Five years.
It had only taken five years for the happiness Harry had worked so hard for to crumble at his feet.
Neville had once told him, after the end of the war and their subsequent graduation that it was only a matter of time until the last remnants of the war veterans to die out. So the next coming generations would look back and scoff in disgust over the atrocities. But never experience that same kind of fear, the same kind of urgency and hatred.
It had, of course, been the same week that Augusta Longbottom had died.
Harry had nodded then, sympathetic, but not really understanding the importance of Neville's words, or his wisdom, until that cloudy winter night three years later when Andromeda Tonks succumbed to her old age and left Harry, not even having finished his Auror training, the new and sole guardian of four-year old Ted Lupin.
Harry had been horrified at first, he was so young, nineteen years old and now completely responsible for a child.
He didn't know how to be a father then.
He wasn't sure he was ready to be a father even now, two years later when he had just managed to get Teddy to smile at him and call him 'Harry' and stop asking when was gramma coming home when he woke up from nightmares, because Teddy had suddenly collapsed in school, his small body shaking with the most violent convulsions and his skin had turned sallow and clammy and there was nothing no one in Saint Mungos could do and Harry felt like he was going to die.
And as such he was now, sitting by his godson's bedside in Grimauld Place, holding his tiny hand as he shivered, having been released from the hospital with a pitying look from the healers and recommendations to contact foreign experts because whatever was hurting the child was something no healer in Britain. All they could tell was that something was over-exhausting the boy's magical core and that it could be the sudden appearance of his metamorphomagus abilities – from his late mother – or the unfortunate infection of his father's manifesting as he matured in his magic.
Hermione had been working after hours at the ministry, harassing the unspeakables until she had been banned from the Department of Mysteries, while Harry, for once in his life, used his name and influence, his fame, so every single healer around the world knocked on his door with a solution.
None had much luck yet.
So when he heard the knocking on his front door that sunny spring afternoon he jumped to his feet as it had become his costume for the last week, almost ripping the wooden door off its hinges and grasping the hand raised to knock once more urgently.
"Yes!" he said before he could even get a good look at the person on the other side, only to feel his body freeze the second his eyes met the silvery grey ones of the person whose hand he was now holding in his own.
"Good afternoon, Potter," Draco Malfoy greeted, a blond eyebrow raised. "I didn't realize you were expecting me."
Harry blinked, instantly releasing Malfoy's hand as if burned.
"I wasn't," he admitted, taking a step back. "I thought you were another healer."
Malfoy's face turned pale for a millisecond, his lips pursing and his eyes darting from side to side before he nodded.
"As I thought," he muttered. "Let me in, quick, I don't have much time."
"What?" Harry gapped.
"Hurry up," Malfoy whispered, his whole body tensing. "I take it Theodore Lupin is here?"
"How did you…" the other man hesitated, frowning. It wasn't that he didn't think Malfoy wouldn't know Teddy was living with Harry, but then again, the blond had left Britain a few months after their graduation, his hands clenched and shoulders set back arrogantly, never to be seen or heard from again.
Until that very day.
With a roll of his pale eyes, Malfoy simply pushed the door open further with his hand and made his way inside, whispering a soft 'let me in', hands instantly pulling his cloak off and letting it drop to the floor as he made his way upstairs, hands quickly reaching to undo the cuffs of his sleeves.
"Which one's Theodore's room?" he asked, not looking back as he checked each door. Sure Harry was following him.
Which he was, of course.
"Third to the right," Harry replied instantly, instinctively. "But Malfoy, what…"
Malfoy ignored him then, pushing the door open and rushing to the child's bed, reaching for Teddy's hand and tightly holding it in his own. Pale, slender lips whispering a soft incantation in a language that did not resemble anything Harry had ever heard which made a soft glow envelop them both before fading inside Teddy.
"It seems I got here in the nick of time," the blond whispered, frowning. "Two more days and I would have been too late."
Harry stood by the doorway, eyes wide, breath ragged, ready to demand answers from the blond when he noticed how Teddy's tiny chest stopped convulsing and his breathing grew even.
He looked calm for the first time in a month.
"How…" he asked, approaching them.
Malfoy looked tired, Harry could see now, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple, lips dry. As if he had ran the whole way from Malfoy Manor.
