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My childhood from my life is parted,
My footstep from the moss which drew
Its fairy circle round: anew
The garden is deserted.
Another thrush may there rehearse
The madrigals which sweetest are;
No more for me!—myself afar
Do sing a sadder verse.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In a way, Draco supposed, it was a relief to discover that Harry Potter was as much of a prat as ever.
It wasn't anything the man said, or even necessarily what he did. But his very presence in Draco's laboratory was galling, even if he was doing nothing more blatantly offensive than standing in his crimson Auror's robes, rocking back and forth slightly on his heels and looking bored.
Draco added the meticulously measured portion of dried lacewing flies to his cauldron, narrowing his eyes until the mixture turned a precise shade of violet.
Potter huffed out an impatient breath.
"It's not as though I didn't tell you flat out that you were interrupting, Potter," Draco said, impressing himself with his own ability to keep the snarl out of his voice. Silently he counted the revolutions of his stirring rod.
"Damn it, Malfoy—"
"That's Professor Malfoy, I'll remind you, thanks ever so."
Draco didn't need to look up from the simmering potion to know that Potter was glaring. He kept his face turned downward to hide his smirk.
"Professor Malfoy," Potter enunciated, "I have some questions for you."
"And I, Auror Potter, have a time-sensitive potion I am in the midst of brewing, a situation of which I informed you directly upon your arrival. I am not keeping you waiting by design." He paused. "Not that the notion doesn't entertain me rather a lot."
To his surprise, Potter didn't fling a hex or storm from the room or exhibit any other outward sign of having reached the end of his notoriously short fuse. Instead, he seated himself on a stool on the opposite side of the worktable, folding his arms across the tabletop. Unable to resist the urge, Draco flicked a glance over the top of his cauldron to find Potter watching him levelly, his green eyes intent.
He only faltered in his stirring for a heartbeat, and he was almost positive Potter hadn't noticed.
Much as he might resent Potter's intrusion into his laboratory—and into his painstakingly carved out time for replenishing other professors' potions stores—he had to admit it was no hardship looking at the man's face across the table, no matter how forbidding his manner. A decade in the Auror corps appeared to have honed him to a fine edge, his features leaner, his gaze sharper. As a teenager, Potter had wielded a certain restlessness and raw power that had been damnably attractive.
As a man, Potter was well nigh irresistible.
Draco returned his gaze to the steaming cauldron, forcibly banishing any ridiculous untoward thoughts about Potter as he enumerated the final few stirs. After one last, precise turn, he set the stirring rod aside and cast a quick timing charm. His eyes met Potter's again as he stripped off his dragonhide gloves. "All right," he said, lacing his fingers together on the tabletop. "I'm all yours for the next ten minutes."
If he'd hoped to see Potter's eyes flicker with interest at the statement, it was in vain.
Potter drew a notepad from his pocket and flipped through the pages with the tip of a self-inking quill. "First, let me assure you that you are not a suspect in any investigation."
"Well, there's a nice change," Draco replied dryly
Potter's gaze lifted to meet his, and one eyebrow rose in subtle amusement.
Draco frowned and looked away.
"As I'm sure Professor McGonagall informed you, I'm just here to, well, pick your brain a bit."
"Why single me out, if I may ask?"
Potter's fingers drummed impatiently on the tabletop. "I'm not, actually. I've already spoken with Neville, Filius, and Minerva."
Draco blinked at him. A sick feeling began to twist deep in his gut. "What?"
"I'm not here to see you," Potter said. "Or, at least, not just you. I'm making a general inquiry of the Hogwarts faculty about a case."
"Oh." Mortification warred with anger—at himself or Potter, he wasn't entirely sure—as he recalled the tension that had suffused him for hours, ever since McGonagall had summoned him to her office to inform him that the pride of the Aurors, no less than Harry Potter himself, would be making an appearance at Hogwarts that evening with a few questions for Draco, and she simply wanted him to be prepared.
He'd imagined every possible worst-case scenario: They planned to retry him for his crimes during the war. His father had reunited with the remains of the Death Eaters. He'd been framed for murder.
He might also have imagined once or twice that Potter had realized, in a blinding and utterly un-Potter-like flash of insight, that he was gay and desperately attracted to reclusive potions masters. But at least that he knew was utterly preposterous.
"You're here about a case?" he asked.
"That's what I just said," Potter replied.
"And…I’m not a suspect."
"I believe I also just said that." Potter eyed him narrowly. "Are you sure you haven't been breathing the fumes down here too long?"
"Fuck off, Potter," Draco snapped, rubbing his fingers along his temples and instantly regretting his loss of cool. Merlin, how did Potter always manage to tie him in knots seemingly without even trying? And even when he hadn't clapped eyes on the man in years?
"Fuck you, Malfoy," Potter returned with no less vitriol. "And here I'd thought maybe we were old enough to have a civil conversation for once, especially since I came here to seek your expert counsel, or so Minerva put it."
Draco pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm starting to suspect we'll always be children in each other's eyes."
The sound of chair legs scraping against the hard stone floor had Draco opening his eyes in time to see Potter rising from his stool. "I'd hoped we might be mature enough to get past that, but if you insist on—"
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Potter, sit down." Draco sighed. "I'll answer whatever questions you have."
He half suspected Potter's lone question would be, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" And from the expression on Potter's face, he was certainly considering the idea. But instead, he sat back down at the table with another scrape of wood on stone. "Fine," he said, and flipped through his notepad again.
Potter's questions related to an unidentified hallucinogenic potion that had been circulating in London. The Aurors were piecing together the potion's components, but had acceded to Potter's suggestion that they seek outside assistance on a few points that had proven troublesome—Professor Longbottom on properties of plants identified in the concoction, Professor Flitwick on charms that might have enhanced the potion's efficacy, and Professor Malfoy on the combinations of ingredients and the brewing process.
"No, no, no," Draco said, cutting off Potter's recitation of the Aurors' prevailing theory. "Even a trace amount of valerian would render the scurvy-grass inert."
"But Neville said—"
"Longbottom's a herbologist, not a potion maker." He reached across the table, tugging the notepad out of Potter's hand and running his finger along the scrawled list of ingredients the Aurors had identified. "I can almost guarantee the scurvy-grass is a red herring." He picked up his own quill and circled an item on the list with a flourish. "It's the powdered billywig you should be looking at."
Potter lifted an imperious eyebrow at him and tried, unsuccessfully, to tug his notepad back. "They're tripping, Malfoy, not flying."
"You forget," Draco retorted, "billywig doesn't just cause levitation—it also induces a state of giddiness or euphoria. Combine that with a small amount of an ingredient with even mild hallucinogenic properties, and, well—" He traced the edge of the list again, frowning, then his expression cleared as he circled another word. "This," he said, pushing the notepad back across the table.
Potter's eyebrows lowered in confusion. "Sage?"
"Your list says sage-question-mark, which I'm taking to mean the Aurors have identified traces of something in the sage family, but not the actual species. I'd advise them to look more specifically for properties of Diviner's Sage."
The quill twitched in Potter's fingers, but he didn't write anything down. "Diviner's—as in, Trelawney—?"
Draco waved a hand at him annoyed. "Yes, yes, similar, except this is real, not just some crackpot in glasses the size of pie plates. I've been reading about how Mexican wizards are making use of the plant in various types of potions."
"Neville didn't mention it at all," Potter said, the quill still bouncing between his fingers.
"It's not a magical plant," Draco replied, clinging to patience. "But I imagine that, in combination with magical ingredients, it could wreak some serious havoc on a wizard's brain."
Potter frowned pensively at him for a moment longer, then nodded and scrawled something in his notepad before tucking it into a pocket of his robes. "I'll run that by the department," Potter said. "Thanks, Malfoy."
Draco nodded stiffly, relieved when his timing charm chimed to alert him that ten minutes had nearly passed. He donned his dragonhide gloves once more, expecting to see Potter taking his leave as quickly as possible.
But, damn the man, he was still sitting across the way, arms folded on the table as he watched Draco's movements with interest. "What is that you're brewing?"
"The Fountain of Youth, Potter."
Pause. "Come again?"
Draco gritted his teeth, but his voice was calm as he replied. "It's an aging-reversal potion for Longbottom."
Potter blinked. "For—what? Why would Neville need to reverse his age?"
Draco snickered in spite of his determination not to let Potter distract him. "Not for him. For his plants."
"Oh," Potter said. "All right." His fingers tapped an indistinct rhythm against the inside of his elbow. Then, "I'm still not entirely following."
Draco focused very intently on the drops of mistletoe berry extract he was adding to the cauldron Only through the greatest exercise of concentration could he refrain from rolling his eyes. "Sometimes, the timing of a plant's growth cycle doesn't coincide with the Herbology curriculum. So when Longbottom needs to delay the maturation of a species or two, he sprays them with a diluted form of this potion to reverse the process a bit."
"Oh, wow," Potter said. "I didn't realize that was even possible."
"It wasn't," Draco replied, unable to keep the pride from coloring his voice, "until I invented this potion."
"Oh."
Draco couldn't help noticing that Potter seemed distinctly less impressed with Draco's invention of the potion than he had been with Longbottom's application of it. Then again, Longbottom had always made such a complete arse of himself around potions that it probably was only right to commend the man's ability to apply one successfully. Even so, he felt that tinge of pride curdle into resentment once again.
"Why not just use a Shrinking Solution?" Potter asked. "You know, like the one Snape had us make once. It turned Neville's toad into a tadpole."
Draco sneered. "A fine trick for third years. But I can assure you that my potion reverses the clock with much greater care and precision. I doubt Longbottom's toad was ever quite the same after Severus applied the antidote, am I right?"
Potter shifted on his stool, propping his chin on one of his hands as he continued to watch Draco's movements over the cauldron. "Dunno. Hard to tell with a toad, really."
Draco didn't bother holding back the eye-roll this time. "Be that as it may, I can assure you that this potion, in its dilute form, rolls back the aging process of a plant by a carefully calculated span of time, unlike the coarseness of a Shrinking Solution that returns a creature to helpless infancy."
"Does your potion work on people?"
Draco lifted his gaze to meet Potter's and arched a single eyebrow. "Why so interested, Potter? The stress of an Auror's life already giving you gray hairs and crows' feet?"
To his surprise, Potter laughed, revealing that, actually, yes, Potter already had a few well-placed lines beginning to form on his handsome face—laugh lines, though, not worry lines. The crinkles at the corners of his vivid eyes had Draco hurriedly looking away.
"No, I've no worries on that score yet," Potter replied, amusement coloring his voice. "I only imagined this might be the sort of advance in potion-making that could have wizards and witches of a certain age beating down your door for a dose. I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd pay a lot of coin for a sip from the Fountain of Youth."
And the Malfoy coffers could certainly use the infusion, after all those reparations payments, went unsaid.
Carefully, Draco added the rose petals that constituted the potion's final ingredient, then stirred slowly while the petals were absorbed. "It's too dangerous," he said, eyes on the potion's shimmering surface as he waited for the color shift that would signify its readiness. "I haven't tested it on anything other than plants yet. And even plants can take only a very weak form of the potion without reverting to seeds."
"Hence the gloves and the apron?" Potter asked.
Draco glanced up again and narrowed his eyes at Potter's smirk. "It is a protective garment."
"Shaped like an apron," Potter replied, grinning openly.
Draco turned back to the potion, shaking his head. It was a little unnerving, truth be told, to have Potter's insults be teasing rather than taunting.
"Hadn't you best be heading back to Auror Headquarters to report your important findings?" Draco asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the potion.
"No rush," Potter said. Draco could hear him shifting on the stool. "As of tonight, I'm on holiday for the next few weeks anyway. I'll owl my notes to Robards in the morning."
"Oh." His hand continued to move the stirring rod through the potion in slow revolutions. He knew this was one element of potion-making that many of his classmates had found mind-numbing. Draco, though, had always found it oddly soothing. "So, you decided to spend the beginning of your holiday at Hogwarts, of all places?"
And there was that disarming laugh again. Draco's fingers tightened on the stirring rod. "No, not exactly," Potter said. "I volunteered to be the one to come up here and question all of you, in part so I could use it as an excuse to visit with my godson."
"Ah," Draco said. "Yes. Lupin."
"Yeah. Little too late to be bothering him at this hour of the night, though, so I suppose I'll have to ambush him at breakfast. He doesn't even know I'm here yet."
Draco hmmed noncommittally. Lupin was a decent enough student. It was always strange to him, though, to look into the child's eyes and find himself wondering how like the boy was to the cousin he'd never known.
Then Potter's words sank in. "So, you're—staying here?"
"Just for the night." Out of the corner of his eye, Draco could see Potter's strong, blunt fingers tracing the grooves in the weathered tabletop, markers of age and of centuries of student distractions. "Prof—" He caught himself. "Minerva arranged guest quarters for me."
"How kind," Draco said.
The movements of Potter's fingers stopped. "Yeah," he said. "It is." His fingernail began picking at a particularly deep groove.
Merlin save him from a bored Potter who'd apparently decided Draco's company was an acceptable enough alternative to turning in early.
As though in answer to his plea, he stirred the potion just a few more times, and…there, a perfect translucent lavender. Draco set the stirring rod aside and extinguished the low flame beneath the cauldron.
"Finished already?"
Draco looked up with a frown, certain he'd been imagining the hint of disappointment in Potter's voice. "Yes, just about. The potion needs to cool before I can dilute it, so I just need place it under a stabilizing spell and move it to the worktable in the back of the room."
Potter's stool scraped against the stone as he stood up. "Let me help—"
"No, I've got it, really—"
"Come on, I'm not nearly as pants at all this as you think—"
"Potter, you've no idea what I—"
"I'm a bloody Auror, I can cast a stabilizing spell—"
"Damn it, Potter!"
In Potter's eagerness to assist, and Draco's equal adamancy that he not, one or both of them had managed to knock over some of the scattered ingredients and jostle the cauldron. In a heartbeat, Draco had cast the stabilizing spell to prevent the cauldron from spilling its entire contents—but not before the potion inside had sloshed dangerously, scattering droplets across the tabletop.
Frantic, Draco rounded the table and began patting Potter down with his gloved hands. "Did you get any on you?"
"What? No! At least, I don't think—" He took a hasty step back, slapping Draco's hands away. "Damn it, stop it with the—the hands and the touching—"
"For fuck's sake, Potter, if you got even a drop of that potion on you—"
Potter shoved a hand to the center of Draco's chest to stop him moving any closer and continuing his panicked pat-down. "I'm fine. I didn't feel anything hit me."
"You wouldn't necessarily feel it, if it were only a stray droplet—"
"And, besides, what's a measly drop or two going to do?"
Draco threw his hands in the air and rolled his eyes. "Potter, need I remind you that that potion is highly concentrated—"
Potter shook his head and lifted his hand from Draco's chest. "Malfoy, I'm fine. As you can see, I haven't reverted to seed form yet."
"Merlin, Potter, this is not something to joke about." He peeled off his gloves with shaking fingers.
"If you're so worried, then, give me the antidote, just in case."
Draco struggled not to wring his hands like his Grand-Mère Malfoy always had when she was distressed. "I don't have one. There's never been a need for one."
Potter blinked at him. "Well, that's remarkably short-sighted of you."
"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, POTTER, DO NOT LECTURE ME NOW!"
Potter took a step back at Draco's shout. "All right," he said, straightening his robes, eyes following Draco like they would a rabid animal. "Well, I think I'll just go."
"Damn it, Potter—"
He held up a hand. "Look, if anything weird does happen, I'll let you know. All right?"
Draco closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. "I do not want to be the man who goes down in history as the one who reduced Harry Potter to 'The Zygote Who Lived.'"
Potter laughed at that, and Draco just wished he could share the man's easy confidence. He was almost certain the potion had landed too far away from Potter to do any damage. But, well, they'd both been moving, and it was hard to tell…
"Thanks again for taking the time, Malfoy," Potter said as he opened the door to leave. "It was…nice to see you again."
Draco just nodded stiffly as Potter made his escape, then sat down, hard, at the other worktable, laying his head against the surface with a clunk.
Well, that could have gone better.
*
After Potter's departure, Draco moved the now-stabilized potion to the other side of the room and tidied up the rest of the mess, then puttered around first the workroom, then his chambers for the next several hours, dreading a summons from Potter or, worse, the headmistress.
He knew his position on the Hogwarts staff was tenuous. Only a handful of years ago, he'd still been a pariah to all of wizarding society, unable even to find a decent job. It didn't matter that none of his family had been committed to Azkaban after the war, and it didn't matter that the Boy Savior himself had, however improbably, spoken in Draco's defense at his trial before the Wizengamot. All that mattered was that Draco wore the mark of You-Know-Who on his left forearm, and would until the day he died.
He and his parents had sold off a great many of the Manor's furnishings to make ends meet. Eventually, his parents had fled Britain entirely to try to make a new life in France. His mother had begged him to accompany them. But Draco hadn't been willing to give up quite yet.
He'd started an owl-order potions business under an assumed name, so that he at least had a source of funds. More important, though, he made a point of showing his face in Diagon Alley and even, occasionally, the Ministry. He refused to hide away in the Manor like the wizarding world's dirty little secret.
And his determination had been rewarded several years back when he'd received an owl from Headmistress McGonagall, inviting him to Hogwarts to discuss an opening on the faculty. He'd dreaded the meeting, imagining that the only possible positions open to a former Death Eater would be caretaker or gamekeeper—and, worse, knowing that, no matter what miserable position McGonagall was about to offer him, he'd probably take it.
But, to his shock, it turned out it wasn't Filch or Hagrid retiring, but Slughorn, and the man had recommended Draco specifically as his successor. In spite of his resolve to appear strong and stoic, Draco had nearly collapsed in relief at the news—so great was his relief, in fact, that he hadn't even minded in the slightest that McGonagall had laughed and offered him a ginger biscuit.
