her to prevent that disappearing act. He had always encouraged her to feel that he was "safe," meaning that she could vent to him and not worry it was going to be reported back to Ron, Lavender, or the other Weasleys.
Passing by Hermione's office, Malfoy drawled, "Say hello to Weasley for me, won't you, Potter? You've been spending a lot of time with him recently, haven't you?"
It was a particularly low blow. Harry cast an extra Silencing Charm to ensure that what was said in the office wasn't heard outside of it and hunkered down and just waited for the storm to hit. Hermione looked like she'd been zapped with a spine-straightening spell.
"Complaining about me a lot, is he?" Hermione demanded with that glint in her eye.
Harry swallowed. "We talk about lots of stuff, 'Mione."
"And he complains about me."
She said it like it was a foregone conclusion, which, he supposed, it was.
"Sometimes," Harry conceded reluctantly, feeling that it would be worse to lie.
Hermione's eyes flashed. "And you listen to him."
"Well, I-"
Her voice was arctic. "Back to the little boy's club, of course."
"Hey!" Harry yelped. "That's not fair. I listen to both of you, and I like both of you. I have never said that I thought what Ron did was right, but if I stopped being friends with him every time he did something stupid, you and I would probably be dead by now!"
"As if he ever did anything important!" Hermione snarled.
The vase on the shelf under Hermione's window exploded in a shower of glass, water, and flowers. Hermione jumped in her seat.
Distantly, Harry had to give her credit for the speed with which she'd erected the shield that ensured that none of the detritus got very far. But the rest of Harry was a gibbering mess because he'd just lost control again, lost control over a comment that was stupid but hardly worthy of rage.
Hermione turned back to look at him, then fixed the mess with a wave of her wand.
"I'm sorry," he croaked out miserably.
"Oh, Harry," she said in a much-altered tone of voice. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to put you in the middle."
"I know it's not easy," he garbled out through a mouth that felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton.
"It's impossible!" she agreed, sounding a little bit as though she were going to cry, which was really not good because Hermione normally only cried when Ron was being a complete arse, and he wasn't even in the room right now. "They're still my family, you know? You don't really get to divorce the family, only every time I'm there, they're there, and I just want to hide or maybe curse them. You don't know what it's like, you-"
Harry stood abruptly. "I have to go."
Hermione blinked at him, frozen mid-rant. "What?"
"I have to go," Harry repeated. "Sorry to cut this short. Early meeting today. I'll talk to you later, all right?"
"But, Harry-"
"Goodbye, Hermione."
Harry made himself walk down the hallway normally, made sure all the feelings were locked inside of him where no one could see them.
He didn't know what it was like because he didn't have a family. Hermione was the most rational person he knew, the one who had stuck with him through everything.
There was only thing to be done.
Hermione had tried to calm Harry down Monday morning, and she had succeeded to a degree. She knew him better than almost anyone and was one of the only people he could count on not to just tell him to kill Malfoy and hide his body and have done. Honestly, there was just enough sense left in him to be sure that that was not something that he should be encouraging-but there was a large part of him that simply wanted to explain what had happened to Ron and let the other man rage against Malfoy for a while and maybe come up with a few outlandish plots to make him suffer.
Seriously, though, Harry just didn't get it. It would seem as though they were making at least a little bit of progress, and then Malfoy would say something completely awful, and it would be right back to ground zero.
It was definitely taking its toll on Harry; he wasn't sleeping very well and now spent his time in his own house feeling like an intruder as he carefully cleaned up after himself and refused to think about the Dursleys. He was feeling the strain of trying to make everything appear normal to Teddy, and his concentration was shot at work. It was one thing when this meant it took him three times longer than it should to fill out paperwork. But he was an Auror. They went into dangerous situations all the time.
"Harry!"
The crunch as Harry landed-breath knocked out of him-told him that he'd broken something despite the Cushioning Charm, but Harry used reflexes that had been honed by years of Auror training, crazy school extracurricular activities, and a formative life with people who hated him to roll out of the way, which at least meant that the spell sent after him exploded into the ground next to him.
He scrambled to his feet and tried to Apparate, but he'd felt himself falling through several layers of wards, so it wasn't really a surprise when he failed. His ears were ringing, which was probably not a good sign, but it wasn't as though he hadn't been through worse.
Slipping off the roof was embarrassing, but the fact that he'd fallen into the middle of this particular ambush meant both that they'd found the wizards they were looking for, and no one else was going to stumble in all unsuspecting. It was just him and Smith-no relation to Zacharias-tonight; if not for Harry, it might have gone quite badly.
He dodged another beam of spell fire and then another and sent off his own in return. In the distance, he heard a sudden roar and realized that Smith didn't seem to think much of Harry's chances and had transformed into his Animagus form and was trying to distract the two who were trying really determinedly to kill Harry.
