WC: 2459
Written for Quidditch League, Holyhead Harpies, Chaser 1
Chaser 1: The Lover- Goal: connection
Optional Prompts:
(song) "Tightrope" by Janelle Monae
(dialogue) "You don't understand."/"No. But I want to."
(dialogue) "Go to sleep."
Written for Hogwarts, Long Assignment #7, Ravenclaw House
Shortfin Mako Shark: Write about someone who is quick at doing something (e.g. learning, running, falling in love, etc).
AN: This story is muggle!AU. Warnings for parental angst regarding childhood developmental disorders.
Autism has many variations, and this story does not attempt to represent all of them.
Beta credits to DobbyRocksSocks and Hazuzu
Angelo's toes kissed the hardwood—tip, tip, tip—all the way across the living room, straight to his favorite wooden puzzle. It should have been too difficult for a two-year-old, but Hermione wasn't worried. This was fine.
Tip, tip, tip. He tip-toed like a tightrope walker to the cream-carpeted steps. They became his table and chair as he pinched out each wooden province, one by one, until the map of England was an empty, indented outline.
"Such a smart boy! Can you show Mummy your puzzle?"
Angelo didn't look up. He was too busy. Each piece needed to be picked up by his chubby toddler fingers, then placed perfectly in its spot. Then, once the map was complete, they needed to be removed so the process could begin again. But Hermione wasn't worried. This was fine.
After all, hadn't she been a precocious child? Hadn't she learned to read by the age of three? She did plenty of puzzles at Angelo's age. He was smart, that was all.
Two hours and twenty-five puzzle completions later, the jingle of keys and the shake of a doorknob cut through the quiet. Angelo tore his eyes away from his treasured pieces.
"Daddy's home!"
And he tip-tip-tipped to the door, arms outstretched on either side of his bare chest. Draco dropped his leather briefcase on the rug and lifted him into the air. "How's my best boy?"
Their eyes met, and Angelo placed his hands on his Daddy's cheeks. Connection. Hermione saw it from across the room. There was no reason to worry. She reassured herself with memories—Angelo waving to strangers at the mall. Angelo diving into his grandmother's arms. Angelo's sweet offerings of dandelions in the corner park. He'd always connected so easily.
Draco wiggled his pointer finger, taunting. "Where's your shirt, child?" He dug his finger into Angelo's belly, drawing out a squeal of glee.
"He won't wear it." Hermione frowned. "Every time I wrestle him into it, he takes it right back off."
Straw-blond curly hair bounced around Angelo's temples as his head shook side-to-side. "No shirt. Do puzzles!"
Draco laughed, indulgent and deep. He lowered Angelo to the floor, to the tips of his toes. "Go on then, show me."
But tiptoes weren't made for running on. Half-way across the room, Angelo missed a step. His tiny body made a disturbing thump as it flopped against the floorboards.
Hermione's heart flew to her throat; she rushed to dust him off. "Angelo! Angelo, are you ok?"
"No!"
"No what, you're not ok?"
"NO!" Angelo slapped his hands against his chubby cheeks and turned away.
"Let me see, sweetheart. Where does it hurt?" Hermione didn't see any blood, but it was hard to tell. His little body curled around itself, legs blocking his chest. So small, so sad—he needed a hug.
But when Hermione tried to pull him into her arms, he screamed. "NO!"
His body uncurled, all the way up to his tip-toes, and he tip-tip-tipped away to the corner. His cries weren't any louder behind the potted ficus plant, but they shattered Hermione's heart.
Most children ran to their parents for comfort, not away. This wasn't normal. This couldn't be right.
She hugged her empty arms across her belly. It went against every maternal instinct to let him hide there; to hold back her legs from sprinting across the room to him, her arms from scooping him up.
But he didn't want hugs. Not when he was like this. Never when he was like this.
After dinner, she drove herself to the library. Hermione excelled at research—time to put it to use. The nonfiction section had twelve books on autism, six on various developmental disorders, and two on general parenting. She took the lot.
Hours later, the words blurred together on the page, but still she pushed. One more page. One more chapter. Draco squinted at her through the yellow light of the bedside lamp. "Go to sleep," he said. "You'll never get through them all in one night."
She didn't look up. "Did you know that toe-walking is often a sign of autism?"
Draco sighed. "You're overreacting. I threw tantrums all the time as a toddler. He gets it from me."
With a twist of a knob, she shut off the lamp. "Maybe you're right."
