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
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Four—A Certain Kind of Help
            Harry leaned back with a sigh. For the first time in a long time, a letter from the Ministry wasn’t bringing him misery, unwelcome news, or facts that he knew were true but didn’t want to deal with.
It was such a change that he read the letter again just to be sure.
Dear Mr. Harry Potter,
After the war, orphans were received into their extended families. A few rare Muggleborn students whose parents had been targeted were placed in orphanages, but claimed by families of their friends almost immediately afterwards. You are right that the wizarding world currently has no shortage of families for their children.
However, according to the records in my keeping, many of those families are struggling. They need help with money, with child care arrangements—in a few cases, the witches and wizards who took in the children have either large families of their own or are too old to keep up with youngsters—and with simple practicalities, like the size of their houses and clothes for the children. Some of them have asked for help. Some have not, for reasons like pure-blood pride or not knowing how to contact the Ministry or reluctance to let others know that they took in a child without being able to provide for it adequately.
The service you recommended is a strong and much-needed idea. I know that almost all the publicity surrounding you and your actions has been negative, especially in recent years since your divorce, but I hope you won’t let that change your mind. These families could use Galleons, but more than that, they could use the impression that someone cares.
Sincerely,
Katherine Huggins,
Head of Child Welfare Services.
Harry smiled and laid the letter down beside him. He had wondered how well those families who took in the children would cope with a sudden addition, especially since a lot of them would probably be nursing their own grief for siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. But he couldn’t just approach them and ask without making sure the Ministry hadn’t made arrangements for them.
It hadn’t. There was no central service like that.
Harry could come up with one.
The more he thought about it, the more he thought it might work—both for the families involved and to salve some of the pain that was left over from the loss of his future children, and Ethan. Sure, it would be a lot of work and take a lot of money. But Harry had experience in beating seemingly impossible odds, and he had the Galleons. He had sometimes lain awake at night wondering what he was going to do with his money. The Potter vaults combined with the fortune he had inherited from Sirius seemed like too much for one person. But he had comforted himself, then, with the thought that his children could have it and decide what they wanted to do with it when they did.
Now…
Maybe this will work, Harry thought, flicking one finger against the side of the letter. Maybe this will make it so that I can spend time with a lot of different families, and that won’t make it hurt so much when one child needs someone other than me.
And maybe it was even selfish to think that way. Maybe he should be satisfied with the attention that he could have from Rose and Hugo and Teddy, and the other Weasley children, and forget about the fact that part of him still ached with going back to his empty house at night.
But he was through castigating himself for being selfish, and feeling guilty for things he couldn’t help. It never led anywhere good. It was guilt that had driven him to keep secrets and lie and do other stupid things.
So Harry would try setting up this business that other people could help him with, if they wanted, and see if sharing the joy he wanted to feel, spreading the care he wanted to do through multiple families, would make the ache go away permanently.
It’s worth a try, anyway. And it’s something more than I had a week ago, he thought, and put the letter aside to begin writing a different kind of letter.
*
Draco sighed and sat back, rubbing his face. He had just had another argument with Scorpius about whether Scorpius could go over to his grandparents’ house. Scorpius had said he’d left a toy there and wanted to get it.
In hindsight, Draco should have been suspicious the minute Scorpius just said “a toy” and nothing else.
So Draco had agreed, but he’d firecalled his parents first, because he didn’t think their relationship right now was the kind that would just let him show up unexpectedly. Scorpius would probably have been welcome if he’d ridden a hippogriff over.
And whose fault is that?
Draco knew very well whose fault it was; he was working on repairing it. In the meantime, he would keep his complaints to himself.
So Draco had smiled politely when his father’s face appeared in the fire, and made the sort of small talk that wasn’t appropriate for their situation but was more appropriate than anything else, and then asked, “Can we come over? Scorpius left a toy over there the last time he visited, and I think he wants to see you, too.”
Lucius had drawn himself up. Draco blinked. He didn’t think his parents had the sort of commitments anymore at which their grandson was unwelcome.
Lucius said, in a soft, chill tone, “He took all his toys with him.”
