Draco wakes to a pounding headache, finding a drought for speedy hangover recovery on the bedside table. Ro must have left it out for him before retiring to bed.
He swallows it down, returning to his pillow. Corina's strawberry blonde curls within view, she's facing her mother; her little mouth suckling occasionally. Just to remind herself that nunni is still within reach.
Rosanna is sleeping, lips agape, snoring lightly.
Draco drapes an arm over the pair, resting his hand against his wife's hip.
Corina kicks a leg at him for this, bating at his arm. "Mine," she separates from her mother long enough to scold him.
The man chuckles, "she was mine first."
"Mine," she repeats with finality, never bothering to so much as turn to face him.
"Stop it Coco," Rosanna says sleepily. "Daddy can cuddle too."
Draco strokes a hand through her soft waves. "Does that mean you're not angry?"
"It's like everyone says...must be torture; marrying a Legilimens." Rosanna drawls. "I do use it more than I should. Maybe because...it's closeness to me. You're allowed to say no. You're allowed to have privacy. You don't have to share everything with me. And I can't be angry about it. I respect when you don't want me-"
"Even worse married to an occlument, don't get me going." Draco smiles as he cuts her off. Rosanna affording him a small grin. "I love sharing everything with you; truly. I love being close to you.
However there are times when I need process things on my own before I'm ready to put them on display; even for you. I know how easy it would be for you to just look anyway. You learned how to break past an mental barrier from performing it on me." As if either of them could forget the grueling nights teaching Rosanna to build a mental shield for herself. And then discovering what it took to tear his down.
"If you wanted to see, you would've. But you'd never do that, that's why I trust you. That's why you're the only person with whom I'd ever share all of myself."
"I really wanna know what you found." Rosanna pouts rather adorably.
"I want to know what he told you. But, ladies first." Draco lifts her hand up to his face.
—
'Dad,
you'll never guess what happened in divination today. When I signed up you said it was "sodding useless" but, turns out I'm brilliant! Me, Scorpius, finally good at something. Something the girls can't do!
All Malfoy's are rubbish at it, thats what professor Trelawney told me. Even Rose is chuffed because I'm better at it. Albus thinks she might fancy me a bit seeing as I've finally got a strong suit. I'm just learning the crystal ball, but I thought I saw something.
You and Mum, wicked young, only I was there with you. Probably just need to refocus, I don't want to lose my touch. But what'd you think Dad? Could Rose really fancy me? I dunno what to do, how'd you know if a bird's interested? Anyway, off to dinner. I'll write tomorrow once I know more. Tell Mum and Corina I love them, can't wait to see you all for Christmas.
PS. Oi, ask Mum if she has any ideas about what to do with Rose. I really like her hair it's soft and fluffy like a nice red cloud, and her eyes; Rose has nice eyes; wouldn't you reckon?
PPS. Please don't tell Ron about this, he will take the Mickey.'
Draco smirks down at the daily letter from his boy. Setting out for a quill and parchment immediately, remembering the cool sting of rejection when he was young and hadn't received a response when writing his father.
'Dear Scorpius,
I'm glad to hear you're well, I always knew you'd find your niche. I would also like to remind you, however hypothetical, that you are far too young to be concerned with girls. Never the less, I'll mention the Rose dilemma to your mother. But be forewarned, she may also take the mickey.'
—
"I've been through most of the books," Hermione says, clunking one of the larger, leather bound hard backs, onto her office table.
"I've only found one reference of a human conduit."
"She died of it, there's nothing much more than that." Ron finishes for his wife.
"We found something a bit more helpful." Draco presents the dog eared page to the group. He's hovering, a nasty habit really. Standing immediately behind her chair, all but atop her. Some part of him has to touch some part of Rosanna. "It's all very straight forward I'd say. They're partially bonded, incomplete bonds can be severed. Just like a wand is capable of serving many masters."
"Now that's she's been sired to him..."
"She'll need to be bonded to someone else, that's the only way; short of killing Nott. Which, I'm still considering." Draco's hands curl around the back of his wife's chair. Knuckles white with force.
"Do you want to be bonded?" Hermione asks in a hushed tone.