He knew, though—or at least suspected—that his hold on the position was fragile. He knew some parents had threatened to hold their children out of Hogwarts rather than have them taught by a former Death Eater (the reminder that Severus Snape, too, had borne the Dark Mark seemed to earn no points in such arguments), and he knew there were a great many people who'd like nothing more than to see him fail spectacularly and prove all of their suspicions about his character correct.
But the first time he'd found himself in the headmistress's office for a meeting after he'd been bombarded with Howlers in the Great Hall, rather than being sacked, as he'd feared, he'd found himself subject to a long, stern look from McGonagall over the rims of her square-framed glasses.
"Pay them no mind, Mr. Malfoy," she'd said at last. "Some people in this world have a very narrow view of right and wrong, especially as it applies to those other than themselves. Howlers, indeed." She'd sniffed in derision, then pointed one long, thin finger at Draco. "Do not let them get to you. We've not yet sacked a member of the faculty for…ill-advised political alliances in his youth, and I've no intention of starting now."
Draco had bowed his head, his ears still ringing with the amplified shouts of "Vermin!" and "Death Eater scum!" and "Should have died with your bloody Dark Lord!"
"Pay no mind," McGonagall said, "to anyone who questions your fitness for this position, or my judgment in hiring you for it." She thrust the ever-present tin of ginger biscuits at him, her gaze piercing. "Harry Potter thought you were worth saving, and that's quite good enough for me."
He paced the rooms of his chambers the night of Potter's visit until well after midnight, until even the sheep in the nauseatingly bucolic painting in his bedroom had lain down in their meadow, perhaps hoping he'd take a hint. When no knock or other summons came, he finally climbed into bed and fell into an uneasy slumber punctuated by dream fragments that featured Potter's smile, Potter's laugh, and the feel of Potter's strong hand pressed against his chest.
*
Draco sat bolt upright, blinking into the darkness before snatching his wand from beneath his pillow and quickly casting Lumos.
Professor Snape, framed incongruously by rolling fields and dozing sheep, was scowling at him from the painting on the opposite wall.
"Draco, get up," he ordered. "We have a problem."
*
Draco had never really wanted to know what the portraits got up to at night, but now that he knew, he was going to be sure to avoid this particular dark hallway after the students' curfew.
"I do not understand how you could not have insisted Potter shower immediately after the potion spilled—"
"It would have been absorbed immediately, so a shower wouldn't have done any good, anyway," Draco retorted. "And, yeah, I can see that proposal going over well—'Say, Potter, fancy a shower?'" He stopped dead in his tracks. "Wait a minute. How do you even know the potion spilled tonight? I haven't seen you in weeks."
Severus was several portraits ahead of him down the corridor before he realized Draco wasn't following him any longer, so he turned back until he was level with Draco again, fending off the attentions of a particularly enthusiastic kitten as he replied with a growl, "There's a small portrait of Arsenius Jigger in the corner of the potions laboratory. He alerted me as soon as something went awry." An expression of disgust settled over his features. "I have been concealing myself for the past six hours in a portrait of Harold the Hirsute in Potter's guest chambers." He shuddered. "You could probably conceal an army of former headmasters behind all that bloody hair."
Draco took off running again, lit wand leading the way. "What's wrong with Potter, then?" he demanded.
"You shall see," Severus replied, his tone grim. "Here," he finally said, halting his painting-hopping journey at a portrait of a pretty, red-haired milkmaid who reminded Draco a little too much of the Weasley chit. Severus bullied her into opening the portal, and Draco barreled through, following the sounds of indignant shouting to the suite's bedchamber. He held his wand aloft and gasped.
A child stood trembling—with equal measures anger and fear, if Draco hadn't missed the mark—in the center of Potter's bedroom, swathed in adult-size pajamas and wearing too-big glasses.
A distinctive lightning-bolt scar stood out in sharp relief on the child's forehead.
"Who are you?" the child demanded. "Where am I?"
"Oh, fuck," Draco whispered, and turned to send a Patronus to the headmistress.
*
"It's my fault," Draco said, burying his face in his hands and grateful his former potions instructor had taken his leave as soon as McGonagall arrived. "I was brewing the aging-reversal potion for Longbottom while Potter was in the lab asking me questions. We—argued and, well, got into—something of a tussle—and the potion spilled. He swore he didn't get any on him, but he wouldn't let me check, and I was upset and didn't make sure—"
He cut himself off at the sound of McGonagall muttering as she crossed the room to seat herself on the sofa next to the wide-eyed child who was, apparently, Harry Potter. The child flinched when she lifted her wand, but she merely tapped it against the bow of his glasses, and they shrank to the proper size to fit his face. "How old are you, Harry, dear?" she asked.
"Ten," he said, eyeing her warily. "Who are you?"
"I am Professor McGonagall, headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And you—" She broke off and cleared her throat. "—Will be one of my pupils."
Potter narrowed his eyes, swinging his gaze back and forth between McGonagall and Draco, who had fallen into a chair on the other side of the sitting room with his hair clenched in his fists. "Is this some sort of prank? Did Dudley bribe you to do this?"
McGonagall's voice was admirably calm. "This is no joke, Mr. Potter. You are a guest at my school."
"A school of—what did you say? Witchcraft and wizardry?"
"That is correct."
Potter frowned. "But—there's no such thing as witchcraft and wizardry. Not outside of books and telly, I mean."
Draco lifted his head, shocked.
"I can assure you, Mr. Potter, there is. We teach a wide breadth of magical disciplines in this school."
The child's eyebrows furrowed. "My uncle said there's no such thing as magic."
McGonagall stood. "If you'll allow me a brief demonstration?" At the child's nod, she transformed into her Animagus form.
Potter gasped.
The cat leapt delicately onto the sofa, sniffing at the trembling hand the child held out for inspection, then leapt just as gracefully back to the floor. In the blink of an eye, she'd transformed back into the tartan-dressing-robe-clad headmistress.
Potter's jaw hung open. "Wow," he breathed.
"You've—you've really never seen magic before?" Draco couldn't stop himself asking.
Potter shook his head, still staring in awe at the professor, who'd retaken her seat next to him with great dignity.
"And you had no idea you're a wizard?"
His eyes grew round. "I'm a wizard?" he asked McGonagall.
"Indeed you are," she said. "A very fine one, too."
A grin dawned on the boy's face, brilliant like the sun. "Wicked. Dudley'll flip."
"I'm sure," McGonagall replied with the patience of one who's been teaching children for decades.
Draco's mind was spinning. He'd heard the stories of Potter's childhood, of course; everybody had: He grew up with his Muggle relations, never knew he was a wizard, never did magic, never rode a broom, never heard of Hogwarts, etc., etc. But Draco had always figured at least half of it had to be either Potter or that Skeeter woman spinning the story for maximum pathos. No one with that much magical ability could be entirely ignorant of the magical world.
But the bright-eyed child opposite him appeared to lay that notion to rest.
"Am I staying here?" Potter asked McGonagall, hope obvious in his expression. "You're not going to send me back to my aunt and uncle, are you?"
Some infinitesimal expression flickered across McGonagall's face—anger? sadness?—and she lifted a hand, as though to smooth it over the boy's unruly head of hair, before lowering it again when the child flinched away. She lifted her chin, and her voice was uneven as she replied, "No, Mr. Potter, you will not be returning to your aunt and uncle's home. That I can promise you."
The boy whooped with joy, and the sound was enough to make even Draco smile through his dread.
"Now," the headmistress said, "if you'll just excuse me and Professor Malfoy for a few moments, we have some things to discuss. Your appearance here was—a bit of surprise tonight."
"You're telling me," Potter replied, drawing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.
"We'll be back very shortly," McGonagall promised, then stood and beckoned to Draco.
Heart in his throat, he rose to his feet and followed her back into the corridor.
"How soon can you fix this?" she demanded in a hiss.
"I don't know," he admitted, wrapping his arms around himself. "The potion's never been used on a human before, so I don't have an antidote prepared. I have no idea how long it'll take to develop one."
"So probably not tonight?" she inquired, one sharp eyebrow lifted.
He shook his head.
"Very well, then. We'll have to take alternative measures."
"Meaning—what?" he asked. But she'd already reopened the door to Potter's chambers and stepped through it, so he followed numbly.
"Mr. Potter," she said, standing in the middle of the room, her posture as ramrod-straight as when she addressed the school as a whole, "we have a bit of a situation."
Potter's eyebrows rose in question.
"As I said, your appearance here was—unexpected. As such, we need to keep it a secret."
The boy frowned suspiciously. "Why?"
McGonagall sighed. "There's been a problem. A magical accident of sorts that Professor Malfoy here needs to put to rights."
Draco straightened his spine and tried to affect a braver appearance when he felt Potter's eyes on him, but he sensed the boy wasn't fooled.
"A magical accident—involving me?" Potter asked.
"Yes," McGonagall answered.
The gaze on Draco sharpened.
"You are not in any danger," McGonagall continued. "But Professor Malfoy will need your full cooperation as he tries to correct the problem." She cleared her throat. "As such, you will be staying with him in his quarters until such time as the issue is resolved."
"What?" Potter said.
"What?" Draco choked.
"You heard me." She turned and gave Draco a severe look. "We'll add an extra bedroom to your quarters temporarily. You will be responsible for tending to Mr. Potter while he is a guest in our school." She turned back to Potter. "And you, Mr. Potter, will follow my and Professor Malfoy's instructions to the letter as long as you remain within this school, or there may be dire consequences, the likes of which you cannot even imagine."
Potter's eyes grew round.
McGonagall took a deep breath. "All right, then." She strode to the bedroom, pressing her hand against the stone wall and closing her eyes, expression intent, while she murmured an incantation Draco couldn't hear, then took a deep breath before opening her eyes and flicking her wand twice at Potter's belongings, which disappeared. "There," she said. "Professor Malfoy, Mr. Potter's belongings are now in the second bedroom attached to your quarters." She approached Potter and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "If you'll allow me to resize these pajamas for you, Mr. Potter?" Potter nodded, and with another flick of her wand, the boy was no longer swimming in too-large Chudley Cannons pajamas, but rather wearing equally horrifying Chudley Cannons pajamas that actually fit.
The wonder in his expression as he gazed back at McGonagall was something to behold. Draco couldn't remember a time when he hadn't known about magic. How wonderful and strange it must seem to someone who's never experienced it before, he couldn't help thinking.
"Now," McGonagall said, crouching in front of Potter, "there remains the small concern of concealing your identity."
"Like in a spy movie?" Potter asked, sitting up straighter.
The corner of McGonagall's mouth turned up at that. "Something like, Mr. Potter, yes. I thought, perhaps, if you would agree to pretend to be Professor Malfoy's visiting cousin for the time being, just until all this is straightened out?"
Potter and McGonagall's gazes turned to Draco, and he nodded; what else was there to say?
"OK," Potter said.
"And as for a name—''
"Can I be James Bond?" the boy asked eagerly.
McGonagall quickly tamped down a smile. "An inspired idea, Mr. Potter, but I'm afraid that might be a bit too obvious." At Potter's crestfallen look, she allowed, "But I think James is an excellent name."
"It's my middle name," Potter said. "It was my Dad's name."
"So it was," McGonagall replied, as if everyone in the British wizarding community weren't acutely aware of that fact. "How does 'James Malfoy' sound to the two of you? Harry, can you remember to answer to that name?"
Potter nodded.
McGonagall turned. "And you, Mr. Malfoy?"
He took a breath and nodded as well. "Of course, Professor."
"Very well. Last order of business, then." She pressed her wand to Potter's forehead. "Mr. Potter," she said, seeing his expression grow wary, "this is only a precaution to prevent people recognizing you, and I promise it will not hurt in the least." Potter swallowed nervously and closed his eyes, and McGonagall whispered a brief incantation. Before Draco's eyes, the world-famous scar faded away to nothingness. "Just a small Glamour Charm," she said, rising to her feet once more. "It should last for up to two weeks, although I hope we will have cause to reverse it before then." She shot Draco a meaningful look, and he gave a curt nod.
"Right, then," she said. "I shall return to my quarters, and, Professor, I suggest you show your cousin to yours so that we can all enjoy a restful night's sleep before tackling our bigger problems on the morrow."
Draco murmured his agreement, and the headmistress shook Potter's hand and bid him good night before sweeping from the room.
Draco stared across the expanse of the sitting room at the child who was, unbelievably enough, Harry Potter.
He cleared his throat. "All right—James. Let's get you downstairs, shall we?"
*
Pansy had always snickered that being a pampered only child had stunted Draco socially. And much as he might have railed vocally against that assessment, in private he had to admit that he wasn't, perhaps, the most socially adept of all their classmates. Other Hogwarts students didn't obey him like house-elves did, and they couldn't always be bought. That knowledge had been a sad realization for Draco.
Harry Potter, for certain, couldn't be bought. He'd been put off by Draco's boasting in Madam Malkin's and turned down Draco's offer to take Potter under his wing when they were first years. Nothing he'd ever done had seemed to make Potter view him as an equal, let alone offer him friendship.
First year was when it had all started to go wrong. Like every wizarding child of his generation, he'd grown up hearing tales of Harry Potter, who'd defeated a Dark Wizard when he was only a baby. Harry Potter, whom nobody in the wizarding world had even seen since that fateful night. Harry Potter, surely the most famous and powerful wizard of the age.
Draco might not have known much about relating to his peers without resorting to threats and bribery, but he knew Harry Potter's friendship was something to be desired. Harry Potter could change your life just by looking at you, the stories seemed to imply.
And, oh, there'd been truth in that.
Eleven-year-old Harry Potter had had the temerity to look down on Draco, and Draco's life had changed in an instant. His dreams of ruling wizarding society alongside the most renowned wizard in all of Britain had been smashed, and in their place grew a burning need to prove that he wasn't the insignificant thing Potter had cast him as. For years, Potter was the yardstick against which he measured himself and his achievements. And somehow, somehow he always fell short.
Which was all the more reason for him to feel completely at a loss as he stood face-to-face with a ten-year-old Harry Potter.
"Er," he said, glancing around his quarters. He hadn't realized what a mess he'd left it earlier in the evening—students' parchment scattered all over the sofa and coffee table, his clothing on the floor in front of his bedroom, where he'd literally stepped out of it in his desire to crawl into bed and forget the entire evening had happened.
So much for that plan.
"It looks like your room is over here." He gestured to a new doorway to the right of his bedroom that hadn't been there previously. Potter trailed after him, his small feet shuffling against the carpet. Draco peered through the doorway, finding a canopied bed that resembled those in the Slytherin dormitories, only decked in garish Gryffindor gold and red, as well as a wardrobe whose open door revealed clothing that looked as though it were designed to fit a ten-year-old boy—even one (Draco now realized, as the boy in question stood next to him, gazing into the room) as slight as Potter.
Draco had been small for his age when he'd started Hogwarts, and he remembered feeling grimly pleased that the famous Potter was no towering, muscled hulk either. But had that Potter really looked as weedy and underfed as this one did?
Potter stepped through the doorway and turned in a circle, taking in the whole room. Aside from the traditional lavish bed hangings, it was pretty Spartan, like the Hogwarts dormitories were, in his experience. Still, Potter's face lit up like the Christmas tree in the Great Hall. "I get my own bedroom?" he asked.
Draco frowned. "Of course you do."
Potter hoisted himself onto the bed and bounced on the mattress, laughing. "I've never had a room of my own!"
Draco frowned, remembering suddenly some of the things Skeeter had written about Potter's childhood. At the time, Draco had dismissed them as outright fabrications. But now, he began to wonder.
"Do you, ah…share a room with someone at home?"
"Oh, no," Potter said matter-of-factly. "I sleep in the cupboard under the stairs."
Draco stared. "You…but why?"
Potter shrugged, then flopped backward onto the crimson bedspread. "My cousin Dudley has two rooms, so there's none left for me." He sat back upright, his glasses crooked, and grinned at Draco. "Between you and me, he's fat enough that he needs two bedrooms, because he probably can't fit his bottom in just one of them."
Draco choked back his laughter and shook his head at Potter. "That's not very nice."
Potter shrugged again, unconcerned, as he stroked his hand along the soft velvet of the bedspread. "He's not very nice. He's a lot bigger than me, and he and his friends like to chase me around and beat me up. I hope Dudley doesn't get to go here." He looked up at Draco again. "Are people nicer in wizard school, do you reckon?"
Draco swallowed, feeling, for the first time, a touch of shame regarding his interactions with Potter in their schooldays. "Some," he answered, not quite making eye contact. "But there are prats everywhere, you know?"
Potter sighed. "I figured you might say that. My Uncle Vernon is a prat, too, and he's a grown-up, so I guess you just can't escape them."
This time, Draco didn't even try to hold back the laughter. Potter flashed him a grin, pleased, but whatever he'd planned to say next was interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn.
"All right, enough talking," Draco said. "It's half three in the morning, and we both need our sleep."
"Mmkay," Potter replied, already worming his way beneath the covers. "'Night, Professor."
"About that," Draco said, hesitating over his next words. "Since we're supposed to be cousins, maybe it's best if you just call me, well, Draco."
"Draco's a funny name," Potter murmured, clearly half asleep already. Before Draco could feel the old indignation rise, though, Potter went on, "I like it. It's lots more interesting than Harry."
Draco smiled, shaking his head. "All right—"
"Can I call you Cousin Draco?" Potter asked. He shifted under the covers, propping his head up on one arm. "It's just—I kind of hate the one cousin I do have, and it'll be fun to have a cousin I like for a change, even if it's just pretend."
Something tightened in Draco's chest, and he had to clear his throat before he could speak. "Yeah," he said. "That'd be fine."
Potter grinned. "OK." He laid his head back down and closed his eyes. "'Night, Cousin Draco."
"Good night—Cousin James."
