Archive of Our Own

He had been happy. He knew that. It really wasn’t that long ago when he had spun on his broom under the sun, or lounged in the common room with all the other Slytherins laughing at his jokes, or relished in humiliating Potter and his friends… 

It really wasn’t that long ago, but all of that felt so damn far away. 

What felt closer was instead the horror that had started his sixteenth year. Seeing his father break before him. Knowing what it meant to be truly afraid, and helpless. Watching a friend he’d known his whole life burn in flames before him. Losing, in the end, everything that used to come with the Malfoy name.

There was a time when Draco wanted to be the elite of the elite, and never had reason to expect any less. Now he bowed his head when he went out in the public, avoiding pointed fingers and stares. Now he wanted to be forgotten. He wanted to forget.

But time went on, and life carried on. Mother took to cooking and cleaning and gardening, and pretended she wasn’t doing the work of house-elves; Father spoke less and less, sinking into long silences, and pretended it wasn’t liquor in his cups; Draco appeared for breakfast and pretended he had slept well and not been plagued by nightmares yet again.

The three of them were putting on a show, a show without an audience.

Draco grew used to solitude. He hardly had the choice. Crabbe was dead; Goyle was in Azkaban; Nott and Zabini and the rest were pretending they’d never known him, not that Draco expected anything different. Pansy was the only one who wrote to him, at least in the beginning. He never wrote back. Her last correspondence was a tearful Howler, declaring that they were over and calling him every expletive she could think of. Draco wished he could say he felt something. Nowadays he’d lost the ability to feel anything much, really.

He was not yet twenty but his reflection in the mirror looked forty. And he felt even older than he looked, worn down to his bones.

Sometimes, he had the thought that his life was over already. Oh, he wouldn’t do anything foolish, he had his parents to think about (and fine, he had to admit, he didn’t have the guts to off himself or some shit).

All he could do was make it through. Day by day.

*

On one of those long slumbering days, Mother asked him to tidy up the basement - an absurd request, considering nobody had been down there since the ministry did their sweep and they were hardly expecting any house guests. Something told Draco, though, his mother was just using an excuse to get him out of bed, where he’d been spending too much of his time. He agreed to do it anyway. Maybe he was sick of doing nothing.

As he rummaged through the meager belongings that remained, he found a box of old books. He hesitated for a moment, before he remembered anything related to the Dark Arts was confiscated already. They turned out to be potion texts. Old ones, too; if someone hadn’t charmed the pages with a protective spell they’d be all crumbling apart by now. He went upstairs and asked his mother about them. She said those were his grandfather’s; he’d loved tinkering with potions back when he was alive. “They’re all outdated now. I would dispose of them,” she advised with a tired tilt of her head.

Draco didn’t chuck them. He brought them back to his room instead.

He was too bored, maybe. Or perhaps the reason Potions had been his favorite class back in the day wasn’t just because the professor favored Draco and detested Potter. Draco started following the notes from his grandfather, working his way from simple potions to the more complicated ones. He liked the quiet, he liked working with his hands and watching the potions brew was strangely calming.

But it brought a new problem. When he ran out of ingredients, he was confronted with the fact that he had not stepped out of the house for almost a year. The first half of it was due to house arrest, but there was no good excuse for the second half. In the end, it took over an hour of pacing back and forth, but he eventually forced himself to step into the Floo.

Diagon Alley was too much at first. Too much noise and too many people. The first time he couldn’t even make it to the apothecary shop, turning back and burrowing himself in his bed, shaking and heart hammering. But then he tried again. And again. And after a few outings, the panic attacks stopped. It helped that he came to realize nobody actually cared about him. Even the pimply wizard who rang him up never spared him a glance.

So gradually, he stopped rushing straight home, and took detours to other shops. He picked up some new potions books at the bookstore, observed the owls in their cages at the menagerie, and, at long last, stepped into one place he’d forgotten how much he missed - the Quidditch shop. Surrounded by crying toddlers, zealous teenagers and their vexed parents, Draco peered at the newest model in the display case: Firebolt II Plus. He snorted, and paused for a moment in surprise. So he hadn’t forgotten how to laugh.

He still kept a distance from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes (it’d expanded now to cover a whole street), but one rainy morning, on the slowest day for business, he walked up the steps of Ollivander’s.

The old wizard had aged a lot since the war, but his eyes were sharp as ever. Draco knew Ollivander recognized him at once. He stayed at the door, forcing himself to return Ollivander’s gaze, and nodded as greeting. Then he waited.

