Jouasse/Jouissance

[reposoir]

I have to admit a few things.

1) The title came to me in Art History today. I was reading through the text and BOOM! there it was. I have a feeling only lilie_the_mouse will understand it. Amazing the things you learn in school.

2) Catherine, Caroline and Augustine may have been modeled on a young moi, a young Bitchmonster and a young Chofdar respectively. Please don't kill me! *hides*



Title: Jouasse/Jouissance

Author: Ociwen

Feedback: Please! (an_fisher@hotmail.com)

Rating: Eh…I think it’s an R, but everyone else will think NC17…

Spoilers: All 5 books.

Summary: Written in response to a challenge at the Opposites Yet Attracted FQF: 86. After a messy divorce from Pansy, Draco finds that he is very much attracted to his father's husband of the last ten years, Harry Potter. (Starkindler)

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Archiving: Truthfully, that is a good question. Please email me about that if you are concerned/interested. So far just the Opposites_Yet_Attracted Yahoo group and my Livejournal (eventually).

Author notes: Eternal thanks to my betas, broken_birdie, ygrane and berne. I shall join the harem of your sultannesses. That made no sense. But I wouldn’t have been able to do it without your edits, comments and support. *loves*

There’s a reason I’m not mentioning any pairings. Please bear with me on that. There’s nothing too squicky, nothing out of context from the challenge.

Drugging people with opiates is bad

Jouasse/Jouissance

“What is this?”

It was a day off work and he was relaxing with a racy book, since his wife rarely put out these days. Draco looked up from the pocket novel he’d been reading on the couch. Dangling from a pearly-tipped nail was a scrap of black nylon.

He sucked in a breath and his eyes continued upward, up the hand, the arm, the neck. The nail belonged to Pansy, his wife, whose face was white and still. Her rouged lips looked garish; they were pursed and scowling. Heavy black makeup was smeared around her eyes.

“I said,” she continued in a dead whisper that sat heavily in the pit of Draco’s abdomen, “what. is. this?”

Draco swallowed involuntarily. His tongue caught in his throat. Twin red patches stained his pale cheeks. “Its-” he croaked, then averted his eyes immediately. This was far too personal tell Pansy. Far too personal.

“Yours?” he offered lamely with a shrug.

The slap of her hand across his face stung.

Pansy’s chest swelled up- whether it was from a sob or rage he wasn’t certain. “Whose is this Draco?” she hissed, a fresh tear streaming down her face in a rivulet of kohl. “This isn’t mine!” She waved the thong in front of his eyes, so close to his nose that he could tell it hadn’t been washed anytime recently. “Who is she?” Pansy shrieked. “Who? I’ve found this now and you never come home anymore. You never touch me, you never let me touch you! You had that card in your wallet for a ‘Gentlemen of Like Taste’s club! You- you-” she screamed, her voice grating his ears. The half-empty wine glass on the coffee table jiggled. “Who is it? It’s one of those sluts who call themselves your assist-”

Draco cringed at the thought of Debbie’s gaping smile and globular breasts. “It’s not them, I-”

Pansy glared at him, looking ever more disheveled and distraught. “So there is someone. I knew it! I knew it, you disgusting fucking prick. You absolute bastard! How could you? A wife and three-”

His face was on fire now. He had never intended for Pansy to find out like this. He would have told her, yes, eventually when he was sure she would understand his…his needs. The mortification of the whole situation was unbearable. What if she told people? Why did he forget to pick the thong up after? He never meant to hurt her. And them. Draco knew it was going to hurt his family the way Pansy was carrying on, the whole reason he’d tried to be discreet and quiet about it.

“Pansy,” he said looking up at her seriously. If he could salvage the situation… “It’s not you, it’s me.”

His wife snapped out of her tirade. “Oh? ‘It’s not you, it’s me’? You’re trying to give me that? I don’t think so, Draco Malfoy! I don’t think so! I ought to hex your balls off with an Incendio. Watch you scream like a girl as they blister and burn!” She threw the dirty thong at him, which landed on his arm in a heap of string and scrap fabric.

He picked the scrap off himself and stood up. He was taller than her by a good deal, but the height difference hardly gave him the necessary confidence. “It is me. You can’t…satisfy me anymore. God knows you’ve tried…”

The tantric sex spells, the titillating lubes, the whips, the food drizzling, the vibrating charms, even when Pansy grudgingly suggested he might enjoy it anally.

Nothing. It always felt like she was a limp piece of meat with orifices to him. Her kisses gagged him; her touch was deflating.

Draco reached for her hand, but Pansy pulled back with a grimace of disgust. She wiped her hand roughly on her voluminous skirts.

“So that’s what this is about? Those…weird sexual fetishes you have?” She gave a choked sob and brought a shaking hand to cover her mouth. “I’ve tried Draco, I’ve tried-”

“I know you have!”

Pansy ignored him. “Tell me what to do. Help me to understand!” She pleaded, blinking tear-stained brown eyes up at his grey ones.

“I…” He needed to say it. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I think I’m gay.”

The trying smile that quivered on Pansy’s lips faded completely. “What?” she whispered, backing away from Draco and into a low French oak table. “What did you say?”

“I’m gay,” he stated, confidence growing once the words were out. “I’m sorry if I-”

“Gay?” she sputtered. “Gay?!” Pansy took another step back, almost tripping over her long mint robes that gathered at the waist. Her lip curled slightly and her nostrils flared. She looked feral. In a split second she grabbed a jade vase off the mantle and hurled it at Draco’s head.

Woman’s aim, thank God.

The vase missed his elbow. Barely. Instead it smashed into the scarlet plaster of the wall with a crunch of stone. There was a small mark of chipped plaster where it had hit, white bone against the red.

“You are not gay, Draco! You have three children! No one who is gay has kids! Kids and a wife!” She shook her head wildly, brown curls bouncing stiffly. “No. No. No! Someone’s placed a curse on you. A curse! What about the temp from your office- the one you transferred to another department because he transfigured your desk accidentally into a porcupine?” Pansy drew her wand from her side pocket and pointed it at him. She laughed shrilly, high-pitched and grating. “It’s a curse, darling. Let me help. Some awful person who’s after you or your father, who wants to hurt your family. There were so many people furious when Lucius was released, remember? All those threats? I won’t let them hurt us. I can help-”

Draco whipped his own wand out of his black robes. “No! It’s not a curse, Pansy, I just am!”

Pansy didn’t move. She was eerily still. After a pregnant pause, she said “So…you’re gay?”

Draco nodded, not sure where she was going. She used to constantly twist his words around when they were dating …

“I see.” Her lips were pursed, her eyes guarded. “You like…men?”

He nodded again, his face reddening with her blunt words.

“I see.” Her gaze hardened, her eyes narrowed further into little slits. Something Draco liked to do when he was mad. They’d been married so long, of course she’d picked up on his habits.

