eutychides (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} eutychides) wrote,@ 2006-02-13 21:22:00 |
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FIC: Things That Change, 26/26
Title: Things That Change [26/26]
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5][Part 6][Part 7][Part 8][Part 9][Part 10]
[Part 11][Part 12][Part 13][Part 14][Part 15][Part 16][Part 17][Part 18][Part 19]
[Part 20][Part 21][Part 22][Part 23][Part 24][Part 25][Part 26]
1.
Granger seems taken with the situation. She invades their living room, armed with books and Weasley brats, sniffling and red-haired.
“Go away,” Draco tells her. “Potter’s not even here- he’s at work.”
“That’s fine,” Granger says as she starts to spread her books all over a low table.
“Don’t you have to work?” Draco asks, curling his lip at her. “To pay all the bills Weasley can’t afford?”
“Ron makes the same pay as Harry,” Granger says. She smiles. “I found a passage in this book about the corporeal potential of ghosts.” She pushes the book across the table toward Draco and nods at it.
Draco skims the words then rolls his eyes. “And?”
“And you didn’t read a word,” Granger says. “Anyway, Harry was asking me if it’s even possible because he thinks that Viola, well,” she frowns. “I hope she wasn’t raped- that’s awful.”
Draco purses his lips and says nothing. The more he has thought about it, the more he is starting to agree with Potter. Someone attacked Viola, maybe at school, maybe in the park, and now she’s made some tale up about seeing ghosts from Potter’s past. It makes him ill to think of it, but it makes the most sense.
Granger bats a Weasley brat away from her lap, telling the boy to go and seek James out. “Anyway, I read this very interesting account- albeit from 1732- of a woman who claimed her dead husband came back from the dead as a ghost and got her pregnant with their son.”
“And?” Draco drawls. “She had obviously drank a Babbling beverage for morning tea.”
“No!” Granger insists. “The woman lived on this remote little island off the coast of northern Ireland. It was over fifteen months after her husband died before she gave birth. The Wizengamot sent a team of scholars out to investigate and they speculated that some ghosts are capable of producing a specific type of ectoplasm that acts as sperm during semi- or full corporeal intercourse and thus they can impregnate women.”
“You’re full of shit, Granger,” Draco mutters.
“And you’re going to be a grandfather,” she says, smiling smugly at him.
Draco stares at her in horror. The word makes him cringe. “Don’t ever say that again!” he hisses.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but did you ever think Viola could be telling the truth?” she asks. “You live in a world where you can do magic. You, a man, gave birth! Don’t you think things like this are possible?”
Draco wants to slap the Mudblood bitch and tell her to shut her filthy mouth. But, she’s Potter’s friend and he thinks that he is a bit beyond acting like that, although he does clench his hand around his wand.
“How is Harry, by the way?” Granger asks. “Do you want me to put a pot of tea on?”
“I didn’t invite you to stay,” Draco says. “I didn’t even invite you here.”
“I invited myself,” she says. Granger wanders off into the kitchen. Draco can hear her rummaging around in cupboards, opening and slamming the doors. “Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe?”
“Neither,” Draco grumbles. He sighs, scowling and adds, “Prince of Wales. It’s behind the teapot on the shelf.”
Granger boils the water in the teapot with a couple stirs of her wand and sets a plate of oatmeal crisps on the table. She pours two cups of tea and milk into one, which she hands to Draco. Draco prefers more milk, but he can’t be arsed to stand up and get it. He sips the tea carefully, watching Granger over the brim of his cup.
“How is Harry?” she asks again.
“Fine,” Draco snaps.
Granger frowns. “All right. How are you, then, Draco?”
“I didn’t say you could use my name!” He sneers at her, but she brushes it off.
“No, that’s right, not even Harry calls you that,” she says. Draco narrows his eyes at her as she leans back in the chair, knowing she’s touched a nerve.
“That’s none of your business what he calls me,” he says.
“I worry about him,” she says. She sets her tea cup down and inches closer. Draco pulls away, stiffening as she places her palms on his legs and smiles. He can almost feel the dirt under her hands, the disgusting Mudblood sweat of her skin on his robes. He’ll have to burn them later. “He loves you, you know.”
Draco says nothing.
“A lot,” she adds. “He could have, well, I don’t think he would have ever left you, but he could have if he really wanted to, Malfoy. And instead he chose to stay with you and yet…he’s seemed not as happy lately-”
“Considering Viola just-”
“Before then,” Granger says. “It’s been a while. I don’t mean to pry, but- Malfoy, Harry doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman or have this or that, he loves you. It sounds so stupid, but it’s true. All you’ve been through together, as much as you drive him insane and he doesn’t understand you or like your bigotry, he- just-” she sighs. “This sounds like complete rubbish, me having to tell you this because I know Harry bloody won’t, but I think he wants things the way they were.”
“Things have changed,” Draco says. He bites down on his tongue before he says anything more. His voice shakes and he can’t, he won’t say anything more about this to Granger. It’s none of her business, the nosy bitch.
“He still wants you. Physically, I mean. And emotionally. Don’t go bugger off and hurt him, Malfoy,” she warns. Her fingers dig into his leg and he hisses at her sharp nails.
“I’m working on it,” he mutters. “I’m- I’m trying.”
Granger smiles and fills her cup once more.
2.
Draco thinks about what Granger said to him. He thinks about it for a long time.
Nosy bitch, he thinks. She should mind her own business and sod off.
He looks at Potter, who glances away quickly, as though he’s been caught stirring a potion when told not to. Draco feels a flush creep over his body because he remembers what Granger had said to him but he refuses to believe that Potter is a poof, that he is a poof.
When Potter’s hands reach out for his in the night, Draco pulls them tight into his body, trying to figure out if anything feels different. He twines his fingers through Potter’s, pressing their hands over his chest. Potter’s hands are pliable in sleep, and warmer than when he’s awake. Draco wants Potter to feel the pounding in his chest, his heart squeezing tight under his ribs.
“Feel that?” he whispers. “God, Potter, why would you…” want to be a poof?