He knew both of them were thinking of the last time they had been face-to-face: jailer versus prisoner.

But “sod off” never came. Even though it took a while, the wandmaker nodded back. Draco stepped in.

“10 inches, hawthorn, unicorn hair, reasonably pliant.”

“How–?“

“I remember every single wand I sell, lad.”

It had been nearly ten years, but Draco could remember it clear as day, too, standing here in this shop at eleven years old with his mother. When he’d found out what kind of wand “chose” him, he’d thrown a tantrum. Unicorn! That’s for pansies! His mother had given him the sternest of don’t-you-embarrass-me looks. So Draco had to shut his mouth, even as he continued to sulk and call the old man a fraud in his head.

“Do you know what unicorns represent, Mr Malfoy?”

Draco glanced at Ollivander. The wandmaker just smiled at him, exposing his wobbly teeth.

“Weakness,” Draco said coldly.

“Innocence,” corrected Ollivander.

It was Draco’s turn to smile - or in his case, sneer.

“I’m as perplexed as you are,” Ollivander said wryly, “but the wand is always right.” He rolled up his sleeve, removing a stack of slender boxes from the shelf. “Come. You need a new one, don’t you?”

Draco watched him warily. “Are you willing to sell me one?”

“I have yet to hex you out of my shop, haven’t I?” Ollivander lifted a bushy eyebrow at him.

That evening, Draco returned Narcissa the wand she had lent him, his new wand sitting in his pocket.

12 inches, beech, unicorn hair, solid.

Before he’d left the shop, he had asked Ollivander: “So the same person can match with a different wand?”

“Stranger things have happened, Mr Malfoy,” the wandmaker had replied enigmatically.

*

Gregory Goyle was released, Draco read from the Prophet Father had left on the dinner table. It was just a small corner on a page overtaken by the usual Golden Trio pomp again, easily missed if one wasn’t looking for it. All it said, pretty much, was that Goyle had shown good behavior at Azkaban and was allowed to finish his sentence early.

Draco picked up his quill later that night, but nothing came out of it, just drips of ink splashing onto blank parchment. Fuck it. What he wanted to say didn’t seem to fit on a letter anyway. 

The next day, he went to Goyle’s house.

“He’s… busy,” Mrs Goyle said, her face stony and distant, where once she would have been thrilled to see him. She did not offer to Draco to come inside. Draco got the hint; he told her he wished Greg well and walked away. What had he expected? That just because he felt ready, Goyle would be ready too, to see him, to talk about things, to… hear him out? No, Goyle didn’t owe Draco that. Goyle, who had to spend the last year in prison, while Draco, thanks to something his mother did for Potter, got away unscathed - no, Goyle didn’t owe Draco anything. 

Draco’s throat tightened, but he knew what he had to do, where he had to go next.

Vincent Crabbe’s grave was a sad, lonely sight. Or maybe all graves were that way. A small piece of headstone over a small patch of dirt and grass. It was hard to believe that this was where his old friend - or what was left of him, anyway - resided.

Draco forced himself to take several steps forward, so that he was close enough to read the engraving on the stone. It looked dusty. There must be graveyard keepers who did this sort of thing, but Draco cast a simple cleaning spell he’d learned from his mother. Looking around, he saw some graves had flowers, but the thought of lilies or orchids lying at Vincent’s grave was so ridiculous Draco could have laughed. In the end he summoned a vanilla cupcake from the manor’s pantry and set it before the stone.

He opened his mouth, but found that he still didn’t know what to say.

Was it “I’m sorry?” 

What use would that be, though? It was too late. The dead were dead. No matter how guilty he was, how sorry, saying it was only meant to make himself feel better. To release himself of his chains. But it shouldn’t be that easy, and it would never be that easy.

Draco thought some more. What did he actually want?

It wasn’t Crabbe or Goyle’s forgiveness, because even then, it wouldn’t erase his mistakes. His mistakes, his misguided decisions, and the consequences they carried - they would always be a part of him, tempting as it was to try to forget that. 

It wasn’t a Time-Turner either. Yes, life in the Before had felt good, bloody good. But he’d seen it now that it was just a little bubble of a world, built on ideals that were just convenient. And now that he knew the truth, had seen that world crumble and fall apart, and had been failed by those very ideals that once shaped him… He couldn’t go back to that. He wasn’t like his father, clutching to that old world, ready to sink with it.

