[one-shots]: Pantheon, PG, 2/2
Second part of a long one-shot. Don't start reading here.
In the next few days, Draco made an effort to spend more time with Scorpius, joining him at meals and following him into the library to ask what books he liked to read. He felt awkward doing it, somehow false. He hadn’t done this before, when he should have. Scorpius might feel now as if too little was too late and Draco should simply have been a better father from the beginning, rather than trying to make it up to him when he was almost eleven years old.
And there was the long record of his failures, too, which made Draco still go back to the Hall of the Ancestors at night and dream beneath the portraits.
But Scorpius turned to him with an eager face when Draco asked the first question about books, and showed him a thin book Draco didn’t remember seeing before. “I like this one,” he said.
Draco picked it up and turned it over. The photograph on the cover was of a moving, stretching, smiling baby. Draco thought he knew who it was, from the baby’s big green eyes, even before his gaze went to the title: A Biography of Harry Potter.
“You really admire Auror Potter, then?” he asked, remembering just in time to give Potter his proper title. He looked again at the book in his hands and wondered where this obsession had come from. Astoria’s bedtime tales?
Scorpius nodded, and his eyes were filled with the kind of honest enthusiasm Draco could remember experiencing at his age. “Yes! And isn’t it brilliant that he likes me and comes over to the house to play with me and Al, sometimes?”
“It’s brilliant,” Draco conceded. Then he paused, and added, despite himself, “Al?” He hadn’t thought the Savior of the Wizarding World would give his son such a Muggle name, though it did fit into the Potter tradition of names for the last few generations.
Scorpius giggled. “His full name is Albus Severus Potter. But don’t tell him I told you! He’d get angry-Father, what’s wrong?”
Draco forced his eyes open again. He had had to shut them when he heard the middle name. Potter, you have unexpected depths. But then again, I should have known that from the way you played with my son.
“Nothing,” he said. “Tell me why you like him. What is it about the book that fascinates you most? Would I like it if I read it?”
Scorpius flopped down on the floor in front of him, either not noticing or ignoring the way Draco winced at the ungraceful movement. Draco could almost hope that it was ignoring. “I don’t know, Father,” he said. “I don’t think I know you very well.”
Draco reached out and rested his hand on Scorpius’s hair. Once again, he had to shut his eyes, but this time, it was because of the threads of sorrow that felt as though they had been tugged taut in his chest.
“It won’t all change at once,” he said aloud, and didn’t know if he was saying the words to reach his son or himself. “You have to remember that. It’ll take time and work to move out from the shell.”
“Dad?” The next moment, Draco felt Scorpius move in what was almost certainly a flinch, because Draco had told his son over and over again not to call him by that childish name.
Draco welcomed the occurrence, because it meant he had a chance to change things. He opened his eyes, and saw Scorpius looking apprehensively at him. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s fine,” Draco said. “Now, I think you were telling me about the book.”
It might be stupid-his father would certainly have laughed-to say that Scorpius’s face opened like a flower, but that was what happened.
*
“Malfoy.”
“Potter.” Draco stood there with arms folded and face distant. He knew that, as if he was watching himself from outside. Not that he needed the help of his arms to look confined and wary, in truth. Caution wrapped around him like the bands of a steel snake.
Potter had owled and asked if he could come over. Draco had assumed that he meant bringing his son to see Scorpius, and perhaps staying to play with them, and had answered readily. But instead Potter had placed Al in the back garden with Scorpius and was walking up the front steps towards him, eyes bright and alert. Draco wondered if he was the suspect in a crime he didn’t know about, then considered that that might almost be preferable to what he thought Potter would demand of him now.
“Did you know,” Potter said conversationally when he arrived on the top step, “that I got divorced two years ago, too? I think it helps Al, to have a friend who went through the same experiences he did.”
Draco stared and opened his mouth to say that Potter couldn’t possibly have divorced the She-Weasel; he would have heard about it. But then he remembered that he hadn’t read any newspapers in years, and simply stood there feeling awkward.
Potter didn’t seem to find the silence uncomfortable. He waited, eyebrows raised, and Draco decided that it was incumbent on him to say something so that they didn’t stand there in silence for hours.
“Well, I reckon it’s important for people to have support,” he muttered. “What’s your support?” It was a stupid question, but the only one he could think of to ask that would build on what Potter had already said.
For some reason, Potter flashed him a dazzling smile. “My friends, and my children. They didn’t blame me for the divorce, thank God. That happens sometimes, and then the couple make it worse by trying to use the children against each other.” He sighed. “Ginny and I were never perfectly suited, but we both wanted children, and, well…other things that the other could give. So we made a compromise.”
“I’m sure that part of what she wanted was her celebrity crush,” Draco muttered.
He hadn’t thought Potter would hear, but Potter gave him a dangerous glare which melted into another smile. Draco shook his head. He understood almost nothing of what was happening today, including why Potter would want to speak with him.
“I’ve missed you,” Potter said, which made no sense either, and then took his arm. “Do you have a room where we could talk while we wait for the boys to finish playing?”
Draco took Potter to the library with a view of the back gardens. And Potter talked about Auror business with a quite shocking lack of secrecy about official procedures-well, perhaps not shocking, when Draco considered who this was-and about raising three children and their different reactions to the divorce.
Then he started talking about Mind-Healers and the need for someone’s help to emerge from depression. Draco didn’t understand why he was talking about that until he leaned forwards and said softly, “Don’t you find that so?”
“I’ve never visited a Mind-Healer,” Draco said. “And if you think that Scorpius might have ‘problems’ and that your precious son can’t play with him-”
“Of course not!” Potter waved a hand, looking horrified. “I was talking about you. You’re depressed because of the war, anyone can see it, and I think you need help.”
The freezing stare Draco gave him shut him up then, and they sat in silence until Al and Scorpius were ready to come inside and tell them all about their “bloody brilliant” practice match, with Al playing as Beater and Scorpius as Seeker.
When Potter left, Draco ate dinner with Scorpius and sat listening to his chatter with no more than half an ear.
It was strange, but speaking with Potter, and especially trading insults with him, had felt like stretching muscles that had been cramped and aching for too long.
*
“Have you made an appointment with a Mind-Healer?”
That was Potter’s first question during their next conversation, and Draco almost dropped his glass of Firewhisky (which he was drinking only to be sociable; getting pissed in Potter’s presence, especially with his strange preoccupations, struck Draco as a spectacularly bad idea). He turned around and tried the freezing stare again.
Potter seemed immune to it this time, balancing his glass on his hand and looking so hard, for so long, at Draco that he finally snapped, rattled, “Of course not. Why would you assume I had?”
Potter exhaled, a long stream of almost noiseless air, and shook his head. “Because I think you could use help to recover from this,” he said. “And I don’t think I can offer you that kind of help, between the kids and my job and my own mental issues.”
“I don’t need to ‘recover’ from anything,” Draco said, sitting down and tilting his head at the haughty angle that had made Astoria despair. “I am quite happy living alone in my house and raising my son.”
“But your tendency to hide and your scars from the war almost prevented you from raising your son.” Potter pushed his glasses up his nose. “Don’t you want help in case they do that again?”
“I think it’s a bit rich to come in and start speaking to me like that, as if we were friends, as if you understood,” Draco said, biting the words off.
“I haven’t observed you for a long period of time, no,” Potter said, sounding unabashed. “But I’ve listened to Scorpius talk about you, and I’ve listened to you and looked at you during the times when I was here and you were visible. I think you retreated into a world of your ancestors and family because it was the one world you still felt secure in. You need someone who will give you a firm basis outside that, from which you can interact with other people.” Abruptly, he stopped, as if embarrassed, and pulled at his fringe. “I’m sorry. But the language gets into your mind if you read the books long enough.”
“You read?’ Draco said.
Potter laughed instead of getting angry. “Prat. That’s the Malfoy I knew.” He leaned forwards. “At least consider it? I know Scorpius is happier now, but he tells Al all the time how worried he is about you, how he thinks you haven’t left the Manor grounds in years.”
“The Malfoy you knew is dead,” Draco said. “We all change. And so what if I haven’t left the Manor? In other centuries, pure-blood families might spend years in their homes without venturing beyond the walls.”
“That’s because they were besieged,” Potter said. “And I think we should be able to choose the changes that happen to us, as much as possible. Have you chosen yours?”
Draco clenched his hands down on the arms of his chair. “I’m trying to make a difference for Scorpius,” he said, forcing the words past the tight circle of his throat. “That is all I can do right now.”
He had no idea why he’d made such an intimate confession to Potter, and still less why Potter bowed his head and turned the conversation.
But he found himself watching Scorpius at dinner that night, wondering why the boy would worry over him, as if he were the parent and Draco the child. Scorpius glanced up and caught him at it.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” he asked, after swallowing the piece of chicken in his mouth and dabbing at his lips with a napkin.
“Something I can’t tell you yet,” Draco said, and then realized he had spoken to Scorpius more like an equal than a child. He shouldn’t have to bear that burden.
“Something that troubles me,” he said instead. “But I’m sure I can handle it.”
Scorpius bowed his head like Potter, and started talking about something else, like Potter. That night, the worry that troubled Draco was not so much whether he could be a good father as whether someone else already fulfilled that role for his son.
*
Draco hesitated for long moments outside St. Mungo’s. He had cast a glamour that turned his hair black and made him look taller than he was as a disguise. He had wondered if he really needed it. It had been eighteen years since the war. Most people weren’t thinking about the Malfoys and their losses anymore.
But this was his own comfort, rather than other people’s. In the end, he had cast the spells and gone.
Now he tensed his shoulders and walked in, waving his hand in front of him automatically. He had always found walking through the apparent Muggle store window into hospital more distracting than the barrier that guarded the platform where the Hogwarts Express departed. But he didn’t bump against glass this time, and in moments he was walking up to the Welcome Witch.
She gave him a professional smile. “Are you here to see someone, or speak with someone?” She must have already decided that he didn’t require immediate treatment if his hair was the right color and he had the right number of heads and limbs, Draco thought.
“I’d like to make an appointment with a Mind-Healer,” he said.
The Welcome Witch nodded seriously and tapped her quill on the parchment in front of her. “What’s your name?”
“Gordon Fletcher,” Draco said, pulling a name from the air at random. There was no reason to go in as a Malfoy when he had taken so much trouble not to appear as one, and if he had to lie a little about his experiences, then that was fine. He would rather lie than expose all of himself at once.
He wondered what Potter would say about that, and then wondered why he was wondering.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Fletcher,” said the Welcome Witch, and touched another piece of parchment with her wand. There was a cascade of bright purple sparks from some spell that Draco didn’t recognize, and the parchment folded itself up and melted into the desk. The witch smiled at him again and looked expectantly at the door as someone else came through. “They’re waiting for someone to become available.”
Draco sat down in one of the high, straight-backed chairs and waited. He was an expert at this, at least, since these chairs weren’t so different from the ones at the Manor.
A woman in a flowing green robe came down the stairs to meet him shortly afterwards, smiling at him as if she already knew what bothered him and had found nothing in it to distress her. “Mr. Fletcher? I’m Mind-Healer Melody Hargrave. Come with me, please.”
