I was in my dining room examining the silver clock on the mantle, when I heard rapidly approaching footsteps behind me.
My wand was in my hand in an instant, a killing curse on my lips as I turned to meet...
the smiling face of my beautiful young son.
He jumped at me, tiny fingers grabbing for my waist, and I pulled up short, biting back my words before my fatal instincts could destroy my future.
"Surprised you father, didn't I!" Scorpius said with a smile. "I sneaked up on you."
My son, oblivious, held onto me tightly. He laughed, unknowing of the tragedy that almost befell him.
I was frozen in shock.
The war is over.
We live in peace now.
Everywhere witches and wizards are desperate to put the past behind us. Burnt and broken storefronts have been replaced with sparkling new ones. Gringotts has a massive new goblin-wrought dome. Even Hogwarts has been renovated. The only visible evidence of those times being the shiny new monuments proclaiming our Victory over Darkness, and the gaps in the banquet tables where the old wizarding families used to sit.
And the graveyards, of course. So many new ones built. Small plaques inside them with the names of those whose bodies were never found.
With Minister Shacklebolt's general amnesty, we are all free. We show our faith in this New Wizarding Age by ignoring the past. So I smile at the tailor whose husband was killed by my aunt, and she smiles back although her eyes are sharper than the pins she stabs me with. I pay her well, and the robes that she makes fit perfectly.
This is wizard culture, wizard civility, wizarding manners. We each do what is expected of us.
But the remnants of the war remain just beneath the surface.
I see it in the coldness of a shopkeeper's eyes, in the way parents pull their children close when we pass on the street.
I feel it. A well of fear and anger deep inside me that I have successfully hidden all these years, until the day when I pulled a wand on my son!
That's when I realized that the world we live in is broken, and I am broken too.
AUTHORS NOTE:
Warning - This is a work in progress. I plan for it to be an adult Draco/Harry fic that I post on AO3, but I am having trouble finding the time and place to write it. Please tell me if you are interested in me continuing this work. Betas and Potter-pickers welcomed!