Looking at Crabbe’s carved name, Draco finally decided he knew what he wanted.

Hope. Just a sliver.

Whether or not he deserved it.

A week later, Draco returned to Crabbe’s grave, this time bringing along a chocolate pudding. As he approached the grave, he slowed to a stop.

There was a piece of cauldron cake sitting before the gravestone. It looked fresh.

He glanced over his shoulder, but saw no one. The cemetery was quiet, except for some birds chirping. He put the pudding down next to the cake.

Today the sun felt warm on his back.

*

"I got a job,” he told his mother one dinner night, keeping his gaze on his mashed potatoes. It was just the two of them, his father having neglected to make an appearance, as they were accustomed to now. “Knockturn Alley. There’s a potions shop where they’ll let me mix them in the backroom.”

As part of the deal Potter had worked out for them, they were able to keep the manor, their heirlooms, and the money in their vaults. But a fair chunk of the gold went to pay for victims’ families and court fines, and the ministry had taken most of their land, leaving them with the few dozen acres surrounding their estate. It wasn’t like they would need to resort to begging or charity anytime soon, but Draco would have to come up with a solution if he wanted to keep things that way for the next fifty years. 

It was a foreign concept, he knew, to his parents’ generation. None of them ever truly worked. They never had to.

But times were different now.

Narcissa’s hand stilled in the middle of cutting up her chicken, but only briefly. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

Draco blinked, looking up to see his mother smiling a smile that was not too strained.

“I… er, think I’ll move out, too,” he said, bracing himself. “There’s a flat I can rent above the shop.”

Narcissa’s smile faltered just slightly, but she nodded.

“Do it.”

Draco couldn’t believe his ears.

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said simply, reaching over to squeeze his hand. “I’m proud of you, darling.”

Draco squeezed her hand back, his face suddenly a little warm.

*

The owner was an old, gruff wizard who smoked too much tobacco and did not believe in overtime pay, not that Draco minded. What mattered was that he left Draco to his own devices there in the backroom, dealt with the customers himself and handed Draco a soiled bag of coins at the end of the month. It suited Draco well.

He developed a routine. He’d wake in the mornings to the middle-aged couple next door screaming at each other over the thin walls, just in time to shove some stale biscuits in his mouth, pull on the least smelliest set of robes (he’d still have yet to perfect the laundering spell he was studying from the Standard Spells of Household Cleaning), and head down the rickety stairs. He had the keys to the backroom and liked to get set up before the shop was running. The mornings were quiet; he’d prep the ingredients for the day while warming up the cauldrons, and review the list of pending orders, jotting down whatever he needed to buy before the end of the week. Then it was time for potion-making. He loved this part of the day the best, stirring as he went, lost in the steam and bubbling. The more he made, the better he got at multitasking. He’d sometimes have three potions brewing at the same time, although once he’d forgotten to time it correctly and the fungiface potion some nefarious individual had ordered nearly imploded in the room. Fortunately he was able to scourgify the whole thing before that happened, but it certainly kept him on his toes.

Lunch, if he remembered to eat, was a dry sandwich from the seedy pub down the street. As for dinner, he realized he could not live on take-out all the time or else his measly wages would run out, so he resorted to buying a bag or two of groceries on Sundays and adding another book to his collection, Cooking for Beginners: It’s Easy as Pie! He found that cooking was not that different from potions-making, really. You followed the instructions on a book, chopped things up on a cutting board, threw them into a pot and voila. It was no Hogwarts meal, or even anything close to what his mother had learned to make, but at least this way he wouldn’t starve.

He’d go to bed with his back and neck sore, so exhausted he’d fall asleep right as his head hit the pillow. It was certainly not a life that he’d ever envisioned for himself, but somehow, he felt no desire to complain.

*

“Hello?”

A witch knocked on the door to Draco’s workspace, causing him to jerk his head from the cauldron he was currently cleaning.

It was hard to make out her face in the dim lighting, but she seemed young, and she was wearing lime green robes. A Healer?

“Sorry,” she said, “but nobody’s at the front.”

The old man had announced he was stepping out to the tobacco shop several minutes prior. He must have forgotten to put up the break sign.

“I don’t…” Draco started to explain, but it had honestly been so long he’d talked to anyone that his voice was hoarse and he couldn’t quite formulate intelligent speech.

“Can you help? I need an antidote to scorpion venom, fast.”

Draco frowned. “Diagon Alley?”

