“That’s right, swish and flick,” Harry said encouragingly. He was careful not to allow his weariness to affect his tone. If Marbella wanted to keep trying for half an hour to perfect her first wand movement, then that was what she could do. Even if so far it had only been a few minutes, and he was already worn out. The nine-year-old seemed to think that if she got this movement right, she’d never have magical problems again.
Orlando, on the other hand, was bored, always risky for class decorum. Having produced a perfect swish and flick the first time (in his increasingly agitated stated opinion, now interspersed with demands for Harry to stop Marbella and let them move on to something else, he already knew this) he was looking around for something more interesting. Any second now he’d hit on something, and then there’d be noisy chaos in the classroom.
“Orlando, why don’t you set up the tea things? Marbella, you’ve nearly got it, I think; we’ll just do this a little while longer. Yasmin, can you help Orlando by getting out the cups? River and Ashley, get Sean out of the toy corner, and the three of you go wash your hands.”
The children scattered for the familiar tasks. Some Fridays the only concentration Harry had left was remembering whose turn it was to get the tea and whose to wash up later, but he thought he might actually not go to bed at seven tonight.
“Okay, sweet potato, that’s looking good. You can practice at home this weekend, and show me how you’re doing Monday. Your mum will help you and make sure you don’t remember wrong – be sure to ask her, okay?”
Marbella laughed at the nickname and ran to wash up. He had trouble remembering the children’s names sometimes, and didn’t like the Dursleys’ pet names for each other in his mouth. So now his class was known for unexpected nicknames, and it was one of the reasons the children liked being assigned to him. Heaven knew it was better than adults wanting their children in his class because he was Harry Potter.
Harry put away his own wand and flexed his hands. They got stiff much more quickly these days. In his first year or so after the war, when his wand had been in his hand for long hours every day, rebuilding Hogwarts wards and creating new charms for the Ministry -- everything from anti-Imperius curses to neutralizing the anti-Muggleborn hexes -- by the end of the day his hand was cramped and painful. No spells worked as well as aspirin and sleep. So Harry had taken those, every night, knowing he’d have another day just like that one tomorrow. Now he supposed his hands, like the rest of him, had simply worked too hard when young, and were giving out.
He accepted the cup of tea Orlando proudly handed him. “Excellent tea, Orlando,” he said after a sip, and Orlando grinned and ran off to sit with his best friend Yasmin. And it was good. Hermione had suggested that the children all learn Muggle household skills, and even at this age, they proved to be quite adaptable. Harry, of course, had been making tea for the Dursleys since he was much younger than them. These children would have different options than the ones he had, but it was good they’d know things that no one else in their family knew, and could do their share in a magical household.
He loved the 15 minutes or so of the children’s tea. They were enjoying unstructured time, not yet bored and looking for mischief to liven up the day. He could just watch them and relax. And, of course, the caffeine was always welcome . . .
He heard a knock, and then the school administrative assistant, Hannah, stuck her head in. “There’s a parent here who’s considering placing his son in the school. His son is with him.”
“Good.” Many parents came alone the first time, but Harry preferred to watch a child interact with the others and get a sense of how the newcomer would fit in. “Thanks, Hannah. They’re welcome to come in.”
Hannah held the door wider. The first one in was a small blond whirlwind. He was dressed in black robes and a miniature Slytherin tie, but somehow looked more dressed up than simply clothed. His straw-blond hair was longish, straight, and bounced around when he moved. He popped through the doorway like a racing horse out of a chute, ran quickly towards Harry with the clatter of leather-soled shoes, then stopped so suddenly he slid another couple of feet. His legs reflexively adjusted, so that he almost appeared to have done it on purpose, but his startled face gave him away. Harry liked him already.
“Sorry, sir,” he panted, flushing. Harry placed his accent as upper class pure-blood, and blinked in surprise. The upper class pure-bloods had never conceded that the school even existed, so far as he knew.
“Scorpius, how many times do I have to say, ‘don’t run on bare floor’?” drawled the adult behind him, walking in with an air of making an entrance onstage. “Either stop, or you’ll be wearing Muggle trainers for the rest of your life.” The tone was more affectionate than exasperated.
Harry had frozen at the first words out of the father’s mouth. Suddenly, the week had taken a major downturn. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in nine years, and would gladly not have heard the rest of his life. What was Draco Malfoy doing in this school?
He took a deep breath. “Afternoon, Malfoy. How can I help you?”
Malfoy looked rather nervous and uncomfortable. “I’ve heard about your school . . . er, rather Scorpius has, and he wanted . . . well, I agreed to consider . . . ummm, if . . . “ he trailed off, then shrugged, and shifted to annoyed and arrogant, the way Harry was used to him. “Fuck it. Scorpius has a magic problem, and got really excited hearing about what his mother euphemistically called ‘a special school.’ He wants this very much, and I agreed to look into it.”
Harry nodded, understanding. Malfoy, of all people, would not want his heir in a “special” school. Add to that he must have found out it was run by a Muggleborn and Harry Potter – two Gryffindors, at that – and he must have given up a lot of pride to come here. If he’d been nagged into it by his son, Scorpius had inherited his father’s persistence, at least. Not to mention his pale looks.
“Well, Scorpius,” he said, bending down to the child who had been impatiently swerving his head at the adult conversation and bouncing a bit on his shiny shoes, “what do you want to know?”
“Everything!” the mini-Malfoy said enthusiastically. “Can you really teach magic? How do you do it? Who else is in the school? Are you the famous Harry Potter? Would you be my teacher? What are those things over there?” He opened his mouth to continue the list, but Harry laughed and stopped him.
“I don’t know if I can teach you magic, but we’re trying to find out if it’s possible. My friend Dr. Granger, who runs the research part, thinks that magically-challenged children of magical parents may be suffering from a problem which can be reversed magically. Even if that never happens, we teach children like that how to get along in a magical community, and other skills which make it easier for them to live by themselves if they choose, without having to go live with Muggles if they don’t want to. All the children here have some problems doing magic, but most can do a little and we work to develop that. The teachers are all people excited to be working on the project, who like kids. Yes, I’m the famous Harry Potter, but I try not to be. I would be your teacher, because of your age. We designed it so everyone would have the same teacher all through their years here, so I would stay your teacher too – and everyone else’s in the room.”
He glanced up, and saw Malfoy watching his son, not him. His eyes were worried, his mouth was down, and one thing was obvious: Malfoy loved his son very much. Well, that was part of the Malfoy heritage too, Harry recalled.
He remembered the last question. “That’s a fridge, and a stove. You’ve probably seen a sink before. The fridge keeps food cold so it will last without a stasis spell, and the stove heats it without spells. Sometimes we cook, and cut up the food by hand.”
“Isn’t that physically dangerous?” Malfoy asked, his brows knitting.
“We teach children to work with their hands safely. I presume Scorpius would be starting from scratch that way?”
“No, not really,” Malfoy said. He relaxed enough to walk over and perch on Harry’s desk, a little gingerly, as though he might be worried about Potter cooties. “He’s done some woodworking with a knife – under my supervision, of course – as well as handled other tools.”
Harry was tempted to ask why in Merlin’s name Malfoy knew anything about woodworking, but stopped himself. “Then he should be just fine with cutting up food. We don’t give them anything challenging, like melons.” He smiled, remembering the time they had tried that. The only solution to the mess and frustration had been a food fight. He walked over and sat in his chair, thinking Malfoy actually looked almost regal on the edge of Harry’s desk.
Malfoy glanced over at Scorpius, who had sat down next to Orlando and seemed to be describing something large, which involved rotating his chin in a circle and pretending to throw up. Orlando was laughing uproariously. For the first time, Harry saw Malfoy smile without pretence. It was a charming smile.
“While those two are occupied,” Malfoy said, turning back to Harry, “let’s get the situation clear. His mother is in complete denial that Scorpius is . . . magically challenged. She says no son of hers could possibly be a Squib.”
Harry blinked at the term, which like Mudblood was never, ever allowed to be used in front of children or anyone else. “Has Scorpius heard her say this?”
“Yes, and many other things. And before you ask – yes, she always uses the term “Squib.” It’s traditional in her family.”
Harry simply nodded.
“Scorpius is determined to be brilliant at magic to please her. He heard her talking to a friend about a special school she’d read about started by ‘Muggle-lovers,’ and he got it into his head that he could go there and be fixed. That was six months ago. He hasn’t left off begging me since.”
“And his mother?”
“Obviously, she doesn’t want him to come for a variety of reasons. Aside from the stigma, and the question of Muggle-lovers, it’s traditional for children to be home schooled. I . . . I didn’t want him to either; it’s just another way to get his hopes up. I came here today rather hoping he’d be disappointed.”
Draco rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Now I’m not so certain it’s a bad idea. Scorpius spends most of his time with me – his mother’s actively involved in pure-blood charities – and I think he could use a few friends his own age. He seems to get along with the other children here.”
Harry hesitated a moment, trying to channel all of Hermione’s tact. “Malfoy, the children here are happy, and learning, and are around others like themselves so they don’t feel . . . well, wrong all the time. I think Scorpius could use a place where he fit in, with adults not as, well, emotionally invested as you are to talk to. I’m sure it’s very hard for someone in your position to even consider this, but it’s probably been difficult since you first noticed that he was different. I’m really impressed you decided to at least see what the school is like.”
Malfoy stared at the ceiling for a few moments, then turned and tried to smile. “Imagine. I spent my entire childhood trying to impress Harry Potter, and I finally managed it.”
Harry laughed. “Oh, you impressed me a lot of times. I just wasn’t going to let you know.” He took a deep breath. The children were getting a bit restless, although Scorpius seemed to be entertaining enough to distract them. He would fit in well, if Malfoy decided that way. “Are there other things you need to know from me, or do you want to do the rest of your research elsewhere?”
Malfoy shook his head. “Neither really, except – when can he start?”
Harry blinked. “Any time. Go back and talk to Hannah about the administrative details – she’s in charge of that. If you like, you can leave Scorpius here and he can just play with the other children. We’re here for another hour, and we’ll be working on History of Magic.”
Draco looked surprised. “You teach children this young history? In a group? Don’t they get bored?”
Harry laughed. “It’s not like Binns’ class, I promise. Hermione is always using the phrase ‘age-appropriate’ in meetings. We’re going to have a game where we pretend to be designing a magic school.”
“Isn’t designing a magic school rather cruel, since they’ll never attend?”
“Well, they may yet. Hermione is doing good things with the research. Obviously, our goal is to give these children back their magical birthright. We just don’t emphasize that in front of them, because research can take years and years. But even so, it’s part of the plan to get comfortable being around magical people. We compare it to designing a music school – not everyone in every family may be a musical genius, but the ones who are would need special training.”
Harry noticed Draco’s face looked a lot more relaxed than when he’d arrived. “All right, Potter, I’ll go negotiate with Ms. Abbott and let Scorpius get a bit more acclimated.” He started toward the door, then stopped. “Oh – and Potter?”
Harry tilted his head, waiting.
“Thank you.”
The discussion with Draco had worn Harry out. He felt depressed, useless, and angry all at once.
Harry waved the last child out of the classroom and Apparated to Hermione’s office. They had decided early on that there would be no anti-Apparation wards inside the school. The primary goal was to get the children accustomed to all sorts of magic use. Not using it around them because it might hurt their feelings was hardly going to prepare them to live in a magical world.
Hermione was bent over her desk, scribbling furiously in a notebook. Harry recognized it as the one she used for her magically-challenged research, and shared with him nightly. He’d tried to come up with some name they could use as an acronym, like Some Questions for Unmagical Infants Book, but Hermione refused to think that was funny.
“How’s the research going?”
She slowly surfaced. “Did you know that the largest percentage of magically-challenged children comes from pure-blood homes?”
Harry waved a hand, then wrapped it around the Styrofoam cup of tea he’d charmed up. “Well, doesn’t the largest percentage of magic-users also come from pure-blood homes?”
“No. More than half the magic users in the last three generations came from homes where at least one parent was Muggle born. And I’m beginning to think there’s a correlation between that and the level of power, though that hypothesis is a lot harder to confirm.”
Harry glanced at his old friend’s desk and realized that the notes were all mathematical. Arithmancy. He’d always avoided it whenever possible. Which meant that Hermione had best translate for him before he did his homework. He’d been well-punished for simply taking the classes Ron did; now that he was teaching and researching, he’d had to go back and learn things he’d avoided at Hogwarts. He was angry with someone – McGonagall, Dumbledore – for not forcing him out of his comfort level, but that was not unusual. He seemed these days to be angry at everyone for everything. If he knew the current Hogwarts Headmistress, he’d probably go up and throw things around her office.
“So there are more Squibs from pure-blood homes, more powerful magic users from half blood or Muggle born homes… that certainly would have disproved the old Death Eater claims if we’d established that while we were still going to Hogwarts.”
“There was a war on. No room for logic.”
