October
tick tock tick tock
Draco couldn't focus, couldn't think, what with all the screaming—wailing, if he wanted to be technical. His eardrums ached, sharp stabs piercing straight to his brain with every fresh shriek.
"I knew they could cry a lot, but Merlin; he's very loud." Draco tried to control his face, prevent the sneer and the derision and the disdain that crept closer to the surface each time James Potter opened his very small, very loud mouth.
Draco had been standing in Grimmauld Place with Hermione for all of five minutes and already he wondered if a diffindo to his skull might be preferable to a screaming baby.
The Weaslette looked at him, a blank, dead sort of stare in her eyes as she attempted to mollify the crying child in her arms.
"Yes," she said. "He's very loud. And you know what, Malfoy? I think it's your turn for him. You haven't held him yet, right? Here." Before Draco could even comprehend the absolutely unfathomable thing happening to him, she'd transferred the baby into his arms. "I'm getting a glass of wine."
Hermione, beautiful traitor that she was, laughed at him when he shot her what he could probably admit was an excessively panicked expression.
He shifted his weight, adjusted his grip on the very small and very fragile little human in his arms, and forced his body to relax. He loosened his limbs and rocked James in the same way he'd seen Hermione do at the hospital.
Blessedly, thankfully, miraculously, James quieted.
Draco continued rocking, a slight bounce in his torso. Hermione's giggles died with James's wails. The Weaslette rushed back into the room, wine glass in hand. As she skidded to a stop, some of her white sloshed, spilling out over the edge.
Draco arched a brow at her obvious alarm.
"Well, this isn't nearly as bad as you made it seem," he said.
"Why isn't he crying?" Ginny asked, stepping forward as she peered down at her child. Draco shrugged as much as he could with a baby in his arms; it mostly ended up as a continuation of his soft, pacifying movements.
"He seems to enjoy being rocked. Have you tried—"
"Malfoy, are you kidding me? If you finish that sentence I will ask Hermione to liberate her godson from your arms so that I can hex your bloody bollocks off."
Draco engaged in another half-shrug, half-rock for James's benefit. "I don't know. He seems to be doing alright."
Draco caught himself smiling down at the little bundle in his arms far too late to school his features. The women in the room would have seen it, too.
This series of events was Potter's fault, obviously. It was Potter who owled Hermione about how he and Ginny had started going a little stir crazy, spending almost all of their time at home with their newborn, expressing a readiness to try and socialize more. And Potter was the one who made Hermione James's godmother, thus instilling in her an overwrought sense of responsibility that brought her—and a reluctant Draco—to Grimmauld Place to attempt having a full, adult dinner with them, evidently needing to figure out how that worked with a baby. Then Potter had the audacity to get stuck at work, something about a big case, life or death, and all that. Predictable.
Most things, if Draco thought hard enough about them, were Potter's fault.
He tried to find annoyance in that, tried to resist the strange, peaceful draw of the baby in his arms, but he found himself smiling, enjoying himself regardless of his own personal wishes to the contrary.
Perhaps babies practiced a subconscious form of siren-style magic. It seemed reasonable, given the effects Draco personally experienced. He considered posing it as a question, but decided he didn't much fancy being laughed at.
"I suppose babies aren't so bad," he said instead. The Weaslette let out an unbecoming snort of laughter.
Draco tilted his head, looking down at the tiny bundle in his arms. "You kind of just want to squeeze them, don't you?"
"Alright, that's enough. I'm taking my child back." Ginny slid her arms beneath James, wine either finished or discarded. Draco hadn't been paying attention.
"I'm not saying I would. I have developed some impulse control over the years." He folded his arms across his chest when Ginny took James from him. "But they are sort of—squishable, wouldn't you say?"
He glanced at Hermione for confirmation, or agreement, or—something. But she only looked at him with the strangest sort of confusion crinkling between her brows, head tilted, lips parted as her mouth had slipped open.
He supposed, in hindsight, he'd just said a number of things that he would not have said otherwise—if not for the influence of whatever peculiar magic newborn babies possessed.
