The Basket Case
by Stray
2. September 2006
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or its characters and make no money off of it. I'm not sure I would even if I owned them.
Warnings: This is my first HP fanfic that you get to see. I'm not a native English speaker, but I try. And this is going to contain SLASH! If you don't like it, you can still read it if you harbour masochistic tendencies. Flames are used to warm my cold little heart. Constructive criticism is appreciated.
Beta-ed by: Vaughn and C. Dumbledore.
8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8 ·m 8
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Draco woke up to a knock on his door and realised, dismayed, that he was alone in his bed. At first he didn't know what woke him, but then it repeated, and he sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
"Come in," he called without even getting up and putting on a dress robe. It wasn't as if Podmore had not seen him in his nightdress before. At least if the Healer had come to conduct some examinations on him, which was very likely, he wouldn't have to remove one more layer of clothing.
"Do you want me to undress?" he asked with his fingers in front of his eyes, which seemed particularly sensitive to sunlight right now.
He almost jumped out of his skin when he realised that the voice answering definitely did not belong to Podmore.
"Sure I do." Harry leered at him, then, seeing Draco's minute mortification, laughed and came to sit down on the bed next to Draco. "So? Do I get my show or did you think I was someone else?"
"Bugger off, Potter!" Draco groaned in mock-frustration and embarrassment, the latter being attributed more to the image his overactive mind conjured at the last suggestion than to the fact that he had just offered to get naked in front of Potter. It wasn't as if that were such an uncommon occurrence lately, anyhow.
"No can do." Harry grinned, clearly enjoying the situation.
"Then tell me what you want already!" Draco snapped. "And why the hell are you knocking?" he muttered afterwards, but Harry didn't let himself be influenced by his bark. Quite the contrary.
"Just that thing called common courtesy you like to accuse me of not having. I didn't know if you were still sleeping or in the middle of something…" Clearly, Harry had very much a one-track mind.
"All right, all right! You still didn't answer my question. What do you want this early?" Draco asked, resigned to the fact that he wouldn't be allowed to go back to bed. He was already waking up, so it would have been of no use now, anyhow.
"Do you really need to be told? I thought I was pretty clear on what I wanted from you," Harry said, his voice turning seductive, which just seemed plain wrong to Draco. Mostly because his body had reacted to it, and it was clear that Harry wasn't planning to remedy the situation. No wonder it had put Draco in a rather cranky mood.
"Potter, it's too bloody early for games," he groaned, trying to mask his arousal with grumpiness, which he didn't really have to feign. "Get to the point or get out."
"Okay, not a morning person, I see. I guess I'd do better to remember that." Harry paused while Draco huffed at the jab. It was true, but even if he were a morning person, how could Potter have expected him to be awake this early, when he had been up and waiting for him to return from the Ministry almost the whole night? Come to think of it, he would have liked to know how he had got into his bed, since he didn't remember waking up and coming up there after he had dozed off in the lounge.
"I just came to wake you up and to see you before I go again. Breakfast is served."
"When did you get back? You never came to bed last night," Draco grumbled, acutely aware of the fact that he must have sounded awfully clingy to Harry's ears.
"No, I didn't. Sorry. It became late and I slept in my office. Did you miss me?" Harry asked as an afterthought, pulling Draco into an embrace and pressing a smacking kiss onto his cheek.
"Why the hell did the Wizengamot decide to order you to return to your job right now? They were fine without you for a month…"
Draco had managed to completely forget that Harry had a job, until the message to inform him that his leave was over had arrived, with the request that Harry return to work immediately. After the scandal printed in the Prophet concerning Draco carrying Harry's child had run, the Ministry had decided to send him on 'holiday' – forced leave would have been a better word for it. As a result, cases had accumulated during his long absence, and he then had to spend not only the required eight hours of his first day in his office, but also the following night. This rendered Draco extremely annoyed and made him eat three bowls of chocolate ice cream in a row.
"What did you expect? I can't exactly ask for a leave. If I told them why I needed the time off, not one day would go by before everyone would know about it. I don't really fancy the idea of an audience crashing the ceremony, nor reading our names in the Prophet featured in some highly exaggerated fairy-tale." Harry sighed.
