Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).
ooo
It's only the soreness of his feet that tells Draco that the reception at the Ministry has been hours, and not minutes. His brain has been occupied with an constant replay, with variations, of everything that could have gone wrong. He vaguely remembers the time before the war when he actually would think things like "What could go wrong?" Now he has altogether too many answers to that question.
And now it's over. Andromeda Tonks is telling him that he did well, very well, and the Minister has shaken his hand as well. Granger is looking well pleased, if tired. She's absently pulling on a lock of hair that has become entangled in the mesh of the chain-mail.
He must say that's the first outfit he's seen her wearing that comes anywhere near truth in advertising. Had she stomped onto the Hogwarts Express wearing that, he might have had some idea of who—or what—had just entered the wizarding world.
Lovegood is saying something about a Portkey, and Weasley chimes in, "I'm looking forward to putting on my own clothes. These Muggle things are heavy."
Potter—somewhere in his peripheral vision, and things have changed, because he's not uneasy with that—is taking charge of Teddy, who has started crying, in the way of an overstimulated small child who wants his bed.
Draco can't say he faults Teddy for that. He's feeling more than a bit over-stimulated himself. But the day's not over, because Weasley the youngest is saying, "Mum's insisting."
"Well, then," Potter says, "there's no getting out of it."
"At least then let's get changed first," Granger says, and the Minister nods.
Potter hands off Teddy to Andromeda, and the six of them leave, led by one of Shacklebolt's aides.
His mother is holding Hypatia, who is fussing. He'd like to go home, but it's not going to be possible. She knows it too.
Andromeda says, "Go on. She'll do without you for a few minutes."
It takes him less time than that to exchange the petitioner's robes for his ordinary clothes, the Muggle clothes that have regrettably become part of his wardrobe, because he spends so much of his time in the other world. And now that he has a court wizard's appointment, that's likely to continue to be the case.
His mother is wearing everyday robes when he returns, and she's talking with Andromeda. Weasley the youngest—Ginevra—has the Portkey.
"Mum's gone on ahead. She's expecting us," she says.
This is the part of the journey he's dreading, now that he's finished replaying disaster.
No, he corrects himself, not disaster, only the potential for extraordinary awkwardness.
ooo
The Burrow is indeed a ramshackle country wizard's house of the old style. Some of the patchy bits are plainly new. It probably sustained some damage in the war, given who lived there. He'd read the whole bit in the Prophet about the lot of them going into hiding.
They materialize on a hilltop and walk in, so he has the prospect and the long view as they tramp through the wintry fields. The clouds overhead hang in a grey furry blanket, and the air is cold with the steely smell of coming snow. The blue twilight gives an even more pronounced golden cast to the many windows shining indoor light. Even wrapped in a warming charm, he can feel the invitation of that interior… however shabby it might be.
Quite in contrast to his childhood gibes to Ron Weasley, it's neither dirty nor threadbare; there's a motley richness of color and texture.
It's awkward. He knew it was going to be awkward, and still it doesn't equal the experience. He's grateful for Hypatia's warm weight in his arms, and he feels cowardly that he's using his little sister as a shield against the world. People see her, and by reflex look kindly on the one carrying her.
The kitchen and the dining area… well, there is no formal dining room in the Weasley house. There is only a sprawling kitchen table that expands, magically and smoothly, to take up the influx of visitors.
Slickly, done, he thinks. He has been studying up on household charms, and that's not apprentice-work. It looks effortless, which is a sure sign of long practice.
He's reassured by Elizabeth Granger on his right and William on his left. She's the real Power. She's chatting easily with their hosts. Yes, of course, she already knows them; both Grangers already know them.
He remembers that confrontation in front of Flourish and Blott's … how long ago. Surely they remember.
Not that any of it matters now. He's a part of their family, a vassal of their House. Hypatia wriggles in his arms and squawks in delight. Across the room, there's a little blond baby who might be her twin… well, isn't, because she's a bit smaller, and rounder…
… and the tuft of hair on her head, less thick than Hypatia's corona of fine, flyaway hair, leans a bit more to the red-gold than the moonlight-pale of his own, and hers.