Potter sighs heavily, the air through his nose whistling. Draco touches the tip of his nose, dancing a fingertip across the skin, smiling when Potter crinkles his face and sniffles, before rolling even closer to him and mumbling “Draco” through a sleepy slur.
It’s been months and months since they have done anything, not since before his father showed up. And then the potion- Draco can hardly remember the time before he took that first potion. It is a vague memory of himself, no extra bits, not having to wonder every month, not feeling cramps or like half a wizard.
Potter makes things so hard, makes him so hard. He can’t stop thinking about having hands run all over his body again, to feel Potter’s mouth closing around his cock, to see Potter’s eyes squeezed shut as he comes inside of him. He tosses off in the shower, every morning when Potter is off at the Ministry. He wants to do more than make eyes at Potter behind his back, he wants to do more than touch Potter’s hands and Potter’s face when he’s sleeping, but-
He’s not a poof.
He doesn’t want it to be like the few times Potter did try it the other way. Draco remembers the pain, the discomfort, his yelping when Potter pushed too far, too fast, too much. Except the more he thinks about, he doesn’t tense up, he just grows more desperate. James can be eating lunch and Draco will rush into a bathroom and furiously rub his cock until he comes on the edge of the sink, red-faced in the mirror and panting.
I could, he thinks. I could tell Potter “Yes, fuck me, god I want to!”
But when he opens his mouth, the words won’t come.
Potter brings Viola and Abraxas home from King’s Cross a few days before Christmas. The tree they have is bigger than the year before, covered in floating candles that Draco charmed and paper chains James helped make with Pyrrha. Little glass and pewter ornaments, relics from each year, hang on stiff branches. The house is covered in pine needles and the smell is so strong Draco sneezes whenever he walks downstairs.
It is the Christmas hols, and he wants to see his children.
He watches Viola carefully when she walks through the door and for days afterwards. He searches for the bump on her middle that must be growing. He told Potter what Granger told him, and Granger’s been over twice a week since then with more texts and Weasley brats.
“Ghosts don’t show up immediately after their physical death,” she says. “It can take years, sometimes as many as one hundred or more. And they usually attach themselves to a significant place or person from their life. You were significant in Cedric’s life- right before he died- and so I can see why his ghost may have attached itself to Viola.”
“Too close,” Harry murmurs.
Draco doesn’t disagree.
Viola doesn’t know when it was, but Draco has a rough idea, judging from the robes that look tighter around her waist. Her middle has thickened and she walks slower, more carefully, always watching those around her with suspicious eyes, almond-shaped and sly.
“We all know,” Draco says. “You don’t have to hide it around us.” He tightens his lips.
Potter takes her to a Muggle doctor. “I don’t trust them!” Draco says, but Potter insists. Viola leaves, white-faced, and returns with a tiny photograph, static and still, a black and white image of whatever is inside her.
“It’s real,” Potter tells him. “She actually is pregnant.” He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair and making it even more untidy.
Draco’s stomach sinks a little further.
Viola keeps the little photo in her room, framed by her bedside.
“Is Diggory’s ghost even still around?” Draco asks Potter when Viola is sleeping one evening. She sleeps a lot, naps even more, complaining about a constant sort of tiredness.
“I don’t think so,” Potter says. “I wish it was, though. I wanted to ask him some things.”
“Like what?” Draco asks. He bites his lip when he feels Potter’s toes absently grazing his shin, rubbing slowly up and down his leg. His cock stiffens and he inches away, unable to get closer, not yet, not yet.
“It was nothing,” Potter manages, his voice strained.
Draco watches Abraxas a lot, too. Abraxas knows it and turns away from him whenever their eyes meet. His cheeks will flush if he’s asked a question at dinner about his friends at school, or even his marks or Quidditch.
And then, on Christmas Eve, Draco realizes why. Potter leaves in the middle of the day, mumbling something about driving Abraxas to London to see a friend. Potter comes back and their son stays, until after supper when a pale green car drops him off, a parent and a boy speeding off for their own Christmas dinner.
“Does he…?” Draco asks, blinking in disbelief.
Potter’s mouth twitches. “You know that jar, in our bathroom, the one with pure murtlap essence and star grass salve? It was missing this afternoon.”
Draco feels his face burn at the thought of his son shagging. Like an adult. Which he is most clearly not because he is only seventeen! He coughs awkwardly when Abraxas’ eyes shift to him and Potter, standing in the middle of the kitchen, whispering. His eyes go wide and glassy and his mouth opens as his face twists into a grimace.
“At least you’re being safe about it,” Potter tells him, placing a hand on Abraxas’ shoulder. Abraxas tries to duck away, but Potter pulls him in for a hug, which he reluctantly returns.
Christmas morning is still, time transient and eternal as the crisp frost patterns over the glass windows that shimmer in the palest of suns as they open gifts. Pyrrha offers to make a pot of tea. Draco scowls and mutters about the house elf until Potter says, “I gave him the day off today.” Not that it matters to Draco. The creature is a waste of space and effort as far as he’s concerned. Defective and old and Potter ought to buy a new one.
Viola sighs when she opens a box of robes from Potter and himself. She holds them up to the light and frowns. “I don’t think these will fit,” she says.
“I charmed them,” Draco says. “A concealing charm and an enlargement one too, right into the weave.”
“You’ll come in the Easter hols and stay home in spring,” Potter says, “but until then you’ll need some clothes that fit at school and your father thought that it was best if you didn’t, well, attract a lot of attention.”
Viola nods slowly.
The only person who doesn’t understand all of this mess is James. Draco watches him tear into the spell-o-taped gifts with the sort of childish glee that is so fleeting, so precious it makes his heart ache because he’s glad that his youngest son still retains a naïve sort of innocence that makes Christmas all the more special when he smiles at the presents.
Draco thinks of his present for Potter and his chest constricts. It could be nothing, it could be everything, it doesn’t matter which, his stomach can’t hold much more than a jellied salad down after supper.
He sits on the bed and waits.
3.
Draco sits and waits, his heart pounding furiously against his ribs, so hard they threaten to shatter. He tries to breathe as he waits for the tell-tale signs of Potter’s footsteps and when he hears them, he sucks in what little breath he had.
