Work Text:
How can you remember what you’ve been forced to forget?
His footsteps in the snow. A hand at his shoulder. A voice peeking out from behind the hedges.
“Draco! Come find me!”
In his dreams it was always snowing and there was a boy holding his hand. Draco could never quite see him; it was like he was at the periphery of his vision. Just a small blonde figure holding tightly to him.
They would chase each other across his father’s gardens, their footprints making beautiful patterns on the sheet of white, their voices echoing against the rose bushes.
“Where are you?” Draco would shout, his eyes closed, his hands feeling around in the dark.
He trusted this boy, and although his face was always a blurr and his name was always just at the tip of his tongue, he felt familiar. Draco would hold onto his arm with a gloved hand. There was security in the touch. He trusted him.
“Draco-”
That voice haunted him. It made him yearn. It made him want to weep.
“Draco-”
He sat bolt upright in bed. There was sweat sticking to his back and his breathing was ragged, as if he had just come from Quidditch practice. Next to him, Harry was sitting up too, his hair tousled, his glasses off, green eyes fixed on him. “Are you okay?” he said, a hand extending slowly to touch his bare shoulder.
Draco shuttered, and shut his eyes. The memory of the voice felt so real, but the boy was already fading, as if a vast distance was separating them. He took a deep breath and raised a hand to his forehead and with shaking fingers pushed back his blonde hair.
“Was it about Voldemort?” said Harry quietly, stretching his arm so that it went over Draco’s shoulder.
Draco shook his head.
“Was it about the wildfire?”
“No,” he answered again. Both of these were common nightmares for him, but neither had ever made him react this violently. Somehow, seeing his father’s garden, and the snow, and feeling that presence, hearing that voice was worse than the Dark Lord, worse than the inferno in the Room of Requirements.
Slowly he leaned his head against Harry’s shoulder. There was security in the warm, dark skin, in the familiarity of his scent. He breathed in again. Harry had lit the lamp, and there was a warm orange glow in their bedroom.
The apartment was new. The cohabitation was new too, although it didn’t feel that way. They had spent a year together before officially moving in, and in that time, they had rarely spent a night apart. Draco had crashed often at Harry’s tiny apartment, and sometimes, Harry would sneak in through his mother’s protective charms and join him in his room at the Manor.
It had felt unnatural not to spend nights together. Not to go to sleep side by side now that they had really and truly found each other.
“What was it then?” said Harry.
Draco shook his head. “It was nothing really.”
He rubbed Draco’s shoulder and pulled him closer, kissing the top of his head. “It didn’t feel like nothing. I’ve never seen you like that.”
The little footprints in the snow. The warm hand holding his. The voice. That voice. “I was home-” said Draco, trying to force the images to come into focus, to make sense. “And it was snowing. I was-” the footsteps were tiny, his hands were tiny. “A kid, maybe four or five, and-” he tried to focus on whoever had been next to him, but the more he did so the more they seemed to fade. “I think there was someone with me.”
“Your father?”
“No, not my father.”
“Were they a kid too?”
The dream had clouded entirely, as if its very essence had been pulled from his mind. “I don’t know, I just-” He gulped and licked dry lips. “I felt like I lost something.”
Harry held him, pulling him against his chest. Once upon a time, the gesture would have been infuriating—he didn’t need to be coddled and petted—but they had broken past that now. They had each learned how to care for the other.
He kissed Harry’s forearm. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s not a problem.”
Draco smirked. “The chosen one doesn’t need to sleep, he can take care of others 24/7.”
Harry laughed, Draco’s favorite sound in the world. “Don’t be daft, I’m going back to sleep right now.”
Draco raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?” he asked in what he hoped was a very seductive voice. He looked straight into Harry’s eyes. “Don’t you want to comfort me some more?”
And as usual, that was all the invitation Harry needed. The next moment, he had rolled on top of him, kissing him, his hands already working to remove Draco’s sweatpants.
-
There still remained something deeply disconcerting about Malfoy Manor. Even though Harry had now spent many pleasant nights there, its sinister aura always impacted him upon apparition. The house was large, elegant, but since Voldemort had stayed there, forlorn. Lucius’s gardens, once so lush and well kept, had been laid to waste, and now stretched wild and barren against the fierce November wind.
The house which had raised seven generations of proud Malfoys now housed Narcissa alone. There was a ghostliness in its hallways, in those large over-decorated rooms, that clawed at him. Whenever they were inside, their movements were closely monitored by the solemn figures in the old portraits, the ever-present ancestors with their grey disapproving eyes.
“Was this a happy place to grow up?” Harry had asked Draco the first time he had dared bring him into his room.
Draco had been puzzled by the question, as if he had never pondered it himself. “Happy? Merlin, no, that’s not the point.”
“Not the point?”
Draco had shaken his head. “Malfoys don’t aspire to happiness,” he said, his hand moving to the sleeve of Harry’s sweater. “They aspire for grandeur.”
“Do you include yourself in that statement?”
A mischievous grin had come across his face and he leaned down to kiss Harry. “Of course, why else would I chase after the chosen one,” he had said in a husky whisper before pulling him into his bedroom.
There had almost been a sacrilegious feeling in making love to Draco in Malfoy Manor. It was like he could feel the piercing disgust and disapproval of generations of heterosexual purebloods as Draco knelt between his open legs, sucking his cock as if his life depended on it.
“Does it feel dirty doing it here?” Harry had asked as he pulled Draco on top of him.
“Oh, yes,” said Draco with delight. .
They both took a perverse pleasure in fucking in his childhood bedroom. The figures in the portraits would vacate the room with horrified expressions, and not come skulking back till morning.
“Let’s horrify them some more,” Draco would whisper, his hand snaking underneath the sheets to grab Harry’s cock.
This was the first time that either of them came to the Manor since the day Draco had moved out a month before. In that brief amount of time it appeared to have gotten more lonesome, more silent.
Harry found himself pressing his shoulder against Draco’s as they walked up to the entrance, the chilly November air fluttering between them like an invisible hand.
“Scared, Potter?”
Harry instantly rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Admit it, you're scared of my mother.”
“I am not!” he said, shoving him hard.
Draco laughed, putting a slender arm around Harry’s waist. “It’s okay, she likes you.”
“In what world does your mother like me?”
“I mean, she saved your life, of course she likes you.”
Harry stared at him quizzically, but he didn’t say anything. Narcissa had been polite every time they had met. There was a formality to her that Harry could not quite get used to, but she had certainly never been rude. Having homosexual love affairs was not exactly “the thing” in pureblood circles, so Harry had been surprised to see that she treated their relationship simply as fact, and not something she could deem right or wrong.
Draco almost went straight for the handle, but then changed his mind and used the knocker against the old oak door.
The sound rang over the silent grounds as Harry straightened his jacket, trying to look presentable.
Didi was the one to pull open the door. She was a young elf, with perky ears, and wide brown eyes that gleamed up at them. “Master!” she exclaimed in a high voice, bowing lowing to Draco.
“We’re here for tea, mother should be expecting us.”
“Of course!” she squeaked, holding the door open for them.
The hallway was fully lit. The heavy chandelier above was gleaming with hundreds of candles, and yet they add no touch of warmth to the place. As they moved down the hallway to the sitting room, Harry could feel the eyes of the portraits on the walls following them. Just to spite them he reached for Draco’s hand, squeezing it for a moment before they entered the room.
Narcissa had shroud herself in black every day since Lucius entered Azkaban, and today was no different. Her dress was light and airy with wide sleeves and a low neckline that showed off her perfect white skin. She smiled at her son, reaching out a hand for him to clasp before moving her cool blue eyes to Harry.
“I am so glad you could make it,” the intonation reminded him of his Aunt Petunia. There was that same air of artful falseness in the address.
She extended her hand to the plush, velvet, blue sofa. “Please, sit down, make yourself at home, dear.”
They sat next to each other, Draco leaning forward slightly, Harry feeling stiff and awkward. Maybe there had been some truth in Draco’s earlier statement. She did frighten him a little. She was enigmatic, and he had no idea what she was thinking at any particular time.