“Good bye, Draco.” With a click of her high boots, she turned towards the corridor of their flat that led to the bedrooms.

Draco stood stunned for a minute, absorbing her words. Then he ran after her and found his wife in their bedroom, hastily packing a purple leather trunk full of expensive robes and jewelry and cosmetic tinctures and creams.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded angrily from the doorway. “Accio robes.” He caught a set of azure robes in his hands. Pansy marched over and yanked them back. Then she stalked into the closet.

“What am I doing?” she shrieked as teal, magenta, indigo robes flew into her trunk with waves of her wand. She paused, considering. Draco could hear her brain ticking. “I’m leaving. I don’t need this anymore. Nearly ten years I’ve put up with you…and your aberrations! Almost ten years and three children. I want my life back, Draco.”

Pansy refused to utter another word until she was standing at their fireplace, trunk ready to floo to her parents’ house in North Hampshire. Draco tried to take hold of her hand feebly, to try and explain again, tell her how sorry he was. His mouth froze, though and the apologetic words didn’t come. At the touch of his warm skin to her own, she recoiled. He was an anathema.

“Don’t touch me!” she hissed.

Then her face softened, as though reflecting something warmer of a mutual past they’d shared.

“Tell the girls I love them.”

* * * * *

(Three weeks earlier)

The smouldering glow of a cigarette was the only light in the dark alleyway behind the club. Using a Lumos would have drawn too much attention. Draco could hear the muffled moans, laughter and low beats of the music drifting out from the side door. It was nearly autumn, but the nights were cold enough that he didn’t look out of place with his cloak pulled low over his face. Whether it was for hiding or warmth, though, he couldn’t tell.

With a puff of stagnant grey smoke, the lone figure approached Draco. “Here again?” The low voice was husky. Whether it was deliberate or from a recent blow-job, he couldn’t tell.

Draco glanced over to get a better look. The blonde hair was dyed dark at the tips, but the roots were visible and familiar, as was the height and the lanky casualness the other figure held himself with. “Yeah,” he agreed, eyes checking over his shoulder warily. His cloak fell back a little. “Looks like you are too, Smi-”

The figure brought a chilled hand- the one not holding the fag- up to Draco’s hip, halting the name. “Just Zacharias here.”

Draco nodded, shuddering under the touch of another man. The casual gesture Zacharias gave him caused his blood to pump faster, deeper, harder than anything Pansy had ever done in all the years they’d been together and Lord knew she’d tried. Even the enchanted strap-on she bought for his twenty-sixth birthday could hardly compare to the real thing.

By now Zacharias had tossed his butt onto the ground and crushed it into the mildewed cobblestone with the crunch of a soft boot. “Figured everything out yet?” he asked lightly, a smile playing at his bruised lips.

Definitely a blow-job then.

Draco blinked and gave a choked sigh of affirmation.

Zacharias raised an eyebrow, leering at Draco, even though they were close in height. Draco felt so out of control. He’d known the other man at Hogwarts- but Zacharias had been a year younger in classes, less experienced in the world.

But now he was the naïve one.

Zacharias didn’t stop there. He pulled Draco’s hands around his body to cup his arse roughly. Draco gasped at the touch. The last time they’d met all the two of them had done was share a few clandestine kisses and chitchat in the darkness of the club. They’d had a few shots of premium malt Firewhiskey Draco bought, but this…this was sobering. This was taking it a step beyond.

“Mmm…” Zacharias mumbled something unintelligible and stroked the tip of Draco’s ear with his index finger. The lightness brought shudders all the way to the base of Draco’s spine. “Is this what you want?” he whispered. The words themselves made Draco’s cock jump.

Draco let out a primal groan and his hips strained forward of their own eager accord. Zacharias laughed, wiggling closer himself. Draco could feel a hard, hot brand against his thigh. His eyes widened and his breathing grew shallow in anticipation. His hands that had shyly rested on the topmost part of Zacharias’ arse slid lower and began to knead the soft flesh tentatively. He didn’t know if Zacharias- or men in general- liked it, but Pansy had a lot and the other man wasn’t complaining yet.

And then the reality of it all crashed down.

He pulled back. Pulled his hands away, untangled himself.

“What?” Zacharias said irritably, as though Draco’s actions had angered him. He picked at his arse and adjusted his cock through his trousers.

Draco didn’t know quite how to phrase it. It seemed so ridiculous now, in the heat of the moment, all his worries. “It’s just…Are you wearing a thong?” he asked incredulously.

Zacharias didn’t answer. Then as the silence lengthened into something taught and tense, he burst out laughing. “Is your wife home tonight?”

Draco allowed himself a strained, nervous laugh of his own. “No,” he admitted, “she’s at a dinner party Goyle’s wife is throwing.”

Zacharias licked his lips. Draco’s resolve settled in his trousers. “Well then,” he said resolutely, taking one of Draco’s hands into his own, “why don’t you and I floo to your place and find out what’s in my trousers?”

* * * * *

Draco sat in his office, parchments still requiring his signature strewn across the dark wood of his desk. He brought his hands up to rub his temples and groaned. How much more work did he need to finish tonight? His signature seemed to be needed to authorize everything. The divorce just got messier and messier. Pansy wanted compensation. She wanted the flat, a third of the yearly allowance from his father, half of the assets they had, and the silver car that Draco liked to drive to work on Fridays.

There was a soft knock on his door.

Draco blinked and sat up straight. He brushed a stray lock of hair back from his eyes. It felt lank and limp; he wondered when was the last time he’d had a chance to shower. “Come in,” he mumbled.

The door opened slowly. Catherine, his eldest daughter, was standing in the doorway- at least Draco thought it was Catherine. Her blonde hair fell messily down her back and hid her face in a veil of shy childishness. Her white nightgown was crumpled and had what appeared to be a raspberry jam trail down the chest.

Draco wondered who was supposed to do the laundry.

She looked at her father expectantly, with wide grey eyes fixed on him.

The one thing Pansy didn’t want. Their daughters. “You can’t even tell them apart anymore!” she had shrieked into the Floo chat last week when they had squabbled over the silver car. “Well this is your chance!”

“Er…” Catherine was biting her lip. If Draco’s mother had still been alive, she might have scolded Catherine to not do so. Draco wasn’t sure if it was ‘lady-like’ or not, so he let it pass.

“Er…” he replied. He didn’t know quite what to say to her. What did you say to a six- or was it seven?- year old who knocked on your home study in the middle of the night?

Catherine left as quietly as she’d come

* * * * *

“Father, please!” Draco winced at himself after realizing how childish he sounded. But his father was being awfully stubborn himself. “Please!” His knees were stiffening from having to kneel down on the marble hearth of the fireplace. He wanted the firechat over soon.

Lucius’ face, looking far more verdant and glowing in the floo flames than in person, scowled. “It isn’t prudent in the least for a twenty-eight year old man to come whining to his parents after every scuffle with his wife, Draco.”

