I met my wife, Astoria, in the south of France. She is sweet, intelligent, charming, and of course, purebred. She was largely untouched by the war having spent much of that time touring the East. She is a marvelous hostess and a loving mother. She gave me my son, truly the sweetest and loveliest child ever to hold the name of Malfoy.

I can never tell her what happened.

Because although my wife is beautiful, she is also fragile. A crystal goblet, strong enough for the table, but unable to survive hard use. She knows me as the confident head of Malfoy house. She does not understand that I am also the scared boy who watched in silence as his teacher was casually tortured and killed before dinner. The youth who witnessed horror after horror expecting every moment to be his last. Neither home nor Hogwarts was safe then, and although the mind knows it should be safe now, the body finds it hard to forget.

I lay in bed that night imagining her worried face if I told her the story. How she would fear for the life of our son. And then, she would begin to fear me.

That is why instead of confiding my fears to my wife, I left home in the middle of the night and apparated to the edge of town to drink in a bar called The Snapped Wand. It was an old place, opened during the war when people needed a place to drink, but did not want to be seen. A wizard bar where people mostly mind their own business.

I took my vodka to a corner table and downed half of it in one long drink, but before long, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew that I was being watched. I looked up staring into the dark corners of the room, and I saw a pair of green eyes staring back at me. For who else should be in the bar but the great Harry Potter himself.

I stared across the room looking deep into the eyes of my one-time rival. How long I had writhed in jealousy of the The hero of Hogwarts? I was livid that he was popular for doing nothing more than failing to die. I hated him, and I envied him...that is until I rose beyond him, becoming a Death eater and having a new rival in Dumbledore. That was what I had thought as an impressionable and supremely stupid youth. I felt at my highest when I broke his nose in the train carriage certain that I was destined for greatness, and he was destined only for ignominy and death.

But as the days went on, and the pressure mounted, I realized what it truly felt like to have the Dark Lord's eyes focused upon me. It was soul-crushing, terrifying. Everyday I feared that he had lost his patience, and my mother or father had been killed. I would receive reminders at unexpected times: Notes inside my schoolbooks. Messages on my bottle of butterbeer asking 'how soon?', and once a dead mouse on my pillow with a noose around its neck bearing the words, "I'm waiting". I was scared every moment, and that was only one year. Harry Potter had held the wrath of the Dark Lord's attention for his entire life!

It was only as I stood on that mountain of furniture having watched one of my closest friends die in fiendfire that I truly realized the limitations of fame.

And it was only while sitting on the back of Harry Potter's broom, barely escaping the room with our lives, that I realized the true meaning of compassion. But no, it took longer than that. It took me years to understand why Harry Potter had bothered to save me. It wasn't a trade as I had first thought. A debt owed from the time I had not identified him to Bellatrix. It was... an understanding, that human life has value. A fact that the Dark Lord had never learned.

It wasn't until Harry Potter smiled that I realized that I had been looking at him for all of that time. I must have been staring at the man for over a minute. Potter rose to his feet then and walked toward me. I could have fled, but I couldn't stand others thinking that I, Draco Malfoy I was afraid of Harry Potter. I frowned as he stood beside my table, pulled back a chair, and sat down across from me.

Then Potter said, "Are you going to drink that?"

"Of course," I said and downed the rest of my vodka so fast it burned the back of my throat.

"Would you like another?"

"Why would you care?"

"Because I plan to buy you one."

"Why?"

"I'm feeling nostalgic, and you are the only school chum here."

"I didn't come to The Snapped Wand in order to meet people."

"Would you rather we continue staring at each other from across the room? So, do you want that drink or not?"

"Yes," I said, and he climbed to his feet and walked over to the bar.

I considered leaving before he could return, but something inside stopped me. The only place left for me to go was back home, and if there was anyone else who might understand what it felt like to almost kill your son, it would probably be Harry Potter. His life before had been full of danger, pain, and deception. He was always suspicious. Always expecting treachery, usually with good cause. Now he was a family man. By all accounts, he had spawned a veritable brood of children with the Weasley girl. It was likely that something similar had happened to him.

Should I ask?

Would he tell me the truth if I did?

