Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 22
- 23
- 24
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Three—So Connected
            Harry wiped chocolate out of his eyes, and then snorted at Andromeda’s pointed look. Yes, he knew that he now had chocolate on his forehead. He got out his wand and cast a Cleaning Charm on himself.
            But then he darted a look at Teddy and Scorpius, sitting at the kitchen table and each eating an enormous slice of chocolate cake, and smiled. It had been worth whatever little inconveniences and messes he had to go through.
            “So you can bake, Potter. I’m surprised.”
            Harry had to work hard not to stiffen up at Malfoy’s voice. He supposed that reaction would be a long time fading. He deliberately bent down and put the knife he’d used to cut the cake into the sink before he answered. “As I said, I can do a lot that you don’t know about.”
            Andromeda stepped back and raised her eyebrows. Harry thought she would probably interfere, since she wanted to know what the source of tension between them was, and cast Aguamenti with more force than necessary. The crash of the water into the sink, on top of the plates and pans and other utensils he’d used, and the necessary charms to cause the water to boil fully occupied his attention for a minute.
            Not long enough. Already Malfoy was pressing to the counterattack. “Do you think that you can keep on surprising me for long enough to be interesting?”
            Harry eyed him cautiously over his shoulder. What was Malfoy playing at? A quick glance at the kids showed that Andromeda was talking to them and admiring Scorpius’s pattern of chocolate crumbs on his plate, so at least they wouldn’t get involved if this turned into an argument.
            Not that Harry wanted it to. If Scorpius was lonely, Harry knew in his bones the best thing he could do for the poor kid was encourage his dad to spend more time with him and stop shoving pure-blood nonsense down his throat.
            “I don’t see why I have to be interesting,” he said, and cast the charm that made small scrubbing brushes fly into the soapy water and start rubbing the dirty dishes. “We just spend time together with our kids, that’s all.”
            “Is it all?” Malfoy sounded a little disappointed.
            Harry rolled his eyes and Transfigured another scrubbing brush out of a thread on his jumper. He’d learned a lot of useful charms from Molly. “Yes,” he said, and floated Teddy’s plate over from the table. Teddy was not only done with his cake, he looked like he was at that stage where he was going to see if he could cram it into someone else’s face. No matter how much Harry and Andromeda scolded him, he never tired of that game. “Of course it is. What did you expect? Hugs all around?”
            “I think that we could talk a little more,” said Malfoy, and leaned an elbow on the counter to watch Harry work. Harry held back a snort. Of course those were their respective positions. “We are in a sort of unique relationship.”
            “It’s called, ‘you murdered my fantasy life and we’re connected by my godson being a cousin of yours,’” said Harry, and lowered his voice, because distracted or not, Andromeda had a habit of paying attention at the most inconvenient times. “I don’t know what else you want me to say, Malfoy.”
            “Maybe admit that this relationship is more than that.” Malfoy had flushed pink, hot enough that he looked as if Harry could cook something on his cheeks. “Maybe admit that we have to talk about this sooner or later.”
            “Are you all right, boys?”
            And then again, Harry thought as he smiled gratefully at Andromeda, sometimes she saves the day. “Perfectly,” he said, and cast the charm that would part the boiling water and let him see the dishes. It didn’t look as though anything in the kitchen was still dirty except for Scorpius’s plate and maybe Harry’s own face, so Harry cheerfully floated Scorpius’s plate over to him and nodded to everyone in general. “That was good fun, but I have to be going.”
            “Why?” Andromeda folded her arms and gave Harry a hard stare. “I thought you had a holiday from work for the week.”
            “I need to do something with my life other than being an Auror,” said Harry, matching her stare for stare. “That’s part of what I’ll do this week, work that out.”
            “But being an Auror is what you do,” Teddy broke in, and his hair had changed to black this time. Not the black that reflected Harry’s, either, and which Harry often found charming against his will when Teddy was in trouble, but a flat and greasy sheen that resembled Snape’s. “You can’t stop being an Auror!”
            “Why would you?” Scorpius asked, and popped the finger back in his mouth when Harry looked at him. Harry was starting to think it was a nervous gesture, and wondered idly if Malfoy had noticed the connection to Scorpius’s mood or not.
            “Because sometimes there are things more important than being an Auror,” said Harry. “More important even than helping people.” Like getting my head on straight and realizing that I’ll never have blood children and coming up with a permanent solution to my grief. But there were things one didn’t say to children, whatever their age.
            “Like what?” Teddy asked, and put Harry’s resolve to the test.
            “Like living the sort of life you want,” said Malfoy, and Harry whipped around to face him. Malfoy wasn’t looking at him, though, but at Teddy, and his face was serious and serene. “Like learning that you can’t change everything, but you can change a few things, and those are things that matter to you but not necessarily to other people.”