Draco shifted his knees a little to the left. That was an awful stretch of the truth! The last time he’d ‘whined to his parents’ was when Pansy refused to speak to him after that conference in Milan the six weeks before…”But Father, Pansy’s going to take possession of the flat tomorrow! Where will I stay?”

Lucius smirked at his son’s plight, ostensibly to make him act his age. “Not at the Manor,” he said resolutely. “I’ve told you that before, I don’t want you staying here.”

“But-”

“I’m sure your wife-”

“Ex-wife now, Father. The divorce papers have been signed and notarized now.”

“Ex-wife, then,” Lucius continued, regardless of the interruption. “I’m sure Pansy would be more than willing to make concessions if you…” he trailed off purposefully, a pale eyebrow rising and making a slight crease in his high forehead.

“If I what, Father?” Draco asked. Honestly! His father could be so enigmatic at times. He hadn’t the faintest idea what the old man was getting at. With age clearly comes no wisdom….

“If you do something to please her, Draco!” Lucius snapped. His cane popped out of the green flames and rapped Draco hard on the thigh, the closest thing he could aim for. “Have you no sense at all in that empty head of yours? It’s no wonder she’s divorcing you!”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. He was twenty-eight years old and his father was still treating him like an ignorant child. God, he had children of his own! “No, Father,” he spat back, “that’s not the reason! I just don’t like women anymo-” He gasped, clapping a hand over his mouth to stop himself. Dear Lord, had he just-

Lucius chuckled lowly, a deep rumbling through the green flames that made the quiver with frisson. “Oh?” He smirked at his son. “You beat the other sort of Bludger, do you?”

Draco could feel his face on fire. This was horrible, mortifying. Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut? He kept his eyes downcast, on his hands resting innocently on his knees. There was no way he could look his father in the eye.

“This is certainly a turn of events,” Lucius sounded amused, “though I must say, I’m hardly surprised.” Draco could practically hear the half-smile on his father’s lips. “Well…there really isn’t anything you could do to please a wife now, is there?”

Draco looked up hopefully at the words his father was using. Might he be able to? The words “Can I please?” were on the tip of his tongue once more.

But then Lucius’ green-hazed eyes themselves narrowed. “It would be…wise to avoid any sort of further scandal that could taint our name, wouldn’t it?”

Draco nodded quickly, ever the acquiescing son. He wasn’t sure where this was leading.

“Pansy hasn’t…told anyone of your…anomaly?”

Draco shook his head. “No,” he mumbled, “she was too embarrassed to even tell Daphne Nott.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“And you haven’t purchased any other houses elsewhere? Any private villas anywhere? The Alps? Tuscany? The Dalmatian coast? I gave you more than enough…”

Draco couldn’t help but think of all the illegal joyrides he’d bribed Dennis Creevey into giving him in Creevey’s Viper three years before. Or those ultra-modern Muggle stereo-systems he kept hidden under cloaking and silencing spells in his home office- he’d have to make sure Pansy didn’t get those when she took over the flat.

“No, Father.”

Lucius sighed with exaggerated exasperation. “Would that I could have a son with a spine in his back!”

Draco perked up, suppressing a triumphant smile. It was inevitable that his father caved. One word was all he needed. One word!

“Fine.”

* * * * *

Less than a week later- as Pansy had taken pity on Draco and given him a few more days to pack up and get out- Lucius pushed open a white-trimmed door with a brass handle. It swung widely to reveal a wide, window-lit room with a blue-sheeted bed to the one side and a seating area on the other side, complete with toile Louis XV chairs and a writing desk.

Draco toed his heavy trunk, made lighter and more compact with several intricate charms to include most of his possessions, over the threshold with his boot. Lucius nodded to the house elf to leave the remaining suitcases and chests where they were, outside the room. Draco frowned. Not only had he had to cart his trunk up the stairs himself, but now he was expected to drag everything inside the room too? His father hadn’t exactly been a very warm host- not, Draco reminded himself, that he was a guest at Malfoy Manor. For the most part Lucius had remained reserved, nodding curtly, standing stiffly, eyeing Draco with cold, calculating eyes. His father had really only seemed to warm up when Catherine and Caroline had torn into the large pink guestroom decorated with white and yellow daisies that fluttered in non-existent breezes. Augustine was more shy and timid, clinging not to her father’s leg, but a tattered plaid blanket. Draco was beginning to notice that she dragged the silly scrap everywhere. He was sorely tempted to use his wand to levitate the blanket to a rubbish bin, but a new-found parental intuition got the better of him. He reckoned that would have caused dire consequences.

“Father,” Draco said as formally as he could when he was shown where he himself would be staying, “why I am in a guest room? What’s wrong with my old room? This one is all the way in the east wing.”

“Mmm…” Lucius considered, running the silver tip of his cane with languor along the edge of Draco’s trunk. “Surely you have outgrown the Wimbourne Wasps posters by now,” he said lightly, almost teasing. His voice was too cold to be completely jovial, though. “Unless, of course you’d like them relocated to this room to watch the male players wink at you?”

Feeling his face flush- Thank God the girls were exploring their room now!- Draco conceded, if only to stop any further comments like that. “Yes, but-”

“Draco,” Lucius drawled, “I will not have you there. This is my home, you forget. Not yours.” He leaned in closely to Draco and a rush of cold air on his face made Draco shiver. He could smell the heavy, musky patchouli and something else that seemed to always cling to his father these past few years. “You will keep to your area. Here. And I will keep to mine. Is that understood? And you will tell my granddaughters to stay away from the west wing. Far too many…dangerous things there…”

Draco hadn’t the slightest idea what his father meant. All of the worst Dark Arts objects were still under the drawing room floor, as they had always been, though under heavier cloaking spells than in his youth. He blinked. He nodded, albeit puzzled. “Yes, Father.”

Lucius nodded back briefly. “Good.” He ran a hand along the front of his brocade robes, smoothing out a slight wrinkle. “Dinner is at six. I’ll see you then.”

And then he was gone, leaving Draco alone with his trunks and bags in the middle of an airy light, but slightly stale and musty old guest-room.

Draco had to wonder when his father had last had guests at the Manor. It was hard to say. Crabbe Sr. was incapacitated now. Goyle Sr. had died of a heart attack years before. Most of his father’s other old friends were dead or disgraced.

Besides, his mother had always been the one to entertain visitors and she played hostess well. Charismatic, charming, beautiful, graceful. Since her death would his father have taken up that beloved role himself? He doubted that. Lucius never spoke of Narcissa since she died, nearing eleven years ago now. His father still even wore his gold wedding band, for remembrance Draco reckoned. His mother had never had a chance to see him married. She was killed in the prime of her life. By Potter, no less. Of all the people! Potter had killed his mother, countless others, including his Aunt Bellatrix- whom Draco had hardly known, but that didn’t count- and vanquished the Dark Lord, all in one fell swoop.