Harry Disillusioned himself. It wouldn't last, but it gave him a moment to get to better cover and toss out one of the twins' new inventions, which mirrored spellfire. It took at least twice the energy from the caster and normally only gave one good spell, but it meant that when Harry cast the Stunner, he did it from two directions and momentarily confused his targets, as well as giving him the chance to see where they were casting from.
He slipped away from his current location and sneaked far more quietly than ever he had managed when he was at Hogwarts, climbing up the fire escape and listening as Smith got closer to their location, the roaring making it quite easy to do.
He let the Disillusionment fall off of him as though it had worn out, still creeping stealthily and watching out of the corner of his eye, or maybe feeling the weight of eyes following his movement.
The roaring stopped, Harry's signal that Smith was human again, which sucked a bit, because Harry had really hoped to be above the wards for this part, but he was two storeys up and still hadn't passed them.
Here went nothing.
Harry launched himself across the alley.
Spells whizzed through the air where he had been, Harry hit the window ledge on the wall opposite, smacked his face into the brick, and scrabbled at it desperately. The sound of bodies dropped by Stunners made Harry heave a large sigh of relief.
A moment later, he reflected that apparently he should be working out more, never mind extensive Auror training, because clinging to this ledge wasn't nearly as easy as it should be.
"Give us a moment, Love."
"No problem, take your time," Harry gritted out.
There was a huff of laughter but muttered spell work, and Harry felt the wards fall.
"Good to go," Smith told him. "You first."
Harry Disapparated, hitting the ground with a thud but opening his eyes again to find himself in the Ministry-and being regarded with some amusement for his graceless entry.
Harry had always found it difficult to Apparate from a non-standing position to a standing one; his body had completed the fall that would have occurred if he'd stopped holding onto the window ledge; fortunately, he was much closer to the ground, so he was just embarrassed, not injured.
Climbing to his feet, pain shot through him, and Harry amended, not more injured.
Smith Apparated a moment later with the two stunned and Mobilicorpused wizards, more graceful than Harry could ever hope to be, and immediately stepped forward to wrap an arm around Harry, which was just as well because Harry realized that the world had begun to spin rather crazily.
"Time for St Mungo's, I think."
Dizziness swallowed Harry up, and he knew no more.
~*~
By the time Harry got home, it was almost four o'clock in the morning, and Harry's ears were now ringing not from the pain but from the comprehensive dressing down he had been given for being an idiot.
He'd been ordered to take tomorrow off, and if it wasn't quite a suspension, it was a near thing. Harry needed to get himself together, and he knew it.
Seeing a light on in the library, Harry headed in-and froze at the doorway at the sight of Theodore Nott sitting on the couch next to a sleeping Teddy.
He hadn't thought that he'd landed that hard, but maybe it had been going face-first into that wall…. Still, the mediwitch would surely have mentioned if he was prone to hallucinations, wouldn't she?
Nott had been reading but looked up at Harry's entrance.
"What happened to you?" he demanded blankly, but the question was asked quietly, in deference to the sleeping child, Harry imagined.
"Ambush," Harry said succinctly, really not wanting to get into the details right now. "What are you doing here?"
"Draco got called out, and you weren't back yet. I think he judged me least likely to be sleeping."
Harry could feel the swirl of anger tightening his gut, but he'd just been chewed out for being an idiot, and it wasn't like this was Nott's fault. It was true, at least, that Malfoy certainly shouldn't have just left Teddy alone.
"What's Teddy doing down here?"
Nott was watching him carefully. "Nightmare. Wouldn't go back to sleep upstairs, and this was the best I could do."
Harry nodded; it must have seemed very strange and probably alarming to the little boy to have neither Harry nor Malfoy respond to his nightmare.
Harry took off his cloak and then Banished it back to the peg by the door before Malfoy could get into another damn hissy fit about something of Harry's being somewhere inappropriate.
He crossed the room and scooped Teddy up into his arms, trying not to wince at the strain to his aching body. The little boy stirred sleepily.
"Hawwy?"
"That's right, Teddy Bear," Harry reassured him, kissing the top of his head. "Just putting you to bed. Go back to sleep."
Chubby arms clumsily wrapped round his neck, and the little boy curled more fully against Harry.
"'Kay."
Harry carefully carried Teddy up the stairs, not thinking about how much more slowly he was doing this than normal or what Nott was thinking back in the library. Not dropping Teddy was definitely the priority here.
He carefully unwound Teddy's arms from round his neck, got him settled under the covers in the bed and pressed another kiss to his messy hair. He waited a few minutes to make sure that Teddy was settled-he missed that ability to sleep so easily, even taking childhood nightmares into account-stopped off in his room to change out of yet another ruined set of clothes, and came back downstairs to see if Nott was still there.
Harry definitely wasn't going to be able to sleep if the man was just sitting down there, despite the fact that he was exhausted.
Nott was, indeed, still in the library, and maybe it was the exhaustion, but the surreality was hitting very hard again.
"Tea?" Harry asked.