            Teddy glanced back and forth between Harry and Malfoy. For that matter, Harry felt like doing the same thing. “So…Uncle Harry can’t be himself because he’s an Auror?” Teddy asked dubiously.
            Harry answered before Malfoy could come up with something else that confused Teddy. “I still want to help people,” he told Teddy. He could feel Malfoy’s eyes on his face, but fuck if he was going to look up and acknowledge that right now. “But sometimes I’m the one who needs help.”
            Teddy’s confusion melted into an angelic smile, and his hair became the bright, gleaming yellow it went when he thought he had a good idea. “I can help you with that, Uncle Harry! I like helping you!”
            Harry thought of some of the incidents at St. Mungo’s and Ron and Hermione’s house and even here when Teddy had thought he was helping, and managed a smile. “I appreciate that, Teddy. But it takes a lot of time and skill to help someone like me, you know. I need to—talk to someone who has that skill.”
            “What’s wrong with you, Uncle Harry?” Teddy critically looked at Harry’s face, as if he could see signs of illness that way. “Are you sick?”
            “Yes, Harry,” said Andromeda. “You don’t look sick to me.”
            Harry gave her an exasperated glance, which Andromeda answered with a bland one. He didn’t see why she needed to pry into this, especially when therapy with a Mind-Healer would be hard enough to explain to a nine-year-old in the first place. And he couldn’t forget the Malfoy audience, listening with wide eyes that might seem identical if Harry looked at them.
            He didn’t look. “It’s complicated,” he said. “And has to deal with things that I’d prefer to keep private.”
            “Surely you can talk about them to family.”
            Oh, fuck you, anyway, Harry wanted to tell her. Bringing it up like this in front of Teddy would mean that he couldn’t just walk away or scream at her, though. And she was standing there with eyes like an eagle’s, as uncaring. She was so eager for him to forgive her that she was pushing everything far too fast.
            But Harry did have more self-control than some people thought he did, and he refrained from screaming at her. He only shrugged a little and said, “Even with family, there are secrets I prefer to keep.” He had never told Andromeda about Ethan, sure, but not about the Dursleys, either. Ron and Hermione were the only ones who knew that much detail of them, although given that he’d seen the bars on Harry’s bedroom window, Harry thought George could probably make a good guess.
            Andromeda took a little step back, apparently baffled by his reticence. Maybe it was because Harry had been thinking of the Dursleys when he said that to her, and so she seemed to hear more secrets than one in his voice.
            But she wasn’t giving up either. “You know that I—didn’t mean certain things I said the last time I saw you, Harry,” she said, delicately. “Please. Tell me what you plan to do.”
            “He just said that he was going to think about that,” said Malfoy, and his voice crackled and hissed like lightning. “How can he tell you when he has to sort out the ideas in his own head? Can’t you leave him alone for a second?”
            Harry stared at Malfoy. Teddy stared at him. Scorpius stared at him. Malfoy seemed to realize a moment later that he’d been oddly defensive of Harry, and his eyes fell and he flushed again.
            “Harry can choose what he wants to do and who he trusts to his secrets to, of course,” said Andromeda, and her voice was spiky. “But if he gives us a hint, then we might be able to help him better.”
            Harry stared at her a second, until he snorted. “Can’t give you a hint of what I don’t have a single idea about,” he said, a little smugly. His own uncertainty, which had been so frustrating, was his greatest protection against Andromeda’s probing. “I’ll send you a Patronus or an owl when I do know.”
            “When will we see you again?”
            Harry had started to open his mouth and give a scathing reply to that, when he realized that he had misheard the direction the voice had come from. He’d been so focused on Andromeda that he’d forgotten there were other people there who could ask questions. And this voice wasn’t Teddy’s.
            Harry knelt down in front of Scorpius and took his hands. “I don’t know,” he said gently. “I don’t know a lot right now. You know how sometimes adults need to think about things so they don’t cause problems?”
            Not the most subtle allusion, but Scorpius only looked at his father for a moment, and then turned back and stared at Harry with soft, subtly blinking eyes. “Yes.”
            Harry nodded encouragingly. “I need to think about that right now.”
            “Are you going to give Teddy to his grandparents while you decide?”
            Harry blinked, then realized that must be what Malfoy had done with Scorpius while he was meditating on Ethan and his own insanity, and hopefully on how to be a better father. “No,” he said. “Andromeda is Teddy’s grandmother, you see. He already lives with her. I visit, but I don’t take care of him all the time.”
            “Oh.” Scorpius looked back and forth between Teddy and Andromeda with an expression that Harry found unexpectedly hilarious. Scorpius’s face seemed to say that he’d envied Teddy, but now he didn’t.