They had already spoken about those issues and decided that it would be best to keep silent about their impending wedding until it had already happened. The 'ceremony' itself wasn't going to be anything like the one Draco had for his marriage with Pansy. It was going to be just a formality, going into the Ministry and signing some papers and exchanging rings. Hermione had told Draco she would make the new institution somewhat formal, but to be honest, neither Draco nor Harry felt the need for a grand wedding. Draco had sent out the required invitations to his family, but – not surprisingly – only a handful of them had been answered, so there was no need to come up with anything fancy. Both of them would have been the happiest if it was quick and to the point. That thought reminded Draco of something else.
"Did you see yesterday's Evening Prophet?" he asked, resting his head on Harry's shoulder sleepily and rubbing his face into the warm skin of his throat.
"Something interesting?" Harry's voice rumbled. He must not have slept much, because Draco already started feeling his body weighing down on him as his muscles became lax with fatigue. Draco had the feeling that, if he could, Harry would have liked nothing more than to crawl in with him for a short nap.
"Just Cyrus," Draco answered a couple of seconds later, his tone suggesting resignation. "He and Pansy are now apparently married. And then he felt the need to give a statement about me. Not very flattering, mind you, but I didn't expect him to go out of his way." And if that was not the understatement of the century, then Draco didn't know what was. "He said a few things about you, too. Just wanted to warn you what to expect before you go into that madhouse you call a workplace."
"Thanks for the warning," Harry said, his voice assuming a pained undertone. "I am a big boy. I had to learn the hard way how to deal with the press… Come to think of it, you had your share in my 'education', as well." Draco felt Harry pushing him away a bit, and he looked up into his face, expecting the previous hurt to resurface; he really wasn't in the mood to deal with that. Fortunately, Harry's expression only reflected mock-seriousness about the offence. "Don't you feel you should compensate me for all that nastiness…"
"Oh, don't worry about that," Draco said with the same teasing air, "I was planning to. Just not right now."
Harry's lips turned into an exaggerated pout at that last sentence, and Draco had a hard time keeping his features straight.
"What, not even to make it easier to endure another day at work?" And then he turned the puppy-dog eyes on Draco, which he knew Draco wouldn't be able to resist. That was how Harry was late for work and consequently, had to pull another long day.
Harry being away the whole day meant that Draco soon ran out of things to do alone, and found himself stewing in his own juices. Then his attention was diverted to Cyrus, as his accusations did not stop after the first article. Draco hoped that the hate propaganda wouldn't influence the voting negatively. He even went so far as to firecall Granger and talk with her about his concerns, but she told him not to worry, and that she was doing everything in her power.
This didn't quell Draco's ire against Cyrus, which his cousin had successfully rekindled with his untimely reappearance. Draco was trying to think of an appropriate revenge for Cyrus' latest attempt to blacken his name. His first thought was hiring Rita Skeeter and making her write a similar article about his cousin, but when Ginny Weasley heard him muttering to himself about the plan, she suggested a different approach that, Draco had to admit, was a much more elegant solution. It still involved Rita Skeeter, though.
Only two days before the voting, Draco woke up with the frightening thought that he was forgetting something concerning the wedding. The sudden movement as he sat up in bed had jolted Harry, who looked like he was also waking up. Draco wanted to let Harry sleep in, since this was the first day since he had gone back to work when he didn't have to wake up early. He leaned back into the deceptive warmth of the bedding and the body draped over his side, and listened to Harry's breathing deepening again while he tried to list everything in his mind.
The ceremony was to be held in the Ministry's new Civil Marriage Office, which was on the same floor as the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, so they would have only to Floo into Harry's room, avoiding the public entries into the Ministry.
There would be little to no trouble with the guests, since out of his relatives only three families deemed to acquiesce to his invitations; that meant six people he didn't even know very well, but beggars can't be choosers, he supposed. Two of them were an older couple without children who had renounced the Dark Lord and fled the country even before Draco had been born. There was a cousin thrice removed who had married a Muggle and borne a son for him and, unfortunately, Luna Lovegood. Naturally, Harry couldn't get away with not inviting every single member of the Order of the Phoenix, but, on the positive side, the presence of so many veterans meant Draco didn't have to worry about getting rid of any unwanted guests.
