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Starfall	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 32486 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eighteen—The Dark Snake
            Kingsley waved away the apology when Harry tried to make it, and pointed Harry to the chair in front of his desk. “I trust that your godson is going to be fine now?”
            “He will.” Harry sat down with a grateful little hiss, arching his neck and stretching out the tension in his shoulders. “Has there been any further word on the Dark Snake? I know that Auror Bailey was going to track him.”
            “Would you know anything about that tracking, I wonder?”
            Harry innocently met Kingsley’s eyes. It wasn’t all that hard to do, once he had got past the war-inspired instincts that said Kingsley was part of the Order of the Phoenix and needed to know everything right now. He didn’t, and some of the time, he would be just as happy not knowing it.
            “I know a lot about tracking. Did you want me to give Auror Bailey lessons? I suppose I could do that, although—”
            “Harry.” Kingsley sighed out the word, and Harry obediently shut up. He resisted the urge to grin. Maybe it was the danger to Teddy being over, maybe it was the lack of sleep and food doing silly things to his brain, but he felt ridiculously good. In the meantime, he could deal with any Auror business that came up.
            “As long as no one can find out what spell you used, then I think we’re fine.” Kingsley held his gaze, and Harry nodded. “Good. Now, Bailey did capture the Dark Snake, although he apparently had no children with him when he was caught. He’s also resisting giving us the names of his associates. I’d like you to assist in the interrogation.”
            Harry nodded, less certainly. He wondered if he should get some more rest and food before he did that. Interrogations he conducted tended not to be top-notch unless he was absolutely top-notch and had control of his emotions. He still tended to explode over too many of the most mundane crimes.
            “I want you there mainly as an intimidation factor,” Kingsley continued, and then Harry got it. He flicked one finger against his forehead, where the scar still lay, a lot less significant to him now, but sometimes useful in other ways.
            “Right. I’ll go in and scowl like the desk flunky I am.” Harry stood up and winked at Kingsley. “No field duty.”
            “I’ll put you back on it as soon as the month is up,” Kingsley promised, and Harry hid a grin. They probably had more cases than they could handle, with one of their best active Aurors only able to lead from the office.
            “Fine,” Harry said, and practiced his Auror-minion scowl. “Which room is the interrogation in?”
*
            The minute Harry came in, the Dark Snake, who was in the middle of sneering something at Bailey, oriented on Harry and stared at him hard. “So you’re the one who used the blood magic that found me,” he said.
            Harry was glad that no other Aurors except Bailey were in here right now. He took his time scanning the room for a bit, as though he had everything more important to do than answer the Dark Snake’s question. It was the usual bare space with only the chairs and the table. At a pinch, of course, a desperate criminal could turn even those into a weapon, but it was much less dangerous when said criminal didn’t have a wand.
            “Are you listening to me, Harry Potter?”
            “I wasn’t, actually,” said Harry, and turned back towards the Dark Snake. He hadn’t heard the man’s actual name yet, and he wasn’t interested in it except as a means of taking away the aura of grandeur he’d tried to surround himself with. “Were you saying something?”
            Bailey, reading his mind on at least one thing, tilted the folder he held so Harry could see the name along the top. Marvin Gaylord.
            Harry bit his cheek firmly and met Gaylord’s eyes. He had stopped tapping his hand on the table and was focusing on Harry.
            “I felt some of your weaknesses, when you were inside my head,” he said. “Saw some of your mind.”
            “You would,” said Harry pleasantly. “So you ought to know that someone who speaks Parseltongue naturally has no interest in bowing down to someone who only speaks it by poisoning himself with a potion.”
            “I had developed immunity to the poison, I was—” Gaylord stopped himself, but Bailey was writing busily. For a moment, Gaylord stared at Bailey’s hands as though he hadn’t expected him to be able to write, and then he whirled around and faced Harry. “I know why you were so affected by my work.”
            Harry said nothing, but contrived to lean against the wall and look bored. He was already helping the interrogation along more than he had thought he would.
            “I felt your desire,” Gaylord breathed. “Your desire to avail yourself of my services, if you could. You can’t have children of your own, can you? You would give anything to have one of the children I was taking.”
            Harry didn’t have the time to wonder how Gaylord had learned that, since he had probably done it from the strange connection the blood magic had formed between their minds anyway. He laughed.
            Gaylord blinked hard. He looked as if he would have been glad to stand up and reach for his wand a short moment later, but that wasn’t Harry’s problem.
            “You think that what you do could ever appeal to me?” Harry stalked towards the edge of the table as if he would round it and come for Gaylord. That didn’t happen, of course, but the so-called Dark Snake leaned further back, and that was good. It meant that he was ignoring Bailey, and Bailey could take care of him from the side if he lost all control. “You steal children and take them to people who pay for them. And you’re wrong about what I wanted. About everything I want.”