*
That hope was shattered moments later by a frantic knock on his bedroom door and a child's loud voice. "Cousin Draco, where's the loo?"
Draco closed his eyes and wished he'd never answered Minerva McGonagall's inquiring owl.
"Two doors down on the left!" he called out, and was rewarded with the sound of rapidly retreating footfalls, followed by the slam of a heavy door.
Draco cast a Tempus charm to check the time and was relieved to remember it was the weekend, so at least he wouldn't be forced to cart the mini Potter with him to lessons. Yet.
Soon enough, the knock sounded again. "Come in," Draco called, sitting up and brushing his sleep-mussed hair out of his face.
A messy head of black hair poked though the door opening. "Hi."
"Good morning," Draco said. How did one make small talk with children? "Sleep well?"
Potter nodded. "The bed's really nice and soft."
"Well…good. I'm glad to hear it."
He and Potter stared at each other warily.
"So, what are we doing today?" Potter asked.
Excellent question, Draco thought. "Well…we slept in a bit too late to make it to the Great Hall in time for breakfast, but I can have the elves send something up."
"Elves?" Potter's eyes grew round.
"Yes, they're…well…they're elves. They…cook food and clean and such. We don't see much of them, so don't get your hopes up."
The boy's mouth closed, the corners turning down. "Oh. OK."
It was irrational to feel bad for disappointing the child, Draco told himself firmly. The child was Potter. He'd do well to keep that in mind.
"Yes," he continued. "And after that, we'd best head to the potions laboratory so I can get started turning—er…" He cut himself off, remembering at the last moment that this Potter apparently had no notion that he was actually an adult. "Fixing the problem and getting everything back to normal."
But for all his myriad complaints about Potter over the last couple of decades, he never could have accused the man of being stupid. Potter's eyebrows knitted, his mouth twisting into a sullen frown. "I'm the 'problem,' aren't I? You just want to send me home."
"No, I—" Draco closed his eyes and raked a hand through his already disheveled hair, then made eye contact with Potter again. "Yes, the problem has something to do with you, but it has nothing to do with sending you away. I made a mistake, and I need to fix it. But I need your help to do it."
Potter eyed him suspiciously, then gave a curt nod.
Draco just barely refrained from rolling his eyes. Good to know Potter came by his imperiousness naturally.
He rubbed a hand over his eyes. The sooner he put this situation to rights, the better.
"All right. I'm taking a shower, and then we can eat and get moving. Have you washed up?"
"Yes," Potter said, eyes wide and guileless.
Draco narrowed his eyes at him, remembering similar exchanges with his mum when he was a child. "And I'll bet you've brushed your teeth, too, am I right?"
"Of course!" Potter flung him a cheeky grin and bounded back toward his bedroom.
Draco collapsed back against his pillows. It was going to be a long day.
*
"Professor McGonagall, are you there?"
He heard footsteps as the headmistress rounded her desk. Trust McGonagall to be in her office on a Saturday morning. Not that he wasn't grateful for it at the moment.
Soon, she was crouching in front of her own fireplace. "Draco, is something wrong?"
"Not wrong, no, but—I wondered—" He swallowed. "Has the Ministry been informed of the, ah, problem? I seem to recall Potter mentioning that he meant to report to his department head this morning."
McGonagall nodded. "I sent an owl to Kingsley late last night, after you and I had parted, informing him that we had a bit of a—situation where Potter is concerned. I received his reply this morning—he will be here at one to meet with us and discuss the problem. I'd hoped to inform you at breakfast." Her expression was arch.
"Yes, sorry, Professor. Pot—er, my cousin and I slept in a bit after all the excitement."
She nodded in resignation. "To be expected, I suppose. Nevertheless, I expect you in my office by one. In the meantime, Kingsley will quietly spread word that Potter is engaged in a top-secret project, so that, I hope, will prevent anyone from worrying overmuch that Harry hasn't been heard from. Now, then, can you find some way to occupy the child while we are meeting?"
Draco cast a glance over his shoulder at the jumbled shelves of his quarters. Potter had never been known for his intellectual prowess, but… "Maybe a book?" He frowned as a terrible thought crossed his mind. "He can read, can't he?"
The expression McGonagall wore could have curdled milk. "For Merlin's sake, he was raised by Muggles, not monkeys."
Draco shrugged. What did he know about the Muggle lifestyle?
"Is Har—James all right? No problems?"
McGonagall's gaze was sharp, and Draco withered a bit under her scrutiny. "Everything's fine. He's eating breakfast. I thought I'd ask him some questions before we went to the lab so I can start some experiments."
She tilted her head. "Oh, Draco. You're not going to coop him up in the dungeons indefinitely, are you? He's just a boy."
Draco opened his mouth, then closed it, then shook his head in bewilderment. "Professor, it's Potter. Harry bloody Potter. This isn't some waif off the street!"
"Language, Mr. Malfoy!" He lowered his gaze in the force of her pinched expression. Damned if the woman couldn't make him feel eleven again with a single sharp glance. "And he might as well be a waif off the street, for all he knows about us and our world. Remember, Mr. Malfoy, he doesn't know he is Harry Potter. He doesn't understand what that means."
The notion was as baffling to him now as it had been when he'd first heard that Potter hadn't known he was famous for the first eleven years of his life. How could a person not know he or she was famous? How can everyone know you, and you not know that everyone knows? He still couldn't entirely wrap his brain around it.
"All right," he muttered. "All right, I see your point."
"Perhaps the boy would like to—play outside in the snow?" McGonagall suggested.
A picture leapt into Draco's brain of a twenty-nine-year-old Harry Potter frolicking in the snow like a child—building a fort, making snow angels, amassing a stash of snowballs. It wasn't as incongruous an image as he suspected it ought to have been.
"Perhaps," Draco said. "Later. Or tomorrow. I'd just as soon get to the bottom of this little fiasco so we can turn him back to his old—" prattish "—familiar—" handsome "—self."
"Yes, yes, of course, I agree." She sighed. "It's only—poor Harry never had much of a childhood, from what I've heard. He doesn't even like to talk about that time. As long as he has to be a child right now, it would be—nice—to let him just be a child for a while, even if he doesn't remember it when he's an adult again."
The thought hadn't even occurred to Draco. "You think he won't remember this?"
She gave a small shrug. "We won't know for sure until he's taken the antidote and returned to normal. But it stands to reason, since he doesn't seem to remember his adulthood now. I imagine the transition is fairly traumatic, from a biological and psychological standpoint." She shook her head and gave Draco a wry look. "In fact, it might be best for all concerned if he doesn't remember just what happened."
Draco winced. "An excellent point."
Hearing Potter moving about in the next room, he hastily made his excuses to McGonagall ("One o'clock sharp, Mr. Malfoy!") and pulled his head out of the fireplace.
*
Draco blinked at the boy, unsure whether to be appalled or impressed.
"They were really good," Potter offered by way of explanation.
Draco stared.
"I left you the fruit…?" Potter said.
Draco shook his head. Apparently, once a prat, always a prat.
"Slight change of plans," Draco said, settling into his favorite armchair with a piece of parchment, a quill, and an apple. "I've a meeting with the headmistress at one, so I thought we'd get some preliminary questions out of the way, and then maybe you can—spend some time reading this afternoon?" He watched Potter's reaction closely, still not sure if he should trust McGonagall's assertions on the literary front.
"Oh," Potter said. "OK." He plucked a strawberry off the tray and grasped the stem between his fingers, spinning it idly.
Well, at least he hadn't had a panicked reaction at the mention of reading, Draco supposed.
"All right," Draco said, casting a quick charm to stiffen the parchment for easier writing and another to keep the apple suspended within easy reach, "a bit of background first." He made a note at the top of the parchment and asked, "When was your last birthday?"
When only silence greeted him, he glanced up to see that Potter was staring fixedly at the floating apple, his jaw agape. Draco's gaze swung from Potter to the apple and back before he remembered—oh, right. Not something this Potter would have seen every day. Silently, he canceled the spell on the apple, catching it in his palm and setting it on the side table.
Potter's stupefied expression transformed into a grin. "That was magic, wasn't it? Cool. It's like you can do magic without even thinking about it! Will I be able to do that someday?"
"Very, very soon, if I have my way," Draco replied dryly.
"Wow," Potter said, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.
"Yes, yes, magic is very exciting," Draco sighed. "Now, can you please answer the question?"
"What question?"
Draco took a very, very slow breath. "When was your last birthday?"
"Oh," Potter said, sprawling back against the sofa cushions. "That's easy. Last month."
Frowning, Draco made a note. "How many days ago, exactly?"
Potter furrowed his brow. "Wait, yesterday was the twenty-first, so…twenty-two days ago, I guess." His eyes brightened and he slanted Draco a sly look. "Are you going to throw me a party?"
"I imagine you had quite enough of one at home already, but nice try," Draco replied.
The sparkle dimmed a bit, and Potter looked away, fidgeting with the trim on one of the throw pillows. "It was OK."
When he was a child, Draco's birthdays had always been a time for lavish fetes and extravagant presents. Potter's lack of enthusiasm seemed strange. "Did you do anything exciting for your birthday?" he asked.
Potter frowned. "No, I—" He shook his head. "No."
"Any good gifts?" Draco prodded. Surely, surely even Muggles wouldn't ignore a child's birthday, would they?
Potter's gaze dropped to the floor, and he hugged one of the pillows to his chest. "Well. My aunt and uncle gave me a coat hanger."
Draco frowned, disbelieving. "That's it?"
"And a pair of my uncle's old socks."
Draco stared. "You're pulling my leg."
Potter shot him an angry look over the edge of the pillow. "Why would I do that? You asked, didn't you?" He scooted farther down on the sofa, so the pillow blocked his face from Draco's view.
"Bloody hell," Draco murmured. Even Skeeter hadn't got her pincers around that bit of information. Fifteen or so years ago, Draco would have all but killed for that kind of dirt on Potter, just to rub his face in it.
But fifteen or so years ago, Draco hadn't seen this Potter—skinny, scared, and defiant.
Maybe if you grew up with relatives who gave you a coat hanger and old socks for your birthday, he mused, battling a Dark Lord for most of your adolescence didn't seem too rough a proposition after all.
He turned back to his parchment, clearing his throat before he spoke again. "So, you are exactly ten years and twenty-two days old, correct?"
"Yeah," came the boy's voice from behind the pillow.
Draco noted the information, then started to perform some calculations, murmuring, "All right, so if it's currently the nineteenth of December…"
Potter sat upright at that. "Wait, did you say it's almost Christmas?"
Draco lifted his head and blinked. "Oh. Yes, it is."
"But that's…" Potter frowned. "Did I go back in time?" He sucked in a breath. "Did I go forward in time? Am I in the future?"
Draco opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, not sure what to say. For all intents and purposes, to this Potter, this was the future. Not that he needed to know that.
"Let's just say," he said at last, slowly, "that the space-time continuum—" He'd picked that term up in a Martin Miggs comic book as a child and had always secretly rather enjoyed the sound of it. "—Is in a bit of disorder, and I need to figure out exactly how and why."
"Are you like the Doctor?" Potter gasped, leaning precipitously forward. "Are we going to time-travel?"
Draco frowned and shook his head. "I've no clue what you're on about."
"Oh." Looking glum, Potter settled back into the sofa cushions. "I suppose it was rather far-fetched."
Draco narrowly resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. He would never fully understand how children's minds worked.
A check of the time had him cursing and setting the parchment and quill aside. "I need to head up to my meeting shortly. Here, let me—" He stood and glanced around the room at the various overstuffed bookcases before his gaze alighted on something that looked promising. He tugged the book carefully from where it was wedged between, improbably, Moste Toxicke Tonics and Castration Made Easy! and Other Handy Jinxes and Curses for the Spurned Lover.
He handed the book to Potter. "I don't suppose you've read any of these?"
Potter traced his fingers over the lettering, flaked and faded now with age. "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," he read.
So, not raised by monkeys after all, thank Merlin.
Potter's brows drew together as he thumbed through the pages. "Are these like—wizard fairy stories?"
"They're the stories I grew up on," Draco said. "My mum used to read them to me before bedtime."
Potter gave him a withering look. "Don't you think I'm a little too old for fairy stories?"
Draco returned the look with interest. "Aren't you the one who just asked me if you were in—" He waved his hands about crazily. "—The future?!"
Potter turned away with a sullen look. "Fine, I'll read your old book."
"And don't get into anything," Draco warned, snagging his professorial robes off a hook and shrugging into them. "Don't touch anything."
"What if I have to use the loo?" Potter asked, ever the smartarse.
"You are allowed to use the loo," Draco allowed. "But touch nothing else."
"Sure," Potter said. "No problem."
Draco stared at him.
Potter opened the book and calmly began reading.
Narrowing his eyes, Draco took out his wand and cast a charm around the perimeter of the room. He didn't need Potter poking his nose into anything while he was away. Especially not the drawer next to his bed. And most especially not a certain issue of Witch Weekly that was perpetually folded open to last summer's spread on the Ministry's interdepartmental Quidditch tournament. The well-creased image of a certain windswept, green-eyed hotshot Seeker might be a tad hard to explain.
Potter looked up indignantly. "What did you just do?"
"Oh, nothing," Draco said, sliding his wand back into the pocket of his robe. "Just a little spell to alert me the moment you touch anything you're not supposed to touch."
Potter scowled and slouched back into the couch. "Good of you to trust me."
"Potter—"
"You're supposed to call me James."
"James." Draco crouched on the floor so he was eye-to-eye with Potter. "You're right, I don't trust you not to explore, because I was ten once, too, and I would have had my nose in everything the moment the adults' backs were turned." And I don't trust you because you're Potter, and you've always been a sneaky little bastard. Draco drew in a breath and expelled it slowly. "Listen to me," he said and waited for Potter's narrowed green eyes to meet his. "You've been here not even a full day yet. You know almost nothing about magic. There are dangerous things in here—dangerous books, dangerous objects. When I tell you not to touch, it isn't just because I don't trust you. It's because I don't particularly relish the idea of coming back and finding a James-shaped scorch mark on the floor."
Potter paled at that.
"Fairy stories sounding pretty good right now?" Draco asked, sneering.
Potter scowled a bit, but nodded.
"OK," Draco said. "I'll be back soon." He hesitated at the doorway, cursing himself for a fool, but opening his mouth anyway. "If you're good," he said, "I'll show you some more magic later. And maybe even let you try some."
Potter sat up straight, his face split by an enormous grin. "Really?"
Draco nodded curtly. "Now read your bloody fairy stories."
*
"How long, exactly, is Potter going to be a child?" Shacklebolt thundered.
Draco swallowed, but lifted his chin and held his shoulders straight in the face of the Minister's wrath. "I couldn't say with any certainty, Minister. I've only just begun the calculations necessary to determine how much of the aging-reversal potion Potter may have absorbed—which will be crucial in determining how much of a potential antidote to administer."
Shacklebolt cocked an eyebrow. "Potential antidote."
Really, it was unnervingly easy to see why the man had been such a master Auror.
Then again, Draco was a Malfoy.
"Yes, Minister," he replied. "Potential, as in, I really ought to get back to work developing one from scratch, rather than answering angry questions."
"Professor Malfoy!" McGonagall hissed. "Mind your tone!"
But Shacklebolt merely surveyed Draco coolly for a few moments more, then cracked a reluctant smile. "Don't worry, McGonagall. Malfoy's right enough." He eyed Draco again, albeit with less hostility. "You're certain you can create an antidote?"
"Positive," Draco said, hoping to Merlin that Shacklebolt wouldn't whip out Veritaserum next to test the veracity of Draco's claim.
"Very well, then," Shacklebolt sighed. "As I've told you, Minerva, I've informed a handful of people at the Ministry that Potter is on a top-secret mission, reporting directly to me. However," he said, turning his sharp gaze to Draco once more, "the longer it takes to fix this…incident, the harder it will be to keep up the charade, especially with Christmas right around the corner."
Draco nodded and summoned what he hoped was his most confidence-inspiring tone. "I won't fail you, Minister."
"See that you don't." Shacklebolt's lips flattened in a thoughtful frown. "I would offer the assistance of our staff potions experts, but I understand you are extraordinarily capable in a potions laboratory, Mr. Malfoy, and I won't insult your abilities by suggesting you require the help."
Draco blinked, startled. "I—thank you, sir."
"Should you desire assistance, however," the Minister went on, "you've only to ask. I know at least two staff researchers whom I feel confident I could trust with this secret."
"No, I—" Draco paused and took a breath to steady himself. "No, Minister, thank you. It's my mess, so to speak, so it's my responsibility to clean it up."
Shacklebolt lifted an eyebrow. "I understood that Potter was just as much to blame for the accident, if not more so."
Draco's gaze darted to McGonagall, surprised. She closed her eyes briefly, and her weary expression spoke of years of sorting schoolboy scrapes. Meeting Shacklebolt's gaze once more, Draco demurred. "It's not my place to speak ill of a man who's not even here to falsely defend himself."
At that, Shacklebolt laughed and clapped an approving hand to Draco's back, causing Draco to stumble at the unexpected impact. "Harry once told me you had more to you than most people gave you credit for, and I'm beginning to see why." He held out a hand, and Draco shook it absently, his mind spinning. Potter had said something positive about him? Surely the man must be mistaken.
As his hand separated from the Minister's, Draco's gaze moved to McGonagall, who was watching him with an inscrutable expression. "You are free to go, Professor Malfoy."
Already dreading what he might find in his quarters in spite of his precautions, Draco bolted.
*
The rest of the room appeared untouched, thank Merlin for small favors.
Draco canceled the monitoring spell with a casual wave of his wand as Potter looked up from the book, a frown still shadowing his eyes. "Can all this kind of stuff really happen?" the boy asked.
"What kind of stuff?" Draco asked, turning his back briefly to Potter as he hung up his robes.
"All of this—pots that hop around and—and hairy hearts and meeting Death."