There was a silent moment where they both considered one another, and then Nott nodded and rose to his feet to head into the kitchen with Harry.
Harry wasn't sure whether he'd been expecting Nott to do that or if he'd been hoping that the other man would just stay in the library so that Harry had a few minutes to gather himself together, but it was done now.
He put the kettle on, but then he found that Nott was guiding him to a seat at the table. He sat down and apparently looked as confused as he felt because Nott's lips tipped up a bit.
"You look as though you're going to keel over, Potter. I'm perfectly capable of making tea."
There was something wrong with this scenario, Harry was certain, but sure enough, Nott brought the kettle to a boil, found them mugs and tea and milk and sugar and managed to combine everything quite correctly in order to make them tea.
Harry sighed as the first mouthful slid down his throat. It was a little too hot, but that just meant that it burnt a trail of warmth down to his belly, and he'd been feeling cold for ages.
"This seems like a dream."
Harry hadn't meant to say the words and looked up, embarrassed, but Nott just let out a bark of laughter.
"Tell me about it. I don't think we exchanged two words at Hogwarts, and here I am making you tea in your house."
Tilting his head to one side as he really looked at the other man, Harry considered.
"You know, I think you're right," Harry repeated slowly.
"Hard to notice anyone else when Draco's got your attention."
Harry was sure that this was not a statement that he wanted to agree to, but on the face of it, there didn't seem to be any possible way to deny it. Malfoy had kind of eclipsed all the other Slytherin students put together.
"I had a lot going on in my life."
"When do you not? You look as though you lost an argument with the Hogwarts Express."
Harry's lips twitched up. "Kind of what it feels like, too. It was loads worse before I went to the hospital." He shrugged and offered philosophically, "Least I'm getting paid now."
Nott laughed again. "You know, Potter, you're not at all what I expected."
"You're not really what I expected, either," Harry agreed, since this seemed better than admitting that he hadn't really ever thought about the other man before at all.
Nott looked as though he knew what Harry was thinking, though, because he suddenly held out his hand.
"Theodore Nott. Nice to meet you."
Bemused, Harry nevertheless shook his hand and offered, "Harry Potter. Uh, likewise."
Despite what most people seemed to stupidly think, Harry wasn't at all opposed to Slytherins on principal; he'd just met a few that really, really annoyed him. He knew exactly what his reputation and theirs was, however, and he tended to find that many of them weren't interested in anything to do with him.
Nott, though, at least at five o'clock in the morning in Harry's kitchen, seemed genuinely willing to chat. Maybe he was just waiting until Malfoy got back, feeling the need to stay until the same parent who'd asked him over returned, but there could have been far less talking if that was the case.
And the other man certainly hadn't needed to introduce himself and get them going as though they'd never met before. Harry wondered if this approach would work on other Slytherins or people he'd made a bad impression on?
Harry had lost count of the number of cups of tea that he'd had by the time he was relaying to Theo Harry's first attempt at the stealth portion of the testing for Auror training.
"They seriously wanted your autograph?" Theo said incredulously, laughter threading through his voice.
"Still trying to figure out who put them up to it," Harry said darkly, though he was having trouble suppressing his smile. "I mean, I got mobbed, mobbed by people who just wanted to touch a hair on my head. How the hell was I supposed to move, never mind sneak anywhere?"
Theo dissolved into laughter, and Harry gave it up as a lost cause and grinned at him. This was when he realised that Malfoy was standing frozen in the doorway.
He cleared his throat, amusement dying into a bundle of nerves in his stomach at the look the other man was giving him.
"Hi, Malfoy."
Theo, whose back had been to the door, twisted round.
"Draco! Everything all right? You look a sight better than Harry, here."
Malfoy was looking at Harry with the singular suspicion you normally reserved for someone you suspected of Imperiusing a friend.
"I am perfectly fine," Malfoy drawled.
Harry wasn't even sure who that was insulting; Harry for getting injured, Theo for talking to Harry…. Harry felt suddenly exhausted again, the lightness that had come with speaking to a Slytherin who didn't hate him fading away like a balloon that had been punctured.
"Well, that's good to hear," Theo said good-naturedly as though he hadn't noticed the increased tension in the room. "Guess I'll be going, then. You two make sure that you get lots of sleep."
Harry was pretty sure that was Theo's way of telling them not to get into a fight when they were both tired. If only Harry knew how to not get into fights with Malfoy.
Theo squeezed Harry's arm and offered a, "Hope you're feeling better soon," before drawing Malfoy out into the hall with him.
Harry waved up a Silencing Charm so that he wouldn't have to hear Malfoy demanding to know what was going on or Theo excusing himself. He seriously considered dashing for the stairs while Malfoy was otherwise occupied, but with a sigh, he finished his tea instead.
He took the empty mug and tea things over to the sink because that at least gave him something to do. It was only once he'd tidied everything away that he realised that Malfoy had been gone for a long time.