James started crying again and the Weaslette looked like she might do the same, shoulders sinking as she launched into a string of unintelligible shushing sounds. Hermione seemed mere seconds from stepping in, already pushing off the balls of her feet to save an obviously distressed ginger and her selectively cranky baby, when the Floo flared to life and Harry Potter made his majestic entrance.
The Weaslette advanced on him before he could kick the cinder from his boots.
"Your child needs a change. Your wife needs wine. I spilled it earlier when the Ferret mentioned wanting to squeeze my child."
"Thought he was my child when he cried like this?" Potter asked, accepting the baby being transferred into his arms.
"You're missing the point. He also stopped crying when Malfoy held him so—we're living a nightmare where Draco Malfoy is better at getting James to quiet than we are. So again, I'm getting wine."
And with that, Ginny whirled, exiting the room with a stomp and a huff and something wild crackling in the air.
Potter sighed, rocking James.
"Turns out being a parent is hard," he said, spectacles trained on his child.
Awkwardness crept up Draco's spine, an errant observer to this strange, highly strung situation in the Potter household that he really, truly wished to have no part in. Even Hermione seemed uncomfortable; she'd transitioned from staring at Draco with confusion to worrying her lip between her teeth as they all waited for—whatever was meant to come next. A meal? Drinks? An informative lecture on the trials of baby rearing?
Draco excused himself to the loo, a transparent excuse for a getaway, but successful nonetheless. It seemed to break the tension in the room as well, with Potter tending to his child and Hermione allowing the rock solid tension in her shoulders to loosen, dropping.
He took a moment in the loo to inspect his hair, check for creases in his shirt, search for other general signs that a baby might have disrupted his put-togetherness. When he opened the door, he found Hermione standing there, waiting.
She stepped forward. On instinct, he stepped back, finding himself pressed against the sink in Potter's first floor toilet with a very serious Hermione looking up at him, eyes narrowed. She looked mere seconds from planting her hands on her hips and accusing him of something unsavory.
"You look good holding a baby."
Not the accusation he expected.
Warmth dropped from his chest to his stomach, hot tendrils crawling outward. His eyes, which had been wide and questioning, narrowed, darkened as a sense of understanding settled in him.
"So do you," he said, left hand already grazing her jaw, sliding past her ear, winding into the curls at the base of her neck.
She lifted her chin, angled closer, stepped closer, too, body flush with his.
"Why does that make me want to jump your bones?" she asked. Her eyes fluttered shut as he ran his fingers along her collarbone, a light touch over her thin blouse.
He dipped low and pushed forward, shifting their position such that he had her pressed against the wall opposite the sink, mouth hovering by her ear, thigh pressed between her legs. She let out a breath-tempered whimper as her back made contact with the wall.
"Because you love me," he said, one hand still wound in the curls at the base of her neck, the other toying with peeks of bare skin between the hem of her blouse and her waistline. "And you can see it, can't you?"
He slipped a finger just inside her waistband at the hip, sliding between the fabric and her skin as he travelled inward, stopping at the button closure in the center. He kissed beneath her ear.
"I can," she said, hot breath coasting along the side of his neck. He thumbed the button on her trousers, popping them open. It was an easy thing to see, with her. He'd seen it at St. Mungo's two months before when he should have been packing to go to The World Cup. Instead, he watched Hermione hold a child and alter his entire idea of what the future might look like while barely doing anything at all.
He dragged her zipper down, just enough to allow him the space to slip his hand inside her knickers. Her head thumped against the wall, dropping back as her mouth fell open, spilling a hushed, obscene sound into the tiny loo with them.
He dipped his fingers, finding her warm and wet and already rocking against his hand and his leg. Her hands fell limp against the wall as she sucked in a stuttering breath, tiny gasps synchronized with his fingers: almost touches, barely touches, sliding in. She groaned, forehead falling to rest on his shoulder.
"Merlin—fuck, seriously?"
If Draco never heard Harry Potter's voice again for so long as he lived it would be too soon. Hermione tensed at the sound of Potter's shock; Draco stilled, knowing his body concealed their activities from view.
