Just after lunch on Friday, two owls carrying a good sized bundle wrapped in decorative paper and ribbons arrived. Draco had been attaching yet another set of the thank you cards from the baby shower to each of their family's three owls when through the drawing room window, he saw two house elves out on the patio struggling with untying the package from the delivery owls. Since it was his birthday, even though no one in the house had mentioned it, he knew it was for him. He went out the back door, intercepting the package from the elves.
Harry had been crawling around the floor with Sev when Draco ran out of the room. Scorp and Teddy were happily enjoying the new swing, so he picked Sev up and followed Draco out the door. Draco was sitting down on one of the benches associated with the patio table, package in hand, turning it over looking for a card.
"Um, that'd be from me. I ordered it from Madam Malkin when I was with Hermione," Harry said, sitting down next to Draco with Sev in his lap.
"You remembered?" Draco asked surprised. He really didn't think anyone had remembered, least of all Harry. His parents had never forgotten before, but with the war, the funerals, the children, and everything else that was going on, he understood. He wasn't the spoiled child he'd once been and blind recognition for simply being born meant nothing if he had to demand it.
"Yeah, but why didn't you say anything?" Harry asked.
"Everything is so hectic with the end of the war and all of the funerals that I'd thought everyone had forgotten. Professor Snape's funeral is tomorrow." It was hard to celebrate the fact that he'd made it through another year, when the man who had sacrificed everything to make that possible wasn't.
"Yeah, but that's tomorrow. Today I wanted to get you something. Open it."
Draco began removing the decorative ribbons and paper from the package, unveiling a white set of summer robes with green flowers on it, a plain white undershirt, and what appeared to be a copy of a set of light grey dress robes he already had.
"They're paternity robes, Draco. The undershirt will allow you to wear any of your normal clothes on top while you're pumping; you'll just have to take the overlying robes completely off when you need to nurse," Harry said.
"That's great; then I can wear my funeral robes tomorrow," Draco replied, putting the package on the table and hugging Harry.
"Yeah and you can wear the summer robes while swimming; she made it out of swimsuit material."
"That's brilliant. And the dress robes? Did you have somewhere in mind for me to wear them to?" Draco asked, thinking that maybe Harry had arranged a special birthday dinner out.
"Well yeah, I was hoping you could wear them tonight. We could all dress up and have a special family dinner," Harry lied, keeping Lucius' surprise a secret.
"Yeah, alright. Jingly!" Draco called the elf, who appeared with a pop, bowing so low her nose touched the ground. "Take these up to my room and place them on my dresser." He handed over the package and dismissed the elf.
Later, while Draco and the babies were all napping, Harry went through Draco's closet looking for a set of dress robes to borrow that would look good with Draco's new set. He quickly came across the set that the new robes had been based off of. They were made out of the same flowing fabric, except that they were a couple of shades darker, and were trimmed with lacey white stars around the cuffs, instead of down the front.
Harry was just trying the robes on, confirming that they fit alright, even if they were just a tad long, when he heard Teddy's cry. He removed the dress robes and went next door to retrieve Teddy from the basinet in the nursery. He changed Teddy's nappy and then took the baby downstairs to the drawing room.
At four o'clock, around the usual end of naptime, the floo flared green and Hermione's head appeared in the flames. She looked around, spotted Harry and said, "Oh good, you're there. Is it alright if I come through now or should I wait until later?"
"Come on through, but Draco's still asleep and he's still clueless," Harry replied.
Hermione came through the floo and then agreed to watch Teddy, while Harry went upstairs and got dressed. Draco was just waking, so Harry asked, "Draco, can I wear these robes tonight?"
"Yeah, sure," Draco replied, just sitting up in bed and yawning.
The monitoring charm went off while Harry was flattening his collar. "I'll go get them. Why don't you try on the new robes?" Harry asked before going to the nursery.
Draco proceeded to change into his new robes. When he went over to the nursery, Harry had three matching outfits out on one of the dressers. Luna had given the light blue rompers with the lion heads to them at the baby shower. Sev was on the floor, dressed only in a nappy and crawling towards the door, and Harry had Scorp at the changing table, changing the baby's nappy.