Cautiously, he poked his head out into the hallway and discovered that there was no sign of the other man. Harry'd been gearing himself up for a confrontation that was apparently happening only in his mind.
He ached to go to bed, but looking at the clock, he realised that in less than an hour, Narcissa would be here to take care of Teddy. He had no idea if Malfoy had also been given time off given the late hour of whatever he'd been called in for, but it seemed unlikely that if Harry also went to bed now either of them would be up for the change over.
It was less than an hour, after all.
~*~
Narcissa woke Harry with her arrival through the Floo, and Harry looked up blearily to see that Teddy was sitting across the table from him eating cereal without milk that he'd mostly managed to pour into the bowl. It was clear that he'd tried to be as quiet as possible, and the little boy shushed Narcissa before he saw that Harry was awake.
Harry felt tears prick his eyes and came round the table to kiss Teddy on the top of the head.
"You don't ever have to be quiet so that you won't disturb me," Harry told him thickly.
He recognized that this wasn't exactly what he wanted to say. It probably set a bad precedent; surely there would be times where he wanted the little boy to be quiet. He knew that it was different, that Teddy had chosen to do it, and Harry hadn't ever ordered him to and wouldn't ever punish him for disturbing him, but it still … it still hit far too close to home.
Teddy twisted up so that he could kiss Harry's chin.
"You looked sleepy," Teddy said simply.
"I was a bit sleepy," Harry agreed, forcing back tears that the little boy wouldn't understand and which Harry had no interest in explaining to him, especially as Narcissa carefully watched the interaction. "But I'm still here to take care of you, and if you're hungry, then it's my job to get you food, all right?"
"All right, Hawwy," Teddy agreed with more solemnity than Harry thought, on balance, he actually wanted the little boy to display.
But he couldn't have it both ways, and he'd just hope that he'd got his point across in a friendly and non-confrontational manner.
"You want some milk with that cereal?" Harry asked.
Teddy nodded, so Harry moved to the fridge to retrieve it.
"Morning, Narcissa," Harry greeted the woman, pretending that he couldn't tell that she had heard and seen too much.
"Good morning, Harry. May I say that you look a little the worse for wear?"
Harry sighed.
"I've not looked in the mirror yet, but I can imagine. I've got the day off, so if you want-"
Narcissa didn't let him finish the sentence.
"How sensible of the Auror department to give you time to recover."
"But-"
"I want you upstairs and asleep within the next ten minutes, and I don't want to see you all day, do you understand me, young man?"
Harry was torn between laughter and something that was distinctly not laughter because this was so clearly a parental order-and how on Earth had he managed to acquire Narcissa Malfoy as a mother?-but one that seemed to be grounded in concern, one that was ordering him not to help out but to take care of himself instead.
So Harry drew a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth. Then he repeated the motion a couple more times for good measure. The Auror department had ordered him home to rest. He was lucky that Smith hadn't been badly injured, that things hadn't gone disastrously wrong because he was exhausted and ill-tempered. Here was Narcissa to do exactly what they'd asked her to do, and if he went to sleep now, then he could get up in the late afternoon and actually spend time with Teddy, which couldn't happen when he was out on stupid raids.
"Understood," Harry agreed finally, and Teddy was looking at him with wide eyes but that solemn expression again, nodding his head as though to say that he thought it was the best thing that Harry could do.
Harry sniffed again, kissed Teddy once more on the top of the head and told him to be good for Narcissa and then headed upstairs, passing by Malfoy's floor as quietly as he could, hoping that the other man got lots of sleep as well.
Maybe they could be civil to one another if they'd both had lots and lots of sleep. It was a nice dream, anyway.
Harry was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
~*~
Despite Harry's best intentions, the evening was spent sniping at one another with increasingly snide barbs. Harry really hadn't meant to get into anything contentious, but he was still tired and in pain, and before he knew it, he was needling at Malfoy for getting through easily on training exercises, Malfoy was arguing about his need for attention any way he could get it, and Harry lost his temper.
The stack of dishes he was gathering from the table was slammed back down with a rattle of pottery.
"At least I don't have to hide in the Department of Mysteries!"
"Please!" Malfoy whirled back from the sink. "As if you'd go anywhere where you didn't get to stand in the limelight like the attention-seeking prat that you are!"
"It's not my fault that people pay attention to me!"
Harry waved the dishes over to the counter so that he wouldn't have to get any closer to the other man.
"Random chance, is it?" Malfoy sneered.
"I damn well didn't ask Voldemorrt to come and kill my parents and mark me as his equal, now did I?" Harry snarled dangerously.
"Hawwy?"
Harry froze and then turned to see that Teddy was standing in the doorway into the kitchen clutching his stuffed owl, Hedwig. It looked as though neither he nor Malfoy had been paying any attention to how loud they'd gotten or how long it had been since they'd told Teddy they'd meet him in the library as soon as they'd cleaned up.