Draco turned his head and found Potter standing with his back turned to them, head shaking.
"You didn't even close the door?" Potter asked, voice ascending in something that sounded suspiciously like panic. The man had defeated dark wizards, this surely didn't even register on his panic scale. "In my house? In my loo? Really?" He let out a heavy breath. "Gin sent me to tell you she has wine ready. She's had her one glass and wants to live vicariously through you. I'm—going to try and forget I saw this."
Without turning back around, Potter left them there.
A hand closed around Draco's wrist. He turned back to Hermione as she tried to lift his hand from her knickers. He arched a brow at her, hand and fingers still firmly in place.
"He's gone." Draco smirked.
"They're waiting on us."
"I can get you off before they even start to wonder where we are again."
The pressure on his wrist loosened, less insistent. He watched her indecision fight the rising flush creeping up her neck.
She fisted his shirt fabric, pink blooming across her cheeks as she looked him in the eye with a most Hermione kind of determination.
"Five minutes and you have to close the door."
"Five minutes," he agreed. "And then you can tell Potter how he and Theo should start a support group."
Her embarrassed groan shifted into something sweeter. If he only had five minutes, he had to get to work.
—
"What is this?" Hermione asked from somewhere on the floor in their living room.
Draco looked up from his reading—another failed, valiant attempt at enjoying The Count of Monte Cristo—and spotted a few wild curls peeking over the top of a wall of books. When Hermione had told him she wanted to spend the weekend relaxing with their books, he'd naturally assumed she meant reading. Evidently, she'd meant reorganizing.
After confirming that this bout of organization did not involve a crisis over her perceived contribution to their household, Draco excused himself from participation on the grounds that he had no interest in being hexed. She was much more patient with him working at the manor than she was with organization around the flat.
Thus, he'd adopted a strategy of avoidance, peppered with placation by reading her favorite book. He and Crookshanks toed a careful line on her nerves, sitting on the green sofa together, as Hermione warred with herself over whether or not she preferred organization by author or topic. Or how some gentleman named Dewy preferred to do it. Draco didn't bother offering his input.
She held a hand up over the tower of books that obscured her from view. In it, she gripped a large envelope he must have left on one of the tables she so often covered in new books as she purchased them.
He'd completely forgotten about it. His silence must have alarmed her because she lowered her arm, head appearing in its place and she lifted herself to her knees.
"Oh, that's—not much. I brought those home after I had dinner with my mother last month. They're photos she found at the manor."
"Photos?" Hermione shifted, standing. She eyed the barrier of books between them before opting to sit atop one of the stacks, rotate her legs over it, and then stand again on the other side. She planted herself between Draco and Crookshanks, looking far too pleased with her maneuvering.
"Of me," Draco said. "And my family, I presume. I completely forgot about them, to be honest." He closed The Count of Monte Cristo and arched a brow at her. "Must have gotten lost under your many and frequent biography acquisitions."
She rolled her eyes.
"I spoke to the shopkeeper the other day; he said he's running out of new ones to stock." She crossed her legs beneath her, turning to sit facing him. Her knees brushed his legs. "You need a new strategy for your grand plans to win that bet, otherwise"—she patted the velvet cushion beneath her—"it's all mine."
"You think I don't have other plans?" he asked, reaching for the envelope. He met resistance when he tried to pull it from her hands.
She lifted her brows, smirk growing. She tugged it back, out of his grip, and opened it.
With a small gasp, she pulled out a photo.
"Oh, Draco"—he snatched the photo from her hands—"weren't you just the cutest?"
He looked at the photo, sighed.
"I know."
She snorted an indelicate laugh and snatched the photograph back.
"Well don't have too big a head about it. Is that Theo?" She flipped it around so he could see it again. In the frame, a young Draco and Theo threw pebbles into a pond in the Malfoy gardens, loop ending and restarting again just as Draco lobbed a pebble at Theo's head.