She led him to her private office, somewhere within the bowels of St. Mungo’s, and sat down in the least comfortable chair, waving him to a plush one. Draco sat and watched her expectantly. He’d never been in a Mind-Healer’s office before and had never thought he would be, and had no idea what would happen next.
“Do you know how we work with our patients, Mr. Fletcher?” she asked.
Draco shook his head. “I thought-talking, potions?”
“It depends on their troubles,” said Hargrave. She pulled a bowl towards her that looked like a Pensieve, except that it was made of pale green stone the same color as her robe. “I favor memory work, examining memories in situations where the patient has fear or discomfort and describing different ways that things could have happened. At times, I work with alternate universes through mirrors and allow patients to meet different versions of themselves who made different decisions.” She said it as casually as if she had been talking about brewing Pepper-Up Potions, Draco thought in disbelief. “What is your trouble?”
Draco licked his lips. He thought of Scorpius’s face, and Potter’s. He thought of the way Astoria had turned her back on him when she was leaving, and the way Helena Malfoy sometimes refused to talk to him.
Again Scorpius. Again Potter. He thought he knew this wasn’t the right thing to do, but-the most amazing thing of all-he thought he might have the courage to try something else if it wasn’t.
“I’ve spent most of my time since the war hiding inside the past,” he began.
*
“Scorpius tells me that you’ve started going to a Mind-Healer.”
Draco closed his eyes with a small hiss of irritation. That should have been his news to tell or not tell. But of course he should have guessed that Scorpius, with his liking for Potter, would tell a secret that he saw as something to brag about.
“Yes,” he said, turning around with the cups of tea in his hands, and hoping that Potter would understand, from his short response, that he didn’t want to talk about it.
Potter was smiling with pleasure, though, and took only one gulp of his tea before he continued. “That’s wonderful! Did they suggest someone special? How much progress are you making? Have you discussed-”
“That’s enough,” Draco said sharply.
Arrested in mid-flight, Potter looked like a puppy who’d had its nose bruised against a mirror. “Why?”
“Because,” Draco said, and then stopped. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to speak all the bitter words brimming up inside him. He lifted his cup and drank instead.
But that didn’t help, he realize, because Potter was still leaning forwards and watching him with yearning eyes. Draco rolled his eyes and gave in. If he got stung by the poison, that was his fault for approaching a snake with warning hood appropriately flared.
“Because I’ve only begun to acknowledge that I won’t fail at everything I do,” he said. “Because I’ve only begun to think that hiding inside my house isn’t a good way to raise Scorpius, or to make up for my mistakes in the war. For years, in fact, I thought about the mistakes and wallowed in my guilt, but just assumed that there was no way to change them or atone for them. I was useless, a dried-up rag of a person. The last significant act I did was siring Scorpius. You think getting over that is easy? You think that because my son needs me and I know that now, it’s easy to think of myself as worthwhile? No, Potter. I don’t want to talk about this with you, because you would try to make me change my mind and jolly me out of my bad mood-and all the while, you’d be making the assumption that it’s easy to do this. I don’t want to hear it.”
He turned back to his tea. Potter was silent. Draco didn’t think he was watching him, but staring at the far wall. Probably wondering why he had ever come in the first place, Draco thought acidly, or waiting for the shouts that would signal Al and Scorpius were done playing.
“I’m sorry,” Potter said.
The apology made Draco have to lean back in his seat. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry,” Potter said. “I didn’t realize I was doing that-I wasn’t being mean on purpose-but it happened.” He ran his hands through his hair, then looked in the other direction as if he assumed the window would be less confrontational than Draco. “I have to remember not to do that,” he muttered.
Draco shook his head. “I doubt you meet with anyone else who would take offense at anything you said.” He had almost said that none of Potter’s other friends would misunderstand him that way, but had stopped himself. Whatever lay between him and Potter, he didn’t think it deserved the name of friendship.
“You’re wrong,” Potter said. “And even if they didn’t, it’s still a good reminder to myself, when I hope that my association with you will be long and deep.”
He gave Draco a quick smile, then glanced out the window again and stood. “I think our boys are done.”
Draco sat there for a minute before he could stir and follow Potter. A long and deep association? What did that mean? Why would Potter assume they had anything in common besides a divorce and their sons’ friendship?
It was baffling.
*
“Are you glad that we woke you up and you started spending more time with me, Father?” Scorpius was sitting on the edge of his chair at the dining table, one foot swinging while he pushed around the vegetables on his plate with a fork. He had spent most of the meal talking about Al Potter and what they were doing in school tomorrow, but Draco wasn’t fooled. His son only chattered that much when he had a question that he was afraid to ask.
He didn’t think he had known that four months ago.
“Yes,” Draco said. He didn’t see the need to elaborate. Some of his feelings weren’t things he could burden Scorpius with, and others were so private that he would have found it difficult to talk to his parents about them. He focused on his wine and sipped it instead, wondering if Scorpius would move on.
He didn’t. He leaned forwards and asked, “And are you glad that Mr. Potter comes here so much? I know that he wants to be your friend, like Al and I are friends.”
Draco knew that he frankly stared at his son, and wished that he hadn’t. It was no part of his plan to force Scorpius into being an adult sooner than he was ready for. He tried to keep the same calm demeanor as he had before he and Astoria divorced, though with more affection. Scorpius didn’t need to see his father upset or angry.
“I am glad,” he said, when he had left enough silence for Scorpius to look uneasily away. “But I don’t think that you can be right about what he comes for, Scorpius. We-we don’t have enough history between us to be friends.”
“Al and I became friends the first day,” Scorpius said triumphantly, as if he had solved a universal puzzle.
“That’s not what I meant,” Draco said. He seemed to say that a lot around his son now. “We had history between us at school, yes, but it was a history of taunting and insults, hexes and trying to kill each other. We can’t start over from that.”
“Why not?” Scorpius demanded. “You didn’t see each other for at least thirteen years. So why not?”
“Because it’s more complicated than that,” Draco said. Scorpius opened his mouth to dispute this, and Draco said, in quick frustration, “You and Al-you’re better people than I am, Scorpius. You have interest in each other. You made friends quickly because you had no reason to keep away. And Potter might be a good person, too, for all I know. But I’m not, and I need time to learn how to be one again. Potter might claim that he wants friendship with me, but he has no idea what that would entail.”
Scorpius stared at him so long that Draco started to stand. It was still difficult for him to endure prolonged contact with other human beings sometimes, though he was better with Scorpius than with anyone else.
“You’re not a bad person,” Scorpius whispered. “Dad, you’re not.”
“You have no idea what I did when I was in school, Scorpius.” Draco forced himself to speak harshly. “I should let you see my arrest records, and the official histories of the war. Then you’d know.”
Scorpius gazed at him fearlessly. “Let me see them. I know they’re going to prove me right, and you wrong.”
Draco shook his head. His heart was breaking and choking him, both at once, and he knew no other way to get the point across. “Scorpius, even if I was a good person, Potter only wants to be on cordial terms with me. Not friendship. That’s something deeper, more important.” Draco had started to think that he hadn’t ever really known what it meant, either, given his haughtiness in school and Vincent and Gregory’s dimness.
“You’re wrong,” Scorpius said. “I’m right, and you’re wrong.”
Draco went to fetch the arrest records and the history books, giving up on a conversation that wouldn’t go in any productive direction for the moment.
*
“Will you permit me to see your memories?”
Draco hesitated. On the one hand, Hargrave had been nothing but kind and helpful so far, asking him to describe his memories after he relived them in the Pensieve and then giving him her own perspective on those actions that he found hopeless or foolish. Draco had begun to believe, slowly, that there might be more than one way to view his past, and that had helped him to start thinking differently about the present.
But she had never asked to see his memories. And a good thing, too. The blond hair might not be a matter for comment, but looking shorter in his Pensieve memories was noticeable.
Hargrave sat across from him, hands laced across her stomach in the pose that she often adopted, as though nothing would make her happier than to wait forever. Her eyes squinted at him, but Draco thought that was because of the sunlight behind him, rather than because she disapproved of his actions.
“I…” Draco licked his lips. “I would value your perspective,” he said. “But I’m using an assumed name, and you might not like the person I really am.”
Hargrave smiled. “I thought so. I know several families of Fletchers, and you’re not akin to any of them. But I know enough of your mind and memories now not to object to anything I find there. May I?” She reached for the Pensieve on the table, which showed the last memory of the time Draco had stood in the Hall of the Ancestors, arranging and rearranging the Malfoy histories with a furious passion and not responding to the house-elf who’d told him Potter was there.
Draco closed his eyes. She might miss the clues in his face, but she would see the ones in the book titles.
But he must have had more courage than he knew, or more impulsiveness. He leaned back and lifted his hand from the rim of the Pensieve.
Hargrave plunged her head into it. She was under for a long time. When she surfaced, she gave Draco a single glance and asked, “Why do you think of that particular place as a refuge from the world? The world is in there with you, your elves and the deeds of your ancestors.”
Pathetic though the subterfuge might be, Draco was still glad that she hadn’t spoken his family name aloud. He answered quietly. “They did grand and terrible things. I did nothing like that. I’m not hiding from the world as a whole, just the world of my particular life. I failed extensively in the war. I didn’t help either side. I cowered. I had moments when I could have killed or otherwise made a difference, and I didn’t do anything.”
Hargrave was silent for a few moments more, appearing to think deeply before she leaned back and linked her hands in their usual position. “How many of the war heroes do you hear about now?” she asked.
Draco blinked. “Not many,” he said. “Except for Harry Potter.”
If Hargrave cared about the tone of bitterness in his voice when he spoke the name, she didn’t show it. “Exactly,” she said. “Their actions changed the world for them, and perhaps for others. But most people have forgotten them now, nineteen years later. Harry Potter stays in the news because he is an Auror and because of the magnitude of his actions; otherwise, I imagine that his name would also have begun to fade. Yes, ordinary individuals can make a difference, but the differences die out, and so do those who remember them.
“Punishing yourself for failing a single, decisive test might make sense. But not punishing yourself for a series of bad choices where what you did was refrain from acting, the way most people did. You are the overwhelming majority of people in this war, Mr. Fletcher. You, and not Harry Potter. The war heroes’ stories get honored because they’re so rare, honored and then dropped again. Why punish yourself for being like so many others?”
“Because my ancestors weren’t!” Draco snapped. “They did things.”
“All of them?” Hargrave tilted her head. “Unless I am deeply mistaken about who you are, your father did nothing during the war, either, except perhaps lead one raid on the Ministry, and the evidence for that was disputed.”
“But he acted,” Draco said. “He chose his side.”
“And he never regretted it?”
Draco paused. He hadn’t thought about that.
“I suspect,” Hargrave said, voice warm and gentle as falling sand, “that you have thought about the actions that your ancestors took, and not their emotions. Who is to say that they might not have regretted what they did, or thought something else, some other action that did not enter the history books, more valuable? Who is to say that they did not think of themselves as failures while alive, and it was their descendants who made them the honored figures they were?”
Draco bowed his head. He remembered the shining, absolute faith in Scorpius’s eyes when he had said Draco was wrong, and he was right.
“You are not alone,” Hargrave said. “You are not the only one in the world who has ever felt these things, and your failures are ordinary flaws, human faults. Now, that does not mean you cannot work to conquer them. But it also does not mean that you need to apply a whip to your back for every single one of them, for years, because your failure is unique in the annals of your family. It is not.”