            Andromeda folded her arms and tapped her foot on the floor a little. “But you’ll let me know when you’re ready to visit again, Harry.”
            “Yes.” Harry nodded and looked at Malfoy, whose gaze he’d been avoiding for the last little while. “Maybe it can be a day when you and Scorpius visit, so I can see him as well.”
            Malfoy’s face blazed with a delicate pink color. “And so that you can see me as well, I hope,” he said.
            Harry checked a sigh. So there were two Blacks in the kitchen who wouldn’t take no for an answer, although Malfoy had been more reasonable about it than Andromeda. “Yes. Of course I’ll see you.”
            Malfoy’s flush faded, but not his gaze. That remained locked with Harry’s, and Harry turned away, irritated without knowing why. They seemed small and silly to him, these proddings and pickings. He had big things to think about, things that might determine the course of his life, and Andromeda wanted him to excuse her from all blame and Malfoy wanted—Harry didn’t even know what. The promise of a continued connection? It didn’t have much to do with forgiveness.
            As for Andromeda, coming over to the house should be enough in the first place to tell her that he didn’t bear her an eternal grudge.
            “Good-bye, Uncle Harry.”
            Harry started and glanced down. Scorpius was holding his hand out, the way he’d probably been taught to shake hands with any leaving adult to be polite. Malfoy looked torn between pride and exasperation as he aimed his wand at Scorpius.
            “Let me clean off his fingers, Potter, he’s had them in his mouth—”
            Harry caught Scorpius’s hand and shook, ignoring the sensation of stickiness. He got worse from Hugo most times he went over to Ron and Hermione’s house. He held Malfoy’s eyes, watched them blink in confusion and then turn down to his wand as though he didn’t know why he was holding it at all.
            “I don’t mind a bit of dirt,” said Harry evenly, and let Malfoy interpret that how he would. He turned around and hugged Teddy, the way he usually did, then nodded to Andromeda. She was stretching out one arm, tentatively, but she pulled it back to her side at his nod, and stood a little taller, hand closing hard. “Andromeda.”
            “Harry.” Her eyes followed him as he turned away and walked towards the front door, and Harry knew they did. But that was just too bad. Harry would need either more time or another apology, and at the moment, she acted as if she didn’t want to give him either.
            “Potter.”
            And now Malfoy was behind him. “I can say goodbye to you, too,” Harry told him, a bit exasperated. He couldn’t keep up with Malfoy’s moods. He wanted Harry to stay away from him, he wanted his advice, he wanted Harry to meet and like his kid, he wanted Harry to do strange invisible things that involved reading his mind.
            Malfoy’s mouth shut on whatever he’d been about to say, and his face went blank. “Yes. Do.”
            Harry shrugged. At least this would get him out of Andromeda’s house and away from whatever strange plan Malfoy had launched regarding him. “Fine. Bye.”
            Malfoy stood there with his hand propped on his chin for a second, then sighed. “Good-bye, Potter. I’ll let you know when I next have free time to bring Scorpius.”
            As though he has that busy a schedule, Harry thought in blank wonder. He knew Malfoy didn’t have a job, or he would never have started brooding on Scorpius and lost himself in ennui and madness the way he had. He bit his lip to avoid snapping, though. He had been lost, too, although it was in a way he still thought of as healthier than Malfoy’s manner of handling things.
            “Fine,” he said, and finally, he escaped. He shook his head as he walked briskly down the path outside Andromeda’s house to the point where he always Apparated. You’d think Malfoy was the one who’d lost his fantasy life, and Andromeda was the one who had been insulted by a reference to blood family.
            Honestly, give him kids any day. He could be with them and be happy, and it wouldn’t expose him to strange adults.
            Harry paused, and not because the thought had reminded him, again, that he didn’t have kids. Perhaps there was something in the thought, the disappearing tail of an idea, that would be good to meditate on later.
            And that was what he did when he got home and could stretch himself out on a couch in front of the hearth and sip from a glass of Firewhisky. The idea came back and sat in his head, and he turned it around and snorted a little and laughed a little. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
            Because he’d been busy being an Auror, and immersing himself in Ethan’s imagined family life, of course. And because it was so different from work he’d considered doing before, even when he still had the capacity to have kids and a marriage, and he’d had every expectation of a busy, happy, long life with Ginny. He had wanted to help people. For him, that meant the Auror program.
            But there was more than one way to help people, especially in a world where, even years later, some people were still trying to cope with the effects of the war. Harry had read the stories of lost grandparents, aunts, cousins, how sometimes only one parent and child would survive. There were enough people to care for the children that there weren’t really any war orphans as such, but there were reduced families. And after the shock of getting back on one’s feet and realizing that the war was over came a host of problems you’d never had to think about when you lived in a large family.