"When did he fall ill?" he asked, eyes determinedly set on the now sleeping child. "A month ago? Two?"
"Two and a week," Harry replied, entering the room at last when he heard Malfoy whisper a soft 'fuck'. "Malfoy, what the hell did you do? How did you know?"
"I wasn't sure I had felt it right, or I would have come sooner," the blond whispered. "This spell was never meant to touch him. We will need to move fast, take him out of here."
"Malfoy, you better start making sense soon or I swear…"
"I'm trying to!" Malfoy interrupted. "I just don't know where to start."
"Start from the beginning, then!" Harry snapped, frustrated.
Malfoy lowered his face in a way that made his long blond hair fall over his eyes, his adam's apple bobbed twice as he swallowed.
He nodded.
"Someone," he began. "Someone wanted to take the government away from the hands of the Ministry and by doing so, connected the whole base magic of the magical community to Theodore's magical core. He is too young however, and his body is not strong enough to withstand such power."
Harry stared, shocked.
"You said the spell was not supposed to touch him," he said earnestly, eyes narrowing.
"It's because of his blood relations, that he was targeted," Malfoy nodded. "I don't think it was intentional, or at least I don't want to believe it was."
"Then who should have been targeted by the spell?" Harry asked, feeling dread pull at his stomach at the very thought. "Was it… me?"
He would never forgive himself if the answer was yes. If he was, once again, the reason someone had hurt those he loved.
Malfoy finally took his eyes off Teddy's sleeping face and locked them with his own emerald ones, his face was solemn, aged.
"No, Potter," he said softly. "It was me."
Harry felt the breath leave his body.
"All this… because of you?"
Malfoy nodded.
"Centuries ago, when Hogwarts was still new, the Ministry was only an institution established by the Royal family that was to oversee the most domestic affairs of the kingdom," he explained. "Long before it became the power hungry monster that it is today."
"I thought the Queen and the Royal family were not magical," Harry asked, finally allowing himself to take a seat by Teddy's feet, afraid to touch him and dispel whatever Malfoy was doing to keep him stable.
"They are not," Malfoy nodded. "Not anymore at least. Then again, crown has changed hands a lot in the last thousand years."
"Then…"
"There is a spell, a really old one, that can only be casted when at least half of the population is unsatisfied with the elected government," Malfoy continued to whisper, as if each word hurt his throat. "It ties the magical core of the most suitable magical heir to the land and spreads its essence throughout each and all citizens, looking for their unconscious preference until a consensus can be reached, which usually takes up to four to six months, as our community is rather large. If the majority of the population decides they'd rather side with the Ministry, the spell stops and awaits for another time it is needed."
Harry swallowed, the knot in his stomach tightening at the implications.
"And if the majority decides they don't want to follow the Ministry?" he asked, his own voice going soft.
"Then the Ministry loses its absolute power, and the heir becomes King or Queen of magical Britain."
Silence fell between them for a moment as Harry tried to absorb Malfoy's explanation. The implications of what was happening, the sole reason his godson, his only remaining family almost died.
Someone, out there, had been selfish enough to cast a spell without even knowing the consequences, just because the Ministry was unpopular?
"You said Teddy got targeted because of his blood relations," he mused outloud after a few minute. "So he has the blood of the closest heir?"
"In a way," Malfoy replied, shrugging his shoulders. "It's one of the reasons why we Purebloods are so obsessed with keeping our lines pure, to be honest. We need to know who is related to whom in order to keep our families protected, and be prepared in case this spell was ever casted, of course, us of the families involved are not permitted to cast it ourselves, so you can take most of the ancient noble houses out of your list of suspects."
Harry nodded then, sighing. Trust Malfoy to know he was going to get to the bottom of the matter.
He didn't really care about the Ministry, since it all sounded rather fair if the majority of the wizarding population got to choose, but the asshole who had dared to hurt his godchild, that bastard was going down.
"I'll need a list of all the families that knew the Black family was the closest to the royal family," he said, hands clenching when Malfoy simply chuckled.
"You'll need to start looking for a half-blood or a muggleborn, Potter," Draco said, shrugging. "No pureblooded family would dare the risk to cast this spell."