            He could see Gaylord’s mind working frantically, trying to understand how he had misinterpreted the blood connection. Then he abruptly narrowed his eyes and said, “But you would want a child of your own blood if one was possible. What if I said that I could get that for you?”
            He can probably hear my heart beating. It was pounding that hard, and Harry could feel the impulse to reach out and stroke his fingers down Gaylord’s face right before he punched him in the jaw. He probably couldn’t hide the flush on his neck, either.
            “I would say that you’re full of shit,” Harry retorted smartly. If he couldn’t control his physical reactions, he could still control his words. “Do you understand anything I’m saying? I wouldn’t want to bargain with someone who spoke counterfeit Parseltongue, or someone who stole kids because he couldn’t get his own. And I wouldn’t want someone who would make up a blood connection with a potion, either.”
            “Counterfeit,” said Gaylord, shaking his head.
            He was trying to regain his composure. Harry saw no reason to let him. “That’s right,” he said, leaning forwards and catching Gaylord’s eye when he thought he saw his attention start to twitch towards Bailey. “It is. Everything about you is fake. Tell me the truth. You used the Snake Tongue Potion because you couldn’t stand not being a Dark wizard in all the particulars, right? You wanted to be a Parselmouth, but that has to be inborn, so you faked it.”
            Gaylord’s hands trembled, then clenched. “I was speaking to snakes.”
            “Like this?” Harry asked, and pictured the Slytherin symbol in his mind, and hissed hard.
            Gaylord’s face split open for a second, and Harry saw the yearning under the surface. It made him want to roll his eyes. The “gift” he would have done anything to get rid of, other people treasured like it was a sign of special favor from Merlin.
            But just then, Gaylord lunged at him, and Harry became a bit busy with defending himself.
            The table was between them, but Gaylord took advantage of that, pushing it hard into Harry’s legs. Harry had jumped back part of the way, but not enough to get himself completely out of the way, so he staggered. Gaylord hissed like one of the Parselmouths he wanted so badly to be, and shot out a hand as if he would grip Harry’s collar and tug him flat that way.
            “Aranea,” Harry gasped, a modified version of the charm he had used to bind Malfoy in the alley behind the Ministry. He didn’t have time for any more.
            The air seemed to shudder weirdly around him, and Harry grimaced. No food. He got weak like that when he didn’t eat enough.
            But the web still worked, although Gaylord had twisted enough that it only snared one hand and tied it to the side of his neck. He gave a sound of outrage anyway, and tried to kick Harry in the groin beneath the table.
            “Put Auror Potter down.”
            That was Bailey. Gaylord’s ignoring him had worked out well, Harry thought as he cautiously straightened up and knocked Gaylord’s weak, spasming fingers away from his collar. Bailey stood behind the table with his wand against Gaylord’s neck, shaking his head disapprovingly.
            “Sorry, sir,” he told Harry. “I must have been asleep, to let him just jump on you like that.”
            “No harm done,” Harry said, checking the lines of his robes. “At least for me,” he added, because Gaylord’s eyes were bulging and he still wanted to see if he could get a reaction out of him.
            Gaylord snapped his teeth once, and then turned his head away as though Harry wasn’t worth his time and attention. Harry smiled, a little grimly. Yes, of course Gaylord could react like that after they had already gained some insight into him. Harry only wished they could have gained more.
            “Sir?”
            Harry started and turned back to Bailey. “He hasn’t confessed anything to you?”
            “Nothing useful until you were here, sir.” Bailey’s eyes were bright with curiosity, and Harry knew that it was about him, and probably about Gaylord’s statement that Harry couldn’t have children. Well, Bailey would just have to hold onto his questions for a while.
            “Then I’ll remain a little longer,” said Harry, and he did, but no matter how delicately he needled Gaylord, that really was the end of both their usefulness. Gaylord sat with his arms folded and stared at the table, and never altered his posture or his silence during the near-hour that Harry was there.
            Bailey finally nodded and waved Harry towards the door. “I think you can go on now, sir. I agree, we’re probably not going to get any more out of him.”
            Harry sighed and drew his cloak close to him, shivering as he walked towards the door. He could only be glad that Bailey was so intelligent, or at least determined to do the task in front of him first. He could think of a dozen other Aurors who would have asked questions by now.
            “Potter.”
            Harry turned back to face Gaylord, not because he really wanted to, but because he knew as well as Bailey that they had to squeeze every drop of information out they could. And Gaylord was leaning forwards with his hands braced on the table in front of him, but not as if he was going to attack again. In fact, he ignored the way that Bailey brought his wand down on the back of his neck.