Harry shivered. Even after all these years, remembering his school days and their bloody end was painful. He still woke up occasionally screaming from nightmares of Fiendfyre and of Voldemort asking if he were really dead. In his dreams, the outcomes were often different than reality – and never pleasantly so. “Well, there’s room for logic now. Does that mean magic is stronger when it first manifests? So the pure-bloods are inevitably going to deteriorate?”
Hermione frowned. “No. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s more an either/or thing. Either the child is a strong wizard or witch, or has little to no magic at all. There are almost no magically-challenged children born to non-pure-blood households.”
“Well, that would explain why all our kids are pure-bloods, then.” Harry sipped his tea, which was hot and sweet and tasted like burnt twig. He’d never been great at making tea magically. “Speaking of which, we have maybe acquired another one.”
“Really? For your class?”
“Yes. His name is Scorpius Malfoy.”
Hermione blinked. “A relative of the Malfoys?”
“Draco Malfoy’s son.”
Harry grinned as Hermione immediately dated her notes and put the book away. She was predictably prone to gossip. “You’re certain?”
“His father brought him to class during the children’s tea.”
“What’s he like?”
“Still as much of an arrogant git as ever, though he’s improved physically.”
“Harry! I meant his son.”
“Oh.” Harry had really thought of bringing up the topic of Scorpius as just an excuse to discuss Draco. He pulled his thoughts back to the professional. “Nice little boy, really. Plays well with others, as dramatic as his father was but not mean nor a suck up. Surprising, really. I presume he’s got a good mother.”
“So you wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all. After all, it wouldn’t be like having Malfoy in the class every day.”
“I can not imagine a circumstance under which we’d have a school left, if he were. By sixth year, everyone ran for cover whenever you two faced each other. It would be duelling all day, every day.”
“Not in my class,” Harry pointed out, pulling open the desk drawer in which Hermione kept her biscuits. “Because if he were in it, he’d be a… he’d be emcee.”
Hermione winced at his version of “magically challenged,” but said nothing.
Harry had found ginger biscuits and was selecting several. Hermione made them taste very much like treacle tarts, only crunchy. “It is rather odd he’s considering it, don’t you think? I mean, neither of us are exactly experts on pure-bloods, but it took a lot of work to persuade parents to send what children we do have here. And these parents are all what the Malfoys used to call blood traitors – people who hear my name or yours and are biased toward us. So why’d Malfoy come here?”
“Maybe his wife.”
“I suppose. I’m not sure he’s coming, anyway. He was snotty as always, and said, ’My son is a Squib,’ as if he just dared me to comment.”
Hermione sighed. “Your life is full of drama, Harry. Some of it self-generated.”
“Thanks, Hermione. You always have faith in me.” But Harry knew she was right. After all, Hermione had always given him the same advice back at Hogwarts: “Ignore him, Harry, he’s not worth it.” Snabbling two more ginger biscuits for the road, he appropriated the SQUIB notebook and kissed her on the cheek at the same time, leaving a few crumbs. From the new entry’s length, it appeared he had about 10 feet to read tonight.
He was panting desperately, trying to get away. He was running through the maze, and every dead end was a grave. Every time he thought he’d found a path, he stumbled over a headstone.
Albus Dumbledore, noted winner of Witch Weekly’s most duplicitous smile award 17 years running.
Colin Creevey, too young to die
Sirius Black: it was inevitable
Remus Lupin: just another of Harry Potter’s failures
Nymphadora Tonks, because getting her cousin killed wasn’t enough for you
Severus Snape: half git, half hero
Tom Riddle (1/7)
Tom Riddle (1/7)
Tom Riddle . . . .
He screamed then, and ran back where he’d come from. He was lost there too. The headstones were thicker on the ground this way.
Ronald Weasley: the best dead friend around.
Ginny Weasley: she didn’t deserve this.
Hermione Granger: not that smart after all.
And last, taller than his head,
Harry Potter, who should have died hereafter.
He slammed against the rough stone and felt shackles snake out from it and bind his hands. His cheek was pressed against the stone, and he could see from the corner of his eye a simmering cauldron. He hadn’t killed enough Tom Riddles. There were more, more he’d missed. He just hadn’t been good enough . . .
He felt Peter pull his arm out, and a sharp knife slice it. The blood poured into the cauldron – not a trickle, but a flood. Surely there wasn’t that much blood in him? Surely . . . But it filled the cauldron and began overflowing, and he heard Peter say, in the voice he’d used to recite the spell which brought Voldemort back, “Blood from every sacrifice for you, blood from every witch and wizard in the land, blood because you weren’t fast enough, strong enough, smart enough. You fooled them, son of James, but your father never fooled me and neither did you.”
And the blood poured, and poured across the ground, until it filled the maze and overflowed like a river in the spring overflowing its banks. Harry lay against the stone, clinging to it as his blood, everyone’s blood, washed warm and sticky over him and went into the soil. Then there was the last voice, the one he’d always heard in his dreams: “Give me my wand, Peter,” and he screamed and screamed and fought to escape until suddenly he was, still thrashing, but awake, awake and his friends were still alive, he wasn’t dead, Voldemort wasn’t back, Harry was alive, Voldemort wasn’t . . .
Harry lay there in the hot damp sheets as the sweat cooled on him. Finally, he sat upright and wiped his aching eyes, then cast a Tempus. Five a.m. Well, she was a morning person.
He staggered to the fire and sat down, shivering, reaching aimlessly for the Floo powder and somehow getting it. He threw a bit on. “Ginny Weasley,” he said hoarsely, and pushed his head into the flames.
Ginny was puttering in the kitchen, singing softly to herself. She wore an old blue chenille robe over her flannel pyjamas, and looked as beautiful as always. Her head jerked up when she heard Harry’s voice, and she came into the part of the room which held the fireplace and sat in a chair. They’d designed their house when they’d just gotten married, and Harry had insisted it be tall enough to stand in, but also be set two feet above the floor so that no one had to kneel to talk. He knew this fire better than any other in the world, and looked out, desperate for a glimpse of sanity and family.
The room was the same, except that the wall colour had changed to a different shade of white.
“You must have . . . painted recently,” he said, forcing out the words.
Ginny put her hand on his forehead. “Last summer. You’re just unobservant. Oh, Harry, was it a bad night?”
“Really bad. Hasn’t been like that . . . for awhile.”
“You’re shivering, you idiot. Cast a warming spell on yourself.”
Harry tried, but his hand was shaking too much for the wand to be steady.
“All right then, go get that ugly crocheted thing Mum made you and wrap it around you. Go on, do it now.”
She wouldn’t talk to him until he’d done it. That was how Ginny was. Funny how it had taken him years to notice that he’d actually married a younger version of Molly Weasley. He loved them both, even though . . . He sighed, crawled to his feet and found the chartreuse and Kelly green afghan Molly had made for him the Christmas after the final battle. He wrapped it around him, and felt the charms she’d hooked into it activate: feelings of love and warmth and pride, what Molly called “motherly feelings.”
“I don’t know what I would do without you, Ginny,” he said hoarsely.
“Survive, I suspect. You’re good at that. Harry, last time we talked you said it was getting better.”
“It was. Well, I thought it was.”
“What was the trigger this time?”
He thought. “Maybe just Christmas. Everyone’s so happy, you know? Except the dead ones. And the hurt ones, and the orphans – Ted sent me a card a couple of days ago by the way, it was really sweet. I think he’s going to be an artist if he keeps it up. He reminds me of Dean a lot . . . “.
Ginny frowned at him. “Was that the trigger, Harry?”
He was silent.
“You can say it.”
He felt the familiar vise close around his throat. “His parents are dead. I sent Remus back to take care of him, but they came to fight instead. He grew up never knowing his parents at all.”
“Like you didn’t.” Ginny’s voice was gentle.
“Like . . . I didn’t.” Harry willed himself back under control.
“I’m sorry, Harry. Would you like to come to breakfast?”
“No, thanks.” He closed his eyes. “Gin, about your plans for Christmas…”
“No, Harry.”
“What?”
“No. You agreed to take them, they’re looking forward to two weeks with you, and Viktor and I are visiting his family. It’s a very traditional old world wizarding family, and James and Rose would be bored stiff – which means Albus would be in charge of inventing things to do, and you know how that would work out. I want to be invited back. I want them to know me as a sensible adult before they know me as the mother of the three most . . . creative children in the wizarding world.”
“I’m not sure I can. What if I just . . . forget them, or something?”
“Don’t drink, don’t take mind-altering potions, and don’t feel sorry for yourself. You won’t forget. You never have.”
He knew better than to argue. He couldn’t win.
“Now, babes, I have to go finish my tasks before Rose gets up. If you can, go back to sleep. If not, you really should go back to St. Mungo’s and talk with someone a bit.”
“I know.” He really did know. He just wasn’t going to. When he was like this, Ginny was the only one he could talk to. Even Ron and Hermione didn’t know how bad it could get. And he wasn’t dragging a wizarding therapist into it – not after what happened when the Prophet broke the story that he was seeing one.
“All right, Harry. Call if you need anything. Otherwise, we’ll see you by solstice.”
He nodded.
She looked at him, her brows knitted. “I love you, Harry.”
“I love you too.” There had been years when they couldn’t say that to each other. It was good to hear again. Although he would have liked, just a little, if she loved him the same way she had at Hogwarts – as if he were the most important person in her life. But then, he didn’t love her that way any more, maybe never had. He should have guessed when they’d finally killed Voldemort, and he’d put off talking to her afterwards. Everyone had gone to the arms of the ones they loved. He’d gone off with Hermione and Ron.
After a month, Harry got used to having a Malfoy in his class. After two months, he got used to having two.
The next day, Draco Malfoy had come back, son in tow, with a grim expression on his face that completely contrasted with the beaming smile on Scorpius’ face. “He will be enrolling,” Malfoy said, rather abruptly. “I would like to visit the class every other week for awhile, to observe.”
Harry had thought carefully how he’d relate to Malfoy, if he came back. “You’d be most welcome,” he said as cheerfully as if Malfoy were any other anxious parent. “Of course, if you come, I might dragoon you into helping out with the children.”
Malfoy looked rather interested. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Scorpius threw himself into the new class as, Harry was to learn, he threw himself into everything. He introduced a new game – “Being Muggles” – where they all “pretended” to have no magic and dress and act like Muggles. Harry had to go to Oxfam and buy a lot of Muggle clothes for their dress-up games. He was secretly pleased how well the game fit into the school’s educational program, and passed it on to Hannah to share with other teachers and parents.
“My dad taught the game to me,” Scorpius explained, when Harry asked. “He said he and his friends used to play it when he was a little boy.”
Harry could well imagine that for magical pure-bloods, a game where they pretended to have no magic and lived in a non-magical world would be the ultimate fantasy game. He and Dudley, when they weren’t fighting, had sometimes played at being super heroes for much the same reason.
Scorpius caught up quickly with the basic lessons, naturally. His parents had clearly been teaching him how to hold a wand and mix a potion from early childhood. Preparing an omelette was easy for him, apparently, after having removed the seeds from Hocklepeppers and counting out 20 to put in a potion to de-flea their dog.
“Because Putter is always going out where he’s not supposed to, and Dad says it’s easier to have a potion in him which keeps them away than remembering to do the charms for getting them off before he comes in.”
“Dad says,” Harry had already learned, was Scorpius’ favourite phrase. He was interested in the dog’s name and the answer surprised him. “I wanted to name it Harry after you, because you’re famous, but Dad says dogs shouldn’t be named after people – it’s not really a compliment, and I’d never met you, so I certainly shouldn’t use your first name. So I said I’d use your last name and he laughed and laughed, but then he said at least to change one vowel. So it’s Putter, not Potter.”
Harry was dimly grateful to Malfoy for that. He could just imagine a small circle of former Death Eaters and sympathizers at an elegant lawn party, with a large, dripping-tongued dog running through followed by a small boy screaming, “Potter! Potter!”
“Dad says if you hold the knife like this, you’re less likely to cut yourself,” he heard Scorpius explain to his new friend, Orlando. Orlando was such a follower of anyone he found interesting, it was fortunate Scorpius was a child who tried to meet adult expectations.
“Dad says we have to practice handwriting, just like anything else,” he comforted the frustrated Yasmin. She had been a little unhappy when Orlando turned his compass to Scorpius’ magnetic north, but Scorpius had solved that by making Yasmin his friend as well. Now the three of them did everything together. Harry had thought of Crabbe and Goyle and Malfoy, but unwillingly had grown used to the idea that it really was more like him and Ron and Hermione, in that Scorpius seemed to have no idea that he could boss them around if he chose, and they were as likely to argue with him as support him.
The next day Scorpius brought a handful of quills made of peacock feathers. “Dad says it’s more fun to practice manual skills with something pretty,” he said, and handed them out to his classmates. Although Harry was feeling that he could do with perhaps one or two fewer “Dad says” a day, he was charmed by Scorpius’ generosity. At the end of class, Scorpius approached him, looking a little awkward.
“Mr. … Harry,” he corrected himself. Scorpius seemed to live in a world where all male adults were “Mr.” or “Sir,” and the informality of the school had daunted him a bit at first. “Would you like… I brought you one too, sir?”