The witch didn’t seem to mind that he wasn’t able to speak beyond two words at a time. “I’ve checked. Edgar Earwig didn’t have any in stock, and I’ve seen him mess up Pepperups lately,” she huffed. “He’s gone senile and he won’t admit it. Will you help?” she asked again, this time sharply.

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it. He sighed. “Which species?”

“The hyperion.”

Wordlessly, he dragged over one of the cleaned cauldrons and lit it underneath. The witch didn’t leave, but instead found herself a stool, situating herself by the door. Draco ignored her. To his relief, she wasn’t interested in idle chatter.

The potion was complete within the hour; the anti-venom was not particularly strenuous to make, just called for precision. She only wanted enough for one person anyway. He measured out a small portion into a glass vial and held it up towards her.

“Wait,” she said. 

She stepped closer - now he could see she did look his age, with large green eyes and a heart-shaped face. She looked oddly familiar, although Draco couldn’t recall where he’d seen her before.

She opened her palm, revealing a piece of scorpion tail wrapped in tissue.

Draco raised an eyebrow.

“Test it first.”

He had never met someone so paranoid. But he only gave her a look and obliged.

A drop of the anti-venom caused the dissected stinger to sizzle, and then, the bulbs of the venom sacs cleared.

“Well,” the witch said, “guess I’ll take it.”

She handed him Galleons and Draco handed her the vial. She had long, slender fingers, cool to the touch.

“Nice doing business with you… Malfoy,” she said, cocking her head to the side.

Draco’s eyes widened.

She gave him a small grin as she backed away. “Astoria,” she said, pointing at herself. “Daphne’s sister?”

She was already gone before he could utter a reply.

*

He did remember her, vaguely, from back in school. Daphne’s little sister. She’d been a bit of an oddball, quiet, always walking around with her nose in a book. Daphne rarely included her in any of their gatherings, so Draco really couldn’t be blamed for not recognizing her right away. Obviously, no shock at all that she’d recognized and remembered him. With a reputation - even one like his - you’re at least never unmemorable.   

He figured he’d never see her again, but to his surprise, she showed up at the shop about a week later at closing time, asking the owner specifically for him.

Confused, he wiped his hands on a rag, dropping the beetle eyes he’d been peeling, and went out to see her.

“Your bird?” the old man asked, leering at Astoria.

Draco stepped in front of her, feeling protective for some reason.

“This way,” he said, taking her arm and guiding her out a side door.

“Why do you work here of all places?” she asked him, once they were outside.

“Nowhere else to go,” he said, which was the truth. Who else would hire him, a former Death Eater and a Hogwarts dropout who’d never actually sat for his NEWTs?

She sighed, leaning back against the wall. She didn’t seem to care that she was getting sludge all over her lime green robes.

“Are you a Healer?”

“I wish,” she scoffed. “I’m a mediwitch. That means I do the intake, I clean up bodily fluids, and I force-feed patients their potions.”

“Such as scorpion antidotes?”

“Yes, such as,” she said impishly. “When the Healer trainee accidentally spills the last bit of antidote on his boots, I also help to find a last-minute save.”

“Ah.”

“Ah, indeed,” she said, smiling. “Thanks for that. The little boy’s going to do just fine.”

Draco nodded. The two of them stood for a while in silence, each pretending they were not looking at the other.

“Hey–”

“So–”

They both spoke at the same time.

Astoria laughed. “Can we just cut to the chase?” 

“And what?”

“And well, go for a drink,” she said, smile growing wider. She had dimples when she smiled. Draco had never known any purebloods to have dimples.

“With me?”

Astoria rolled her eyes. “No, with your revolting boss. Yes, with you!”

Draco did not really understand it, but he let her lead the way.

*

Over butterbeers, she caught him up. Daphne had gone and married someone from Durmstrang and was now living in Oslo. She still kept in touch with the others, which was how Astoria knew who's doing what. Theodore Nott had done alright for himself, working in the magical transportation office under one of the Weasleys, funnily enough. Blaise Zabini couldn’t fare much worse, of course; his new stepfather got him a cushy job consulting for Gringott’s. And Pansy was writing a book, believe it or not. A memoir about her experiences in the war. Apparently, Rita Skeeter was showing some interest in it, since it had a lot of “dirt” on the Golden Trio. Draco did not doubt the same sort of unsavory material would be written about him. Lastly, Goyle - he had found something for himself too, as it turned out, working shifts as an Azkaban guard. Yes, all the Azkaban guards were humans now, hadn’t he heard?

