Hey y'all! This is the latest of my imaginings (another Drarry because I will undoubtedly go down with this ship). To kick us off, no, I don't own the characters or settings. I get to play with them, but I have to return them later.Also, this is set post- DH, but not following the epilogue. The pairings all stand, but no one has kids. That should cover everything… anyways, enjoy!

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After surviving something as earth-shattering as the second wizarding war, you think you've suffered it all. You've lost friends, comrades, your sanity… and you think to yourself, surely there's nothing else you could possibly suffer. But then, against all odds, your world finds a way to crumble and corrode even mode, your very foundation carried away by a river of misfortune.

That's what it felt like when Ginny left me.

It's not as if I could have done anything to prevent it. I didn't ask for reporters and fans to constantly harass us, for people to plague her with questions every time she went out. I didn't ask for her to become simultaneously guilty and adored, simply by association. She spent three years with me, trying to come to terms with the fact that some would love her and some would want her dead, simply because she was my wife.

The final straw certainly wasn't my fault, either. Ginny knew that I would never be unfaithful to her. She even admitted that much after the fact. So when the front page of the Daily Prophet started declaring that I'd been seen in all manner of seedy hotels, bars, and brothels with dozens of different women, it wasn't that she thought it was true, she just couldn't handle it anymore.

Couldn't handle the pity, couldn't handle the stares that said, "There's the woman that couldn't keep Harry Potter faithful…" It didn't matter that every word was a lie. What mattered was that she'd had enough of living under scrutiny, because that was hardly a life at all.

Or at least, that's what she said over her shoulder as she walked out of my door and my life.

As usual, the bottom of my firewhiskey bottle didn't give me any kind of answer as to how to move on from this point. Here it was, two months later, and all I could do was sit around stupidly and try my hardest to drink myself into oblivion or a revelation, whichever came first.

" 'Nother one, mis'er Po'er?" the barkeep asked, and I nodded. Just one more. Then I'd go home.

I was halfway through that one, and leaning farther and farther towards oblivion, when the warmth of the near-empty bar was disturbed by a rush of cool, early-spring air as the door to Diagon Alley opened and shut. I wouldn't have looked up at all, though, if it weren't for the familiar voice that called out to the barkeep.

"Just a hot coffee, sir," Draco Malfoy was saying. He strode towards a stool at the other end of the bar without his usual Malfoy swagger, not seeming to notice me at all. Behind him floated a basket filled with some sort of fabric that I couldn't quite see. He collapsed, rather than sat, on the stool and put the basket one seat over before dropping his head into his hands in the universal sign of exhaustion and defeat.

The barkeep, a bloke named Joe, placed the coffee in front of Malfoy, then excused himself into the back room for a minute. Malfoy lifted his head to drink, and I saw lines of worry and stress etched into a face that had aged far beyond the youth I remembered, though it was only a few years ago that we'd last met.

"Just a coffee, Malfoy?" I said, and was rewarded with the startled look on his face when he finally looked to see who sat down the bar from him.

When he did notice me, his face turned sour. "Not tonight, Potter. Of all nights, not tonight."

I frowned. I hadn't meant to antagonize. Any animosity I'd once held towards Draco Malfoy had been dulled by age, wisdom, and copious amounts of alcohol. Everyone did things in the war that they now regretted- it was a world where fear and pain could damn near blind you to consequences, I understood that just as well as anyone.

I reached around the bar- I was enough of a regular here to know where everything was and to feel comfortable helping myself- and poured a shot of Joe's strongest vodka. As I sat back down on my stool, I slid the shot down the bar, where it came to rest inches from Malfoy's elbow.

He looked down at the shot and up at me. "What's this, then?" he asked suspiciously.

I gave him a lopsided grin. "You need more than coffee tonight, mate. I'm four firewhiskey's deep and even I can tell that." I saluted him with my half-empty bottle. "Go ahead, it's on me. The strongest stuff in the house, I guarantee it."

He grimaced a little, but no longer looked as though he suspected me of some nefarious motive. "I shouldn't," he said, but more like he was trying to convince himself, rather than me. "I'm flying home tonight."

"I'll arrange a portkey for you myself if it comes to that," I assured him.

With a shrug, Malfoy picked up the shot and threw it back, scrunching up his face at the burn on the way down. "Thanks," he muttered.

"Sure."

He laughed once to himself as he put the empty glass down on the bar. "I probably should have checked that for poison before downing it, eh? Some Slytherin I am."

I shrugged. "This isn't the war, Draco, and we're too old to let childhood grudges control us."