            He’d been looking for a way to help, for something he could do that would give him what he needed and stop him from sinking into obsession over being an Auror.
            Perhaps this was it.
            After a long consideration, Harry took down parchment and ink and started writing to the current Special Undersecretary to the Minister. She could tell him where he should direct the letter he had in mind, to what part of the Ministry. Harry might have worked as an Auror for years now, but that didn’t mean he knew every Department.
*
            “I trust that you’ve settled some of the things that made you run away so suddenly?”
            Draco gave Theodore a strained smile. He had thought that he was going to see him abroad, perhaps in Vienna, but instead, Theodore had shown up at the Manor this morning and asked to be let in. Draco had—there was no really good reason to keep him out—but he did have to admit that he was listening for a firecall or the beat of an owl’s wings the entire time he was talking with his friend.
            “Some of them,” he said, when he realized that Theodore was waiting for an answer and not simply sitting there and consuming Draco’s good wine. “There was someone who—irritated me and intrigued me in equal measure. I think I’ve settled matters so that I at least have the time I need to decide if I should pursue the connection.”
            Theodore spluttered into his wine, which wasn’t like him. Draco had always known him as cultured, and he only seemed to have got more so since he’d started traveling the world. He did slam the glass down on a table and point at Draco, though. “Since when did you start becoming intimate with Harry Potter?”
            Draco felt as though his heart had frozen and then exploded into a rain of shards like some of the Death Eater spells he’d seen during the war. He nearly drew his wand. “What did you say?” he asked, and he was proud of himself for keeping his seat and his wand hidden and his voice more or less even.
            “I know it’s only Harry Potter that it could be.” Theodore waved one hand when Draco opened his mouth. “No, don’t worry, I’m not going to blurt this out to Blaise or any of the gossips we know. I just can’t believe it.” His eyes glittered, and he gave Draco what Draco knew was a teasing smile, though at the moment it upset him more than that. “It has to be Harry Potter. He’s the only one who could make you react this way.”
            Draco turned his head away. He knew he was flushing, and he hated that. He shouldn’t be that weak, that cheap, that predictable.
            At least it was providing entertainment for Theodore, if the way he locked his fist beneath his chin and surveyed Draco with frank delight was any indication.
            “Fine,” Draco managed to grind out at last. “Yes, it’s Harry Potter. But the relationship is nothing like—what you think it is.” This was one reason that he hadn’t wanted to spend much time with Theodore in the last few years. The man could find sex in everything.
            “I didn’t say that it had to be,” Theodore replied smartly. “I didn’t think it was. Or else I would have already asked you if he was good in bed.”
Draco turned around, hissing. “He’s been giving me advice on how to raise Scorpius, if you must know. He has—a godson, and lots of experience with his friends’ children. He was the one who told me some things were normal that I didn’t know were normal.” Not even to Theodore, who he knew wouldn’t tell anyone, would he betray Potter’s secret about not being able to have children. Silly or not, it seemed too sacred and personal for him to do that.
“All right, and that’s even true, from what I can see in your eyes.” Theodore shook his head in amazement, but held up his hands when Draco hissed at him. “Like I said, I won’t doubt, and I won’t ask you anymore. You’re too upset about it. When you want to discuss it rationally and in more detail, then talk to me.”
Draco blinked. He already knew that he couldn’t discuss this with Blaise, who would make fun of him forever. But Theodore had never occurred to him as a possible candidate. “Really?”
Theodore pointed his glass at Draco. “You may think that you know all about me and what I would do, but you don’t, all right? And that means that you have to think more closely about the way I would really react, instead of the Theodore that you’ve built up in your head.”
Draco took a long, slow look at him, and then nodded. “I’ll remember that.”
Strangely, after that it really was easy to move to a different conversational topic, and soon he and Theodore were laughing away, like they used to.
But the idea remained in the back of Draco’s mind all the time.
If I ever get things settled with Potter…
And Theodore’s other question was there, too.
How’s he in bed?
Like I would know. Like I would care.
All Draco knew right now was that he wanted to be connected to Potter, and what they had wasn’t enough. He wondered if he could say what would be enough, though.
Maybe not.
*
butterpie: I feel you. It can be very hard to plan on one kind of family and then find out that you can’t have it after all.
Marron: Yes. Especially when Harry’s a little baffled as to why Draco would want a closer connection with him.
SP777: Exactly. But although Harry feels a lot of affection for Scorpius, he doesn’t feel much for his father—at least not yet.
- 22
- 23
- 24
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Starfall