Didi came in, carrying a heavy silver tray above her head. It bore little pastries and a tea set, which she laid out neatly on the table in front of them. Narcissa poured the tea herself. It had a flowery scent, like jasmine, which was not Harry’s favourite, but he took it, giving her what he hoped was a polite smile.
“And how is the new place coming along?”
“Well-” said Draco. “It’s not fully decorated, but it’s comfortable.”
She smiled, and her eyes glossed over Harry. “It’s in a Muggle building, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s cheap, but it has a really nice view, you should come see it-” he found himself saying the words without quite registering what they were. He could not picture this aloof stranger in their apartment.
“When it’s ready-” Draco quickly interrupted.
He thought he observed some tightness in the corner of her smile, but perhaps it had just been a play of the light. “And work?”
“No complaints,” said Harry, who did not feel that it was appropriate to discuss his work in the Auror Department.
To fill the void in conversation, Draco began inquiring about household matters, asking meaningless question after meaningless question. While they spoke, Harry found his gaze wandering to the portraits, many of whom were scowling at him. He knew that in their books, he was the villain, and the exact thing they didn’t want for the precious last Malfoy heir.
There was one portrait in particular which drew his eye. It was a beautiful painting which had the spot of prominence over the mantel. It bore Narcissa and Lucius, both looking young and pale and vibrant, like mirror figures of each other. Lucius was standing by her side, Narcissa on a throne-like-chair, her long hair down her shoulders and a small boy on her lap.
Harry had seen the painting before, and noticed what a good depiction it was of Lucius and Narcissa, but today he found his eyes looking at the baby who he had always assumed was Draco. It looked about two years old, and was pale and blonde, but this baby had blue eyes instead of grey.
When there was a pause in the conversation, Harry asked: “When was that portrait made?”
She turned her head slowly, and he watched her blue eyes look over the frame and three people in it. “We had that done right after the Winter solstice in 1982, I believe.”
“Who painted it?” asked Harry.
“A very talented young man, a foreigner.”
“His name?”
She turned her eyes on him, and for the first time he felt something in her gaze. Something more than coldness, more than politeness, something viceral. “I can’t recall,” she said, and he knew that it was a lie. “Why are you so interested? Are you thinking of having your portrait made?”
“No,” said Harry briskly before standing up and moving closer to it. “I just think it’s very well done.” The Lucius in the portrait was glaring at him, while the Narcissa in the portrait was staring at her young son, and holding him in her arms, almost as if she were shielding him from Harry. “It’s very realistic,” he said.
“What was with you and that damn painting?” said Draco an hour later when they headed out the door. “It put her in a bad mood.”
“Have you ever looked at that painting?” Harry asked as they passed through the snowy gardens.
“Looked at it? Yes, of course! I bleeding had to live in that house my whole life. I’ve seen the stupid painting.”
Harry stopped him right at the gate. “Did you ever get a good look at that baby?”
“You mean at myself as a baby? No, thank you, I’m not really interested.”
“Draco, that baby has blue eyes,” said Harry.
He watched Draco carefully as he frowned and then looked back towards the house.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’ve heard that when babies are born, their eye colour can change a lot, but if that was made in December 1982 when you were already two-and-a-half years old, I would have thought you looked more like yourself. I would have said it was just the painter not being attentive to detail, but he painted your parents perfectly, and if it wasn't accurate, it’s hard to imagine your parents not throwing a fit over it and demanding it be changed.”
Draco was silent for a moment, and then turned to Harry again. “What are you trying to say?”
“That it’s weird.”
“Lots of things in that house are weird.”
Draco tried to turn towards the gate again, but Harry put an arm on his shoulder and stopped him.
“Something feels off about this.”
“Harry, what do you want me to say? Maybe my eye colour did change, or maybe my parents made me take a potion so that I looked more like my dad and less like my mum. Frankly, neither would surprise me,” he finished with a shrug.
“So, you don’t feel like she was hiding something?”
At this, Draco actually laughed and leaned forward, kissing him on the mouth. “Of course she’s hiding something, that’s all she knows how to do, but it doesn’t mean that it’s anything important.”
-
It was the snowiest December in Draco’s memory. Even the dirty London streets had piles of snow built up on street corners, slowly melting from the heat of the cars and the metro below. Draco escaped out into the world as often as he could. He took walks before breakfast, while Harry lay asleep, and in the evening after supper, he apparated away to a wooded area not far from the Manor.
As he walked beneath the trees, he heard the sound of the wind shaking the branches and snow crunching underneath his boots. He loved the fresh, cool air, and how its purity almost hurt when you breathed.
He crouched down and picked up a soft bit of snow in his ungloved hand. He made a fist around it, shaping it until it was a round ball and feeling how it numbed his fingers. He remembered spending hours making dozens of these as a kid, piling them all up together. But there had never been anyone to have a snowball fight with.
He picked up another handful of snow and pressed it hard together, compressing it between his hands. When it felt strong and durable, he threw it against a nearby tree, and heard the satisfying sound of the crash and split. The trunk was left white as the snow splatted down, like a stream.
Draco sat down and closed his eyes.
He had dreamt of his father’s snowy gardens again last night. He had dreamt of that game where his eyes closed and he was trying to find someone, trying to reach someone. Whoever that person was, their face was never clear in the dreams, and once he was awake, every bit of their essence felt like it had been ripped away from him. All he could remember was how it had felt to hold their hand in the cold.
Draco bowed his head. He couldn’t understand it—he was getting everything he wanted, so why was this dream of sadness haunting him?
-
“So?” said Hermione when Harry told her about the portrait and Narcissa’s reaction.
“Don’t be like that!” he exclaimed as he reached over for another biscuit.
Due to the fact that they all had jobs and responsibilities now, Harry didn’t hang out with Ron and Hermione nearly as much as he used to. However, they always made a point of going out on Tuesday nights. Today, they were in a coffee shop, with chocolaty drinks and a plateful of biscuits in the middle of the table.
“I’m not being like anything,” said Hermione. “I’m just asking what you mean by it?”
“Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious?”
Ron and Hermione looked at each other and then back at him, and said together, “No.”
“Oh, come on!” said Harry, stuffing the rest of the biscuit in his mouth. “Why would it have bright, blue eyes? It doesn’t make any sense at all! Draco’s eyes are storm-grey! And she said it was made Christmas 1982, he was already two year-”
“You don’t have to explain it again, mate,” said Ron, who had a ring of chocolate residue around his mouth. “We understood the first time. It just seems like a weird thing to fixate on.”
“Fixate?” said Harry, his eyes bulging. “I just mentioned it casually!”
Again, Hermione and Ron looked at each other.
“Harry, your instincts are to investigate,” said Hermione in the same tone she had once used to answer Professors’ questions. “That’s just how your mind works. You treat everything like a puzzle, except some things are just what they are. What did Draco say?”
“He didn’t think it was a big deal either but-” began Harry, but before he could finish Ron cut him off.
“See? Even Draco thinks it’s nothing, and he’d know, wouldn’t he? It’s his wacko family, after all.”
Harry grabbed another biscuit and stuffed it in his mouth, his eyes narrowed. It was so silly that after all this time, people still doubted his instincts. Hadn’t he been right more often than he’d been wrong? He took a drink of his hot chocolate. It didn’t matter what Ron and Hermione said, or what Draco thought, there was definitely something here, and he was going to get to the end of it.
-
“Was it the snow dream again?” asked Harry, as he handed Draco a glass of water.
They were in bed and half dressed, the room dark around them Draco’s hand shook as he took the glass from his boyfriend and brought it to his lips. The dream had been happening almost every night, but this night in particular, it felt terrible.
He drank to calm himself, but it didn’t help much. Before Draco knew quite what had happened, he was sobbing, the cries going through his body. It was nothing he had experienced before. It was like suddenly, he had this mountain of grief upon him, weighing him down, except that he had no idea where it came from.
He felt Harry put his arm around him, pulling him close. He felt the beautiful familiarity of Harry’s body, his shoulders, his hair, the smell of him, all of it grounding him to the moment, but still that grief persisted.
“What’s wrong?” Harry whispered.
Draco could barely breathe, and his words were muffled and incomprehensible even to his own ears.
“Draco?” Harry whispered gently, alarm in his tone.