*
“Strange,” Draco muttered as he poured a cup of wine that he didn’t trust the house-elves to handle properly, “how being told that I’m not unique should make me relax.”
“It has that effect on me, too.”
Draco started. The bottle of wine slipped from his hand, followed by the cup, and he had to cast a series of quick spells to ensure that they would both reach the ground without breaking or spilling anything. Then he spent a moment composing himself. By the time he turned around, he hoped that he looked, as he was, icily furious.
“Who told you that you could simply let yourself in through the wards?” he demanded of Potter.
“Your son.” Potter seemed unaffected by Draco’s outburst, except that he might have strolled to the chair he usually occupied with a bit more caution. He sat down, went through a careful rearrangement of his robes, and then lifted his eyes to Draco’s face. “Is that wine shareable?”
“Not with you, not today,” Draco said, and ignored the idea that he was being unreasonable. Hargrave had told him that he would have such ideas on occasion, and he should pay no heed to them. He would heal at his own pace, regardless of what others tried to tell him or impose on him. He finished pouring his cup and thought about moving towards Potter, but remained standing near his chair. “What do you want?”
Potter looked at him keenly, and then something changed behind his face. He stood up. Draco sipped his wine, and hoped that hid the shaking of his hands and his intense eagerness for Potter to leave, as well as his intense fear that leaving now meant the other man wouldn’t come back.
“I’m sorry,” Potter murmured, leaning forwards to take the cup of wine from Draco’s fingers. “I was trying to be subtle and slow, and I thought that speaking in vague terms would let you warm up to me on your own terms. But all it’s done is confuse you.”
“I am not confused,” Draco said, and grabbed Potter’s wrist, forcing him to bring the cup of wine back. “I asked you a simple question, one that you should have been able to answer without hesitation if your intentions were innocent. Why do you keep coming here? You could simply let your son run free in the gardens with mine, without speaking with me.”
“It’s a poor thing I’ve done to Scorpius and Al, but it’s the other way around now,” Potter admitted. He didn’t seem to mind Draco moving his hand away, instead staring as if he were fascinated. “I’ve been coming mostly for you, not for them.”
Draco’s fingers trembled, but he locked them in place and they stilled. “You still make no sense,” he said. “What is a friendship like this, pursued against your own natural inclinations and with someone who’s almost never been out of his house in the past eleven years, worth to you?”
“This,” Potter said, and leaned forwards to touch Draco’s lips with his.
Draco shuddered and stood still for longer than he should have. Then he broke free and stared at Potter, touching his lips. “So Weasley divorced you because you were bent?” It was the only thing he could think of.
“She divorced me because we didn’t love each other anymore.” Potter’s eyes were bright and calm, and Draco reckoned he must have heard that particular accusation before. “But I do find myself more intensely attracted to men than women, yes.”
Draco dropped his hand, abruptly aware that he was keeping it at his mouth as though holding someone precious, and sneered. “What part of ‘terminally awkward, obsessed with his family past, pure-blood’ don’t you understand, Potter?” he demanded. “There’s nothing in that to attract you.”
“Why don’t you let me decide who I’m attracted to,” Potter said, leaning against the mantle, “and I’ll do you the same courtesy.”
Draco rolled his eyes. His heart was still thumping and throbbing, his pulse stuttering back and forth as though he’d nearly fallen. “I’m glad that you at least recognize I might not be drawn right away to your high and mighty maleness.”
“I’m sorry,” Potter said a third time. “I’d intended to wait until you were more back on your feet before I said anything, but I saw that I was making you unhappy. So I decided to make it clear.”
Draco turned his back and nursed his cup of wine again. “There’s nothing in me to hold someone like you,” he said, and he heard the snap and ring of iron in his voice. That was good, at least, implying that he was holding on to his values.
“Ah, so you value commitment as well,” Potter said. “Excellent.”
Draco spun around. He would have aimed his wand, but he didn’t think that he wanted to cast any more spells to catch the cup of wine. “Stop playing, Potter!”
Potter’s eyes became cooler, his smile vanishing. “That’s the last thing I’ll do,” he murmured. “And right now, today, I’ll leave you, because you’re clearly distraught.” He majestically ignored Draco’s snort. “But at least you know the truth, now, and can make your own decisions.”
He turned and left, and Draco leaned back against the wall, his heart a roar and thunder in his ears. When he heard the pop of a house-elf appearing, he looked down and found that some wine had spilled on the carpet after all.
The poor house-elf probably never understood why Draco ordered it out of the room with an imperious gesture and a shout.
*
“See? I told you that Mr. Potter was good, Father.”
Considering Scorpius’s tone and flushed cheeks, Draco reckoned he should be glad that he got the more formal title at all, and no insults. He looked up from the book he’d been reading, or attempting to read, when Scorpius entered the library. It concerned Pensieves and memory theory, and Draco had hoped it would help him understand his experiences with Hargrave better. So far, it hadn’t helped, because his mind was worrying over what Potter had said to him like a dog over a bone.
“Why do you care so much, Scorpius?” he decided to directly ask this time. “I’ll let you play with Al even if his father insults me, after all.”
Scorpius hesitated and looked wary for the first time. Draco didn’t ordinarily like the look, but he did think that he should make some attempt to establish some authority. However much he had failed during the past few years to do his duty, he was still the adult and Scorpius the child.
“Well,” Scorpius said. “I just thought it would make things easier for me and Al if you were friends with Mr. Potter.”
“I’ve asked you not to lie to me, Scorpius,” Draco said quietly, setting aside the book. This time, he thought his tone worked, because Scorpius jerked and then turned to face him.
“I just-” Scorpius made a little chopping motion with his hand. “I want to see you happy.”
And this is the reason that I do have trouble feeling like the father. “It’s not your job to worry about my happiness, Scorp,” Draco said. He had heard Al Potter call his son that nickname, and though it made the skin on his back crawl a bit, he thought he could get away with it.
Scorpius gave him a look that was both startled and pleased. Then he said, “But it matters to me. Besides, you make Mr. Potter happy. And I care about him, too.”
Draco shook his head. “And you think that, what, dating would make us happy? If that’s what Potter even wants.” Yes, there was the joke about commitment and the kiss, but Draco couldn’t draw conclusions from that. He still thought it was extremely unlikely that Potter knew him well enough to be sure he wanted to date him.
Scorpius gave him a pitying look that once again made Draco wonder exactly who was the older one here. “You haven’t looked at Mr. Potter, then, Father. He looks at you as if he wants to date you every time he’s here. Like the sun shines out of your arse-er, I mean, as if you were the center of the universe.”
Draco frowned. It seemed impossible that he could have missed that level of emotion. Potter wasn’t very subtle. More likely, Scorpius had seen something small and misinterpreted it to give support to what he wanted to happen.
“You know that it might not work out that way,” he said. “We might not date at all. We probably won’t.”
“But you could try,” Scorpius said. “Just like Al and I tried being friends even though everyone said that because I was a Malfoy and he was a Potter, it wouldn’t work out, because our fathers were famous enemies.”
Draco smiled sadly. “They still remember that about us, then?”
“The headmistress of the school is obsessed with you both, I think,” said Scorpius. “She remembers everything.”
Draco shook his head. “I’ve never thought about dating Potter before, Scorpius. It won’t work out. I don’t think it will, at least,” he added quickly, to keep Scorpius from giving him the speech about good chances that he could practically see building behind his lips. “I might be willing to call him my friend, but no more than that.”
“I think Mother wouldn’t mind if you dated someone else,” Scorpius said.
“This has nothing to do with your mother,” Draco said. He knew the look he gave Scorpius was strange, but he didn’t know why it wouldn’t be. Where had he got the idea that Draco was pining over Astoria?
“Then why not date him?” Scorpius put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the door in a pose that looked positively common. He went on before Draco could correct him, though. “You could try.”
“It has to do with history and the past and politics, and lots of other things,” Draco said.
“Al says those don’t matter,” Scorpius said. “His parents were together for those reasons, but they weren’t as strong as love in the end.”
“Al is ten years old,” said Draco gently. “Of course he would think that.”
“I’m ten, too,” Scorpius said.
“It’s different,” Draco said, and ignored how weak his voice sounded, because this was his life and he was the one who would make the decisions this time. “Go to bed, Scorpius.”
He went, scowling over his shoulder. Draco leaned back in his chair and thought about Harry bloody Potter for ten whole minutes before he shook his head and returned to his book. He could think about Potter where it was hard to think about memory theory, yes, but the thoughts got him nowhere, so he might as well engage in productive struggle.
*
I shouldn’t be here, Draco thought, even as he knocked and then stood back in case Potter threw the door open and tried to spit on him. There’s nothing between us and no reason for it to work out if there was. Why am I here, instead of waiting for Potter to come and dance attendance on me?
He knew the reasons. Hargrave had convinced him to come. And Draco had started thinking that confronting Potter in his own home might show him a little more of what the man was like. But those reasons didn’t seem good enough now that he was actually here.
Potter opened the door of the pleasant house, and gazed at him, open-mouthed. Draco raised an eyebrow. “Surprised?” he asked. “Or offended?”
“Definitely the former,” Potter said, and then grinned wildly at him and reached out one hand. “Won’t you come in?”
Potter’s house was serviceable, Draco decided, though nowhere near the size or elegance of the Manor. It had several rooms, each decorated in a different, vivid color, and Draco wondered if that was Potter’s doing or his former wife’s. One was clearly a bedroom, one clearly a kitchen, but the others looked as if they were in-between rooms that could be whatever Potter wanted them to be at the moment.
Potter led Draco to the largest one, which had a window with a curved arch, and drew up a chair for him. “Do you want wine?”
Draco paused and looked more closely at Potter. He was sweating and fidgeting with the edge of a cloth thrown over the back of the chair he stood behind. Draco blinked. He’s nervous. He’s actually nervous to have me here.
That helped relax him. He sat down and shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“Er, right,” Potter said, and then came over and sat down opposite him. There was silence for a few minutes, while Draco sat there wondering what would happen next and Potter sat there drinking Draco in with his eyes.
“I came here because I wanted to see you,” Draco said, deciding that he should seize the initiative, “and speak more about what you said the other day.”
“When I kissed you, you mean?” Potter wiped his hands once on his robes, and then leaned forwards.
Draco nodded. “I don’t know if I’m ready to date someone else yet. It’s pleasant to have a friend for Scorpius, and of course you come along as part of the package. But I truly hadn’t thought further than that until you kissed me.” He was glad he could discourse of that as calmly as Potter seemed to be doing.
“You should,” Potter said, in a breathless voice that Draco didn’t think he’d been meant to hear. “You’re beautiful.”
Draco blinked, but Potter didn’t repeat that. He might not know he’d said it aloud. Draco sighed. “You should think about this a bit more. That’s what I want. For you to think, and to give me time to think.”
“I don’t know that I need more time, but you can have everything you need,” Potter said. His smile abruptly vanished. “As long as you don’t go back into your Hall of the Ancestors and shut the door behind you.”
“I wouldn’t do that to Scorpius,” Draco said. “But I might do it to you, and I wouldn’t want you intruding.” He had to make that point. Hargrave had told him that he was too much in thrall to his family’s legacy and needed to make some decisions that were solely for himself. If Potter couldn’t be a part of his life because of Draco’s own desires, Draco intended to make sure Potter knew it and wouldn’t simply assert a claim.