"This was more than a Quidditch rivalry," he argued, but slowly, as if he was unsure why I wasn't on his side. "I don't know if you remember this, but I sort of teamed up with a group of murderers and sadists who destroyed nearly everything you ever loved and were out for your blood."

I finished my firewhiskey and tapped my fingers on the bar as I debated getting another. "Trust me, I remember it well." When I glanced back up, he seemed intent on looking everywhere but at me. "I come here every night trying to forget, in fact."

"Listen, I-"

"We were kids, Draco," I interrupted. "We all fucked up somewhere down the line, myself included. It's past, okay? The only thing that counts is what we choose to do now. Alright?"

He didn't look convinced, but he didn't argue. He kept his eyes trained on his hand- which, I noticed with a start, was conspicuously missing a ring.

"Where's your ring?" I blurted out. Age may have taught me how to forgive and forget, but as yet it hadn't dared to broach the lesson of tact.

He was quiet for a long moment, and I thought I'd overstepped whatever tentative truce we'd established for a second there. But finally he gave a seemingly glib retort. "Is this the part where I unload all of my troubles to you while sobbing into my empty shot glass?"

I smirked over at him. "Well, no one's forcing you to talk about it, but if you're going to-" I reached behind the bar once more "-I have the feeling that a full glass will be of more use than an empty one."

He grabbed the large bottle of vodka that I offered to him and refilled his glass. Two shots later, he seemed more friendly, which often happens as one blazes through a bottle of wizard vodka. "My ring," he started, "according to my wife, is at the bottom of the Amazon river, where she vanished it to after she ripped it off my finger as she threw my- I'm quoting now- 'sorry, good for nothing, cheating, motherfucking scumbag ass' –end quote- out of the house." As he vocalized it, the reality of the situation seemed to settle on him. "Shit," he muttered, and helped himself to another shot.

"Is it true?" I asked, now quite too drunk to care about propriety.

"Is what true?"

"Are you really a no-good… er… whatever, all of those things?"

He snorted. "Well, she was really just trying to find a creative and violent way to call me a cheater, and I really can't weasel my way out of that accusation, so…"

"Yikes," I supplied. "Did the veritaserum get you?"

"Worse. Undeniable evidence showed up on my doorstep in the form of Alexander Malfoy, my illegitimate infant son."

I waited for a punch line that never came. "Wait, are you serious?"

Instead of answering, Draco reached into the basket he'd brought with him and pulled out a bundle of blankets that- I now saw- contained a small baby boy slumbering quietly.

"Oh, fuck," I said simply.

He sighed. "My thoughts exactly."

"What- how did- who-"

"A very drunk, very regrettable one-night stand. Astoria and I were fighting, and I went out, and I met a woman… and I took her home… Well, you can figure out the rest." He knocked back another shot. "She was even kind enough to name him after me, wasn't that sweet? But her classiest move by far was when she decided she no longer wanted the child, and she kindly dropped him off at Malfoy Manor so that I got to come home to not only an irate wife, but also an infant that I'm now responsible for, despite the fact that I have no experience with children and I'm currently unemployed and homeless."

He said it all with the sugary, cheerful tone of the truly depressed, looking down at the sleeping bundle that he was awkwardly supporting. I tried to master my facial features instead of letting my jaw gape open like it threatened to do. "So what are you going to do?"

He snorted as he replaced the baby in the basket. "If I had a fucking clue, do you really think I'd be here?"

I chewed my lip, considering. "Listen, if you need a place to stay…" I may not be on a mountaintop myself, but at least I had a home, and money, two things Malfoy obviously needed. "I- well you could, I mean, I have room." I'd meant what I'd said about the past being the past, and I could hardly watch a man- Slytherin former Death Eater or not- and his child be turned out onto the streets.

The alcohol was definitely getting to him now. "To accept, or not to accept," he exclaimed, "that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of being a homeless man with a baby, or to face down pride and… accept housing. Or something." The end of the recitation was lost as he considered his empty glass. "I guess the only smart thing to do is say yes," he finally said. "And thanks," he rushed to add.

I smiled, even as I felt the alcohol tugging on the corners of my own consciousness. "No problem. Now," I said, standing, "there is no way either of us is capable of getting home under our own power, much less with a baby in tow, so let's go call the Knight Bus, shall we?"

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How intense! Draco's got a plus one, Harry's (still) got a hero complex, and now they're going back to Harry's place? WHAT? I know you can hardly wait for the next chapter, right? Hee hee. If I get 5 reviews before the next time I post, I'll tell you why I chose Alexander as the name! Haha. Thanks for reading, y'all. :)