"Yes, Teddy?" Harry asked in a choked voice.
"Why are you so angwy?"
"I lost my temper. We meant to have a normal talk while you were out of the room."
"You and Dwako angwy with me?"
Harry sucked in a sharp breath and fell to his knees so that he was level with the little boy, pulling him into his arms and hugging him tightly.
"Of course we're not angry with you, Teddy. We're not ever angry with you," Harry assured him with every ounce of feeling that he possessed.
"Don't like it when you yell," the little boy confessed.
"We won't yell anymore," Harry promised.
Shit. Could Harry be any more of a screw up if he tried?
Teddy hugged him back, tugged Hedwig back up to his chest, and went back to the library.
Harry turned back to the kitchen to find that Malfoy was still standing next to the sink and didn't look as though he'd moved at all since they'd stopped fighting.
Swallowing heavily, Harry said, "Sorry about that, Malfoy. I've been having a rough few days."
Malfoy sniffed but at least didn't tell him off right then and there.
And then Malfoy surprised him.
"Why don't you head into the library, and I'll finish up here?"
Harry eyed the other man, but he seemed serious. It was definitely safer to get them out of the same room, and it would ensure that Teddy didn't worry in the library for very long.
Harry nodded, but at the door, he paused and turned back.
"I did try, you know," he admitted.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow.
"To become an Unspeakable. They wouldn't let me. Said that I'd make the whole department newsworthy rather than make me unworthy of news."
Malfoy stared at him for a long moment. "Perhaps that was their way of telling the Saviour of the Wizarding World that he wasn't good enough."
Harry suppressed a sigh and left for the library without another word.
~*~
By the time May arrived, Harry felt as though he'd lived the longest six weeks of his life-and he'd lived some pretty long weeks. But he'd never been in charge of a small child before, never needed to be so careful about his own behaviour because it materially affected someone young and innocent, someone who needed to be protected.
Plus, he'd never lived with a Malfoy before, and he was quite sure that that raised any challenge to a whole new level.
They'd been more careful since Teddy had caught them fighting, but it wasn't as though everything was now sunshine and roses. Harry had hoped that as time passed, they would get used to one another. He had even hoped, though he felt like an idiot admitting it even in his own mind now, that they might became friends.
Six weeks had taught him that he was a complete and utter idiot, and the most that he was hoping for now was a cessation of outright hostilities. He was hoping that they would survive the next decade taking care of Teddy, never mind that they'd enjoy themselves or get used to it.
There were moments that were all right, of course. When they both kept a lid on their tempers, when they concentrated on Teddy-and weren't fighting about something to do with him-when Narcissa or Molly were here and acted like the adults that they were that he and Malfoy never seemed able to achieve…. There were whole stretches of time where it was okay, but it felt…. It felt false. It felt as though he and Malfoy, when they were managing to get along, were just faking it, were pretending as best they could to make a bad situation ever so slightly better, and Harry wasn't so sure that they were going to be able to keep it up.
Statistically, they surely had to run out of things to argue about, literally run out of points of raising a child that they hadn't already hashed out to death, and yet it seemed at every turn that there was something new.
"What do you mean, he won't be going?" Malfoy demanded.
Harry swallowed and reminded himself that he had promised not to lose his temper. They could get through this if only they kept their tempers.
"I think I was very clear, Malfoy."
The other man faced off from him with narrowed eyes.
"So, just to make sure I understand: you, Harry Potter, are informing me, Draco Malfoy, that our ward is not going to the celebration?"
Bugger. He could actually hear Hermione's voice in his head telling him that he was an idiot.
"I shouldn't have said it like that," Harry admitted, deflating a little. "I didn't realise we were going to disagree about it. Why do you want to go?"
"Why wouldn't I want to go?" Malfoy demanded as though Harry was a complete idiot.
Harry huffed an incredulous breath. "Oh, let me see if I can come up with a list. Half the people we know died or nearly died? It was one of the worst days of my life-and I'd like to think yours, too."
Malfoy stiffened. Harry should have known better than to make any suggestion that he knew what the hell was going through the other man's head at any point.
"The Dark Lord died that day. That's what people are celebrating," Malfoy bit out. "They're remembering the people who made it possible, including Theodore's parents."
Harry swallowed. "So don't you see why it's better for him not to go?"
Malfoy threw up his hands. "Do you have no sense of family pride? No idea what is owed to your line and your blood?" His lips twisted into a cruel smirk. "Oh, wait. It's not your family or your blood."
Every piece of glass in the room exploded in a shower of sparkling shards. Windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles, beakers, more individual items than Harry could ever have thought about if he'd been thinking at all.
Fortunately for their continued health and safety, the shield that prevented them from being cut to shreds by all the flying glass had been equally unpremeditated.
Malfoy hadn't moved a single muscle since he'd whirled towards the window as it had exploded.
Harry couldn't hear, couldn't think, couldn't seem to stop shaking, knew only that if he stayed in this house one moment longer, he might do something truly unforgivable.