"I don't really have a choice," Rosanna shifts her legs uncomfortably. "If somebody has to 'own' me, I'd rather it be someone I trust. The only thing is, this will break my ties to anyone else that's previously tapped into my magic, including you guys, and Harry."
"This ritual can be incredibly painful for the participants." Ron points of, rubbing a hand over the stubble forming at his jaw.
Hermione shoots daggers with her eyes.
"What?" Ron protests, "it's all right here." He directs her to the text.
"It's quick and effective." Rosanna counters. It's been many years since she's been afraid of physical pain, there are much worse things. "I don't want Theodore to have any hold on me. He got off on it, holding me by the reigns. Never again."
"If you were upset or didn't agree to something, wouldn't you try to keep her from it?" Hermione turns her attention to Malfoy.
"What are you suggesting Granger?" Draco snarls, leaning forward so that his chest is pressed to the back of Rosanna's head and shoulders.
"Nothing," Hermione crosses her arms over her chest. "I'm merely asking. Being sure it's something you've both discussed."
"She's my wife, not my property. I don't fancy her being owned or sired by anyone." The platinum haired man's jaw ticks, "not even me."
"I know that," Rosanna assures him, pressing against his weight until he backs up. "Hermione knows that." Brown eyes narrow at her friend.
"Nothing changes; if we do this or if we don't." Draco tells her.
"We should get started." Rosanna's mind is made up. "Shouldn't take long."
"We'll stand guard outside. If something goes wrong, I reckon you'll holler."
—
"Are you very nervous?" Draco asks, pulling long hair over his shoulders.
"No," she swallows harshly, "are you?"
"I don't want to hurt you. Never could stomach it."
Rosanna nods in understanding, "I don't wanna hurt you either. Not anymore than I already have." His words from the night before bounce around aimlessly in her head. 'Oh my love, you burn everything you touch.'
"I didn't mean-" Draco flounders around for the right words.
"That's not at all how I meant it."
"How did you mean it?" Rosanna asks patiently.
"You are..." he shakes his head, "you're you."
"Very eloquent." The strawberry blonde snorts.
"You are magnetic and witty and powerful, a force of mature and sometimes loving you is painful. Take yesterday for example, I needed to see you straight after I got back. To be sure that you were alright, but you were in the interrogation room. For longer than we agreed to, might I add. I thought about the Talbit case."
Draco swallows the lump in his throat, "I always wondered if you knew. If you knew it was all slipping away, but kept going regardless. Part of me thought, perhaps for you, the case took priority over me. Over us; our family was second fiddle to your work. I turned it over and over in my mind, trying to understand how those memories weren't important enough for you to want to keep. I wanted to hate you for it, for what you did to our children, to me.
Nearly a month in St. Mungos and the healers still didn't have answers. No one knew if you'd ever recover or if those part of you were just gone. I wanted to tell you off, I wanted to stop caring, I wanted to hate you." He repeats, "but I couldn't. Because you're you."
"I get it," Rosanna mumbles around the nail she's biting. Dropping it back to her side, she continues, "I'm human. I make decisions and sometimes they're the wrong ones. But I would never hurt you on purpose, I would never hurt our kids. Draco, I've told you a million times and I'll tell you a million more, if I need to, but I swear to god... I didn't know what was happening until it was too late.
Until I didn't know where I was or why I was there. When people would visit I wanted to know them, I wanted to remember. I did every mental exercise they gave me, I never missed a potion. I needed to get better and not because of the wizengamont. They could find a new Legilimens, I was, and still am, one hundred percent replaceable."
"Not to me." Draco loosens his tie, taking it over his head. Draping his jacket over the arm chair, rolling his the sleeves of his dark blue dress shirt up to his elbows.
"That's why you're the only one I can trust with this. You've never thought of me as an object to be manipulated. You've never wanted to be with me because of the things that I can do. You're a good person, better than I deserve." Ro tells him, simply.
Draco steps around his rectangular desk to where she stands on the opposite side.
She's searching him, with large brown eyes. As always, ridiculously beautiful and raw. "I know you think the world of me, but I wish you wouldn't say things like that. You have your shortcomings, even still I'm nowhere near good enough for you."
Draco takes the book from her, lying it open on oak desk between them.