Draco leaned back against the door. "Well," Draco said, "in my experience so far, I think it highly unlikely that you would ever actually meet Death. But," he amended, eyeing the boy in front of him, "stranger things have happened."
Potter shook his head. "It's just hard thinking of these as fairy stories when I saw an old lady turn into a cat yesterday."
Draco choked back a laugh, wondering what McGonagall would think of her golden boy applying that particular label to her.
A frown still shadowed Potter's expression, so, almost against his will, Draco settled himself on the other side of the sofa. "When I was a boy," he said, "I read these same stories and thought they all were true. But I grew up with magic—my mother healed my scrapes with a spell, my father taught me to fly a broomstick on our ancestral grounds. I knew what was possible, and I wanted to see evidence of all the tales." He reached out and gently plucked the book from Potter's hands, trailing his own fingers along the pages' well-worn edges. "I wanted to travel to the Fountain of Fair Fortune, and glimpse the golden statue of Babbitty Rabbitty, and wield the Elder Wand." He shivered, then attempted to cover the movement by thumping the book against his knee and placing a hand atop it. "But as my mum always told me, they're only tales, meant to instruct and to entertain."
Potter's small face was serious. "So there was no Babbitty Rabbitty? No Elder Wand or Cloak of Invisibility?"
Draco opened his mouth to answer, the green eyes of the master of the Elder Wand intent on his. "No," he said firmly.
"Oh." Potter chewed on his lip. "That's OK, then. Though the Cloak of Invisibility did sound pretty cool."
Draco had a vivid recollection of Potter's head appearing from out of thin air one long-ago Saturday. "I'm sure it would be," he said dryly.
Potter wrapped his arms around his bent legs and propped his chin on his bony knee. "So what kinds of magic are there, really? You said you'd show me some."
Draco cocked an eyebrow at him. Bloody single-minded whelp. He raised his wand again and flicked it at the book on his lap. "Wingardium leviosa." The book rose into the air, Potter's avid gaze following it. A few more wand movements had it looping Draco's head, then swooping toward Potter, but dancing just out of reach when the boy grabbed at it, prompting a bright peal of laughter.
Draco swallowed as he took in Potter's open expression, the boy's face alight with wonder as he tracked the book's whirling dance through the air. He rose to his knees on the sofa cushion and, like the Seeker he'd always been, when the book dipped close once more, his hands shot upward, grasping the book triumphantly.
"Finite incantatem," Draco murmured, watching Potter lower the book to his lap and trace his small hands all over its surface, as though examining for tricks.
When Potter's face lifted once more, he was beaming. "That was so cool. Can you make me fly?"
For one brief moment, he imagined sending Potter zooming around the room. Then he remembered he actually valued his job, not to mention his hide.
"Maybe another time," he replied, thinking instead of the school broomshed. It wouldn't hurt to see if Potter really was as much of a natural as he'd claimed at eleven. He still wasn't completely convinced there hadn't been some measure of trickery involved in that affair.
Then he caught himself and shook his head at his own idiocy. Another time, indeed. He had a bloody job to do.
Potter's face had fallen as his hopes for flight were dashed, but his expression brightened at Draco's next words.
"How would you like to see an entirely different branch of magic?"
"Yeah!" Potter said.
"Come on, then." Draco rose from the sofa, and Potter scrambled after him. "I'm going to introduce you to a little something called Potions."
*
"Read your spellbook," Draco replied without looking up from the ginger root he was chopping.
"The spellbook is what's boring."
Rather than risk Potter messing with his cauldrons and storeroom, Draco had rooted through his old school things to find The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1). The prospect of actually learning magic had made Potter positively gleeful, and he'd trailed down the corridor after Draco with his nose already stuck firmly in the book.
Clearly, though, the charms of reading about charms had begun to wear thin.
"Not much of a reader, I take it?" Draco said.
"I might be if I could do some of this. It's boring just reading about it." Potter's voice was garbled, and Draco glanced across at the other worktable to find the boy's cheek leaning against his fist, his mouth warped into an almost painful-looking shape.
Draco shook his head and turned back to his ingredients. "If you behave, I'll let you try some later."
"Really?"
Draco lifted his head again, just high enough to meet Potter's gaze and give him a stern look. "If you behave."
"I can behave," Potter assured him. "I do nothing but behave at my aunt and uncle's house. Well," he amended, "mostly, anyway."
Draco snorted as he added the ginger root to the already simmering cauldron.
"Why can't I come over there and watch what you're doing?" Potter asked. His voice was less garbled, and Draco glanced up to see that he now had his arms folded across the surface of the table and had leant forward to rest his chin on them.
Because I'll be damned if I ever let you near a potion again. "Because it's dangerous," Draco replied, then cursed himself as the boy's head lifted and his eyes lit up. "Not fun dangerous," he amended, watching with satisfaction as the potion's color shifted exactly according to his predictions. "Dangerous as in could vaporize you dangerous."
"Then why are you doing it?"
"Because I have to."
"Who says?"
Draco lifted his gaze from the potion and stared levelly at the boy. "The Minister of Magic," he pronounced.
Potter's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You're having me on."
"Believe what you will," Draco said with a shrug, beginning to grind the ashwinder eggshell into a fine powder.
"Is there even such a thing as a Minister of Magic?"
"Oh, I assure you there is. He's the leader of the wizarding government."
Potter mulled that over. "Then why would the leader of the wizarding government want you to make a potion?"
"Because," Draco said, "one of his favorite people in the whole world has got himself into a mess of trouble, and only I can fix it."
Potter's gaze searched his, then he shook his head, obviously opting to abandon his line of questioning. "Is that why you're wearing that funny apron, then?"
The movements of Draco's pestle halted. "What in Merlin's name does the Minister of Magic have to do with wearing an apron?" He caught himself, scowling. "And it is not an apron," he bit out, wanting to smack his forehead with the overpowering sense of déjà vu. "It is a protective garment."
"Sure looks like an apron to me," Potter replied, unfazed. "And I meant, is it because what you're doing is dangerous?"
"Yes, of course, it's because it's dangerous." You twit, he didn't add, because as much as he might have admired Severus Snape, he really didn't fancy becoming the man.
"Are all potions dangerous?"
"Not in and of themselves, no," Draco replied, once again moving his pestle in a steady, soothing rhythm. "Of course, just about anything can be dangerous in the wrong hands."
"Like that time Dudley whacked the little girl up the street with her own doll," Potter agreed.
Draco fixed his gaze on the potion as he stirred in the powdered ashwinder eggshell, struggling not to show any outward sign of the anger that was beginning to manifest every time Potter mentioned his Muggle relations. "Does that sort of thing happen often with your cousin?"
"Oh, yeah," Potter said, sounding unconcerned. "Dudley's a right arsehole."
"Language," Draco cautioned, fighting to keep the snicker that threatened out of his tone.
"Well, he is," Potter said, aimlessly flipping the cover of the spellbook open and closed. "Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia give him everything he wants, and he just gets fatter and fatter and meaner and meaner."
Draco consulted his notes while turning Potter's comment over and over in his head. The boy didn't sound particularly envious, or even vengeful, despite the references to the cousin's growing girth. "Does that make you…upset?" Draco asked, adding rose petals one by one to the brew.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Potter's shrug. "Not really. Dudley's always been mean. But I'm faster and smarter than he is, so I can usually get away when he starts in."
"Your aunt and uncle don't discourage him?"
Potter snorted. "Uncle Vernon calls him a chip off the old block, and Aunt Petunia just gets all weepy at how quickly her ickle Duddykins is growing up into a big, strong man."
Draco's fist clenched on his stirring rod. Granted, he'd done his own level best to make Potter's life a misery in their school years, but he'd always found himself punished for it, one way or another. "Don't your friends stick up for you?"
Potter was silent, the sound of the book cover flipping back and forth becoming slightly more vehement. When Draco looked up from his stirring, he saw that Potter's mouth had tightened.
The implication was all but unthinkable. "You do have friends, don't you?"
Potter shrugged, not looking up from the desktop. "No one at school wants to get in Dudley's way." He set his jaw. "I don't care," he insisted.
Draco had always assumed the reason he never heard any mention of Potter's Muggle friends back home was that he'd wisely left them behind once he'd entered the wizarding world, as so many children who'd grown up in the Muggle world did. He hated the heavy feeling that settled into his chest as he gazed across the room at the small, thin boy with the stiff shoulders and the mutinous jaw. It was an expression he'd seen on Potter's face many times over the years.
Frequently, he'd been the cause of it.
"Put that book away," he found himself saying. "I have a job for you to do."
Surprised, Potter stopped abusing the spellbook. Draco cast a stasis spell on his cauldron and stripped off his dragonhide gloves, grabbing a large box from his storeroom and dropping it in front of Potter. "These," he said, opening the box, "are flutterby bush leaves." As soon as the box lid lifted, the leaves began to float and dance out of the box, as though caught by indiscernible air currents. Potter's mouth fell open, and Draco cast a quick immobilizing charm that had the leaves falling softly back into the open box. "They were sent up today by Professor Longbottom, who teaches Herbology. However, not all of them are acceptable for use in potion-making."
He drew a succession of leaves out of the box, lining them up to show Potter the varying sizes, colors, and degrees of insect damage. "Now," he said, "I want you first to sort through these and discard any that are too insect-bitten to be of any good, as well as any that are smaller than this leaf here." He pointed, then Summoned two jars from one of the shelves along the wall. "Whatever's left, I want you to divide between these two jars. The leaves that are fully green go in this one, and the leaves that show traces of yellow, orange, or red go in this one. Understood?"
The boy nodded.
"All right," Draco said. "It might not seem like much, but this is very important preparatory potions work. If you sort these wrong, it could have dire consequences for another student's potion."
Potter drew himself up. "I can do it," he insisted.
Draco nodded. "I wouldn't have assigned it to you if I didn't think you up to the challenge. If you have questions, ask."
Potter nodded again, his gaze darting between the leaves and the jars.
Draco left the boy to his task and returned to his first attempt at a potion to restore Potter. As he removed the stasis spell from the cauldron, he glanced up to see Potter hunching over the other table, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he eyed two flutterby leaves critically.
Suppressing an unruly smile, he turned his focus back to his work.
*
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Starved," Potter averred.
He and Potter washed up in the workroom's sink, then stopped by Draco's quarters so he could exchange his work robes for something more professorial. McGonagall's feat of transfiguration in adding Potter's room to Draco's quarters had been so thorough that the wardrobe even contained non-House-affiliated robes in precisely Potter's size, so Potter, too, donned a set of black robes, looking thrilled to do so, and together they made their way upstairs to the Great Hall.
Draco and Potter's appearance caused a stir among the students who'd arrived early to dinner. McGonagall beckoned him to the staff table, where he could see a new chair had been added between his own usual seat and Longbottom's. Whispers followed his and Potter's progress through the hall. For his part, Potter stared, slack-jawed, at the hovering candles and the Great Hall's ceiling, sparkling already with stars in reflection of the early-winter evening sky.
As he seated himself in his usual chair next to McGonagall, she motioned to him to lean closer. "All the faculty know what's going on and have been sworn to secrecy," she murmured. "And I've let it be known to the prefects that your young cousin is visiting for several days, so that should get the word out to the students soon enough."
He nodded his thanks, pointing Potter toward the seat next to Longbottom, who stared a little too obviously at the boy. Draco cleared his throat, and Longbottom blinked, coloring faintly in embarrassment. "Right," he said in a too-loud voice. "So this must be your little cousin, eh, Malfoy?"
To Draco's secret delight, Potter narrowed his eyes at the man, clearly displeased at being labeled as "little" anything.
"James," Draco said, stressing the name, "this is Professor Longbottom, who teaches—"
"Herbology!" Potter chimed in, his expression clearing. "I know who you are."
"You do?" asked Longbottom, appearing taken aback.
"I sorted your flutterby leaves!"
"And a fine job he did of it, too," Draco said, a hand on the back of Potter's chair.
Potter beamed, and Longbottom slanted Draco a speculative look that had him hastening to make conversation with McGonagall.
Potter was dazzled by everything about dinner in the Great Hall: The gaily decorated Christmas trees that ringed the expansive perimeter of the room; the long tables that quickly filled with chattering students, several of whom waved at the surprised newcomer; and, most of all, the plates of food that appeared—naturally enough—as though by magic. If Draco had thought Potter had managed to eat a lot at breakfast, it was nothing compared to what the boy was able to put away at dinnertime.
Don't those Muggles feed you at home? he nearly asked, then bit his tongue when he realized he didn't particularly want to learn the answer.
"So—James," Longbottom said. "You and—your cousin—are getting along all right?"
Draco set down his goblet, interested to hear Potter's response.
The boy nodded, his mouth full of chicken, and thankfully swallowed before speaking. "Oh, yeah, we get along OK." He turned toward Draco, his smile sly. "Cousin Draco's going to teach me some magic later."
Draco lifted an eyebrow. "If you behave, I said."
Potter smiled, the picture of innocence.
Draco shook his head at the child's shamelessness, and took another draught of pumpkin juice.
Longbottom eyed the two of them with the sort of expression Draco imagined he might wear if his carefully tended Flitterbloom turned out to be Devil's Snare.
Draco dug into his meal with a smile, feeling much more satisfied with dinner than he had in quite a long while.
*
The excited question popped from Potter's mouth the instant they returned to Draco's quarters after dinner. He was all but vibrating with excitement at the prospect, and tempted as Draco was to draw out his acquiescence, the boy had remained admirably quiet and focused on his task for the greater part of the afternoon in the potions workroom, so Draco couldn't see the point of denying him.
Besides which, the longer he drew out the inevitable, the less likely it would be that he'd have Potter securely put away to bed before Draco had to return to complete the still-simmering potion.
"All right," he said, and Potter cheered.
He wasn't sure where McGonagall might have stashed Potter's current wand, and he wasn't feeling quite foolhardy enough to search for or Summon it, lest Potter recall all this once Draco had managed to set him to rights and wonder just why Draco had been in possession of his wand in the first place.
Besides, a notion had been prodding at him all evening, and he found himself curious to test it. Leaving Potter on the sofa, gleefully flipping through the previously disdained spellbook to find one that piqued his interest, Draco entered his bedroom and knelt before the trunk that had sat at the foot of his bed for so many years. He drew in a breath, opened the trunk, and reached inside to retrieve something he hadn't touched in more than a decade.
The box still rested near the bottom of the trunk, wrapped securely in an old, silvery silk scarf that had belonged to his mother. Carefully he unwrapped it and lifted the lid.
The wand's sheen was undulled even after so many years hidden away.
Potter's appearance at the gates of the Manor one afternoon after the conclusion of the war trials had been one of the greater surprises of Draco's life—not that it ought to have been, logically, after Potter had shocked the Wizengamot, not to mention most of wizarding Britain, with his passionate defense at Draco's own trial. But Potter had never spoken directly to him at the Ministry, only of him. It had only been Potter the Hero doing what he perceived as his duty, Draco realized—acquiescing to the pangs of his ever-noble Gryffindor conscience. In the wake of the trial, Draco had all but expected never to see the man again.
So, Potter's unexpected presence at the Manor had shaken him. And when, once inside the house, Potter had drawn a wand from his cloak, Draco had begun cursing his own lack of foresight in not grasping his own wand at the first glimpse of Potter—before he realized Potter was holding the wand out to him handle-first.
"It's yours, by rights," Potter had said. "I wanted to return it."
Draco had swallowed, eyes on the length of hawthorn that had spilled a stream of silver sparks with his first wave of it at age eleven, that he'd wielded to duel Potter in their second year at Hogwarts, that he'd used to cast his first shaving charm, his first silencing charm, his first lubrication charm.
The wand with which he'd disarmed Dumbledore. The wand that had, in a way, brought down the Dark Lord.
"I—" His gaze had lifted to Potter's eyes, which regarded him with a peculiar sort of understanding that had left Draco instinctively wanting to bristle, but too weighted with emotion to quite do so.
"Go on," Potter had murmured.
Swallowing, Draco had reached across the distance between them and accepted the wand. It no longer felt the same—there wasn't that sense of welcome, of comfort and familiarity.
It was as though the connection between wand and wizard had been severed, as cleanly as the extinguishing of a Lumos.
Feeling a hollowness settling in his chest, he pointed the wand at the darkened fireplace. "Incendio."
Flames had sprung up and licked at the wood—small, nervous things curling tentative wisps of smoke into the air. Certainly nothing like the roar of flames he'd been able to conjure with this wand before the world had turned upside-down.
His knuckles had whitened, and he'd lowered the wand.
Potter's expression had been contrite, and Draco had wanted to claw his eyes out for having the temerity to feel sorry for him. He'd wanted to rail at him, to fling the near-useless stick of wood back in his stupid, heroic face.
But Draco knew who held the power here. He didn't need the weight of a traitorous wand in his hand to tell him that.
"Remember," his mother had hissed when she'd ushered him into the drawing room to greet their startling guest, "he saved us. He saved you."
As if Draco could ever forget.
And so, stiffly, he'd thanked Potter and dismissed him. Potter had been on the verge of arguing, he knew—what about, he'd no idea. Perhaps he'd expected Draco to prostrate himself in gratitude, or craved a material reward. Perhaps he'd been angling to be asked to dinner—Merlin knew the man could have used some more weight on his frame, which was still somewhat shockingly lean after his year on the run with Granger and Weasley.
Not that Draco had been looking, he assured himself.
But as quickly as the challenge had snapped into Potter's eyes, the expression had been banked, replaced by an odd light that almost resembled disappointment. "All right," Potter had said, and if Draco hadn't still been clutching the pale, near-dead thing that was his first wand, he imagined the other man might even have offered his hand to shake.
That, Draco really might have hexed him for.
Once Potter had taken his leave, Draco had wanted to hurl the wand into the flames, to obliterate it as surely as its connection to Draco had been obliterated. His mother, though, had stopped him.