Without thought, he Apparated Teddy to him, and Malfoy had just whirled back to him at the sound of the "pop" when Harry wrapped his arms around the little boy and Side-Alonged them far, far away.
~*~
It took a long time for Harry to realise that his robe and trousers were wet where he was kneeling on the ground. The shaking had finally begun to taper off, and it was only now that it impinged upon him that a warm weight he was holding in a death grip was petting his hair and assuring him that everything would be okay.
Shit.
He sat back, and Teddy looked up at him with huge, solemn eyes, too serious for a child of four.
Harry had helped to put that expression there.
"I'm so sorry, Teddy," Harry exclaimed guiltily. "I'm stupid. I didn't think. I'm so sorry!"
But Teddy was still hugging him, still petting his hair, and still insisted that everything was okay.
As it turned out, it was harder to feel completely bad when a small child was trying to tell you over and over that it was okay. If nothing else, you needed to rally so that you could go back to being the adult and they would stop having to try so hard to take care of you.
Harry practiced his deep breathing for a few minutes. Seriously. The four year old was handling this better than Harry was. No wonder Malfoy thought that he was a complete and utter fuck up.
Thoughts of Malfoy caused anger to swirl through Harry again, but he forced the emotion down into the churning pit that was currently his stomach. Teddy was his first priority.
"You cold?" he asked.
Teddy shook his head. "You kept me warm. Still nice here."
"You remember it?" Harry asked, surprised.
The little boy nodded. "Came last year to see Mum and Dad."
Harry swallowed tears-he'd cried too many today-and nodded carefully.
"That's right. Are you okay to see them again?"
Teddy nodded, so Harry climbed to his feet and then cast a drying charm to take care of the bits of them that had been in contact with the wet grass.
It was quiet, at least, which made for a nice change from the yelling at home. Harry wondered if he should worry that Teddy thought this was a nice place, but then, Harry thought so himself. It was all in how you looked at it, he supposed.
They passed row after row of gravestones until they came to the headstone that proclaimed the resting place of Remus Lupin and 'Dora Tonks.
He was pretty sure that he'd inadvertently insulted Andromeda over this, but he'd been positive that Tonks wouldn't have wanted "Nymphadora" to be carved into rock for all to see. Though Andromeda hadn't explicitly said so and Harry certainly hadn't meant it that way, there was very little people wouldn't do for him in those early days following Voldemort's death. Harry had just been trying to make sure that she and Remus were taken care of to the best of his abilities.
There was aconite in bloom around the gravestone. Remus had asked for it, and Harry wasn't about to deny any request that the man had; Hermione had shown him how to charm the plant so that the flowers were always in bloom no matter the season. The flowers looked pretty, anyway, though Harry remembered to point out to Teddy that the plant was very poisonous and he shouldn't touch it. (Hermione had drilled it into him.)
Harry and Teddy sat down in front of the grave and talked about Teddy's parents. Harry told Teddy as many of the good things that he could remember, as well as talking about the reason that they had died, giving their lives to try to bring peace and freedom to the wizarding world and their son.
It was hard to hang onto even his incandescent rage at Malfoy, almost impossible to feel absolutely gutted about being the outsider once again when Teddy was curled up in his lap remembering his family.
This was what family did, wasn't it? What family was supposed to be? Caring about one another and loving one another? Remembering one another and answering questions?
It did occur to Harry, though, that there had been an easy way to resolve the issue that had led to his losing his temper so spectacularly.
"Would you like to go to the celebration at Hogwarts?" Harry asked.
"What's a celebwation?" Teddy wanted to know.
"Well, it's kind of like a big party." Teddy perked up, as Harry had known that he would, but Harry was trying to be as fair as possible. "There are lots and lots of people, and they've all come together to remember how the war ended, to remember everyone who died in the war."
"Like Mum and Dad."
"That's right," Harry agreed.
"Are there pwesents?"
Harry huffed a laugh that he told himself didn't sound a lot like a sob. "It's not really like a birthday party. There's usually food, though, but also lots of speeches. Sometimes people ask lots of questions if you know someone who had a lot to do with the War."
"You like the quiet," Teddy said far too wisely for a four year old.
"Yeah," Harry agreed on a sigh, realising that he hadn't ever truly stopped to think about how Teddy would feel about it, he'd just assumed that Teddy would feel the same way that he would.
Harry couldn't imagine ever returning to the party, not after he'd bailed five minutes into the first one. Maybe it was okay for everyone else. Maybe when the fucking Saviour of the Wizarding World wasn't there, it was perfectly fine. But it turned into a freak show when Harry was there, everyone wanting to interview him and talk to him and question him about one of the worst days of his life.
Maybe it would have settled if he'd stayed longer.
But Harry hadn't seen any remembrance for all the brave people who had fallen by his side. He hadn't seen much except a salacious interest in what he had done and a demented focus on him in the face of so many dead bodies. He had sworn never again, and so far, he had held true to that promise.