Harry looked at the quill Scorpius was shyly holding out. Although the peacocks on the Malfoy estate were white, these quills were all the iridescent green/blue which was the first thing he thought of when he heard of peacocks. This one was especially fine, curled into a plume which would have looked dashing in a cavalier’s hat.
He looked at Scorpius’ hopeful face. “That was thoughtful, Scorpius. Thanks.”
“It’s charmed not to break, si… Harry. And to keep a sharp tip. My dad did it.”
“Just this one?” Harry tried not to sound too surprised.
“Oh no, sir! All of them. My dad says if you give a present, it should be everything you would want for yourself.”
“Well, it’s lovely, Scorpius, and I’ll be glad to use it.” Harry put the quill into the inkwell on his desk, and smiled at Scorpius. I’ve got to meet his mother. He must have got his charm from her, and probably his manners. Though Malfoy’s manners appear to have improved, or maybe when he was in gift giving mode . . .
“Harry….”
“What can I help you with?”
“Am I… am I better than I was?”
Much to his own surprise, Harry hugged the boy. “It doesn’t work like that, Scorpius. It’s only been a week. This is going to take much longer – years, really. And you have other things to learn as well. But I like having you in my classroom.”
There was a flash of the smile Harry’d seen on Malfoy’s face when he thought no one was watching him watch his child. Then Scorpius looked stricken, said, “Oh! My dad said he’d meet me in the school library! I’m late!” and, grabbing his rucksack, ran off.
Harry sighed. Scorpius had not shown even a flash of magic. In fact, he didn’t feel like the typical Squib at all. When Harry was very near a student – or anyone – he could feel the magical energy in an aura around them. Squibs had a pale aura; Harry thought of it as a yellowish white. It flickered like a light bulb just before going out. Children who were magically challenged but had some magic had an aura which flickered, but was a little brighter in colour. Scorpius’ was more like a short in the electrical system. It flung out sparks and flowed out of him at an energy level which actually dangerous. It was so dark, however, as to look black in Harry’s mind.
Harry had told Hermione this, but she’d had no way to investigate it.
“Just keep it in mind,” she advised. “It may prove important one of these days.”
He rubbed his temples and looked around him absently. Teaching school, in its own way, was much more challenging than fighting Voldemort. It had fewer going-to-die moments, but required far more planning. Maybe he shouldn’t have quit the hero business.
There were steps outside his door, echoing on the old oak planks and then stopping. Then there was a knock on the wall next to the open classroom door. He looked up, and Malfoy was in the doorway, standing elegantly in obviously expensive robes whose effect was slightly marred by the fact a smallish boy was attached to them with a fist in a sleeve.
“Malfoy.” Harry was surprised that he was actually pleased to see him. Git he might be, but he wasn’t bad to look at, and Harry had been living like a monk for years. And to be honest, he thought Scorpius improved the look mightily. Near him, Malfoy’s constant smugness could be taken simply for pride in his boy.
“Scorpius tells me he was late because you were talking to him.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, bracing himself for venom.
“Thank you.”
Harry’s mouth dropped open, and he began channelling the inarticulate teenager he thought he’d outgrown. “Ummm, thanks, you know – that’s what teachers are for, isn’t it, the good ones, anyway, not that I’m good, but I’d like to be…”.
He trailed off, and Draco continued smoothly, “I would like to visit tomorrow and see how his education is conducted, if I may.”
“Of course, I said you’d be welcome… well, all parents are welcome, of course, it makes it easier for them to understand what we’re doing, and then they can participate with the children… er, at home, I mean, or of course, the class is good too…” What the fuck was he saying? He started thinking perhaps he should go to a Muggle club tonight. That might chase away the overwhelming sense of noticing which was going on. Noticing that in his 30s, Malfoy had grown comfortable in his own skin, and moved not like a cocky schoolboy, but like a self-confident man; noticing that Malfoy’s lashes were longer than Harry remembered, and darker; noticing that his mouth, when it wasn’t smirking, looked soft and as knowing as the rest of him; noticing that his well-cut robes emphasized, rather than concealed, the fact that he must still do a lot of physical activity; noticing that his collarbone looked like a perfect target for a bite… .
He wrenched himself away from the want which was settling into his skin, and realized that Malfoy was staring at him as if he were waiting for him to answer. He’d had no idea anyone had spoken.
Finally, Malfoy smiled, and it was a bit more like his usual smirk. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Potter.”
“Harry.”
“What?”
“Call me Harry. Your son does – all the children do.”
“Very well. If you’ll call me Draco.”
Harry found himself blushing, and cursed. He held out his hand. “Agreed.”
Malfoy… Draco … stared at Harry’s hand inscrutably for half an instant, then took it. “Agreed.”
He’d been back the next day, and Scorpius had gone wild with excitement. He dragged his father around to the other children, introducing him as “Mr. Malfoy, my dad.” Harry noted that Scorpius had his hand clutched in his father’s sleeve again, and concluded that Malfoy discouraged handholding.
The lessons had gone acceptably; Malfoy had been helpful about showing children the way to hold knives and chop carrots for soup. He was apparently well-travelled; Scorpius kept saying, “Tell Orlando about the time you were in Tahiti and it rained and flooded your hotel, Dad,” or “Tell Jasmin what the wizards in San Francisco wear when they go around as Muggles.” Malfoy obligingly would tell the story, putting in small embellishments which were highly improbable but, to the uncritical ears of the children, invested the story with high drama. At the end of the day, Harry took Malfoy aside for a moment and told him, “Next time you come, I’m putting you in charge of story hour.” It was his least favourite part of the day, since he’d heard no magic stories at the Dursleys, and telling, say, a plot from East Enders did not seem desirable.
“All right. Thanks for the warning.”
The next time he came, Malfoy had prepared a story Harry knew well, about three brothers who met Death at the crossroads. He wondered if it were that well-known a story in the wizarding world, or if Malfoy had selected it specifically because of its connection to their past. It would have been hard to miss the newspaper accounts, WWW coverage, unauthorized biographies, blow-by-blow accounts of the rise and fall of Voldemort (always called coyly “The Dark Lord” in the titles) which retold the story of the invisibility cloak, the stone, and the elder wand, and their astonishing re-emergence in the hands of the Chosen One.
He had to admit it was a good story, at any rate, the way Malfoy told it. Nor were there any embarrassing gestures to recent events in the past few centuries.
“Good story, Draco,” he said at the end. “You’re now officially in charge of Friday story hour.”
Malfoy raised an eyebrow. “Well, then, I suppose I had better plan to be here on Fridays.”
Harry was busy not noticing how young and mischievous that raised eyebrow made its owner look. So busy that he almost failed to notice the smirk reappearing. He had an uncomfortable suspicion that he might be being a trifle obvious. He wondered for an instant what Malfoy would do if he asked him out for a drink after school one day. Then he firmly quashed that idea. It would just be the two of them – and a hundred reporters, once the pub owner called the Prophet. Anyway, Malfoy was married to someone who presumably made the father just as happy as she made the son.
Draco became a Friday fixture. The children were all delighted to see him. With them he was charming, patient, playful and even occasionally wise, with a satirical twist surfacing enough to remind Harry that this indeed was Draco Malfoy and not a Polyjuiced doppelganger of some sort. With Harry, he was reasonably polite – a little reserved, but with no particular malice of the sort which had marked their Hogwarts days. Harry was puzzled to find out he rather missed it. No one had paid that kind of fierce attention to him since. The news people paid attention in an annoying way, but they would have no idea how to get under his skin, and would presumably not attempt to do so. Life was rather flat without an opponent.
Scorpius occasionally showed flashes of magic, just as the other children did. Harry found out if he had a hand on a child’s shoulder, they were twice as likely to succeed at the simple tasks Harry set for them: levitate a feather, send sparks from a wand, clean up a small mess. When Draco tried it, Scorpius’ power was almost at an adult level.
“But I can’t spend my life with my hand on Scorpius’ shoulder,” he pointed out quietly, when Scorpius had gone to the loo.
“Still, it’s another piece of the puzzle,” Harry said. “I’ve got to tell Hermione.”
“I’ll cover. It’s story hour coming up anyway.”
“Thanks, Draco.” After a month and more of using his name, Harry had gotten accustomed to it.
“Before you leave, let me put my hand on someone else’s shoulder. Just to test the variables.”
After it turned out that the only child who improved with Draco’s hand on him was Scorpius, Harry trotted down the hall to find Hermione.
“That’s very interesting, Harry, but maybe Scorpius has a completely different problem than the others,” Hermione pointed out. “Perhaps he has actual birth damage when they don’t, or had a magical trauma in youth where they were born with a defective gene, or… well, anything.”
“You think magic is genetic?” Harry was distracted.
“Yes, of course. It’s just not clear how the heritage runs yet. I’m thinking currently that we may be able to test the foetus, maybe even the embryo, to see if it’s carrying that gene or not. Unfortunately, we can hardly ask the Muggle genome project to look for a genetic alteration for an attribute they don’t even think exists.”
Harry grunted. “Hermione, Muggles have done research which demonstrates that what you eat can change your gene structure. I don’t see how knowing what the gene is will help kids do magic. It’s a practical problem.”
“All right Harry, fine. You’re right – genetics don’t exactly fit why a boy can actually practice some magic if his father’s hand is on his shoulder. On the other hand, what has that to do with anything? The other children improve with your hand on their shoulder. We know two people working together can produce stronger magic than either working alone. Maybe that’s what’s going on – you’re just giving them some of your magic.”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t be so disappointed. More than that may be going on, you know.” Hermione looked at him sharply. “Sometimes your intuition checkmates my linear thinking, you know.”
Harry knew. He nodded. “You’re the smartest witch of our generation, though.”
“Good thing you’re a wizard, then.” She grinned at him. “Hey, who’s teaching your class?”
“Draco.”
Hermione’s eyebrows went up. “’Draco’? As in ‘Malfoy, the git’?”
“The very same. But he’s not a git any more, Hermione. If I didn’t know him from school, I’d have asked him out.”
“But now you won’t, because you couldn’t POSSIBLY be interested in a nice man who was a brat as a child.” She grinned at him. “I think it’s time to send Ron over to sort you out… or, as the telly says, ‘set you straight.’”
“Watch your language, woman!”
“All right, I will if you’ll tell – do you really want to ask Draco Malfoy out? And do you really think he’s a decent person now?”
Harry blushed. “Yes to the first. The second doesn’t matter that much to me.”
Hermione frowned. “Until it matters to you if you’re dating a git or not, I’m just as glad that you never ask anyone out. So Malfoy isn’t rude to you anymore?”
Harry thought about the occasional smirk when Harry had been just a little too… observant of the fact that Malfoy was quite fit. But that wasn’t rude, exactly. Just knowing. Neither of them had ever said a word.
“No, he’s not. And he’s quite charming with the children.”
“Probably likes the attention,” Hermione said wisely. “Malfoy always wanted attention very, very badly. Especially yours, of course.”
“Well, I’d better be getting back, then,” Harry replied, concluding that the theoretical conversation had been definitely derailed. He didn’t quite know how he felt about the relationship conversation, but that was Hermione.
Ginny stayed till Christmas morning. Usually Harry slept in his own room, but on Christmas Eve she heard him yelling from the nightmares, and dragged him into her own large bed. She dealt calmly with the panic attack which usually accompanied it, cooled his sweating with a charm, and talked to him a little while until he dozed off.
He woke up to find her already awake, sitting up in bed and staring at him, and grinned sheepishly.
“Are you seeing someone about these, Harry?” she asked bluntly.
“They don’t happen often, you know.”
“They’ve happened that I know about at every significant anniversary since the War. That’s often enough.”
He shook his head. “I’m okay, really.”
“Maybe I really shouldn’t go to visit Viktor’s parents with him. I don’t like leaving you alone with the children in this condition.”
He looked at her frowning face and sat up to lean against her. He kissed her hair, warm and smelling of flowers and the hot, slightly sweaty smell which was Ginny in the morning. “It’s fine, really. You’ve already made it very clear to me that I promised, and that you really want to go. You don’t have to worry what they’ll think of you, though. They’re going to think you’re the best thing that ever happened to him, besides Quidditch.”
Her expression softened at that. “I will fool them quite nicely, you think?”
“I don’t think you’d be fooling them.”
She sighed. “I wish we could get married. He never says a word, but he’s traditional and would like that.”
“When the kids are older. We’ll get divorced, and you can get married.”
“Yes, I know, you don’t want them to have to lose their privacy the way you did. And I don’t either. I just wish it could be different, that’s all.”
Harry looked at his hands. The morning after bad attacks, they shook. This morning, the shaking was going away fairly quickly.
“You know, Ginny, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, too. I wish things could have been different too.”
