ten months later

"See you next term, Professor Malfoy!" A chorus of children, first years, called out to Draco as they left the final class of the year before their exams.

Draco smiled wearily to himself and sighed looking out into the empty classroom. It had been a long and terrible year, with no answers and absolutely no peace.

He hadn't spoken to his father very much since he jilted Astoria at the altar. He'd burned most every bridge he'd ever built in his life except for the ones at Hogwarts.

After gathering his things from his temporary abode near Hogsmeade, Draco traveled back to his flat in London. With the school year finally completed, Draco felt a sense of relief that he could finally devote his time to searching for Davis.

He came home to the empty flat and immediately went to bed, worn out from teaching, and perhaps life in general. It was amazing what a person could adapt to. Amazing how a person could continue to live day after day when there was no real life occurring at all. Not when that person's heart had disappeared.

There was a picture of Davis in his memory, a living picture of her smiling face and warm, passionate laugh. Draco had no surviving pictures of Davis to sustain him, so his memory and his imagination had to suffice.

Draco wondered what she was doing with herself wherever she was. He knew she was studying abroad, presumably at a Wizarding School, though he wouldn't put it past her to learn a muggle trade in order to turn her back on the world of witchcraft and wizardry. The problem was he didn't know where she was. This was the extent of the information he had been given about Davis, something that his mother had told him after she admitted to visiting the Christie household.

The world was a large place for a person to hide. But luckily, summers were long. Hopefully he could find her before the Fall term began again. But this brought Draco to the horrifying thought that plagued his nights. What would he do if he found Davis again?

She obviously didn't want to be found and made a concerted effort to tell virtually no one, not even Weasley, of her hideout. The only person who knew was Julianna, and she had unceremoniously refused to communicate with him several times throughout the year, though he had persisted.

Draco could hardly blame her. He'd broken her sister's heart and humiliated her.

If Draco found Davis, she'd probably refuse to see him. Somehow Draco didn't care. This need to find Davis and the baby had consumed him for months and months until it was the only driving force of his existence.

The thought of being an active father scared him. The idea of making the same mistakes his own father made kept him from feeling like he even deserved the chance to even attempt the role of Father.

He wondered what the baby looked like, and what Davis looked like with him or her. The thought of her doing maternal things made him feel proud and rather protective of her, though he felt helpless that he could not act on it. Not to mention the strange thoughts of desire he'd had imagining her holding his child, knowing his contribution to creating him.

There wasn't a week that went by that he didn't wake up from a dream in which Davis was naked and vulnerable in his arms.

He simply had to see her again, had to see the baby, even if it was from afar.

"Altais Halford Christie!" I shrieked. The four-month-old in my arms grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled tight with his little fists. How he got such behemoth strength I will probably never know. All the same, I did the best I could trying to open his fists as he giggled a little bit like it was a fun game.

"Altais, mummy is going to get cross with you." My father said, a muggle newspaper under his arm. He gave Altais a kiss on his tiny head and sat down at the table, sipping coffee from his favorite mug. I put Altais in his high chair and began the arduous process of trying to feed him canned baby food. These were the times when I debated using magic behind my father's back.

One of the hardest things in life had to be trying to get a baby to eat carrot paste.

I made his baby spoon go up and down, making noises like a train, in an effort to entice him to open his mouth. On the lucky chance that I did get the spoon to land in its destination spot, I nearly always had to get a burp cloth ready for when he spat everything back out.

"Your namesake is getting fidgety." I said. My father put down his paper and began to tickle Altais' chin, making him laugh and kick his legs excitedly.

"Is little Halford being a naughty wee boy?" My father, the older Halford, said with a gleam in his eye I hadn't seen in quite a long time. Altais, though quite a challenging baby, was also a godsend for my father and me. Our lives had suddenly become filled with laughter and mirth unlike any I had ever known.

And the feeling of love I had for him was something so powerful and surprising it never ceased to amaze me.

"If he's not careful he's going to get a hungry tummy." I said. I was growing impatient with Altais and after half a jar had successfully made it into his stomach, I pulled him from the chair and put him in his little bathtub, giving him a thorough bath. My little angel was covered in orange goo.

But Altais loved baths, which was a good thing. He loved the water and the warmth, and always held a very calm, euphoric expression when he was taking one. And it was times like these that I noticed how his little sprigs of fine, downy hair were coming in very light. How his eyes were such a striking blue that they cut right into me like a tiny knife. How much he truly resembled his father in almost every expression.

It was very hard to get over someone when you had to stare them in the face every day, even if the face belonged to a perfect replica.

Sometimes I had to turn away when thoughts of Draco began to overwhelm me. I tried not to think of him, not to say his name in my head. He was someone my father and I never spoke of, though we saw him through baby Altais day after day.

I always wondered whether or not he had ever really, truly loved me, or how much he had fought to be with me. Most of all, I wondered how much he thought of the child he'd decided to leave behind.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and gathered a very wet Altais in my arms and began to towel dry him. Perhaps that afternoon we would go to the park.