As Angelo grew from toddler to child, his tip-toeing disappeared. His tantrums did not. Nearly every weekday, Hermione's phone screen lit up with the nursery school's number. Nearly every weekday, she dragged him out of class while his peers watched, wide-eyed.
Her pediatrician told her it was normal. "All children tantrum," he'd say. "And you said he communicates well. You have nothing to worry about."
Hermione knew tantrums were normal. But to this degree?
"Angelo! Stop hitting me. Please, Angelo—I cannot let you run away." She strapped her arms around his torso, but the squirming didn't stop. Her parenting books said she needed to establish firm boundaries. They said to use time-out to discourage negative behavior. They didn't explain what to do when time-out became a wrestling match.
"No! I'm stronger than you. I'm faster than you." He squirmed and wiggled and kicked until frustrated tears formed in the corners of Hermione's eyes. All the other children were happy to sit on the rug, play along with the games, sing along with the songs. Every week it was her, and her alone, wrangling her child in the hall. Hadn't she followed all the advice—read all the books? She was a failure. A big, fat failure.
"I'm ready to sit now." Angelo's arms hung limp, and Hermione sighed.
"Ok. I will give you a chance. Here we go."
She unwrapped her arms, and he ran.
That night, she went back to her books, propped against her pillows with her giant ginger cat warming her toes.
When Draco walked in, his eyes were wary. "Back to that, again? I thought the pediatrician said—"
"—the pediatrician doesn't know him, not like I do. He spends ten minutes with him and—"
"—but he does know the disorder."
Hermione pushed her fingertips into her hairline, her cheeks into her palms. "You don't understand!"
"No. But I want to."
Silence stretched between them, filled with years of observations and doubts. "Yes. So do I. All I want is to understand. If I had just one reliable data point… it would give me a place to start."
Draco smiled sadly and wiggled the book out of her grip. "Go to sleep. We'll call a specialist in the morning."
Despite Draco's attempts at bribery, months passed before their appointment. When it finally came, the sun smiled down from a cloudless sky, and Angelo was cheerful. There was no nursery school that day; no noisy classroom, no button-up shirts. He skipped into the office, jabbered on about gravity, and read to himself while Hermione described her concerns.
After a long stretch of silence, the autism evaluator clipped her pen to the top of her clipboard and smiled. "He's definitely a high-needs kid. I'd say he has an autistic personality." She looked up through her glasses, perched on the end of her nose. "I don't think he has autism."
Hermione wasn't sure if she felt relieved or disappointed. "But isn't the average age of diagnosis for Asperger's syndrome seven? It's subtler, and social differences often aren't obvious until older childhood. Could it be that?"
The evaluator shook her head. "Asperger's is an outdated diagnosis, no longer given. Those diagnosed with it, before it became disbanded, now fall under the autism spectrum disorder umbrella."
"Yes, but—"
She gave Hermione a conspiratorial smile. "There's an optimal range for IQ. People function best between 100-130. Anything above that and, well…" She gestured to where Angelo sat, reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the sterile corner. "We start to see some maladaptive behaviors."
It still didn't seem right, but this woman was an expert. And after all, Angelo had always been quick to connect.
It must be all in her head. Her biases had colored her perception, just as they'd colored it when she'd first met Draco. High-society, old money, stiff upper lip. She'd seen him as a bore, and that was the color he had become. Now she viewed her child through an autistic lens, and it was all she could see.
Maybe this definitive 'no' was the fresh perspective that would give her the insight she desperately needed.
But two years and thirteen doctors later, she was no closer to understanding anything at all.
"Mrs. Malfoy? Could you come into the classroom, please? I can't get him out from under the table."
Hermione's heart sank. Not again. Seven was entirely too old for this. "How long this time?"
"Three hours."
Hermione snapped her cell phone shut and pulled out of the pickup line, into the parking lot. What was this, the second time this week? She'd hoped that as the school year progressed, he'd get used to the new schedule. Instead, his anxiety had worsened.
She didn't want to run; she'd never grown out of her childhood aversion to rule-breaking. But she speed-walked—down the hall, one left turn, and through the second door. The room was dark, which was best. Darkness soothed him on the hardest days; the days when chaos tore through the classroom, or his seatmate broke too many rules.
"Angelo? Are you in here?"
A faint sniffle sounded from the far corner. It was his usual spot—his designated spot. She sank to the floor next to it and peered at his tear-streaked face. "Bad day?"
He only nodded, as expected. Words were beyond him when he was this upset. "Do you want to talk about it?"