Draco absolutely hated the bastard for all he had done. With every fibre of his being. But in the end, it was he who had the last laugh.

Because Potter was gone now too.

No one was certain he was dead-gone- Draco liked to think so- but no one was certain Potter was still kicking either. He’d simply disappeared, as the Dark Lord had when he was incinerated in that fire. Only, once every while there would be headlines in The Quibbler. Potter was sighted. Often in the company of a dark cloaked figure that some claimed to be the Dark Lord himself! About fourteen months previously had been the latest report. Some crackpot old wizard had seen Potter on a broom in some lonely neibourhood in Salisbury.

So if Potter wasn’t dead, he wasn’t around either. Some thought he had left the Wizarding world all together, gone to live in a Muggle commune in Brazil. Draco didn’t like that idea. It was too cliché. And disgusting, really. He couldn’t fathom why anyone would give up magic to live with Muggles. Sheer lunacy.

Even if they did have some nice cars.

Nope. Potter was as good as dead. And that suited Draco just fine.

Besides, Draco didn’t have time to think about whether or not Potter was dead. He had other more urgent familial matters to attend to. He moved back into Malfoy manor on a Saturday. When he sat down to breakfast the following Monday, he was alone at the grand oak table with the mother-of-pearl inlay in the dining room. The high ceiling ricocheted the scattered vermilion sunlight that was rising in the trees to the east. It was quiet save for the faint flapping of the sheer curtains that fluttered ever so slightly and the clattering of his fork tines on the china plate. Draco was blearily reading The Daily Prophet. Interest rates at Gringott’s were low again- no big surprise. Someone named Fletcher had a third hearing for public indecency that afternoon at the Ministry- nothing exciting there. There was a wedding announcement for a Miss Ginny Weasley on page thirteen. Draco smirked to himself- wasn’t she that carrot-top girl who gave Potter that atrocious Valentine in his second year?

“Probably” he murmured between bits of toast.

Draco stabbed his fork into a piece of sausage and lifted it to his mouth. He dropped it hastily as something foul permeated the air. Something rotten and dirty. His nostrils twitched and his lip curled. “What the hell…?” He glanced over his shoulder.

A house elf in a mildewed, stained and ripped dishtowel was groveling in the corner by the marble Adonis nude his mother had bought in Siena. “Sir?” it croaked.

Draco groaned, setting down the newspaper next to his plate. “What is it now, you filthy shit?” He glared at the house elf and despite its trembling, took a careful step forward.

The house elf pulled a parchment envelope from a fold of its rag. “Sir, this is coming for you this morning, sir. An owl delivered-”

“I know damn well owls deliver things. Give it to me!” He snatched his letter from the house elf’s grubby fingers. “Get lost,” he ordered. As it slunk out of the corner, Draco stuck his foot out from under his chair. He gave the creature an awkward kick and it yelped.

“I thought I said get lost.”

The house elf gave a jagged bow and with a CRACK! it was gone.

Draco snapped the black wax seal of his letter. He could hear the stove door banging open and closed repeatedly, with interspersed yelps of pain. Draco laughed and perused his letter casually.

Mr Malfoy,

It has come to our attention that your recent divorce with Mrs Pansy A. Malfoy (nee Parkinson) has resulted in your translocation of residence from London to Wiltshire. Unfortunately, due to the unstable nature caused when marriages sour, we at the Ministry firmly believe that-

Draco threw the letter down in disgust, his hands shaking with rage. “How dare they? How dare they?” he snapped at the portrait of his great grandmother that hung over the porphyry fireplace. She sniggered.

“What now, dearest Draco?” she cooed, flapping her feathered fan. Her rouged lips curled up in mockery. “What did he do now?”

“What?” Draco snapped out of his reverie. “What are you talking about?”

Great grandmother smirked. “What did your darling Potter do now? You were always talking about him when you lived here last.”

“Potter!” Draco snarled. “Potter? He’s got nothing to do with this!”

“Oh?” His great grandmother raised a thinly plucked white eyebrow.

“I’ve a letter from the Ministry. They told me to either see a counselor at St. Mungo’s or I’m as good as fired for an ‘indefinite period of time’ because of my divorce. My divorce! That bitch, she must have told the whole department slurs. Slander. That was why she gave me that extra time to move out. I’m perfectly capable of working at the time being!” He stood up from his cushioned, high-backed chair and stalked over to stare eye-level at the oil painting. “Well?” he hissed when she just smiled silently, enigmatically for a long moment. “What now?”

“Divorce is rather unseemly, don’t you think?” Great grandmother Malfoy shrugged, her slate taffeta dress crinkling. “Haven’t you got children to take care of now, my sweet?”

He recoiled at the question. He hadn’t thought of that. Wouldn’t the house elves watch his daughters? No, that wasn’t a good idea. A nanny? No, Pansy said they stole from their employers too often. Truthfully, he didn’t think of his children much. Pansy had always been the one to take care of them while he was at work. Wasn’t she the one who taught them their reading, writing and maths?

Or at least, Draco reckoned she did. He didn’t recall Pansy ever mentioning tutors- Draco had had one when he was a child. Mr…Adlam? He was probably dead now…Maybe his daughters weren’t even old enough for schooling. How old was Catherine? She had to be at least six or seven by now. Was that old enough for learning letter, numbers and Nordic runes? A few rudimentary spells?

“You’re right,” Draco said to the painting. Great grandmother looked flustered at her own suggestion. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Great grandmother recovered herself with a smirk. As Draco left the dining room to go wake his girls, he could have sworn he saw her lips move and the words “female intuition” form.

From that point on, things began to form a sort of routine at Malfoy manor. Lucius was always up and off to work at the Ministry before Draco and his three daughters woke up. He didn’t see much of his father except at meals, but Catherine, Caroline and Augustine seemed fine with this. They never complained about the lack of their grandfather being around. They had never seen him much in their infancy, except at Christmas and major holidays. Draco half-wished his father would have made more of an effort to get to know his granddaughters, but he himself barely knew them, so he couldn’t blame him.

In the mornings, after breakfast, Draco discovered was the best time for a bit of schooling for his two elder daughters. He checked the Malfoy family bible one late one night in the library and found out his daughters were seven, five and two and a half respectively. That sounded about right.

Thus the first step to getting to know his daughters a bit more was taken.

As much as Draco would have liked to have had male children, he decided that girls were just fine. They weren’t too loud and they were fairly clean and well-behaved. Maybe he would even buy them some training brooms in the spring and teach them some basic Quidditch moves.

One evening, while his father found a rare moment to spend in the library with his granddaughters (no doubt reading them a copy of Gory Stories For Children), Draco flooed to Diagon Alley. Ever the opportunist, Draco purchased the primers Catherine said they used in their studies. Draco wasn’t sure what level of primers to buy, so he bought the whole series.