She had nothing to say to that. They sat in the warm bed they’d shared when they were first married. Harry was thinking of his painful coming out process, his realization after a year or so that he loved Ginny dearly, but the fire he’d felt had been more the sheer excitement of being loved and loving someone. It seemed nothing like what most couples felt. He finally put that together with his fascination with Quidditch magazines and locker rooms, and his interactions with Malfoy all those years of school. That had led to a series of painful discussions with Ginny, who could understand but didn’t have to like it, and then carefully using the house like a time share. Fortunately, they’d had to continue parenting together for the sake of the children, and then Ginny fell in love with a team-mate, and Harry and she had settled into a pleasant best-friend relationship which neatly balanced Harry’s feeling of being an odd man out with Ron and Hermione. Only they knew that the storybook marriage of the Boy Who Lived and the beautiful girl he’d saved when she was small was very different on the inside than the outside.
Harry was cautious with his sexual experiences, going exclusively to Muggle clubs, and not the ones fashionable for pure-bloods to go slumming in. His experimentation was brief. He’d hated it. He wasn’t the sort to deal well with anonymous sex, or one-night sex of any kind. He decided that maybe he just didn’t have much of a sexual drive, and that was convenient. Ginny’s romance worked easily and well without public attention, because when the team was working, they stayed in the same hotels and were with each other all day, stopping for meals in groups of two or three.
Viktor sometimes stayed over, once Ginny was sure their relationship was solid enough that he wouldn’t suddenly disappear from the children’s lives. He and Harry got along quite well, as long as the subject was Quidditch, comparisons of wizarding lives in different countries, or what-life-was-like-at-Durmstrang. Viktor’s mention in the press always identified him as a friend of the family, which in fact was true.
Ginny got up to put together the traditional Christmas morning fare, and Harry went to find the children. The rule was that they could NOT come wake their parents, and had to be in bed until they were fetched. This rule was always bent just a little; they tended to gather in Lily’s room, perched on her bed, talking about possible presents and occasionally grumbling at the ridiculous requirements of grownups, who thought they should sleep in till 8 at least. Harry and Ginny had concluded over the years that Ginny should prepare the meal and Harry could deal with the children, since she got angry if she found them not following the rules and Harry didn’t especially care. To keep the peace on Christmas morning, this way worked best.
In the afternoon, Viktor came over and they showed off their gifts. He’d known what they were getting, and his gifts were designed to complement them. James, who’d had a broom for two years, was beginning to be really interested in Quidditch, and Ginny and Harry had bought him books about Quidditch and a subscription to Quidditch Quarterly of his very own. Viktor brought him a pair of the gloves his own team used, and a promise to work with him in the spring on the practical application of the book on Quidditch moves he’d received. James was speechless with pleasure, an unusual phenomenon for him.
Lily’s biggest presents were all writing tools – colour changing ink, quills spelled to check spelling and write in red any word she’d got wrong, special parchment paper with metallic edges or with flowers embedded in it. If they weren’t of such different ages, Harry would have suspected his and Hermione’s child had been switched at birth, because Lily’s favourite book was Hogwarts, A History, and Rose got into all sorts of mischief trying to learn things she wasn’t supposed to know.
And Al. Harry tried not to play favourites, but Al was special. James was unquestionably Ginny’s boy, and Lily seemed to be Aunt Hermione’s girl, really, but Al was his. He was small and anxious and just a trifle prissy and worked hard to please. The eye correction spells at birth had worked well, thank goodness, so he didn’t wear glasses, but in every other way he looked just like Harry, including the expression Harry recognized from the mirror – shy and stubborn both. This year Al got his first broom, and he spent most of the day zooming around the house and then, when Ginny put her foot down, the yard. Harry went with him to be sure he didn’t go above a metre or so. Then James came out, and Harry had to concentrate hard, because James loved to tease his brother, and of course to encourage him to go much higher and much faster. Al was proving to be as natural on the broom as his father. Finally, Harry Accio’ed his broom and joined them in the air. The monitoring was so wearing the bad night faded from his memory and his body.
Viktor gave Al Quidditch robes, the colours of his and Ginny’s teams, and Al peacocked around in them proudly until Ginny told him to save them for practice. After a pick-up lunch, Ginny and Viktor were off on their 10-day visit to his parents.
There was no school for the next 10 days. On Boxing Day Harry had them take what remained of their Christmas feast to the war orphanage. Most of the children who lived there were children of Death Eaters – the Light’s orphans had lost parents as well, but generally their extended families were more intact. The post-war Death Eater trials had been severe. Harry augmented the Potter treats for this occasion, knowing the depredations his children could make on sweets and pumpkin juice. The orphans all knew Harry of course, since he tried to come at least once a month with Ron and, when possible, Ginny, to hone their basic broom flying skills. A few of them could actually make it off the ground without much help, and the other children enjoyed watching the lessons.
By the time Harry needed to go back to school, he was worn out with single parenting, and delighted to see Ginny return. In the Quidditch off-season, she was their primary parent. In summers, Harry took all three children – with an occasional extra or so – to Scotland, and they camped in the wild. Months during the war of starving and feeling disoriented away from his suburban environment had marked Harry. He got survival books and set himself to learn, and teach his kids, how to live in the wild. Except for the occasional spat between Albus and James, the summers went beautifully, and Harry’s irrational fear that the children would die in the wild during a war someday were beginning to fade.
“Dad, you promised to teach me to play Quidditch,” Al said the day Harry left. He of course brought that up in the two minutes of farewells and I-love-you’s before Harry was to Apparate back to Godric’s Hollow, and couldn’t reply properly.
“I will, Al. You had to learn the basics this holiday.”
“But Da-ad…”
“Let your father leave, dear,” Ginny said, smoothing Al’s hair, which was as messy as Harry’s always was. “I can help too, you know. I’m the one who does it for a living, after all.”
Al did not look appeased. Harry hugged him again, then gave Ginny a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Gin. See you in awhile.”
He Disapparated to the sound of Albus’ argument that Dad was a Seeker, and Albus wanted to be a Seeker, and Dad had been the youngest Seeker in a hundred years, and that was much better than just playing Quidditch for money, because Dad had been famous for it, and…
As the familiar walls of his Godric’s Hollow home appeared around him, Harry shuddered to think of how Ginny’s temper would rouse with that set of arguments. He also felt guilty because Albus Severus thought that his father was the most important person on earth, and famous for reasons which had nothing to do with being a War Hero, and Harry liked Al thinking that and didn’t want him to think anything else.
But mostly he felt guilty because he was looking forward to a couple days of complete rest and silence before the school term began again.
By the Friday after term started, Harry was back in teaching mode and happy to be there. It had nothing to do with Mal… Draco, he told himself firmly. He just needed to talk to him about his son.
Scorpius looked a little fragile after his holiday. There was nothing Harry could put a finger on, just… he didn’t seem quite his ebullient, stubborn self. His father brought him to the door of the class as always, and this time Scorpius hung on to his robe sleeve again – something he hadn’t done since the first two weeks. Draco gently detached himself, whispered something in his ear, and Apparated.
After the first day, he didn’t cling any more, but his smile was a little forced when Harry teased him, and he didn’t run around yelling with the other children as much as usual. Harry called him up to his desk during Quiet Time, and asked him if everything were all right, but Scorpius merely nodded and waited patiently to be allowed back to his table.
Draco looked … unapproachable. He was as polite as he indubitably had been brought up to be, but somehow that courtesy made an impenetrable mask. Harry found himself missing the boy and young man whom he could make screaming and furious in 10 words. This upper-class inscrutability made him feel left out.
“Your son seems a bit subdued this week. Did something happen over Christmas?” he said quietly to Draco as the children fetched out the magical items Draco had begun stocking in the toy chest for story illustrations.
“Christmas was pretty much as usual,” Draco said shortly. Harry backed off hastily and went over to make sure the children were not overwhelming their storyteller with too many items.
Draco at least was definitely in a mood. He was holding himself well in check, but the story wasn’t as exciting as usual, somehow. It started well. “Once there was an old fox who wanted to be a young dog.” Orlando threw a stuffed fox into the air. It floated around, and Jasmine threw a stuffed puppy to join it. They circled each other for a moment, then the dog barked and chased the fox back into the toy bin.
“I think we’ll dispense with the toys today,” Draco said courteously enough, but with an edge of ice. “I’ll find it hard to concentrate on the story, otherwise.”
Harry had to admit the children were acting more like seven year olds than nine year olds – but after a highly sugared holiday, with no school for weeks, it was hard for children to get back into a routine.
The story ended. “And the old fox found that being an old fox could save his life, while being a young dog meant he almost lost it.”
It was a good story, as all Draco’s were, but rather more painful than some. Harry was absolutely certain something unpleasant for both Draco and Scorpius had occurred in the recent past. He found himself wanting to shake them, kidnap them and take them home with him, anything to wipe the chill off Draco’s face and help Scorpius return to his expansive self, rather than the contracted one.
The class settled down to do an art creative project, which doubled as a way for the teachers to learn more about them. This week, the assignment was “Draw yourself doing the spell or charm you’d most like to learn to do.”
Draco and Harry had tacitly divided the work between them. Harry went around talking about the child’s feelings about the work; Draco gave them advice on the art itself. He had proved to be knowledgeable about line, form, and colour, which surprised Harry. However, since Harry knew very little about art, he appreciated the addition of a specialist to his children’s learning.
He stopped by Scorpius’ place at the table. Scorpius was bent over a drawing, so absorbed that his friends were talking entirely to each other, and simply ignoring him. He was using crayon, and had coloured on the sheet completely: one large black piece of wax. Harry paused, surprised, and realized that Scorpius had taken the edge of a pair of scissors and was carefully using them to reveal the layers of colour underneath the black.
Harry just watched for awhile, enthralled both at Scorpius’ painstaking work and what it was revealing. Flashes of red in all directions, and in the centre, a bright lime green. Outlining the green was a bright yellow.
And then Scorpius stopped and put his scissors down. He appeared to be done. He stared at the swirls of colour thoughtfully, his face as unreadable as his father’s.
“Which spell is it?” Harry asked, and Scorpius jumped. “Sorry to surprise you. There aren’t any people in the scene.”
“No there aren’t,” Scorpius said shortly. “It’s not that sort of spell.”
“What kind is it?”
“The kind that works, but no one knows about.”
“Is that why you’re scratching off from black?”
Scorpius shrugged. “No. Or yes, maybe, but mostly because it’s dark magic, and black is dark.”
“You want to learn to do dark magic?”
Scorpius paled. “No, defend against it. The spell’s the yellow.”
“Have you seen dark magic, Scorpius?” Harry tried to make his voice casual.
Scorpius, however, went winter moon pale, and shook his head emphatically, after glancing over at his father, who was helping Marbella by fixing her broken crayon, and soothing her shame by making a show of the minor magic. Marbella was always up or down; she didn’t seem to have a neutral.
“So this is just… your imagination?”
“Yeah.” Scorpius looked at Harry out of the corner of his eye. “You’ve seen dark magic, haven’t you Harry?”
“Not for awhile now.” Harry hesitantly put his hand on Scorpius’ shoulder, and noticed that he was thinner than he looked. The magic aura he’d noticed in the fall had changed a bit as well – it was almost impenetrable now. The sparks and lightning which had distinguished it had almost disappeared, which meant Harry felt almost no magic at all. When it did spark, it felt unpleasant against his skin.
He began to wonder even more if Scorpius had lied about never seeing Dark magic done. And if he had seen it – recently.
As the children were putting their supplies away, Harry sat at the edge of his desk, feeling drained. He was still worn out from the holidays. He loved all his children, but being a father terrified him. He had no idea how to go about it. The nearest to a loving family he’d ever seen were the Weasleys, and none of them seemed really… well, relaxed. He’d dreamed of a quiet home, where no one made too many demands on him except to play with them and give them good advice – and of course, protect them from evildoers. Ginny told him often that his problem was he’d never lived in a family he was part of, and had unrealistic expectations. But then, she’d grown up with a full supply of rambunctious brothers and a demanding mother. She was accustomed to making demands and intervening in fights. She felt no need to stay calm and adult about it either. If Harry raised his voice to one of his kids, he reminded himself of Vernon Dursley.
For some reason, only his own children drove him to fury enough to shout. He hadn’t for years, not since he was a teenager himself. After that terrible fifth year when he seemed to walk around angry at everyone, he had learned control and almost never shouted -- not until James was a toddler. Why did he start it up again? He should be more patient – but when they did something risky or stupid, he wanted to scream and shake them and lock them in a cupboard the way…
“Dad!”
Harry’s thoughts jolted back to the present, and the familiar voice calling him. Only Albus Severus had that edgy, almost panicky, needy use of the word “dad.” James had something like a whine, but more demanding, and Lily still sounded like a generic little girl.
He blinked, and opened his eyes. “Al, what on earth are you doing here?”
“Mum wants me to learn Quidditch.”
“Answer the question, please.”
“Mum says she’s going to teach me to play Quidditch this weekend. With Viktor.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
Al’s face screwed up. “I don’t want Mum to teach me! I want you to teach me!”
“Well, Al…”. Harry pondered, torn between feeling flattered and impatient. “You know that I just live in a little room here. Even the school’s grounds aren’t that large. Your mother and Viktor will be able to teach you on a professional pitch. It’s hard to learn what you need to know without real practice on a pitch.”