"Is this what you wanted the boys to wear?" Draco asked picking Sev up. He checked Sev's nappy, making sure that Harry had changed it, as he suspected. Harry had, so he grabbed the largest of the three outfits and took Sev over to the rocking chair to change.
"Yeah, only I've never shrunk clothes on a baby before," Harry admitted, pinning Scorp's nappy in place, before grabbing the middle sized outfit from the dresser. He had adjusted clothes on himself and on Draco, but he had a feeling it was riskier to do with a squirming baby. And the outfits needed to be shrunk, because they were all a size too big.
"I'll do it for you. Where's Edward?" Draco asked, setting Sev back down onto the floor now that he'd shrunk the outfit to fit Sev perfectly.
"He's downstairs with Hermione. I hope you don't mind that I invited her over for dinner," Harry replied, handing Scorp, whose outfit looked far too large for him, over to Draco.
Draco took Scorp with a put upon sigh, before shrinking the baby's outfit and saying, "I guess it's alright." He would have to invite Pansy for Harry's birthday and see how Harry liked it.
"Thanks," Harry said, picking Sev up from the middle of the room, where the baby was once again making a break for the door. He grabbed the third outfit, the smallest one, for Teddy and then went downstairs, with Draco and Scorp following behind him.
Harry put Sev in the jumper and Draco put Scorp in the new swing, before Draco greeted Hermione and took Edward. Harry handed him the outfit and he changed the baby, shrinking the clothes to size. He checked Edward over and noticed that the red socks didn't match the little outfit. Edward and Sev needed bibs too. Sev was already drooling down his chin, so Draco put Edward in the bouncer and went back upstairs to find matching socks and bibs.
While Draco was upstairs, Lucius came into the sitting room and informed Harry and Hermione that the elves were setting up the patio for the party. Lucius asked if they could keep Draco preoccupied, preferably in the nursery, which overlooked the front of the house and so didn't have a view of the patio. Harry and Hermione agreed. She Hermione took Teddy and Harry took Sev and Scorp back up to the nursery.
"Draco, Scorp's white socks really don't match. Do you have any light blue ones or even yellow?" Hermione asked, making up an excuse for why they had come upstairs when Draco was just about to head back downstairs.
"Yeah, sure. These are for Edward." Draco handed a light blue bib and socks to Hermione, before going over to Scorp's dresser and getting out a pair of light blue socks, which he also handed to Harry. Sev was sporting the new bib and once again crawling towards the door.
"Draco, why didn't you get Scorp a bib? The other babies are wearing them," Harry wondered in an effort to stall.
"Because Scorp doesn't drool all over himself all day long and he doesn't spit up his milk when I'm nursing him. He only needs one in his high chair," Draco explained, taking Scorp from Harry and going over to the spare bed to nurse the baby. Scorp wasn't crying to be fed, but it was almost dinner time and he didn't want to risk soiling his new dress robes by feeding the babies mashed carrots, like he normally did every evening. "Ask a house elf for a bottle and offer it to Sev."
Harry picked Sev up, from where he was banging on the baby wards on the door. "You know, I think Sev just likes to see what happens when he hits the wards," Harry said, sitting down on the bed with Sev next to Draco and offering Sev the bottle.
"Yes, he does laugh and smile so," Draco agreed.
"Draco, do you want to nurse Teddy too?" Hermione asked. She didn't know the schedule, but if Draco was feeding the other two, she at least wanted to offer to hand Teddy over.
"Yeah, might as well. Otherwise he'll be wanting to be nursed during dinner," Draco replied, removing the panel and the breast pump from the side Scorp wasn't using and taking Edward.
Harry remembered his earlier conversation with Draco and it occurred to him that he still hadn't got an answer to one of his questions. "Draco, how come last year you down played your birthday and tried not to tell me about it? No one was dead last year," Harry said.