Potter nodded. “But we can meet?”
“We can meet,” Draco said. “As friends.”
Potter smiled again. “That’s fine. More than I thought I’d get at first.” He held out his hand.
Draco clasped it and shook.
He didn’t think he knew for sure what kind of growth would spring from this, if anything at all, but at least he’d made a decision, one that he felt good about and could stick with.
*
Draco gritted his teeth, told himself that the kind of exclusion he could imagine was almost certainly worse than the kind he would see in reality, and opened the door of Flourish and Blotts to enter for the first time in eleven years.
No one turned to look at him, although he walked with his hair uncovered, in rich robes that proclaimed his family’s money, and without the glamour of Gordon Fletcher. Two witches in loud robes continued arguing about the merits of some author Draco had never heard of. A man with several children clustered behind him read from a large book with bright pictures. The shopkeeper turned to Draco and elevated his eyebrows.
“Yes? And what kind of book would you be looking for, young man?”
Draco paused. Given his receding hair, he hadn’t thought “young man” was exactly how he would be addressed. But he would take it over the kind of insults that he’d thought up before he walked in.
“Books on the most recent Potions theory,” he said carefully. He was glad there weren’t a lot of people in the shop at the moment. Crowds, of the kind he’d forced his way through as he traversed Diagon Alley, could still make him sweat.
“What was the last one you read?” the shopkeeper asked, bustling through the shelves as though it was an honor for him to personally serve Draco. Perhaps he’d noticed the rich robes and not anything else, Draco thought.
“Er, Liggins,” Draco said, and then tried to sound more confident when the shopkeeper glanced back at him. “Christopher Liggins. On The Process of Potions Transfigurations.”
“Oh, we have many more new ones than that,” the shopkeeper said scornfully, as much to say that Liggins had lived in the unenlightened ages when no one understood brewing. “We have Elaine Sedaddle, The Precise Use of Potions. That one’s popular among the theorists, which I can tell you are, sir. And then there’s Jeremiah Liggins-Christopher’s older brother, you understand-with The Complete History of Feathers In Potions, Volumes One and Two. I would recommend the second volume myself, as more carefully researched, though of course…”
Draco let the soothing chatter wash over him, and bought both the books the man recommended, though he avoided several others that seemed more devoted to “exciting” potions such as love draughts rather than magical theory. The shopkeeper, who had already revealed that he was called Kendal Flourish, chattered endlessly away at him as he led him back up to the front.
“And what’s your name?” he asked at last, abruptly, as Draco was counting out the Galleons he owed. “I never did let you speak it! I’m like that, really,” and he wagged his head from side to side. “A sad fault, my wife tells me. Nothing sadder.”
Draco looked up into his eyes and said, “Draco Malfoy.”
“Might have guessed, with the hair,” said Flourish, and accepted Draco’s Galleons the way he would have accepted anyone else’s. “I hope that you enjoy your books, Mr. Malfoy, and don’t hesitate to return when you require anything else.” He winked. “We also have owl order, for those special orders that you need late at night.”
And that was the only reference to any possible Dark Arts involvement, Draco reflected as he stood on the shop’s threshold with his books. Perhaps he had only purchased Flourish’s respect with his Galleons. But that bought civility was still better than the intolerable staring and subdued insults he had imagined.
Flourish might not have meant any reference to Dark Arts, either. After all, it was in the shop’s interest to cooperate with the Aurors and not sell any openly illegal books. Perhaps he had referred to more risqué texts instead, the ones that hinted at illegal potions without ever describing them enough for anyone to brew them.
Draco shook his head and drew his wand to Apparate. Teasing out possible motives for shopkeepers was not a productive use of his time. The important thing was that he could venture out of his house, lessen his past isolation bit by bit, and still survive.
*
“Father?”
Scorpius didn’t usually come into the library at this time of day unless he had something immensely important to ask. Draco looked up and saw him frowning in the door, turning over a piece of parchment in his hand.
“Yes, Scorpius?” he asked at once, putting aside Sedaddle’s book and sitting up. Modern potions theory made him feel rather inadequate. Draco was sure that his facility would come back as he studied, or he never would have tried it, but it did mean that he was much gladder of interruptions than he once would have been.
“I got the Hogwarts letter.” Scorpius bit his lip and looked, as he often did, much more adult than his years. The only time that Draco saw him look calm and “normal,” in fact, was when he played with Albus Potter.
“Congratulations,” Draco said levelly. He wanted to go over and hug Scorpius, but he wasn’t sure it would be the best thing. He had been closer to both of his parents than Scorpius was to him, and even then, it had been hard to do anything more than show the letter to his father, who had inclined his head in approving silence. His mother had embraced him, but it was a tentative, fluttering hug.
“I-” Scorpius blew out his breath. “I know that we were going out to dinner in Diagon Alley to celebrate tonight, but do we have to? Can’t we stay home?”
Draco stood up and crossed the room to his son. Scorpius, in his self-appointed role of parent, was always worrying that Draco didn’t leave the Manor often enough or for long enough. For him to ask to stay home was unusual. “Scorpius, what’s the matter?”
Scorpius tried to stand taller and straighter than usual, but he was still just an eleven-year-old, and he ended up collapsing into the effort and searching Draco’s face with big, anxious eyes. “I’m going,” he said. “I’ll leave for Hogwarts in September. And I’m looking forward to it and everything, but-Dad, what are you going to do when I’m gone?”
Draco put his hands on his son’s shoulders. He thought he could understand the anxious looks that Scorpius seemed to be casting him lately and the absent way Scorpius often responded to questions. “You’re afraid that I’ll fall back into my old pattern of only staying in the Hall of the Ancestors and not interacting with anyone else?”
“Well, won’t you?” Scorpius tried to sound defiant. He only sounded nervous.
Draco shook his head. “I have Hargrave now, and though I’ll miss you, I can write. I hope to change, yes, but only to become more engaged and less distanced than I have been, not to go back to what I was.”
“And you have Mr. Potter.”
Draco nodded. He still thought about Potter’s kiss sometimes, but in isolated moments, rather than continuously. He thought that was best for the moment. “I do.”
“Are you-are you going to listen to him?” Scorpius asked in such a high-pitched voice that Draco wasn’t sure what he was feeling, and a glance into Scorpius’s face didn’t enlighten him, either. “Are you going to be with him?”
Draco flinched for a moment. He knew what answer would please Scorpius best, but he honestly wasn’t sure he could give it. It was still a struggle to remind himself that there was a world beyond the Manor’s walls and that not everyone would automatically hate him on sight, as he had assumed for so long.
But he knew what Hargrave-and, hopefully, Potter-would say about it, so he clenched one hand and spoke. “I don’t know, Scorpius. It has to be my decision, and not his.”
Scorpius looked uncertain now, but he nodded as if that made sense and Draco wasn’t a horrible parent for suggesting it. Draco decided that he wasn’t going to collapse in relief, and instead gave Scorpius an encouraging smile.
“Just-can we stay home tonight?” Scorpius asked. “So that I’ll have some more time with you?”
“You’ll have time with me no matter what,” Draco said firmly, “even if we go to the restaurant. That was what you wanted to do originally, wasn’t it? It’s one thing if you’ve really changed your mind, it’s fine, but if you want to do it, don’t let worry for me deter you from it.”
Then he held his breath. He thought that was the right thing to say, and Hargrave was working with him on trusting more of his own instincts and impulses rather than thinking he was a failure at all times, but-
“Yeah,” Scorpius said, and his smile was shy. “I’d like to go. And maybe we can meet Al and Mr. Potter there.”
Draco didn’t say that he thought his son had arranged that. It could only be a hope and not a prediction, after all. He did nod and say, “If you like.”
As it turned out, Albus and his father were there waiting for them, and Draco managed to nod to Potter and accept his greeting with what he thought was becoming gravity. It didn’t hurt that Potter spent most of the meal with his eyes fastened on Draco, and had to be distracted by his son several times to join in the conversation.
Perhaps feeling flattered by Potter’s continued attention, little as he understood it, wasn’t a failure, either.
*
It was the night before Scorpius was to go to Hogwarts.
Everything was finally, finally, packed up and picked up and put away. Scorpius had all the books that he thought he would need right now, although he had undoubtedly forgotten some and would have to owl frantically back home the moment he started to unpack his trunks in Hogwarts. The new school robes had been cleaned by a team of house-elves that had worked for six hours because Scorpius found something wrong each hour. (No matter what else he and Astoria might have done, Draco thought, they had managed to raise a son who was at least a Malfoy in the amount of time he spent worrying about clothes).
Now Scorpius was asleep, lying in his bed with his head propped up on his pillow, breathing loudly. Draco rather hoped that the beds in the Slytherin boys’ bedroom still retained the Silencing Charms that everyone had put up when they discovered what a heavy snorer Theodore was. One of Scorpius’s hands lay outstretched on the blankets as if he wanted to snatch at everything being offered him.
Draco resisted the urge to take the hand. He didn’t want to wake Scorpius up.
And he should go to bed himself. Astoria was coming in tomorrow, so that they could have a family breakfast-well, a parents-and-son breakfast-before taking Scorpius to King’s Cross Station. Draco thought he would need time to emotionally prepare for seeing her, not to mention everything else.
But still he lingered, looking.
He didn’t think a few months of sustained attention to Scorpius could make up for ten years of relative neglect before that. But it was better than nothing.
And he would write. And he would try not to let the silence of the Manor cause him to retreat into the Hall of the Ancestors, where there were portraits who would at least speak to him. Besides, become the hermit he had again, and even that would stop. He knew, now, why Helena had sometimes refused to respond to him for days or even weeks.
It would be hard. But he would try.
Scorpius’s voice said hopefully in his head: I know someone who would be more than happy to come over and keep you company if you’re lonely.
Draco rolled his eyes. Yes, it was time to go to bed when he decided to have rows with his son that his son wasn’t even awake for.
He touched Scorpius’s forehead, once, with a fingertip, before he moved off.
*
It hadn’t been as difficult with Astoria as he expected, when she smiled at him and he nodded and they sat down and ate together with Scorpius, who was chattering in the kind of high, bright, excited voice Draco could remember using to conceal his own nervousness. And now they were standing at the station, waiting for the train that would make a difference in both their lives.
A movement from the other side of the pillar caught Draco’s attention. He turned his head, and saw the herd of red-headed Weasleys running along, accompanied by the smaller black spot that was the heads of Potter and Albus.
Draco’s heart was beating very fast. It was a morning of endings and beginnings, and though Astoria stood beside him, that had stopped mattering some years ago. They hadn’t understood each other, and they were better apart. She had a close friend, Draco had come to understand, who she would probably marry soon.
And Potter and his former wife were separated, too, though Draco didn’t know all of the reasons.
It occurred to him that he’d like to.
So he waited until Potter turned towards him, and then-out in public where everyone could see it, in front of Scorpius who would certainly take this gesture as meaning more than Draco intended, under the gaze of judging Weasley eyes-Draco inclined his head in a nod.
Potter nodded back, and didn’t smile.
The smile was in his eyes, which made Draco look away quickly, stunned and breathless.