The reception was going to be held in The Burrow, as previously planned, with Mrs. Weasley as the main organiser. Draco had already decided that he didn't need to know any more about that. Since neither he nor Harry wanted to attract attention, they decided to keep the festivities down, at least in the Ministry, and didn't feel the need to order specific wedding robes to be tailored. Not to mention that Draco had this hidden, nagging fear in his mind that from now on, he had to watch every Knut he was giving out, and he couldn't afford to buy clothing that he would only be able to wear once.
What else was there?
He was lying on his back, grimacing when the little fiend inside him suddenly kicked him in the guts again, and he couldn't prevent the tightening of his fingers, which had slipped into Harry's mane out of habit. Harry moaned sleepily and turned to his other side, pressing his bum to Draco and ducking out from under Draco's hand. As he did that, one of the dark curls got caught on Draco's finger and came loose slowly, like a small black snake uncurling from around his finger… and that was when realisation hit him.
The rings! He had forgotten the rings! He and Pansy never had any, so Draco wasn't used to wearing a wedding band, but now they would need it as part of the magical contract that legalised their marriage, as was the case with civil marriages.
Draco jolted out of the bed in panic, opening closets and drawers in search for his reduced belongings. He knew there was a small case with some of his mother's family jewels, courtesy of Pansy. There must be at least two rings among them; it wouldn't even matter if they weren't identical. Finally, he found it. Sitting back onto the bed, he put it on his lap and resized it. At the noise of metal clinking inside the velvet-lined box, Harry woke up for real, as Draco had completely forgotten to be stealthy while he was searching franticly for something that would serve the purpose. He sat up and directed bleary eyes, offended by the light, on Draco's bowed frame.
"What are you doing?" he asked thickly, jolting Draco out of his trance.
"We don't have rings!" was Draco's desperate answer, but just then, his finger slipped into something that had the feel of a metal hoop and he pulled out his hand with a triumphant cry, presenting the band to Harry.
They stared at the gleaming metal with the large red stone for several seconds in silence. Finally, it was Harry who spoke.
"I think I recognise that ring…"
Draco gulped and felt his face fill with blood at the remembrance. He pressed the little trigger and the bolt over the hidden compartment engraved into the setting opened, a strong herbal smell drifting from it to their noses. Draco was able to tell Harry had just remembered where he could have seen that ring, as he lunged back on top of the bed and started laughing.
"I knew you took something," he said, his eyes full with mirth. "I could smell it on you."
"It was just something to protect against diseases," Draco muttered, embarrassed by the reminder of Snape's deceitful potion that had caused so much trouble for him after that night in Copenhagen.
"I guess it would be appropriate to wear that," Harry suggested, joking, but Draco didn't feel that jovial himself.
"There is no way," he grumbled. "It's a woman's ring, anyhow. You can't expect me to wear it."
"It was just an idea." Harry shrugged and gave an apologetic caress to Draco's shoulder. "Let me help you," he said then, and took the box from Draco's hand, emptying its contents into a pile on top of the sheet between them.
As he did this, Draco immediately spotted another ring that was now on top of the heap. He had seen identical pieces in most of the portraits in his mother's chamber. It was a variation of the Black signet-ring, designed in the brief period during the eighteenth century when the family gained a bad reputation for Muggle burnings. Instead of the entire family crest, there was only one of the five-pointed stars engraved into the face, so it wouldn't be obvious at the first glance whose seal it was. It looked familiar, but not because it was his mother's family heirloom. Draco had a feeling that he had seen the ring recently somewhere else.
"You have a similar one," he said to Harry, lifting out the ring from the pile with a finger. Harry nodded, and Draco's mind suddenly presented him with the memory of the ring he had found in Harry's flat during his first visit, when he was waiting for him to come back from delivering Pinky to her parents.
"It's in the second drawer from the top," Harry told him, and, after a short search, Draco sat back on the bed with two nearly identical rings sitting in his palm.
"How did you get it?" he asked Harry, who lifted out one of the rings and held it in front of his face to be able to examine it closely. But the answer he gave Draco was not what he had expected.
"This was the Portkey you used to transport us out of Voldemort's dungeons," he said, dropping it back carefully on top of the other in Draco's hand. Draco looked up sharply, then back at the rings in his palm, but even after ten seconds of examining them, his mind proved unwilling to supply him with the memory. He shook his head.
"And you kept it," he said or asked – even he couldn't have told which.