She didn’t delve too much on their school days, for which Draco was grateful. But she did say that he seemed different.

“Can’t imagine how,” he said, smirking into his beer.

“Not in a bad way. You just have…”

He waited, wondering if she was going to comment on the sordid state of his clothes or hair, or how he’d started hunching his back now.

“… more range of expression.”

“Expression?”

“Yeah, on your face.” She shrugged. 

Draco thought about this; he supposed back then, he only had two expressions: sneer or scowl. The thought made him laugh.

“See?” 

Astoria finished her beer, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She wasn’t like Daphne, or any girl Draco had known before in his circle. All of her movements were… free, like she didn’t care at all what others thought of her.

Draco envied her just a little for it.

“Don’t thank me,” she told him when she’d slapped some coins down on the table before he could. “Just pay for next time. There will be a next time, right?” She shot him a sharp look, not unlike the one she’d worn when demanding for a scorpion anti-venom.

Draco found himself smiling - not sneering. A genuine smile.

“There will,” he told her.

*

The girl was two years younger than him with a completely different personality and few common interests, but Draco came to look forward to her company. Maybe all it took was having one person who tolerated his presence - other than his mother - to make him realize how lonely he had been.

The drinks became a regular thing, and then, before he knew it, they were meeting for meals too. He even cooked for her once in his flat. It was the strangest and also most nerve wracking thing Draco had ever done; cooking for himself was one thing, but for someone else? 

But she’d cleared up her whole plate and grinned at him with spinach in her teeth, and Draco felt momentarily lightheaded, like the rush he got when he caught the Snitch.

He told himself not to be foolish. She only sought him out because she was lonely, too, with her sister in Oslo and her parents moved back to Russia after the war. She didn’t have too many friends at St. Mungo’s, from the sound of it. She hated that they had the wrong idea about her just because she had been a Slytherin and her parents were never anti-Voldemort, even though they were never pro- Voldemort, either.

Whenever she vented off like this - usually with a beer in one hand - Draco always stayed quiet, not wanting to remind her with his very presence that he and his parents were the exact kind of people others mistook her for.

But one day, she blurted out, “Sorry - you can tell me to shut up, you know.”

Draco frowned at her, baffled. “No… why? I don’t mind hearing about it.”

“It’s just… I don’t want to offend you or make you uncomfortable. Sometimes my mouth just runs off and I forget, it’s not always about me.”

“No,” Draco repeated, shaking his head. “You don’t have to–” Spare my feelings, he wanted to say, just because of who I am.

He looked at Astoria, at the person he’d come to know so well. He knew all her tells, could read her like an open book without using Legilimency, for that was just who she was, plainly and unrestrainedly herself. But he knew he wasn’t like that - greater range of expressions aside, he was as guarded and closed-off as ever to the world, if only because he was too afraid to be judged, to be pitied, to be hurt. He knew so much about Astoria by now, but there was so little that she knew about him, and he was to blame for that.

He inhaled deeply, startling Astoria.

“Draco?”

“I want you to see this,” he told her.

He rolled up the sleeve of his robe, right there in the bustling Leaky Cauldron.

She looked at him, down at the mark on his forearm, then back to his face. Draco forced himself not to look away, and met her questioning green eyes.

She bit her lips, glancing down at her butterbeer, and Draco felt his heart plummet. 

It was over.

She wouldn’t want anything to do with him.

How could he fault her for that?

But what came out of Astoria’s mouth was not, you are disgusting , or get the fuck out of my life .

It was a soft, barely whispered, “Thank you.”

She smiled up at him, tears beading on her eyelashes, and gently reached over, placing a hand over his exposed forearm.

“It must have taken a lot of courage to show me that. So thank you.”

And Draco - for once, not overthinking every minutiae of his actions - leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.

*

While Draco had dated a few girls in school, he’d never consider himself to be good with women. Pansy had been his longest relationship, and that had not ended on the best note. 

But Astoria was… Astoria. Even as his girlfriend, she was still the same witch who’d call him out on his bullshit and make him crack a laugh now and then. Draco still had to work on speaking his feelings and his thoughts, instead of hiding them behind a mask or running away - the healthy way of communicating, Astoria told him - and it wasn’t easy. But he was learning.