"How can you be so sure?" Harry snapped.
Malfoy scoffed.
"Because no light or dark family would risk having a Malfoy as their King, not after the war," he said simply, his eyes slowly returning to Teddy's face. "The closest family with blood relations to the royals, is not the Black Family. It's the Malfoys."
Harry's eyes widened.
"Then… why Teddy?" he asked.
Malfoy snorted, his eyes downcast.
"Because there is no other Malfoy left. If Father was alive, the spell would have targeted him, and me by default as his heir," the blond sighed. "As I am the only Malfoy alive, and was not in the territory as this spell was cast, the magic needed to find my closest blood relative. My mother's grandnephew."
"Teddy," Harry nodded. "As he is Andromeda's grandson."
"Exactly."
"Then the suspect could be a pureblood," Harry mused. "You were not in Britain, and everyone knew it. Someone with enough knowledge could surmise Teddy would be targeted in your absence, and maybe that's what they wanted."
Malfoy shook his head.
"All purebloods know what would happen if a child was involved. We do not sacrifice young blood, it is a sin against magic," he said. "Furthermore, there would be only two possible outcomes, and no pureblood would accept them."
"Which are?" Harry pushed.
Draco sighed.
"One," he whispered. "Once my closest heir died, the magic jumped the bloodlines to my new closest living relative, who happens to be one Professor Neville Longbottom."
"Neville?"
"He is my third or fourth cousin, or so I think," Draco nodded. "His great granduncle was my great-great grandfather's cousin."
"And the other option?" Harry asked.
Draco hesitated for a moment, his lips pursed.
"If Theodore survived the magical onslaught," he shrugged. "The crown would be passed to his guardians to hold until he was of age. Which would make you King in his stead."
"What?" Harry's eyes widened.
"He is six years old, and I was not considered a part of the British society by law," Malfoy explained.
Harry nodded, remembering how he had overheard Ron talking to his older brother Bill about the end of Malfoy's parole one Christmas dinner. How Malfoy Manor had closed its doors to any outsider in absence of its Lord and Master and the dark magic that could be stagnating and rotting inside. Bill had nodded and replied that they only needed to wait five years, four months, three weeks and two days for Malfoy to set roots in Europe, that way the magic would recognize that Malfoy was renouncing his British roots and accepting foreign ones, which in turn would revoke his citizenship and open the Manor to the government.
"I thought your citizenship had been revoked," he said, tilting his head.
"So did I," Malfoy shook his head. "I received an owl from the Ministry stating that all my rights to Malfoy Manor were to expire so I had 24 hours to retrieve all assets I wanted to preserve to myself – prior Ministry approval, of course – before the house was taken from my hands and all its magic stripped."
"And was the Manor open?" Harry asked, blinking.
Malfoy shrugged.
"I don't think so," he said. "Before I could portkey to the Manor I was intercepted by Chief Goblin Farrhogk, of Gringotts who was quite aggressively upset that I was moving the Malfoy vaults out of the bank. He literally kidnapped me and apparated me to his private office in Gringotts."
"And were you? Moving the vaults I mean?" Harry said.
"Not on my accord," Draco sighed. "It's standard procedure that once a wizard renounces his citizenship, all his assets are moved to their new country of origin – not counting a hefty transfer fee for the Ministry, of course."
"So, if the Malfoy vaults are still in Gringotts," Harry frowned. "You are still a British citizen."
Draco nodded.
"Apparently the quill pusher that sent me my notification was a little bit two eager," he said. "They sent it a month before the deadline. Most likely believing the owl would take a lot longer to reach me than it did."
Harry's frown deepened.
"So, they send you a letter believing you are no longer part of the community, you come back believing the same but the Goblins tell you otherwise and then you felt Teddy was ill," he surmised.
"As soon as I realized I still had time to reclaim my heirlooms without the Ministry's interference," Draco said simply. "When I left for Germany, I had not been able to take anything magical with me due to me being on Parole, but now… I immediately asked Chieftain Farrhogk to retrieve the Malfoy Ring from the Main Vault where it must have appeared after my Father's death."
The blond paused, a bitter curl on his lips as he, most likely, remembered how he had been forbidden to attend both his parent's funerals – if they even had one, Harry wasn't sure.