"It looked like the one Sirius had shown me in an old portrait of his brother. He said he had sold his own after leaving Hogwarts and bought a bottle of two-hundred year old Ogden's Old Firewhisky with the money… and his bike," Harry explained, grinning with the remembrance, but Draco didn't miss that the grin was not entirely genuine.
Draco lifted his gaze from the rings and looked into his eyes. For several seconds, they only gazed at each other, communicating without words, and then they both nodded.
"I don't mind if you don't," Harry told him. "It isn't as if we'll have to wear them every day," he added. Then he plucked the pieces of metal out of Draco's hand and deposited them on top of the dresser.
"And now, I think you owe me for waking me up when I could still be sleeping," he said with a glint in his eyes that left no doubts about what he considered an appropriate compensation. After weeks of time to get used to that sudden change, Draco still couldn't help the leaping sensation in his stomach as his blood ran southwards, and he found himself carelessly sweeping the pile of jewels off of the bed and climbing into awaiting arms, to lose himself in the exquisite pastime that was touching and being touched by Harry.
The next two days trudged along as if time had decided that it needed a breather, if only to make life hard for Draco. He wasn't even able to concentrate on Pinky's explanation about aliens and laser guns, and he seriously considered fleeing when Mrs. Weasley only mentioned cakes and frosting or sitting arrangements.
Then finally the sixth of March had come, and with it a nervous anticipation that seemed to affect not only Draco and Harry, but everyone else, too – even the little children who should not have understood what was going on at all. Draco was only glad that Pinky had gone home the previous day, because as much as she had grown on him, he did not fancy the idea of having to trip over her while he was in that state of mind.
Harry stayed home with him, making a valiant effort to take Draco's mind off of brooding, but not even sex was able to distract him for long. He spent the day on the couch in front of the fireplace just staring into the crackling flames and imagining them turning green with Granger's bushy head popping up on top of them any moment. Harry sat with him for short intervals of time, but neither of them was particularly good company for the other, so Draco told him to just go and do what he needed to relieve tension. Thus, Harry spent the majority of the day either on his broom or helping Mrs. Weasley with little repairs in the kitchen.
Mrs. Weasley made Draco's favourite for lunch to cheer him up, but Draco barely tasted it. He did not have an appetite. Seeing that he was only pushing around his food, Podmore warned him that he needed to take care of himself and his child. If he had not, Draco would have excused himself in order to go back to his brooding and fire-watching.
This repeated a few hours later at dinner, and they still did not have any news about the voting. The Evening Prophet came with no article whatsoever about the law change; they did not even deem what the Wizengamot was currently occupied with worth mentioning. Of course, Draco mused, the matter did not hold any importance for the majority of the wizarding population. Letting his mind run free, he pondered how many there were in his situation, and after weighing the odds, he reckoned very few. In fact, he would not have been surprised if it turned out that he and Harry were the only couple to benefit from the law change – if it ever took place, that is.
Draco was so into his thoughts, that at first, he had not noticed when the by then almost extinguished fire in the fireplace blazed up again and a very tired-looking woman's head started bobbing above the flames like an odd green beach ball on top of the ocean waves.
"You're still up!" Granger said instead of greeting.
Draco suddenly became aware of his surroundings again. He and Harry were alone in the lounge, with only the fireplace to light the room, and the house sounded empty. Everyone else had long gone to bed, Draco realised. He consulted the clock and saw that it was already past one in the morning.
He sat up quickly, pulling his feet out of Harry's lap, dislodging the grip that had slackened on them when Harry had fallen asleep.
The constant snoring, that Draco had not even noticed until then, stopped as Harry woke up too, and stared blearily into the flames until his mind comprehended what he was seeing there.
"Hermione!" he exclaimed then, and kneeled onto the rug in front of the fireplace, pushing his glasses, which had slipped down his nose, back up with a forefinger. "Has it gone through?" he asked excitedly, as if he were the one whose future depended on the end result and not Draco. Draco was secretly glad about it, because his own throat felt suddenly too dry to ask.
Granger gave them a huge smile that belied her exhausted countenance and nodded. Draco's breath caught in his throat when his mind comprehended what exactly that gesture meant, and he was only half aware of Harry pulling him into a crushing embrace and smacking an enthusiastic kiss on his mouth. He was so out of it from relief that he didn't even care when Harry slipped him the tongue in front of Granger!