This turned out to be a wise move. The following morning Caroline scribbled her name in block letters on Level One with a purple crayon and Catherine diligently, if sloppily, handwrote her name with an eagle feather quill Lucius had given her the night before.

For the most part, Catherine and Caroline were self-sufficient in their studies. They read the lessons and worked on the questions with little intervention. Augustine, on the other hand, needed a bit more attention. Upon discovering she was toilet-trained, Draco attempted to have her play with her blanket (or other toys) quietly in his bedroom while he either caught up on some light reading (sorely missed with the mess of the divorce) or he tried to keep up with the goings-on in his office that Dennis Creevey, his former assistant, prompted him via owl mail.

No sooner would Draco turn his back before the contented babbling of his youngest daughter would dissipate into the hallway. Draco would find Augustine in the corridor outside his bedroom playing with the Italianate silver-plated suit of armour (it would pose for her) or touching the antique Han dynasty jasper vases.

Once, though, he had been too far absorbed in a passage depicting the glorious capturing of the Dark Wizard Guildenbourne (a seventeenth century predecessor of Grindelwald who liked to kidnap innocent wizarding youths and bugger them into submission and Dark services) that he didn’t catch up with Augustine’s disappearance until she had toddled off all the way to the wrought-iron and marble landing that separated the east and west second floor wings.

“No!” Draco said sternly, scowling, doing his best to emulate the voice and tone he remembered his father using in his childhood. “Father told me not to go towards that wing” he pointed, so she would understand, “and if I can’t, Augustine, neither can you.”

Augustine didn’t say anything, but her lip quivered, much like Pansy’s did, and her grey eyes filled up with tears. She refused to hold Draco’s hand as they walked back towards the east wing.

Draco didn’t know quite how to respond, so he didn’t say anything either.

But as they were walking, there was a strange, low moan in the distance. Like a rumbling cat’s yowl or a groan of pain.

“What the-” Draco glanced behind them, but there was nothing save a dim hallway lined with curios and silver mirrors and old paintings. He frowned. One of the house elves must have done something to itself. He smiled at the thought.

In the afternoons, however, the girls would go off by themselves in their shared guestroom- Draco kept waiting for the hair-pulling fights to occur- and play. Draco had wanted to give them each their own bedroom- Lord knows there were more than enough to go around in the Manor! But before he had the chance to get more than one phrase out of his mouth to tell his daughters, Augustine would start crying. Caroline would have a tantrum and kick the walls hard enough to leave dents in the walls and bruises on her legs.

Draco would always give up. So long as they weren’t hurting each other, it seemed fine to him.

Besides, he didn’t know a charm to un-dent walls- though he did learn one to take crayon off them. He ended using a concealing charm with his wand. He hoped his father wouldn’t notice. Perhaps he would need to bribe the house elves.

The matter had been settled officially when Draco conceded to allow his daughters to share the guestroom and it was sealed with a large plate of chocolate digestives brought from the kitchens by a house elf.

“You can even kick the house elves, Caroline,” Draco told his middle daughter with a sadistic grin. “I used to do that when I was your age.”

Caroline, initially looking a bit surprised at Draco’s casualness, marched up to the house elf and hit it in the knee with her foot. She grinned and ran back to her father, preening.

He smirked and nodded, proudly. “Well done!”

Sometimes Lucius would come home early on Thursdays and Fridays- usually Fridays- in the mid-afternoon. When he did, he would summon Draco into his own office, a dark panelled room in walnut quatrefoils, and they would sip brandy together.

“So tell me Draco,” Lucius would say, “what have you been doing all day with my granddaughters?”

Initially, Draco hadn’t known what to say. When Catherine was born, he was sure his father was disappointed the latest Malfoy heir was a female, so Draco pushed Pansy for more children. With Caroline and lastly Augustine both girls too, Pansy refused to have any more. Draco worried, but his father had always kept mum about the issue.

He must be warming to them, Draco thought.

The first time Lucius had asked Draco that question, Draco tentatively mentioned that he had been doing a bit of schooling with Catherine and Caroline and that they had all had lunch together that day. Afterwards, he glanced up at his father, the vague sense of shame in having to do a woman’s work stained his face.

But his father only smiled and offered him more brandy. Draco recoiled a bit in shock. “Father?” He set down his glass of brandy on a cherry side table.

“Are they making good progress with you?” Lucius asked as he filled Draco’s glass from a crystal decanter. “Better than with your wife?”

Draco blinked. “I- I suppose.” He really didn’t even know Pansy had been the one schooling them until the previous week. He didn’t have much to gage his daughters’ progress on.

“I have always maintained that a male tutor was far superior to a woman- that is why your mother never saw to your early schooling.” Lucius took a sip of brandy and leaned back in his studded leather armchair. “And look where you are now!”

Draco smiled. It was at times like this when he felt as close and as comfortable with his father as ever.

Over brandy he and his father wouldn’t talk of the news of the day, but instead of the family. Lucius brought up memories of his own father, of his youth, of Draco’s youth and Draco relished all of the words carefully, hung off every phrase his father said. Sometimes Draco would try to recapture something humorous that had happened with his own daughters in their morning lessons and Lucius would smile and nod, but he would not press for details.

The one thing his father never spoke of, much to Draco’s disappointment, was his mother. His father still obviously mourned her; he refused to take off his gold wedding band even after ten years. The great love of his father’s life for twenty-one years and nary a word was said. Even the oil painting of his mother at twenty-five, flush with stunning youth and feminine beauty was long removed from his father’s study. In its place hung a tacky chartreuse and gold tapestry of a stylized lion rearing up at the viewer- it often growled at Draco, especially the closer it was to midday. For the most part, it was quiet.

Three days after the ides of October, Augustine celebrated her third birthday. It fell upon a Friday, so Lucius took the day off and the whole family had a birthday luncheon for her. Draco spent the better part of the morning charming the parlour and dining room to reflect the desires of a three year old witch, namely pink and silver streamers that wriggled in the rafters like snakes. He even attempted to make a decorative unicorn that pranced over the walls. It was fine up until the point where Draco muttered the incantation to make the beast sparkle. Red sparks shot out of his wand, but instead of sparkles, the unicorn’s tail was singed off. The animal snorted balefully at Draco and trotted to an adjoining wall to chew on drapery.

Pansy didn’t show up. Her gift of new magenta robes had arrived early that morning.

Much to the chagrin of himself and his father, all three girls and the two adults had cucumber and tuna finger sandwiches cut in the shapes of butterflies. The sandwiches actually fluttered sporadically too- to the delight of the girls. Augustine wore a silver crown with streamers, until she ripped the streamers out and put her tartan blanket over her head. For the most part, though, she seemed to get the party treats more on her new robes and blanket than in her mouth. Caroline whined about the mess her sister was making and Catherine ignored it, but she did offer Augustine a linen serviette. Augustine promptly swatted it away with a grubby hand.