The door creaks open, inch by inch as Potter glances over to him and gives Draco a half-smile.
“Are the children in bed?” Draco asks, swallowing the lump in his throat. His mouth is dry, the words like wool, thick and twisted.
“Pyrrha’s still awake,” Potter says. “She says she’s going to go see Dennis tomorrow. I said it was all right.”
Draco can’t even be bothered to sneer, he’s too busy staring at his fingers, watching them tremble against his knees. He stretches them out, but they won’t stop, and a shiver runs through his body.
“Malfoy?” Potter murmurs. “Draco?”
“Say that again,” Draco says in a rush.
“What?” Potter scrunches his brow.
“My name,” Draco whispers.
Potter’s eyes go wide and his lenses flash, catching the dying light of the room as Draco waves his hand, the lamp flickering to darkness.
The mattress groans under Potter’s weight as he sits down beside Draco. Draco sucks a breath in when Potter’s hand reaches for his neck, the fingers tickling his skin when Potter brushes a strand of his hair away.
“Draco are you-”
“Cast a Silencing Spell!” Draco hisses. He closes his eyes when he feels Potter’s face, warm, warmer, his breath, his mouth, his lips on his neck, moving slowly across the skin. It feels like eckeltricity. It feels alive.
Potter flicks his wand, then sets it aside. “Are you- I didn’t think-”
Draco can barely mutter, “Shut up, Harry,” before he pushes Potter to the bed and bends his head, kissing Potter, afraid and shaking and achingly slow but he forgets how, he remembers, too, and then Potter is kissing him back, a hand behind his neck and they are moving together with twining legs and hot tongues, sliding back and forth between moans.
He rubs himself against Potter’s thigh, Potter’s hip, the weight of his body pressing down upon Draco that only makes his cock harder and his back arch. He runs his hands down Potter’s spine, down to Potter’s arse to bring him closer, and Potter gasps, breaking the kisses to groan.
“Draco,” he pants.
Draco, through his own panting, starts to smile. He runs his hands through Potter’s hair, feeling the soft thickness weaving through his fingers as he guides Potter back to his mouth, his face, his jaw and his chest.
Potter picks at the buttons on his robes with unsteady hands. Draco wants Potter to just push up his robes around his waist. He thinks about how good this feels, how much the pleasure coils in his belly, a spring waiting to burst. He thinks about how much he wants this, how much Potter wants this, Potter’s hard cock straining in his trousers, not about the pain of the last few times.
“God, just-” Draco shakes his head, taking Potter’s hands and lifting the hem of his robes with them. Potter stops for a moment, hands grazing Draco’s bare hips. Draco moans, shivering as Potter’s knee wedges between his thighs.
“You’re not wearing any-”
“No,” Draco whispers. His body is made of flames. He can’t feel the blush in his face.
He doesn’t want Potter’s hand on his cock, or even the mouth that circles him, hot and wet and sucking, fingers pressed into the hollows of his hips. Draco digs his toes into the sheets, grabs the bunched robes with his hands, leverage as Potter’s tongue swirls around the head of his cock and he can hardly think, except-
“Stop!” he moans. “God, stop!”
Potter pulls back slowly and the rush of cold air makes Draco gasp. His eyes in the dark, shining and bright, the deepest of greens visible. “Don’t you-”
Draco clears his throat and calls, “Accio lube!”
A whoosh through the air from the bathroom, then something hard hits Draco in the side before dropping onto the rumpled sheets beside him. Potter picks the jar up and lowers his head, his breath ghosting Draco’s belly, the moans rising in his throat once more. Potter’s back shakes, sobbing.
Draco reaches out. “Potter- Harry?” he murmurs, placing a hand on Potter’s trembling shoulder.
Except Potter isn’t crying, there are no tears sliding down his face, but his eyes are still shiny. He laughs. “I didn't think I would ever hear you say those words,” he says, grinning. He screws the lid from the jar, sniffing.
“Be careful,” Draco says. “Please. Not like the other times.”
“I’ll try,” Potter says. It’s not what Draco wants to hear, but it is good enough. He expects the sting when slick fingers push into his arse, he expects the sharpness, the full feeling when Potter’s fingers spread, slow and wiggling. Mostly he misses the weight of Potter on top of him, the way Potter’s body, sweat-covered, slides against his, their skin sticky and salty under Draco’s tongue.
His legs are uncomfortable. He winces and Potter mutters an apology. Draco cuts it off with his mouth. “Shut up,” he says, and then he can’t breathe anymore. Potters hands are gone, and then he can feel Potter’s cock, hard and pressing, close and just waiting as Potter catches his breath, his heart pounding as loud as Draco’s.
“All right?” he asks.
“All right,” Draco manages, leaning to the side as Potter kisses his neck, his mouth moving over the pulsepoint near his collar as hands rush all over his belly, his hips, his cock and Potter pushes inside with a sigh.
He tries to stop thinking about anything except the sensation, about anything except the way Potter’s face stills into a deathmask after the first thrust and he doesn’t move, doesn’t even breath until Draco digs his hands into Potter’s shoulders, urging him on even through the discomfort. He runs his tongue along Potter’s ear. “Do it,” he whispers.
Potter moans.
And at the soft sound, vibrating through Potter’s kiss, Draco moans too and rocks his hips, moving together, his cock harder. This isn’t as awful and uncomfortable as the few times they tried it before, but it’s nothing spectacular either. Potter pushes himself deeper with each thrust, his speed building as his pants grow louder. His fingertips feel the tension in Potter’s shoulders, he rubs his hands over Potter’s slick back, pushing their bodies closer.
He clenches his muscles and Potter is gone, a keening wail and a gasp in the air and a blind thrust as he comes, moaning Draco’s name, his real name, into his neck.
Draco lies under Potter afterward, content, but not sated. Potter frowns, flopping onto his back and mutters something Draco doesn’t catch.
Potter clears his throat and tries again. “You didn’t…?”
“No,” Draco says. “It’s all right. I didn’t have to.”
“But you’re still hard,” Potter says as his hands slip under the sheets and curl around Draco’s cock.