They were not without the occasional squabble. Draco was angry when he found out Astoria had written to McGonagall on his behalf, behind his back. She said she only did it because she knew this was exactly how he’d react. They didn’t speak to each other for two days - not until Draco received a letter from the headmistress back, agreeing to let him sit for the exams without requiring him to redo his seventh year. And he’d realized that maybe, just maybe, it was time to let some of that old Malfoy pride go.

And when he went to apologize to Astoria, she just smiled cheekily and said maybe, just maybe, he should listen to her from now on.

Draco spent his twentieth birthday taking his NEWTs at Hogwarts, the oldest examinee in the room, but he wasn’t bothered. He walked out of there, knowing he would come away on Potions with full marks. Three months later he was proven right. Shortly after Professor Slughorn sent him an invitation to a luncheon hosted by some uppity potions society, which amused Draco a great deal.

By year’s end he had moved out of Knockturn Alley, into a flat with decent soundproofing on the more respectable side of Diagon Alley. With Astoria’s encouragement, he bought the potions shop from Edgar Earwig, who had finally come to his senses and decided to retire off to Tahiti. Business was slow at first - as Draco was absolutely dreadful at customer service, and some folks turned away as soon as they saw who he was - but thanks to Astoria, he was soon getting a steady stream of orders from St. Mungo’s. By the following summer, he’d managed to hire a cheery young witch to talk to patrons for him, leaving him free to brew potions in the back, where he belonged. 

When he looked into his reflection in the mornings nowadays, he was sometimes surprised by the person looking back at him. He did look different - not necessarily younger, but more relaxed, the bags under his eyes lighter, and his jaw less tight. And perhaps, it was also because now, he stood a little straighter.

*

He received the Floo-call from his mother one late night, rain drumming on the windows. He knew something was wrong from the moment he heard her voice, pleading, stricken, and brittle like glass.

“Draco, it’s your father…”

He fumbled for his cloak in the dark. “I’ll be right there, Mother.”

“Not the manor, Draco. St. Mungo’s.”

A knot started to twist in his stomach.

*

He met Narcissa at the front desk of St. Mungo’s. His mother was a wreck, never mind decorum and manners, shouting at the welcome witch, “I’m his bloody WIFE, you silly little fool! You’ll let me in now, AT ONCE, or I’ll - I’ll - ”

Draco reached her, pulling her back before Narcissa could think of a threat. 

“Lucius Abraxas Malfoy,” he said to the witch breathlessly. “Please, can we see him? We’re his family.”

The welcome witch pursed her lips at him.

“He came in as a critical, so I can’t let you in yet. I was trying to explain to your mother, but it’s protocol, you see… the Healers have to see to him first…”

“BUGGER YOUR PROTOCOL!” Narcissa screamed, struggling against Draco’s grip.

“Mother!” he said, frightened. He had never seen her like this.

“It’s alright, sir,” a familiar voice spoke behind him, “I’ll get her some calming draught.”

He felt his whole body slacken in relief, turning around to see a tired Astoria, her hair tied back in a messy knot and dubious stains on her robes, but still offering him a comforting smile.

“Thank you,” he mouthed to her, and she nodded as she led them to one of the private rooms behind the lobby, seating Narcissa in a patient chair. 

Narcissa had stopped screaming now, which should be a good thing, except she was now frozen and silent, staring off into a void.

“She’s in shock,” Astoria murmured to Draco, stirring a spoonful of the draught into a cup of coffee. “Don’t worry, this should help. How are you holding up, by the way?”

He gratefully squeezed her hand.

“I’m fine,” he said, smiling weakly. “Don’t waste any calming draught on me.”

Astoria could see through his lie, he could tell, but she let him be. He loved her for that.

“I’ll try to find some updates on your father,” she told him in a low voice. “Healer Appleby is with him. She’s great, I can vouch for her.”

“Thank you,” he said again, at a loss for saying anything else.

Astoria left him and Narcissa in the room, reassuring them that they could stay there as long as they wanted. Draco took his mother’s hand in his, shocked at how cold and clammy it was.

He had no idea what to say to her. He couldn’t offer reassurance that Father would be alright, because he didn’t know. He couldn’t ask her what had happened, because it might upset her more. So he just decided to keep holding her hand, rubbing it in his, over and over again, trying to quell the knot in his stomach as his mother closed her eyes and wept.

*

They waited a long time. Finally, when it was close to dawn, the Healers came out to get them. Narcissa made no effort to hear beyond “you can see him now” and rushed to Lucius’s bedside. Draco stayed back, trying his best to focus on what the Healer was explaining to him.