The chocolate birthday cake tasted as divine as it ever had when Draco had some as a child. The ice cream they had with it was imported from Italy. None of his daughters seemed to appreciate that detail and gobbled it up the same as they would have even if it were from a Muggle store.

Partway through his own piece of cake, there was a strange clanging crash heard from upstairs. The girls were too absorbed in licking the icing off their fingers (or cake, in Augustine’s case) to care, but Draco was suspicious of this. This was the second time he had heard strange noises upstairs. The house elves usually cleaned the upper floors later in the afternoon or early evening. He looked over at his father with a look of confusion. “Father, what…” his words trailed off.

Lucius looked paler than usual for the autumn weather. All of the blood drained from his face to leave a bluish, ghastly hue. He stood up from the table quickly. “I’ll go check to see that…disturbance.”

Draco couldn’t help but notice that his father left his beloved snake-headed cane- that he carried everywhere, even to the loo in the Manor- on the table by his champagne flute.

Nothing much of significance came from that event and the house elf that had broken a priceless voodoo fertility statue in his father’s bedroom was rightly punished. It wasn’t until the following week that another occurrence happened. It was about noon, Friday, just after lunch. The girls were entertaining themselves in the library; Draco was waiting in the grand parlour for his father to arrive from work, via the private floo connection. Instead of his father stepping out from the fireplace, the lanky form of Professor Snape stepped out. Draco, who had been reading a pornographic catalogue, looked up in surprise.

Even the ten years since school had ended and seven since he had last seen the man, Draco immediately felt his years slip away. He was fifteen, thirteen, eleven once more under the piercing stare of those black eyes. He hastily put down his catalogue and covered it with a dark morocco leather tome that was handy nearby. “Sir?” he asked, his mouth hanging.

Snape raised an eyebrow and walked over, uncovering the book. He snorted at the title- A Wizard’s Wand. “You needn’t put down your pornographic perversions for my sake, Mr Malfoy.” Snape brushed the dusty ashes from his bat-like robes. The man never seemed to change. Except…a little orange satchel hung from a braided cord around his waist. Draco was tempted to ask what the new addition to a stagnant wardrobe of twenty-some years was for, but Snape’s question beat him to it.

“Is Lucius here?” he snapped, glancing around impatiently.

Draco shook his head. “No.”

Snape frowned, sallow features more pronounced with his age. The lines around his mouth and eyes were deeper. A ragged white scar cut his left cheekbone in two. Draco reckoned it was a scar from the last battle. The battle that had claimed his mother, an innocent bystander. It had claimed the Dark Lord, countless others- likely including Potter - and a lot of Hufflepuffs.

Draco offered Snape some tea and cake, but the other man declined with a shake of his head and a sour expression. “No, I’ll only be a minute.” He eyed Draco carefully, black eyes glittering. Draco shrunk even smaller, younger under that look. “Wait here.”

Snape stalked off towards the staircase, Draco close behind. It was his house after all. Snape didn’t appear to notice Draco’s trailing, his black robes fluttering behind him as he ascended the polished marble with the clack clack clack of his heels.

But then, at the top of the stairs, Snape turned to the direction of the west wing and continued to walk even more swiftly. His hand rested lightly against that strange orange pouch. Once Snape passed the bust of Lorenzo Malfoy the younger, the bust that stood on its limestone ionic pedestal as the unofficial marker of the west wing of the Manor, Snape sped up more.

“Wait!” Draco shouted and tore up the staircase. He ran down the carpeted hallway and repeated his shout. Snape turned around, very slowly, very carefully.

His black eyes were guarded.

“You’re not supposed to be there,” Draco said feebly. “Father has very strict rules about that.”

Snape smirked and a lock of greasy dark hair- greying at the roots now- veiled his face. “Draco, your father is well-aware that I was coming today. He has no problems with my presence in this area of Malfoy Manor.”

The unspoken words being: Unlike you.

Now Draco was utterly confused. He was family and his father didn’t want him in this part of the Manor? But he would allow Snape? Something was very wrong with that logic. Unless…

His eyes widened. Was his father…? Was Snape….? Were they…? His jaw dropped.

Snape snorted, a sort of dry laugh played at his features. “Whatever you are thinking, Draco, I can assure you it’s faulty.”

Draco let out a visible sigh of relief. If that wasn’t the case, then what was? He stood up straight, he was more than tall enough to meet Snape eye to eye. “What are you doing here then?” Draco said testily, trying his own sort of familial authority.

Snape pursed his lips. He didn’t respond for a long second. “I am here,” he said, long fingers tapping on the little orange pouch, “because your father asked it of me.”

Draco waited for a better answer. If he was ten years younger it might have passed for pouting.

There was an even longer drawn out pause. Snape sighed irritably. “Your father asked me to bring him something.”

“A potion?”

Dark eyes darted suspiciously over his shoulder, ostensibly checking for the eager ears of portraits. “Yes,” Snape said lowly.

“Is it an illegal potion?” Draco used his business voice. They were speaking mano-a-mano and he wanted to reinforce that.

Snape chuckled hollowly. Draco recalled it frequently from his days as a student. “And what makes you think that?”

“Because you keep touching that pouch.”

Snape just watched him.

Draco stepped back and nodded. “Alright, th-”

“Ah, Severus! I see you have arrived earlier than anticipated.”

Lucius approached Snape and himself. Snape made a sour face, as though he’d just sucked on a puffskein. “Or you arrived tardily.”

Lucius made a non-committal noise than turned to Draco. “I thought I told you to stay out of this wing!” he hissed angrily.

Draco shot Snape a resentful look, then back to his father his eyes downcast. “Yes, Father.” He knew well enough to leave then. All the way back down the corridor and stairs, his face burned with the embarrassment of being treated like a child in front of his former professor. He could hear their hushed voices conspiring. Draco was almost tempted to use an Audius charm on his ears, but he didn’t risk it. He hadn’t tried that in years and if his father caught him doing that, well, for all he knew his father could kick him out of the Manor. Being a legal adult in the eyes of the Ministry didn’t matter; he’d always be a child to his father.

That particular incident was never spoken about again. Draco was both relieved by this and insatiably curious to know what his father was doing with illegal potions. He didn’t want his father to chance Azkaban again- even the room under the drawing room was mostly cleared out now. His mother had had a difficult enough time bribing the Ministry the last time, those thirteen years before.

Only, because of this increased curiosity in his father’s secret, Draco began to notice more things. Subtle things that had been previously overlooked. The next week, again around lunchtime, Draco saw a house elf discreetly carrying a tray of soup and bread out of the kitchen when he and his daughters were preoccupied with their own meal. Why was the house elf carrying it? Why was the house elf carrying it? The house elf, though, was far too quick and nimble for Draco to keep up with following it so lately after noting its activity, but he would be vigilant.