Draco doesn’t refuse him. Even this has been too long. He barely has time to register what Potter is doing before he’s grunting his own release into Potter’s hands, his back arching off the mattress as he falls, falls, falls.
After, Potter watches him with big eyes in the dark. Draco watches back and hopes that Potter can’t see the smile on his lips. A private joke with himself. Instead, Potter tastes it with his tongue, his teeth, as he kisses Draco, one last slow time.
“Was- was that my present?” Potter asks.
Draco smiles wider and presses his lips to Potter’s, feeling the reciprocal grin. “Happy Christmas, Harry,” he murmurs.
4.
Potter shares a bed with him, in every sense of the word now. Draco thinks he’s getting better- they are both new at this thing. And the other week, Potter hit something inside, completely by accident, that had Draco gasping and begging and coming before Potter had begun to thrust more than a few shallow times.
But Draco can’t help feeling wrong, somehow. He won’t admit to Potter but he’s afraid Potter might be right, that he is poof. That they both are. It fires his face, but the more he thinks about it, it burns his cock, too.
“I love you,” Potter murmurs in his ear. The words, Potter’s voice, the cock pressed into his lower back, they all make Draco burn and freeze, an alternating shiver that runs down his spine whenever Potter enters their bedroom and their eyes meet and they will fall onto their bed, tangled and kissing and grabbing at clothing.
Draco smiles when he thinks of this. Maybe this is what love is. What being in love is. He feels the same foolish grin, the same lethargy and energy pulsing through his body.
Even the letter from his father doesn’t detract from this. Draco reads the words, his father’s voice in his head: Don’t you tire of hiding, Draco? Malfoys were never meant to shy away from the light.
You should talk, Father, he thinks. He throws the letter into a low-burning fire in the fireplace, letting James play with the poker until Potter discovers this and yells at him for letting James play dangerously.
He rolls his eyes and ignores Potter, but the swelling happiness grows inside, no longer shame or guilt, and he doesn’t care, he lets the feeling simmer and leads Potter up the stairs before midnight, that look in his eyes that spells out what will happen on the other side of their bedroom door.
Everything has changed in his life, and nothing at the same time. He feels the same, his body is restored to what it once was, with twenty years and four children added to it. When the light hits the right angle, he’ll sit quiet sometimes and try to count the few grey hairs Potter is starting to grow near his ears.
His own hair is too pale to find any, but he looks each morning in the mirror, picking through with a fine comb.
Potter lingers in the doorway. It is Saturday. There is a pot of tea on downstairs and Pyrrha is sleeping in late. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m getting old,” Draco drawls. “I’m ancient.”
“Not yet,” Potter says. He pushes his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose. “And I don’t mind.”
“Don’t you?” Draco asks. He smirks and sets the comb down. “Even when I’m a veritable graybeard?”
“Even then. Another twenty, fifty, seventy years, it won’t matter.” Potter swallows. Draco feels the air thickening around them, pulling him closer to Potter. He opens his mouth to say something to Potter, to laugh him off, but he can’t manage anything more than, “Really?”
Potter kisses him, his lips dry and chaste, his breath stale and warm and completely welcome. “It’s been twenty years nearly. I can’t- I can’t imagine what it would be like any other way.”
Draco blinks, and turns away, biting his lip before he does anything embarrassing, like sniffle, or cry. He curls his lip, but he can’t stop the smile when he scoffs and says, “Don’t be a poof, Potter.”
Potter starts to laugh.
His father’s words, burned but not forgotten, linger in Draco’s mind for some time. In early February snow falls, soft and downy across the world, coating everything in a belated Christmas season. He bundles James up in a snowsuit and shoves him out into the back garden to play, to build the snowman he tells Pyrrha at supper he wants to build.
Draco loves hearing the sound of James’ voice. It isn’t much, but when he hears James call out, “Daddy! Come see!” his heart skips a beat. He leans out of the doorway, oblivious to the cold air, and smiles at the sad, toppling snowman James has built, a torso and a lumpy head, eyes and smile of rock pebbles.
He stomach flips a little when he grabs a quill and parchment from the desk. His words are clear, but when he’s finished, the letter posted with Pyrrha’s owl flying to London, his hands feel sweaty and cold where the quill scolded his palm.
Draco goes to bed beside Potter and wonders if he should have. His father may be nearly a ghost from a past life, showing up here and there with a few words and a disapproving frown, but Potter wouldn’t understand that no matter how much he might want to, Draco can never escape his past.
But I can choose my future, he thinks. He looks down at Potter’s sleeping form, dark hair sprawled across his face, the features softened without glasses and by sleep.
He doesn’t finish the rest of the thought. It is near dawn and he can hear the first squawks of owls outside, rushing upon the house with a fury when Draco spreads open the curtains wide to the rose-tinted light of early dawn.
Potter groans and rubs his eyes. “What on earth…” he starts to mutter as he walks over to Draco, tugging with a sleepy hand to try to close the curtains. He puts on his glasses and blinks.
“What the hell?” he says, louder and stronger.
“I sent a letter,” Draco says slowly, practiced, “to the editor of The Daily Prophet.”
Potter blinks again. “But- but why?”
“You don’t have to hide me anymore, Potter,” Draco says. He glances out the window, the owls flocking on top of the fence, flying over the roof, settling on the grass below, all colours and species, all carrying little notes, all to him, he knows it.
YOU?!? they’ll say.
Or maybe, How could you?!?
Or, That’s impossible!
Potter is silent for the longest moment, and as the times slows, strained and long like a pensieve string, Draco starts to wonder if he shouldn’t have, until Potter asks, “Are you sure, Draco?”
Draco snakes a hand around Potter’s waist, smiling when Potter leans into it gently. “Yes,” he says.
The owls are beautiful outside, congregating in a great flock, the owlery of Hogwarts transported to the middle of the suburbs. It is only fitting that something grand like this be for a Malfoy. Nothing less would do.
“I’m going to add the letters to the boxes in the attic,” Draco says. “Fanmail, I think.”
Potter laughs, and in the shining golden light started to stream across his face, Draco knows that everything is all right.
~finis~
Feedback, comments, anything is appreciated, as ever.