So he hadn't even thought about discussing it with Malfoy, had assumed that Malfoy wouldn't like the memories any more than Harry did. In his mind's eye, though, Harry could see that Malfoy had been wearing a very nice looking set of dress robes that brought out the colour of his eyes. Clearly, he had been all ready to go to the celebration, and it hadn't occurred to him that there was any question of their going.
Harry and Andromeda and Teddy had always come to the grave on this day, but now Harry didn't know if Andromeda had agreed with him or if she had just been giving him what he wanted.
"Would you like to go see what they're doing at the celebration now?" Harry asked, careful to keep his voice mild and the question unloaded.
Teddy was still curled up in Harry's lap, and he shook his head.
"Maybe Dwaco can take me next year."
Harry let out a shaky breath and held onto Teddy a little more tightly than necessary.
It was difficult to speak through the lump in his throat. "Love you, Teddy Bear."
"Love you, Hawwy."
Before they left, they went to see Harry's parents, because Harry had explained that he came to talk to his, too. He hoped that was normal and he wasn't setting the other boy up to have as many problems as Harry did. But it made him feel better, and while he hoped that Teddy would always feel that he could talk to those around him, none of them were actually his parents, not the ones he'd been born with, anyway.
So Teddy said hello to Lily and James and explained that their son was being a very good boy and taking care of Teddy.
Harry swallowed more tears and realised he was going to have to come back and set the record straight about the piss-poor job that he'd actually been doing.
As if to emphasise this point, Teddy's stomach gave a loud grumble, and Harry realised it had been hours and hours since they'd eaten. Teddy just giggled at the noise and agreed readily to finding a place to eat.
When they finished their meal, Harry found all sorts of suggestions for where they could go next crowding up his throat, but he knew that there was really only one option.
"Ready to go home?"
Teddy nodded, so home they went.
Malfoy was sitting in the kitchen nursing a mug of tea. All the damage that Harry had caused appeared to have been fixed. Malfoy looked pale, and his eyes flashed when he saw Teddy in Harry's arms. Or maybe that was just rage against Harry.
Teddy was yawning and agreed to a nap when Harry suggested it, though at this point Harry couldn't tell if the little boy was truly that tired-normally he was more likely to protest-or if he had the good sense to want to get out of the way of the upcoming confrontation. The latter was more awareness than Harry really wanted Teddy to have of the problems going on at home. Of course, the way things were going, you didn't even have to be very smart to notice.
So Harry went upstairs to lay Teddy down for his nap, and he couldn't blame Malfoy for trooping up the stairs and watching it happen and then trooping back down the stairs so that they could yell at one another in the kitchen once Silencing Charms had been cast.
Malfoy opened with, "I nearly called the Aurors."
Harry nodded, noticed how the sick feeling in his stomach was more apparent now, though he wasn't sure if that was because the steadying influence of Teddy was gone or because he was now back in front of the person who had denied him any connection to Teddy and to a family.
"You had every right to. I could have hurt you badly."
Malfoy scoffed. "As if they would have done anything about that."
Harry swallowed and decided not to even go there. "I haven't lost my temper like that in a long time. I apologize."
"Have a few anger management issues, Potter?"
Malfoy sounded almost amused rather than angry, but being mocked didn't really make Harry feel better.
"Only with you," he snapped.
Only with people who attacked his family.
Malfoy's eyes were cold like slate. "And what if Theodore is in the room next time?"
Harry swallowed. Malfoy wasn't the only one who'd had that thought; Harry couldn't blame him for bringing it up.
"I wouldn't let anything happen to him."
"You'd snatch him up and take him away instead?"
Harry realized his hands were clenched into fists and made himself uncurl his fingers one by one.
"I realise it was not appropriate," he said carefully. "I wasn't thinking very clearly."
He hadn't been thinking at all, but he recognized that whatever was going on between the two of them, they couldn't hold Teddy hostage.
Malfoy was just staring at him.
Harry cast around for what he was supposed to say. "It won't happen again."
Malfoy rose to his feet. "See that it doesn't."
Harry was left alone in the room. He hadn't felt this alone in a long time.
~*~
Malfoy regarded him with especially watchful, calculating eyes now, and Harry couldn't figure out if the other man was a bit afraid of him or was just even more certain that Harry was going to screw up.
Harry was on his very best behaviour, striving not to rise to any jibe or stray comment that Malfoy might make for fear that he would lose his temper again and inadvertently hurt Teddy. Harry remembered what it was like to always be on his guard, knowing he might need to dodge blows at any moment, and he would do anything to ensure that Teddy didn't live through the same thing.