He had cried in front of Harry before, but never like this. It had been years since he cried like this. He felt like a little kid; whatever this feeling was it was overpowering him.. “Are you unhappy?”
“No,” Draco managed to say as he took a gaping breath. “No, I don’t know what’s happening,” he pulled back so that he could see Harry’s face. “It’s just that dream-” he shuttered, remembering the frozen rose bushes and the hand reaching out for him, a child’s hand. He gulped. “I feel like someone died.”
“Like a premonition?”
“No, it feels like they died a long time ago.”
“Who?”
There was no answer to give him. “It’s just a dream,” he said, more to himself than to Harry.
“It’s affecting you a lot.”
Draco shot him a glance. “Well, dreams can do that, you of all people should know that.” He didn’t mean for his tone to be so confrontational, but it was.
Harry stiffened. “Interesting comparison since my dreams weren’t actually dreams at all.”
He ignored Harry and lay back down in bed, staring up at the ceiling, his arms crossed over his bare chest. He felt weak, and shaken and vulnerable, and for the first time since they had gotten together, he wished he was alone in bed. He didn’t need Harry seeing him like this.
“You’re not gonna say anything else?”
“Don’t have anything else to say,” he replied, not looking at him.
“It’s the third night this week, we can’t do this forever.”
Draco’s jaw hardened, and his eyes flickered to Harry. “If you don’t want to do this, then leave.”
It was obviously not the answer Harry had expected. In fact, he physically recoiled at the words. “What's the matter with you? It’s not my fault this is happening.”
“I know that,” said Draco in what he hoped was a softer tone. “But I never had these dreams until we moved in together.” It was a connection he had not made until that very moment, but now that he said it, he had no idea how he could have missed it. He looked at Harry, and found his green eyes staring back at him.
“Do you think the dream is telling something about us?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” He closed his eyes, reliving the little bits that hadn’t yet faded away. “It doesn’t feel like you, the dream is sad, and it takes place in my father’s gardens.”
Harry lay back down by his side, their arms just touching. “Maybe it’s about how you feel about your dad?” he suggested.
Draco sighed. Unlike his mother, who visited regularly, he hadn't seen his father since the day the trial ended and he was locked up in Azkaban. That had been almost seven years ago now. Practically a lifetime ago. His father had never seen him as a grown man; they had parted when Draco was still a weak, traumatized eighteen-year-old.
“I don’t want to see him,” he said to the darkness.
“That’s your choice,” Harry answered.
They had never had a proper conversation about his father, it was one of the many things in their past which was too messy a topic to open back up again. It had taken them years to get to this place in their relationship, years to heal from everything that had happened to them, and everything they had done to each other. It had taken years to build up that trust, and the last thing Draco wanted was his father messing it up.
He moved closer to Harry on the bed, and turned his head so that he kissed his shoulder. He didn’t have the words to say what he wanted to, so he hoped that little gesture communicated it. Harry put his arm around him, and Draco closed his eyes, determined not to dream again.
-
In theory, Harry’s job consisted of investigating dark magic, and when needed, securing or capturing those suspected of wrongdoing. In practice, Harry did exactly what he wanted, and was paid very well for it. He ran the auror department, but its day to day running bored him, and he often investigated things on his own, ignoring the protocol just like he had ignored school rules. He knew it was irresponsible, even hypocritical, since everyone else in his department had to toe the line and keep a neat record of their activity.
However, it was easy for Harry to brush this off. He had saved the wizarding world, surely that meant that he could spend his work hours wandering through Diagon Alley with his invisibility cloak, or flying in the outskirts of the city. Those little breaks from the life he had were sweet, and necessary for his daily function.
But today, Harry was escaping with a very different objective. He moved through the Ministry under his invisibility cloak until he reached the archives. The archives were guarded by an elderly witch with half closed eyes and a magazine in front of her. Harry quickly snuck around her desk and began walking through the long familiar aisles, the invisibility cloak swishing around his ankles.
The place was massive, the rows and rows of cabinets so long that it looked like the dimensions of the room were eternal. It was very challenging to find anything unless you knew exactly where it was, and luckily Harry did.
The file on the Malfoy family was surprisingly short. During Voldemort’s take-over of the Ministry, most of those files had been destroyed, leaving behind nothing but a few documents that traced the Malfoy ancestry through to the 13th century. The rest of the content of the file was from after the war. They held all the details of Lucius, Draco and Narcissa’s trials, photographs of their arrest, and several full searches that had occurred at the Manor.
These were the ones that Harry was looking for. He had seen them all before, close-ups of rooms and antique furniture, family jewels and the secret entrances. He barely spared any of them a glance until he came to the ones showing that portrait of the Malfoys with the baby.
Slowly he put everything back the way he found it, stashing those pictures in the inside of his cloak.
-
Despite the fact that Draco hadn’t physically met her until he was eighteen, Andromeda had become something of a parental figure. She had a warmth that radiated from her, and she understood things without having to be told. She had been the first person to realise that he and Harry were in a relationship, and one of the few to encourage them.
He apparated outside of her gate and immediately heard his name being called.
“Draco!” Teddy yelled as he ran across the garden. He was seven years old and rambunctious. As he ran, his hair changed from purple to blonde, as it always did when he was around his older cousin.
“Hello,” said Draco, leaning down to hug Teddy as he crashed into him.
“I didn’t know you were coming!”
Draco ruffled his hair. “I thought I’d have dinner with you guys since Harry’s working late.”
“Oh, good,” he said with a nod, grabbing Draco’s hand and pulling him into the house.
Andromeda’s home was very different from the Manor. It was casual, with distinct Muggle influences, including a TV and a computer. He found his Aunt on the couch in a seasonal sweater with a bowl of popcorn in front of her.
“Draco!” she said with surprise, and got off the couch to hug him.
It was impossible not to draw comparisons between her open expression and smile and his mother’s own calculated politeness. “Is Harry with you?”
“No, he’s working late tonight, I thought I’d drop by for dinner if you don’t mind.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Of course not.”
Teddy drew his attention by pulling on his jacket. “Can you come fly with me? Grandma won’t let me go alone.”
Draco hesitated, the truth was that he was here to see Andromeda tonight, but there was no way you could break that to a seven-year-old.
Thankfully, Andromeda stepped in for him. “Now Teddy, you know very well that dinner is in half-an-hour, and you still have to clean up that room of yours.”
He sighed. “If you do it, it’ll only take a moment.”
“Is it my room, Teddy, or is it your room?” she said.
Teddy rolled his eyes, then looked up pleadingly at Draco, who shook his head. “Nope, it’s important to learn to take care of your own things,” he said, which was rich coming from him since he had never once learned to do that himself. “How about we go flying after dinner, yeah?”
“Alright-” said Teddy in the voice of one resigned to his fate.
Draco took a seat by Andromeda. She tilted the bowl of popcorn towards him, but he shook his head.
“Oh, so this is serious,” she said, putting it down and shifting on the sofa to look at him better.
Normally Draco felt like he was very skilled at guarding his feelings, but for some reason, Andromeda always could tell when something was wrong with him. Perhaps it was a mother’s intuition, or maybe it came from having been raised in a family where occlumency and legitimacy were practised daily.
“I wouldn't say it’s serious exactly,” said Draco. “But certainly on my mind.”
“Go on.”
He glanced at the shiny black TV, where their darkened image was reflected. There was something upsetting about this angle. He looked too much like his father, and in an added twist Andromeda resembled Bellatrix. They looked like poor imitations of them.
“Draco,” she pressed, putting a hand on his forearm, right where his Dark Mark was still visible, pink against his pallid skin.
“I’ve been having a dream lately,” he said, his eyes fixed on the brown sofa. “And it’s really unsettling. It doesn’t feel like anything that I’ve experienced before. It pulls at me, I feel drawn to it.
“In my dream, I’m in my father’s gardens, and there’s someone with me. I can’t see them, and I don’t know their name, but their presence feels familiar. Like something I should remember. We’re playing hide and seek in the rose bushes, and they’re calling for me, but I can’t reach them.”
He glanced up at her. “Do you have any idea who that person might be?”
“In this dream you're a child?”
He nodded. “Yeah, maybe Teddy’s age, maybe younger, and I think the other person is a kid too.”