"Your first wand will always be special," she'd said, "even if you've long since outgrown it. Someday, you may be grateful to have it."
So he'd tucked the wand back into the original Ollivander's box that had still resided in his trunk, wrapped it in the scarf his mother had silently offered, and hidden it away.
In later years, he could admit to himself that, in a way, she'd been right: There was a certain emotional aspect that went along with possession of one's first wand.
Although perhaps that didn't entirely explain why he'd never offered it up for the king's ransom it no doubt would have commanded from collectors who longed to own the wand that felled the Dark Lord. Not even when his family had begun to sell their possessions to make ends meet. Not even when Draco had found himself resorting to engaging in trade.
Gazing at the wand now for the first time in so long, he hesitantly reached into the box. Some infinitesimal part of him hoped to feel the familiar tingle of magic against his fingers that spoke of a wand's affinity for its master. But it was, as he remembered from that long-ago afternoon, only cool and smooth and all but lifeless beneath his fingers.
Sighing, he rose to his feet and carried the box into the sitting room.
Potter's head rose from his perusal of the spellbook, eyes bright and curious behind his glasses as he watched Draco take a seat and smooth his fingers along the edges of the box. "I think," Draco said, "that this might suit you."
Potter edged closer on the sofa, peering into the box as Draco lifted out the wand, then offered it to Potter handle-first. The boy drew an excited breath as his small fingers curled around the base of the wand.
Draco swallowed past the tightness in his throat. "Go ahead, give it a swish."
Pursing his lips in concentration, Potter did so, and his jaw fell open in amazement as a trail of gold sparks followed the movement of the wand. "Oh, wow!"
In spite of himself, Draco smiled. His own acquisition of his first wand at Ollivander's had been almost anticlimactic. After all, he'd used his mother's wand to cast small charms as a child. He'd even used his father's a time or two, although it had never been responsive to his own innate magic in quite the same way as his mum's had. He'd known what would happen when he found the right wand. The sense of connection had been wondrous, yes. But it had also been expected—magic was, after all, his birthright.
The wonder in Potter's expression as he moved the wand experimentally through the air almost had Draco envying the boy this first—well, sort of—experience performing magic.
Potter pointed the wand at the book he and Draco had set aside earlier before their sojourn in the world of Potions. "Wingardium leviosa!"
The book jerked slightly, but did not lift off the table.
Potter turned accusatory eyes toward Draco.
Draco sighed. "There's more to it than just saying the words. Here, let me show you—"
And thus began young Potter's first lesson on the art of swish and flick.
*
Potter's surprised, delighted laugh had had Draco grinning along with him before he'd even realized it.
After that, they'd worked on maintaining Potter's control over the feather, guiding its height and direction. Now that he'd got the hang of it, Potter was even faster on the uptake, and soon the feather was dancing over their heads, twirling in circles, and even, to Draco's dismay, attempting to tickle Draco's nose into a sneeze.
Potter had laughed himself to near-exhaustion over Draco's frantic swatting.
Eventually, though, the boy had begun to yawn and curled up against a pillow on the corner of the couch, setting the wand aside with great reverence and stroking his fingers along its length as though to reassure himself of its reality. "This was fun today," he said, voice slow and sleepy and content. "I love magic."
Draco sipped from his mug of tea, watching over its rim as the boy's eyes grew ever more heavy-lidded. "So do I," he said.
"Can we do more tomorrow?"
"Perhaps," Draco said, thinking of the potion that still simmered down the hall. It was entirely possible that by this time tomorrow, Potter would be his old, unbearable, adult self and want nothing more than to be free of Draco's presence. The notion of performing any sort of magic—other than curses, perhaps—with that Potter was damn near laughable.
"Tell me more about the magic world," Potter said through a yawn. "Do all wizards and witches live here, in the castle?"
"No," Draco said, curling his fingers around his mug to soak up its warmth. "Not by a long shot."
As Potter listened raptly, Draco described the nature of the wizarding world—how it coexisted with the Muggle world, but behind a veil of secrecy. He told the boy about Platform 9-3/4 and the Hogwarts Express, about the Ministry of Magic, about wizarding communities, like Hogsmeade.
With every sentence, the boy grew noticeably sleepier, his yawns more frequent. Finally, Draco realized—when he began to talk about Quidditch and received no response—that Potter had fallen asleep completely.
Carefully, Draco navigated Potter's sleeping body into his bedroom and tucked him beneath the covers, plucking the glasses off the boy's face to set on the nightstand. It was so strange, still, to look at this small, pale face, vulnerable in sleep, and realize this was Potter, bane of his adolescence, defeater of the Dark Lord, savior of the world as Draco knew it. It was shocking, in a way, to realize how little Potter apparently had understood about the wizarding world when he'd first entered it.
Then again, Draco reflected wryly as he rose from his perch on the edge of Potter's bed, Draco's own understanding of the currents at work around him had been pretty meager at that age, in retrospect.
Casting a charm to alert him if Potter awakened, he left for the potions lab.
*
Longbottom's expression had been carefully blank when Draco had whispered hurriedly to the man at the end of dinner to request some plants on which he could test his experimental potion. The Herbology professor had conversed politely with "James" throughout the meal, casting occasional inscrutable looks at Draco over the boy's head whenever Potter referenced his "Cousin Draco."
In the handful of years that they'd worked together, Draco and Longbottom had not become friends, and Draco imagined neither of them was foolish enough even to entertain the thought that they could be. But they'd developed a solid working relationship grounded in mutual respect for the other's expertise—Draco might find Longbottom a bit of a bore and in possession of a peculiarly Gryffindorish sense of humor that never ceased to puzzle him, but he couldn't deny the man's affinity for plants, and Merlin knew Longbottom had to have considerable trust in Draco's potions mastery to use as many of Draco's tweaked or wholly invented potions in his greenhouses as he did.
Half a lifetime ago, he'd never have imagined he could be seated next to Longbottom, of all people, at the Hogwarts staff table for years and not want to kill either Longbottom or himself. But such was the world in the aftermath of the war.
And so the odd glances and blank looks tonight had grated—more, even, than he might have expected, particularly since he'd also caught himself on the receiving end of a few outright suspicious glances from other faculty members with whom his working relationships were not as placid as with Longbottom. "And would you all just get over yourselves?" he'd hissed to Longbottom, annoyed, after the man had nodded acquiescence to his request. "I sure as fuck didn't do this on purpose, and I've no sinister designs on your precious Potter."
Longbottom had blinked at him, frowning. "Draco, I never—"
But Draco had shaken his head and held up a hand to cut him off. "Just get me the plants. The sooner I fix Potter, the sooner all of you can stop wondering when I'm going to sacrifice him on the altar of the not-so-dearly departed Dark Lord, or whatever dark notions all the puerile imaginations employed by this school must be entertaining."
With that, he'd swept away, snagging Potter away from his animated conversation with McGonagall, and not giving Longbottom a chance to respond.
The man had brought the plants, though. Good to know there was still some level of professional respect between them.
Feeling the weight of the day settling on his shoulders, Draco donned his protective gear and watched the charm he'd set on the simmering potion tick down the few remaining minutes as he measured the height and breadth of the various shrivelfig plants, for comparison purposes. He'd run a number of calculations and examined a variety of theoretical ingredient combinations earlier in the day while Potter had first been so captivated by the spellbook. There were a few possibilities he'd devised that he thought would counter the properties of the aging-reversal potion. This one that he'd brewed first he had pegged as the likeliest to work.
With a faint ting!, the charm alerted him that the simmering portion of the brewing process was complete. He removed the cauldron from heat and stirred in the final few nettles that would fully stabilize the potion. Twenty revolutions of the stirring rod, and—ah, a perfect semi-translucent blue.
Casting a stasis spell on the cauldron, he retreated to the shelf where he'd set the decanted aging-reversal potion the night before and drew a minute amount into a dropper. Then, with a bit of help from the steadying influence of his wand, he dropped just two almost invisible flecks of the potion onto the first of the shrivelfig plants, and waited.
Several minutes later, the plant had reverted nearly to sprout form. When its size appeared to have stabilized, Draco in turn drew a few droplets from the cauldron of the hoped-for antidote, then flicked precisely the same amount of the potion on the plant.
He held his breath, hoping.
Rather than shooting up to its fully mature size, growing greener and broader and stronger, the plant shriveled, its leaves curling inward before turning brown and dropping off the plant entirely. Soon, the stalk, too, withered, leaving Draco gazing in horror at a pot containing a very, very dead plant.
So much for sending Potter home on the morrow.
*
When they got there, more students than on the evening before waved at the young boy trailing after the stormy-looking Potions professor. Potter, Draco saw from the corner of his eye, tentatively waved back.
The simulated sky overhead was dazzlingly, eye-piercingly blue, the sort of cloudless that heralded a bracingly cold day. But, looking at it, Draco realized he wanted nothing more right then than to leave the stifling confines of the castle.
"How would you like to try flying?" Draco asked.
Potter had just taken a large bite of sausage and thankfully did not open his mouth to answer. But he turned to Draco with wide, curious eyes and nodded vigorously.
On Potter's other side, Longbottom studiously minded his own plate.
Potter seemed much more chipper as they made the journey back down to the dungeons afterward to prepare to venture outdoors. A quick check of Potter's belongings revealed only a child-size version of what Draco imagined to be the adult Potter's Ministry-issue cloak, sans Auror insignia. It was perfectly suited for skulking about London on Auror business, but hardly up to the rigors of a Scottish winter.
Not wishing to incur the wrath of Potter upon finding any further modification to his belongings, Draco transfigured some of his own older clothing into fitting attire for a young boy. Draco bundled Potter firmly against the cold, then supplemented the multiple layers of clothing with warming and waterproofing charms.
Potter cast him a betrayed look, then muttered something Draco couldn't hear through the muffling layer of Draco's green wool scarf.
Draco pulled the scarf beneath the boy's chin. "What was that?"
Potter scowled. "I said, if you have magic, why bother with all these clothes?"
"Because warming charms fade with time," he replied shortly. "And besides"—he repressed a shudder at the sudden mental image of a contentedly warm and naked Horace Slughorn—"would you prefer to rely solely on magic and go starkers all the time, showing your bits to anyone who cared to look?"
Potter blanched. "OK, I get it."
Draco donned his own winter clothing and, with Potter in tow, set off for the Quidditch pitch. The snow that lay across the grounds of Hogwarts wasn't prohibitively deep yet—not quite a foot, by Draco's estimation—but it still took some effort to make their way to the school broomshed, Draco slowing his gait so that the smaller but excited Potter could keep up with him as he bounded through the footprints Draco left in the snow.
As they approached the broomshed, Draco silently thanked Merlin that Hooch had left the school early for the holidays, or there'd have been no keeping her away from tagging along to watch Harry Potter's "first" time flying. She was still prone to ruing loudly at staff parties—once she had a few firewhiskies in her—that she'd been denied the opportunity to see the legendary Potter take his first real flight, all owing to another first-year's bungling. Longbottom's ears turned red and his face set in an annoyed frown every time Hooch started up, as she seemed to have forgotten that he was the bungler in question. The last time it had happened, Draco, having long since wearied of her Potter-related complaints, had shoved another firewhisky in her hand and asked after the Cannons' chances that season, which had led her to launch into a rant of an entirely different sort. Longbottom had shot him a grateful look, but, after all, Draco hadn't done it for him—really, the woman's fascination with Potter was as tiresome as it was inappropriate in a woman of her years.
In the broomshed, Draco selected two school brooms that looked as though they'd suffered the least amount of wear at the hands of inexperienced fliers, and handed one to Potter, who blinked at it, startled, and tugged his scarf down to speak. "Wizards really fly on broomsticks, like witches do in the movies?"
Draco lifted an eyebrow. "How else would we?"
Potter shrugged, eyeing the broom with a dubious expression. "I dunno. I kind of thought, you know, maybe like Superman."
Draco frowned and shook his head, not understanding the reference.
Potter lifted his arms and swayed back and forth, making whoosh-ing noises. "You know," he said, lowering his arms again. "Just—flying."
Draco barely refrained from rolling his eyes. "In case you hadn't noticed, wizards don't have wings."
"But you have magic. Can't you just—levitate yourself?"
"You could," Draco allowed, "to some extent. But then what if you lost concentration midway through and found yourself plunging to the ground in some remote location?"
Potter frowned, considering. "So the broom keeps you up in the air?"
"It's independently charmed so that all you have to do is control it, kind of like a Muggle motor vehicle." Draco might have been admittedly, even proudly, ignorant about a great many things having to do with Muggle culture, but he'd harbored a secret fascination for Muggle forms of transport ever since his accidental encounter with a helicopter when he'd flown his broom too high once as a child.
"OK," Potter said, not bothering to hide his disappointment.
Well, Draco thought, exasperated, at least that answered his lingering questions about whether Potter had had any prior experience on a broomstick.
Draco showed the boy how to command the broom to rise to his hand—naturally, the broom's response had been instantaneous, Draco noted with some degree of bitterness—and then the proper way to mount and grip the broom. Not that the boy actually needed much in the way of instruction—his instinctive stance was nearly flawless, his grip in need of only minor adjustment. And when Draco instructed him to rise a foot into the air and hover briefly before touching down, Potter did so perfectly on the first try.
A grin split the boy's face as he tugged the scarf down again. "This is so cool. Can we go higher?"
Draco's eyebrows rose. "All right, Potter," he said, then corrected himself at Potter's scowl. "James. Let's see what you've got." He launched his broom into the air, Potter mirroring him, and shot off toward the Quidditch pitch, Potter rocketing behind with a delighted laugh.
Granted, he hadn't had as much practice on a broom over the last decade or so as he might have liked, but he was still an adult with no small degree of experience behind him in brutally competitive school Quidditch. And yet, even so, Potter paced him easily, his muffled whoops of excitement drawing a reluctant smile from Draco as they rose and dived across the pitch, looping the goal hoops and cresting the spectator stands. In almost no time, Draco's blood was singing with the joy of being back on a broomstick once more, and he couldn't quite manage to bring himself to resent the ease with which Potter followed his lead, not when it allowed him to fly as freely as he'd craved.
By the time they landed, they'd drawn a small knot of spectators, mostly first-year students, from what Draco could tell. The children applauded the two of them as they dismounted their brooms; Draco nodded in acknowledgment, and Potter blushed to the roots of his hair. Recalling some of the things Potter had told Draco of his home life, he wondered if the boy had ever been recognized so openly for any talent.
One of the children—startled, Draco recognized him as Potter's godson, Lupin; the Gryffindor-red eyebrows beneath the boy's knit hat were a dead giveaway—stepped forward and stuck his hand out for Potter to shake. Draco searched the boy's expression for any hint of recognition, but found none. Still, he found himself on edge as Lupin spoke. "Hi, I'm Teddy. You're Professor Malfoy's cousin James, right?"
Potter blinked, but extended his own hand and shook Lupin's firmly. "That's right."
"That was bloody amazing flying," Lupin said, grinning. "Are you really only ten?"
Draco leaned against his broomstick, watching in amusement as the students began chattering at Potter all at once. Potter shot him a single hunted look before appearing to collect his wits, after which point he began calmly and confidently replying to the children's eager questions.
Finally, one of the children—Elladora Burke, if Draco wasn't mistaken—invited Potter to join them for the snowball fight they'd been in the midst of preparing for when they'd noticed the two fliers over the pitch. Potter's mouth opened in surprise, and he turned a hopeful expression toward Draco.
Draco's Floo conversation with McGonagall the previous day flashed through his mind, and he found himself nodding agreement even before he'd had a chance to think the situation through properly. Potter beamed and thrust the broom at Draco before galloping through the snow after his new acquaintances.
For a few minutes, he only watched as the children divided themselves into teams and began setting up barricades and amassing ammunition. Potter appeared to fall in with them naturally, laughing with Lupin and grinning even as he was struck the first time by a well-aimed snowball. Using his new mastery of levitating charms, he soon was volleying snowballs as nimbly as any of the first-years.
Shaking his head even as he found his mouth curving into a smile, Draco returned the brooms to the shed and made his way back to the castle.
*
He was deep into the brewing process when he realized he'd gained an audience. Potter perched on a stool at the far end of the other worktable, his cloak still slung over his shoulders, his hair a staticky nimbus around his head thanks to the wool knit hat that now rested on the table in front of him. "When did you get here?" Draco asked, startled.
"Not long ago," Potter replied, unfazed. "You looked like you were concentrating. I didn't want to interrupt."
"Oh." Draco shook his head and took a deep breath. He wasn't used to people sneaking into his workroom; if anything, students steered far clear of it, and of him. He knew he'd acquired a bit of a reputation as a dragon among the students—not as reviled as Severus had been in Draco's schooldays, but snappish and exacting enough to instill a healthy sense of fear.
The students' knowledge of the Dark Mark on his arm didn't hurt, either.
"Is that the potion you were working on yesterday?" Potter asked, chin on his hand.
"No," Draco said. "That one didn't work. This is a different one." He turned up the heat beneath the cauldron and stirred a single jobberknoll feather into the boiling brew. "You're looking suspiciously dry. How long have you been back inside the castle?"
"Just got in," Potter said, unclasping his cloak and draping it over the stool next to him. "Teddy cast a drying charm on me, 'cause I was soaked clean through." He grinned. "We won, though!"
"Congratulations," Draco replied dryly. After all, when had Potter ever lost at anything?
"Teddy and Evan and Jane and all the others don't seem to like you very much," Potter went on matter-of-factly.
"Oh, really." A single puff of blue smoke heralded the feather's dissolution, so he reduced the heat and added a pinch of powdered unicorn horn, then set the cauldron to simmer for five minutes. "What makes you say that?"
