Michiko: Bag ladies bring people together
Moonlight Yellow: Yes indeed. Gotta love them French.
Temptress: I'm imagining the ministry would take the manor because Lucius would cut Draco out of any rights as an hier.
Bean: Feel free to be bratty. It inflates my ego. *j/k*
Goddess of insanity and pauru: Thank you for asking people to read my story. It saves me the trouble of having the spread the word myself.
Bienfoy: I love your name! Okay – er – recomposing myself. I understand avoiding cleaning your bedroom. I just did that yesterday after avoiding it for two weeks.
Grey Malfoy: Once again, the bag lady brings people together.
El: Wow! I read the beginning of your review and I felt like I was reading the inside of a Stephen King book where they put all the words critics used to describe his novels. . .er – okay. . .
Dark One Shadowphyre: Francois is my hero.
Anyone else who read and/or reviewed, thank you. You are insane (as is this story) and it is more than I deserve.
Not JK Rowling. I don't own Harry Potter or the entire world within. Anything you recognize would belong to her. Anything you don't would belong to me, including the crack!plot of this trifle of a story. I am (obviously) making no money off this though if you really want to sue me, I've got $10.00. That and you don't understand what holiday spirit means. Good day.
Forgive my errors, for I hate spellcheck.
*~*~*~*~*
Three weeks had passed since Harry's arrival and every day that went by was a reminder to Draco that he had one less day to think about Harry's offer. He wanted him to pack up his life here in New York and move clear across the ocean back to England, back to the old life. At first Cherish had been an excuse, a rather big one in the back of his mind. As the days progressed, however, he saw how close his daughter and boyfriend were growing. They were becoming attached to one another and Draco was certain that Cherish would have no objections to returning to England.
It wouldn't be the same. He kept telling himself that over and over again, but a small voice inside his head reminded him that he didn't want it to be the same. Things had been far too messy and complicated before but now they might be able to work. In a time where Voldemort didn't exist, Draco could see just how possible things were and it scared him. Going back was returning to something he had long tried to forget; something he had tried to run from. For Cherish, it was a new adventure. It was starting over and though she loved her life in New York, Draco knew that should would persuade him to go if she knew about the offer. There was so many new possibilities for her and she wanted to learn them all. For him, it was a chance to go home.
After the Cherish excuse had vanished because, honestly, he kept hearing Cherish in the back of his mind telling him that she was sick of being his excuse, he had started to try and think up new reasons. All he could come up with was his own fear. The person he left in England was not someone he wanted to be ever again. He didn't want Cherish to know about his past. He didn't want her to know that he had trained in the dark arts from as early as age seven. He didn't want her to know that he had fully stood behind Voldemort until his sixth year when Lucius had attacked him, abused him, and Draco saw what power could do; how it could corrupt.
He tried to shroud the memories. They weren't pleasant and they weren't things that he liked to remember. By going back to England, there would be no hope in running. Even having Harry in New York, a constant reminder of what he had been and become, was taking a toll on his weary and beaten soul. The only problem was, by not going back, he would probably lose Harry. He doubted that Harry would want to move to New York. His life was, and had always been since his fifth year, grounded in the wizarding world, Hogsmeade specifically. Draco could never ask Harry to leave everything he knew and the only place he ever felt comfortable. Harry was happy in Hogsmeade. The difference with Draco was that no matter where he went, he never seemed to be truly happy unless he was in Harry's arms.
A long distance relationship would never work and Draco would never try it anyway. Harry hadn't offered him a chance to go home. Harry had offered him a chance to be together forever; the three of them living together as a family. It was a picture in his mind that Draco adored. There was nothing he could want more than bringing the two people who mattered most together into a family. His fears kept him back, unable to commit not to Harry, but to returning and becoming not Draco as he was in New York, but Malfoy.
He wiped the fog off the mirror and grimaced at the perspiration collected on his hand. Looking into the mirror before it fogged up again and hid his image, Draco had seen the weary face of himself. He had changed so much. He looked older, more mature, and it was obvious that he had been through a lot. Draco was still not even thirty but the fine lines in his face formed from frowning for so many years made him appear much older. The wet strands of his platinum hair hung before the steel grey of his eyes, hiding them from view. Draco didn't mind. He couldn't look himself in the eye anyway.