“… deprived of oxygen for too long, and while we’ve managed to get his heart and lungs going again, it’s likely he’ll never wake up from this.”

Only the last few words stuck.

“He won’t wake up?”

“I’m afraid not,” the Healer said gravely.

“But - is it like the draught of living death, because there’s an antidote to that - I can get you–”

“No, Mr Malfoy, this isn’t something a potion can fix. I’m sorry.”

The knot in his stomach was so tight that Draco could barely breathe. He ignored the Healer’s look of concern, pushing past her to run down the hall, not toward his father’s room, but to an open window. He needed fresh air, he needed to breathe. But he only made it as far as the toilet, and the stomach knot worked itself up into vomit.

*

In the end, it was his mother who made the decision to let Father go.

She just shook her head at Draco’s querying look. She’d long finished crying, and her eyes were heavy with dark circles but beheld a steely calmness.

“He wouldn’t have wanted to live this way,” she said quietly.

Draco thought about Lucius, spending those last days - years, really - alone in his study, the curtains drawn, nursing a bottle of whiskey. What was he thinking all those times there in the darkness? Had he been thinking, as Draco once had, that life was already over for him, and there was nothing left? Had he meant to drink more than he usually did that night, and meant to charm an unbreakable lock on his door, so that his wife, when she’d waited too long for him to come to bed, could not get to him in time?

And Draco was angry. Angry that his father did not want to - try to - stay for his mother and him. Angry that he, Draco, never tried either, to break down that door, drag his father out even if against his will, and make him see that life was worth living. Angry he never got to show his father that hope existed, because Draco himself had found it. 

“He loved us, Draco,” his mother said, as if reading his mind.

Draco didn’t respond to that, but he reached over, brushing a hand over his father’s face, closing his eyes for him. 

Lucius looked so peaceful, as if he really did consume a draught of living death.

At least, like this, he could go on dreaming forever of the Malfoys’ glory days.

“Rest now, Father,” Draco told him.

*

The funeral was small and hurried. They made it as private as they could, but a few reporters still got through, shouting questions like, “Was it Spattergroit that did him in, Mrs Malfoy?” “A Dark Arts experiment gone wrong, perhaps?” Draco ignored them, giving all his attention to his mother, who was pale as a sheet in her black mourning robes. She only got a bit more color in her face when an unexpected visitor turned up at the end of the service: her sister, Andromeda.

The two of them looked like they had a lot to talk about, so Draco left them alone, walking aimlessly across the grounds. Near the gates, he came up on another unexpected surprise - Astoria.

“I thought you had work today.”

“I switched with someone.”

“You didn’t have to…”

“I wanted to be here,” she said, reaching for his hand, “for you.”

He leaned into her embrace, closing his eyes, breathing in the smell of her hair. And just like that, the heaviness in his chest felt lighter.

They were still holding each other when Narcissa approached. Astoria pulled away, flushing, but Draco did not let go of her hand.

“Mother, this is Astoria Greengrass.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Malfoy,” Astoria said, pink in the face.

“You’re kind, dear,” Narcissa said. She glanced at Draco. “I take it my son has been hiding you from me this whole time? What did he think, that I would scare you away?”

Draco scratched at his neck. “Mother…”

But Astoria laughed, looking more relaxed. “Not at all, Mrs Malfoy. He’s always spoken highly of you. Not just any mother makes a fool out of Voldemort, after all.”

Narcissa’s smile transformed her face; the grief that had been written into the lines around her eyes, while not gone completely, became harder to see.

She walked right up to Astoria and took her hand in hers.

“You are so very lovely,” she told her, “and I insist you stay for dinner. My sister will be joining us as well. Oh, how marvelous… It’s been so long since we had guests over…”

She linked her elbow with Astoria’s, walking her in the direction of the manor without even a backward glance for Draco. And Draco watched them go, shaking his head. He raised his head to the sky and closed his eyes.

The sun was warm on his face today, and his heart was full.

*

Five years later

*

Sweat on his hands, unable to be wiped off. Sweat in his armpits. Sweat soaking through his socks. Draco Malfoy was trembling so much he dropped his cup of freshly filled coffee on himself. Swearing, he rubbed at his shirt with a napkin, forgetting he was a wizard with a wand.

“First time?” A portly red-haired man asked, appraising Draco over the crime pages in the Prophet. They were the only two in the waiting area of the newly minted delivery ward on the sixth floor of St. Mungo’s.