"It is. We were maybe—eight? Nine? You see the peacock in the background?" She nodded, leaning to see around the edge of the photo still facing Draco. "It chased Theo all around the gardens maybe five minutes after that photo was taken."
She flipped it around, watching the scene as a smile spread across her face. Slow at first, as if she might want to resist the amusement from such a thing, then suddenly, as she gave in.
"Why would it do that? Poor Theo."
Draco smirked.
"I have absolutely no idea," he said with a poorly concealed grin, having every idea and zero intention of voluntarily admitting his involvement in the aforementioned peacock chase.
Hermione shook her head, likely constructing the exact order of events in her mind without him having to provide a single detail. She knew the two of them well enough to guess.
She set the photo aside and pulled out another one. She blinked, amusement straining, as she took in the scene in her hands. Her brows drew together, but her smile persisted, less light slipping through.
She flipped it around so he could see.
"You're so young here," she said.
He stood in the gardens, in front of one of Narcissa's prized rose bushes that bloomed a beautiful peach color. In the photograph, he fidgeted, young energy held at bay by his parents on either side of him. He could just see his father's hand resting atop Draco's left shoulder. All three of them smiled.
Draco could feel his features softening as he took in the scene.
"I was four or five I think—my birthday."
"Your father looks—"
"—Happy? Young? Healthy?" He didn't intend for his words to come out quite so sharp, especially not after the passing nostalgic ache that washed over him. He sighed. "I'm sorry, I—you didn't see him at the hospital. He—couldn't have looked more different from the man in that photo."
It felt like a dramatic thing to say, an exaggeration. But perhaps the most difficult part was how close it came to the truth. The version of Lucius that Draco witnessed in a hospital bed had none of the hallmarks of the living. It made him wonder if, at some point in recent years—perhaps during his time in Azkaban, or under house arrest—Lucius had simply passed away and his corpse kept animating: a sneering puppet playacting at life.
The smile hit the hardest. How long had it been since Draco had seen it in person? Too long to remember an exact moment. But he remembered the feeling, remembered what it had felt like to earn his father's laugh, to impress him with a witty retort or a clever parrot of his own words. Draco knew, now, with so much perspective, that he probably shouldn't have ever had to earn that laugh in the first place. That little voice of perspective sounded suspiciously like Hermione in his head.
Nevertheless; the version of Lucius in the photograph looked proud, beaming at his son. Draco couldn't help but miss that look, miss earning it. The draw towards that satisfaction pulled a line taught between reason and impulse.
When she finally spoke, Hermione's words came out slow.
"You all look very happy."
"I think we were."
"Do you—want to talk about them?"
Draco sighed. He didn't want to be cruel, but no, he didn't want to talk about them. He didn't even want to think about them. If he could manage it, he preferred to avoid that particular mental confrontation for as long as possible.
"What is there to say, Hermione? That I suspect my own flesh and blood are a festering infection that can't be cured? That in lacking a cure, my only option is amputation?"
He felt his chest clenching, words shifting from a normal cadence to tight, staccato-like bursts as he forced them out. He ground his teeth together.
"Why does that have to be your only option?" she asked.
"Because nothing else has worked—will work. You don't understand what they're like."
"So tell me, let me help."
"I don't want to talk about this, Hermione." He dropped his gaze to the photo that now rested atop her knee.
"I—I think we need to," she said.
"Why would we need to? They're my parents. They're barely even a part of my life anymore."
"But they are," she said, insisting, pushing, forcing a conversation because she thought it needed to happen. Draco clenched his jaw even tighter, trying to remind himself that he loved her for her obscene Gryffindorishness, even when he really wished she would stop. "They're still a huge part of your life because they're always here."
She made a strange, vague gesture at him that felt like she meant to imply something profound about their place in his head or his heart. He might have rolled his eyes and shrugged it off if she hadn't lifted herself to her knees and then crawled onto his lap, knees bracketing his hips.
"I love you, Draco. I want—I want to find a way to fix this—this relationship you have with them."