“I think that’s a better question for your mother.”
Draco sighed and hung his head. His mother was the last person he could talk to about this. He loved her, of course he did, but there was an iciness there that he didn't dare penetrate. “I just can’t figure it out. Crabbe, and Goyle, and Nott used to come over when I was a kid, but it doesn’t feel like any of them. I was hoping maybe I have a cousin or something I never knew about.”
“As far as I know, Draco, you and your mother and Teddy and I are the last of the Black family. We have no cousins left, and your mother cut me off when I married Ted.”
He nodded. He had heard that story during his childhood from his mother’s warped perspective. How Andromeda had tainted the family by marrying so far beneath her, how she was an embarrassment. It was disgusting to remember how he had never questioned it.
She must have sensed his guilt, because she reached out to rub his shoulder. “It’s all in the past now.”
“Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like it, you know. Me and Harry, we always talked about a fresh start, but maybe there’s some things you just don’t come back from. Maybe that’s what the dream is telling me.”
-
Harry arrived home well after midnight to a pitch black apartment and a sense of guilt. He knew he should have been home earlier, he knew that he and Draco not spending enough time together was a huge strain on their relationship, and yet he hadn’t been able to help himself. He had spent the last three days trying to determine who had painted the Malfoy family portrait and track down his current whereabouts, and today he had finally achieved it.
He cast the usual protective charms over the entrance before walking to their bedroom. Draco was asleep on his back, body stiff and straight. His skin was almost luminecent in its paleness, and Harry admired the firmness of his chest and shoulders where they peaked out over the blanket. He would never quite get over how beautiful he looked, with his sharp features, and his natural grace.
He dropped his coat on the floor, and was about to start unbuttoning his shirt when he noticed Draco jerk in his sleep. He was dreaming again, Harry just knew it. He walked towards the bed, as Draco pushed back the blankets, his breathing disturbed, his head moving from one side to the other. It looked like he was fighting an invisible force.
The dream was happening almost every night now, but Harry had never seen it like this before. Usually, the movement woke him up, and he was half-asleep and alarmed. But tonight he was in his full senses, as Draco thrashed in bed, gaping for breath.
His instinct was to call to him, to wake him up from whatever terror was happening in his dreams, and comfort him, but he didn’t. He wanted to see how far the dream would carry him without an outside presence.
Draco’s body jerked violently once more, and this time his grey eyes flashes open, and the next moment a sob came out of his mouth and he was sitting up against the wall. He took a moment to recover his breathing, then he glared at Harry.
“What are you doing?”
“I just got in,” he answered. He had a terrible feeling in his stomach. He didn’t like this at all.
Draco turned his face away as he wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Don’t ever watch me like that again.”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Harry defensively. “I just wanted to see what would happen if I wasn’t there to wake you up.”
“That’s fucking creepy.”
Harry took a seat on his side of the bed. It felt like this dream had scrambled everything between them. Their first year together had been exciting and smooth, and now it was like everyday there were new tensions between them. He reached over to put a hand on Draco’s arm, but the other flinched away.
“I’m not going to sleep with you looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
The full fury of Draco’s grey eyes landed on him, narrowed and angry as a cat’s. “Like I’m something pathetic and weak for you to save. I don’t want you here.” The way he emphasised the last words felt like a slap in the face.
“You mean in our bedroom?”
“Yeah,” said Draco lying back on the bed and crossing his arms over his chest. “Go sleep somewhere else.”
“Draco,” said Harry quietly. “Is that really going to fix anything?”
“Yes,” said Draco. “Cause frankly I don’t want to see you right now,” he said, turning over in bed and facing away from Harry.
He stood up and walked out of that room with a sense of bewilderment. He lay down on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling before him. He needed to meet that painter. He needed to get some answers. He didn’t like how this was going at all.
-
Looking back, Draco could hardly remember the summer after the war. Between the trial, the investigation, and his own tempest of emotion, everything was fragment and achronological. But there was one thing that he knew for sure. He had survived that summer due to his mother’s sleeping potions.
If he hadn’t drugged himself up, the nightmares would have gotten him. The nightmares of Voldemort’s hand on his shoulders, of his father cursing at him as he was carted off to Azkaban, of Crabbe falling into the flames of his own creation. The death, and guilt, and darkness of it all would have consumed him.
His mother had been his saviour, with her smooth, intoxicating sleeping potions, which promised nothing but numbness and peace. It had taken him almost two years afterwards to wean himself off of them, and he had sworn he would never use them again. But as the dreams became more draining, he found himself thinking of his mother’s stash of perfect sleeping positions with longing.
That was all he wanted. To rest. To be at peace. To never visit that snow dream again, where he was forever losing something, forever being torn from something.
The day after he banished Harry to the couch, he went to see his mother again. They had tea, sitting directly beneath that portrait that had so intrigued Harry.
He found that he didn’t want to look at it too closely. Something about it upset him, and turned his stomach.
Finally, when the tea service was ending, he asked his mother: “Do you happen to have any sleeping potions?”
And she turned blank eyes on him, and said with a smile, “Of course, Draco. You know you can always come here for more.”
His mother had never seen the potions as an addiction, why should she? He knew for a fact she had been using them religiously for years, maybe even every night. So there was no concern in her expression as she handed them over to him.
He held the bottles in his hands for several seconds, and then quietly pocked them. “Thank you.”
She gave him a gracious smile, but there seemed to be something vacant and empty in her eyes all the while, and for the first time, Draco really wondered how much she felt, and how much she had numbed herself to.
-
Harry hadn’t been home in two nights. Officially he was ‘on a mission’, unofficially he was wandering through the Belgium countryside in search of someone by the name of Rayan Salehi. He had identified him as the painter of the Malfoy portrait and had a general idea of his life. He was half-Belgium, half-Iranian, but he had spent the better part of his twenties travelling around the world. His art was well renowned within the wizarding world, but he had grown increasingly sparse in its creation. In fact, in the last five years he had only produced one painting, and that had been for a head of state in Mali.
His exact whereabouts had been impossible to discern as he was something of a hermit, but Harry was sure he was getting closer and closer. Four people in the last village he had visited had been able to identify him from a picture, and the last one of these had pointed in the direction of a winding path and told him that Salehi lived in a cottage visible from the road.
The day was cold and grey, and the dry scenery around him seemed to accentuate this. The brown grass swished against the bottom of his jeans, and the earth felt cold and compressed beneath him. He had expected to have to walk a long way, but after only about twenty minutes, a cottage became visible in the distance. Its entrance was partially obscured by trees, but the chimney stuck out, a little line of smoke floating off the top.
In preparation for this, Harry had altered his appearance. His glasses were gone, his eyes turned black, and he grew a thick beard over the lower half of his face. His disguise was partially for his safety, but also because he did not care for anyone to know what he was up to. It was better going at things alone and in secret, life sure had taught him that.
The cottage was larger than he had anticipated, with great open windows and a beautiful terrace that went all around. He knocked on the door and stood back when he heard footsteps approaching.
From the records he knew that Salehi was fifty, but he could have easily passed for ten years younger. He had warm dark skin, and a full head of curly hair, and there was something lively in his eyes which immediately drew Harry’s attention.
He greeted him in French to which Harry nodded.
“Actually I’m English,” he said. “I’m a reporter actually, in London.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “An English reporter?” he said in English. His accent was light and crisp, barely discernible.
“Yes, I’m doing a piece on some art work of yours.”
His dark eyes looked Harry up and down, and then he smiled, a crooked one, which Harry couldn’t help notice made him look rather attractive. “Very curious, would you like to come in?”
He led Harry through the house into a back sunroom that looked out at the terrace. The furniture was rustic and comfortable, and he and Harry sat in matching armchairs looking out at the bare trees that surrounded the cabin.
“I have not been in England for a very long time, not since the first war.”
Harry extracted a small notepad and a quill. “Do you mind if I write?” he said, inadvertently reminding himself of Rita Skeeters.
The man laughed. “That is what you are here for, no?”
Harry nodded. “So, you haven’t been in England for how long?”
“I left the summer of 1981, having been there four years in all. Though I travelled a lot, spent most of my time in Scotland actually.”
He had meant to write that down but his wrist was frozen. “Sorry,” he said with a frown. “You left England in 1981?”