“He did?” Draco did remember coming home laden with what seemed like half the contents of Diagon Alley’s toyshops, but he hadn’t counted specific ones. And Scorpius had taken an awful lot with him in the first place. “Well, let me ask him which one it was. Maybe it got overlooked.”
He turned to Scorpius. “Which toy was it, Scorp? Your grandfather says he doesn’t think there’s anything there.”
Scorpius immediately ducked his head and traced one foot on the floor, watching Draco out of wide eyes.
Draco bit back his impatience and watched Scorpius instead. “Scorpius?” he whispered, as the silence increased and lengthened.
“I don’t remember,” Scorpius mumbled.
“But this morning, you said that it was over at your grandparents’ house and you wanted to go get it.” Draco let a little of the impatience out. He was afraid that he would explode in a more damaging way if he didn’t. “What does that mean? You could remember what it was then, but you can’t now?”
Silence, except for the soft shuffling sound of Scorpius’s foot dragging across the carpet.
“I’m sure there was no toy left here,” Lucius said abruptly. “We had the house-elves investigate Scorpius’s room after he left. Nothing that I can remember, and you know the house-elves would hardly throw something away that they thought might be precious.”
Draco nodded unwillingly. One of his ancestors had expressed his preference for a bust to be left uncleaned, and after that, the house-elves had come anxiously to him and asked about getting rid of every piece of dust until he had made his orders clearer. “Or even something that’s not precious.”
“Yes,” said Lucius, with a faint smile that faded in the next moment, seemingly burned to ash in the fires of his eyes.
“I’ll talk to him,” said Draco, although he suspected he already knew what he would find, and Lucius nodded and disappeared from the fire, leaving Draco to turn around with a sigh to confront his son.
“I don’t remember,” said Scorpius, and he turned his back and started to walk out of the sitting room. Draco saw his hands clenched and trembling next to his sides, and that made his response softer than it otherwise would have been. He never wanted his son to be afraid of him.
“Did you lie to me, Scorpius? Or do you really not remember what the toy is?”
Scorpius said nothing, and Draco walked over and crouched down in front of him. Scorpius hated that, he knew, because for some reason it was hard for him to deceive people when he was looking them in the eye—much harder than it had been for Draco at that same age.
That probably said good things about his son, but at the moment, Draco was too tired to think of them.
“Can you please tell me?” he asked, and heard his voice scrape with tiredness. He was probably playing too much into his son’s desires, probably handling him too roughly, probably doing everything wrong. But he wanted to know why Scorpius would lie about something as simple as this, when he could have just asked if they could visit Lucius and Narcissa and Draco would have firecalled the same way.
Scorpius stared at him with big eyes. “Maybe I should question your grandparents’ house-elves?” Draco added, because it was the only other thing he could think of.
“I hate you,” Scorpius whispered, and then turned and ran out of the room.
Draco had risen slowly to his feet with his head throbbing, and after calling Izzy and making sure that the elves would keep Scorpius from hurting himself or breaking too many precious objects, made his way to the study that he had set up as a meditation room long ago. He hadn’t often used it since then, because he had discovered that he had more effective techniques than meditation, at least when he wanted to deliver his temper against someone else.
But he had shut the door behind him and sat down on the soft white rug in front of the red brick fireplace, the plainest one in the Manor. The walls were the same dim red color, made so by the softly flickering candles on the tables, the torches that never burned any color but pure gold, the carpet that barely scraped against Draco’s thighs. He had descended into himself the way he used to know how to do, when he was practicing Occlumency on a regular basis, trying to find the patience that would let him be a good father.
He felt calmer than he had when he first confronted Scorpius, but the question remained, banging around in his skull. What am I going to do with him? How do I know if I’m actually being a good parent?
Perhaps it was stupid, given that he now had another relative with a young child, but he could think of only one person to talk to.
He tried to make the letter measured this time. Not cold, not warm, not pleading. Just laying out the situation and explaining that he didn’t know why Scorpius had lied or why it mattered so much to him, or to Scorpius. But he did want to know, and he did, as he acknowledged to himself when the owl was flying away, want Potter to come.