She reaches out her arms to the newcomer. "Baby!" she says with conviction.
It's her new word.
The other child, looking over her father's shoulder, says something like "Gah-gah-gah!"
"Baby!" Hypatia says. She's quite pleased with herself. Not only is there Teddy (Draco translates) but there are others. Hypatia approves of the Weasley domain, because it is full of people inclined to fuss over her, and there are peers to be greeted.
Making connections, he thinks. His sister is a Malfoy to the core.
On the new model, he thinks, and then blanches as the child's father runs to smile at him—
The face is scarred, seamed all over with silvery scars that would look ancient except for the red flare that surrounds them, as if the system were in a perpetual state of irritation. The bone structure under it tells him that the man must have been strikingly handsome, before…
… before a werewolf's claws tore his face open. He's lucky that he lost neither eye…
The smile is frightening, and Draco has to back-translate it through the ruined features to realize that it's sincere. Would be a real smile on a face that wasn't seamed with old scar tissue that turns it into a sort of demonic smirk.
Bill Weasley. And the baby must be the infant born a few months after Hypatia. He remembers them now, his mother and the gorgeous Fleur Delacour, the day that Fleur shared her generous portion of take-away with them.
Bill says, "Victoire seems to be interested in making the acquaintance of her cousin." He smiles. "Hypatia, isn't it? After the alchemist." Draco nods. His mouth is dry. There's something he ought to say, that hasn't been said, that he should have said months ago, if not years.
That ruined face is his fault.
Bill looks at him, his expression serious. "I think that you've done admirably as a father," he says. Draco gulps; he hadn't any idea the conversation would take this turn. "It's no calling for the faint of heart," Bill continues. "There's the real things, and then there's the ones that visit you at four o'clock in the morning." He finds them a place at the table. "Here, sit down." He takes a seat at the long padded bench that Molly Weasley has conjured. It's upholstered in something soft and no doubt it's reinforced with a cushioning charm.
Yes, definitely a cushioning charm, he concludes, as Bill budges over to make room for him.
"Four o'clock in the morning is the worst," Draco says. "There's no one awake but you and the baby. Or you and your imagination."
Bill nods. Molly has reached their end of the table, and she's beaming. Two crystal goblets float down and settle gently in front of them. A faceted decanter hovers gracefully above one, then the other, and the scent is unmistakable.
"Elf-made wine," Bill says. "Fleur's parents sent it."
Molly says, "Now don't think of refusing. It's only a glass." She flicks her wand, and the table rearranges itself, with only the slightest tremor in the surface of the wine. "We'll be drinking the toast shortly."
His puzzlement must show.
"To the court wizard of the House of Granger," she says.
ooo
Hypatia reaches for the goblet, or for the play of candlelight in its faceted depths. Draco reflexively intercepts her chubby fingers, and shifts her in his arms so that she's facing her cousin. Hypatia gives him a speaking look, then turns her attention to Victoire.
Draco stares at the goblet for a moment, his fingers closing over the stem, and breathes in the shifting bouquet of the wine. The conversations rise and fall around him. Bill Weasley's expression is neutral; yes, he's supped with horrors, and knows more than he'd like about reading intent.
"I'm sorry." There, it's out.
Bill raises an eyebrow.
"The raid… what happened. Greyback. I didn't know they were bringing him." He raises his eyes to meet Bill's. "But I'm the one who made it possible."
The long considering silence would drive him mad, except that he's already lived through more of those to do for a lifetime, beginning with the deliberations of the Wizengamot at the war crimes trial.
Bill looks off into the middle distance, and then shifts little Victoire on his shoulder.
Draco looks down to see Bill's hand extended to him… the palm as fair as his own, the back tan and rough, but unscarred.