            “You understand that you’ll never have blood children?” Gaylord asked softly. “I was lying when I said that I could find a way to repair it. I felt the depth of the damage when I was in your head. It was a million-to-one chance that the spells struck you like that. It can’t be cured because the problem should never have existed in the first place.”
            Bailey was almost vibrating with curiosity, but he kept his gaze and his wand on Gaylord, and Harry didn’t think an earthquake would persuade him to take them off. At worst, Bailey would probably Stun Gaylord if the earthquake came and then drag him to safety underneath the table.
            “I know that,” said Harry. “It’s one of the reasons that nothing would have persuaded me to take up your offer.”
            “That broke your life,” said Gaylord, and now there was a faint hint of panic in his voice, as though he was watching Harry wrestle himself free of bonds that he had been told would hold any prisoner.
            “It did,” Harry agreed. “And then I learned to walk again. Good-bye, Gaylord.”
            He did rather enjoy shutting the door on the gaping jaws of his enemies, he thought as he slid out of the interrogation room.
*
            “I hope you have a good explanation of where you’ve been.”
            In his father’s compressed words, Draco could hear all sorts of compressed emotions. He nodded. “I’ll talk to him about it.”
            “That is not what I asked you about.”
            “I have the explanation,” Draco said. He was studying Lucius, the way that his father stood as if he was going to block Draco’s pathway into the inner rooms of the house. Draco swallowed. He didn’t have to admit how much that hurt. Just because it did hurt was no real reason to admit it. “Whether I can make it simple enough for a five-year-old’s ears that he’ll understand everything I want him to understand…”
            He let it trail off, and a second later, Lucius seemed to realize that there wasn’t going to be anymore. His mouth flattened out, and he gave the smallest of nods, then moved aside.
            Draco didn’t know whether it was his face or the fact of his coming here or the words he had spoken that made Lucius decide to give him the chance, but he was grateful that something had.
            By the time he was inside the house, he was already trembling with impatience and fear. He swatted away the thoughts and continued down the corridors of the much smaller house his parents had chosen when they left the Manor to him. He hadn’t been here often, but they were familiar nonetheless. Of course Lucius had mimicked the colors and the general layout of the Manor.
            Draco heard Scorpius’s laughter before he saw him.
            He halted and peered around the corner before he came into the room. It was instinctive, just not wanting to step into such a fun scene as Scorpius was playing in and interrupt. Maybe it was stupid, but it was his decision.
            His mother sat in a chair in a large, bright room that for once wasn’t an imitation of an original at the Manor, her gaze resting on Scorpius as if he was the center of her universe. Draco reckoned he might be. Scorpius was tumbling around on the sunlight that covered the floor from the glass walls with—
            Draco blinked. It was a Kneazle kitten. A little unusual in that it was white with a silver streak down the back, but if he had known that Scorpius wanted an unusual-looking pet, he could have got him one, without relying on his parents to provide it.
            If I had known. If anyone ever told me.
            Draco touched his chest, above his heart. If I had ever asked.
            Scorpius scrambled up from laughing and started to say something to Narcissa, or maybe to the kitten. Draco found it hard to tell the direction his eyes were looking. That was another thing he had never bothered to pay much attention to when he was with his son.
            But then Scorpius saw Draco, and he stilled, his eyes so wide and round that Draco thought he could see the sunlight through them. He walked into the room and bent over to kiss his mother. Scorpius hadn’t run to him, which settled the question of whether he should kneel down and try to hug him. That meant Scorpius would come to him in his own time, Draco suspected.
            “Did you have a good holiday?” Narcissa had her hand on Draco’s shoulder, but her eyes were flickering back and forth between him and Scorpius, as though she had no idea where to begin reintroducing them to each other.
            “I did,” said Draco. “And I spent part of my time on a quest, searching for that goal I told you about.”
            “That you told me very little about,” said Narcissa, but she was still keeping her voice low so as not to upset Scorpius. It was only from the flatness of her lips that Draco really knew what she felt.
            “I’ve achieved what of it I’m going to achieve,” Draco said, and then he turned around and smiled at Scorpius. “Hello, Scorpius. How are you?”
            Scorpius had picked up the Kneazle kitten and was cradling it close, as though he assumed that Draco would march across the room and take it away from him. Draco hated to think that he might have been that kind of father, but as it was, he had no perspective on himself for the last few years.
            The Kneazle kitten scratched Scorpius and jumped down from his arms, running over into the corner where a fluffy mouse lay. Scorpius didn’t flinch or act as if he felt the sting of the scratch at all. He still hadn’t taken his gaze from Draco.