Wrapping a towel around his waist, Draco opened the door to the bathroom and felt the cool air hit against his bare chest. Cherish was sitting on the floor in her pajamas, a bowl of cereal sat before her and cartoons were playing on the television set. Behind her he could see Harry seated, a hairbrush in his hand as he pulled it through Cherish's hair. Draco leaned against the frame smiling at the scene before him. He wanted it to be like this forever but there was only two weeks left before the decision had to be made. Time was running out and Draco didn't like it one bit.
"Hey," said Harry, noticing him standing there. "What are our plans for today?"
"Well its Sunday so I have off," said Draco toweling off his hair. "I thought Central Park, movie, ice cream. Sound good?"
"Works for me. Cher-Bear?"
Draco smiled at the nickname Harry had given Cherish. At first it drove him crazy but as time went on, it was beginning to grow on him.
"That would be fun. I already finished my homework yesterday. Harry helped me."
"Did he?" asked Draco. He could see Harry slightly blush before pushing his glasses up his nose and running a hand through his continuously shaggy mop of black hair. "You two are becoming very close, aren't you?"
"Yeah," said Harry, softly.
"Harry's great, Daddy. I see why you love him so much."
Draco smiled. "Yeah. I gotta get dressed and have breakfast but then we can head out. Its getting rather warm out. Maybe we can toss the ball around a bit."
"Sure," said Cherish, an avid fan and player of softball. "You'll play with us, won't you, Harry?"
"I probably won't be any good but I'd be delighted."
Draco headed for the bedroom and shut the door behind him. He could hear Cherish and Harry's voice through the door turn to undistinguishable murmurs. He sighed, running his hand through his hair, and then began to get dressed. For a long time he lay on his bed running a hand along the soft cotton of his t-shirt. His thoughts rested solely on the two people sitting in the living room. Draco didn't know what he was going to do.
When he returned to the living room, he saw that Harry had been french braiding Cherish's hair and he was just securing it with a hairband upon Draco's emergence. They both still had to get dressed but they had already eaten so Draco went straight to the kitchen and began rummaging through the cupboards. Grabbing a pop tart, he decided to skip the toaster and wandered back over to the couch where Harry was handing Cherish a mirror.
"Well, Cher-Bear? How did I do? Was my performance satisfactory?"
"You did good," she said, looking into the mirror she was holding which reflected back to the one Harry held so she could see the back of her head. "Daddy does it better, though. He does my hair really good, though, so I didn't expect you to be better than Daddy."
"Really," said Harry dryly as he looked at Draco with mirth dancing in his emerald eyes. Draco scowled at him and took a bite of his pop tart.
"Yeah. Daddy does my hair better than some of the girls' moms at school. A lot of the girls pity me cause I don't have a mom but I tell them that my Daddy is better than any mom."
Harry smirked as she stood up and began heading for her bedroom to get changed. He noticed that Draco had stopped eating and was now picking at the part of the pop tart around the frosting. His eyes were focused on his hands, refusing to look up and meet Harry's, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. Harry covered them with his own.
"That was sweet what she said about you, don't you think?"
"Well its true. She doesn't need a mum. She's got me."
"I'm going to go get changed, okay?" Draco nodded, still not looking at him. With a soft, almost sad, smile, Harry left the living room area for the bedroom they had been sharing. Draco stared at the hands on his watch and awaited their return, a few precious minutes left to himself before the mask had to go back on and everything was supposed to be right in the world.
~*~
"Why does stuff like that always happen?" asked Cherish staring at the ground. Draco looked over to see her gripping her ice cream cone, scowling at the ground, and he saw that her ice cream had fallen off, now laying in a pile of melting chocolate syrup on the pavement.
"Joel would probably tell you it was one of life's great mysteries but I've come to believe that it's just dumb luck."
"Meredith says it's karma coming back at me."
"Meredith says everything has to do with karma."
"I know. It's what makes the world go 'round."
Harry snickered. "Your friend Meredith sounds like a very interesting individual."
"She is but I think she spends too much time reading. She needs to socialize with people that aren't in books otherwise I feel that she will become a recluse. Then who would play with me?"
"I would."
"Thank you, Harry. You are rather enjoyable company, though I don't want to play softball with you again. You're vicious. You almost took my eye out."