"Listen, I managed to persuade the press not to print the news until the day after tomorrow, so we don't have to worry about unwanted attention at the wedding ceremony." Granger suddenly turned to him, smiling. "By the way, Draco, it was a very clever idea to give Skeeter the exclusive rights to the story."
For some reason, Draco was not surprised that she knew about that, and it reflected his true state of mind that he had half a mind to tell her that it was not exactly his idea, but he figured that he would have time for that later. Apparently, Granger had already updated Skeeter about the law and promised her additional chunks she could sink her fangs into if she promised to keep it a secret for now. Draco half-listened to the following short conversation about other small things that eluded his attention next to the immense relief he was feeling.
Some ten minutes later, Harry stood up from before the now empty fire and scooped Draco up, helping him up the stairs into their room. Draco barely even assisted Harry in pulling off his clothes, and slipped between the sheets obediently, allowing Harry's warmth to curl around his body. Then he fell asleep with his mind still absorbed by the overwhelming elation, and slept like the dead until Harry woke him up the next day to get ready for their wedding.
Draco was physically still tired, but mentally he couldn't have been more awake. He was wide-eyed with anxiety, and every time he glanced at the mirror, he had to remind himself to school his expression into something neutral. Funny, it was not the fact that he was going to be married under these peculiar circumstances that caused his apprehension, but what went with it: having to appear in front of a larger audience in his current condition.
This was one of those very rare occurrences in Draco Malfoy's life, when he did not want to be seen and noticed – the only other time was during the last two months of his stay at Hogwarts. He was wearing a dark grey robe with a darker grey high-collared shirt underneath. The robe and the shirt itself were of course the highest quality material, but together they looked dreadfully mediocre. Draco shuddered at the sight and had to remind himself that this was exactly his intention: he was trying for something that would not draw attention to him and his belly.
There would be no photographers there, per Draco's request. He thought he would die from embarrassment if a picture of him were released in the Prophet, showing off the bulge on his front. He could barely stand to look into the mirror as it was and couldn't imagine how Harry was stomaching having to see Draco naked every night, but then, he tried not to think about that. Thankfully, Harry must have figured out by then that there was a reason why Draco insisted they didn't leave the lights on most of the time.
Draco hesitated briefly about whether or not to wear his Order of Merlin. The medal had been in the package Pansy had given him. It would surely draw the attention from his middle section, but then again, he knew Harry was not going to wear his own, and that would only make Draco more ridiculous standing next to him. He frowned at the ruffles of the bulbous material aligning itself at his feet and, turning around, he found the look highly irritating.
Just when he was about to try and search his lacking wardrobe once again for yet another robe, even though he had already gone through it at least ten times and chosen the least offensive one, the door to his room opened and Harry slipped through the gap swiftly, as if he were trying to sneak in undetected.
"What are you doing, Draco?" he asked, after he had closed the door behind his back.
"Trying to find a robe that doesn't make me look like a fat cow," Draco snarled back, elbow deep in the trunk laying on the bed he had not slept in since he had Apparated into Harry's that night.
"You don't look like a fat cow," was Harry's feeble attempt at placating him, but the hesitant tone of his voice told Draco that statement didn't stand on the most stable foundation.
"Shut up, Potter! I know what I look like," he grumbled, half-angry and half-resigned to the truth of that statement. He had to face it: there was nothing short of a Glamour Charm that would make him look his previous sleek self and not like a sod with a beer-belly. It was too bad that the barrier around the foetus prevented any kind of foreign magic from being cast on it.
"Whatever I wear I'll just look like an overweight drag queen!" Draco burst out, and he was only a hairbreadth away from bursting into bitter tears – bloody hormones!
"No, you don't…" Harry stepped up to him and touched his shoulder. Draco snapped his head to the side so quickly that if it hadn't been fastened there, it would have entered into an orbit around The Burrow. The look in his eyes was enough to bring Harry's failed attempt at consolation to an abrupt stop.
Harry stood there with his mouth open for several seconds, but then he just shrugged and a slow grin made its way to the corners of his mouth.
"All right, you do. But I kind of like it," he said with such an expression that Draco couldn't possibly stay angry with him and the universe anymore.