Potter shrugged, fingers picking at the scarf that lay in a heap on the tabletop. "I think they're a little afraid of you." He looked Draco up and down, gaze as coolly assessing as it had been on their first ride on the Hogwarts Express nearly a lifetime ago. "I'm not afraid of you."
Draco lifted an eyebrow.
"Ermintrude says you've got some kind of big, scary tattoo," the boy said, sitting up straighter, eyes bright with curiosity.
Silently, Draco rolled up his left sleeve and rotated his arm so that Potter could see his inner forearm.
Potter hopped off the stool and approached Draco to examine it more closely. His brows lowered as he studied it. Then he lifted his face to meet Draco's gaze. "That's it?"
A bark of laughter escaped Draco before he could help it.
True, the Dark Mark wasn't what it once had been—faded with age and, blessedly, disuse, it was only a shadow of itself, still obvious only to those who knew what to look for. But there were enough of those in the wizarding world still that Draco never dared to bare his left arm in public, and especially not in front of students. The fact that none of the students had ever seen the Mark on him probably had only served to heighten its sinister threat in their collective imagination.
In reality, the Dark Mark after a decade of disuse was a pale, sorry thing, suitable only as a reminder to Draco that, in the blind idiocy of youth, he had accepted his fate on the wrong side of the war willingly, even eagerly.
But the children of those who'd come of age in the era of Death Eaters didn't know that. And neither did most of their parents.
"A mark of youthful folly," Draco said, keeping his tone light as he rolled his sleeve back down to his wrist.
Looking disappointed, Potter climbed back onto his stool. "Uncle Vernon says tattoos are for hooligans." He tipped his head, a considering expression flitting across his features. "Maybe I'll get one someday."
Draco shook his head as the timing charm went off and he began stirring once more. He'd heard rumors about any number of possible artistic enhancements to the adult Potter's body, but he'd never seen photographic proof of any of them—not for lack of trying, if he were being honest. At the very least, it would have been deeply entertaining to know for certain that the savior of the wizarding world had a gold-colored pygmy puff tattooed on his left arsecheek.
Then again, imagination sometimes suited just fine.
"Anyway," Potter went on, "I told everyone they were wrong about you."
Draco's head snapped up. "You what?"
"I told them all how you were way nicer than the relatives I live with," Potter said. "How you'd been teaching me stuff and showing me how to fly and everything." He eyed Draco narrowly. "Not that you've been nice to me all the time. But at least you haven't tried to beat me up, like Dudley, or shut me in a cupboard, like my uncle."
Draco just barely held in a groan. Years of carefully constructing an intimidating image, all for naught, simply because it hadn't occurred to him to lock Potter in a cabinet somewhere.
"So, what is that you're making?" Potter asked, watching Draco add knotgrass to the cauldron.
"An antidote," Draco replied shortly. "I hope."
"Oh." Potter chewed on his lip. "Antidote to what?"
"A potion I make for Long—Professor Longbottom."
"What's he need an antidote for?"
"He doesn't. But if something were to go wrong, it would be good to have an antidote on hand."
Potter frowned. "Weren't you supposed to be doing something for me?"
Draco set his jaw. "I am doing something for you."
"But you just said—" Potter halted, brow creasing. "Does the magical problem you're supposed to be solving for me have something to do with a potion for Professor Longbottom?"
Draco could have kicked himself for not remembering that there were reasons other than the obsequious worship of everyone at the Ministry that Potter had a reputation as one of the foremost members of the Auror department.
"It does," he admitted, and held up a hand to stop Potter's next words. "And Professor Longbottom has nothing whatsoever to do with it, so don't think you're going to go interrogate him next."
Potter slouched on the stool, looking sulky. "Well, what sort of magical accident was it, anyway, if I'm not even allowed to tell people my real name?"
"It's advanced magic," Draco said curtly. "All you need to know is that this potion could be what solves it. And besides," he added, hoping to deflect Potter's line of questioning, "I thought you liked having a secret identity."
Potter shrugged and scratched at his forehead, in approximately the spot where Draco knew the famous scar resided under its Glamour Charm. "Did you know Megara, Anthony, Quinn, Persephone, and Evan all have little brothers named 'Harry'? Isn't that weird?"
Draco was willing to bet three-quarters of the children currently enrolled at Hogwarts had younger siblings named Harry (or even Harriet, so he'd heard). Potter's namesakes likely could fill a Quidditch World Cup stadium. "Very popular name, Harry is."
Potter frowned. "I don't know a single other Harry in my school back home."
"Very popular among wizards, I meant to say."
Potter's frown deepened for a moment, but ultimately he seemed to accept this explanation, as his expression brightened. "Oh! So, Teddy was telling me about this game called Quidditch…"
Draco laughed as he added dried newts' eyes to the cauldron. It was nice to know that some things didn't change.
*
He eyed Longbottom suspiciously, but the man didn't meet Draco's gaze, instead fixing his attention on Potter, who chattered eagerly at him for the majority of the meal.
"I received your Patronus last night," McGonagall murmured to Draco. "How is the second attempt progressing?"
"Well enough, as far as I can tell," he replied in a low voice. Then again, he'd thought that about the first as well.
McGonagall nodded, as though hearing his thoughts. "Keep me informed, Professor Malfoy." She glanced down the table at where Potter was gesticulating wildly in conversation with Longbottom, and her expression softened. "I was heartened to hear that you'd taken my advice regarding young James," she said. "The younger students seem very taken with him."
"So I've noticed," he muttered.
The second potion had a shorter estimated simmering time than the first had, so Draco knew he had to make a beeline for the potions lab immediately after dinner. He suggested that Potter spend some time reading in Draco's quarters, which Potter rejected out of hand. Draco's offer of a deck of Exploding Snap cards met with greater interest—but not quite enough.
"I want to see what you're brewing," Potter said, jaw set mulishly.
Tempting though it was to Stun the child and leave him behind—or, perhaps, if he were feeling generous, to pawn him off on the pack of first-year Gryffindors who'd encircled Potter to offer a chorus of hellos as they left the Great Hall—he let Potter tag along. After all, it was unlikely he'd ever see Potter take this much interest in potion-brewing again; he might as well encourage it while he could.
"Professor Longbottom told me you brew a lot of potions for him," Potter said as they made their way down to the dungeons, the tone of his voice studiously casual.
Draco stopped and turned to face the boy, who had the courtesy to look abashed. "That's what you were talking to Longbottom about? You were grilling him about potions?"
Potter scowled. "Well, you won't tell me anything. I don't like everyone keeping secrets from me—especially when they're about me."
Draco exhaled angrily and began striding down the corridor once more, Potter scurrying after him. When they reached the potions lab, he held open the door and pointed Potter toward his usual stool. "Sit."
Looking nervous, Potter sat.
Draco rubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. Then he sat down across the table.
"Potter—James," he corrected, exasperated, at Potter's small growl of warning. He looked the boy straight in the eyes. "Do you honestly believe that I intend you any harm?"
Potter hesitated, then shook his head.
"Do you believe anyone here at Hogwarts intends you harm?"
Another shake.
"Do you believe me when I say that if I could be completely open and honest about this with you, I would?"
Potter narrowed his eyes at him and frowned. Then, looking reluctant, he nodded once.
"Then why are you so fixated on this all of a sudden?"
Potter's lips flattened, and he looked down at his lap before lifting his gaze to meet Draco's again. Some of the anger had disappeared, but what had replaced it looked almost—lost. "I don't like not knowing what's going on," Potter said.
Draco nodded, encouraging him.
A muscle twitched in Potter's cheek. For a few moments, he remained silent. Then, he said, "I don't want you to send me back."
"To your relatives?"
Potter nodded.
The breath Draco hadn't been aware of holding burst from him in relief. "For Merlin's sake, didn't Professor McGonagall already tell you we wouldn't?"
Potter's eyes flashed. "Well, I don't know! Every time I ask you what's going on, you tell me something different—it's a potion for me, it's a potion for Professor Longbottom, it's a potion for the Minister of Magic—" Potter stopped, his jaw hanging open. "Wait, is Professor Longbottom the Minister of Magic?"
Draco couldn't help it—the laugh bellowed out of him, and he had to put his head down, shoulders shaking as he struggled to gain control over his mirth. When he finally looked at Potter again, wiping the tears of hilarity from his eyes, the boy was staring at him with a distinctly put-out expression.
"You could have just said no," he said.
"No," Draco said, rolling his eyes, "Longbottom is not the Minister of Magic. Merlin help us all if that should ever come to pass."
"I like Professor Longbottom!" Potter said as Draco rose from his seat to approach the potion, which was nearly at its critical stage.
"So do I," Draco said, and realized, to his shock, that it wasn't entirely a lie. "But I'm pretty sure Longbottom himself would laugh just as hard over that notion."
"Oh," Potter said, deflating.
Potter watched in silence as Draco added the final few, meticulously measured ingredients and stirred. When the potion was complete, he repeated the same process as the night before, aware every moment of Potter's gaze trailing him. A few droplets of the aging-reversal potion produced the looked-for effect. A few drops of the experimental potion produced—nothing.
Draco sat down heavily, feeling his shoulders slump. Fuck.
He waited several more minutes, hoping perhaps the effects were merely delayed. But the plant remained in its de-aged state.
Setting his jaw, Draco stood and cast a stasis spell on the potion, just in case it could be salvaged, then began cleaning his work area in silence.
Potter's quiet voice spoke up. "Is there anything I can do?"
"No," Draco said, voice dull. "We're just about done here."
*
"Tea?" Draco asked, breaking the silence.
Potter shook his head.
Draco sighed.
After several long minutes during which the only sounds were turning pages and quiet sips of tea, Potter ventured to ask, "Was that—the other potion, the first one you put on the plant—was that a shrinking potion of some kind?"
Draco lifted a brow and leaned back in his chair. "What makes you say that?"
Potter fidgeted with the book. "It looked like the plant got smaller. I thought—" He shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. "I thought maybe I accidentally took a shrinking potion, and that's why I'm so short."
In spite of his mood, Draco found himself smiling. "No," he said gently, then couldn't resist adding with mock gravity, "I'm afraid you come by your shortness naturally."
Potter's indignant expression had Draco snickering, and eventually even Potter cracked a smile. He tucked himself more comfortably into the corner of the sofa, the book clasped to his chest. "Why don't you have any kids of your own?" he asked.
Draco started at the question. Potter's guileless green eyes blinked at him from behind the lenses of his glasses, and Draco found his voice was gruff when he finally answered. "A lot of reasons."
Potter studied him. "What reasons?"
Gay, Death Eater, social outcast, take your pick. "Personal ones."
"Oh." Potter frowned. "Do you not want kids?"
"Oh, for—" Draco rubbed a hand along his forehead. "It's not that simple. My family—I can't—" He shook his head, closing his eyes.
"Oh." The knowing tone in Potter's voice had Draco opening his eyes in time to see Potter casting a sad glance at Draco's lap.
Coloring, Draco sat up straight, crossing one leg over the other. "No, it is nothing like that. There's no—physical impediment, so far as I know."
Potter tucked his legs beneath him to sit up higher, perhaps unconsciously mimicking Draco's posture. "Then why not?"
Because even if I weren't gay and unlikely to find any man who'd have me, I wouldn't dare bring a child into the world that would carry on my family's sordid legacy. "I told you," Draco said firmly. "It's personal."
Potter frowned and fell back onto the sofa cushion with a huff of breath. "Fine, don't tell me."
"Why are you so interested anyway?" Draco asked, irritated.
"Because I think you'd make a good dad," Potter said, startling Draco into stillness. The boy sighed and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. "Not that I have any experience with that. But it's just—yeah, you're kind of grouchy, and I know there's something you're not telling me, but—I like you."
Hearing those words come from Potter's mouth made something twist inside of Draco, and his fingers tightened on his mug. "I like you, too," he said. And, unlikely as though it would have seemed, it was true.
Potter beamed, and Draco, terrifyingly, found himself almost wishing he could keep Potter this way—innocent and unjaded and unscarred by war. He blinked down into his tea, shocked at the thought.
"Are there more stories like this?" Potter asked.
Draco looked up to find the boy balancing the book of Beedle's tales on his knees. He smirked. "I thought you didn't care for fairy stories?"
"I don't, not really," Potter said. "But I like stories, in general."
A mad notion occurred to Draco, and he set his tea aside. "All right," he said slowly. "Would you like to hear a real story?"
Potter sat up, more alert. "Real, as in, it actually happened?"
"Oh, yes." Draco nodded. "And not too long ago, either."
"Is it an exciting story?"
"Very exciting. Full of danger and intrigue."
Potter grinned. "Yeah, I want to hear it!"
"All right, then." Draco leaned back in his chair, hands clasped across his midsection. "Let me tell you the story of the man who saved the entire wizarding world from a dark foe." He took a breath. "His name was Harry."
*
When Potter hesitated, she added that Professor Longbottom, too, had volunteered to watch over him for the day, if he'd like to spend some time in the greenhouses.
Potter's eyes widened at the prospect, and Longbottom offered him an encouraging smile.
Draco knew it was for the best. He had his NEWT-year students and both sections of the fifth-year OWL students on Mondays, and having Potter underfoot would only be an unnecessary distraction.
Still, though, he'd become used to having the boy around, and the thought of spending the day without him seemed—strange.
Potter turned his head to look at Draco, then smiled.
"No, I want to stay with Cousin Draco today," he said, then blinked up at Draco again. "If that's OK?"
Draco returned the boy's smile and looked up to find both McGonagall and Longbottom staring at him with identical gobsmacked expressions. He dropped the smile. "That's fine with me," he said.
Potter trotted alongside him through the corridors like a small, but enthusiastic shadow and took up residence behind Draco's desk in the Potions classroom as though it were his birthright. Draco stifled a grin at the thought of Severus's reaction if he were to see Potter behind that desk, and hoped, for the sake of Severus's own sanity, that the man didn't take a notion to popping into the small painting of Hector Dagworth-Granger that was still tacked up next to the door, a remnant of the Slughorn years.
While Draco railed at his NEWT students for their performance on the end-of-term exam he'd administered the previous week, Potter sat quietly behind him and seemed content to take it all in. Draco caught students sneaking smiles at the small, rapt boy—one thunderous look from Draco would have the smiles falling away and the students' attention riveted to their professor once more. By the end of the lesson, he only hoped he'd managed to terrorize them all into some serious revision over the Christmas break.
In his free period after the NEWT students, he escaped to his private lab, Potter trailing behind, to get started on antidote experiment number three.
"You really can be kind of scary," Potter commented, sounding impressed.
"I try," Draco said.
Potter laughed. Draco grinned at him over the rim of his cauldron.
The rest of the day progressed in much the same way. Each of the students in his OWL classes was tasked with brewing a potion from the Ministry's list of OWL-standard requirements, so Draco moved around the classroom throughout the allotted time period, noting the students' understanding of the steps involved and their execution of the process. By the end of the day, he'd granted two students full marks. It was a good day.
Every free moment, he and Potter spent in the lab. After having watched the fifth-years struggle with their own brewing, Potter was full of questions about proper potions procedures. Pleased to have a responsive audience, Draco provided a running commentary as he chopped and diced and stirred. By nightfall, the potion was exactly as he'd extrapolated in his notes.
And yet, when he applied it to the third of the shrivelfig plants, it was another dismal failure.
"Did it work?" came Potter's tentative voice long moments after Draco knew he'd let his shoulders slump.
"No," he said shortly, frowning at the plant. Rather than return to its mature state, the plant had shot to its full size without achieving any of the other hallmarks of maturity—an adult-size sprout. In a way, he was staring at the herbological equivalent of a not-quite-six-foot ten-year-old Harry Potter. He shuddered at the very notion.
"All right," he said, Banishing the potion. "I'm done for today."
*
Severus was a bloody hero, Draco thought, disgusted with himself, and here he couldn't even brew a single antidote correctly. What poor excuse for a Potions Master was he?
A terrible thought had occurred to him while he watched Potter laughing in delight over a particularly epic explosion of cards. Perhaps, he thought, he simply wasn't trying hard enough. Perhaps, subconsciously, he wanted to keep Potter like this—enthusiastic and surprisingly clever, and, best of all, openly admiring of Draco in a way the true-aged Potter never had been, and never would be.
Perhaps he was allowing himself to fail on purpose.
Frustrated and still wide awake, Draco flung himself out of bed and thrust his arms through his dressing gown. He paused outside of Potter's bedroom door to cast a quick monitoring charm, then left his quarters to stalk through the shadowed castle.
For months after Draco had returned to Hogwarts to teach, he'd been plagued by nightmares that woke him up in a cold sweat almost every night. He'd taken to wandering the castle corridors like a wraith, the sounds of battle echoing in his ears and thoughts of his failures chasing him through the shadows. He'd supposed, at the time, that he ought to be grateful not to have encountered any actual wraiths—if he'd met with Vince's shade in some lonely corridor, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to hold onto his sanity.
It had been an encounter with McGonagall that had curtailed his regular nighttime wanderings. He'd run into her one night on the seventh floor of the castle, the Lumos-lit tip of her wand startling him as he rounded a corner.
"Up late, aren't you, Professor Malfoy?"
"Can't sleep," he'd muttered.
She'd tilted her head, considering him. "Walk with me," she'd said, and he'd fallen into step beside her.
They walked in silence for several minutes before she spoke again, voice low. "We've all had nightmares, Mr. Malfoy. When the school first reopened, I don't think any of us on the staff slept a night straight through that entire first year." She shook her head. "Frankly, I'd be surprised if many of the older students managed it either." Her pace was brisk. "It does get better. It will not go away entirely, but it will get better, I promise you." She halted and turned to face him. "But first, you must learn to let go of the blame you feel." When he opened his mouth to protest, she held up a hand. "I know you blame yourself for things that happened during the war." Her mouth turned downward as her gaze drifted into the middle distance. "I still blame myself for not doing more to protect my students that year." Her gaze snapped back to Draco's. "Evil was done here, make no mistake about that. But if we are to survive and to honor all those who made sacrifices in the conflict, we must take to heart what we learned from the experience, resolve not to allow its like to happen again, and move past it. Do you think you can do that, Mr. Malfoy?"