“I did.”
That did not make any sense. Narcissa had said that he had created that painting in Christmas 1982, and that matched with how old Draco appeared in the picture.
“Something the matter?”
Harry shook his head and scribbled the dates down in his notepad. Narcissa had never said where it had been created, he realised. Perhaps the Malfoys had commissioned it from him while they were on vacation or something.
He thought back to his notes and picked up what he had previously rehearsed. “You created several works while in England. There’s a painting of Francis Edhert that stands in Corraway Hall, and another portrait of the Parketo Clan which is in St. Mungo’s.”
A look of disdain crossed his face but he gave a curt nod.
“You don’t like your work?” Harry inquired.
Salehi laughed. “Portraits of rich families is what a young artist does to fund expensive travels, but I would hardly call that my work.”
“But they’re very good,” said Harry, who had been studying his work closely. He had located a dozen paintings around England, and they were all hyper-realistic, detailed, and fresh. Not only that, they all seemed to evoke some feeling within him.
“Thank you, it is thanks to all of that good, English gold that I don’t have to do portraits anymore.”
“I wanted to ask you about a few in particular,” said Harry. “Would you mind if I showed you a picture?”
He shook his head and Harry withdrew several photos of his paintings from his bag. He lay them out on the table in front of Salehi and watched as his eyes glossed over his old work, work that perhaps he had not seen for decades. There were six paintings in front of him, and yet, just like Harry’s, his gaze fell to the Malfoys.
“Do you remember much about that one?” he asked, pointing at it.
“Oh, yes, I know who they are,” Salehi answered.
“The Malfoys?”
He nodded. “I knew then too,” he said quietly. “But I needed the gold, didn’t think too much of it. It’s one of those things one regrets later on.”
Harry made no comment. He waited for a moment, wondering if Salehi was going to move on to the next painting, but instead the artist said: “They contacted me years later, requesting for me to make another one for them. They were offering a very hefty amount too, but by then I had a clearer head. I declined.”
“You turned down the Malfoys?” said Harry, impressed.
The man laughed. “Yes. I think that was around 1990, more than ten years after I painted that,” he pressed his finger to the picture, right at Lucius' heart.
“So you painted this in 1980?” said Harry. That did not make any sense at all, Draco would only have been a few months old at that time.
“No, no, that I painted Christmas 1978. I remember it well, they had a large party and”—he laughed—”he was a bit of a flirt actually after he had a few drinks, I think it was a bit embarrassing for her.”
Harry was so busy trying to understand the way the dates didn’t match up that he didn’t even give a thought to the fact that Lucius had been flirting with a man. “Are you sure about that date?”
Salehi nodded. “I’m certain.”
Was there any reason for him to lie about this? Harry wondered as he tried to come up with any logical solution for it. He could understand if the painting had been off by a year, but four years, how could that be mistaken?
Harry cleared his throat. “And besides the fact that he was a flirt, did anything else strike you about them?”
“They were very beautiful,” said the painter. “Compared to other rich people, I mean. Good features, clear skin, and the boy was surprisingly well behaved. I remember thinking that they looked like mirror images of each other, like they were one being, it was almost creepy to be honest. And they were very proud. Proud of their ancestry, of their home, of each other, and of that boy.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“I think it started with an A, but maybe I’m confused about that since the one in the papers is always named Draco.”
-
Draco was looking down at tiny footprints in the snow. There was a path of them leading from the house into the gardens. The wind was blowing against his bare cheeks, pushing back his hair.
“Where are you?” he yelled.
A small laugh was the only reply, and Draco turned, looking behind him at the shadow of his parents house. He knew they were not supposed to play in the garden without supervision, but the world was white, and beautiful, and it called to him.
He ran through to the garden, leaving his own trail of footprints behind.
“I’m gonna get you!” he screamed, crouching down to grab a fistful of snow in his ungloved hand.
He cupped it in his palm, shaping it until it was round and tightly packed, before heading between into the hedges of his father’s rose bushes.
“Draco!” a familiar voice called, and he sped up his movement to see him. Oh, how he wanted to see him .
Suddenly he halted. This was a dream. This was the dream. He dropped the ball on the ground. His chest was swelling, he could feel his heart beating fast, and faster. He was here, with all of his senses, lucid at last.
He walked shakily through the maze. Where are you? Who are you?
The laugh had gone from the air. The world was silent, foreboding.
“Hello?” he yelled.
“Draco!” It was a boy’s voice, and it just about broke his heart. It made him ache. It opened up a loneliness inside of himself that he had never noticed or examined before. Of course , he thought, how could I have forgotten?
The snow. His father’s garden. The tiny footprints left behind.
The world was crashing around him, and the next moment Draco found himself shaking in bed. He pushed the blankets off of himself as he gasped for air.
Despite the fact that a minute before that dream felt as real as anything in his life it already seemed to be vanishing like a wisp of smoke. Draco hugged his knees, bitterly wishing that Harry was by his side. He wanted to cry. He felt like he had lost something, something indescribably precious to him. Whoever that person was, their very voice had wrecked him. And Draco wasn’t sure if he was full of love, or full of grief.
-
Harry arrived at their apartment so early the next morning that the sun hadn’t risen yet. He walked in quietly, removing his shoes and coat by the door. He inched towards the sofa, determined to sit and wait for Draco to get up, but stopped halfway there.
Draco was on his back on the sofa, his long body wrapped in Harry’s blanket, his head propped up on several pillows and his eyes closed. Harry frowned. Why wasn’t he sleeping in their bedroom?
He took one step back and the floorboards creaked beneath him causing Draco to sit up instantly, his wand in hand.
“Oh,” he said, frowning at him.
“Sorry,” said Harry. “I just got in.”
Draco nodded.
Following his visit to Salehi, Harry had spent all the previous day thinking about what he was going to say to Draco, but he hadn’t come up with anything good. They had left things too strangely. It was unprecedented and he didn’t know how to proceed.
“Come sit-” said Draco, moving his legs off the couch to make room for him.
He didn’t sound angry at least, which Harry was very grateful for. “I’m sorry I left like that,” he said once he was seated.
“It’s work right? Not really your choice,” said Draco with a shrug. “Was lousy timing though.”
A familiar sense of guilt welled up within him. “Actually, it wasn’t work at all.”
Draco stared at him. “So you just wanted to get away from me?”
“No,” said Harry quickly. “I was looking into something.”
It had taken him years to learn to properly read Draco’s expressions. He had that ability of shielding himself, hiding behind a mask, just like his mother. Harry could see it going up now, an old distrust in the grey of his eyes.
“You know me, you know how I get when I find a question I don’t know the answer to. I just have this need to get to the bottom of it. That’s why I left, I couldn’t think of anything else.”
When Draco said nothing Harry continued: “I went to see the man who painted that portrait over the mantel at your parent’s place.”
“You what?”
“It took me a while to find out who he was and locate him, but I finally managed yesterday.”
“But why, Harry? Why would you ever do that?”
“I told you something about it felt wrong to me, and I just needed to figure out why.”
“And did you?”
“Not exactly,” said Harry. “I didn’t get an answer, but I got more questions.” He pulled out his wand and summoned the pictures he had shown Salehi from his packet, laying them out on the coffee table.
“As soon as I showed them to him he started talking about yours,” he said. “He remembered your parents, he’d read about them in the newspaper. He also said he painted this in 1978.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I know,” said Harry, he inched slightly closer to him on the sofa, and reached over to pick up the photograph of the painting. “It doesn’t add up. He swears he wasn’t even in England in 1982 and I don’t know why he’d lie about that.” He looked down at the image, at that little perfect pure blood family. “He even said that he wrote the year with his signature on the back of the canvas.”
“I had the dream again yesterday.”
“I feel like you’ve been having it every night.”
“Yeah, I have, but yesterday I took a sleeplessness potion.”
“Draco! Where did you even get that?”
He laughed. “Where else? Mother. But Harry I’ve never dreamt when I was on this potion before, and yesterday the dream was different, I was lucid. I was myself. I knew it was a dream, but I also knew-” he sighed and tilted his head back, closing his eyes. “It’s hard to remember. It’s like it’s all taken away from me the moment I wake up. But I’m not sure it’s just a dream anymore.”