"Last year was my seventeenth birthday, which by rights should've been a big ghastly ball to celebrate my coming of age. But Father was in Azkaban, Mother was in hiding, and I was pregnant. The time was not right and besides, I hate balls. I'd rather not have to sit through the tedium, so whenever those birthdays come up, I try to pretend like I'm not having a birthday that year," Draco answered.
"And does that work?" Harry asked.
"No, not once before last year has it ever worked. But my luck seems to be changing or maybe it's just that I'm the Lord Malfoy now and what I say goes. Father let me shoot down his ideas for an end of the war ball, an announcement of my marriage ball, and a ball to celebrate the births of my children. He even suggested we have a ball to announce Edward's adoption," Draco said shivering.
"I had no idea you hated balls so much. I don't remember you particularly disliking the Yule Ball," Harry replied.
"That wasn't so bad. You've no idea how much worse pureblood balls are. They're mostly old people dressing up in clothes that ought to have been outlawed a century ago. Then they play pureblood opera music and force you to dance around the floor with your grandmother," Draco replied.
"When was the last time you had one?" Harry asked.
"When I turned eleven," Draco replied.
Harry was out of things to ask Draco about and he was sure he could hear the sounds of apparation cracks, which meant guests had to be arriving. Before the silence grew too long and he cracked under the pressure, Hermione jumped in and saved him by asking Draco about pureblood traditions, keeping Draco's attention off of Harry. Once Sev was done with the bottle, Harry took his son over to the toy chest to find something to play with and let Hermione continue occupying Draco.
Harry played with Sev until Draco finished nursing. Draco gave Teddy back to Hermione, picked up Scorp, and announced that he was going down to the drawing room. Hermione and Harry followed along behind with Teddy and Sev, but Draco was only on the staircase when he realized something odd was occurring.
"What in Merlin's name? How'd you get here, Pansy?" Draco asked, coming down the stairs. Pansy was in the hallway, which made her the first person he saw, but when he reached the bottom of the stairs and glanced out the sliding glass patio door, he saw that all of his friends were out there.
"Happy birthday, Draco!" Pansy exclaimed.
There was a roar of exclamations of, "Happy birthday!" as everyone else joined in.
"Harry, did you do this?" Draco asked, turning to his husband.
"Um no, your dad," Harry replied as Lucius walked inside.
"Draco, I wanted to throw you a proper party this year, to make up for last year. Congratulations on becoming a man," Lucius said, hugging Draco and being careful not to squash Scorp, who was in Draco's arms.
"Thank you, Father," Draco replied, letting Lucius lead him outside.
Draco greeted his friends and then showed them his three sons. The witches had all been to the baby shower and met the babies there, but this was the first time Blaise Zabini and Theo Nott were seeing them. There was a bit of a commotion when Scorp screamed at Theo for getting too close. But Nott hadn't performed any offensive magic all day and once he moved a few feet away, Scorp was fine.
"It's okay, Draco, I'll just look at the little green haired one," Theo Nott said, examining baby Edward.
There was more talk and Harry and Hermione were mostly silent during it, not wanting to say anything and risk offending the Slytherins. Draco's friends were being nice enough and they wanted to keep it that way, but there really wasn't much they had in common. Then the elves put out the appetizers and everyone sat down to eat. Sev and Scorp went into their highchairs, only getting crackers instead of their usual messy mashed foods, and Teddy was put in the new swing, which Lucius had brought outside for the babies.
Then the main course was served, during which the elves turned on George's bubble machine. Sev and Scorp squealed in laughter at the bubbles. Scorp seemed happy to reach out and try to grab the bubbles, laughing loudly when one popped on his hand, but Sev fussed and kicked, frustrated at being trapped inside the highchair.
"I think Sev wants down," Harry said to Draco.
"Well he can't crawl out here; the pavement will scratch up his legs," Draco replied.
"What if I get the walker for him?" Harry asked.
"Alright, but put his shoes on," Draco agreed.
Harry did just that. He set the baby loose in the hover-walker, before returning to his spot at the patio table between Draco and Hermione.