He placed a hand on her waist, bringing the other to graze her cheekbone, brushing a curl behind her ear. He didn't know how to be annoyed with her, inserting herself where she didn't belong. Not when she looked at him with such a raw earnestness, her wide, pleading eyes begging to be let into this very closed-off part of his life.
The sigh he released didn't feel annoyed, didn't sound frustrated; it only carried a sense of fatigue.
"This isn't your problem to fix," he told her. His voice came out flat as he watched her reaction, willing her to understand that it was his, and not worth her effort. It wasn't worth a single moment of conflict between them.
"Does that mean I can't try?"
"I don't think it means you should."
Their impasse stretched like a canyon, miles between them yet sitting face to face. He saw it, when it happened: the stubborn set of her jaw, the way her shoulders rolled back just enough, her spine straightening. She wouldn't give this up.
"Do you think they can be cured? Of their infection, as you said?"
His hand slipped from her neck, back down to her waist.
"I don't know. And you don't need to worry about it." She opened her mouth, rebuttal ready, always ready. She needed to be stopped before she pushed too far. "This is my problem," he said again. How many times now had he claimed this unfortunate thing as his own? "I'll fix it."
—
St. Mungo's discharged Lucius from their care at the end of September. It took Draco until the middle of October to muster the courage, resolve, and willpower required to join his mother and father for a dinner at the manor. He did not expect this fact to go unnoticed.
"So gracious of you to join us, son," was how Lucius greeted him upon his entry into the dining room. The sun had already set, darkening earlier and earlier each day that passed from the summer solstice. The wall sconces, candles, lanterns, and fireplace all cast an orange and yellow light about the room that Draco once found comforting, warm and cozy. Now, it only looked like a veneer of color animating a corpse.
Narcissa interjected, a hostess's grace.
"We're glad to have you here, darling. We've seen so little of you in recent months."
Draco allowed Tilly to pull out a chair for him as he took his seat, realizing belatedly that he had not waited for his mother or father to sit first. Some habits, some parts of his upbringing couldn't be erased from the surface of his skin with even the strongest evanescos. Others, dining protocol among them, it would seem, only required a few months of burgeoning routines with Hermione to fall by the wayside, forgotten in a gutter and washed away with the tides of time.
"I've made a point to dine with you at least once a week," he said, even knowing his self-defense would solve nothing. "Normally, at least," he added at the end.
"Normally," Lucius repeated. "But not this month. Not when your father has so recently been attacked."
Draco sank deeper into his seat, heated-through with guilt. His father had a point, a valid one. Draco had been present at the hospital, concerned long enough to ensure Lucius would survive, and then made himself scarce again. Intentionally or not, he'd abandoned his role as a dutiful son.
"I—had several meetings early this month. Blaise and I—he's been helping me." Lucius valued business, valued success. Perhaps a venture like the one he'd been trying to get off the ground with Blaise could ease Draco's other shortcomings. "We've been considering an investment in real estate, for a potions business."
A muscle beneath Lucius's eye twitched, a forewarning to the sneer that formed a moment later.
"A shop? How pedestrian, Draco. Why would you ever consider such a thing?"
Draco curled his fingers around the butter knife in his hand, blunt nails biting into his palms as his knuckles flushed white.
"I'm good at potions," he said, as calm and level as he could manage. "Blaise is good with finances. It could be—something for me."
Narcissa snapped at Topsy, who'd just appeared with a crack, ordering her to fill their wine glasses. His mother ran a hand along the tablecloth before speaking, smoothing the fabric as Draco assumed she wished to smooth the mood at the table.
"What your father means, darling—why would you want to work? You don't need the money—a shop is so—"
"It would be mine. The money would be mine, not like my trust."
Narcissa shifted in her seat, posture stiffening.
"Your inheritance is yours, darling."
The peculiar thing about awful conversations was that sometimes the worst parts weren't even spoken. They were conveyed through body language and tone, a shift in mood so tangible, so real that even though Draco couldn't begin to quantify how he knew something in the room had changed, he knew it changed all the same.
The air perhaps: a shift.
Or the temperature: a drop.