P.S. Stick around until tomorrow night. I have a few things to say. :)
Title: Things That Change [26/26]
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5][Part 6][Part 7][Part 8][Part 9][Part 10]
[Part 11][Part 12][Part 13][Part 14][Part 15][Part 16][Part 17][Part 18][Part 19]
[Part 20][Part 21][Part 22][Part 23][Part 24][Part 25][Part 26]
1.
Granger seems taken with the situation. She invades their living room, armed with books and Weasley brats, sniffling and red-haired.
“Go away,” Draco tells her. “Potter’s not even here- he’s at work.”
“That’s fine,” Granger says as she starts to spread her books all over a low table.
“Don’t you have to work?” Draco asks, curling his lip at her. “To pay all the bills Weasley can’t afford?”
“Ron makes the same pay as Harry,” Granger says. She smiles. “I found a passage in this book about the corporeal potential of ghosts.” She pushes the book across the table toward Draco and nods at it.
Draco skims the words then rolls his eyes. “And?”
“And you didn’t read a word,” Granger says. “Anyway, Harry was asking me if it’s even possible because he thinks that Viola, well,” she frowns. “I hope she wasn’t raped- that’s awful.”
Draco purses his lips and says nothing. The more he has thought about it, the more he is starting to agree with Potter. Someone attacked Viola, maybe at school, maybe in the park, and now she’s made some tale up about seeing ghosts from Potter’s past. It makes him ill to think of it, but it makes the most sense.
Granger bats a Weasley brat away from her lap, telling the boy to go and seek James out. “Anyway, I read this very interesting account- albeit from 1732- of a woman who claimed her dead husband came back from the dead as a ghost and got her pregnant with their son.”
“And?” Draco drawls. “She had obviously drank a Babbling beverage for morning tea.”
“No!” Granger insists. “The woman lived on this remote little island off the coast of northern Ireland. It was over fifteen months after her husband died before she gave birth. The Wizengamot sent a team of scholars out to investigate and they speculated that some ghosts are capable of producing a specific type of ectoplasm that acts as sperm during semi- or full corporeal intercourse and thus they can impregnate women.”
“You’re full of shit, Granger,” Draco mutters.
“And you’re going to be a grandfather,” she says, smiling smugly at him.
Draco stares at her in horror. The word makes him cringe. “Don’t ever say that again!” he hisses.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but did you ever think Viola could be telling the truth?” she asks. “You live in a world where you can do magic. You, a man, gave birth! Don’t you think things like this are possible?”
Draco wants to slap the Mudblood bitch and tell her to shut her filthy mouth. But, she’s Potter’s friend and he thinks that he is a bit beyond acting like that, although he does clench his hand around his wand.
“How is Harry, by the way?” Granger asks. “Do you want me to put a pot of tea on?”
“I didn’t invite you to stay,” Draco says. “I didn’t even invite you here.”
“I invited myself,” she says. Granger wanders off into the kitchen. Draco can hear her rummaging around in cupboards, opening and slamming the doors. “Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe?”
“Neither,” Draco grumbles. He sighs, scowling and adds, “Prince of Wales. It’s behind the teapot on the shelf.”
Granger boils the water in the teapot with a couple stirs of her wand and sets a plate of oatmeal crisps on the table. She pours two cups of tea and milk into one, which she hands to Draco. Draco prefers more milk, but he can’t be arsed to stand up and get it. He sips the tea carefully, watching Granger over the brim of his cup.
“How is Harry?” she asks again.
“Fine,” Draco snaps.
Granger frowns. “All right. How are you, then, Draco?”
“I didn’t say you could use my name!” He sneers at her, but she brushes it off.
“No, that’s right, not even Harry calls you that,” she says. Draco narrows his eyes at her as she leans back in the chair, knowing she’s touched a nerve.
“That’s none of your business what he calls me,” he says.
“I worry about him,” she says. She sets her tea cup down and inches closer. Draco pulls away, stiffening as she places her palms on his legs and smiles. He can almost feel the dirt under her hands, the disgusting Mudblood sweat of her skin on his robes. He’ll have to burn them later. “He loves you, you know.”
Draco says nothing.
“A lot,” she adds. “He could have, well, I don’t think he would have ever left you, but he could have if he really wanted to, Malfoy. And instead he chose to stay with you and yet…he’s seemed not as happy lately-”
“Considering Viola just-”
“Before then,” Granger says. “It’s been a while. I don’t mean to pry, but- Malfoy, Harry doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman or have this or that, he loves you. It sounds so stupid, but it’s true. All you’ve been through together, as much as you drive him insane and he doesn’t understand you or like your bigotry, he- just-” she sighs. “This sounds like complete rubbish, me having to tell you this because I know Harry bloody won’t, but I think he wants things the way they were.”
“Things have changed,” Draco says. He bites down on his tongue before he says anything more. His voice shakes and he can’t, he won’t say anything more about this to Granger. It’s none of her business, the nosy bitch.
“He still wants you. Physically, I mean. And emotionally. Don’t go bugger off and hurt him, Malfoy,” she warns. Her fingers dig into his leg and he hisses at her sharp nails.
“I’m working on it,” he mutters. “I’m- I’m trying.”
Granger smiles and fills her cup once more.
2.
Draco thinks about what Granger said to him. He thinks about it for a long time.
Nosy bitch, he thinks. She should mind her own business and sod off.
He looks at Potter, who glances away quickly, as though he’s been caught stirring a potion when told not to. Draco feels a flush creep over his body because he remembers what Granger had said to him but he refuses to believe that Potter is a poof, that he is a poof.
When Potter’s hands reach out for his in the night, Draco pulls them tight into his body, trying to figure out if anything feels different. He twines his fingers through Potter’s, pressing their hands over his chest. Potter’s hands are pliable in sleep, and warmer than when he’s awake. Draco wants Potter to feel the pounding in his chest, his heart squeezing tight under his ribs.
“Feel that?” he whispers. “God, Potter, why would you…” want to be a poof?
Potter sighs heavily, the air through his nose whistling. Draco touches the tip of his nose, dancing a fingertip across the skin, smiling when Potter crinkles his face and sniffles, before rolling even closer to him and mumbling “Draco” through a sleepy slur.