"As soon as I said the incantation and slipped the ring on, I felt the weight of Magic's displeasure and how it was tugging me here," he continued. "I had been taught by my father to recognize the signs of the spell, a thousand little voices asking questions in the back of my head, all at once, and from then it didn't take me long to assume what had happened."
Harry nodded once more.
"Even if it is a ridiculous coincidence," he whispered. "I'm thankful you came and saved Teddy's life."
Draco let out a soft snort.
"You won't be so happy for long, I'm afraid," he said. "We need to move from here, to a place no one in the Ministry, no one in Wizarding Britain knows."
Harry's eyes widened.
"What?" he asked.
"I'm literally telling magic I am back to take the place it requires of me," Malfoy scowled. "It will send a broadcast of subconscious relief through the population. The Ministry will know."
"And?" Harry scowled back.
"Do you really think it will take them long to put two and two together and know I'm back?" Draco hissed. "Do you think they'll just sit there, twiddling their thumbs as they await the consensus? They'll come after me and my heir! They'll do their damned best so no King rises to stop them."
"That wouldn't happen!" Harry protested. "Kingsley would never!"
Malfoy locked his cold silvery eyes with his.
"Maybe the Minister himself wouldn't, I don't know him," he admitted. "But what about one of his guards, an Auror gone rouge, an unspeakable with an agenda! One of his fucking undersecretaries? Can you honestly trust each and every one of them with your godson's safety? Because they won't just come for me, they'll come for him too!"
Harry paled, remembering Umbridge's high-pitched giggles, Robarb's sneering comments whenever Parkinson passed them on her way to the Recreation and Sport's department on how Slytherins should all be slayed for the greater good.
No matter how much he wished otherwise, he knew that old prejudice was still inside people's hearts, that power was corruptive and many could fall prey to it.
He could easily imagine a lowly ministry employee, a clerk even, feeling the 'broadcast' and thinking that if he could get rid of Malfoy and Teddy, he or someone he loved could be next in line to the throne. Following old pureblood genealogy had never been his forte, yes, but it had never been particularly difficult either.
"No, I can't," he whispered finally. "We need to move then."
"Do you have any safehouses?" Draco whispered, teeth sinking into his bottom lip. "I'm afraid my properties would be the first they would search for."
"Not that I know of, not any that are hidden," Harry replied, shoulders slumping. "I'm an Auror, after all."
"Not for long if they find you with me," Draco mumbled. "Then again, the Ministry must know my heir is your godson and will be knocking on the door within minutes."
"The Weasleys would…"
"Definitely not," Draco snapped. "There are too many and… everyone knows they are your family."
"Then what do you suggest?" Harry snapped, losing his patience.
Draco seemed thoughtful for a moment, his eyes downcast, dulled. Harry took that moment to examine him maybe for the first time since he had arrived at Grimauld Place. Malfoy's hair was long now, as long a Lucius had once worn it – maybe because his father had worn it like that once? – and it fell in gently over his shoulders, spilling like liquid silk around him. His eyes had lost most of their blue speckles and had turned completely grey, metallic in a way, unearthly.
He had grown taller – they all had, really – but while Harry's training had made him muscled, broadened his shoulders, Draco had grown lankier, his limbs slender, his fingers long.
He reminded him of…
"Snape," he whispered, unaware of himself.
Malfoy's eyes widened.
"What?" he asked.
"You look like Snape now," Harry said, flushing. "You are skinnier, lankier… like Snape."
Malfoy's lips thinned.
"I am a Potion Master," he whispered.
Harry nodded, unsure.
They remained in silence for another moment, each deep in thought.
"Snape…" Malfoy whispered, awed. "That's it! Snape!"
"What?" Harry asked.
"I can't move from here until the magic settles," he urged. "But you can, I need you to go to the chimney and call out Chief Farrhogk at Gringotts. There might be a place we can hide in."
"What?" Harry stared at him, eyes wide.
"I said go! Hurry up!" Malfoy snarled, body curling protectively over Teddy's.
Harry nodded.
Draco watched him go towards the fireplace, his shoulders squared and tense.
"Let's hope you kept your promise, you old bat.." he whispered.