"Almost took your eye out," said Draco, rubbing at his wrist where Harry had hit him. "I'm lucky we put ice on it right away. Its swelling considerably and if we hadn't, I'd probably have a welt the size of a softball by now."
"Oh come off it," said Harry. "I wasn't that bad."
"Yes you were," the two Malfoys chorused, smirking at each other.
"It was a brutal attack on both me and my Daddy. I expect an apology."
"I'm sorry, Cher-Bear. Draco? Well. . .you deserved it."
"How did I deserve it?"
"I don't know. You just did."
Cherish grinned as she threw her ice cream cone away. "Daddy and I accept your apology."
"I don't know what you're talking about," muttered Draco. "I didn't get an apology."
"Was I really that bad?"
"Yes," the both said.
"You were raised muggle," said Draco. "Shouldn't you know how to throw a softball?"
"I do know how to throw a softball. Just not very good, apparently."
"Apparently," drawled Cherish and Harry stared at her for a moment in shock. "What?"
"You sounded just like Draco for a moment."
"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," she replied.
"Softballs, however. . ." said Draco.
"Fine. No more softball. One day, Cherish, I'm going to have to take you to the wizarding world. You'd love Quidditch."
Her eyes brightened up at this and her grudge against Harry for the brutal softball attacks was forgotten. Cherish linked arms with Harry, attaching herself to his side as she tugged on his arm.
"You'll let me come see Quidditch one day?" she asked.
"Of course."
"Harry, do you think I'll be able to go to Hogwarts one day?"
"Probably. You're a half-blood. If you weren't, you'd be a squib."
Draco snorted grabbing their attention. "Can you imagine? A Malfoy a squib?"
Harry chuckled at this. "Your father would die of embarrassment."
"That would be the second time. Weasley already killed my father from humiliation when I was living as a muggle waiter."
"Ah that's right. Well, you can never have too many deaths planned for Lucius Malfoy."
"I suppose not."
They returned to the apartment and after dinner, settled in to watch television. Draco's focus was directed anywhere but at the television, his eyes focused on the book in front of him but he wasn't reading the words. In fact, they were blurring before his eyes into squiggles without any sort of definition and he was certain that Harry noticed Draco hadn't turned the page in over twenty minutes. If he had, however, Harry never said anything but he had started to massage the tense muscles in Draco's back and neck, kneading them gently with his hands.
As Draco was beginning to relax and the words were swimming back into letters instead of blots of ink, the door to the apartment flew open and Joel sauntered in. Grabbing a juice box from the refrigerator, Joel sat down on one of the stools at the counter and began to drink.
"To what do we owe the pleasure this time?" said Draco.
"Sam and I are in a fight," he replied. "What is this?"
Cherish looked over to see him holding up a small, rectangular card. "That's my student I.D. for next year. Don't look at my picture. It's awful."
"We teased her about it all day yesterday after it came in the mail," explained Harry.
Ignoring her request, Joel turned it over and began to snicker. "Okay, this just proves how awful the technology in that school is. They think they're so fancy taking the pictures with digital cameras, scanning them into the computer, but somebody has got their color balance off. You can never get a student I.D. at any school around here without your picture coming out red. It's like, look at Cherish. She's white as a ghost. These cards make her Malfoy skin look like she spent the summer at the reservation with Chief Whitefeather and a lack of sunblock."
"Cute, Uncle Joel," she said, snatching the card away from him and taking it to the safety of her room.
"So what did you and Sam fight about?" asked Draco.
"Okay, there was this big bird. . ."
"A what?" said Draco.
"Just let me explain. It's not as crazy as it sounds."
"Yeah, okay."
"No, really. See, I was cleaning the apartment for Sam so I had the windows opened. I'm already nutsy. I don't need to be inhaling anymore fumes than I've already got working on my brain. I was dusting the bookcase and this big bird came flying in the window. I tried chasing it out but it wouldn't go. I mean, it flew right at my head. Almost took out my eye before it flew into a mirror. Damn bird. The thing was nuts so I started throwing Sam's books at it to try to get it out. Well, eventually the bird hopped, not flew mind you, hopped, out the balcony door before taking off again. Sam's mad cause I ruined a lot of her books. She asked me why I couldn't be normal."
"There was a big bird," repeated Draco. Harry bit back a laugh.
"Yes," he said, exasperated. "It was a very large bird."
"And now you and Sam are fighting."