*
“I think it’s a bit mental, mate.” Ron cleared his throat in apology a second later. Harry suspected it was because Hermione’s elbow had nudged him underneath the table. “You’re giving up your whole career as an Auror?”
Harry folded his hands near his plate. They had had dinner, but of course the washing-up had turned into games of chase with Rose, with Hugo pulling himself up on against cabinets and curtains and toddling after them. The shrieks of laughter still made Harry’s mouth ache with smiling.
Now, though, he needed to be serious, and he needed his best friends to understand him.
“Maybe it’s a bit mental,” he said slowly. “But there’s a need, and I could fill it.” He glanced from face to face, silently willing Hermione to accept his words, then Ron. If Hermione did it first, Ron would follow. “And I need to be needed.”
“We need you in the Aurors!” Ron leaned forwards, and his eyes were flashing and his face had flushed. “I know you got injured, but we’ve been short-handed with you on holiday, mate! You’ll always have a place here.”
“You were the one who told Kingsley that I had a death wish,” Harry muttered.
Hermione touched Ron on the arm this time, and reached across the table to take Harry’s hand. “He was doing what he thought he had to do,” she said, slowly and kindly, as if she could somehow escape Harry getting upset if she spoke that way. “And you’re doing what you think you have to, Harry. I know that. It’s just—could you explain it a little more, so we can see if we can understand it?”
Harry thought of a few sarcastic replies, but in the end, they were less valuable than his friends’ continued good will. “I want to be with children. There’s no way I can have any of my own, and—Rose and Hugo and Teddy are wonderful, but they’re not enough.”
“I understand,” said Hermione, although she looked a little sad. “Have you talked to Andromeda about moving into her place and helping take care of Teddy? I know you thought of that last year, and you and Andromeda were talking about it…”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea right now,” Harry said. In truth, he and Andromeda had talked about the idea when Teddy was being more difficult than usual and moping that all the other children he knew had two parents, but Andromeda predicted he would grow out of it, and he had. “Not with this tension between us.”
Hermione squeezed his hand again. “You know she didn’t mean it that way.”
Harry just looked at her, and said nothing. Ron nodded in Hermione’s place and murmured, “So you want to be with more children, and you don’t want to move in with a family.”
I want that more than anything in the world. If I could raise a child with someone I loved.
But his romance with Ginny was dead, had been dead probably from the moment he’d told her about his condition, and Harry had no one else. “Yes. Being with lots of families, having lots of children whose welfare I’m involved in, might help.”
“Then I can see the sense of it.” Ron still said it as though he expected Harry to throw up his hands and declare allegiance to the Aurors again in a second, but his face had relaxed. He gave Harry a look that Harry accepted, even though it was full of pity. “Ginny getting pregnant did a number on your head, didn’t it, mate?”
Harry sighed. “Maybe.” He didn’t know why he’d been so reluctant to admit that before. It wasn’t like Hermione or Ron would go tattling to Ginny on him, or even hinting that she should have stayed with Harry. They were long past that now, and Molly was the only member of the family who sometimes gave Harry wistful looks.
“But I can’t have children with her,” he said. “I don’t know if I ever could have. There were huge, gaping cracks in our marriage that we would have fallen into sooner or later.”
Ron opened his mouth, then shut it when Hermione shook her head at him. Hermione glanced sideways at Harry, bit her lip, and looked away. “Maybe it was you being cursed that opened those cracks,” she said.
Harry snorted. “That had a lot to do with why we got divorced, but no. What ruined our marriage was yelling at each other and being so quick to accuse each other, and not trusting each other enough. Those would have been problems no matter what. And they would have been a lot worse with children in the marriage.”
Hermione hesitated. “Maybe you’re right.”
Harry nodded. On this, he was sure. He had been the only one who had seen his marriage fall apart from the inside—the only one in the room, anyway. He had made his decision, and he felt brave and adult and contented as he sat there with his best friends.
At least, he did until Malfoy’s owl hooted at him, and landed on the table so fast that it left claw marks in the wood.
Harry stared at the bloody bird, who was hopping up and down in place now, turning to face him and beating its wings so urgently that it looked as if it was about to break one. Then Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not again,” he said.