Rosanna watches him with pursed lips. "Agree to disagree," she offers, holding her hand out to him.
He takes it in his own for a firm shake, "as you wish."
"No," Rosanna laughs as Draco begins trailing kisses up her wrist toward her elbow. "Not to kiss, you're supposed to cut me!"
"How silly of me." Draco murmurs against the fabric of her shirt, now at her upper arm. "But this is much better darling." Her arm is draped over him diagonally as lips move over her shoulder, up her neck, to nibble her earlobe; right palm hidden from view.
Rosanna hardly has time to register the cool metal blade pressed to her palm before-
"Ouch," she hisses in protest, "you cut me!"
"Course I did sweetheart, you insisted." Draco flashes her a triumphant grin. He hates hurting her, even with smaller things, she must be properly distracted.
"Sneaky bastard," she pulls her hand from his grasp. Blood running out to stain her tweed pants.
"Read it aloud." Draco clears his throat, holding a finger to the text, on the desk, as the move to perch on the edge of it.
"I give myself to you, Draco Malfoy. Choosing you as my one true master, forsaking all others. I make myself malleable to your every need and desire...until you should perish. Will you accept this offering?" Rosanna turns her eyes to his. Large and brown and wet.
Draco's lips are on hers in an instant, to steady her, to steady himself.
"For you, the world." Draco whispers leaning to nuzzle against her cheek, drawing her hand to his lips. Sweeping his tongue over the cut there, laving it thoroughly. Greedy for it, her magic is familiar and sweet and it sings to him, in her blood.
Rosanna whimpers then, her body tingles, set ablaze by his touch; their magic. "Draco," she says to get his attention.
"It's alright Ro. This is normal yeah? Remember the book said you might feel resistance from Nott. It'll pass." He doesn't know for certain if it will, but he has to keep calm.
Her grip tightens on his shoulders, "Do you hate it?"
"What?" This? Yes; he does hate this.
"My magic, your body keeps rejecting it." It's supposed to flow, instead it feels like hitting a rather large wall.
Perhaps that's what's keeping him. Maybe some part of him does hate her magic; the part of him that loathes anything that could be a danger to her. He refocuses, on the larger portion that adores every inch of her forward and backward. "I love you, I accept your offering. I want you to be mine...I need you to be." He pecks two kisses to her temple.
Draco opens himself up to her, merging into one stream of consciousness. Their magic flowing together, in them, around them. Burning through their veins like white hot poison, and then excruciating becomes bearable, bearable becomes comfortable and gently their insides settle.
Rosanna is holding him, so tightly her muscles ache; Draco's screaming similarly. But he nuzzles closer, breathes her deeper, and clings to her; harder than he ever has.
—-
"Ron! Hermione! What the devil's going on in there?" Harry calls, approaching the door of Malfoy's office.
"We're trying to stabilize it, nothing's working." Hermione shakes her head, yelling over the rumbling of the very floor they stand on.
"Some kind of binding ritual mate...we can't get in." Ron elaborates. "Do you mind standing in for Hermione?"
"Why, she's always been the best at spells?" Harry steps forward, slightly confused.
"The timing's rubbish," Hermione pants in exertion, "you're going to be an uncle again."
"Blimey Hermione, out of the way!" Harry shouts, just in time for the tremors around them to still. Without warning, the door swings open.
"Bloody hell you two," Ron shakes his head, "at least tell us it worked."
Upon the sobering realization that they're no longer alone Draco pulls back slightly. Smoothing down Rosanna's hair and clothing.
Casting a wandless, wordless, healing and cleansing charm.
His wife looks a little worse for wear, by lovely nonetheless.
When she moves to brush stray hair behind his own ear his skin zings to life where it comes in contact with her. A tiny spark of magic eruption from her fingertips. She looks down at her own hand, feeling betrayed by her own power.
"Sorry baby," Draco says without much thought. But it was a thought, her thought.
Rosanna cocks her head to the side, "you can hear me?"
"I haven't gone deaf." He chuckles as the by-standing trio looks on in confusion.
"She hasn't said anything." Harry tells him, brows furrowed.
"That was in my head?" Draco turns to her incredulously. "Are you in my head now?"
"Or are you in my head? Spooooky." Rosanna's teases, trying to lighten the mood.