"Yes. You would," he told Harry, feeling his facial muscles wanting to pull into a smile and deciding to allow them to. Then he remembered just how true that statement was and felt his face being warmed by a ferocious blush.
"Before you get any ideas: I won't dress up like that ever again! Even for you," he exclaimed, still red as a tomato, which the mirror was not above to comment on.
Harry had the nerve to laugh at him.
"We'll have to see," he said, giving Draco a kiss on the cheek. This time, Draco was willing to forgive him for his impudence because the interlude had taken his mind off of the nerve-wracking apprehension he had managed to work himself up to about such an unimportant issue as clothing. (And he hoped that his mother did not hear that last remark, wherever she was currently, or she would take to haunting him for sure.)
It was three in the afternoon when they stumbled out of the fireplace of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office in the Ministry – Draco, because it was impossible for him to get used to his constantly shifting centre of gravity, and Harry because he was perpetually clumsy arriving through the Floo. It was fortunate that Podmore and Weasley were already there to catch them.
"Why did we have to come this early?" Draco asked, grumbling. The ceremony was to start at four.
Harry looked at him and gave him a slow smile. Draco didn't like the glint in his eyes. It looked like he was hiding something from him. And after his answer, it became quite apparent that he was indeed. "We were invited to another wedding before ours," he said with an air as if he had just given Draco something he had wanted for his whole life as a present.
Draco returned his gaze, unblinking, for a long second, and then said, "No."
"What?" Harry looked confused. The smile had disappeared from his face and relinquished its place to confusion.
"I said: no," Draco repeated with a tone that brooked no opposition.
"But… why?" Harry wanted to know.
Draco rolled his eyes as if the answer was quite obvious. For him, it was. He didn't see how Harry could have missed the clue.
"It is quite enough that I have to go out there and parade myself in front of all those people and a reporter to boot. I'm not going to make a spectacle of myself for another audience, thank you very much. I'll just stay here and you can come back for me once it is time to go."
"But Draco… aren't you even interested in who the other couple is?" Harry tried to appeal to his curiosity.
The truth was that Draco would have been interested, if the remembrance of what he had seen in the mirror that morning and the mortification and degradation he felt at the sight had not pushed everything else out of his mind.
"No, I'm not." He was not looking forward to making an appearance at his own wedding in the first place. What made Harry think he would be happy to take his arm like a good little wife and march into someone else's?
In that moment, the door to the office opened and Draco was barely able to jump behind Harry and Podmore's bulks to get out of the sight of the newcomer.
"Oh. You're already here!" a familiar sounding feminine voice said.
Draco risked a glimpse from behind Podmore's black Muggle suit-clad back and saw that he was right: it was Katie Bell with her eight months old son sleeping on her shoulder and drooling on her elegant and expensive-looking cream-coloured robes. They complimented her skin tone and contrasted with her dark hair, which was swept up into an elaborate knot at the top of her head. Draco caught himself looking at her with envy for her slender figure. It was only a few months more until he, too, would go back to his old self, he reminded himself, but that knowledge offered very little consolation for his current appearance.
"Are you coming?" she asked, when after a second silence no one had moved.
"Just a minute!" Harry said and turned around to face Draco. "There will be no other guests… well, not much more than at our own ceremony. Please, come." He tried to plead with Draco.
"Who?" Draco asked in a voice that radiated suspicion.
"Er… just a couple of Muggles. No one you should worry about…"
"Potter! Are you completely out of your mind?" Draco snapped at Harry. "There is no way I will parade myself in front of Muggles! They cannot even understand magic! How, do you suppose, are they going to react to this?" he asked with a sharp gesture towards his middle, where the robes were beginning to tent. "There is no way that I will come, and you'd do better to scurry off already," he added with his hand on Harry's back, and he pushed him in the direction of the door.
His resolve was not even to be moved by the disappointment on the other man's face.
"All right." Harry sighed in surrender.
Draco closed the door behind them and leaned tiredly against the woodwork. He heard them talking, their voices echoing in the empty corridor – Katie asked Harry to hold her son during the ceremony because apparently Harry was always able to calm him when he was crying. Draco wondered just when Harry had had an opportunity to establish that, but he felt too wrung out and depressed to care about finding out. He hobbled to the couch and slumped into it inelegantly, supporting his aching feet on the armrest and closing his eyes with his fingers entwined on top of his belly.