Oh how the world had changed. Before, I would have never expected to be sitting in a bar drinking with my former rival. But he was never really my rival. Potter had only ever had one true rival. One whom he had killed after supposedly coming back from the dead. People now talked of him in the same hushed tones they once reserved for The Dark Lord. They whispered that the boy who lived could never die.

He looked so ordinary in his plain robes and worn brown leather shoes. His days filled with diapers and children's broomsticks. So many loud voices in such a tiny house. No privacy. No wonder he came here. Where else could he go to drink alone?

But... he isn't drinking alone, is he?

Potter walked over to the table with a Vodka in one hand and what looked like fire whiskey in the other. He slid the vodka across the table, and sat back in the chair.

"You haven't drugged this, have you?" I asked.

"If I wanted to hurt you, Malfoy, I could have done it by now. You know I'm a faster duelist than you."

"Are you... really?"

"There's no one faster."

"Except, perhaps, Professor Snape."

"Yes... he was faster, once. Drink up!"

"You first."

He raised the glass to his mouth. I raised my glass letting it hover at the level of my lips as I watched his. He took a sip, lowered his glass and then slid it across the table before reaching out and grabbing mine out of my hand. He took a long drink of my Vodka.

"Ooo, it has some bite! I thought it must be something poncey if you were drinking it."

I frowned, and downed some of his fire whiskey. I coughed. The fumes burned out half of my nasal hairs.

"I haven't seen you here before," Potter said.

"I never came before."

"What's different tonight?"

"What's it to you, Potter?"

"Just curious. It doesn't seem like your kind of place."

"I needed a drink. Why are you here?"

"I needed one too."

I downed my vodka and snapped the glass onto the table. Some faces turned toward us and then quickly turned their gaze away.

Potter's smile grew. He downed his fire whiskey in one long, slow gulp. Then he opened his mouth and breathed out smoke before saying, "Another?"

"I'll get it. Wouldn't want you to have to cut into the children's school funds. Another fire whiskey?"

"Just get me whatever you're having."

"Billywigs Special Reserve costs a bit more than that bottom of the barrel fire whiskey you were drinking, but I don't mind giving to charity."

"I don't need your charity."

"No, you need my company, but I warn you, if you get too drunk to apparate home, I'm leaving you under the table."

Harry guffawed. "If you think that I'll get drunk before you do, you are sadly mistaken, Malfoy."

I laughed as I walked to the counter and ordered a bottle.

I don't remember much else we said or did inside.

What I do remember is the feel of his hands under my robes as we stood in the alley behind the skip, my back against the wall as he wrapped his hands around my penis and tugged. I wrapped my hand around his, while my other hand casually flicked my wand to cast a privacy spell just before he cried out and fell against me, soiling our robes with his sperm. His hand grew limp, and I grabbed myself, my hand flying across my flesh as he clutched onto me. I came then, in a heat that felt like flames were sprouting from my head. Then I leaned back, panting against the wall, and felt relief such as I had not felt in years.

In that moment, as he leaned his messy hair against my neck, his arm drapped across my shoulders, we were just two boys playing in an alley with no fears and no responsibilities. I laughed, and It was only then, when the weight was off of my shoulders, that I realized how much pressure I had been under. For the last few months, no the last several years, I had held myself so tightly. So carefully. I closed my eyes trying to hold on to this memory before it all slipped away, but the door rattled open, and a group of men came out of the bar. They walked the other way without looking back.

Harry pulled away from me then, quickly fastening his clothes. I felt a straightened his robes, his eyes not meeting mine as he nodded once. Then he walked to the end of the alley and apparated away with a wave of his hand.

More people came out of the bar, but I stayed against the wall, sure that my privacy spell could not be breached. I pulled my robes closed and breathed deeply. The air smelled of alcohol, rubbish, and sex. I knew my wife would notice the moment I entered the house, her nose is very sensitive. So I spelled myself clean and finited the privacy shield before apparating to my business office which had a shower and a change of clothes. I would tell her that I rose early to work on investments. She had no reason to doubt me. I had never lied to her before.

After showering, I lay on the couch in my bathrobe staring at the ceiling. My body still felt loose. I couldn't help but wonder then how may other 'school chums' Potter had met in that bar, and how many of them had joined him behind that skip.