“I don’t care. I just want you to teach me.”
I’m a terrible father. If it weren’t for me, Ginny and I would be living together and he could have a father and mother at the same time. We could teach him to play Quidditch together.
He shook off the old guilt feelings. “So why are you here then?” If Ginny thought Harry could persuade Al not to… well, Ginny wouldn’t think that. She knew Al as well as Harry did.
“I ran away.”
Harry stood up slowly, stared at Al, then sank into his chair with as much dignity as he could manage. James had never run away. Rose had never run away. He’d be willing to bet Scorpius had never run away. He very much doubted if Lily ever would. Only Al forced Harry to revisit his own childhood and concede that yes, in many ways, Draco Malfoy hadn’t been the only prat at Hogwarts.
Speaking of … He glanced over and saw that Draco, who had been casually standing near enough to hear all this, was now encouraging the children to put on their coats and mittens and hats and wait for their parents to apparate into the hall. Harry would at least have the necessary privacy. Thinking of what to say was something else.
“Al, did I actually hear you say you ran away?”
“Well, I Flooed away, anyway,” he sniffed. Yes, his eyes were watery. Harry’s guilt accelerated.
He knelt on the floor to look Al in the eye. “Does your mother know where you went?”
“If I told her, she’d’ve stopped me.”
“Can you think of one good reason I shouldn’t apparate you home right this minute?”
“Dad, I want to be with you. Please? I love you, Dad. I want you to teach me Quidditch.”
Harry thought, not for the first time, that there should be a manual attached to the umbilical cord as well as a placenta. He didn’t know what a good father would do. He wanted to be a good father, but …
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Harry, may I speak with you a minute?”
He nodded, and followed Draco over to the corner. Scorpius was parked out of hearing, but he kept shooting interested glances at Al, who was after all his age. Al didn’t look up, staring at the desk as if it held the secret to Quidditch.
“I welcome any ideas you have,” Harry told Draco, feeling desperate enough to let a Malfoy feel superior if it would mean a way to respond to Al that wouldn’t infuriate Ginny or teach Al something horrible.
“We have a Quidditch pitch at the Manor. You’d be welcome to come home with us and use it – I think Scorpius would enjoy it, and I haven’t been on a broom in a long while. The two of you could stay over and fly some more tomorrow. You can firecall your wife from the Manor and tell her what’s happening, and then after a couple days’ cooling off period, you can decide what you need to do about your son running away and inconveniencing you both. My parents always thought that waiting to hear the consequences of my actions was part of the punishment.”
Harry took a deep breath. “That sounds wonderful, but Ginny will be angry that I don’t just force him home.”
“Do you think that’s the right thing to do – make him go home?” There was no judgment attached to the question. Harry found it easy to think about it, from this neutral perspective.
“No, I don’t. With James, yes, but Al’s so… well, impassioned. He’d view it as a grave injustice. I think the right thing to do is keep my promise and teach him the basics, then send him home.”
“Then you just have to decide which is worse -- making your wife angry or your son unhappy.”
“She’s not my – “ Harry bit that statement back quickly. He’d been just about to tell his long time enemy the secret only five people knew. “All right, but I need to call her right away. If she’s noticed he’s gone, she’ll be worried.”
“I can stay here with both of them, if you’d like to call from here.”
For some reason, the familiar ache in the back of his neck from the weight of having no good choices was easing. The Malfoys had not been, in Harry’s opinion, decent people, but he had no question they loved their son and if they’d made him wonder for days what trouble he was in, there probably was something to be said for it. At least it was something someone’s parents had done besides yell or lock their child in a closet or put bars on the windows.
The call to Ginny did not go well. She was, in fact, royally pissed off.
“What the hellare you thinking, Harry? Albus has been bad. Verybad – he’s put himself at risk, worried me, and if he hadn’t made it through the floo system – and you know how kids can screw it up, you’ve done it yourself – and went missing, you would have been panicky. He can’t be rewarded for that!”
“You have a point,” Harry said miserably. “But he’s already feeling I abandoned him. He needs to know I never will.”
“He’s just playing on your guilt, Harry. And you have loads of guilt to play with, you Chosen Hero, you. I swear, the child belongs in Slytherin, and I keep telling you, you need a therapist.”
“And I keep asking you, which kind – a wizarding therapist with who knows what reactions to the Boy Who Lived as a client, not to mention the Prophet’s field day last time I visited one? Or a Muggle therapist who is supposed to believe – and heal -- someone who thinks he can do magic, was pursued by the greatest and most evil wizard of our time, and oh yes, managed to kill him by dying and being resurrected?”
Ginny continued her argument. Harry kept reminding himself that she cared about him, she cared about Scorpius, she just had a completely different way of running a family. Finally, he cut in.
“Ginny, we can’t argue about this all day. Draco Malfoy is watching Scorpius, and waiting for me, and I don’t want to impose on him anymore. Just this once, let’s do it my way.”
When Ginny did not seem prepared to quit her argument, Harry sighed and closed the Floo. Ginny was used to winning, and Harry was used to letting her, but this time Draco had made more sense.
Once Ginny had snapped at him, “You always seem to give in to anyone who sounds logical.”
He had snapped right back, “That’s because I encounter people like that so seldom.”
Harry massaged his temples, pinched the bridge of his nose, and with those Muggle magics warded off his incipient headache.
The time at the pitch helped even more. Harry side-along Apparated Al, and picked up a change of clothes and his broom, an old Millennium 20, in his quarters. It was the last time he’d been able to rationalize buying an expensive broom when he never flew it, and the broom was like new. Just having it in his hands was joy, and Al squealed when Harry said, “Maybe you should use this, and I can use the old broom Mal—Draco said he had.”
He was immediately sorry, in the usual parental way, for having promised more than might be considerate for Scorpius. But when he Apparated to the Manor pitch, he found Draco standing there with two brooms and a Scorpius pale with excitement.
“My dad says I can ride with him!” he said excitedly to Al.
“My dad says I can use his broom!” Al responded, the first words he’d said to Scorpius Harry knew about. Al was usually shy with strangers, and any of the guilt Harry felt about making Ginny angry fell away.
With Draco helping, it was much easier to show Al the basic Quidditch moves. Harry concentrated first on cushioning and safety charms. When James was born, Hermione’s present to him and his parents was all the results of her thorough research into safer flying. She’d found some state of the art charms just being experimented with. Thinking of the times he’d ended up in the Hospital Wing, Harry wished he’d known these at Hogwarts. On second thought, they were quite difficult, and the odds were he’d never have worked as hard to learn them as the Patronus charm.
Draco learned them quickly. After that, he became a Beater, since Seekers didn’t really interact with any other players. Harry worried how he’d do that and still keep Scorpius, who couldn’t fly in the slightest, safely on the broom.
Draco smirked. “Watch and learn, Potter,” he said. Puzzlingly, Harry didn’t find this insulting. Quidditch had always been the space where they met as rivals, rather than enemies, and this sounded like the old Draco. Harry was startled to find that he had rather missed the smirking, swaggering bully who always got to him -- especially since Harry won despite the taunts. He didn’t feel he’d particularly won at anything the last few years.
Draco charmed two Bludgers; first, removing the weight of them, so that they were more like foam rubber; second, making them respond to the movement of his hands.
“Will those hurt when they hit?” Harry asked, a bit anxious still. Who’d have ever thought, with his history of danger, he’d grow up to be a hyper-protective father? (Hermione, of course, when he’d asked her. No one else.)
“Let’s see, shall we?” Draco said, making a large circle in the air and looking over to where Harry was hovering. He moved his hand slightly, and the Bludger sped toward Harry so quickly that his usual reflexes didn’t help. The Bludger smashed him full in the face. It felt – and smelled -- spongy.
“Does that hurt?” Draco asked sweetly. Scorpius was covering his mouth with his hand, trying not to show his laughter. Al was laughing aloud, a carefree sound Harry hadn’t heard from him before.
“Thanks for your concern, Malfoy; perhaps you’d like to see for yourself.” Harry moved his own hand, and the Bludger leaped for Malfoy, who dived spectacularly so that it missed them by an inch. Scorpius screamed with excitement, and Albus cheered.
For a few minutes it was a free for all, with the two boys discovering that it was possible to hit the Bludger and send it flying in a deliberate direction. By the end of that time, Scorpius and Al were so wired that it took all of their fathers’ attention and patience to pull them back into the rules of Quidditch.
Scorpius proved to be excellent at hitting the Bludger exactly where he wanted it to go. Harry caught himself just in time before he said, “You’re a born Beater!” Al was of course anxious that he’d be doing something wrong, but he caught on quickly and went after the snitch as fiercely as Harry ever had.
After all four of them were so worn from trying to beat each other to the Snitch, which they ended up doing by tacit agreement when playing with the Bludgers grew old, Draco led them into the manor. He told Bobby, a young house elf, to show them to their rooms.
Harry washed quickly, threw on the robes he’d brought, advised Al put on the robe he’d pulled off to play but leave his dirty clothing, and followed Bobby obediently back to what appeared to be an informal sitting area. Draco wasn’t down yet, but Scorpius was, and immediately ran up to Al and started discussing Quidditch rules. Since Al seemed more than ready to talk to Scorpius, Harry left them to it and wandered about the room. There was a series of French doors leading to a terrace, and behind them were gardens in the French style, extraordinarily formal but beautifully laid out and with several exquisite fountains, each of them featuring one of the more attractive magical creatures in verdigris. Harry identified a Hippogriff, a Unicorn, and a Dragon before he stopped looking at the gardens and turned his attention to the Manor.
At certain parties, Harry had learned to fence with words and make polite small talk appropriate for strangers to report casually afterward, “Oh, yes, I met Harry Potter, quite pleasant, really.” These parties were marked by the sole presence of the upper class – not merely pure-bloods, but wealthy -- what Sirius had once, trying to explain why the Black family was so respected despite its Dark interests, called “old money”. Old Money were people who, even if they lost their entire fortune, would still be viewed as One of Us in a way New Money or the middleclass would never be. The Weasleys were never invited to such parties. The Blacks were invited as a matter of course. Harry was invited partly for his heroism, partly because Potters had come to gatherings of Old Money for centuries. Harry went to them at first because he was a hero and expected to; later because he needed their support for his school, both financial and emotional, and was trying to find parents of Squibs.
It was at these parties Harry had first begun to understand Draco Malfoy, not as a unique annoying git, but as an annoying git whose way of being annoying had a lot to do with being Old Money. When he was honest with himself, he conceded that Sirius had many similar qualities, all under the chapter heading called “Natural Privilege.” When Harry spurned Draco’s advances on the Hogwarts Express, he had not only rejected one of his own class for an inferior, he had acted neither apologetic nor defensive, implying his own class was inferior. By Old Money standards, Harry had insulted the class he sprang from.
At these same events, Harry had learned that Old Money did not employ decorators and had no interest in style. If the embroidered brocade curtains of the 18th century were working, they would stay there, right next to a chair Uncle Edward found in an Indian bazaar and obscuring a table Great Aunt Martha brought into the family when she married. While taste was valued, it had more to do with the value of each piece in a tradition, rather then how everything went together. Magical pieces might be displayed, but they were far more likely to be housed in a large Magic Room, near the Book Room, if they were at all interesting.
The Manor followed this pattern, mostly. Much of it was quite old, obviously left from previous generations of Malfoys. None of it matched; each piece was one of a kind, from what looked like a Tudor bench to a worn Aubusson on the floor. However, several new pieces had been acquired which were most unusual. Harry had seen a few pieces like them, when he was a guest in a wealthy person’s home or at a major public function at the Minister of Magic’s mansion. He’d asked about the first he’d seen, and was told it was made with a combination of Muggle carpentry and magic charms, and sold under the label Light. He always knew it immediately, because it was well-made furniture, but never simple, and with identifiable styles of paint. There were delightful designs on it, many of them moving, and always absolutely perfect for the task for which it had been designed.
A small end table, a wooden-framed chair, and a mirror all shared space in the room. The end table seemed relatively unassuming, until Bobby brought Scorpius and Al pumpkin juice and placed it on the table. It immediately grew holders around the glasses, lifted into the air, and floated to where the boys sat on the floor near the fireplace, beginning a game of Exploding Snap. When Scorpius said, “Come here,” patting the floor as if he were calling a dog, the table obediently landed between them, and then transfigured its legs until it was at a perfect height for reaching the juice and putting their cards on. A large yellow lab, the dog Scorpius had named Putter, raised its head, stared at the table thoughtfully, then lowered it and went back to sleep.
“Won’t the explosions hurt the table?” Harry asked Scorpius, imagining the fierce reaction of any parent to the loss of what he knew was a spectacularly costly piece of furniture.
“Nah,” Scorpius said cheerfully, squinting at his cards. “There are all kinds of charms that protect it from things. My dad says there’s no point in having beautiful furniture if you have to worry about using it.”