            “I’m sorry,” Draco said.
            Scorpius blinked, and more sunlight seemed to leak through his eyes.
            “I know I wasn’t the best dad,” Draco said, and he got down on his knees, because he needed to do it, whether or not Scorpius ever responded. “I hope that you can—I hope that you can forgive me, and maybe understand someday.” Those were words he also needed to say, even if Scorpius also didn’t grasp them. “I’m sorry for going away and leaving you. Can you forgive me?”
            Scorpius at least knew the word “forgive,” because he had heard his parents use it to him and each other. But he still didn’t move forwards. He stood there and stared at Draco, and Draco was filled with the wrenching certainty that he shouldn’t have come, that Scorpius had been happy here with his grandparents and felt like he really belonged in the wizarding world, and this was where Draco should have left him.
            Draco suppressed the impulse to get up and walk away, though. He and Scorpius were still father and son. He could make sure that Scorpius visited his grandparents more and had more fun and freedom from him, but he couldn’t just give up his responsibility or make a decision based in one wild moment.
            If nothing else, the way I went after Potter should have taught me that.
            “Scorpius?” Draco whispered, and then had to leave the question to dangle there, on a chain, while Scorpius shuddered and looked for a second as if he might run away.
            But in the end, he didn’t. With all his muscles shuddering and trembling like a hunted deer’s, Scorpius still came closer.
            He didn’t hug Draco. But he looked at him solemnly from a short distance away and whispered, “Why did you leave?”
            “Because I was stupid.” Even if Draco could never tell Scorpius all about Potter and Ethan Starfall and the complexities of what he had done, he could admit that much. “Because I wanted to chase someone down who wasn’t worth being chased down. And then because I had to help your cousin. But I should still have come back here and seen you instead of running away.”
            “Cousin?” Scorpius blinked, and his face changed.
            Draco was actually glad that he hadn’t remembered the existence of Teddy Lupin until now, because it meant that he could tell Scorpius about something that might please him without actually trying to manipulate his way back into Scorpius’s good graces. “Yes. Grandmother has a sister, your great-aunt Andromeda. And she has a grandson called Teddy Lupin. He’s a few years older than you are.”
            Draco could see Scorpius wrestling painfully with that for a moment. It was a little complicated for a five-year-old, but then again, Scorpius had been expected to memorize Malfoy genealogy from the time he was small. He grasped it sooner than most other five-year-olds would have, Draco thought with pride.
            “Why is he somewhere else?” It was probably the only way Scorpius could think of to ask why he’d never met Teddy.
            “Because I didn’t get along with his grandmother and him,” Draco said. Again, a simple way to explain it. He would tell the truth, but he had been wrong to think that Scorpius could appreciate all the differences between Muggles and wizards and why it was important to be a Malfoy. That was something Draco would have to explain and make fun for him, not just assume that Scorpius would get.
            Maybe that was part of the difference between the way his parents had raised him and the way he had raised Scorpius. His father had been cold at times, and distant, and sometimes impatient when Draco failed to grasp the point of a lesson, but Draco had admired him intensely and wanted to be like him. He couldn’t wait until he grew up and people would respect him for being a Malfoy. But he hadn’t been that kind of example for Scorpius.
            “Can I meet him now?” Scorpius gave another look around, as though he thought Teddy would come out from behind a wall.
            “You can meet him tomorrow,” Draco promised recklessly, although Teddy might still be recovering and he didn’t know if Andromeda would let him come over, and Potter might be there. “He’s still a little sick, but he’s getting better.”
            “Good,” said Scorpius, and then he gave Draco a look of deep suspicion that was wounding, but once again, Draco understood it too well to resent it. “Are you going away again?”
            “Not for a long, long time,” Draco said, and put out a tentative hand. “I’m your dad, if you want me.”
            “What about Mum?”
            “She won’t come back all the time,” said Draco. “Only for visits.” The truth, no matter how much it might make him resent you someday. Lies would just make him resent you more.
            Scorpius subjected him to another stare, so thoughtful that Draco was a little surprised. But then he nodded and said, “Okay,” and then his voice seemed to break and so did the light in his wide eyes. “I missed you, Daddy.”
            He crossed the last distance between him and Draco all at once, and Draco could do nothing except wrap his arms around Scorpius and close his eyes and think, This is worth everything. It always was, if I’d had eyes to see it.
*
delia cerrano: He doesn’t know that about Harry, but he would be sort of gratified to know, because that will serve to get Harry closer to him.
SP777: That will be difficult, as Draco at the moment has a motive to want to know more—he really isn’t satisfied with Harry’s explanation of Ethan—and Harry just wants to stay out of his way.
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Starfall