He woke up from a light slumber at a familiar hand caressing his cheeks and his name being murmured into his ear by Harry's voice. His eyelashes fluttered open, and his gaze met with a pair of green irises staring intently at him from behind glass lenses that were a bit smudged near the corners.
"Wake up, sleepyhead." Harry gave him a smile and then rewarded him for his obedience with a kiss that was too warm and lasted too long to count as chaste, and too soft to be born of desire. Draco punched Harry in the stomach in order to make him move and let him get up in haste.
"Is it something with my hair?" he asked with sudden alarm and tried to smooth down the sleek tendrils with the help of his fingers.
"It looks fine," Harry told him, not even blinking at the aggressive treatment. "There is a mirror." He gestured to a cabinet with the distinct appearance of something that an old witch with a thousand cats would possess rather than a proper filing cabinet that belonged to an office. Draco had the sneaking suspicion that it must have been exactly that before Harry or his predecessor had acquired it. Why else would it have a mirror on it?
Draco combed a few strands into place and perfected his appearance by separating the hairs on the top of his head with his nails into a pleasing image, then turned to Harry.
"I take it it's time."
Harry nodded. "Are you ready?"
Draco wanted to tell him that no, he wasn't, but he realised that he wasn't going to be more ready for several months yet, so he went without a word.
Draco thought that the following half hour was the worst thirty minutes of his life – the endless seconds during which he had stood with his wand turned on Dumbledore included. He looked straight ahead, trying to concentrate on anything but the stares he could practically feel on his skin – as if they were trying to divest him of his robes or see into his flesh to discover whether or not there really was a baby inside.
Cold sweat was running down his back, and it was only thanks to Harry's guiding arm and the presence of Podmore looming behind him that he was able to retain his cool state of mind. It did not help at all that, from the corners of his eyes, he could see a few heads sporting hair as pale as his own standing out in the crowd. Certainly, he knew there were a few of his relatives in attendance, but he wasn't afraid of those – he was more wary of the ones who did not announce their presence. For example, he could not imagine that Cyrus would willingly bypass an opportunity like this to ridicule him.
His intuition was proved right in the next second, when he turned his head in the direction of another gleaming white crown and spotted the maliciously slitted eyes underneath with the colours that didn't match. He turned back his head slowly, pretending that he did not see anything unusual, and his grip on Harry's arm tightened instinctively.
"What is it?" Harry's barely audible question rang in his ears not a second later.
"Cyrus," Draco whispered back.
He felt Harry's hand coming up and descending onto his fingers reassuringly. "Don't worry," Harry filtered through barely moving lips. "I set a few of the Aurors on him. He won't be able to make a disturbance."
Draco's glance flicked in the direction of his cousin again. He saw three people surrounding him very closely: a tall dark-skinned man with his teeth and eye whites gleaming white and a silver hoop in one ear; an old woman with a hunched back whose head Draco would not have been able to spot among the crowd if her curled hair wasn't dyed fuchsia, of all colours; and none other than Luna Lovegood. Draco made a mental note to question Harry about the peculiar contingent after the freak show was over.
The woman who conducted the short ceremony was undoubtedly a Ministry employee. She was young and starry-eyed - she looked like someone who was just out of school – but her manner was professional and nearly painless. She started with a short introduction that Draco barely listened to, then she asked them the usual yes-no questions and told them to put on the rings. There was a brief confusion between Weasley and Podmore, both staring at each other, until Harry remembered that while he had to deal with Draco's moods, he had completely forgotten to give the rings to either of the best men, and fished them out of his robe pockets. Once the ring Draco was supposed to pull onto Harry's finger was thrust upon him, he was so nervous that he almost dropped it. Harry, though, seemed to be composure itself; he made it look easy, as if he made a habit of marrying someone every day.
When the business with the rings was straightened out, the officiator pushed a heavily adorned parchment in front of them and presented them with a large, decadent peacock feather for a quill that had already been dipped into thick indigo ink and was most likely provided with a Self-Inking Charm.