Harry vividly remembered the Dursleys, where everything nice had been forbidden to him because he might damage it. There were plastic mats over the high-traffic areas of the carpet, and covers for every appliance in the kitchen. He suspected that, if the telly weren’t on all the time, Petunia would have made a dust cover for it as well. He preferred the Malfoy point of view.
On the other hand, the Dursleys had never been wealthy enough to own a Light piece, even if they’d been a Wizarding family.
The colours on all three pieces were in the blue-violet-red range, a little brighter than Harry would have thought Malfoy’s colour preferences would be. Perhaps this was evidence of his wife’s taste.
He began to look at the mirror, intrigued by the landscape of stars and mountains carved into it and painted. It reminded him of Art Nouveau – the mirror frame itself delicate and strong, the colours almost other-worldly, midnight-blue sky similar to Parrish’ colouring. As he reached to run his finger around the carved lake, which had a very small squid swimming in it which suggested he should recognize the view, he heard a cough behind him.
It reminded him unpleasantly of Umbridge – a “hem hem!” which would only get worse if ignored. Umbridge was in Azkaban, but Harry still tensed.
He turned around and saw a woman carved of ice standing there.
At second glance, she was not quite so cold – there was an expression on her face which looked borderline annoyed, in fact. But she was perfect as an ice carving, and nearly as clear – blue white face, white hair which made Malfoy’s look yellow-brown, grey eyes and prominent bones. Only once had the carving wand slipped – she had a dimple in her chin which, while not a flaw, certainly was not as elegant as the rest of her. She was wearing midnight blue robes and a silver chain around her neck, from which hung a pendant of crystal. She also wore a cap of silver wires, each crossed wire emphasized with a clear crystal bead. She was unsmiling but not frowning, she was beautiful – and Harry had never felt so uncomfortable with any stranger. Somehow her beauty reminded him of Bellatrix, which wasn’t fair to this woman but triggered his defences.
“Hello,” he said awkwardly.
“I am Atropa Malfoy,” she said, voice as cold as the rest of her. “You are clearly a guest of my husband’s.”
If communication includes providing new information, Harry thought, the second statement was most certainly not communication – in fact, it almost checkmated it. This was Scorpius’ mother?
He hesitated only an instant. One advantage of being a famous hero was that one could not help acquiring certain social skills from the endless procession of formal dinners and dances.
“How do you do?” he said, calling on all his charm. “Then you must be Scorpius’ mother. I’m his teacher, Harry Potter.”
The unsmiling face definitely moved onto the frowning side of the scale. “His teacher? You mean at that school for Squibs?”
Harry glanced out of the corner of his eye to where the two boys had stopped their Snap game and were listening. Al was wide-eyed and a bit shocked. Scorpius had gone even paler, except for bright red along his cheekbones. Every protective instinct in Harry rose to help him.
“We do not consider them Squibs,” he said, encouraging ice into his own voice. “They are Magically Challenged in various ways, and need help.”
Atropa sniffed. “A Squib is a Squib, and in Scorpius’ case, it does not matter. My son is not and cannot be viewed as someone with any magic problems. His father simply indulges Scorpius’ fears of inadequacy.”
Harry felt his hand twitch for his wand, and took firm hold on his temper. “So you do not believe that Scorpius is challenged in that way?”
“Not at all. He was a little blocked once, but that was because his father put fears into his head. I have worked with him and he is fine. Which is as it should be – he has excellent lineage.”
“All pure-blood, I presume?”
She stared at him, and sneered. “What else?”
“I see.” Harry casually walked over to where Scorpius was sitting. The child’s hands were trembling, and his eyes were wide. The edges watered. “Scorpius, I realized that we flew around the pitch today a lot, but we never walked it. Al would probably understand the set-up better if he saw it from the ground. Would you be so kind as to give him a tour?”
Al, startled, opened his mouth. Then his eyes narrowed and he closed it again. He jumped to his feet and grabbed Scorpius’ hand. “Come on, Scorp, show me the pitch. Let’s see how long it takes to run around it.”
He did not let go of Scorpius’ hand as they left the room. Harry had never felt prouder of him.
Then he turned to Atropa, and did not try to disguise his fury. “Are you trying to undercut your son, or is that simply a secondary benefit of bragging about his family?” She blinked and stared. “You are horribly insulting. The Zabinis talked about how . . . how clueless you were at school, but I never understood how truly socially incapable you are.”
“Sounds like a case of pot and kettle,” Harry snarled. “Scorpius has problems using his magic. That doesn’t make him less than “fine” in any way. He’s a wonderful boy, and you should be proud of him – but pretending he hasn’t got a problem doesn’t mean it’s going to go away. You knew that, or you wouldn’t have allowed him to come to us.”
“ ’Allowed’ him? I certainly did not! His father indulges him far too much, and he is the one who gave in to Scorpius’ constant nagging, as always. Scorpius is completely undisciplined, and has learned how to be helpless despite my best efforts. We have been discussing this over the Christmas holidays, but Draco simply disregarded my wishes, as usual; in this case, I suspect, with your encouragement. No doubt you have heard an extremely poisoned version of my concerns.”
“Draco has never even mentioned you.” She tried to hide the fury in her face at that, and Harry thought how ironic it was, that he’d thought she was the good influence in Scorpius’ life. He was beginning to understand why Draco and Scorpius had returned to school so subdued. No doubt the “discussion” as she called it, had been incessant lecturing.
“Well, he has mentioned you,” Atropa snapped back at him. “Says that you have fulfilled your potential, and –“
“Ah, my dear.” Draco’s most arrogant drawl cut her off. “I see you and Mr. Potter have met. I’m sorry – we played Quidditch this afternoon, and the time got away from us. I thought we’d have a small, informal dinner. You are of course welcome to join us.”
“Thank you, but Father and I have a charity dance, as you may remember,” Atropa sniffed. “You were unwilling to attend, as I recall.”
“Your memory is excellent as always, Atropa.”
Harry came to two conclusions. First, that Atropa was furious at Draco, and seemed to make a habit of that. Second, that Draco disliked her thoroughly.
“It was good to meet you,” he lied, and did not take her hand.
She looked at him with the unsmiling face again. Obviously, she was not as angry at him as she was her husband. “Do call again,” she said vaguely, and swept out of the room, leaving behind her the scent of dried roses and a trace of the same darkness Harry had detected in Scorpius’ magical aura.
As soon as Atropa left, Draco took Harry’s elbow and said, “Come with me.” Harry obediently followed him down a corridor to a smaller room, a little more formal but somehow welcoming, with squashy chairs and walls of books. Draco waved Harry to a chair, then opened a cabinet and stared at it.
“Firewhiskey? Muggle scotch? Butter beer?”
Harry opted for a small glass of Firewhiskey, and Draco did the same. They sipped it in silence for several minutes. Harry was feeling guilty for snarling at Draco’s wife, although he couldn’t actually regret it. He remembered too well how he’d felt as a child, disliked by his own family.
Draco lounged, legs crossed, in a slightly shabby leather chair, and stared at his glass. The silence was not unfriendly. Eventually Draco took a deep breath and drank the last of his whiskey.
“More?”
Harry shook his head. Draco poured himself another half glass.
He took a sip, stared at it, and abruptly laughed. “It was rather pleasant to see the old Potter from school,” he observed, and then actually looked at Harry. “I missed the fire.”
Harry flushed. “Scorpius is a wonderful boy,” he said. “He was getting upset by what she was saying.”
“So you found an excuse to send him out of the room and launched yourself at Atropa.” Draco’s voice remained neutral. “The rest of us are far too terrified to stand up to her, at least directly.”
“You apparently stood up to her enough to get Scorpius into the school,” Harry replied.
“Well, yes, but that was accomplished with avoidance and deafness,” Malfoy explained coolly.
Harry snickered, then sobered. “I’m sorry I was rude to your wife.”
“My dear Harry,” Malfoy drawled, “have I said anything which would suggest that I am less than delighted that you were rude to Atropa? If so, I do apologize for misrepresenting myself.”
“Did you hear everything after the boys left?”
“I heard everything. I was in the hall when I saw Atropa enter. With her, it’s always better to assess the situation before entering it.”
“I can understand that,” Harry said. “What made you interrupt at that particular time, then?”
Malfoy snorted. “I was concerned that Atropa was going to find ways of insulting you based on what little she knows of you from Scorpius’ and my reports.”
“And you weren’t sure I could take care of myself.”
“Well, she is the mother of my son. I wouldn’t want her dead or transfigured into a slug.”
Harry did laugh at that. “I’ve learned a bit more control than I used to have, Draco. Facing young children every day forces you to practice not hexing people who annoy you.”
“Ah, that would explain why I never acquired such an ability. Scorpius is not a challenge by himself.” Draco poured them each another finger or so of Firewhiskey. “Well, since Atropa is out for the evening, we will certainly have to entertain ourselves. Shall we go find the boys and see what they wish to eat?”
The rest of the evening should have been pleasant, but Harry felt the familiar prickle on the back of his neck. Part was surely just adrenalin from feeling so protective of Scorpius. It was indeed the old Potter – the “Chosen One” lashing out at anyone who threatened someone he was supposed to protect, but feeling oh, so inadequate to the task. And partly it was Al showing up. Harry couldn’t help feeling as if he were in the middle of a quarrel, with no right answers, and it was panic all over again – he wouldn’t be able to decide and someone would die and it would be his fault . . . .
He pushed his food around his plate, trying to disguise how little of it he was eating. He looked up once to see Al watching him, looking worried in a way no 9 year old should look. He was a terrible father. Al was just like Harry, and Harry’s parents at least had the excuse of being dead.
He rubbed his eyes. Headache coming on. He hoped to hell Draco was sleeping behind solid doors and walls. He did not want someone hearing him having nightmares. Draco would either be snotty as hell, which would at least be familiar, or he’d be like Ron and Hermione, fussing over him. Harry preferred to be alone when he lost control, though it was nice spending time with Ginny afterwards, because she didn’t make him talk about it if he didn’t want to. It was going to be difficult to reassure Al, who usually slept through Harry’s screaming because the first spell Ginny ever did when Harry started those dreams was Silencio.
“Dad, Scorpius says I can sleep with him. Can I?”
Well, one problem solved.
“Yes, but don’t stay up all night talking.”
He watched them run out of the room, laughing, and forced a smile. “You know, I think I’m a bit worn out from the week. Do you mind if I go off to bed myself?”
Draco stood, and helped Harry out of the chair with a firm hand under his arm. “Not at all. Are you feeling all right? You look pale.”
“Yes, just . . . just tired.” Draco conducted him to his room, which seemed rather formal, but then, this was Malfoy Manor. He had a fleeting thought at the door that Draco might come in, but his host simply rubbed his shoulder, said, “Have a good night,” and left him there.
Harry ignored all the grooming chores he should be doing, pulled his shoes off, and threw himself into the large, welcoming bed.
He woke up two hours later to cold sweat and the echoes of someone screaming. What woke him was not the forests of death he was running through, but a hand on his arm.
Harry still slept with his wand in his hand. Any habit dies hard, but that one had kept him alive. He raised the wand and suddenly the hand closed around his wrist.
“Wake up, Potter.”
Malfoy sounded calm and certain of himself, and that, more than the pressure on his wrist, stopped Harry from snapping out the first hex he could think of. He froze, Reducto still on his lips.
The hand on his wrist remained for a few seconds more, gripping painfully, and then relaxed. “Are you awake enough not to slice me to ribbons?”
“I never . . . “ But Harry knew better than to complete the denial. It would be untrue.
“Lumos.” He blinked, and Draco sat down on the edge of the bed. He was wearing a slightly shabby, fluffy robe which had dancing snitches all over it. The robe was a light blue, the colour Harry’s Aunt Petunia called “baby blue,” and the snitches were in various neon colours. Harry blinked again.
Draco snorted. “Christmas gift from Scorpius,” he said. “With the economic and transportation assistance of my mother. When he was six.”
Harry remembered one of Dudley’s favourite insults: “You’re ugly and your mama dresses you funny.” He had no idea where Dudley’d acquired it. In this case, the first part was certainly untrue – but the second part seemed to fit, although Scorpius had probably picked out the robe.
“It looks . . . like a little boy who loved you gave it to you,” he said truthfully, forcing down a laugh.
“Well, it’s warm and he likes to see me wear it,” Draco explained, as coolly as if he were wearing the maroon velvet brocade with gold trim which Harry would have guessed was his nightwear. “At any rate, pleased as I am to provide you with midnight amusement, why were you screaming my house down?”
Harry flushed. “It wasn’t intentional.”
Draco sat back against the footboard of the bed and crossed his legs. His slippers were leather lined with fur, a bit above ankle height, and Harry had a sudden urge to pet them. He looked as if he were about to begin an odd meditation. Perhaps tantric, Harry thought hopefully, then reminded himself he was no longer a teenager and he hadn’t liked Malfoy that way when he was.
Draco simply stared at him for a moment thoughtfully. “You don’t like people to know you have bad dreams, or you don’t want me to know?”
“People. Including you,” Harry added hastily.
“Why not?”