“You think it’s a vision?”
“No,” said Draco with a shake of his head. “I think it’s a memory.”
Harry felt like the two of them were working to piece something together. The dream and the painting, like it was all connected. He looked down at that little boy with blue eyes and he knew his gut had been right. That wasn’t Draco. He would recognise him anywhere. This boy was not him.
“Who is he then?” Harry asked.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know, but I feel like I should.”
Harry shuffled towards him on the sofa and put an arm around him, pulling him close and kissing the top of his head. “We’ll figure this out.”
“I have a bad feeling about it,” he said, his words muffled against Harry’s chest.
Harry rubbed his back. He had a bad feeling about it too.
-
For four days, the mystery surrounding the dream and the painting seemed to hang over them. Draco knew that Harry was dying to have an in-depth conversation about it, to iron out theories and possibilities, but he understood how difficult the topic was for Draco and refrained for his sake. Instead, they lived more or less like usual, going to work in the mornings and spending their evenings intertwined on the sofa.
It was difficult going to sleep. Draco felt an urge to fight it, and remain awake for as long as possible.
“That’s not sustainable,” Harry whispered as he kissed his forehead. “People need to sleep.”
“Damn stupid,” Draco muttered back, clinging to Harry’s arm.
When he at last did manage to go to sleep, he would find himself in Lucius’s gardens once more. He would feel the snow with his finger tips, and hear that voice calling his name, and he would know that he was about to lose something dear to him, something that he would never attain again.
“Where are you?” he would shout against the wind, and when he woke up in bed, he would hear his own voice resonating in his head : Where are you? What happened to you?
“I feel like he died,” said Draco as he wiped the tears from his face.
“The boy?”
“Yeah, I think that’s why my parents hid it.”
Harry did not say anything. His focus was on being supportive, and Draco appreciated it. He leaned against him, feeling his strong, warm arms go around his body.
On the fourth day, it was finally time to go investigate the painting. They had had to wait for a Sunday, the only day in which Narcissa left the confines of the Manor. She went to visit Azkaban, dressed all in black, and with Didi by her side.
When they were sure that she had apparated away, Draco opened the gate and they snuck in.
His mother’s protective enchantments were strong, but they were not meant to keep him out. He still had free access to the place.
It was December now, and a fierce cold wind blew against them, scattered with small flakes. Draco tried to avert his eyes from his father’s dying rose garden, but he couldn’t. It was so strange to see how it had withered away, when in his dreams it was always lush.
A single tap from Draco’s wand opened the door, and Harry shut it tightly behind them.
He could almost feel Harry’s excitement. To him, it was just another investigation, just another mystery that he needed to get to the bottom of.
“Calm down,” Draco said.
“I’m calm.”
He bumped his shoulder against him. “Maybe we won’t find anything. Maybe the painter was just off his rocker.”
“Maybe,” Harry replied, but Draco knew that neither of them believed it.
They went forward, through the empty corridors, the faces in the portraits looking down at them in disapproval. Draco could feel his heart beating in his chest as he approached the large painting over the mantel. The fire was burning beneath it, its flickering flames, casting wild shadows over the walls of the room.
Draco withdrew his wand and tapped the painting, causing it to come clean off the wall, and hover in the air. He turned it over and laid it on the surface.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lucius in the frame said, but Draco ignored him.
He tapped the back of the frame, pulling it away so that he could examine the canvas.
“He’s mad! Starking Mad! What do you think you’re doing?” Lucius protested.
“Shut up, will you!” Draco shouted back at him as he crouched on his knees examining the canvas.
Harry was the first to spot it, he pointed a finger at the left corner where Salehi's signature was visible, the date December 1978 directly beneath.
Draco had expected to be surprised, to be shocked even, at all that this could indicate. But he didn’t feel either, it was like he had expected this. He sat down, cross-legged on the floor, feeling Harry’s green eyes watching him.
“Are you okay?” said Harry, putting a hand on Draco’s knee.
He shrugged. Was he? He didn’t know.
“I think from here the next step would be talking to your mother-”
Draco shook his head. “No.”
“What do you want to do then?”
He wished that he had a solution for him, but the truth was that he didn’t know what would follow. All he was sure of was that his mother would not give them any answers. If anything, she might destroy the evidence. Carefully, he put the back of the frame onto the painting, and with a wave of his wand, he returned it to its rightful place where it had always been waiting for him.
Lucius scowled down at him, while his mother only had eyes for that baby on her lap. “Damn preposterous! Who do you even think you are?” Lucius shouted.
Draco stood and leaned close to the image, like Harry had during their tea with his mother. The baby was chubby faced, with large blue eyes, just like his mother. Draco reached out a hand to touch him, and instinctually Narcissa pulled him deeper into the painting, as if protecting him.
“Get away! Get away you ill-mannered fiend!” shouted Lucius waving his wand.
“Who is he?” said Draco, addressing the small painted figure of his father.
Lucius stopped moving his wand, and instead looked at Draco with cold, grey eyes that were a little too lifelike. “What is it to you?”
Draco brandishes his own wand pointing it directly at the portraits. “I can blast you off, you know,” he threatened. “I can destroy all three of you in one go. You’d best do as I say. Who is he?” He repeated the last three words with particular emphasis.
Lucius looked down at his wife and child and then said in a dejected tone. “Abraxas, my first born.”
Abraxas . The name rung in his ears. Abraxas, like my grandfather .
He felt Harry put a hand on his shoulder and slowly pull him back until he was seated on the sofa. Draco was staring at the floor, his stomach in a knot. Abraxas . Furiously he thought back on his earlier memories, Christmas with his mother, his father taking him by the hand to Diagon Alley, lonely days spent in that boarded up house with no one but Dobby for company.
“Draco-” said Harry very gently as if afraid to wake him from some trance.
“It’s not possible-” he said with a shake of the head. “I would remember if I had a brother right? I couldn’t have forgotten that-” the words caught in his throat as he said them.
“Where is he? What happened to him?” asked Harry to the Lucius in the frame.
Draco wished he didn't. He didn’t want to talk to that painting. He didn’t want to see that painting. How had he lived with it for so long and never noticed? How had his parents just go on, replacing one son with another as if nothing had happened?
“Gone and buried-'' said Lucius a nasty little edge to his voice that Draco knew all too well.
He lurched off the sofa and grabbed Harry’s hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he pleaded.
“Draco, we can-” Whatever protestations Harry had halted as he looked into his face.
“Let’s go home,” said Draco firmly, pulling him out of that room, and out of the Manor.
He hated that he had to go by that garden. He hated that he could still remember that voice calling to him in his dreams.
“Draco! Where are you?”
He didn’t have all the answers, but he felt that he didn’t need them. He understood the situation well enough. He had once had a brother. Abraxas. A brother who had died as a little boy, and whose existence had been erased by his parents because of their inability to deal with grief. Of course they would suppress all of that, like they suppressed everything ugly and unmanageable.
They had let him forget. No , thought Draco with disgust, they forced me to forget .
-
The heating was off in their apartment when they returned, so they went to sit on the couch in their coats. Harry kept glancing at Draco. He didn’t know what to say. He knew it was up to Draco to decide how they proceed from here, but he was itching to get back into the Manor. He wanted to tear the place apart and look for more evidence. They had to be hiding all kinds of things—photos and documents, baby clothes.
He fidgeted anxiously with his watch.
“Stop moving,” said Draco.
“Sorry.”
He leaned against the back of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling above. The most important thing right now was being supportive of Draco; the answers would have to wait. Unable to take the silence any longer he asked: “How are you feeling?”
Draco laughed coldly. “How do you think I’m feeling?”
He turned his head to look at him. His face was in profile, still, but unguarded. The corners of his mouth were tense, and there was a glazed look over his eyes, as if he was looking at something far and away.
“Devastated?” Harry suggested. “And rightfully so.”
“I always knew they were cold, guarded, furtive, but I never thought they would be capable of something like this,” he said quietly. “To just go on as if nothing happened-” he shook his head. “To erase his life like that.”
“So you don’t remember him at all?
“Only in my dreams,” said Draco. “I think they must have manipulated my memory to achieve that.”