It reminded him of what it had been like when people had thought he was the Heir of Slytherin, all that careful watching, only this time, Harry was really seriously fearful that the watchers were right. If he couldn't control himself, he wasn't a fit guardian, and if seven years of schooling with Malfoy had taught Harry anything, it was that the two of them didn't bring out the best in one another. He'd thought that he was well-trained and well past the age of reacting magically without thought, but now it seemed like he was better trained to do damage and more inclined to cause it in the one place he should have been striving to keep safest.
Narcissa and Molly had both asked him if he was all right, and he had shrugged them off as best he could. The person he was most concerned with feigning happiness for-or at least not admitting desolation-was Teddy, but the strain was taking its toll, and he wasn't so sure that the little boy was buying it. He was watching Harry almost as carefully as Malfoy was.
What with his personal life falling apart around him, Harry forgot until it was nearly upon him what the end of May brought. Four years ago, in the aftermath of the war, Ron and Hermione had joined a host of others in a whirlwind of weddings and celebrations.
A year and a half ago, everything had fallen apart, and what would have been their anniversary now marked the epicentre of extraordinarily bad temper and pettiness on both their parts, what appeared to be an annual tradition that Harry could really have done without.
Ron was complaining to Harry because the rest of his family had told him to shove it. (Even his mother, though Harry doubted she'd phrased it quite like that.) To hear Ron tell it, the entire world was out to get him.
Privately, Harry kind of understood the rest of the world's point, but he didn't want to start fighting with Ron on top of everything else. He just thought it would go better if Ron maybe acknowledged that what he'd done hadn't exactly been good.
"You don't know what it's like, Harry. Everyone's against me. As if it was my fault!"
Harry stared at him.
Ron's ears flushed red at the tips.
"It's been ages now! When is everyone going to let it go?" Ron blustered.
Harry suppressed a sigh. "It's an awkward situation, Ron. You're all together a lot, and it's hard to just let the matter go."
Especially when no one was willing to accept any of the blame or apologize for what had happened.
"You're so lucky, Mate. No family to cause you troubles like these."
Harry stood there, frozen, and let Ron's words wash over him. Lucky to have no family. Lucky.
He had Teddy who he was a danger to and Malfoy-wasn't that a laugh-who hated him, and not even his best friend thought they counted.
Hermione, by contrast, tended to get quieter and quieter towards everyone, and Harry had to make especial efforts to see her to prevent that disappearing act. He had always encouraged her to feel that he was "safe," meaning that she could vent to him and not worry it was going to be reported back to Ron, Lavender, or the other Weasleys.
Passing by Hermione's office, Malfoy drawled, "Say hello to Weasley for me, won't you, Potter? You've been spending a lot of time with him recently, haven't you?"
It was a particularly low blow. Harry cast an extra Silencing Charm to ensure that what was said in the office wasn't heard outside of it and hunkered down and just waited for the storm to hit. Hermione looked like she'd been zapped with a spine-straightening spell.
"Complaining about me a lot, is he?" Hermione demanded with that glint in her eye.
Harry swallowed. "We talk about lots of stuff, 'Mione."
"And he complains about me."
She said it like it was a foregone conclusion, which, he supposed, it was.
"Sometimes," Harry conceded reluctantly, feeling that it would be worse to lie.
Hermione's eyes flashed. "And you listen to him."
"Well, I-"
Her voice was arctic. "Back to the little boy's club, of course."
"Hey!" Harry yelped. "That's not fair. I listen to both of you, and I like both of you. I have never said that I thought what Ron did was right, but if I stopped being friends with him every time he did something stupid, you and I would probably be dead by now!"
"As if he ever did anything important!" Hermione snarled.
The vase on the shelf under Hermione's window exploded in a shower of glass, water, and flowers. Hermione jumped in her seat.
Distantly, Harry had to give her credit for the speed with which she'd erected the shield that ensured that none of the detritus got very far. But the rest of Harry was a gibbering mess because he'd just lost control again, lost control over a comment that was stupid but hardly worthy of rage.
Hermione turned back to look at him, then fixed the mess with a wave of her wand.
"I'm sorry," he croaked out miserably.
"Oh, Harry," she said in a much-altered tone of voice. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to put you in the middle."
"I know it's not easy," he garbled out through a mouth that felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton.
"It's impossible!" she agreed, sounding a little bit as though she were going to cry, which was really not good because Hermione normally only cried when Ron was being a complete arse, and he wasn't even in the room right now. "They're still my family, you know? You don't really get to divorce the family, only every time I'm there, they're there, and I just want to hide or maybe curse them. You don't know what it's like, you-"
Harry stood abruptly. "I have to go."
Hermione blinked at him, frozen mid-rant. "What?"
"I have to go," Harry repeated. "Sorry to cut this short. Early meeting today. I'll talk to you later, all right?"
"But, Harry-"
"Goodbye, Hermione."
Harry made himself walk down the hallway normally, made sure all the feelings were locked inside of him where no one could see them.
He didn't know what it was like because he didn't have a family. Hermione was the most rational person he knew, the one who had stuck with him through everything.
There was only thing to be done.