The next day, in the afternoon while Catherine, Caroline and Augustine were playing and his father safely at work, Draco sauntered into the kitchens. Hands on his hips, he surveyed the area. Nothing of interest there, a large pot-bellied stove, several dirty house elves toiling with dishes over a steel sink, another house elf entering with a tray of empty dishes

in its hands.

Draco’s eyes widened. This was what he was looking for!

“You!” he shouted, pointing at the accused house elf. “What is that?”

The house elf, in the shock of being yelled at in the kitchens, dropped the tray onto the tile floor and the emptied bowl on it broke into pieces. It whimpered and bent to pick up the shards.

Draco was not impressed. The house elf hadn’t even bowed down to him. He gave it a smart jab in the middle with his foot. “What is that?”

The house elf mewled and cowered, shaking at Draco’s feet. “Sir, I is-”

Draco glared at it. Then he kicked it again. “Answer me!”

“Sir, I is not telling you, sir. Master Luci-” The house elf stopped mid-name, clapping a spindly hand over its mouth. “Oh, sir, what has Dippy done?”

Knowing that the house elf wouldn’t say anymore, even under penalty of death, Draco left it to punish itself for its insolence to him. “Forty- no! Fifty- whacks with a wooden spoon,” he ordered, kicking the house elf one last time for good measure. “And make sure they’re hard!”

Draco, you see, had a plan. That day was a Thursday. He couldn’t execute his plan on the following day because his father would likely come home early from work. Nor could he act Saturday or Sunday.

He needed his father to be gone. So Draco waited impatiently for three days and plotted. Saturday evening Lucius even grew suspicious of his son when Draco watched him too intently at the dinner table. Draco would always guiltily avert his eyes when Lucius caught him watching.

That night after his daughters were abed, Lucius cornered him in the grand parlour where Draco was curled up by the fireplace, watching it crackle and burn the fragrant cedar logs. Late autumn was heavily upon them.

Draco looked up when he heard his father enter the room. The glowing gold and copper light from the fire danced on the shadows of his father’s form, bathing him in a primeval gilding.

Lucius regarded his son coolly. He stood unmoving, like a statue until Draco asked “Father?”

Lucius’s eyes darkened knowingly. His lips were set in a dead line and Draco shivered with apprehension under his thin dressing robe. He made a move to rise from his recline on the Persian rug, but by the time he had his father was gone.

Draco knew then that he had to act fast.

Monday dawned unusually early for Draco. Of late he’d taken to sleeping in because he could, but the butterflies of anticipation cocooned in his stomach the night before, hatching before daybreak. Draco was left awake and wary well before anyone else in the Manor.

The minutes ticked away like hours. Draco broke into a cold sweat by the time his father had flooed to the Ministry for work. Trying to teach the girls anything that day was pointless- Draco stuttered and stammered over their daily spelling lesson, he swayed and dazedly wandered around the room while attempting to go over subtraction.

In the middle of his haphazard demonstration of vanishing Grecian urns to indicate subtraction, Catherine pointed out his agitation.

“Father,” she said politely. Draco winced at her address. He felt so geriatric when she called him that, “Are you alright?”

Draco nodded, pulling out of his nervous reverie. “Of course I am!”

He immediately regretted his tone when his oldest daughter cringed and bowed her head down over her book. Caroline glared darkly at Draco; he turned away from her resentful scowl.

Augustine was playing happily in the corner with some silver-plated building blocks Lucius had a house elf fish out of storage in the attic. Her tower tipped precariously.

Lunchtime, too, rolled around early. Draco specifically went down to the kitchens and demanded the meal be served a half-hour earlier than usual. His request, of course, was granted.

And luckily for Draco, none of his daughters were adept enough at telling time yet to note the difference. It was apparent to him that their stomachs felt the change, however, when Augustine made more of a mess with her chicken pie than she might otherwise have. The meal was an early flop- no one was hungry- but Draco had other things on his mind. Besides, if the girls were hungry enough mid-afternoon, they were more than welcome to bully the house elves into baking cookies or a cake for them.

Draco, too, pushed his pie around his plate to feign eating. If Pansy were there, she might harass him about his appetite, but he was the sole adult present now.

At five to noon the hour swung precariously close to lunch time and Draco had to be ready for action. “Time to go upstairs and play now, girls!” he announced with a forced smile. Catherine, Caroline and Augustine clambered out of the padded dining room chairs as they always had, but hurry hurry hurry was the sole thought that ran through Draco’s mind.

His daughters had barely made it up the grand staircase themselves before Draco saw the awaited house elf slink up the stairs also. He watched from a hidden perch half-concealed by the wrought-iron railing. The Silencio spell was already cast on his body.

Then Draco followed, fifteen steps behind.

The house elf was quick and quiet, but not as watchful as it should have been. Draco trailed with ease behind the creature as it carted that black enamel food tray with the soup bowl down the main upper hallway of the west wing. The wing wasn’t decrepit yet in the least, but it had certainly aged since Draco’s youth. The silver-framed mirrors and iron suits of armour, the bronze statuary and shrunken heads of mermen, house-elves and headhunters were dusty and gaping and sinister and uncared for. Draco wondered how his father could still live there, how often the house elves were permitted to clean there.

Not very often, by the looks of it.

In the half-light of a windowless corridor, they passed the watercolour of the lands to the North of the Manor- a forested park once hunted in, where Draco used to go and catch frogs and grindylows by the lake there as a young boy. They passed the three doors in a row- Draco’s childhood bedroom, the room that once served as a nursery and his mother’s bedroom. He felt a chill of apprehension and disapproval sweep over himself. It reminded Draco of the wards surrounding the Manor, but there were no internal wards in the building. The tell-tale shimmer of his body approaching it would have alerted and there was none of that.

At the furthest door at the end of the hallway where a lone window looked out dismally, the house elf pulled a long brass key from its pillowcase rag and glanced briefly down the path it had come. Draco ducked behind a Doric pillar just in time to avoid the visual sweep. The house elf pushed the key into the silver lion’s mouth handle and jiggled it. Then it hobbled inside the room leaving the door accidentally open a slim inch or two.

This was his father’s room.

A little surprised, but mostly unfazed, Draco cracked the door open himself, to slip in too.

His silencing spell held up.

But then the door hinge creaked.

The house elf, hunched over a low table in his father’s personal sitting room, yelped and spun around, sloshing the soup bowl onto a thick dark fur rug on the floor.

Draco himself gasped, but immediately regained his composure. He stepped forward into the light entering the room from dark sheer drapes. “What are you doing?” he asked in a hollow voice. He didn’t recognize his own words and sound. It was foreign.

The house elf whimpered, huge eyes bulging further out from its skull. It slowly placed a stoppered vial back into the table drawer. “Sir is not to be here.” Its words were clipped and dangerously confident.

For reassurance, Draco pulled out his wand, gripping it tightly. “And neither are you. This is my house.” He stepped forward again-

And all hell broke loose.