He accepts the handshake. It's firm, and strong, and the fingers are long and graceful—not too different from his father's hands, but put to rather different use: a warrior who began as a fine worker in defensive magic, a Gringotts curse-breaker, and (it's rumored) the de facto liaison with the Goblins in the post-war.
And then in the pause, he hears Madam Granger (in the next room) say in a low voice, "I could see how you might have been tempted."
"More a matter that he'd disappeared, and we had other fish to fry. I don't know how many times I lay awake thinking about it, after what happened to Bill." Molly Weasley, in another key entirely. "Though to be fair it was more the fault of Bellatrix."
"A piece of work." The dryness of Madam Granger's tone would freeze the blood.
"Oh she was. Good riddance, I say. She'd done for enough of us by the end."
He looks at Bill, who looks back. He'd heard it too…
"We came through it," Bill says. "I was at the trial." He shifts Victoire, who smiles at Hypatia. "You chose very little of it freely, and on the one occasion you could choose, you didn't choose wrong. At the Manor."
He hadn't framed it that way at the time, only that the words of denunciation hadn't even occurred to him. One would have thought they'd have come quite naturally, the number of times he'd wished ill on Potter and Granger and Weasley.
He still remembers the dryness of his mouth, and the way his throat hurt when he tried to swallow, and his mother taking it over—Granger being the only one she could identify.
Granger. Hermione. His present foster-sister.
His mother had been protecting him.
And Bill Weasley's mother would have hunted him down if she hadn't been occupied with more pressing matters. As it was, there was a certain fittingness to her being the one to kill Bellatrix…
… who hasn't haunted his dreams in a while, yes, now that he thinks about it.
It seems that his protection in the post-war extends even to his sleeping hours. Hypatia is safe, that's the main thing, even if the road to safety winds through the alien landscape of the Muggle world.
"She was a piece of work," Bill says.
Draco nods. At least he's not having this conversation with Neville.
A procession of dishes floats out of the kitchen, settling on the table. Simple enough fare, but splendidly done: and yes, he'll have to ask how she manages that, the main dish and the side dishes all finishing at once, and settling onto the table. Hermione had hinted that might be some part of his duties, on days that her parents worked long days at their practice.
Well, that could be seen to later.
ooo
He blames Arthur Weasley for the Firewhiskey, and himself for thinking it was a good idea. A toast to the winter season, in advance of Yuletide, with an invitation to the extended family to visit on the Christmas holidays …
… Which invitation his mother accepted on their behalf, and then sidelong, he heard Neville whisper something to Hermione; he caught only the word "mistletoe" and that was enough, well, that and Hermione's laugh and blush. Really, that was the reason he drank so deeply in that first toast, and then accepted a second tumblerful—
That he drank it, of course, was only his own fault. At some point, someone—it may have been Andromeda—mustered all the small children to their own corner of the front room, where they could crawl about and gabble at each other, surrounded by a casual ring of adults.
It had been Andromeda who said to him, "She'll be fine. Now enjoy yourself."
He reflected that he'd been altogether too obedient in that case.
He remembers Arthur and Molly looking at each other, middle-aged faces aglow in the candlelight, incandescent as young lovers—that look he knew from his own parents, that he'd only seen in flashes.
No, he would not envy Ron Weasley, not even retroactively.
He had in fact humored Ron, and even consented to a game of chess, with the full expectation of a humiliating loss… well, the firewhiskey decidedly did not help. One shouldn't drink and play chess, well unless one were Ron Weasley.
Who said something good-natured and chaffing about how Draco didn't have to go easy now that they were cousins…
… And he didn't mind so much, even when Ron said that Pansy gave him a much better run.
"She handed you your head," Draco said (yes, remembered saying).
And weirdly enough Ron smiled, and said, "Muggle tactics. Dirty Muggle tactics. Except when we play Muggle-style, and then I win."
