I Am The Son
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter in any way, shape, or form.
A/N - Hello! Third chapter! Please enjoy! :)
Her voice died into a silence that continued to ring with her hysteria. Draco's heart thumped hard, and when James Potter whispered "baby?" in an utterly bewildered tone, he knew something else besides the fact that they were alive was very, very wrong.
Chapter Three
"Tell me it's really a pain potion."
"It is," Draco said faintly, then heard the man mutter something to his wife and watched him hurry over to the desk and roughly jerk the drawer open. He scooped up a vial and shut the drawer with a slam, soon out of Draco's eyesight again. There was a lot of shuffling, some harsh, hissed protest and answering, almost pleading reassurances, and then a soft, groaning sigh.
Bemusement and disbelief had Draco wanting to frown. He didn't know why Potter was trusting him so easily. Wasn't he supposed to have been an active participant in the first war?
"Better, love?"
"Yeah, some," Lily Potter answered, her voice less tight with pain, although still heavily guarded. Draco couldn't turn his head but he still saw her suspicious glare plain as day, the expression somehow making him feel better. "Who is he, James? Can he be trusted? We need to find Harry!"
"We will, Lils, I swear. First though, can you tell me the last thing you remember?"
"Why?" Lily snapped. "We're wasting time, James! Why are you stalling?!"
"I'm not stalling, Lily, but you really do need to tell me that last thing you remember. Please?"
Draco heard the low hiss of frustration and just had enough time to think that he was glad he wasn't the one going against an irate woman desperate for her child before she spoke again. "The last thing I remember, Potter, was Voldemort coming to the fucking door and you telling me to take Harry and go! I ran up the stairs while you faced… you faced…" she trailed off and confusion began to creep into her voice. "I heard you… you fell. You… fell. J-James?"
Potter sighed. "That's what I was afraid of," he muttered, and this time the frustrated hiss had a heavily panic-stricken undertone. Draco stared up at the ceiling, his face carefully blank, feeling extremely uncomfortable. With subtle movements, he tried again to move his arms and legs.
He didn't want to be here for this. He didn't want them to be here.
He didn't want to face his monumentally idiotic mistake.
What in the blue blazes had he gone and done?
"James Charlus Potter, you tell me what the bloody hell is going on this instant! Where is my baby?!
"He isn't here, Lily. And he isn't a baby anymore. Listen, please just trust me, sweetheart. Harry is safe. He is safe, isn't he?"
It took a moment for Draco to realize the question was directed at him. Going still, the tentative excitement he'd been feeling at the twitching in his fingers – they were moving! – fled by force; deliberately pushed away. It probably wasn't a good idea to let them know he could move, and besides, being able to move was one thing; getting out of the room was entirely another.
Getting out of the room and locking the other two in? Not something he was sure was possible. But he had to try. Until he figured out what the hell had gone wrong, having two dead people wandering around, alive as they'd been twenty or so years ago, would be bad. Very bad.
"He's perfectly fine," he told the ceiling, a sneer invading his tone by habit. "Saint Potter's a resilient little shite after all, isn't he?"
The only answer from the other side of the room was a low, thoughtful hum. Draco blocked it out, as well as the continuing questions from Lily Potter as he tried again and again to get his limbs to move without letting the other two people in the room know. For whatever reason, it was just as mentally exhausting as it was physically, and his vision was blurring when a shaft of not-at-all tentative excitement shot through him as he very slowly lifted his arm and laid his hand palm-down on his stomach. Heart pounding, he drew in a long, deep breath through his nose and inched one leg up and then the other until they were bent at the knees, praying to Merlin and Salazar and all the deities he could think of that the Potters took no notice. With the soles of his dragonhide boots firmly on the floor, he paused and closed his eyes before blinking up at the ceiling again, a strange but somehow familiar hot tingle rushing along his nerve endings and pooling in his sternum, right under his heart.
He knew what it was. The knowledge was sudden and brought forth a soft, resigned sigh. Draco licked cracked, dry lips as he focused inward, trying his best to centre himself and assess the state of his severely depleted magical core. It made sense, really. He'd fed his magic into the spell and the spell had fed on his magic.
The spell had practically sucked him dry.
And it didn't even work. Why, why, why didn't it work?! It doesn't make any sense!
Am I really not worthy?
Lips flattening, Draco shoved the tired disappointment, and the anger, and the useless distress and insecurity back into the dark recesses of his mind where they belonged. It wasn't the time to focus on his failures, as large and as constant as they were. He needed to get moving, get out of the room; get out of the house, and do all that while keeping Lily and James Potter locked and secret within. He needed to rest, recoup and regrow his magic.
And after that he needed to figure out how in Merlin's name he was going to send the pair currently whispering furiously to each other back where they belonged.
"What the fuck do you mean, we were dead?"
It was spoken so softly, so chillingly calm and monotone, that he felt it reverberate forcefully through the room. Draco froze and stared up at the ceiling, holding his breath, and by the sounds of the total and absolute lack of sound following the question, so did James Potter. Seconds ticked by.
"James?"
"Don't panic, Lils," Potter whispered, the words running together in an almost unintelligible sentence. Mrs Potter laughed.
It wasn't a joyful sound.
"Don't panic? Don't panic? You're telling me that my son, my baby, is all grown up and in his twenties, we've been dead since he was fifteen months, and we've now miraculously come back to life, and you don't want me to panic?! How the hell else am I supposed to react? You're barking!"
"I'm not. It's the truth, my love," Potter said in a quiet voice. His wife let out another one of those hisses.
"Then why in all of God's green Earth don't I remember all that like you seem to be able to?!"
Draco sighed and closed his eyes, all thoughts of stealth and subtlety vanishing. Ah, fuck.
"That's a very good question," Potter murmured, and it was as if the subject was a physical entity, turning on its enemy. The tension twisted and morphed and rained right down on him, and Draco focused all his will on moving his torso and sitting up.
It was time to leave. Now.
"Forgetting something, mate?"
Draco yelped when a low-grade stinging hex caught him in the hip. His head sprang up and fear and panic seeped over his skin like ice as he mentally called himself every name under the sun, his eyes locked on his wand dancing, knuckle over knuckle, through Potter's fingers.
How could he have forgotten that Potter had his wand?!
"Now," James Potter said, crouching down and tapping the tip of Draco's wand against his chin, his wife sitting against the bottom of an empty, crooked bookcase and eyeing Draco like she was trying to pick him apart piece by piece. "You're going to do some talking, yeah? Explain yourself some."
With a final, huge effort, Draco forced himself up and slumped heavily against the wall, his chin lifting and his lip curling, grey eyes defiant. "I will do no such thing."
Potter grinned. "Oh ho, son, you haven't got a choice, have you?" he said, fingers tightening around Draco's wand. His eyes were hard. "Talk. Or I'll make you."
Back going up at the order - he was Draco Lucius Malfoy for Salazar's sake, who the hell thought they could order him about? - Draco glared and opened his mouth to put the recently-dead git back in his place. Any verbal slaying was halted in its tracks, however, when a loud crack rang through the house, making all three head whip towards the door. A minute later, said door burst open, the person on the other side entering wand-first and then coming to an abrupt stop two steps across the threshold as if he'd run into a solid brick wall. Light green eyes widened to the size of saucers, the colour draining in an alarming rush from a weary, lined face.
Draco sighed and just managed to lift a stone-heavy hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, the need to bang his head repeatedly against the wall incredibly strong. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Just where exactly had his blasted brains gone?!
"Remus?" Lily Potter whispered into the deadly silent room, her voice shaking as much as Grimmauld Place's library had not too long before.