He'd swallowed. "I'm not sure."
Her smile had been wry. "It seems very hard now, and, indeed, it will be. But, remember—you are not alone here."
It was with those words in mind that he made his way to the potions lab and sought out the portrait of Arsenius Jigger.
The man was irate at having been awakened from his pleasant doze, but he acceded to Draco's request in spite of his grumbling, and soon Draco found himself face to face with his former mentor.
"I need your help," Draco stated.
Severus's expression was a study in disdain. "From what I hear, you need more help than I could possibly give you. Really, Draco, did you have to acquire Potter as a pet?"
Draco scowled right back at him. "It was my responsibility to take him in after what my potion did to him, so don't get started—"
"Yes, but you care for the boy," Severus sneered. He arched an eyebrow. "Unless it's all some elaborate act?"
Draco set his jaw, but didn't answer.
"The students are buzzing about how Professor Malfoy dotes on his adorable little cousin. They think it's sweet. Some of them have expressed hope that you might adopt the little scamp."
"He's a child—"
"He's Potter, and you shouldn't forget that. He isn't your cousin. He's nothing of yours at all."
The sudden tightness in Draco's throat was due to fatigue, he told himself. Only fatigue.
"Fine, then," he said, ignoring the strangled sound in his voice. "Help me get rid of him."
"Gladly. Let's go through your notes."
*
Besides, when one's first sight upon awakening was a set of eye-stabbingly orange pajamas, it was only natural to want to close them again and give up on the day altogether.
The feel of a small finger poking into his shoulder banished that notion. "Draco?"
"Mrrmph," he answered.
The poke turned into a shake. "Draco."
Draco buried his face in the pillow.
He felt the bed shift as Potter climbed onto the mattress, gaining the leverage to shake his shoulder with both small hands. "Draco!"
Draco heaved out a sigh and rolled over to look at Potter. "What?"
"There's a head in the fireplace!"
Draco slowly shut his eyes, then opened them again. "A head."
"Yes!"
"Whose head?"
"Professor McGonagall's! She told me to come fetch you."
"Oh, bloody hell," Draco muttered, rubbing his hands over his face. "All right, all right, I'll be right there."
He dragged himself out of bed and into his dressing gown. At least most of the students would be departing for Hogsmeade this morning to catch the Hogwarts Express back to London for the hols, he thought, so that was one fewer distraction to deal with.
On the other hand, that meant it was only a few days to Christmas, and people—Granger, in particular—were going to start getting suspicious if Potter didn't return from his mysterious "assignment" soon.
He requested a plate of pastries from the kitchens to distract Potter, then knelt in front of the fireplace with a sigh.
"Professor Malfoy, I need not tell you that time is growing short," McGonagall began.
"I know," he said. "I—" His hands, perched on his knees, curled into fists. "I think I have the proper formula now. Professor Snape and I conferred last night."
She nodded curtly, but some of the tension seemed to ease from around her mouth. "Good. Now, see what you can do about turning that formula into a viable potion."
"That is my plan for today, yes."
McGonagall's gaze was shrewd, and apparently something she saw made her expression soften. "Draco," she said, and he started—she spoke his given name so rarely, it almost sounded like a foreign language in her faint burr. "It has been—well, refreshing to see you and Potter getting on so well these last several days. I had hoped, once, that the two of you might begin to see past your differences and learn to get along. Having seen the two of you together this week, I suspect that hope is more attainable than I would have thought."
Draco huffed out a single, bitter laugh. "Except you're forgetting one thing—Potter isn't even Potter right now."
"He is," she insisted. "Do you really think the Potter you know is an entirely different person from the one you've glimpsed this week, just because he's an adult?"
Draco scowled and shook his head at her. "This Potter hasn't been through the war, hasn't watched his friends die for him. He doesn't know that he and I were enemies. The real Potter does, and he'll never forget that."
"But you managed to, didn't you, Draco?"
He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again with a frown. "It doesn't matter. He'll be back to normal soon enough."
"Draco—"
He pressed his palms to the floor and leaned forward, just off-balance enough to require a bit of concentration to stay upright. "If you'll excuse me, Minerva, I'd best get moving. I have a long day of brewing ahead of me."
"Of course," she said, her voice back to its usual brusque, businesslike tone. But her eyes held the shadows of something that looked uncomfortably like regret. "Do let me know if you need anything."
"I will," he said, and she disengaged the Floo connection.
Draco rocked back on his heels with a sigh, then rose to find Potter and begin the day.
*
Once he'd washed, dressed, and managed to snag a few stray breakfast pastries that had miraculously escaped the clutches of the ever-rapacious Potter, he and his small shadow made their way once more to the lab.
"Can I help make the potion this time?" Potter asked.
"No," Draco said.
"But I've been watching you do it."
"Watching isn't the same as doing."
"I know! That's why I want to help. So I can do."
Draco paused in his setup process to shoot Potter a look, amusement warring with exasperation. "That always has been your problem, hasn't it, Potter?" Then he rolled his eyes and, in tandem with Potter, corrected himself: "James."
Potter sat on his stool, legs swinging idly. "Why do you always call me by my last name anyway?"
Draco shrugged. "I call everyone by their last names."
"But why?"
"Because. That's why."
Potter scowled. "Should I start calling you by your last name? Malfoy?"
The sound of his last name being pronounced in such tones of disdain by that voice had Draco setting down his mortar and pestle harder than he'd intended. He hadn't realized until just then how accustomed he'd become to Potter calling him Draco. "That'd be a fine thing," he said, busying himself with his tools again to cover his fumble, "seeing as how you're supposed to have the same last name."
"Oh. Right." Potter subsided, picking at the scarred tabletop and looking crestfallen.
Draco sighed and shook his head. Damn it, he had gone soft on the boy. How the hell had he managed to turn into such a complete fool?
"How would you feel about chopping some ginger roots?" he asked, and Potter looked up with a bright, happy grin.
Oh. Right.
*
"We have a few hours before I can remove it from the heat," Draco said with a quick check of the time. "How'd you like to go flying again?"
Potter practically leapt for the door.
Draco had spotted the school's practice set of Quidditch balls when he'd been returning the brooms to the shed the other day, and it had given him a mad idea.
Which was how, for the first time in close to fifteen years, he found himself facing off against Harry Potter over a Golden Snitch.
It still astonished him to realize what a natural Potter truly was at flying. He wondered, a little, what his adolescent self would have thought had he known for a fact that everything people said about Potter's inborn talents on a broom was true.
Probably just that people wholly overstated said talents, Draco thought with a wry grin.
The two of them raced each other up and down the pitch, Potter's childish laughter trailing after them like a banner. When the Snitch deigned to make an appearance, Potter jostled him shamelessly, unafraid to use shoulders and elbows to knock Draco off course.
The way he played, the boy wouldn't have seemed out of place on the Slytherin team, Draco realized with some amusement. It was tempting to tell Potter that sometime.
Then again, the odds of that opportunity ever arising were about on par with McGonagall performing a striptease down to her no-doubt tartan knickers in the Great Hall.
And, wow, that was a mental image he hadn't meant to conjure.
Just as Draco had begun to worry that he ought to give up on the Snitch and usher Potter back inside for a dose of drying charms, warming charms, and piping hot tea, the Snitch made its reappearance. Potter took after it like a shot, Draco only half a beat behind. But it was just enough to give Potter the advantage, in spite of his much shorter reach, and the boy was so surprised to find his fingers wrapped around the fluttering golden ball that he nearly fell off his broom.
On the one hand, Draco thought as they made their way back to the castle, Potter bounding giddily through the snow, it was truly galling to have been beaten again by Harry Potter—especially a ten-year-old Harry Potter.
On the other hand, would he truly have been able to relish a victory over a ten-year-old?
Well, Draco was forced to admit—hell, yeah, he would have.
*
Potter's gaze followed Draco's movements. "So—what happens if this one works?"
"Everything goes back to normal," Draco said, his tone far flatter than he'd intended it to come out.
Potter didn't seem to notice, absorbed as he was in scratching at the surface of the table. But a frown creased his brow. "You said—" He pinched his lips and looked up at Draco. "You and Professor McGonagall both said that you won't send me back to my relatives." Draco nodded. "But—" His knee bounced up and down on the stool, shaking his whole body. "But just because you're not sending me back to the Dursleys, that doesn't mean I'm staying here, does it?"
Mutely, Draco shook his head.
The corners of Potter's mouth turned downward, and he turned his face away.
The ting! of the timing charm came as a relief, the motions of his stirring rod calming and reassuring. And then—the potion was complete.
Heart in his throat, Draco fetched the fourth of the shrivelfig plants.
He and Potter watched in silence as the few droplets of the aging-reversal potion produced the expected effect. Then it was time for the possible antidote.
The almost immeasurable droplets fell onto the plant's surface. Nothing happened.
Frustration warred with a strange sort of elation inside of Draco. The goddamned potion hadn't worked, which meant he'd failed again. But that meant he'd have to try again tomorrow, and Potter wasn't going anywhere, not yet.
And then, between one blink and the next, the de-aged plant shot back to full maturity.
Potter gasped.
Draco sat down, hard.
"Is that it?" Potter asked. "Did it work?"
"Yeah," Draco said, dazed. "It did."
*
The meal was oddly silent, with both of them picking at their food. Finally, Potter put his fork down. "Where will they send me, if not to the Dursleys?" he asked, lips thin.
Draco set down his own utensils. "It isn't like that."
"Well, what is it like, then?" Potter demanded. "I know I won't be here. I'd like to know who you're foisting me off on."
Draco glared. "I'm not foisting you off on anyone."
"Right, like I'm supposed to believe that."
"For fuck's sake, Potter, would you get it through your thick head for one minute that not everyone is like your idiot relatives?"
"So—what?" Through the haze of his own anger, Draco could see that Potter was shaking, one fist clenched at the edge of the table. "You've been eager enough to finish that potion, and now you don't want to get rid of me?"
"No, I don't!"
Potter blinked at him, his mouth falling open.
Draco swallowed and looked away. "Finish your dinner," he said quietly. "McGonagall will be here soon."
Blinking rapidly, Potter began eating again, his movements slow and mechanical. Draco only continued to pick at his own plate until the inevitable knock came.
*
Severus nodded, satisfied, and McGonagall breathed a tentative sigh of relief. "Are you sure it's safe to give to Potter, though?" she asked.
The boy in question sat on his usual stool, head pillowed on his arms on the tabletop, pretending to ignore the conversation.
Draco wondered if he would ever again not think of that stool as belonging to Potter.
"It should be," Draco told McGonagall. "It's modeled off the—ah—" He coughed, aware of Potter's presence. "—other potion, and that seemed to have no ill effects on Potter—well, aside from its stated purpose."
"I agree," Severus added. "There are far more volatile potions than this one that wizards and witches employ all the time. If applied correctly, it should simply neutralize the effects of the previous potion, with no harm to the subject."
McGonagall wrung her hands. "It isn't that I don't trust you. It's just—" Her voice lowered. "This is Potter we're talking about."
"We know," Draco and Severus said as one.
"Minerva," Severus added, nearly in a whisper, "would you prefer Potter remained like this?"
"No, it's only—" She took a breath and straightened her spine. "No, no, you're both right. It's time."
Draco and McGonagall turned toward Potter, who lifted his head when he realized he'd become the focus of attention. As if realizing a decision had been made, he straightened and lifted his chin.
"Harry, it's time," McGonagall said, voice gentle.
Potter's gaze moved from her to Draco, and Draco clenched his jaw to stop himself from saying anything he'd regret.
"OK," Potter said.
McGonagall turned to Draco. With his heart pounding in his throat, he filled the dropper with precisely the same amount of antidote as, by his calculations, Potter had absorbed of the aging-reversal potion. He seated himself next to Potter. This close, he could see the nerves the boy was fighting to conceal.
"It'll be all right," Draco said, willing himself to believe it.
Potter nodded. He searched Draco's gaze. "I trust you," he said.
Nodding and breaking eye contact with Potter, he reached for the boy's hand. "It just needs to be absorbed through the skin."
"Will it hurt?"
"No," Draco said. He hoped it was true.
Potter's fingers curled around Draco's as Draco administered the droplets to the skin on the back of the boy's hand. Almost instantaneously, the potion was absorbed.
Potter held on.
A minute passed, then two. Then three.
McGonagall began to fidget. "Are you sure it's working?" she asked, her voice strained.
"The first potion didn't take effect until hours afterward, if you'll recall," Severus spoke up. "A human being is, after all, a rather more complicated organism than a shrivelfig plant."
"Yes, and thank you so much for the biology lesson, Severus," McGonagall snapped. To Draco, she said, "Very well, then. No use waiting around. If it works, notify me immediately." Draco nodded, and she shook the sleeves of her robes out nervously. "I should inform the Minister. He may wish to be here, just in case." Finally, she spoke to Potter, who looked up at her with wary eyes. "Mr. Potter," she said quietly, "it has been a pleasure having you among our pupils this week." With two brisk but affectionate pats to Potter's shoulder, she took her leave.
When Draco glanced back at the portrait on the wall, he realized Severus had departed as well.
Draco and Potter were left staring at each other. "So, what do I do now?" Potter asked.
Draco looked down at the small hand that was still wrapped around his in an almost painful grip. His eyes were almost bleary from exhaustion after the unrelenting tension of the day, and when he caught Potter stifling a yawn, he realized Potter had been under the same stress, if not more so.
"Now," he said, "we get you to bed."
Potter looked at him as though he'd just suggested they perform a tap-dancing recital in the Great Hall.
"It's been a long day," he said, feeling every minute of it.
"But—the potion?"
Draco sighed and curled his fingers as tightly around Potter's as Potter's were around his. "If it works, we should know by morning. If not, well—we'll address that tomorrow."
They made their way back to Draco's quarters. Potter changed into his usual horrifically ugly pajamas and climbed into bed. Just as Draco was about to extinguish the light and retire to his own room to attempt sleep, Potter piped up, "What's going to happen to me?" His glasses were already on the nightstand, and his green eyes seemed especially wide and vulnerable without the shield they afforded. "What did happen to me?"
Draco pressed his forehead against the door frame. "You know I can't tell you everything," he said.
"I know," Potter said. "But can't you tell me something?"
Draco sighed. "All right. Well—you know how you woke up here in the castle one night, not knowing how you got here?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, if this potion works—you'll remember."
Potter sat up. "Wait, do I have amnesia?"
Draco shook his head. "No, no—not exactly. But—let's just say that if everything works, pretty soon you'll remember things you didn't know you'd forgotten."
Potter frowned slightly. "I can't quite decide if that sounds scary or cool."
Draco exhaled a short laugh. "A little of both, I'd wager."
Before he realized what was happening, Potter had climbed out of bed and flung his arms around Draco's waist. Shocked, Draco patted the boy's back awkwardly.
"Sorry," Potter said, backing away, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "It's just, I wanted to say—" He shrugged. "Thanks. You know, for everything."
"You're welcome," Draco said around the lump in his throat.
Potter climbed onto the bed and lay back down.
"Nox," Draco murmured.
"Draco?" Potter whispered just before Draco closed the door.
"Yeah?"
Potter turned to look at him, the light of the sitting room reflecting in his eyes. "Are you part of what I'll remember if the potion works?"
Draco forced a smile. "Yeah," he said. "You will definitely remember me."
*
What if the potion didn't work at all?
What if it aged Potter up too much?
What if it aged him up too little?
What if he really did end up with amnesia?
What if there were some sort of other terrible neurological damage that they couldn't have anticipated because he'd only tested the potion on fucking shrivelfig plants, was he insane?
When he finally did fall asleep, it was to a bizarre nightmare of a ten-year-old Kingsley Shacklebolt wearing nothing but tartan knickers and chasing Draco around the castle with threats to throw him in Azkaban.
When a tremendous crash woke him in the middle of the night, he was almost grateful.
And then he swung open Potter's bedroom door and was confronted by the sight of an adult Potter's naked arse as the man picked himself up from where he'd apparently fallen out of the bed.
Draco stood frozen in the doorway, shocked and horrified and fascinated all at once, and unable to think anything more coherent than, It's not a pygmy puff; it's a Golden Snitch.
Then Potter turned around, clutching the sheet to preserve his modesty—or what was left of it—and that spurred Draco to action. "Potter, sit down," he said, stepping into the room and turning on the light, then hurriedly sending his Patronus to McGonagall.
Potter's eyes widened as he gazed around the room, then down at his near-nakedness. Draco could see the remnants of the Chudley Cannons pajamas in shreds on the floor. Belatedly, it occurred to Draco that perhaps he ought to have put Potter to bed in something a little less…child-size. Those couldn't have been comfortable to wake up in.
The room was littered with the detritus of a young boy—clothing scattered across the floor and the chair, Exploding Snap cards in a sad little heap on the floor, the hawthorn wand occupying pride of place on the nightstand. Draco picked up a dressing gown from where it had been slung over the half-open wardrobe door and transfigured it to adult proportions. Then he realized Potter was blinking at him myopically, so he snagged the still child-size glasses off the nightstand and transfigured them back to adult size as well.
Potter accepted them and the dressing gown with a murmured, "Thanks," but he did not stand up to clothe himself. Instead, his gaze traveled around the perimeter of the room, expression lost, before settling on Draco.
"Was—is your Patronus seriously a peacock?"
Draco burst out laughing. All the stress, all the weirdness of this night, and he had a naked, adult Harry Potter in his quarters asking after his Patronus.
"Seriously?" he managed, wheezing as he tried to catch his breath. "That's what you ask?"