Or maybe the sense of foreboding, fluttering in his chest: a freefall to his stomach.
His mother had spoken last, but he turned to Lucius.
Was his inheritance really his?
"It doesn't feel like it is."
Draco watched his father, who hadn't moved a single muscle, but met him grey gaze to grey gaze. Narcissa spoke again.
"That's ridiculous, Draco, why would you ever—"
"Because it has terms, does it not?" Distantly, Draco felt guilty for being so dismissive of his mother. But this conversation, he knew, and had known for a very long time, could only occur between him and Lucius. "You've said so. Perhaps not explicitly. But I'm not a fool."
Draco took a deep breath, letting the butter knife in his hand finally come to rest on the table. He forced his jaw open, coaxing out words that he preferred not to acknowledge, things he'd barely thought about himself, but that he knew held truth regardless.
"I'm a Slytherin. I'm hedging my bets and planning for all possible outcomes the way you would want me to."
Lucius didn't respond. He breathed through his nose, mouth sealed tight, brow lifted in a look that, years ago, might have forced Draco's compliance. But Draco's didn't feel compelled towards cooperation, only guilt. He'd not seen his father since Lucius suffered a serious injury and now, Draco had instigated yet another disagreement.
The guilt burned in his stomach, bubbling like bile up his throat. He realized he breathed too heavy, chest expanding and contracting as he sat at his family dining table, waiting for his father to say something damning, half expecting to be disowned, right then and right there. Draco had already nearly dared him to do it.
He looked at the food on his plate: a butter basted white fish, haricot verts, roasted dutch potatoes. He hadn't tried a bite of it and couldn't bring himself to start now. His gaze caught on the fish fork beside his plate. A stupid, ridiculous utensil with a single use that, at its core, was barely any different from a traditional fork. If he never saw another fish fork again, Draco couldn't imagine his quality of life would suffer.
Narcissa made a quiet throat-clearing sound. Draco tore his gaze from his uneaten meal. The room smelled rotten.
He met his mother's eyes. Orange light flickered across her face and Draco lost himself for a moment in a memory of glowing orange runes. They cast a very similar light, a similar warning.
Draco reeled himself in; a fish on a hook just as doomed as the one on his plate. He needed to control the rapid decay in the room, in his orbit.
He looked back at his father. Forced effort, forced calm.
"How is your convalescence progressing?"
"Fully recovered."
Lucius's meal sat untouched as well. Narcissa's silver tinked against her plate in Draco's periphery, pulling Lucius's focus; his nostrils flared.
"And how are you, Draco?" he asked: careful, unfeeling syllables.
"I'm—fine." He could think of no other response, shocked by the fact that Lucius had even asked, and knowing that had Narcissa not been present, the question would have never been posed.
"Do you have plans for Hallowe'en, dear? We were hoping you'd come to the gala, though we've yet to receive your response." Narcissa smiled at him, a kind, topic-changing smile.
Draco assumed she meant it as an offering, a safe change in conversation to pull them from the tension threatening to snap between father and son.
"I will not be attending," he said, heart thundering in his ears. She either did not know what she just asked, making her painfully oblivious in the most unflattering way, or she did and she chose to ask anyway, making her nearly as cruel as his father. Draco did not know which version of his own mother he preferred to have disappoint him.
Narcissa tilted her head, face pinching at his tone.
"And why not? You'll be missing several opportunities for social connections that would be valuable—"
"I noticed the invitation I received did not include a plus one."
Narcissa blinked, brows pulled together before she could stop them. When they softened, she released a small tittering laugh meant to reduce his words to absurdity: so ridiculous it was laughable.
When she finally responded, her words came out tight and thin as if being forced to speak them at wandpoint. "I suppose, if you had a friend you wanted to bring—"
"I don't have a friend I want to bring, Mother. I have a girlfriend. And as I know she would not be welcome, I have no plans to attend."
He did not eat his meal.
He did not apologize for the angry, quiet tear his mother shed, painted by orange light.
And he did not apologize for offending his father, in all the ways he had: Draco had lost count.