And hopeful.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/301320.html. Comment wherever you like.
In the next few days, Draco made an effort to spend more time with Scorpius, joining him at meals and following him into the library to ask what books he liked to read. He felt awkward doing it, somehow false. He hadn’t done this before, when he should have. Scorpius might feel now as if too little was too late and Draco should simply have been a better father from the beginning, rather than trying to make it up to him when he was almost eleven years old.
And there was the long record of his failures, too, which made Draco still go back to the Hall of the Ancestors at night and dream beneath the portraits.
But Scorpius turned to him with an eager face when Draco asked the first question about books, and showed him a thin book Draco didn’t remember seeing before. “I like this one,” he said.
Draco picked it up and turned it over. The photograph on the cover was of a moving, stretching, smiling baby. Draco thought he knew who it was, from the baby’s big green eyes, even before his gaze went to the title: A Biography of Harry Potter.
“You really admire Auror Potter, then?” he asked, remembering just in time to give Potter his proper title. He looked again at the book in his hands and wondered where this obsession had come from. Astoria’s bedtime tales?
Scorpius nodded, and his eyes were filled with the kind of honest enthusiasm Draco could remember experiencing at his age. “Yes! And isn’t it brilliant that he likes me and comes over to the house to play with me and Al, sometimes?”
“It’s brilliant,” Draco conceded. Then he paused, and added, despite himself, “Al?” He hadn’t thought the Savior of the Wizarding World would give his son such a Muggle name, though it did fit into the Potter tradition of names for the last few generations.
Scorpius giggled. “His full name is Albus Severus Potter. But don’t tell him I told you! He’d get angry-Father, what’s wrong?”
Draco forced his eyes open again. He had had to shut them when he heard the middle name. Potter, you have unexpected depths. But then again, I should have known that from the way you played with my son.
“Nothing,” he said. “Tell me why you like him. What is it about the book that fascinates you most? Would I like it if I read it?”
Scorpius flopped down on the floor in front of him, either not noticing or ignoring the way Draco winced at the ungraceful movement. Draco could almost hope that it was ignoring. “I don’t know, Father,” he said. “I don’t think I know you very well.”
Draco reached out and rested his hand on Scorpius’s hair. Once again, he had to shut his eyes, but this time, it was because of the threads of sorrow that felt as though they had been tugged taut in his chest.
“It won’t all change at once,” he said aloud, and didn’t know if he was saying the words to reach his son or himself. “You have to remember that. It’ll take time and work to move out from the shell.”
“Dad?” The next moment, Draco felt Scorpius move in what was almost certainly a flinch, because Draco had told his son over and over again not to call him by that childish name.
Draco welcomed the occurrence, because it meant he had a chance to change things. He opened his eyes, and saw Scorpius looking apprehensively at him. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s fine,” Draco said. “Now, I think you were telling me about the book.”
It might be stupid-his father would certainly have laughed-to say that Scorpius’s face opened like a flower, but that was what happened.
*
“Malfoy.”
“Potter.” Draco stood there with arms folded and face distant. He knew that, as if he was watching himself from outside. Not that he needed the help of his arms to look confined and wary, in truth. Caution wrapped around him like the bands of a steel snake.
Potter had owled and asked if he could come over. Draco had assumed that he meant bringing his son to see Scorpius, and perhaps staying to play with them, and had answered readily. But instead Potter had placed Al in the back garden with Scorpius and was walking up the front steps towards him, eyes bright and alert. Draco wondered if he was the suspect in a crime he didn’t know about, then considered that that might almost be preferable to what he thought Potter would demand of him now.
“Did you know,” Potter said conversationally when he arrived on the top step, “that I got divorced two years ago, too? I think it helps Al, to have a friend who went through the same experiences he did.”
Draco stared and opened his mouth to say that Potter couldn’t possibly have divorced the She-Weasel; he would have heard about it. But then he remembered that he hadn’t read any newspapers in years, and simply stood there feeling awkward.
Potter didn’t seem to find the silence uncomfortable. He waited, eyebrows raised, and Draco decided that it was incumbent on him to say something so that they didn’t stand there in silence for hours.
“Well, I reckon it’s important for people to have support,” he muttered. “What’s your support?” It was a stupid question, but the only one he could think of to ask that would build on what Potter had already said.
For some reason, Potter flashed him a dazzling smile. “My friends, and my children. They didn’t blame me for the divorce, thank God. That happens sometimes, and then the couple make it worse by trying to use the children against each other.” He sighed. “Ginny and I were never perfectly suited, but we both wanted children, and, well…other things that the other could give. So we made a compromise.”
“I’m sure that part of what she wanted was her celebrity crush,” Draco muttered.
He hadn’t thought Potter would hear, but Potter gave him a dangerous glare which melted into another smile. Draco shook his head. He understood almost nothing of what was happening today, including why Potter would want to speak with him.
“I’ve missed you,” Potter said, which made no sense either, and then took his arm. “Do you have a room where we could talk while we wait for the boys to finish playing?”
Draco took Potter to the library with a view of the back gardens. And Potter talked about Auror business with a quite shocking lack of secrecy about official procedures-well, perhaps not shocking, when Draco considered who this was-and about raising three children and their different reactions to the divorce.
Then he started talking about Mind-Healers and the need for someone’s help to emerge from depression. Draco didn’t understand why he was talking about that until he leaned forwards and said softly, “Don’t you find that so?”
“I’ve never visited a Mind-Healer,” Draco said. “And if you think that Scorpius might have ‘problems’ and that your precious son can’t play with him-”
“Of course not!” Potter waved a hand, looking horrified. “I was talking about you. You’re depressed because of the war, anyone can see it, and I think you need help.”
The freezing stare Draco gave him shut him up then, and they sat in silence until Al and Scorpius were ready to come inside and tell them all about their “bloody brilliant” practice match, with Al playing as Beater and Scorpius as Seeker.
When Potter left, Draco ate dinner with Scorpius and sat listening to his chatter with no more than half an ear.
It was strange, but speaking with Potter, and especially trading insults with him, had felt like stretching muscles that had been cramped and aching for too long.
*
“Have you made an appointment with a Mind-Healer?”
That was Potter’s first question during their next conversation, and Draco almost dropped his glass of Firewhisky (which he was drinking only to be sociable; getting pissed in Potter’s presence, especially with his strange preoccupations, struck Draco as a spectacularly bad idea). He turned around and tried the freezing stare again.
Potter seemed immune to it this time, balancing his glass on his hand and looking so hard, for so long, at Draco that he finally snapped, rattled, “Of course not. Why would you assume I had?”
Potter exhaled, a long stream of almost noiseless air, and shook his head. “Because I think you could use help to recover from this,” he said. “And I don’t think I can offer you that kind of help, between the kids and my job and my own mental issues.”
“I don’t need to ‘recover’ from anything,” Draco said, sitting down and tilting his head at the haughty angle that had made Astoria despair. “I am quite happy living alone in my house and raising my son.”
“But your tendency to hide and your scars from the war almost prevented you from raising your son.” Potter pushed his glasses up his nose. “Don’t you want help in case they do that again?”
“I think it’s a bit rich to come in and start speaking to me like that, as if we were friends, as if you understood,” Draco said, biting the words off.
“I haven’t observed you for a long period of time, no,” Potter said, sounding unabashed. “But I’ve listened to Scorpius talk about you, and I’ve listened to you and looked at you during the times when I was here and you were visible. I think you retreated into a world of your ancestors and family because it was the one world you still felt secure in. You need someone who will give you a firm basis outside that, from which you can interact with other people.” Abruptly, he stopped, as if embarrassed, and pulled at his fringe. “I’m sorry. But the language gets into your mind if you read the books long enough.”
“You read?’ Draco said.
Potter laughed instead of getting angry. “Prat. That’s the Malfoy I knew.” He leaned forwards. “At least consider it? I know Scorpius is happier now, but he tells Al all the time how worried he is about you, how he thinks you haven’t left the Manor grounds in years.”
“The Malfoy you knew is dead,” Draco said. “We all change. And so what if I haven’t left the Manor? In other centuries, pure-blood families might spend years in their homes without venturing beyond the walls.”
“That’s because they were besieged,” Potter said. “And I think we should be able to choose the changes that happen to us, as much as possible. Have you chosen yours?”
Draco clenched his hands down on the arms of his chair. “I’m trying to make a difference for Scorpius,” he said, forcing the words past the tight circle of his throat. “That is all I can do right now.”
He had no idea why he’d made such an intimate confession to Potter, and still less why Potter bowed his head and turned the conversation.
But he found himself watching Scorpius at dinner that night, wondering why the boy would worry over him, as if he were the parent and Draco the child. Scorpius glanced up and caught him at it.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” he asked, after swallowing the piece of chicken in his mouth and dabbing at his lips with a napkin.
“Something I can’t tell you yet,” Draco said, and then realized he had spoken to Scorpius more like an equal than a child. He shouldn’t have to bear that burden.
“Something that troubles me,” he said instead. “But I’m sure I can handle it.”
Scorpius bowed his head like Potter, and started talking about something else, like Potter. That night, the worry that troubled Draco was not so much whether he could be a good father as whether someone else already fulfilled that role for his son.
*
Draco hesitated for long moments outside St. Mungo’s. He had cast a glamour that turned his hair black and made him look taller than he was as a disguise. He had wondered if he really needed it. It had been eighteen years since the war. Most people weren’t thinking about the Malfoys and their losses anymore.
But this was his own comfort, rather than other people’s. In the end, he had cast the spells and gone.
Now he tensed his shoulders and walked in, waving his hand in front of him automatically. He had always found walking through the apparent Muggle store window into hospital more distracting than the barrier that guarded the platform where the Hogwarts Express departed. But he didn’t bump against glass this time, and in moments he was walking up to the Welcome Witch.
She gave him a professional smile. “Are you here to see someone, or speak with someone?” She must have already decided that he didn’t require immediate treatment if his hair was the right color and he had the right number of heads and limbs, Draco thought.
“I’d like to make an appointment with a Mind-Healer,” he said.
The Welcome Witch nodded seriously and tapped her quill on the parchment in front of her. “What’s your name?”
“Gordon Fletcher,” Draco said, pulling a name from the air at random. There was no reason to go in as a Malfoy when he had taken so much trouble not to appear as one, and if he had to lie a little about his experiences, then that was fine. He would rather lie than expose all of himself at once.
He wondered what Potter would say about that, and then wondered why he was wondering.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Fletcher,” said the Welcome Witch, and touched another piece of parchment with her wand. There was a cascade of bright purple sparks from some spell that Draco didn’t recognize, and the parchment folded itself up and melted into the desk. The witch smiled at him again and looked expectantly at the door as someone else came through. “They’re waiting for someone to become available.”
Draco sat down in one of the high, straight-backed chairs and waited. He was an expert at this, at least, since these chairs weren’t so different from the ones at the Manor.
A woman in a flowing green robe came down the stairs to meet him shortly afterwards, smiling at him as if she already knew what bothered him and had found nothing in it to distress her. “Mr. Fletcher? I’m Mind-Healer Melody Hargrave. Come with me, please.”
She led him to her private office, somewhere within the bowels of St. Mungo’s, and sat down in the least comfortable chair, waving him to a plush one. Draco sat and watched her expectantly. He’d never been in a Mind-Healer’s office before and had never thought he would be, and had no idea what would happen next.