Unable to speak, Draco could only offer a stiff nod.

“I’ve been there,” the man said after a pensive pause. “When I had my first, I thought I was going to pass out, even though my wife was doing all the work… I’d rather battle a hundred Voldemorts than go through that again…”

Draco rolled his eyes; another nutter who fancied himself a war hero.

“... yet here I am, with my second,” the man continued. “And still scared shitless.”

Draco gave a grudging snort. “You don’t look like you are.”

“Only because of the calming draught they forced down my throat.”

Draco chuckled despite himself. 

Then he was somber again.

“It doesn’t get easier, does it?” he asked, slumping into the chair next to the stranger.

“Being a father?” The red-haired man shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.”

They sat for a while in companionable silence.

“It’s just… I’m not sure I can ,” Draco said, burying his face into his hands.

“Nobody’s ever ready, I think.”

“No - you don’t understand,” said Draco, staring at his shoes. “I’m… not the sort fit for a role model, you see. I’ve done some terrible things in the past… I’ve only barely figured out how to be an adult. I want to be someone they can look up to, but I’m afraid I’ll just –”

“Disappoint them?”

Draco nodded.

The red-haired man studied him with a strangely intense look for a few moments. Then he cleared his throat, reaching up as if to adjust a pair of glasses that wasn’t there, and awkwardly dropped his hand. 

“Listen, I can’t speak for your child… But my dad wasn’t around when I was growing up. And I can tell you now that if he’d been there, it wouldn’t have mattered to me whether he was perfect or not. Just being there, loving me, caring for me… That would have been enough.”

“Really?”

“Really.” The man shrugged. “And for the record, I did get to know my dad later on, and he wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. But that doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of him, or I love him any less. I’ve learned by now, people aren’t black and white, you know?”

Draco pondered on that. “No… I suppose they’re not.”

Looking into the eyes of his companion, Draco got the funny feeling that he knew this man, even though he was fairly certain he’d never met him before. He chalked it up to hallucination from sleep deprivation.

“Er, thanks…“ 

“Barny,” the man said.

“Right, Barny.” Draco thought about introducing himself, but decided against it. He didn’t want to ruin this interaction by discomfiting the poor man. With his white-blonde hair tucked underneath a Muggle cap, Draco seemed to have gone unrecognized so far, and for good reason; there had been a flock of reporters including Rita Skeeter hovering downstairs. “I’m… er, Darryl.”

“Nice to meet you, Darryl.” Barny’s lip twitched.

Draco excused himself, returning down the hall, where Narcissa was arguing with the mediwitch at the door.

“Will you bugger off and let me IN? That’s my daughter-in-law! Who works here, shall I remind you!”

“Madam, we’ve gone over this, but when the Healers are in there they can’t be disturbed, no exceptions - it’s protocol –”

Draco stepped in before the argument could get out of hand.

“Mother, it’s alright, just let them work.”

“But it’s completely ridiculous , these blasted protocols!”

The mediwitch looked immensely relieved as the door opened at that moment, and the Healer stuck her head out.

“Family for Astoria Malfoy?”

Draco’s mouth went dry. “Y-yes.”

“Come in,” the Healer beamed.

With Narcissa giving him a firm shove, Draco found himself moving inside, his mind buzzing blankly. Astoria was lying inside, her fringe plastered to her forehead and barely able to lift her head off the pillow, but she was smiling brightly, her dimples on wide display, as she held a little bundle of blankets to her breast.

“He’s got your hair, look!” 

Draco moved to her side, still numb all over as if under a body-bind curse. Narcissa was right away cooing in pleasure on the other side of the bed, going on about how all the Malfoys had that distinctive hair.

Holding his breath, he peered down at the tiny little pink face. Eyes scrunched, mouth open in a fierce cry, and the tiniest fingers Draco had ever seen clutched into little fists.

“Go on, you can touch him,” the Healer told him encouragingly.

He hadn’t even realized that his hand was outstretched. Gingerly, tentatively, he lowered his fingers and brushed them against the soft warm cheek. The baby turned towards his hand, as if sensing it.

“Aw… he likes you,” said Astoria happily.

“Do we have a name?” the Healer asked, brandishing a quill.

Astoria and Draco looked at each other and grinned.

“Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy.”

Narcissa glanced between them, looking confused. “But it’s March. The baby’s an Aries… Why, what’s so funny?”

fin.