Draco let Harry take it first, until he managed to stop the trembling of his hands so he would be able to sign his own name. They agreed upon it in advance, that both of them would keep their names. To be honest, Draco had just as hard a time imagining himself as a Potter as Harry being a Malfoy. There was no need to change what they had become used to: neither of them was a woman and it wasn't as if anyone in wizarding Britain needed a reminder like another surname after a hyphen to know who their respective spouses were.
Draco observed with trepidation as Harry drew the last line across the two 'T's and straightened up. He accepted the heavy quill and bent down above the table – the position made inconvenient by his belly. He put down his first name and was pleased to see that the usual elegant contours were not at all affected by the nervous tingling he could feel in his fingers. He lifted the quill after curling a small connecting line after the 'o' and started the 'M' with flourish… only to come to an abrupt stop just before he reached the transition to the 'a'. It felt like his own hand was a separate being who could not decide what it was supposed to do now. After a few seconds of hovering above the parchment impotently, the quill dropped out of his fingers as if it was knocked out of them by force, and Draco was left there blinking, still leaning onto the table.
There was a quick movement he could detect from the corners of his eyes and, not a second later, Harry was already up again and passing him the feather. Draco accepted it automatically, but he felt like his limbs were moving under water. The quill felt too heavy within his fingers. He positioned his hand with the tip of it over the blank space where the 'a' was supposed to come, but he was not able to move it. After a few seconds that must have looked like he was frozen to the spot, but in reality was him trying to move the quill down and draw the curved line, he gave up on it. He forced out a shaky breath to calm himself, then with a slow, calculated move, he put down the quill onto the table and straightened up with a face that must have been pale as a ghost's.
He could feel the questioning looks on him, most importantly Harry's, but he was still in too much shock to be able to answer them.
The static of the air was shredded to pieces in the next instant by a shrill, high-pitched laughter cutting into it. Draco didn't need to turn his head to be able to tell whose voice he was hearing. He realised that he wasn't even surprised by this turn of events – he should have expected it, really.
He was jolted out of his stupor by the sudden movement at his side. His arm shot out by reflex and he was able to stop Harry from strangling his cousin in time. Harry gave him a confused look and Draco could see in his expression that he did not comprehend the situation completely – the only realised that something had happened to hurt Draco and provide Cyrus with a seemingly unending supply of hilarity, but he didn't exactly know what. Draco shook his head to indicate that his cousin wasn't worth that much attention.
"I'm glad you've had your share of amusement, Cousin," he said in a low tone, but in the surrounding almost-silence, it was enough to draw everyone's attention to him. Even his cousin stopped the insane noise that was coming out of his throat.
"Well, Cousin, you surely do not live with the belief that you will be allowed to retain the family name after what you did," he said with a cruel sneer. Draco, though, only lifted a brow to show that he was not impressed.
"You're right, of course." He nodded. "Just don't forget it: I am going to laugh the same way when, twenty-five years to come, a Potter is going to take over the Malfoy fortune," he added, his facial muscles pulling into the mirror image of his cousin's goading smirk. In the background he could hear the scraping of a Quick-Quotes Quill on a parchment, and his smirk widened, while Cyrus was grabbed unceremoniously by his arms and dragged out of the hall without much ado.
"Don't think we are finished yet, Cousin!" he could hear Cyrus' voice echoing from outside before the thick wooden doors leading to the hall were closed with an audible thud, banning the improbable image of the old lady manhandling his cousin from his sight. For a second, Draco could see a vision of the small purple-haired lady beating Cyrus' head repeatedly with a floral-patterned handbag behind the closed door just too vividly, in his mind's eye.
"Draco? Are you all right?" Harry's concerned voice questioned, while Draco was enveloped into the warm and protective embrace of strong arms. He felt the breath he had held leaving his lungs in a gust, and his body sagged minutely into the comforting warmth of his…
"Is it over? Are we married?" he asked, turning his head away from the rest of the room and connecting his gaze with Harry's. In the light of the many floating candles above their heads, his eyes looked hardened, almost like carved jade with a fascinating pattern.
Harry glanced at the Ministry officer, who answered the question with a smile, not so much pleased as comforting, and a nod. That was enough for Draco.
"Can we go then?" he asked. He was not even a little surprised when Harry just took a firmer hold of him and Apparated them straight into his office, from where they took the Floo to The Burrow and were ensconced in their room by the time everyone else arrived for the reception.
TBC