After a bit, he retired to the edge of the room to sit in the golden lamplight with the firewhiskey tumbler in his hand, and to consider the room from the philosophical perspective—almost aerial—of wise drunkenness. He liked that distance. He could watch Neville and Hermione hold hands, and remember with detachment that he'd always found Hermione annoying—though his father's reproaches about not excelling her certainly didn't help the case—and it was all right, it was quite all right that she and Neville were a couple, quite all right, and quite all right too that Ron was holding hands with Lavender Brown, and at one point feeding her dainties … and then Fleur and Bill, watching Victoire, hovering and solicitous without descending.
No, none of that bothered him, none of those couples … except he was alone.
He didn't remember how the tumbler had refreshed itself—well, at that point he might have taken the invitation as general, and summoned the decanter himself …
He wouldn't see his parents together that way for years yet to come. He wasn't and wouldn't be permitted at visiting hours in Azkaban, not so long as the Dark Mark persisted on his forearm, which looked to be forever.
Twenty years.
And he didn't even know who the man was, never had, and knew even less, remembering all unwilling the testimony at the trial.
What he does remember, the next morning with the headache and then all the clearer after the sobriety draught had taken it away, was weeping like an abandoned child, in the cold air on the back steps facing the garden, and letting Hermione haul him to his feet and take a turn around the garden.
He's grateful, he supposes, that she force-fed him neither sobriety potion nor sensible advice, but let him stumble along, guided by her steady arm … as he rambled, oh yes, he definitely remembers passing the chicken houses, and the vegetable patch under its straw and snow, and oh my gods, what had he said?
Drunk, he'd been drunk.
In vino veritas, and in firewhiskey, well, veritas with no editing whatsoever.
Granger had said something, hadn't she? "Raw feed from the subconscious," oh what had he said, that he felt such crushing shame this morning?
That he was going to be alone forever.
That his father … his father would have disapproved of his appointment as court-wizard, well, beyond disapproved—
And that he didn't care, except he did care, painfully, because his father was locked away for twenty years and it was going to be a very different world when he emerged from the mists of the North Sea to take up…
… the authority that his mother would never permit him or anyone else so long as she lived. Because he knew, he'd overheard, oh gods he wished he hadn't overheard, during the period of their cramped house-arrest at the Manor. No, not the lovemaking, though that had been disconcerting enough, but the reproaches.
His own mother, regal and cold (he could tell the posture from the tone of voice) saying that however much Lucius loved her, and however much he reproached himself over what had happened, never again would she permit anyone to set the course for herself and her son.
And he could accede to that, as her husband, or refuse it—and cease to be her husband.
It might have been a cough or a sob—he couldn't tell, because he'd never heard his father weep—that preceded the low solemn words, "Then I accede."
Abdicate, he had meant.
His mother was regent, and would remain so.
And he had no idea who his father was. Did he want to be that man? All his life he'd assumed that's who he would become, but now …
He remembers stumbling in the snow, and his feet cold and wet, and then suddenly warming — it must have been a warming and a drying charm she cast — and the stars overhead, so unutterably high above that you could look up into that immensity and imagine yourself falling forever into it—
The tears froze on his face, and she turned him by the shoulders and warmed and dried that too, and talked sensibly to him (not a word of it can he remember this morning, even after the sobriety potion).
"You're not ready to hear it, are you?" she said at the end.
No, he supposes not, given he can't remember it.
He told her too much. He told her everything. He feels hollow, as if he'd vomited his soul onto somebody's shoes.
Brother and sister. Are brothers and sisters like this? Do they talk sense to each other?
He'd asked that question, hadn't he? The next bit, yes, that was Harry saying "Exhibit A, Ron and Ginny."
And Ginny saying, "I told Ron he wouldn't know about kissing or anything like, so he could sod off …"
Much too much information. He raises a hand to his eyes, as if to ward off the onslaught of it … about twelve hours too late, he'd estimate.
It was Ron who'd said, "No more for this one," and taken the tumbler out of his by-then-unresisting hand.
And he'd got home, somehow … oh, likely his mother had something to do with that.
ooo
Author's Note: Thank you for your patience while my fan-fiction work was on hiatus. We will be returning to regular updates.