Harry grimaced. He had faced his fair share of Dark Magic, but something about memory manipulation still creeped him out. Memories were so integral to identity—if they were altered, then so was your sense of self, your sense of belonging. Effectively, it changed everything. He felt a little sick at the thought that Draco’s own parents had done that to him.
“What are you going to do?”
Draco shrugged. “What is there to do?”
“Get all the facts, confront your parents, maybe-”
“What’s the point?” said Drac, shaking his head. “I just want to forget this, move on.”
“You don’t want to know?”
“No.” Draco turned accusing grey eyes on him. “Do you need to know?”
Harry shifted in his seat. It wasn’t really his place to investigate this if Draco didn’t want to, but at the same time, he had never been one to leave things half in the dark. “Yeah.”
“Okay then, you can do the research, get all your answers, figure everything out, but I don’t want to hear anything about it, Harry, and I mean that.”
He felt his mouth get dry. That was going to be difficult. He had no idea what this might uncover. The idea of a young boy dying and it being covered up seemed so strange to him. Had he had an illness? Or had been an accident of sorts?
“Do you promise?” said Draco.
Harry nodded. “I promise.”
“Okay,” Draco sighed and pushed his hair back. It wasn’t noon yet, but he looked warm and exhausted, like all the energy had been drained out of him.
Harry edged closer to him on the sofa, pulling Draco against him until he was leaning on his chest rather than the cushions. He felt the comforting and familiar weight of his body as he put his arms around his middle and buried his face in his pale hair. “I’m really sorry, Draco,” he whispered.
Draco made a small sound, somewhere between a cry and a hum, and Harry clung on to him more tightly. In moments like these, he felt so protective of him. Draco was strong and capable, and he had survived so much, grown so much, but he was also wounded, in some deep and unspeakable way that Harry felt like he alone was qualified to understand.
He leaned down and kissed his forehead, putting all the love he could into that gesture.
-
He flushed his mother’s potions down the toilet. It felt disgusting even holding them, he didn’t want to hold anything that was hers. He avoided the mirror too, afraid of seeing the shadow of his father’s face on his own features.
He didn’t want to think about them.
He knew he would have to see her again soon, and pretend that nothing at all had changed, but that could wait a few weeks. He wasn’t ready for it yet.
He came to bed in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. Harry was already there, his glasses off, and his dark skin warmed by the golden glow of their lamp. In that moment, he looked so beautiful that Draco almost forgot about how scared he was of falling asleep.
With a flick of his wand, he turned off the light before crawling beside him on the bed, keeping a slight distance between their bodies. He really didn’t want to dream again, didn’t want to see his brother, to hear his voice. He wanted the haunting to be over.
Under the covers, Harry reached for his hand and held onto it tightly. It was like a tether, rooting him to reality.
“I’m gonna be right here,” he said.
Draco nodded and closed his eyes.
-
Harry had spent days combing over every record the Ministry had on the Malfoys as well as interviewing people who had long been acquainted with them, such as Fudge the ex-Minister of Magic. He had not found a single trace of Abraxas Malfoy, the first born son of Lucius and Narcissa. The fact that there were no official records was not peculiar, as most of their files had been destroyed during the war, but the fact that people acquainted with the family had no knowledge of him was deeply unsettling.
Why would they hush it up like that? Harry’s mind kept turning, thinking of increasingly horrible scenarios. He wished he could talk about it with Draco. Instead, he raised the topic with Ron and Hermione during another Tuesday night outing.
They were in a muggle pub, drinking beer, with a large bowl of chips in the middle of the table with various types of dips which Ron was in the process of sampling and rating.
Harry cleared this throat, trying to get their attention, but neither of them even looked up at him. “Do you remember the painting?”
Ron stuffed a wasabi-mayo dipped fry in his mouth as he nodded his head.
“Well, I guess I kinda got to the bottom of that,” he said and he began to fill them in. He left no part out, describing the dream Draco was still having, his travels through Belgium, the conversation he had had with Salehi and finally what they had discovered at the Manor.
As he talked, he noticed Hermoine kept frowning, an expression on her face that he associated with their school days. He was sure that she had something to say, but she waited until he had finished speaking. “Did you check St. Mungo’s for record of him?”
“I did,” said Harry. “Nothing.”
“That’s,” she frowned and absent mindedly picked up a fry. “It’s not possible. Maybe he wasn’t their son after all, maybe the painting lied.”
“But why would it?” said Harry.
“I don’t know,” she said after a moment, chewing thoughtfully.
“Maybe they killed him,” said Ron, vocalising the thing that Harry had been thinking for days. “Maybe it was an accident that involved Dark Magic, or maybe he did something they didn’t like so they killed and erased the evidence. I’ve heard stories like that,” he finished darkly.
Hermione scuffed. “Probably from hundreds of years ago. It’s not so easy to make someone disappear in this day and age.”
“From what I understand, they lived very isolated,” said Harry. “Draco was alone his whole childhood practically. That makes it easier to hide foul play, if there was foul play, that is.”
“And it’s not like we’ve never heard of a story like it-” said Ron.
Hermione turned sharply to him. “Your mother’s old fairytales don’t count, Ron, they were written hundreds of years ago, things were different then.”
“No, I don’t mean those old stories, I mean“—he glanced nervously at Harry and then lowered his voice to a murmur—“Ariana Dumbledor.”
She had been born decades and decades before them, but Harry could see why Ron had made the connection. She had also been hidden away, erased, kept from prying eyes to the point that even her death had been shrouded in mystery.
Harry grabbed his beer and took a deep drink. “Maybe it was like that. Maybe they could cover it all up, maybe they even killed him.”
“Oh, Harry,” said Hermione with a disgusted expression. “I know they’re bad, but are they that bad? I mean who kills their own son?”
“I mean, they let their son be branded, and surrendered him to the Dark Lord—not exactly winning any parenting awards in my book.”
“Yes,” said Hermione. “But this is different, you’re saying you think they were capable of killing a little boy, and erasing every document and memory of him. That’s extreme in the outmost.”
Harry agreed. It was. And he had no proof to back it up, but it wasn’t impossible- In fact, as things currently stood, it seemed the most natural conclusion.
Ron grabbed another fry. “I think you might be onto something Harry,” he said before bringing it to his mouth. “I always felt there was something sinister about them. And you remember Dobby always said that they were bad people, maybe he knew something about it.”
“That’s right,” said Harry, remembering the elf the first time he had come to visit him at Private Drive. Why hadn’t he asked him more about the Malfoys? Why hadn’t he gotten all the information that he could?
He took another drink. It would do no good thinking of questions for the dead. Dobby had more than done his part. If it hadn’t been for him, none of the three of them would be alive right now. The only place left to search for answers was the Manor, but he wouldn't be able to enter without Draco, who wanted nothing to do with this. He sighed. Perhaps it was time to call it quits—it was after all what Draco wanted—but his incessant stubbornness to ‘solve it’ wouldn’t let him. He would continue; maybe there would be an opportunity when they next visited the Manor. That was his only hope for carrying it further.
-
“We don’t have to go if you're not ready,” Harry reminded him for what had to be the thirtieth time.
It was December 20th, and they were paying an obligatory visit to his mother.
“It’s better that we go,” he answered simply.
Harry made a face. He was so bad at hiding his emotions, he would never have survived in his family, but in a way, it was sweet that he worried about him so much. Draco grabbed his hand, intertwined their fingers and gave him a half-hearted smile.
“It’s fine, really.”
“You’re still having that dream,” Harry said, as if he needed reminding of it.
Draco made a shrugging motion. He was trying not to give it any more thought. When he woke up in the mornings now, there was no panic, no sobbing, only a deep sadness that permeated his whole body. It was easier to deal with. Now, he didn’t have to seek anything in those dreams. He just let them melt away, until he remembered almost nothing again.
They apperated together just outside the gates. He hated how deep the snow was, how much it resembled his dream, and he avoided looking at the gardens as they walked up to the house. He couldn’t do that again.
He had thought carefully about how he would behave with his mother. He needed to show no bitterness, no hatred. In fact it would be best if there was no change in his demeanour at all. But of course that was difficult. He felt disgust at having to enter the Manor again, and especially at having to sit beneath that painting. It was a constant reminder.