Torn out of sleep and questioned matter-of-factly, Harry blurted out the answer. “Because people fuss. I’ve had bad dreams most of my life, and none of them killed me.”
“The Dark Lord?”
“Was a source of a lot of them, yeah. And I suppose he still is – leftovers from the War, you know?”
“I know.” Harry could see that he probably did.
“You must have your own memories,” he said tentatively. This house, after all, had been where Voldemort lived that last year.
Draco nodded. “You aren’t sleepy, are you?”
“Hell no. I’m running on an adrenaline high, between the dream and being woken up from it.”
“Come on, then.”
Draco took him quite a distance – into another wing. This room looked as though once it might have been a small ballroom, but it looked more like a warehouse to Harry’s eyes. The wooden floor was scuffed and scratched, even occasionally gouged to raw wood. There were sawhorses and piles of lumber all over. Most of it was raw; a few boards were stained casually and roughly; the stain was uneven and a few boards had more than one colour on it. A large worktable with multiple wood clamps around its edge stood on one side. On it were several pieces of wood. Tools hung along the side wall – a large quantity of them, including, to Harry’s surprise, an electric drill, staple gun, and sander. The wall next to it had a massive wooden cabinet with battered drawers, each one labelled “nails 6,” or “nails 10” or “bolts 2”. Harry found that mysterious. His uncle Vernon had never allowed him down in his workshop, but Harry had peeked in once or twice and nothing had been labelled – or neat, for that matter. Aunt Petunia seemed to be the tidy one.
This was neat in a very used way. Harry thought about the difference, and finally put his finger on it. This wasn’t neat to impress anyone. It was neat because its owner was by nature methodical, and put his tools away. He glanced at Draco, trying to reconcile all the different Malfoys he’d never met in school with the one he’d known.
“Is this your workshop?”
“Yes.” Draco shrugged off his robe and proved to be wearing a faded t-shirt and flannel pyjama pants. Harry wondered what magic made the ordinary night clothes look so enticing. Night wandering with an attractive man carried a strong potential for embarrassing him.
Draco did not seem to be aware of Harry’s minor lust. He was arranging the boards on the table carefully.
“Come here, Harry.”
Harry obediently came over and took the board handed him. It was about two feet wide, a quarter inch thick, and clearly not a cheap piece of wood, judging from the grain. There were comments engraved into the bare wood: “You’re alive, so it’s a good day,” and “Worse things happen at sea,” and Harry saw other mottos of that sort on the other boards. Besides the mottos, there were carefully incised flowers which looked vaguely tropical.
They also looked familiar. “This is like the Light pieces in the family room!”
Draco’s smile was a bit smug, but probably deservedly so. “It had better be. I wouldn’t care to think I was losing my touch.”
“You make that furniture?” Harry could not believe a Malfoy who worked with his hands and sold products.
“You sound surprised.”
Draco stretched before he answered; not as if he were posing for Harry, just as if he were feeling stiff. But Harry had to look away. Draco was far more fit than he’d been at Hogwarts. Apparently physical work agreed with him.
“You do know that after the war, the Malfoy estate was sequestered? We were allowed to live here, but we had no access to any liquid assets.”
“Yes, of course. Even the Daily Prophet couldn’t get that wrong.”
“We needed to eat, and I needed . . . something to do. “ He picked up a piece of sandpaper and handed it to Harry. “This is extra fine – just to make sure the carving didn’t create a place which someone could catch their robes on. Go over it slowly, and try to get it into the carved lines too.” He picked up another piece of sandpaper and a board of his own. “My sixth year was absolutely horrible, only trumped by the seventh year. But there was one thing which I actually liked doing – repairing that cabinet. While I worked on it, I had a thought – the piece was broken both because the magic wasn’t working right, and the physical cabinet itself was damaged. I had to fix each problem before it could work. Don’t worry, you can’t hurt the piece if you sand it lightly. It’s wood; very forgiving.”
Harry realized he’d been rather nervously brushing the sandpaper across an edge. He concentrated on seeing how it worked. He couldn’t see a difference, but the wood under his hands felt different after he rubbed it lightly with the sandpaper and then used the cloth Draco handed him to wipe the dust away. Not significantly different, just – slightly better.
“So, since Malfoy Manor had a plethora of old damaged furniture, I took it apart and started experimenting with it. I learned a lot about craftsmanship when I was doing it. Magic is wonderful, but too many use it to cut corners. I’ve been in houses where they’d just added on rooms by magic. The cupboard taught me that if it’s defying laws of gravity, the magic’s going to deteriorate quickly. People who cut corners are living in death-traps.”
Harry thought of the Weasleys’ Burrow, and a faint anxiety stirred.
Draco glanced at him, and smiled – the nice smile that Harry had never known Malfoy had. “Oh, it’s not imminent, and if you maintain the magic, it’ll be fine – but leave it to deteriorate a year or two and it falls apart. My mother’s cousins grew up in a truly horrible house, with all sorts of dark magic affecting it, but it was built in traditional ways, and no one could actually be killed in it – by the house falling apart, I mean.”
“Grimmauld Place?”
“That’s the name. Oh, you’re connected to that somehow, aren’t you? You donated it to the Ministry for a museum and archive related to Voldemort.”
“Yes.” Harry had discovered that he liked sanding. He did not want to think about Grimmauld Place or his connection to it while doing this soothing work.
Draco seemed to understand. He stopped talking then, and for almost an hour they simply carefully sanded, then wiped with a slightly damp cloth.
“Couldn’t you do this by magic? I mean, it wouldn’t deteriorate, would it?”
“Probably not, but I like to do things the right way.” Draco leaned back and said, “Aguamenti.” He tipped his wand over his mouth and let the water pour in.
“That’s an impressive trick.”
Draco laughed. “Not really. The impressive part is how many growing boys can do it without their mothers seeing and telling them to use a glass. Or later, their wives.”
Harry remembered trying to get water in the goblet, the first time he went looking for Horcruxes. Would his last adventure with Dumbledore have ended up differently if he’d grown up with magic, and could have just poured water into his mentor’s mouth?
Why did everything pleasant end up in an unpleasant memory? He put down the board and clenched his hands.
“Open your mouth, Potter.” He looked up, surprised, and a stream of water was tipped into his mouth. He closed it in shock, and the stream continued over his hair, glasses, and bare chest (Harry saw no need for a shirt in bed.) He jumped from the cold, and Draco laughed.
“Thought you might be getting sleepy.”
“You lie, Malfoy, like a rug,” he snarled, without actually minding.
Draco Accio’ed a towel and let Harry dry himself, then called a shirt from his closet. It was thickly woven, incredibly soft cotton, and dark green. Harry put it on and revelled in the feeling. Maybe he should obey Ginny’s nagging and Viktor’s advice and buy some clothes.
They spent a couple more hours at work on what Draco said would be a mirror cabinet. He showed Harry the paints he used – magic, so that the carvings could move – and let Harry rub the first layer of primer carefully into his board.
“This takes a lot longer without magic,” Harry commented finally, yawning.
“Yes, well, it lasts a lot longer too,” Draco said. “Looks like you’re ready to try sleeping again.”
“I guess so.” He realized he hadn’t thought about anything but paint and wood and how to put things together for hours. “Thanks, Draco.”
Draco flushed a little. “It’s all right. I figured . . . It’s a good way to block out the ghosts of screaming. There were a lot, during the war..”
“Was it terrible?”
“Yes. And now it’s over.”
Harry decided not to press that. “And you make furniture works of art using Muggle techniques and magic, even though the Ministry released your property. Does this mean you don’t mind Muggles as much?”
“Yes, but not so much because of the wood working, although that was interesting. It was Scorpius.” He looked as though he wished he hadn’t said that.
Harry pushed. “Because he might not fit so well into the magical world?”
“It’s hard to look down at people with little or no magic when one of them is your own son.” He rubbed his eyes. “When I know that more than anything else in the whole world, he’d like to be able to do the things I can do without thinking about it – get a drink of water, fly a broom, Accio the book I was reading earlier. That his whole life . . .” Draco’s voice thickened, but he continued, “his whole life, he’ll have to be careful and plan where he’s spending his time and with whom, because he’s not . . . he’s not normal.”
The last few words were whispered. Then Draco shook himself and said, “Time to sleep. And you’re going to need to change your pyjama trousers – they’re still damp.”
“I’ll have you, Draco,” Harry said cheerfully, deliberately harking back to the threats of a much younger and far less wise Malfoy. “You’ll be wet too, before I’m through with you.”
Draco’s eyes shuttered, and then Harry couldn’t see him because he’d shut off the lights in both the workroom and the hall. “I have no doubt you will, Potter,” he said, a hint of something in his voice Harry couldn’t quite identify. “I have no doubt I willbe.”
Harry circled above the tree at the top of the hill above the school. Its flowers looked like a bowl of popcorn. After admiring the fluffy white blossoms for awhile, he got back to flying. He was trying to get into shape because Albus Severus was determined to try out for Quidditch in the fall, his first year, which meant that summer promised to be Quidditch intensive. James, already an excellent Keeper with a bone structure he’d inherited from his Weasley mother, was supportive, but only if Al didn’t compete with him.
Which is pretty much a summary of their relationship, Harry thought wryly. Now he knew more about raising siblings, he thought his relationship with Dudley had actually been pretty typical in a family which favoured one child over the other. One of these days, he’d have to look him up, now that he knew Dudley had no more been the spawn of the devil than, say, Malfoy.
He smiled at that thought. He’d seen quite a bit of Draco the last few months. Scorpius and Al had become co-conspirators in life, and after Al had paid for his runaway transgressions by being grounded from flying for two weeks, every weekend they weren’t together was a weekend lost. They’d both gone quite Quidditch mad, or at least flying mad. At first, that meant Draco was also perforce Quidditch mad, since he had to fly for Scorpius. But one gray morning when their fathers both seemed far more interested in coffee and silence then getting out to the pitch, they had discovered that Al could fly Scorpius just as easily as their fathers could, and it was a lot more fun for everyone that way. After that, Harry and Draco had peaceful weekends with the occasional, “Come watch us, Dad! We’ve figured out how to fly upside down and dance in tandem!”
Since Harry, at least, preferred not to know when his son was attempting suicide-by-experiment, he tried not to think how the boys were spending their time.
The weekends James and Lily also came were much more contentious. James deigned to show his little brother and his friend the right way to fly, which led to shouting from an Albus Severus who saw no reason why James should tell him what to do simply because of an accident of birth. Scorpius, on the other hand, admired Al’s brother, and thought he probably knew everything, since James was on the Quidditch team. That of course simply made Al angrier. Lily, whom Harry suspected more and more had been cloned by Hermione and left at St. Mungo’s mislabelled, found Quidditch boring and sat in the stands with a warming charm and a book, simply adding an umbrella when it was raining, since she had not yet mastered Impervius.
Draco had watched the boys happily quarrelling and Lily happily reading, and punched Harry’s arm, lightly.
“Come on, Potter,” he said. “We need a project.”
After some debate, the project turned out to be a table for the school. The students each ate in their own classrooms, primarily because the large central room had no suitable furniture. There was an old Muggle table, but for the amount of children they had now, it took up way too much space and somehow made the place echoing and unfriendly. On the other hand, as word got out, new children were coming and it seemed likely they’d need the larger table soon, or perhaps more than one.
“We’ll make one that will work however many there are,” Draco said cheerfully. He always seemed much happier making design decisions than relationship negotiations. That probably explained why he was still married. “We can build the charms for expanding and shrinking into it – we’ll just have to figure out how it’ll know.”
“How it’ll know? A teacher could . . . “ The staff at the school had been discussing what size the table should be, although it was so old that shrinking and enlarging it had over time made it rather shaky.
“Harry, the school’s for Squibs.”
“Magically challenged.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I think magical power should as much as possible be built into the objects of the school, so the kids won’t feel helpless. It’s also a great thing for me to practice on. When Scorpius grows up, I want him to have whatever he needs to live comfortably in a magic environment – to be as normal as possible. And then I’ll market that furniture so that other wizards’ children can have it too.”
It occurred to Harry, as they adjourned to the library and started sorting through books on charms to find table-appropriate ones, that Draco might not hesitate to use a hurtful word, such as Squib, but spent much of his time trying to make things easier for people he cared about. Perhaps that was what Crabbe and Goyle had found good about his friendship, not just his father’s influence.
After that, every weekend was spent on table design. Draco was a perfectionist. Sometimes Harry had to stomp outside after an argument and simply fly around the pitch – or over the countryside – to calm down after Draco would say, with all Hermione’s arrogance but without her tact, “Well, yes, a second rate table wouldn’t have drawers in it – but wouldn’t it be useful to have them?” or even, “Potter, you have the imagination of the offspring of a house elf and a Blast-Ended Skrewt.”
Draco never apologized, nor did Harry. But when Harry got back from storming the countryside, there would be tea and excellent scones, with his favourite blackberry jam, waiting for him.