"Ridiculous, isn't it?"
"A bit. Well, we need to turn in. Some of us have jobs in the morning. Joel, feel free to sleep on the couch."
"Thanks," he muttered as he took a sip of his apple juice.
"Sorry about the bird," said Harry, fighting the smirk that wanted to come over his face as he followed Draco into the bedroom. Joel grunted a reply as Harry disappeared behind the door. Once out of earshot, Harry collapsed on the bed and began laughing, Draco watching him with a cocked eyebrow as he undressed for bed. "A big bird. Where did you find this guy?"
"Classifieds," replied Draco. "Makes you think twice about finding a roommate in a newspaper, doesn't it?"
"Kind of. I can't believe you were roommates with him for years. He's your best friend."
Draco smiled. "Yeah, he is. Of all the people to make friends with. I never had a best friend before New York. Crabbe and Goyle certainly can't be counted as friends. You were my boyfriend. The closest I had to a best friend was Hermione back in seventh year. As soon as I move to New York I find that moron and what happens? I can't get rid of him."
"You don't want to get rid of him. He's great. You love him, man. You kept him around for ten years."
"I know," Draco said, sighing. "That's the sad part. He's so crazy but I love him like a brother. I mean, he drives me nuts, but I'm glad that it was him that I found when I went looking for an apartment to live in."
"Yeah, well, the gang from Hogwarts should see you now. Waiter and best friend to a muggle writer who does things like throwing books at big birds and bangs brooms on the ceiling in a fight of noise with the neighbor upstairs."
"And that's just what you've been here for. You missed things like gum-sticking devices and the man-made eggshell."
"Man-made eggshell?" asked Harry, cocking an eyebrow.
"Let's put it this way: Joel used to always wonder what it would be like to live inside an eggshell. He doesn't wonder anymore."
Harry snickered. "Where does he come up with this stuff?"
"Unknown. You know what the really scary part about it is?"
"Hm?"
"This was the second day I lived with him."
"Gods, I can only imagine it. Here you come fresh out of Hogwarts and you meet this guy who seems nice enough but kind of strange. You're trying to adjust to being an muggle, much less an American, and this guy decides to tell you that he's always wondered what it would be like to live inside an eggshell. Why don't you try it?"
Draco snickered. "That was kind of how it went. Joel is very odd."
"Indeed." Harry climbed into bed, pulled back the covers and patted the spot beside him. He grinned as Draco crawled across the mattress and slid beneath the blankets next to him. Harry felt cold and he sighed as he felt Draco's warmth press up against him.
Wrapping an arm around Draco, Harry cradled him in his arms and it wasn't long until Draco's breathing evened, his chest rising and falling in a steady calculated rhythm. With a slight shudder, it was confirmed to Harry that Draco was asleep and he brushed back the platinum hair that shrouded his forehead. Placing a kiss to the skin there, Harry nuzzled his nose into Draco's cheek.
Time was running out. He had two weeks until he was expected back in Hogsmeade and Draco had yet to give him an answer. Part of Harry felt it was unfair to ask him to leave. If truth be told, most of Harry didn't think he'd do it but a small sliver of hope gripped at his heart still. Draco had a life here. His daughter had a life here and it was unfair to ask either one to leave. For Cherish, it would only hold new beginnings but for Draco, Harry was asking him to walk back to a life he had hated. He felt guilty but he couldn't lose him again.
Harry removed his glasses and placed them on the table next to the bed. "I love you, Malfoy," he whispered, cradling Draco's body closer to his own as he stared at the clock and the blurry red numbers flickered to midnight.
*~*~*~*~*
Er – okay. The funny thing about this chapter is that it actually happened to me. The big bird thing. That actually happened to me and my sister, Jennifer. It was a big-ass bird, too, and it flew right at my head. Except we don't know how it got in. I was going down the basement stairs to get the iron in the cellar-way and I heard this flutter so I look to the side and there's this bird sitting there. I run upstairs, shut the door, lock it, and start ironing, wondering how I'm going to get rid of this bird. Next thing I know, the bird flies up through the vent and is flying at my head because I'm standing right in front of the window. I duck, it hits the window, and I ran up the stairs like the pussy I am leaving my sister to chase it out of the front door. It actually hopped out, too. Not flew, but hopped. Alas, I thought Joel might find the situation as traumatic as I did.
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