A furious shake of his head sent his blond curls flying through the shadows.
Tears stung at Hermione's eyes, but she blinked them back. If she could just understand what was bothering him, she could try to fix it. "Can I give you a hug?"
He retreated deeper into the corner with a loud sniff—almost, but not quite loud enough to drown out the sound of soft tapping against the classroom door.
His teacher looked frazzled, as if it had been the mother of all days, and it probably had.
"I'll give you a minute, Angelo." Hermione forced her sorrow away and put on her calmest, most patient voice. "Then I'll need you to come out, ok?"
He didn't move.
The glow from the screensavers on the student computers cast an eerie light on the darkened room as Hermione stalked across it to the door.
"Have you spoken to Dr. Motley?" Mrs. Green asked, peering at Hermione through cautious eyes.
"Not since last week's team meeting."
Mrs. Green's expression clouded over with something dark and knowing. "Call him. He updated Angelo's IEP after their therapy session yesterday. Gave him an official diagnosis."
Hermione's heart thundered against her ribs. A diagnosis of what? They'd discussed so many possibilities, Hermione didn't know what to think anymore. The specialist had ruled out autism years ago, but maybe ADHD? ODD? Something obscure she hadn't considered?
Mrs. Green scratched her arm, shocking Hermione back into the present.
"Thank you," Hermione said. "I'll call tonight."
But Dr. Motley didn't answer. In her head, Hermione knew responsible therapists had boundaries, and those boundaries included limited phone hours. In her heart, she was spiraling out of control.
She had to use two sets of hands to count the number of specialists Angelo had seen over the past two years. Apparently, even Draco's deep pockets couldn't waive away the months-long waiting lists or procure any extra clarity.
It had always been, "Not my specialty. Try psychiatric." Or, "I'm not sure, but I know a great doctor in the genetics field. Maybe she can help."
A circus of doctors, a parade of dead-end leads, stretched between that first autism specialist and this moment. Anxious dread pulsed through her mind. Angelo's list of symptoms scrolled through her mind in a bulleted list: Toe-walking. Quick to learn. Affectionate when happy. Standoffish when sad. Frequent meltdowns. Blatant defiance, but only sometimes.
It was impossible to sort them out. Impossible to arrange them into any sort of sense.
That night, sleep evaded her. At four am, she switched on her bedside lamp and pulled out her copy of the DSM-5.
Draco draped his arm over his eyes. "Go to sleep."
"I can't. I can't stop thinking about it. My brain doesn't have an 'off' switch."
With an exasperated groan, he rolled onto his side and squinted through the light. "It doesn't matter what the doctor says. He'll be the same Angelo tomorrow that he's been his whole life."
Of course he would be, but that didn't make waiting any easier.
It was amazing she didn't doze off at her desk the next day. Fueled by leaden curiosity, by hyperactive dread, she kept her phone next to her paperwork and the ringer turned all the way up. If her supervisor complained, she'd tell her to stuff it.
When it rang, Hermione almost didn't answer. Her hand reached towards it, slowly, slowly, and cracked it open like the door into hell.
"Dr. Motley?"
"Hello, Mrs. Malfoy. I got your voicemail."
Her eyelids fell shut, heavy against her cheeks.
"I've given Angelo the diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome."
"Asperger's? But I thought they disbanded it."
"Yes, yes. Technically, if we are being 'up-to-date', we would say he has high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. Personally, I like the term 'Asperger's.' It gives an easily understandable picture of exactly the type of autism that Angelo has."
"But what about the connections? He loves people. He has good communication."
The pause on the other end of the line seemed to stretch into eternity. "That's a common misconception. Just because a person can connect with others doesn't mean they don't have autism. It is a spectrum disorder. There are countless ways to be autistic, and none of them less valid."
He went on to explain why he felt autism was the most fitting diagnosis, and Hermione saw the pieces connect in her mind: The toe-walking. His resistance to communication when upset. His puzzle obsession. His tendency to meltdown and to become overstimulated.
Autism. Asperger's. For several minutes after the call ended, Hermione stared at her phone. She'd pushed the possibility away when the specialist had told her 'no'. To hear Dr. Motley say it so definitively was shocking. Brain-bending.
Her first instinct had been right. Everything fit, now that she had the answer.
But more importantly, Draco had been right. He remained the same Angelo today that he had been yesterday—still the same sweet, smart, complicated boy that she had always loved.
Despite her heartache for her son, for the challenges that lay ahead of him, her love burned pure.