When Draco got furious, he’d take a piece of wood and burn or carve designs into it. The activity took as long as Harry’s storming, but somewhere in the process he’d move from angry to pleased with himself. “Come see this, Harry.” All would be as it had been. Harry preferred fighting with Malfoy to any of the Weasleys, who seemed to want him to stick around so they could yell. Harry hated being yelled at. Then they wanted to apologize and hug him and talk about it. Harry preferred avoiding that too.
Harry slanted to a landing by the school. Of course it had no Quidditch pitch, but he thought they should put together a cricket or football field. The children needed something. He could ask Draco to start it tomorrow – it was Friday, and he’d be working in class. Draco might enjoy coming up with a new sport which resembled the rules of Quidditch but was played on the ground – or maybe even a combination of on the ground and in the air. Then all Wizarding children could play the game together, and everyone feel useful. Al was determined Scorpius would be able to fly by himself by fall. He had somehow got it into his head that they would be going to Hogwarts together.
Harry was so busy thinking about adding American basketball to the mix, and wondering how to persuade Al not to set Scorpius up for failure, he was completely unprepared for Hermione’s “Hi, Harry.” He managed to avoid swerving into the tree whose top he had recently been admiring, and stopped abruptly just above the ground.
“Hello, Hermione.” There was no point reproving her; Hermione just didn’t understand flying enough to avoid distraction risks.
“I’ve got news about the magic gene.” She seemed to be glowing. Harry forgot his irritation and sent his broom off to its shed.
“Tell.”
“Let’s sit down somewhere private.”
“All right. But I need a shower before I sit anywhere in the school – maybe outside?”
She nodded, and Harry transfigured chairs from tree roots, then made a table, growing it out of the ground to make sure that it didn’t wobble. Hermione nodded approvingly, though she refitted the back and added a cushion to the seat of her chair before she sat.
“Remember when we used to sit on the ground?”
“What I remember best is when we slept on the ground. That’s when I got my first inkling that my body wouldn’t do just anything I wanted it to. Or it would, but it complained afterwards like Malfoy in Care of Magical Creatures.”
“Nice segue, Harry, it’s actually Scorpius Malfoy I want to talk about.”
“All right.”
Hermione put on her reading glasses – just for short distances, she’d said ruefully, admitting to another age deterioration – and looked at her stack of papers. She’d decided a long time ago that rolls of parchment were fine for children, but she needed papers that didn’t find it easy to roll off the desk in quantity.
“All right, first let’s review what we’ve been working on.” That was Hermione’s tactful way of saying to Harry (or Ron) “You never seem able to remember anything important, so try to get this back into your consciousness.”
“We decided to check further on Scorpius’ aura, as you call it.” Hermione looked Harry directly in the eye. “Since no one but you seems able to see or sense these things, it felt rather weird to look for something that maybe you were imagining.”
“I told you, the power was one of the dubious presents I got –“
“—When Voldemort died. I know, I know. It still makes research an act of faith, which is not what it’s supposed to be, dear. But I did it because I do believe you, and then . . . well then, I started finding mentions of it.”
Harry sat up straighter. “What kind of mentions?”
Hermione frowned. “It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with squi . . . magically challenged people.”
“Hermione, just make your point. Nobody’s listening.”
She nodded. “Fine. The point is, after you mentioned how Scorpius’ aura felt, I decided to see if it might be in among the darker magics. The fact you didn’t like how it felt suggests that. Your new abilities seem to centre on facing darker powers.”
They’d had that discussion. Harry knew the theory why. He nodded.
“So the books I’m finding hints in are older ones. Grimoires and such.”
Not good. “What kind of facts?”
“Let me go back a bit in the research, Harry.”
I’m not liking this already, Harry thought. “Go on.”
“We test every student who enters the school with the Malleus Maleficorum, you know that.”
“How could I not? The first time I tried it, Augustus Hallowby kicked me. ”
“Well, that was because you hit the knee reflex, not the magic reflex – it was your own fault.”
It was an old argument. Harry didn’t pursue it.
“Scorpius’ magic level was unexpected.”
Hitting a child’s knee lightly with a silver hammer triggered a series of entries on a chart Hermione had charmed beforehand. Teachers were not encouraged to look at the charts until a second test was done, two years later, to avoid bias working with the students.
“Unexpected? They’re all unexpected, Hermione. Wildly varying and inconsistent – a talent for potions but none for charms, a . . . “
“Unexpected because he had absolutely none.”
Harry put a finger on his mouth and sat back in his chair. After a prolonged silence, he finally found something to say. “That’s impossible.”
“Why impossible?”
“Draco talks about Scorpius’ baby magic. I was not especially strong – he was still on the low side of magic abilities – but he had some. Magic gets stronger after babyhood, not weaker. Never weaker.”
“Unless there’s a magical accident.”
“Are you saying Scorpius had a magical accident?”
Hermione shook her head. “All the ratings are at zero – every single one.”
The Malleus Maleficorum was Hermione’s own invention, and therefore perfect. They’d started talking in faculty meetings about marketing it, with a strong possibility of raising enough money to make the school self-sufficient. Harry was perfectly willing to continue paying for it out of his own pocket – or more precisely, his parents’ Gringotts’ vault – but he liked the idea of the school becoming an independent institution, not dependent on any donor.
The Malleus measured various magic abilities, for charms, spells, transfigurations, jinxes, potions, nurturing and harvesting magical plants, raising magical animals, and other attributes which drew on innate magic to be successful. Sometimes a child might be hopeless at wand work, but have real talent for growing plants – as witness Neville Longbottom, Harry thought. It was still new, only a few years old, but it had already proved useful for helping guide children to their strengths, creating magic exercises for their weaknesses, and most important from a long range perspective, determining if all the work the staff did changed anything. The verdict so far was cautiously optimistic.
Hermione had let Harry name it for his birthday. It amused him to name it after a famous document advising how to identify and kill witches. Hermione had rolled her eyes; Ron had laughed. It stuck.
“How many get zero ratings in anything?”
“Usually with the most challenged, there are one or two zero ratings. I think with more adjustment the Malleus might let us differentiate between absolutely no magic and only a tiny bit, and we’d find out there were no actual zero ratings. I’m going to try this out on Muggles when I think of a way to ethically find some test subjects. I’m betting that most Muggles will be above zero, but not a whole lot.”
“And Scorpius is at zero in everything.” Harry thought about this. “All right, now tell me how your recent research fits in.”
“There’s no way to completely, totally, absolutely strip someone of their magic. There will always be traces.”
“So with a better instrument . . . “
“Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
“You say there’s no way, but Scorpius has no magic. What’s the connection?”
“You can’t eliminate it, but you can redirect it.”
“Redirect it? You mean – deliberately?”
Hermione firmed her lips. “Harry, I think something else is using Scorpius’ magic. And whatever that something is, it’s Dark.”
Hours later, sitting in Harry’s small flat with a nearly empty pot of tea before them, Harry pulled his already messy hair into tufts. “So you’re saying that there are methods to use others’ magic without their permission and while they’re alive?”
“Yes, and they’re all . . . well, evil. Sort of like using someone else’s body, only infinitely worse. Magic is who we are. It drives us, it’s inextricably connected with all our bodily functions. Wizards live longer than Muggles because of it; the children we are working with are condemned to lives basically as long as Muggles, no more, unless our research produces results. Magic attracts other wizards to us; we don’t just have pheromones, we have . . . well, they don’t have a word for it here, but let’s call them meta-pheromones, or maybe meta-magical-pheromones.”
“That,” Harry groaned, “sounds like a line from a Disney musical. Not one of the good ones.”
“At any rate, taking one’s magic is taking away life and health, not just a talent. And I am wondering why anyone would bother – after all, Scorpius doesn’t seem to have had much to begin with.”
“Spite? Revenge?”
“If so, it would have to be someone practiced in Dark magic with an axe to grind against the Malfoys. Do you know anyone like that?”
“Not personally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot. After all, a Malfoy saved my life and helped me beat the Dark Lord – twice.”
“Could they get near Scorpius?”
“Not with Draco around.” Harry grinned at the thought of what would happen to whomever tried. Draco might have calmed down a bit with age, but he still had the fierceness he’d had when trying to Crucio Harry fifth year, as far as his son was concerned. “And I wouldn’t care to cross his mother, either.”
“You said she was an awful woman.”
“She is. And an awful wife. And probably an awful mother. But no one would call her magically incompetent, I think, and she’s possessive. She doesn’t even like it when Draco decides anything about Scorpius. Not that she has much choice.”
“Why not?” Hermione asked.
Harry bit down on his impulsive first sentence, “Because she’s not like you, Hermione, and Draco is definitely not like Ron.” He searched through the bits Draco had let fall about his family life to find a reasonable explanation.
“She’s a pure-blood – second daughter of one of the minor European families. Although it was an arranged marriage, apparently she was really excited and pleased to be asked. Draco says she didn’t really get what she expected, though – not a leader in magic whose father was reputed to be the Dark Lord’s right hand man. Just a cabinet maker who putters, as he put it.”
“He seems much pleasanter that way.”
“I think coming to terms with the fact that he didn’t have to be like Lucius, but could do what he liked, has made all the difference. He’s still ambitious, of course – but his ambition is to be a permanently famous name in furniture making, like . . . oh, I don’t know. Chippendale, maybe.”
“I can see that she’d be disappointed in her ambitions.”
“Which means she needs to get her ambitions realized through her son. And from what little I’ve seen of Atropa, she’s absolutely determined for him to be a successful wizard. Which means anyone using his magic would be stealing from her, personally.”
“I can tell you now – take the “probably” out of her being an awful mother. It’s certain.”
Harry snickered a bit at that, then got serious again. “So what we know about Scorpius is that he has no magic at all? But I felt it.”
“How did it feel?”
Harry thought about this. “Like . . . like an electric wire shorting out, I suppose. The Dursleys used to have a lamp that Uncle Vernon insisted was very expensive and well-made, and it did look nice. But a bulb in it would blow up unexpectedly when they turned it on – not every time, you know, but within a month or so. When it was working, it flickered a little. Scorpius is like that, except the flickering goes on all the time, and I haven’t felt him short out yet. He’s also managed some of the charms and easier spells.”
“When is his magic stronger or weaker?”
“This isn’t a measurable thing, like your Maleficus, you know. Just my impressions. It felt stronger every day, really, until the hols. Then when he came back, it felt . . . almost not there. Now I feel it again. Also, it’s less stormy. There aren’t as many . . . lightning flashes.”
Hermione frowned. “I’m getting confused by this metaphor, Harry. You’re comparing his power to electricity, and the lack of it to lightning.”
Harry smiled apologetically. She was right but he . . . was also right. “I can’t describe it any better. Sometimes it’s like a weak current which can work a light bulb, but dimmer. There’s another power in there too, and sometimes it increases the power, but other times it just . . . overcomes it.”
Hermione was silent for nearly a full minute, still frowning. Then she said, “Is there any possibility Malfoy could be experimenting with Scorpius?”
"Of course not. Draco’s not like that.”
“Are you certain?”
“I’d stake my life on it.”
“Would you stake Scorpius’ life?”
“What are you saying, Hermione?”
“It would take a lot of power to achieve, but what you’re describing sounds like an Augeo Potentia potion which didn’t take very well.”
“What’s an Augeo Potentia potion?”
“It’s very old – not even Hogwarts’ restricted section would have a book with such a recipe in it. It’s been banned for over a millennium. I only ran into it because I was researching ways to enhance or remove magical power. I thought the magic might have a connection to our project. This one is one of the Darkest, apparently because it uses demons.”
“Demons?” Harry snorted. “There aren’t any such thing.”
“Yes, there are, Harry. They may well be just a magical creature we don’t understand well, but there are Dark creatures whose only urge is to hurt, and some are classified as demonic. Then there are some . . . think about Dementors, who change what we are, not our physical selves, but our souls. Anyway, this combines some kind of demon and some kind of potion, and is supposed to create a symbiotic relationship between the wizard who drinks the potion and the demon. The demon provides magical energy, and in return the wizard provides a home for the demon – his body.”
“Sounds like really unpleasant Dark magic.”
“It is – and the catch is that the wizard can become power imbalanced. When he does, the demon gives him random magical power, instead of a steady supply, and drains his body instead of simply occupying it. The unbalanced wizard will die fairly quickly.”
“What causes unbalance?”
“I don’t know,” Hermione confessed. “The texts are hard to find, remember?”
Harry shivered. “I’m not going to tell Draco until we have something more certain. You will continue the research, won’t you? Even though it’s not Squib related?”
Hermione nodded. “Of course I will.”
Harry stood back and stared admiringly at the table. The charms Draco had put on it didn’t show, of course, but it was nice to know that it would always be the right size for whomever came. Although you had to know where the right place was to touch, if you did you could also tell it to grow wider, and make room for feasts. Other charms ensured that it couldn’t be damaged, even if the dog chased the cat down the middle of it. Charms against bacteria, spills, and other common domestic hazards made it completely functional even for the use of the most magically challenged.
But the magic of the table extended to the Muggle cabinetry skills it had required. Some of those H