Sev lurched around the patio, chasing bubbles and squealing in delight. The young adults watched as they ate. "Draco, why don't you let the little black haired one chase after the bubbles too?" Milli asked.
"Scorp can't use a walker, because of what Weasley did to his leg," Draco explained.
All of the Slytherin eyes turned to Hermione, wondering what she had to say for Weasley. It was in all of the papers that the Granger witch was seeing the Weasley blood traitor, after all. But Hermione didn't say anything, so Pansy asked, "Granger, what do you think of your boyfriend hitting Draco while he was pregnant?"
"I think Ronald was a boorish imbecile, but he also was completely unaware that there was even the possibility that Draco was pregnant; he's not very quick on the uptake," Hermione replied, trying to take a neutral stance on the incident. On the one hand, she didn't want to lay too much blame on Ron when he felt really bad about it; on the other, she didn't want to start a fight with the Slytherins by defending the indefensible.
"Well spoken, Hermione," Draco replied, before changing the subject.
After dinner, they let off the whiz bangs. The first of them started all three babies crying at the loud bangs, so Hermione muffled the sky while Draco and Harry calmed the boys down. Daphne even stepped in to help, being closest to Sev when the fireworks started. She patted the little blond baby's back in the walker and said, "There, there." She thought about picking Sev up, but he was already quieting down now that the sky was muffled.
Sev looked up at the bright lights exploding in the sky and said, "Ooooo," and then hissed.
Teddy was the next to quiet down, so Harry put the baby back into the swing.
Scorp, who Draco was bouncing gently up and down in his arms while he looked up at the images of the lion chasing the dragon in the sky, was still crying when the lights flickered out.
"Draco, he's not used to the whiz bangs; I'll take him to the Manor for the rest of the evening," Narcissa suggested, coming out onto the patio with a nappy bag slung around her shoulder.
Draco agreed and handed Scorp over to his mother. Narcissa took the baby and flooed over to the Manor, safely out of range of the fireworks.
Once Scorp was safely away with Narcissa, they set off another firework, resuming the show. The rest of the fireworks were also lion and dragon themed, except one that drew out the image of two wizards dueling and then showed those two wizards kissing. It was done with red, blue, yellow, and green fireworks in the sky, so the likeness wasn't exact, but one of the wizards had distinctly pointy features and the other one had green eyes and a lightning bolt shape on the forehead.
After the fireworks, Harry summoned an elf and asked for the Mega Box, also from George. He opened the box to find Weasley Authentic poppers, Wakefields Off the Record Glow in the Dark Gum, a Fanged Frisbee, a Tiny Twister, and Mysterious Midnight Moon Madness. They abandoned the poppers, for fear they would be too loud and bother the two remaining babies. They played with the Fanged Frisbee first, laughing when Sev kept trying to chase after the disk in the walker, even when the Frisbee went off into the vineyard.
After they got bored of the Frisbee, Draco pulled out the Tiny Twister. He let it loose. on the patio table. But when the twister started to grow in size and went in the direction of Teddy in the swing, Hermione vanished it before it could cause any real danger.
After that they tried out the Mysterious Midnight Moon Madness, which was a type of fluffy biscuit shaped sweet. When they ate it, the vision before their eyes switched from showing them a Villa in France to the surface of the dark side of the moon. The people were there, as was the table, Teddy in his swing, and Sev in the walker, but it looked like they had all been transported to the moon. The party goers looked around, exploring craters and picking up space rocks.
"Draco, I bet it'd be wicked to play Quidditch after eating one of those," Harry said.
"Yeah, we'll have to try that sometime," Draco agreed.
"You know, I bet the glow in the dark gum would work great out here," Theo said.
Everyone agree and they each returned to the table to get a piece of gum, which they chewed to produce huge glowing bubbles. The darkness of the moon and the glowing bubble gum combined to make a pretty cool effect. Sev, who hadn't had any of the moon candy, was far more interested in chasing after the regular soap bubbles still being produced. The illusion lasted for thirty minutes before wearing off.