“Who’s it from?”
Harry almost started in surprise at Ron’s question, and then snorted at himself. Of course he couldn’t expect his friends to recognize the owl. Their lives had been blissfully free of Malfoy’s letters.
“Someone I didn’t expect to be contacting me this soon,” he said, and let them assume it was from Andromeda as he took and opened the letter.
Potter,
I feel silly writing to you, but there’s something I have to ask your advice on.
Just reading that Malfoy felt this was a little silly made Harry relax. At least he wasn’t the only one in this peculiar position.
Scorpius told me that he wanted to visit his grandparents today, that he left a toy over at their house. My father was the one to tell me that no toy had been left behind, because the house-elves would have found it and returned it to us if there had been. When I asked Scorpius about it, he first claimed that he couldn’t remember what toy it was, and then it became obvious that he was lying to me. He ran away when I tried to press the issue, and as far as I can figure out, he’s now hiding in his room. He told me that he hated me before he ran.
What would you do? Or if you need to think about it in that manner, what would Ethan do?
Malfoy hadn’t even signed his name. Well, he didn’t need to, Harry acknowledged—whether or not it was also a gesture to keep his identity secret from too-interested people who might try to read the letter.
Harry hesitated. Scorpius was someone who had a parent, who had two parents, although Harry didn’t know how often Astoria visited or how close she was to her son. But surely, he had people who cared for him.
But—
So does Teddy.
And if Scorpius wasn’t Harry’s child, even the child of someone Harry was particularly close to, he was still a child. Harry wondered how he would have felt if Teddy had been left with a sullen, withdrawn father. Or mother. It could have happened if either Remus or Tonks had lived, he thought. Remus had almost left Teddy before he was born. Tonks had cared so much for Remus that she might have made her grief the center of her life.
No, he would do this for Scorpius, and not Malfoy.
“Who is that letter from, mate?” Ron waved his hand up and down in front of Harry’s eyes.
Harry started, and shook his head. He had forgotten how it must look to his friends, with him just sitting there and staring at the letter. He put it aside and gave them a smile he knew was weak. “Someone—who needs help.”
Ron was quicker than he had thought he would be, or Harry’s face was more revealing. “Is this about bloody Malfoy again?” he asked. “It is, isn’t it?”
Harry tamped down on the defensive urge to reply quickly. “It’s about his son,” he said, when he thought he could speak with a level voice. “Someone who hasn’t done anything to me, and does need my help.”
“I am surprised that Malfoy is writing to you and not Andromeda, now that he’s back in contact with her,” said Hermione. Her voice was neutral, but her eyes, fastened on Harry’s face, were alight with curiosity.
            Harry realized abruptly that he had no idea what he should say about Malfoy without revealing Ethan. And he still wasn’t ready to do that.
            On the other hand, he had asked his friends to trust him when it came to ignoring their letters for a while, and then listening to his plan for this center that would help the families with orphaned children. So he could ask them to trust him a little farther.
“I have to go talk to Malfoy,” he said, standing up. “Thanks for dinner.”
“Mate?” Ron was staring at him with a slightly wounded expression, as though he didn’t know him at all.
Harry managed to shrug with one shoulder, and smile at much the same moment. “This is the way it is, Ron. Sorry.”
Hermione nodded slowly. “I hope that you can explain it to us someday, Harry. Maybe when you and Malfoy feel more comfortable about it.”
“Maybe,” was all Harry would say, and he waved to them and Flooed home, where he would grab his thickest cloak and Apparate to the gates of Malfoy Manor.
It was only when he was pulling the cloak on that it occurred to him Malfoy might have wanted a letter back, not for Harry to come himself.
Harry paused, then shrugged and pulled the cloak all the way on. He was out the door in the same instant.
*
Marron: Well, for now Draco is more interested in having Harry pry Scorpius out of his bedroom. ;)
staar: He is, at least, also trying to help himself.
delia cerrano: Harry isn’t going to have blood children in any way. The curse is permanent.
But Scorpius is adorable, and Harry does like him.
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Starfall