Chairs flew at his head, paintings shrieked, a candelabra crashed down beside him, scraping the arm of his robe. Pillows, books, loose objects of rare value, a chaise all shot at his body. He was in the eye of a tornado, the heart of a faulty portkey. An ornamental Caliph’s knife dislodged itself from its brackets on an ebony display board.

“Reductor! Desiderare! Desiderare Sellam! Reverto Ferrum!”

A chair smashed into unrecognizable pieces. Iron weapons flew everywhere. The house elf made a dash for the door-

“Stupefy! Prohibet!”

Everything fell down, stopped in mid-air and gravity took over. Stepping over the ruins of what was once a rococo-inspired sitting room, Draco moved towards the house elf. It was lying stiff and stupefied beside the door to the last room, its beloved soup bowl, relatively untouched and half-full of vegetables and beef and something more, in hand.

“Wingardium Leviosa!” Draco intoned and the bowl slowly lifted up to waist-height. He prayed that the password to his father’s bedroom hadn’t changed since his childhood. This was it. This was where something was going on, something was hidden. Draco wasn’t sure if he could handle slitted red snake eyes if that’s what it was, but come what may.

“In principium.”

The white door flung itself open.

Draco stepped forward over the shimmering threshold.

The soup bowl cracked dully when it hit the carpet.

There was a man in the centre of Lucius Malfoy’s colossal bed.

Heavy burgundy curtains hung over the gothic bay windows on the one side of the room, bathing it in a murky darkness and dim shadows. The stale of stale earthy incense and a musky something else lingered; it was very much like the smell of sex that permeated Zacharias Smith’s flat the first time Draco had entered it.

But this was his father’s room.

All Draco could do was stand there and stare, shallow breathing collecting in a sort of awe and shock. This was as illegal as if his father had been harbouring the Dark Lord.

The figure on Lucius’ bed was clearly alive- he flopped his head listlessly a couple times. The bed itself was draped in crimson silks and saffron damasks, white and silver French decals. Lush and sensual, the man seemed like a harem catamite clad as he was in loose pajamas. His dark hair was tousled, messy and obscured his face. His build was thin and young.

Draco felt a swell of arousal build. If the man was alive and awake, he might…

Gathering up something in the pit of his stomach, Draco approached the bed for a better look. The man didn’t acknowledge his presence, so he stepped closer still.

Then a pair of papery eyelids fluttered open behind that dark veil of hair and emerald green eyes were hazy and languid.

It was Harry Potter.

Draco’s jaw dropped; he grasped the far bedpost for support as the realization set in. My father has Harry fucking Potter lounging in his bedroom…Even without the tell-tale glasses, the hair and eyes and scar spoke volumes.

He cleared his throat. “Potter?” Draco had to be sure.

The figure blinked blearily, as though trying to see but still blinded. Silence.

“Potter?” Draco asked more sharply. He wanted an explanation. Did Potter know how much trouble Lucius could get into with the Ministry for this? Was that the whole reason Potter was here? Revenge?

Harry Potter, older, thinner and more spaced-out, gave a sort of low breathy moan and flopped his head, rather like a fish would, on the plethora of linen and satin pillows.

Draco was becoming more and more weirded out by the situation. What was going on? How long had Potter been there? Long enough for the house elves to be routinely bringing him lunch, but…Draco had never noticed before. If Potter had been here for any decent length of time, surely someone would have noticed!

Like Snape! If he was in the west wing that day, wouldn’t he have had some suspicions by now?

Lethargically, Potter’s hand flicked towards his face and he wiggled his fingers a little. He blinked and wiggled them again. Then he gave a sigh, or a moan. It was hard to tell- the noise was strange.

“Potter?” Draco hissed, finally resorting to poking the other man with the tip of his wand. “Are you completely out of it? This isn’t funny!”

Potter moaned at the sound of his name. He turned his head to the side, away from Draco. His loose shirt bunched up to reveal a pale expanse of skin on his neck, marred by a deep bloom of red.

His hand went up to his own neck, and then he dropped it. Draco didn’t want to think about what that mark resembled. “Enervate!”

Potter’s body jerked stiffly for a fraction of a moment, like an ecletric shock that Creevey at the office mentioned. Then Potter slackened. He moaned again, wordlessly, but louder. Almost painfully.

“What is wrong with you?” Draco wailed, flailing his arms in the air. He shook his head. What the hell was going on? He glanced around the room, looking for clues, for something- Potter’s beloved brooms, his wand, that ruddy Invisibility Cloak of his.

There was nothing.

Save for one little amber bottle sitting on top, in plain view, of his father’s bedside table. It was stoppered with a dark cork and there was an opaque residue clinging to the sides.

Draco recognized it immediately.

It was the same sort of bottle that Zacharias Smith had on a dresser in his own bedroom. That they had shared amply the two times he’d fucked Draco-

“Oh God!”

Potter moaned breathlessly, more loudly, as if in anticipation of something to follow those words. Draco fled the room. The conclusion was far too horrible to accept. He ran out of the bedroom, the sitting room- the house elves would know to tidy it before his father returned- the hallway of the west wing. His feet carried him to his daughters’ bedroom, his familial salvation. But on opening the door, he panicked. Would his children see the guilt on his face? Would it matter?

He needed peace, quiet, familiarity, a place and time to think and not stew.

Catherine, Caroline and Augustine were startled, but not unhappy, to see him enter. Draco tried a feeble smile, but it fell. He sat down on the floor beside a concentrating Augustine. She had crayons in her chubby hands and was intently colouring an elephant blue. Every time she missed the borders of the beast- which was often- it would trumpet.

Without thinking, Draco was comforted by her innocent presence. His hand reached out to stroke her blonde hair for the first time since she was an infant. It was spider silky and fine. It clung statically to his hands and crackled. It was golden and soft.

To think that he and Pansy had created them- the one good thing that he’d really ever done.

Augustine didn’t notice, but she didn’t shy away either.

It wasn’t until dinner that evening, with his father, that Draco even came to truly fathom the depths of his filial deceit.

Lucius watched him. Knowing grey eyes trailing Draco’s every move. When his fork faltered with a carrot, the eyes saw. His knife dragged accidentally on the Irish lace tablecloth, the eyes watched. Draco felt mucus drain into his gut along with his blood. He was light-headed, ill and so very, very guilty.

“And,” Lucius asked after Caroline narrated her tale of drawing house elves with pierced ears and patches over their eyes, “what did you do this afternoon, Draco?”

All four sets of slate eyes fell on him. What have you done? A little voice asked him. They all know! “N-nothing!” he stammered. Draco looked away, past Catherine’s head across the table. “I mean-” he took a deep, calming breath, “the usual.”

Lucius raised an eyebrow and his eyes locked with Draco’s.

Draco shriveled up. He wished someone could pass him the