Lucius, Narcissa, and Andy handled bath time that night, leaving Harry and Draco free to enjoy the party for once. The elves came out with an ice cream cake and they all sang to Draco, before he blew out the eighteen candles. While they were eating cake, the elves turned on the music and cleaned up.
Pansy was the first person to pull a birthday gift out of her robes. The other guests followed suit, with various small packaged. Some of the gifts remained small, while others were unshrunk to reveal larger gifts. Draco received a quill set, a cloak, a case of snitches, a box of maple fudge, a basket of bath oils, a box of potions ingredients, and a picture frame with a photo of them all together at Vince's funeral. While Draco was opening the presents from the others, Harry summoned Mipsy and asked her to bring the cologne and Extendable Ears, which Mipsy had wrapped. She did and he promptly handed them over to Draco.
After the gifts, they danced. Theo was the first one to rise, asking Daphne to dance with him. Then Pansy and Blaise, Draco and Harry, and Milli, Tracey, and Hermione joined in, dancing to the fast paced drum beat of the wizard rock music. Milli, Tracey, and Hermione had been dating Greg, Vince, and Ron, respectively, but with Greg in Ministry custody, Vince dead, and Ron not welcome, there were three extra females at this gathering. They danced together the way teenage girls often do.
Harry tried to remember back to his dancing lessons with Hermione, Ginny, and Luna last year. He had trouble keeping up with Draco, although Draco didn't seem to mind. Draco even stopped to show Harry how to do a move or two.
They danced until Narcissa came outside with Scorp, having returned from the Manor to put the babies to bed. "Draco, Scorp is refusing the bottle again," Narcissa said.
"Alright Mother." Draco took Scorp from his mother and headed into the house to nurse his baby. When Harry moved to follow him in, he said, "No, you can stay out here with Hermione." It wasn't that he really wanted to force his husband to spend time with the muggleborn, but he was worried about what his friends might do to the witch if left alone.
Harry agreed and stayed, sharing a dance before he realized that Milli and Tracey had disappeared. "Um, I want to check on Draco. Come with?" Harry asked Hermione.
Hermione agreed, so Harry led the way into the house, where he found Draco sitting on the sofa in the drawing room with a blanket covering his chest, where Scorp was clearly suckling. Tracey and Milli were sitting on chairs nearby and talking amicably with Draco. Harry took the open seat next to Draco and Hermione took the seat on the far end, next to Harry. Before long Pansy, Blaise, Daphne, and Theo all came inside, effectively moving the party indoors.
"Wow Draco, you really are the little mother," Blaise commented.
"Blaise!" Pansy hissed, elbowing Blaise in the ribs.
"I prefer the term father. It's like I told you before, my little Lord Malfoy can't go without me," Draco replied.
"So the little black haired one will be the next Lord Malfoy?" Milli asked.
"Yeah, he looks the most like me. Practically the only feature of Harry's he's got is the hair color," Draco answered.
"He's adorable," Tracey said.
"They're all adorable," Daphne added. All of the girls murmured their agreement to that.
There was more talk of how cute the babies were, which was mostly dominated by Draco and the witches. Then Draco asked about Greg. Milli informed them that Greg was still being held, with no word of when his trial would begin; Greg hadn't even been before a warlock to set a trial date yet.
Then Scorp stopped nursing and Draco kicked all of their guests out, so that he could put his son to sleep. Scorp really wasn't hard to put down, but he was tired and wanted some alone time to unwind with his husband before bed. He pulled Harry into the bath with him, as he did every night.
"I'm gonna talk to Kingsley about getting Goyle a date for his trial. He shouldn't just be sitting in a cell forever," Harry promised, thinking that he'd write Kingsley an owl Monday.
Draco shushed Harry with a kiss. When they broke apart he said, "I'm tired. Worry about Greg on Monday when there's something you can do about it."
Harry pressed his lips back to Draco's, wishing his husband wasn't tired and that they could sneak away to Grimmauld Place for a birthday shag.
Author's Note: One birthday out of the way, one funeral to go.
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