It’s been months and months since they have done anything, not since before his father showed up. And then the potion- Draco can hardly remember the time before he took that first potion. It is a vague memory of himself, no extra bits, not having to wonder every month, not feeling cramps or like half a wizard.
Potter makes things so hard, makes him so hard. He can’t stop thinking about having hands run all over his body again, to feel Potter’s mouth closing around his cock, to see Potter’s eyes squeezed shut as he comes inside of him. He tosses off in the shower, every morning when Potter is off at the Ministry. He wants to do more than make eyes at Potter behind his back, he wants to do more than touch Potter’s hands and Potter’s face when he’s sleeping, but-
He’s not a poof.
He doesn’t want it to be like the few times Potter did try it the other way. Draco remembers the pain, the discomfort, his yelping when Potter pushed too far, too fast, too much. Except the more he thinks about, he doesn’t tense up, he just grows more desperate. James can be eating lunch and Draco will rush into a bathroom and furiously rub his cock until he comes on the edge of the sink, red-faced in the mirror and panting.
I could, he thinks. I could tell Potter “Yes, fuck me, god I want to!”
But when he opens his mouth, the words won’t come.
Potter brings Viola and Abraxas home from King’s Cross a few days before Christmas. The tree they have is bigger than the year before, covered in floating candles that Draco charmed and paper chains James helped make with Pyrrha. Little glass and pewter ornaments, relics from each year, hang on stiff branches. The house is covered in pine needles and the smell is so strong Draco sneezes whenever he walks downstairs.
It is the Christmas hols, and he wants to see his children.
He watches Viola carefully when she walks through the door and for days afterwards. He searches for the bump on her middle that must be growing. He told Potter what Granger told him, and Granger’s been over twice a week since then with more texts and Weasley brats.
“Ghosts don’t show up immediately after their physical death,” she says. “It can take years, sometimes as many as one hundred or more. And they usually attach themselves to a significant place or person from their life. You were significant in Cedric’s life- right before he died- and so I can see why his ghost may have attached itself to Viola.”
“Too close,” Harry murmurs.
Draco doesn’t disagree.
Viola doesn’t know when it was, but Draco has a rough idea, judging from the robes that look tighter around her waist. Her middle has thickened and she walks slower, more carefully, always watching those around her with suspicious eyes, almond-shaped and sly.
“We all know,” Draco says. “You don’t have to hide it around us.” He tightens his lips.
Potter takes her to a Muggle doctor. “I don’t trust them!” Draco says, but Potter insists. Viola leaves, white-faced, and returns with a tiny photograph, static and still, a black and white image of whatever is inside her.
“It’s real,” Potter tells him. “She actually is pregnant.” He shakes his head, running a hand through his hair and making it even more untidy.
Draco’s stomach sinks a little further.
Viola keeps the little photo in her room, framed by her bedside.
“Is Diggory’s ghost even still around?” Draco asks Potter when Viola is sleeping one evening. She sleeps a lot, naps even more, complaining about a constant sort of tiredness.
“I don’t think so,” Potter says. “I wish it was, though. I wanted to ask him some things.”
“Like what?” Draco asks. He bites his lip when he feels Potter’s toes absently grazing his shin, rubbing slowly up and down his leg. His cock stiffens and he inches away, unable to get closer, not yet, not yet.
“It was nothing,” Potter manages, his voice strained.
Draco watches Abraxas a lot, too. Abraxas knows it and turns away from him whenever their eyes meet. His cheeks will flush if he’s asked a question at dinner about his friends at school, or even his marks or Quidditch.
And then, on Christmas Eve, Draco realizes why. Potter leaves in the middle of the day, mumbling something about driving Abraxas to London to see a friend. Potter comes back and their son stays, until after supper when a pale green car drops him off, a parent and a boy speeding off for their own Christmas dinner.
“Does he…?” Draco asks, blinking in disbelief.
Potter’s mouth twitches. “You know that jar, in our bathroom, the one with pure murtlap essence and star grass salve? It was missing this afternoon.”
Draco feels his face burn at the thought of his son shagging. Like an adult. Which he is most clearly not because he is only seventeen! He coughs awkwardly when Abraxas’ eyes shift to him and Potter, standing in the middle of the kitchen, whispering. His eyes go wide and glassy and his mouth opens as his face twists into a grimace.
“At least you’re being safe about it,” Potter tells him, placing a hand on Abraxas’ shoulder. Abraxas tries to duck away, but Potter pulls him in for a hug, which he reluctantly returns.
Christmas morning is still, time transient and eternal as the crisp frost patterns over the glass windows that shimmer in the palest of suns as they open gifts. Pyrrha offers to make a pot of tea. Draco scowls and mutters about the house elf until Potter says, “I gave him the day off today.” Not that it matters to Draco. The creature is a waste of space and effort as far as he’s concerned. Defective and old and Potter ought to buy a new one.
Viola sighs when she opens a box of robes from Potter and himself. She holds them up to the light and frowns. “I don’t think these will fit,” she says.
“I charmed them,” Draco says. “A concealing charm and an enlargement one too, right into the weave.”
“You’ll come in the Easter hols and stay home in spring,” Potter says, “but until then you’ll need some clothes that fit at school and your father thought that it was best if you didn’t, well, attract a lot of attention.”
Viola nods slowly.
The only person who doesn’t understand all of this mess is James. Draco watches him tear into the spell-o-taped gifts with the sort of childish glee that is so fleeting, so precious it makes his heart ache because he’s glad that his youngest son still retains a naïve sort of innocence that makes Christmas all the more special when he smiles at the presents.
Draco thinks of his present for Potter and his chest constricts. It could be nothing, it could be everything, it doesn’t matter which, his stomach can’t hold much more than a jellied salad down after supper.
He sits on the bed and waits.
3.
Draco sits and waits, his heart pounding furiously against his ribs, so hard they threaten to shatter. He tries to breathe as he waits for the tell-tale signs of Potter’s footsteps and when he hears them, he sucks in what little breath he had.
The door creaks open, inch by inch as Potter glances over to him and gives Draco a half-smile.