“Do you know how we work with our patients, Mr. Fletcher?” she asked.
Draco shook his head. “I thought-talking, potions?”
“It depends on their troubles,” said Hargrave. She pulled a bowl towards her that looked like a Pensieve, except that it was made of pale green stone the same color as her robe. “I favor memory work, examining memories in situations where the patient has fear or discomfort and describing different ways that things could have happened. At times, I work with alternate universes through mirrors and allow patients to meet different versions of themselves who made different decisions.” She said it as casually as if she had been talking about brewing Pepper-Up Potions, Draco thought in disbelief. “What is your trouble?”
Draco licked his lips. He thought of Scorpius’s face, and Potter’s. He thought of the way Astoria had turned her back on him when she was leaving, and the way Helena Malfoy sometimes refused to talk to him.
Again Scorpius. Again Potter. He thought he knew this wasn’t the right thing to do, but-the most amazing thing of all-he thought he might have the courage to try something else if it wasn’t.
“I’ve spent most of my time since the war hiding inside the past,” he began.
*
“Scorpius tells me that you’ve started going to a Mind-Healer.”
Draco closed his eyes with a small hiss of irritation. That should have been his news to tell or not tell. But of course he should have guessed that Scorpius, with his liking for Potter, would tell a secret that he saw as something to brag about.
“Yes,” he said, turning around with the cups of tea in his hands, and hoping that Potter would understand, from his short response, that he didn’t want to talk about it.
Potter was smiling with pleasure, though, and took only one gulp of his tea before he continued. “That’s wonderful! Did they suggest someone special? How much progress are you making? Have you discussed-”
“That’s enough,” Draco said sharply.
Arrested in mid-flight, Potter looked like a puppy who’d had its nose bruised against a mirror. “Why?”
“Because,” Draco said, and then stopped. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to speak all the bitter words brimming up inside him. He lifted his cup and drank instead.
But that didn’t help, he realize, because Potter was still leaning forwards and watching him with yearning eyes. Draco rolled his eyes and gave in. If he got stung by the poison, that was his fault for approaching a snake with warning hood appropriately flared.
“Because I’ve only begun to acknowledge that I won’t fail at everything I do,” he said. “Because I’ve only begun to think that hiding inside my house isn’t a good way to raise Scorpius, or to make up for my mistakes in the war. For years, in fact, I thought about the mistakes and wallowed in my guilt, but just assumed that there was no way to change them or atone for them. I was useless, a dried-up rag of a person. The last significant act I did was siring Scorpius. You think getting over that is easy? You think that because my son needs me and I know that now, it’s easy to think of myself as worthwhile? No, Potter. I don’t want to talk about this with you, because you would try to make me change my mind and jolly me out of my bad mood-and all the while, you’d be making the assumption that it’s easy to do this. I don’t want to hear it.”
He turned back to his tea. Potter was silent. Draco didn’t think he was watching him, but staring at the far wall. Probably wondering why he had ever come in the first place, Draco thought acidly, or waiting for the shouts that would signal Al and Scorpius were done playing.
“I’m sorry,” Potter said.
The apology made Draco have to lean back in his seat. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry,” Potter said. “I didn’t realize I was doing that-I wasn’t being mean on purpose-but it happened.” He ran his hands through his hair, then looked in the other direction as if he assumed the window would be less confrontational than Draco. “I have to remember not to do that,” he muttered.
Draco shook his head. “I doubt you meet with anyone else who would take offense at anything you said.” He had almost said that none of Potter’s other friends would misunderstand him that way, but had stopped himself. Whatever lay between him and Potter, he didn’t think it deserved the name of friendship.
“You’re wrong,” Potter said. “And even if they didn’t, it’s still a good reminder to myself, when I hope that my association with you will be long and deep.”
He gave Draco a quick smile, then glanced out the window again and stood. “I think our boys are done.”
Draco sat there for a minute before he could stir and follow Potter. A long and deep association? What did that mean? Why would Potter assume they had anything in common besides a divorce and their sons’ friendship?
It was baffling.
*
“Are you glad that we woke you up and you started spending more time with me, Father?” Scorpius was sitting on the edge of his chair at the dining table, one foot swinging while he pushed around the vegetables on his plate with a fork. He had spent most of the meal talking about Al Potter and what they were doing in school tomorrow, but Draco wasn’t fooled. His son only chattered that much when he had a question that he was afraid to ask.
He didn’t think he had known that four months ago.
“Yes,” Draco said. He didn’t see the need to elaborate. Some of his feelings weren’t things he could burden Scorpius with, and others were so private that he would have found it difficult to talk to his parents about them. He focused on his wine and sipped it instead, wondering if Scorpius would move on.
He didn’t. He leaned forwards and asked, “And are you glad that Mr. Potter comes here so much? I know that he wants to be your friend, like Al and I are friends.”
Draco knew that he frankly stared at his son, and wished that he hadn’t. It was no part of his plan to force Scorpius into being an adult sooner than he was ready for. He tried to keep the same calm demeanor as he had before he and Astoria divorced, though with more affection. Scorpius didn’t need to see his father upset or angry.
“I am glad,” he said, when he had left enough silence for Scorpius to look uneasily away. “But I don’t think that you can be right about what he comes for, Scorpius. We-we don’t have enough history between us to be friends.”
“Al and I became friends the first day,” Scorpius said triumphantly, as if he had solved a universal puzzle.
“That’s not what I meant,” Draco said. He seemed to say that a lot around his son now. “We had history between us at school, yes, but it was a history of taunting and insults, hexes and trying to kill each other. We can’t start over from that.”
“Why not?” Scorpius demanded. “You didn’t see each other for at least thirteen years. So why not?”
“Because it’s more complicated than that,” Draco said. Scorpius opened his mouth to dispute this, and Draco said, in quick frustration, “You and Al-you’re better people than I am, Scorpius. You have interest in each other. You made friends quickly because you had no reason to keep away. And Potter might be a good person, too, for all I know. But I’m not, and I need time to learn how to be one again. Potter might claim that he wants friendship with me, but he has no idea what that would entail.”
Scorpius stared at him so long that Draco started to stand. It was still difficult for him to endure prolonged contact with other human beings sometimes, though he was better with Scorpius than with anyone else.
“You’re not a bad person,” Scorpius whispered. “Dad, you’re not.”
“You have no idea what I did when I was in school, Scorpius.” Draco forced himself to speak harshly. “I should let you see my arrest records, and the official histories of the war. Then you’d know.”
Scorpius gazed at him fearlessly. “Let me see them. I know they’re going to prove me right, and you wrong.”
Draco shook his head. His heart was breaking and choking him, both at once, and he knew no other way to get the point across. “Scorpius, even if I was a good person, Potter only wants to be on cordial terms with me. Not friendship. That’s something deeper, more important.” Draco had started to think that he hadn’t ever really known what it meant, either, given his haughtiness in school and Vincent and Gregory’s dimness.
“You’re wrong,” Scorpius said. “I’m right, and you’re wrong.”
Draco went to fetch the arrest records and the history books, giving up on a conversation that wouldn’t go in any productive direction for the moment.
*
“Will you permit me to see your memories?”
Draco hesitated. On the one hand, Hargrave had been nothing but kind and helpful so far, asking him to describe his memories after he relived them in the Pensieve and then giving him her own perspective on those actions that he found hopeless or foolish. Draco had begun to believe, slowly, that there might be more than one way to view his past, and that had helped him to start thinking differently about the present.
But she had never asked to see his memories. And a good thing, too. The blond hair might not be a matter for comment, but looking shorter in his Pensieve memories was noticeable.
Hargrave sat across from him, hands laced across her stomach in the pose that she often adopted, as though nothing would make her happier than to wait forever. Her eyes squinted at him, but Draco thought that was because of the sunlight behind him, rather than because she disapproved of his actions.
“I…” Draco licked his lips. “I would value your perspective,” he said. “But I’m using an assumed name, and you might not like the person I really am.”
Hargrave smiled. “I thought so. I know several families of Fletchers, and you’re not akin to any of them. But I know enough of your mind and memories now not to object to anything I find there. May I?” She reached for the Pensieve on the table, which showed the last memory of the time Draco had stood in the Hall of the Ancestors, arranging and rearranging the Malfoy histories with a furious passion and not responding to the house-elf who’d told him Potter was there.
Draco closed his eyes. She might miss the clues in his face, but she would see the ones in the book titles.
But he must have had more courage than he knew, or more impulsiveness. He leaned back and lifted his hand from the rim of the Pensieve.
Hargrave plunged her head into it. She was under for a long time. When she surfaced, she gave Draco a single glance and asked, “Why do you think of that particular place as a refuge from the world? The world is in there with you, your elves and the deeds of your ancestors.”
Pathetic though the subterfuge might be, Draco was still glad that she hadn’t spoken his family name aloud. He answered quietly. “They did grand and terrible things. I did nothing like that. I’m not hiding from the world as a whole, just the world of my particular life. I failed extensively in the war. I didn’t help either side. I cowered. I had moments when I could have killed or otherwise made a difference, and I didn’t do anything.”
Hargrave was silent for a few moments more, appearing to think deeply before she leaned back and linked her hands in their usual position. “How many of the war heroes do you hear about now?” she asked.
Draco blinked. “Not many,” he said. “Except for Harry Potter.”
If Hargrave cared about the tone of bitterness in his voice when he spoke the name, she didn’t show it. “Exactly,” she said. “Their actions changed the world for them, and perhaps for others. But most people have forgotten them now, nineteen years later. Harry Potter stays in the news because he is an Auror and because of the magnitude of his actions; otherwise, I imagine that his name would also have begun to fade. Yes, ordinary individuals can make a difference, but the differences die out, and so do those who remember them.
“Punishing yourself for failing a single, decisive test might make sense. But not punishing yourself for a series of bad choices where what you did was refrain from acting, the way most people did. You are the overwhelming majority of people in this war, Mr. Fletcher. You, and not Harry Potter. The war heroes’ stories get honored because they’re so rare, honored and then dropped again. Why punish yourself for being like so many others?”
“Because my ancestors weren’t!” Draco snapped. “They did things.”
“All of them?” Hargrave tilted her head. “Unless I am deeply mistaken about who you are, your father did nothing during the war, either, except perhaps lead one raid on the Ministry, and the evidence for that was disputed.”
“But he acted,” Draco said. “He chose his side.”
“And he never regretted it?”
Draco paused. He hadn’t thought about that.
“I suspect,” Hargrave said, voice warm and gentle as falling sand, “that you have thought about the actions that your ancestors took, and not their emotions. Who is to say that they might not have regretted what they did, or thought something else, some other action that did not enter the history books, more valuable? Who is to say that they did not think of themselves as failures while alive, and it was their descendants who made them the honored figures they were?”
Draco bowed his head. He remembered the shining, absolute faith in Scorpius’s eyes when he had said Draco was wrong, and he was right.
“You are not alone,” Hargrave said. “You are not the only one in the world who has ever felt these things, and your failures are ordinary flaws, human faults. Now, that does not mean you cannot work to conquer them. But it also does not mean that you need to apply a whip to your back for every single one of them, for years, because your failure is unique in the annals of your family. It is not.”