His eyes flicker to her lips this time, to be sure they've moved. "Are you not the least bit concerned about this?"
"It's on the list of side effects, along with fever, fatigue, and unpredictable magic. Should subside within a month." Rosanna assumes him, squeezing his thigh over the fabric of his perfectly tailored slacks.
"Shall I give it a go?" Draco wonders if his magic has actually become unpredictable.
"Nothing too complex, keep it simple." Hermione says in warning.
"Lumos," the ball of light that appears is blinding as the sun.
"Nox," Rosanna says calmly. Extinguishing the burning light. "You'll get used to it, I almost burnt the school down when I was learning."
Draco, Harry, Ron and Hermione had all tapped into her magic at one time or another. Without realizing it, an adrenaline rush like wave would surge through when they needed it most; carrying them to safety and then waning.
Only this time the rush doesn't wane, it courses through him over and over, in a steady strum. Like trying to wield a wand with an unfamiliar core.
Weeks go by, it's nearly Christmas. The mind reading does pass, Draco has a good harness on his new power. But somehow the rift between Rosanna and Draco is larger than its been in years.
With Nott behind bars for the rest of his lifetime, and his case closed accordingly; Draco is ready to move forward. Because truthfully, that's all there is to do.
His wife on the other hand, is determined to find some shred of nonexistent evidence; that proves Leo was truthly fathered by Voldemort. More over, why he would lie if she wasn't.
Corina was spending a night with Rosanna's parents, providing them a much needed night out in muggle London. To say it was a tense dinner would be an understatement.
Returning home they ready for bed, silently. Their coupling is rushed and frigid, not the warm love making that they normally share.
"If you have something to say...just say it." Rosanna whispers as Draco rolls away, his back to her.
"Why?" He bites out bitterly. "Will my saying something stop you from running around, chasing dead ends?"
"It might!" She snaps, "doesn't it bother you? Don't you want to know?"
"No, I don't care to be honest. But let's say Leo is Voldemort's?" Draco is exasperated and ready to broach the subject from a new standpoint; devil's advocate.
"What?" Rosanna gasps at the implication.
"You seem so hellbent on this being the only possible outcome; let's say you're right." He turns onto his back. "She's Voldemort's." Draco shrugs a shoulder.
"Did I not still raise her; love her from the time she was nothing more than a twinkle in your eye? Did she not call me Daddy, since she could speak? Or come to me with each scrape of a knee or elbow? Did I not tuck her into bed, and comfort her when she was ill or heartbroken? Does twenty-one years of loving my little girl just go away because biologically she isn't mine?"
"No." Rosanna releases the puff off air she's been holding.
"Are we going to curse off her nose, and send her to Azkaban?" Draco's blue eyes are still trained on the ceiling.
"No." Rosanna huffs a laugh, maybe it is ridiculous after all.
"Did you really think it would be any different?" He moves again, this time supporting his head with his elbow against the pillow.
"Leo is my daughter. If Voldemort fathered her, that is all he did. It doesn't matter. I need you to understand that Rosanna. The only reason that I'm even entertaining this is because you want a definitive answer. But what if there isn't one? I know that's hard hear," Draco rakes a hand through his long platinum hair. "I want to know too, if something happened to you when I stepped away.
When I was supposed to be taking care of you. I've been sick over it, truly. But it's time we put this to bed, please."
"You really wouldn't care?" She asks, needing firm reassurance. "You wouldn't leave?"
"Where on earth would I go?" He cocks a brow at her.
"I don't know...away from me." Rosanna mumbles.
"Now you're just being ridiculous," he chides her. "Wonderful, incorrigible, vexing, yankedoodle, wife of mine. You've left me no choice." He pounced atop her fondly, ghosting his fingers up and down her sides as she howls with pretty, pretty, laughter. "I'm going to tickle you into submission." He promises again her earlobe. "After which I never want to hear another word about this 'away from you' business. Are we clear?" Draco grins down at her.
She nods, tears brimming at the corners of her smiling eyes. "I'm sorry!"
"You will be." He promises, continuing his assault, finally relenting to her kiss.
"I love you." She says against his lips, "and I'll stop."
"I love you too," Draco sighs, "and good."