“Are the children in bed?” Draco asks, swallowing the lump in his throat. His mouth is dry, the words like wool, thick and twisted.
“Pyrrha’s still awake,” Potter says. “She says she’s going to go see Dennis tomorrow. I said it was all right.”
Draco can’t even be bothered to sneer, he’s too busy staring at his fingers, watching them tremble against his knees. He stretches them out, but they won’t stop, and a shiver runs through his body.
“Malfoy?” Potter murmurs. “Draco?”
“Say that again,” Draco says in a rush.
“What?” Potter scrunches his brow.
“My name,” Draco whispers.
Potter’s eyes go wide and his lenses flash, catching the dying light of the room as Draco waves his hand, the lamp flickering to darkness.
The mattress groans under Potter’s weight as he sits down beside Draco. Draco sucks a breath in when Potter’s hand reaches for his neck, the fingers tickling his skin when Potter brushes a strand of his hair away.
“Draco are you-”
“Cast a Silencing Spell!” Draco hisses. He closes his eyes when he feels Potter’s face, warm, warmer, his breath, his mouth, his lips on his neck, moving slowly across the skin. It feels like eckeltricity. It feels alive.
Potter flicks his wand, then sets it aside. “Are you- I didn’t think-”
Draco can barely mutter, “Shut up, Harry,” before he pushes Potter to the bed and bends his head, kissing Potter, afraid and shaking and achingly slow but he forgets how, he remembers, too, and then Potter is kissing him back, a hand behind his neck and they are moving together with twining legs and hot tongues, sliding back and forth between moans.
He rubs himself against Potter’s thigh, Potter’s hip, the weight of his body pressing down upon Draco that only makes his cock harder and his back arch. He runs his hands down Potter’s spine, down to Potter’s arse to bring him closer, and Potter gasps, breaking the kisses to groan.
“Draco,” he pants.
Draco, through his own panting, starts to smile. He runs his hands through Potter’s hair, feeling the soft thickness weaving through his fingers as he guides Potter back to his mouth, his face, his jaw and his chest.
Potter picks at the buttons on his robes with unsteady hands. Draco wants Potter to just push up his robes around his waist. He thinks about how good this feels, how much the pleasure coils in his belly, a spring waiting to burst. He thinks about how much he wants this, how much Potter wants this, Potter’s hard cock straining in his trousers, not about the pain of the last few times.
“God, just-” Draco shakes his head, taking Potter’s hands and lifting the hem of his robes with them. Potter stops for a moment, hands grazing Draco’s bare hips. Draco moans, shivering as Potter’s knee wedges between his thighs.
“You’re not wearing any-”
“No,” Draco whispers. His body is made of flames. He can’t feel the blush in his face.
He doesn’t want Potter’s hand on his cock, or even the mouth that circles him, hot and wet and sucking, fingers pressed into the hollows of his hips. Draco digs his toes into the sheets, grabs the bunched robes with his hands, leverage as Potter’s tongue swirls around the head of his cock and he can hardly think, except-
“Stop!” he moans. “God, stop!”
Potter pulls back slowly and the rush of cold air makes Draco gasp. His eyes in the dark, shining and bright, the deepest of greens visible. “Don’t you-”
Draco clears his throat and calls, “Accio lube!”
A whoosh through the air from the bathroom, then something hard hits Draco in the side before dropping onto the rumpled sheets beside him. Potter picks the jar up and lowers his head, his breath ghosting Draco’s belly, the moans rising in his throat once more. Potter’s back shakes, sobbing.
Draco reaches out. “Potter- Harry?” he murmurs, placing a hand on Potter’s trembling shoulder.
Except Potter isn’t crying, there are no tears sliding down his face, but his eyes are still shiny. He laughs. “I didn't think I would ever hear you say those words,” he says, grinning. He screws the lid from the jar, sniffing.
“Be careful,” Draco says. “Please. Not like the other times.”
“I’ll try,” Potter says. It’s not what Draco wants to hear, but it is good enough. He expects the sting when slick fingers push into his arse, he expects the sharpness, the full feeling when Potter’s fingers spread, slow and wiggling. Mostly he misses the weight of Potter on top of him, the way Potter’s body, sweat-covered, slides against his, their skin sticky and salty under Draco’s tongue.
His legs are uncomfortable. He winces and Potter mutters an apology. Draco cuts it off with his mouth. “Shut up,” he says, and then he can’t breathe anymore. Potters hands are gone, and then he can feel Potter’s cock, hard and pressing, close and just waiting as Potter catches his breath, his heart pounding as loud as Draco’s.
“All right?” he asks.
“All right,” Draco manages, leaning to the side as Potter kisses his neck, his mouth moving over the pulsepoint near his collar as hands rush all over his belly, his hips, his cock and Potter pushes inside with a sigh.
He tries to stop thinking about anything except the sensation, about anything except the way Potter’s face stills into a deathmask after the first thrust and he doesn’t move, doesn’t even breath until Draco digs his hands into Potter’s shoulders, urging him on even through the discomfort. He runs his tongue along Potter’s ear. “Do it,” he whispers.
Potter moans.
And at the soft sound, vibrating through Potter’s kiss, Draco moans too and rocks his hips, moving together, his cock harder. This isn’t as awful and uncomfortable as the few times they tried it before, but it’s nothing spectacular either. Potter pushes himself deeper with each thrust, his speed building as his pants grow louder. His fingertips feel the tension in Potter’s shoulders, he rubs his hands over Potter’s slick back, pushing their bodies closer.
He clenches his muscles and Potter is gone, a keening wail and a gasp in the air and a blind thrust as he comes, moaning Draco’s name, his real name, into his neck.
Draco lies under Potter afterward, content, but not sated. Potter frowns, flopping onto his back and mutters something Draco doesn’t catch.
Potter clears his throat and tries again. “You didn’t…?”
“No,” Draco says. “It’s all right. I didn’t have to.”
“But you’re still hard,” Potter says as his hands slip under the sheets and curl around Draco’s cock.
Draco doesn’t refuse him. Even this has been too long. He barely has time to register what Potter is doing before he’s grunting his own release into Potter’s hands, his back arching off the mattress as he falls, falls, falls.