*
“Strange,” Draco muttered as he poured a cup of wine that he didn’t trust the house-elves to handle properly, “how being told that I’m not unique should make me relax.”
“It has that effect on me, too.”
Draco started. The bottle of wine slipped from his hand, followed by the cup, and he had to cast a series of quick spells to ensure that they would both reach the ground without breaking or spilling anything. Then he spent a moment composing himself. By the time he turned around, he hoped that he looked, as he was, icily furious.
“Who told you that you could simply let yourself in through the wards?” he demanded of Potter.
“Your son.” Potter seemed unaffected by Draco’s outburst, except that he might have strolled to the chair he usually occupied with a bit more caution. He sat down, went through a careful rearrangement of his robes, and then lifted his eyes to Draco’s face. “Is that wine shareable?”
“Not with you, not today,” Draco said, and ignored the idea that he was being unreasonable. Hargrave had told him that he would have such ideas on occasion, and he should pay no heed to them. He would heal at his own pace, regardless of what others tried to tell him or impose on him. He finished pouring his cup and thought about moving towards Potter, but remained standing near his chair. “What do you want?”
Potter looked at him keenly, and then something changed behind his face. He stood up. Draco sipped his wine, and hoped that hid the shaking of his hands and his intense eagerness for Potter to leave, as well as his intense fear that leaving now meant the other man wouldn’t come back.
“I’m sorry,” Potter murmured, leaning forwards to take the cup of wine from Draco’s fingers. “I was trying to be subtle and slow, and I thought that speaking in vague terms would let you warm up to me on your own terms. But all it’s done is confuse you.”
“I am not confused,” Draco said, and grabbed Potter’s wrist, forcing him to bring the cup of wine back. “I asked you a simple question, one that you should have been able to answer without hesitation if your intentions were innocent. Why do you keep coming here? You could simply let your son run free in the gardens with mine, without speaking with me.”
“It’s a poor thing I’ve done to Scorpius and Al, but it’s the other way around now,” Potter admitted. He didn’t seem to mind Draco moving his hand away, instead staring as if he were fascinated. “I’ve been coming mostly for you, not for them.”
Draco’s fingers trembled, but he locked them in place and they stilled. “You still make no sense,” he said. “What is a friendship like this, pursued against your own natural inclinations and with someone who’s almost never been out of his house in the past eleven years, worth to you?”
“This,” Potter said, and leaned forwards to touch Draco’s lips with his.
Draco shuddered and stood still for longer than he should have. Then he broke free and stared at Potter, touching his lips. “So Weasley divorced you because you were bent?” It was the only thing he could think of.
“She divorced me because we didn’t love each other anymore.” Potter’s eyes were bright and calm, and Draco reckoned he must have heard that particular accusation before. “But I do find myself more intensely attracted to men than women, yes.”
Draco dropped his hand, abruptly aware that he was keeping it at his mouth as though holding someone precious, and sneered. “What part of ‘terminally awkward, obsessed with his family past, pure-blood’ don’t you understand, Potter?” he demanded. “There’s nothing in that to attract you.”
“Why don’t you let me decide who I’m attracted to,” Potter said, leaning against the mantle, “and I’ll do you the same courtesy.”
Draco rolled his eyes. His heart was still thumping and throbbing, his pulse stuttering back and forth as though he’d nearly fallen. “I’m glad that you at least recognize I might not be drawn right away to your high and mighty maleness.”
“I’m sorry,” Potter said a third time. “I’d intended to wait until you were more back on your feet before I said anything, but I saw that I was making you unhappy. So I decided to make it clear.”
Draco turned his back and nursed his cup of wine again. “There’s nothing in me to hold someone like you,” he said, and he heard the snap and ring of iron in his voice. That was good, at least, implying that he was holding on to his values.
“Ah, so you value commitment as well,” Potter said. “Excellent.”
Draco spun around. He would have aimed his wand, but he didn’t think that he wanted to cast any more spells to catch the cup of wine. “Stop playing, Potter!”
Potter’s eyes became cooler, his smile vanishing. “That’s the last thing I’ll do,” he murmured. “And right now, today, I’ll leave you, because you’re clearly distraught.” He majestically ignored Draco’s snort. “But at least you know the truth, now, and can make your own decisions.”
He turned and left, and Draco leaned back against the wall, his heart a roar and thunder in his ears. When he heard the pop of a house-elf appearing, he looked down and found that some wine had spilled on the carpet after all.
The poor house-elf probably never understood why Draco ordered it out of the room with an imperious gesture and a shout.
*
“See? I told you that Mr. Potter was good, Father.”
Considering Scorpius’s tone and flushed cheeks, Draco reckoned he should be glad that he got the more formal title at all, and no insults. He looked up from the book he’d been reading, or attempting to read, when Scorpius entered the library. It concerned Pensieves and memory theory, and Draco had hoped it would help him understand his experiences with Hargrave better. So far, it hadn’t helped, because his mind was worrying over what Potter had said to him like a dog over a bone.
“Why do you care so much, Scorpius?” he decided to directly ask this time. “I’ll let you play with Al even if his father insults me, after all.”
Scorpius hesitated and looked wary for the first time. Draco didn’t ordinarily like the look, but he did think that he should make some attempt to establish some authority. However much he had failed during the past few years to do his duty, he was still the adult and Scorpius the child.
“Well,” Scorpius said. “I just thought it would make things easier for me and Al if you were friends with Mr. Potter.”
“I’ve asked you not to lie to me, Scorpius,” Draco said quietly, setting aside the book. This time, he thought his tone worked, because Scorpius jerked and then turned to face him.
“I just-” Scorpius made a little chopping motion with his hand. “I want to see you happy.”
And this is the reason that I do have trouble feeling like the father. “It’s not your job to worry about my happiness, Scorp,” Draco said. He had heard Al Potter call his son that nickname, and though it made the skin on his back crawl a bit, he thought he could get away with it.
Scorpius gave him a look that was both startled and pleased. Then he said, “But it matters to me. Besides, you make Mr. Potter happy. And I care about him, too.”
Draco shook his head. “And you think that, what, dating would make us happy? If that’s what Potter even wants.” Yes, there was the joke about commitment and the kiss, but Draco couldn’t draw conclusions from that. He still thought it was extremely unlikely that Potter knew him well enough to be sure he wanted to date him.
Scorpius gave him a pitying look that once again made Draco wonder exactly who was the older one here. “You haven’t looked at Mr. Potter, then, Father. He looks at you as if he wants to date you every time he’s here. Like the sun shines out of your arse-er, I mean, as if you were the center of the universe.”
Draco frowned. It seemed impossible that he could have missed that level of emotion. Potter wasn’t very subtle. More likely, Scorpius had seen something small and misinterpreted it to give support to what he wanted to happen.
“You know that it might not work out that way,” he said. “We might not date at all. We probably won’t.”
“But you could try,” Scorpius said. “Just like Al and I tried being friends even though everyone said that because I was a Malfoy and he was a Potter, it wouldn’t work out, because our fathers were famous enemies.”
Draco smiled sadly. “They still remember that about us, then?”
“The headmistress of the school is obsessed with you both, I think,” said Scorpius. “She remembers everything.”
Draco shook his head. “I’ve never thought about dating Potter before, Scorpius. It won’t work out. I don’t think it will, at least,” he added quickly, to keep Scorpius from giving him the speech about good chances that he could practically see building behind his lips. “I might be willing to call him my friend, but no more than that.”
“I think Mother wouldn’t mind if you dated someone else,” Scorpius said.
“This has nothing to do with your mother,” Draco said. He knew the look he gave Scorpius was strange, but he didn’t know why it wouldn’t be. Where had he got the idea that Draco was pining over Astoria?
“Then why not date him?” Scorpius put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the door in a pose that looked positively common. He went on before Draco could correct him, though. “You could try.”
“It has to do with history and the past and politics, and lots of other things,” Draco said.
“Al says those don’t matter,” Scorpius said. “His parents were together for those reasons, but they weren’t as strong as love in the end.”
“Al is ten years old,” said Draco gently. “Of course he would think that.”
“I’m ten, too,” Scorpius said.
“It’s different,” Draco said, and ignored how weak his voice sounded, because this was his life and he was the one who would make the decisions this time. “Go to bed, Scorpius.”
He went, scowling over his shoulder. Draco leaned back in his chair and thought about Harry bloody Potter for ten whole minutes before he shook his head and returned to his book. He could think about Potter where it was hard to think about memory theory, yes, but the thoughts got him nowhere, so he might as well engage in productive struggle.
*
I shouldn’t be here, Draco thought, even as he knocked and then stood back in case Potter threw the door open and tried to spit on him. There’s nothing between us and no reason for it to work out if there was. Why am I here, instead of waiting for Potter to come and dance attendance on me?
He knew the reasons. Hargrave had convinced him to come. And Draco had started thinking that confronting Potter in his own home might show him a little more of what the man was like. But those reasons didn’t seem good enough now that he was actually here.
Potter opened the door of the pleasant house, and gazed at him, open-mouthed. Draco raised an eyebrow. “Surprised?” he asked. “Or offended?”
“Definitely the former,” Potter said, and then grinned wildly at him and reached out one hand. “Won’t you come in?”
Potter’s house was serviceable, Draco decided, though nowhere near the size or elegance of the Manor. It had several rooms, each decorated in a different, vivid color, and Draco wondered if that was Potter’s doing or his former wife’s. One was clearly a bedroom, one clearly a kitchen, but the others looked as if they were in-between rooms that could be whatever Potter wanted them to be at the moment.
Potter led Draco to the largest one, which had a window with a curved arch, and drew up a chair for him. “Do you want wine?”
Draco paused and looked more closely at Potter. He was sweating and fidgeting with the edge of a cloth thrown over the back of the chair he stood behind. Draco blinked. He’s nervous. He’s actually nervous to have me here.
That helped relax him. He sat down and shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“Er, right,” Potter said, and then came over and sat down opposite him. There was silence for a few minutes, while Draco sat there wondering what would happen next and Potter sat there drinking Draco in with his eyes.
“I came here because I wanted to see you,” Draco said, deciding that he should seize the initiative, “and speak more about what you said the other day.”
“When I kissed you, you mean?” Potter wiped his hands once on his robes, and then leaned forwards.
Draco nodded. “I don’t know if I’m ready to date someone else yet. It’s pleasant to have a friend for Scorpius, and of course you come along as part of the package. But I truly hadn’t thought further than that until you kissed me.” He was glad he could discourse of that as calmly as Potter seemed to be doing.
“You should,” Potter said, in a breathless voice that Draco didn’t think he’d been meant to hear. “You’re beautiful.”
Draco blinked, but Potter didn’t repeat that. He might not know he’d said it aloud. Draco sighed. “You should think about this a bit more. That’s what I want. For you to think, and to give me time to think.”
“I don’t know that I need more time, but you can have everything you need,” Potter said. His smile abruptly vanished. “As long as you don’t go back into your Hall of the Ancestors and shut the door behind you.”
“I wouldn’t do that to Scorpius,” Draco said. “But I might do it to you, and I wouldn’t want you intruding.” He had to make that point. Hargrave had told him that he was too much in thrall to his family’s legacy and needed to make some decisions that were solely for himself. If Potter couldn’t be a part of his life because of Draco’s own desires, Draco intended to make sure Potter knew it and wouldn’t simply assert a claim.