Potter's cheeks colored. "What the hell am I supposed to ask? I don't even know what—"
At that moment, McGonagall and the Minister of Magic himself tumbled out of the Floo and burst into the room, and Potter very nearly lost his death grip on the sheet in shock.
"Harry!" Shacklebolt strode into the room with absolute confidence, in spite of being clothed in what looked to be lavender-striped silk pajamas.
"Sir," Potter managed, tearing his eyes away from the silk with obvious effort and grasping the sheet with his left hand so the Minister could enthusiastically shake his right.
"It's good to have you back!" Shacklebolt said.
"I...wasn't aware I'd left," Potter said slowly, his gaze moving in turn from McGonagall to Shacklebolt to Draco. At the last, his eyebrows furrowed, and Draco looked away and took a steadying breath.
McGonagall caught his eye and lifted an eyebrow in question.
He frowned and turned back to Potter. "How old are you?"
Now Potter just looked at him as though he were crazy. "The same age as you."
"Which is?"
"Twenty-nine."
"And what is today's date?"
Potter shook his head. "Damn it, I don't remember. I don't have a bloody calendar in my head, Malfoy."
The name caught Draco off guard, and he winced before he could catch himself. "Well, then, what time of year is it?" he asked, tone chilly.
"It's late December, almost Christmas. You know that, you just—" He stopped, shaking his head as though to clear it.
"You all right there, my boy?" Shacklebolt asked.
"Yeah," Potter said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I just—" His gaze touched on Draco again, then skittered away. "I'm a little confused about what's happening right now."
"No worries, we'll explain everything soon enough," Shacklebolt said. "Everything else, though—it's all fine? No pain? No…mental difficulties?"
A corner of Potter's mouth tilted upward in amusement. "You're asking me if I'm mental, Kingsley? I am not the one wearing lavender pajamas here."
Shacklebolt laughed, clapping a hand to Potter's shoulder. "At least I'm wearing clothes at all, Potter."
Potter colored again, but laughed along with the Minister. Draco looked away and saw that McGonagall stood slumped against the door, hand pressed to her chest in clear relief. When she caught Draco looking, she nodded acknowledgment to him, and he returned a curt nod of his own.
"Come now," Shacklebolt was saying, "let's get you clothed and ready to go, so Minerva and I can fill you in."
Potter's gaze found Draco's again, his expression perplexed. Well, Draco thought, he'd be confused, too, if he'd woken up naked in a room he didn't recognize and with his childhood rival standing over him.
While Shacklebolt fussed over Potter, Draco slipped from the room, taking a seat on the sofa and wrapping his own dressing gown around him to ward off the chill.
Some minutes later, Shacklebolt and McGonagall bustled a now-clothed Potter from the bedroom and toward the fireplace. McGonagall approached Draco and laid a hand lightly on his arm. "Thank you for everything you've done," she murmured.
He shrugged, watching Potter as his keen Auror's gaze took in his surroundings—probably finding Draco's aesthetic sense as wanting as the rest of him, if Potter's carefully neutral expression was anything to go by.
Shacklebolt and McGonagall stepped through the Floo to the headmistress's office, and Potter turned to face Draco. "Malfoy," he began.
"Have a nice life, Potter," Draco said, and looked away.
There was a prolonged moment of silence, followed by the whoosh of the Floo.
Draco didn't rise from the sofa for a very long time.
*
To be fair, he doubted his parents were any more thrilled by his tales of the fifth-year potions foul-ups and similar events that formed the bulk of the excitement in his quiet life at Hogwarts.
And he certainly wasn't about to announce that he'd literally babysat Potter for several days, or that he'd woken up to find a naked Potter in his quarters, or, most of all, that he actually missed the bloody bastard.
McGonagall and Shacklebolt apparently had explained the incident to Potter in the headmistress's office. He seemed to have no recollection of the time he'd spent as a ten-year-old, McGonagall told him gently the next morning, when she arrived to retransfigure and pack up the remainder of Potter's belongings and to set Draco's quarters back to normal. When they'd tried to speak to him about the missing days, she said, he'd only become confused and didn't want to talk about it.
Draco had only shrugged.
Potter also didn't blame Draco, McGonagall made a point of telling him.
As well he oughtn't, he'd wanted to snap, because the whole mess never would have happened in the first place had Potter not got in his way.
Fucking Potter was always getting in his way.
Only a handful of students had stayed in the castle over Christmas, and several expressed their disappointment to Draco to hear that his sweet little cousin wouldn't be staying through the holidays.
"He has other family to be with," Draco told them shortly.
He tramped around the grounds a couple of times when the walls of the castle became too confining. But he would find himself thinking about snowball fights or flying lessons and end up retreating indoors.
The thing that absolutely infuriated him was that he'd never really liked Potter before. Yes, he'd thought the man fit. Yes, he'd have gladly taken the man to bed if, by some miracle, the opportunity ever presented itself. Yes, he'd even been known to wank over photos of the man from third-rate magazines. But that was all right, because that Potter was an object. That Potter, the one in the sweaty photos on the glossy magazine pages—he was just a fantasy, one in which Draco could allow himself to indulge only by repressing his memories of the real Potter—the one who mocked people on trains and attacked fellow students with slicing curses and got away with bloody everything.
And then Potter had bloody got himself turned into a child and entrusted to Draco's care, and suddenly Draco was privy to the secrets of his tormented childhood, and included in his jokes instead of the butt of them, and being told that Potter liked him, of all completely mad things.
And then, to add insult to injury, Potter didn't even bloody remember the handful of days that had turned Draco's entire paradigm upside-down.
He wondered now, sometimes, as he lay in bed, whether Potter thought about those missing days at all—whether he even knew that he and Draco had become friends, of a sort, or if McGonagall had glossed over that.
He wasn't sure whether he would have preferred that she had or not.
The hawthorn wand had turned up missing in the aftermath of everything. He could only imagine that it had been mistakenly packed with Potter's belongings when McGonagall cleaned the room out. Not that it mattered—it might as well have been Potter's anyway. But it was another thing to ponder—did Potter wonder how he'd come into possession of it again?
Try as he might to suppress the ridiculous wallowing he knew he'd found himself indulging in, he knew McGonagall had picked up on his mood—and the pathetic reason for it—when she began working Potter into conversation.
"I've received an owl from Potter," she said one morning. "He may be returning to Hogwarts to make some further inquires regarding that case he was pursuing."
Draco had merely grunted into his coffee.
Worse was the time she asked if he'd seen the photo of Potter in the Prophet that day, speaking at the fundraiser for the Widows and Orphans Fund, and didn't he look handsome?
That had earned the meddling old bat a withering look worthy of Severus Snape himself.
And, yes, of course he'd seen the photo. And of course Potter looked bloody gorgeous in it.
And of course he hated the fact that as he'd watched the image of Potter smiling and making nice with a roomful of strangers, all he could do was resent every person in that room for not fully appreciating the smiles that Draco would never be entitled to.
*
The weather had warmed slightly, and the snow wasn't quite as deep as it had been, although it still sat in a thick blanket over the fields and the pointed rooftops of the village. He enjoyed the solitary evening walk, the snow crunching beneath his boots, the air icy-dry as he breathed it in, the stars seeming to swirl like snowflakes against the already darkened sky.
Slowly, he wended his way through the village. Lights and raucous voices spilled already out of the Three Broomsticks, but he gave the tavern a wide berth; even after all these years, he still felt uneasy simply crossing the threshold.
Instead, he set off for the outskirts of the village, where the Hog's Head perched. It wasn't exactly the sort of establishment he'd typically favor, but it was close, it was inexpensive, and, for whatever reason, it seemed oddly fitting to celebrate Hogmanay in the Hog's Head.
He'd stopped to peer into the window of the stationery shop next to the post office when he sensed someone approaching. He kept his attention on the display window, waiting for him or her to pass. But, instead, the person stopped.
"Malfoy, is that you?"
Draco's shoulders stiffened at the sound of that voice, and he turned slowly to discover that, yes, he'd just been approached on a lonely road in Hogsmeade by Harry bloody Potter.
"Potter," he returned, inclining his head slightly, then turned back to the display.
"What are you doing out?"
Surely even Potter wasn't that thick. Draco turned to face him. "It's New Year's Eve."
Potter grinned, and something traitorous inside of Draco seemed to flip over at the sight of it. "So it is. Let me buy you a drink, then. I assume you're on your way to the Hog's Head, too?"
Draco nodded, and there was that grin again.
"Come on, then," Potter said. "We're wasting valuable drinking time out here."
Draco justified his agreement with the fact that, well, it was true that he'd been heading in the direction of the Hog's Head anyway, and if Potter was also heading there, it only made sense to go together.
And certainly that damned persistent flutter in his midsection every time Potter smiled or spoke had nothing to do with it.
The pub was only marginally more crowded than usual, most of Hogsmeade seeming to have squeezed itself into the Three Broomsticks. But that suited Draco just fine. Potter snagged a rough wooden table for them in a dim corner before heading up to the bar to order a couple of firewhiskies. Wiping his damp palms on his thighs, Draco glanced around and wondered just what the hell he was doing.
He accepted the firewhisky from Potter with a flicker of a smile, and Potter seated himself opposite Draco, seeming perfectly content to sip third-rate firewhisky in a filthy pub in the company of someone he'd hated for most of his life.
"All right," Draco said. "I know what my excuse is. But what brings you to the Hog's Head, of all places?"
Potter set down his drink, rubbing his thumb along the damp edge of the glass. "Would you believe, looking for you?"
"No," Draco said flatly.
Potter's mouth curved into a wry smile. "It's true, though, or at least partially. Perhaps I was less looking for you than I was hoping very much to run into you."
Draco narrowed his eyes. "Why would you do that?"
"Well," Potter said, scratching idly at his ear, "it seems I have something that belongs to you."
"The wand."
"Yeah."
Draco shook his head, then tossed back another swallow of firewhisky. "Keep it. It's all but useless to me anyway."
"What?" Potter frowned and leaned closer. "But it was your wand. How can you not want it?"
Draco gritted his teeth. "It doesn't respond to me anymore, Potter. It chose a new master, remember?"
"But—wouldn't you want to keep it anyway? It was still your wand. Maybe—" He shrugged and looked away. "Maybe one day you can give it to one of your children."
Draco clenched his hand around his glass. "I've no intention of having children, so the point is moot, Potter."
Potter turned back to him, frowning again. "Look, I know you said that before, but I still think—"
"Wait a minute," Draco interrupted, horror slowly dawning. "What do you mean, I know you said that before?"
"Last week, when you—" Potter stopped abruptly, grimacing. "Shit. That's not—I didn't mean—"
Draco tossed back the rest of the firewhisky and slammed the glass on the table. "Thanks for the drink," he said, standing up and grabbing his cloak. "Now fuck off."
"Draco, wait!"
But he was already out the door, angry strides carrying him back toward the village proper and away, away, away from the one man who'd always found the keenest way to fuck him over in the end.
Footfalls pounded behind him, and Draco stopped dead, knowing instantly to whom they belonged. He considered, just for an instant, Apparating away to the Hogwarts boundary. But he suspected this was something they were going to need to have out one way or another eventually, and it might as well be now, while the pain was still fresh and firewhisky curled its fortifying warmth through his body.
"Draco," Potter said, catching at his arm.
Draco yanked it away.
Potter parked himself in front of Draco, his cloak and hat and scarf absent, left forgotten in the pub. "I didn't mean for it to come out like that," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry you've been pretending for a week and a half that you couldn't even remember that whole incident?"
Potter crossed his arms over his chest, shivering. Draco was unmoved. "I didn't mean to make it seem like I didn't remember. I was confused when I first woke up. Everything in my brain was in kind of a tangle. And then—" He frowned, a muscle twitching in his jaw. "And then you were so dismissive. I thought maybe you'd just been humoring me—you know, to make the ignorant little kid feel better."
"That's—" Draco stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled. "Potter, you are an idiot."
"I know!" Potter laughed. "I know, I'm a complete idiot. I lied and told Kingsley and the mediwizards at work that I couldn't remember anything, but it was all I could think about. I think Minerva suspects, though." He shrugged, glancing away. "I kept asking her about you."
"Oh?"
Potter smiled through his shivering. "Yeah. It's just—it's something I never would have expected. I always kind of figured I had you pegged—spoiled, selfish, you know. And you were those, a bit. But you were also funny and caring and generous with your time. And—I genuinely liked you. When I got turned back into—well, me again, and I realized who I'd been spending all that time with, it just floored me. I never would have imagined you'd be someone I'd consider even wanting to be friends with."
The hope that had been snaking into Draco's heart with Potter's smiles and laughter and persistence retreated abruptly with his words. "Friends," he echoed dully. He clenched his fists inside his pockets, then released them slowly. After all, he told himself, friends was still more than he'd have imagined Potter asking of him. He could live with friends. "Friends," he said again, injecting the word with what he hoped passed for greater enthusiasm. "That'd be—" He swallowed. There'd been a time when being friends with Potter had been what he'd wanted more than almost anything else in the world. Why was it so hard to accept that hand of friendship now it was being offered?
Potter's eyes grew wide. "No," he said. "No, you misunderstand."
Draco took a step backward. Was this first year all over again?
"I meant—" Potter wrapped his arms more tightly around himself; his teeth were chattering audibly now. "Shit," he said, "I'm sorry, I'm shit at saying things—obviously—and I'm just—what I meant to say was—oh, fuck it."
In a heartbeat, his frigid palms were clasping Draco's face, and Potter's mouth was on his.
Potter's lips were cold and his hands were cold and he was shaking so hard that it was almost impossible even to keep their mouths pressed together.
And yet, it was glorious.
"You are the most ridiculous man alive," Draco murmured into Potter's mouth, and Potter nodded, shivering, and let Draco kiss him again, and again.
Years of fantasizing about Potter, it seemed, had only whetted Draco's appetite for the man, and the reality was so much better than any wank over a magazine photo could ever hope to be. Potter's skin was chilled, but his breath was hot and spiced with firewhisky as their mouths opened against each other. Potter's tongue delved inside, even as his hands snaked beneath Draco's cloak and under the hem of his jumper, frigid fingers alighting on Draco's back. Draco sucked in a breath, startled, then wrapped his own gloved hand around the nape of Potter's neck and held on for dear life as Potter's palms spread against his flesh, pulling their bodies tightly together.
The night was cold and still around them as they touched and tasted each other. Potter moaned quietly against Draco's lips as Draco's tongue took its own exploratory forays into Potter's mouth, seeking out the lingering bite of the alcohol and the irresistible taste of Potter, unbelievably Potter, after all this time. His other hand pressed against Potter's chest, feeling the pounding of Potter's heart beneath his too-thin shirt as they fit their bodies together beneath the stars.
"Draco," Potter murmured, and Draco hungrily tasted the name on his lips, wrapping both his arms around Potter to draw him more firmly into his own warmth. His breath sped up when he discovered he could feel Potter's growing hardness against his own groin, knees nearly buckling at the dizzying realization that yes, this was happening, yes, this was real, yes, yes.
When Draco lifted his lips from Potter's, Potter's face was flushed in the starlight, and his eyes were wide and dazed as they blinked at Draco behind his lenses.
"This isn't—" Draco screwed up his eyes, then opened them again and pressed his hands to either side of Potter's face. "This isn't some bit of Gryffindor foolishness, is it? Some kind of—" The word tasted bitter on his tongue, but he had to be sure. "—gratitude?"
Potter's brows drew together in what appeared to be genuine puzzlement. "For what?"
"For—well, for taking you in. And all the other nonsense."
Now that they were no longer wrapped up in each other completely, Potter had begun to shiver again. He rolled his eyes. "Draco, if I wanted to express gratitude, I'd have sent you a note or—or a bottle of wine or something. Not ambushed you in Hogsmeade."
"To give me back my wand, you said!"
Potter huffed out a laugh and pressed his lips to Draco's neck. "Don't tell me you don't recognize a pathetic excuse when you hear one." His palms slid slowly down Draco's bare back to the curve of his arse, drawing their hips together once more. "I promise you," he murmured into Draco's ear, the warmth of his breath making Draco's own breathing speed up, "this has nothing to do with gratitude, and everything to do with the fact I want to fuck you so hard you'll forget your own name."
Draco whimpered and yanked Potter's face back to his, devouring his mouth in a brutal kiss that had them both panting.
This time, it was Potter who drew back first, chest heaving. He pressed his forehead to Draco's shoulder, struggling to regain his breath even as a rueful chuckle escaped. "We'd best get out of here," he murmured. "I'm feeling more and more inclined to shove you up against the nearest wall and rip all these nice, warm clothes off your body, and damn whoever might be passing by." Draco felt Potter's lips curve against his jaw as Potter pressed a kiss there. "After all, you've already seen me naked, as I recall, and turnabout is fair play."
Draco caught his breath at the memory and reluctantly stepped away, startled to realize his hands were shaking. "Come on," he said, tugging Potter back toward the pub. The idiot man had begun shivering in the cold once more. "Let's get your cloak, and then you're coming back with me to the castle."
Potter grinned and ducked under Draco's arm to share in the warmth of his cloak. "Is that so?" he asked, leaning in for another kiss.
"It is," Draco said, his step feeling lighter than it had in years.
"No more grand plan to spend New Year's Eve down the pub?" Potter blinked innocently, as though his fingers weren't dancing up and down Draco's side beneath the cloak, sending Draco shivering in spite of its warmth.
"No," Draco said firmly. "I have something much more urgent in mind."
Potter's eyes heated.
"I demand a rematch of our little Seekers' game," Draco announced.
Potter lifted an eyebrow.
Draco smirked, sliding a hand down to Potter's arse. "I believe you may be in possession of a Snitch I would very much like to catch."
Potter's bark of delighted laughter had Draco grinning, too, and after one more swift kiss, they locked hands and began to run toward the Hog's Head, and whatever else the future might have in store.