After, Potter watches him with big eyes in the dark. Draco watches back and hopes that Potter can’t see the smile on his lips. A private joke with himself. Instead, Potter tastes it with his tongue, his teeth, as he kisses Draco, one last slow time.
“Was- was that my present?” Potter asks.
Draco smiles wider and presses his lips to Potter’s, feeling the reciprocal grin. “Happy Christmas, Harry,” he murmurs.
4.
Potter shares a bed with him, in every sense of the word now. Draco thinks he’s getting better- they are both new at this thing. And the other week, Potter hit something inside, completely by accident, that had Draco gasping and begging and coming before Potter had begun to thrust more than a few shallow times.
But Draco can’t help feeling wrong, somehow. He won’t admit to Potter but he’s afraid Potter might be right, that he is poof. That they both are. It fires his face, but the more he thinks about it, it burns his cock, too.
“I love you,” Potter murmurs in his ear. The words, Potter’s voice, the cock pressed into his lower back, they all make Draco burn and freeze, an alternating shiver that runs down his spine whenever Potter enters their bedroom and their eyes meet and they will fall onto their bed, tangled and kissing and grabbing at clothing.
Draco smiles when he thinks of this. Maybe this is what love is. What being in love is. He feels the same foolish grin, the same lethargy and energy pulsing through his body.
Even the letter from his father doesn’t detract from this. Draco reads the words, his father’s voice in his head: Don’t you tire of hiding, Draco? Malfoys were never meant to shy away from the light.
You should talk, Father, he thinks. He throws the letter into a low-burning fire in the fireplace, letting James play with the poker until Potter discovers this and yells at him for letting James play dangerously.
He rolls his eyes and ignores Potter, but the swelling happiness grows inside, no longer shame or guilt, and he doesn’t care, he lets the feeling simmer and leads Potter up the stairs before midnight, that look in his eyes that spells out what will happen on the other side of their bedroom door.
Everything has changed in his life, and nothing at the same time. He feels the same, his body is restored to what it once was, with twenty years and four children added to it. When the light hits the right angle, he’ll sit quiet sometimes and try to count the few grey hairs Potter is starting to grow near his ears.
His own hair is too pale to find any, but he looks each morning in the mirror, picking through with a fine comb.
Potter lingers in the doorway. It is Saturday. There is a pot of tea on downstairs and Pyrrha is sleeping in late. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m getting old,” Draco drawls. “I’m ancient.”
“Not yet,” Potter says. He pushes his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose. “And I don’t mind.”
“Don’t you?” Draco asks. He smirks and sets the comb down. “Even when I’m a veritable graybeard?”
“Even then. Another twenty, fifty, seventy years, it won’t matter.” Potter swallows. Draco feels the air thickening around them, pulling him closer to Potter. He opens his mouth to say something to Potter, to laugh him off, but he can’t manage anything more than, “Really?”
Potter kisses him, his lips dry and chaste, his breath stale and warm and completely welcome. “It’s been twenty years nearly. I can’t- I can’t imagine what it would be like any other way.”
Draco blinks, and turns away, biting his lip before he does anything embarrassing, like sniffle, or cry. He curls his lip, but he can’t stop the smile when he scoffs and says, “Don’t be a poof, Potter.”
Potter starts to laugh.
His father’s words, burned but not forgotten, linger in Draco’s mind for some time. In early February snow falls, soft and downy across the world, coating everything in a belated Christmas season. He bundles James up in a snowsuit and shoves him out into the back garden to play, to build the snowman he tells Pyrrha at supper he wants to build.
Draco loves hearing the sound of James’ voice. It isn’t much, but when he hears James call out, “Daddy! Come see!” his heart skips a beat. He leans out of the doorway, oblivious to the cold air, and smiles at the sad, toppling snowman James has built, a torso and a lumpy head, eyes and smile of rock pebbles.
He stomach flips a little when he grabs a quill and parchment from the desk. His words are clear, but when he’s finished, the letter posted with Pyrrha’s owl flying to London, his hands feel sweaty and cold where the quill scolded his palm.
Draco goes to bed beside Potter and wonders if he should have. His father may be nearly a ghost from a past life, showing up here and there with a few words and a disapproving frown, but Potter wouldn’t understand that no matter how much he might want to, Draco can never escape his past.
But I can choose my future, he thinks. He looks down at Potter’s sleeping form, dark hair sprawled across his face, the features softened without glasses and by sleep.
He doesn’t finish the rest of the thought. It is near dawn and he can hear the first squawks of owls outside, rushing upon the house with a fury when Draco spreads open the curtains wide to the rose-tinted light of early dawn.
Potter groans and rubs his eyes. “What on earth…” he starts to mutter as he walks over to Draco, tugging with a sleepy hand to try to close the curtains. He puts on his glasses and blinks.
“What the hell?” he says, louder and stronger.
“I sent a letter,” Draco says slowly, practiced, “to the editor of The Daily Prophet.”
Potter blinks again. “But- but why?”
“You don’t have to hide me anymore, Potter,” Draco says. He glances out the window, the owls flocking on top of the fence, flying over the roof, settling on the grass below, all colours and species, all carrying little notes, all to him, he knows it.
YOU?!? they’ll say.
Or maybe, How could you?!?
Or, That’s impossible!
Potter is silent for the longest moment, and as the times slows, strained and long like a pensieve string, Draco starts to wonder if he shouldn’t have, until Potter asks, “Are you sure, Draco?”
Draco snakes a hand around Potter’s waist, smiling when Potter leans into it gently. “Yes,” he says.
The owls are beautiful outside, congregating in a great flock, the owlery of Hogwarts transported to the middle of the suburbs. It is only fitting that something grand like this be for a Malfoy. Nothing less would do.
“I’m going to add the letters to the boxes in the attic,” Draco says. “Fanmail, I think.”
Potter laughs, and in the shining golden light started to stream across his face, Draco knows that everything is all right.
Feedback, comments, anything is appreciated, as ever.
P.S. Stick around until tomorrow night. I have a few things to say. :)