Potter nodded. “But we can meet?”
“We can meet,” Draco said. “As friends.”
Potter smiled again. “That’s fine. More than I thought I’d get at first.” He held out his hand.
Draco clasped it and shook.
He didn’t think he knew for sure what kind of growth would spring from this, if anything at all, but at least he’d made a decision, one that he felt good about and could stick with.
*
Draco gritted his teeth, told himself that the kind of exclusion he could imagine was almost certainly worse than the kind he would see in reality, and opened the door of Flourish and Blotts to enter for the first time in eleven years.
No one turned to look at him, although he walked with his hair uncovered, in rich robes that proclaimed his family’s money, and without the glamour of Gordon Fletcher. Two witches in loud robes continued arguing about the merits of some author Draco had never heard of. A man with several children clustered behind him read from a large book with bright pictures. The shopkeeper turned to Draco and elevated his eyebrows.
“Yes? And what kind of book would you be looking for, young man?”
Draco paused. Given his receding hair, he hadn’t thought “young man” was exactly how he would be addressed. But he would take it over the kind of insults that he’d thought up before he walked in.
“Books on the most recent Potions theory,” he said carefully. He was glad there weren’t a lot of people in the shop at the moment. Crowds, of the kind he’d forced his way through as he traversed Diagon Alley, could still make him sweat.
“What was the last one you read?” the shopkeeper asked, bustling through the shelves as though it was an honor for him to personally serve Draco. Perhaps he’d noticed the rich robes and not anything else, Draco thought.
“Er, Liggins,” Draco said, and then tried to sound more confident when the shopkeeper glanced back at him. “Christopher Liggins. On The Process of Potions Transfigurations.”
“Oh, we have many more new ones than that,” the shopkeeper said scornfully, as much to say that Liggins had lived in the unenlightened ages when no one understood brewing. “We have Elaine Sedaddle, The Precise Use of Potions. That one’s popular among the theorists, which I can tell you are, sir. And then there’s Jeremiah Liggins-Christopher’s older brother, you understand-with The Complete History of Feathers In Potions, Volumes One and Two. I would recommend the second volume myself, as more carefully researched, though of course…”
Draco let the soothing chatter wash over him, and bought both the books the man recommended, though he avoided several others that seemed more devoted to “exciting” potions such as love draughts rather than magical theory. The shopkeeper, who had already revealed that he was called Kendal Flourish, chattered endlessly away at him as he led him back up to the front.
“And what’s your name?” he asked at last, abruptly, as Draco was counting out the Galleons he owed. “I never did let you speak it! I’m like that, really,” and he wagged his head from side to side. “A sad fault, my wife tells me. Nothing sadder.”
Draco looked up into his eyes and said, “Draco Malfoy.”
“Might have guessed, with the hair,” said Flourish, and accepted Draco’s Galleons the way he would have accepted anyone else’s. “I hope that you enjoy your books, Mr. Malfoy, and don’t hesitate to return when you require anything else.” He winked. “We also have owl order, for those special orders that you need late at night.”
And that was the only reference to any possible Dark Arts involvement, Draco reflected as he stood on the shop’s threshold with his books. Perhaps he had only purchased Flourish’s respect with his Galleons. But that bought civility was still better than the intolerable staring and subdued insults he had imagined.
Flourish might not have meant any reference to Dark Arts, either. After all, it was in the shop’s interest to cooperate with the Aurors and not sell any openly illegal books. Perhaps he had referred to more risqué texts instead, the ones that hinted at illegal potions without ever describing them enough for anyone to brew them.
Draco shook his head and drew his wand to Apparate. Teasing out possible motives for shopkeepers was not a productive use of his time. The important thing was that he could venture out of his house, lessen his past isolation bit by bit, and still survive.
*
“Father?”
Scorpius didn’t usually come into the library at this time of day unless he had something immensely important to ask. Draco looked up and saw him frowning in the door, turning over a piece of parchment in his hand.
“Yes, Scorpius?” he asked at once, putting aside Sedaddle’s book and sitting up. Modern potions theory made him feel rather inadequate. Draco was sure that his facility would come back as he studied, or he never would have tried it, but it did mean that he was much gladder of interruptions than he once would have been.
“I got the Hogwarts letter.” Scorpius bit his lip and looked, as he often did, much more adult than his years. The only time that Draco saw him look calm and “normal,” in fact, was when he played with Albus Potter.
“Congratulations,” Draco said levelly. He wanted to go over and hug Scorpius, but he wasn’t sure it would be the best thing. He had been closer to both of his parents than Scorpius was to him, and even then, it had been hard to do anything more than show the letter to his father, who had inclined his head in approving silence. His mother had embraced him, but it was a tentative, fluttering hug.
“I-” Scorpius blew out his breath. “I know that we were going out to dinner in Diagon Alley to celebrate tonight, but do we have to? Can’t we stay home?”
Draco stood up and crossed the room to his son. Scorpius, in his self-appointed role of parent, was always worrying that Draco didn’t leave the Manor often enough or for long enough. For him to ask to stay home was unusual. “Scorpius, what’s the matter?”
Scorpius tried to stand taller and straighter than usual, but he was still just an eleven-year-old, and he ended up collapsing into the effort and searching Draco’s face with big, anxious eyes. “I’m going,” he said. “I’ll leave for Hogwarts in September. And I’m looking forward to it and everything, but-Dad, what are you going to do when I’m gone?”
Draco put his hands on his son’s shoulders. He thought he could understand the anxious looks that Scorpius seemed to be casting him lately and the absent way Scorpius often responded to questions. “You’re afraid that I’ll fall back into my old pattern of only staying in the Hall of the Ancestors and not interacting with anyone else?”
“Well, won’t you?” Scorpius tried to sound defiant. He only sounded nervous.
Draco shook his head. “I have Hargrave now, and though I’ll miss you, I can write. I hope to change, yes, but only to become more engaged and less distanced than I have been, not to go back to what I was.”
“And you have Mr. Potter.”
Draco nodded. He still thought about Potter’s kiss sometimes, but in isolated moments, rather than continuously. He thought that was best for the moment. “I do.”
“Are you-are you going to listen to him?” Scorpius asked in such a high-pitched voice that Draco wasn’t sure what he was feeling, and a glance into Scorpius’s face didn’t enlighten him, either. “Are you going to be with him?”
Draco flinched for a moment. He knew what answer would please Scorpius best, but he honestly wasn’t sure he could give it. It was still a struggle to remind himself that there was a world beyond the Manor’s walls and that not everyone would automatically hate him on sight, as he had assumed for so long.
But he knew what Hargrave-and, hopefully, Potter-would say about it, so he clenched one hand and spoke. “I don’t know, Scorpius. It has to be my decision, and not his.”
Scorpius looked uncertain now, but he nodded as if that made sense and Draco wasn’t a horrible parent for suggesting it. Draco decided that he wasn’t going to collapse in relief, and instead gave Scorpius an encouraging smile.
“Just-can we stay home tonight?” Scorpius asked. “So that I’ll have some more time with you?”
“You’ll have time with me no matter what,” Draco said firmly, “even if we go to the restaurant. That was what you wanted to do originally, wasn’t it? It’s one thing if you’ve really changed your mind, it’s fine, but if you want to do it, don’t let worry for me deter you from it.”
Then he held his breath. He thought that was the right thing to say, and Hargrave was working with him on trusting more of his own instincts and impulses rather than thinking he was a failure at all times, but-
“Yeah,” Scorpius said, and his smile was shy. “I’d like to go. And maybe we can meet Al and Mr. Potter there.”
Draco didn’t say that he thought his son had arranged that. It could only be a hope and not a prediction, after all. He did nod and say, “If you like.”
As it turned out, Albus and his father were there waiting for them, and Draco managed to nod to Potter and accept his greeting with what he thought was becoming gravity. It didn’t hurt that Potter spent most of the meal with his eyes fastened on Draco, and had to be distracted by his son several times to join in the conversation.
Perhaps feeling flattered by Potter’s continued attention, little as he understood it, wasn’t a failure, either.
*
It was the night before Scorpius was to go to Hogwarts.
Everything was finally, finally, packed up and picked up and put away. Scorpius had all the books that he thought he would need right now, although he had undoubtedly forgotten some and would have to owl frantically back home the moment he started to unpack his trunks in Hogwarts. The new school robes had been cleaned by a team of house-elves that had worked for six hours because Scorpius found something wrong each hour. (No matter what else he and Astoria might have done, Draco thought, they had managed to raise a son who was at least a Malfoy in the amount of time he spent worrying about clothes).
Now Scorpius was asleep, lying in his bed with his head propped up on his pillow, breathing loudly. Draco rather hoped that the beds in the Slytherin boys’ bedroom still retained the Silencing Charms that everyone had put up when they discovered what a heavy snorer Theodore was. One of Scorpius’s hands lay outstretched on the blankets as if he wanted to snatch at everything being offered him.
Draco resisted the urge to take the hand. He didn’t want to wake Scorpius up.
And he should go to bed himself. Astoria was coming in tomorrow, so that they could have a family breakfast-well, a parents-and-son breakfast-before taking Scorpius to King’s Cross Station. Draco thought he would need time to emotionally prepare for seeing her, not to mention everything else.
But still he lingered, looking.
He didn’t think a few months of sustained attention to Scorpius could make up for ten years of relative neglect before that. But it was better than nothing.
And he would write. And he would try not to let the silence of the Manor cause him to retreat into the Hall of the Ancestors, where there were portraits who would at least speak to him. Besides, become the hermit he had again, and even that would stop. He knew, now, why Helena had sometimes refused to respond to him for days or even weeks.
It would be hard. But he would try.
Scorpius’s voice said hopefully in his head: I know someone who would be more than happy to come over and keep you company if you’re lonely.
Draco rolled his eyes. Yes, it was time to go to bed when he decided to have rows with his son that his son wasn’t even awake for.
He touched Scorpius’s forehead, once, with a fingertip, before he moved off.
*
It hadn’t been as difficult with Astoria as he expected, when she smiled at him and he nodded and they sat down and ate together with Scorpius, who was chattering in the kind of high, bright, excited voice Draco could remember using to conceal his own nervousness. And now they were standing at the station, waiting for the train that would make a difference in both their lives.
A movement from the other side of the pillar caught Draco’s attention. He turned his head, and saw the herd of red-headed Weasleys running along, accompanied by the smaller black spot that was the heads of Potter and Albus.
Draco’s heart was beating very fast. It was a morning of endings and beginnings, and though Astoria stood beside him, that had stopped mattering some years ago. They hadn’t understood each other, and they were better apart. She had a close friend, Draco had come to understand, who she would probably marry soon.
And Potter and his former wife were separated, too, though Draco didn’t know all of the reasons.
It occurred to him that he’d like to.
So he waited until Potter turned towards him, and then-out in public where everyone could see it, in front of Scorpius who would certainly take this gesture as meaning more than Draco intended, under the gaze of judging Weasley eyes-Draco inclined his head in a nod.
Potter nodded back, and didn’t smile.
The smile was in his eyes, which made Draco look away quickly, stunned and breathless.
And hopeful.
The End.
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