Narcissa led them in with grace, that plastic smile perfect upon her face. The pallidness of her skin in contrast to the black of her robes made her look gaunt and more severe than ever. Was she always like this? Draco wondered as they small talked. Did I never notice it before because I used to love her?
In his memories, his mother was always cold and guarded, but there was nothing cruel about her. She was a victim of her breeding, of her society, nothing more. But now he was forced to confront things about her that he had long wanted to ignore.
How could you? How could you? How could you?
“And you, Draco?” she said, turning her head towards him.
“Sorry?” he stammered.
“How’s your work?”
“Good, good,” he said with a double nod. “I should have the last week of the year off, and we’ve been talking about taking a holiday somewhere quiet.”
“That sounds lovely. You know, when your father and I were just married, we did a fair bit of travelling.”
He felt a lump in his throat. He didn’t like the way that she was looking at him. Did she know something? Suspect something?
“What place would you recommend?” said Harry, who surprisingly enough managed to sound far more normal than Draco felt.
“There are some lovely places along the Rhine if you have not been there.”
What followed was a twenty minute talk about the charm of small German towns. Draco tried his best to give all the appropriate responses, to nod and ask questions and smile at the correct times, but he had a nagging feeling that he was just a tiny bit off, and that both his mum and Harry noticed.
-
He had excused himself to go to the washroom, but instead, Harry was headed down the steps into the Kitchen where he hoped to find Didi.
He had never been in that room of the Manor before, and he was surprised by how dark and strange it was. All the counters and stoves were miniature, created to suit the heights of the house elves rather than the wizard occupants. In the middle there was a long oak table, nearly adorn with trays bearing the old fashion tea service.
When he entered, Didi, who was stirring something, gave a small gasp. “Master Potter!” she said, instantly bowing towards him.
“Hi, Didi.”
The elf blushed at being addressed by her name and looked down at her bare feet. “Does Master Potter need something from Didi?”
“I do,” said Harry, walking slowly to the elf’s side.
It was possible that she had never seen a wizard in here before, and she shuddered as he came close. Harry leaned down, on one knee, so that he was almost at her eye level.
“I think Didi is a very good and helpful elf,” he began. He knew it was sick and wrong to manipulate her like this, but he had spent years learning how to get information out of people and he knew just how to do it. “And I think you’ll be able to help me.”
Her eyes widened and she nodded, her ears bobbing up and down as she did so.
“Do you know anything about Abraxas?”
At the mention of the name the elf jumped back, increasing the distance between them and gave a shake of the head. “No, I have not seen Abraxas,” she said quickly.
Harry laughed. “Well, I should think not, you're pretty young, and as I understand it Draco’s grandfather died when he was still a kid. I was just wondering if there was a painting, I wanted to take a look at him.”
The relief was clear on her face and she gave a squeak. “Oh, yes! There is one Master Potter! I can show you!” she said and then began leading him out of the Kitchen.
-
They had only stayed in his mother house for a couple of hours, but it had felt interminable. He couldn’t shake off the feeling of her cold, knowing eyes on him. It had been so uncomfortable to be back there, knowing what he knew now. Maybe next time he could persuade her to meet somewhere other than the Manor, he didn’t want to return there, and he certainly never wanted to see that painting again.
It was night time, and he was lying on his back in bed staring up at the ceiling and trying to summon reserves of strength within him that he wasn’t sure he had. He was exhausted from having the same dream, and it was infuriating that nothing, not even sleeplessness potions could free him from it.
Harry entered. He had just showered, his untidy dark curls weighed down and fragrant even from the other side of the room. Messy as ever, he threw his wet towel over the dresser as he reached over and put on a fresh pair of shorts before joining him in bed.
They had not sex in weeks, something which had never happened between them before. Draco couldn’t explain it to himself. He wasn’t angry with Harry and he still found him beautiful and desirable, but he had no inclination for that kind of contact. He was too preoccupied with other things, and he hated it. It would be lovely to let go of himself a little, lose time, enjoy Harry’s body and closeness, but even the thought was repellent at the moment.
He sighed and wondered how much longer that dream would haunt him. Would it never go away? Was this just the rest of his life?
Next to him Harry kissed his bare shoulder. “I know today was rough,” he said quietly.
“I don’t want to have sex,” said Draco firmly.
“Me neither,” said Harry and he kissed his shoulder again. “I just wanted to know if you were okay?”
“What’s ‘okay’ anyway?” asked Draco with a note of defeat. The simple answer was that he was not okay. Ever since the day with the painting he had been pushing this aside, trying to go back to life as it had before, but clearly that wasn’t working.
He took a sharp intake of breath and then asked: “You’re still investigating, right?”
“I’ve tried to-”
Draco turned sharply to him. “What do you mean tried?”
Harry shifted on the bed so that they were facing each other. “Do you really want to know?”
“I guess, maybe that’s why I’m still dreaming about it, maybe I do need all the answers after all.”
“Okay, well, then I guess I have bad news, I don’t have the answers. I’ve looked through all your family records, the few that are left at the Ministry, and the ones at St. Mungo’s, which go back to the 1700's, and I can’t find any mention of an Abraxas Malfoy born in the 1970’s. All I found were your grandpa’s old records.”
“That can’t be right.”
“I know,” said Harry. “So, I started talking to some people who knew your family. The Rhodans, and the Zabinis, even Cornelius Fudge. I tried to be subtle about it, but I did ask about your family and no one seemed to know that your parents had another kid.”
Draco had no idea how to reply to that. He could understand his parents modifying his own memory to stop him from grieving for a dead sibling, but why would they erase his existence all together? Were they afraid someone might bring it up, or was there something more nefarious at work?
“And today I asked someone else.”
“What do you mean?” said Draco.
“I went into the Kitchen to talk to Didi,” said Harry.
Draco sat up. “Harry! That was stupid! I don’t want my mother to know.”
“It’s okay, I think I covered my tracks,” said Harry. “I asked her if she knew anything about Abraxas and Draco; her response was so odd and guilty. It was like she had been expressly told that she couldn’t speak of him and she answered that she had ‘not seen him’ as if, I don’t know he was still alive or something. I think she was pretty freaked out I asked, so I covered it up by asking about your grandfather’s painting and then she took me to it, but I don’t know.”
He was biting his lip, and there was a feverish eagerness in his eyes. Draco could see it; he had already formulated a theory for himself. “What do you think it means?”
“You’re not gonna like it-” said Harry.
Draco shrugged. He didn't like any of this.
“I can’t think of any reason they would erase him from existence unless, you know,” he shrugged.
“They killed him,” said Draco stiffly. He had seen his parents do a fair bit of truly vile things, but it was difficult to picture either of them killing a child, much less one of their own.
“Yeah that’s what I was thinking, until I talked to Didi. I still find her answer so strange ‘I have not seen him’. It didn’t sound like she was talking about someone who was dead. So, what if he’s not. What if your parents just got him out of the way because he was different, you know, maybe he was sick, maybe he had a condition, or maybe he was Squib, like Ariana Dumbledor.”
Draco! Come find me!
The voice rang in his head, straight from his dreams, and straight from his memories. The cold snow against the palm of his hand, and his older brother teaching him how to make snow angels. Draco shut his eyes. He could smell the cold. He could feel Abraxas’s hand on his own, bigger than his, stronger than his.
Why did I let go of you? Thought Draco miserably.
Before knew what was happening he had thrown up all over himself and Harry and their sheets. The room was spinning, and the ugly acidity of it had left a foul taste in his mouth and a burning in his throat.
Harry cleaned up the mess with his wand, and supported Draco to the washroom. He washed his mouth but that disgusting taste was still there.
“Fuck them,” he said at he looked at himself in the mirror. At his eyes so like his father, at the shape of his face that was all Narcissa. He wanted to destroy it, to destroy them.
Gently, and without speaking Harry stripped off both of their clothes and turned on the shower. They got underneath the hot cleaning water and Draco felt the other wash and rinse him. He was grateful in that moment to be able to trust him so much, to be able to be vulnerable with him without feeling like a fool.
When they were clean and dressed in matching red pyjamas that Andromeda had given them last year, Harry said: “I can turn this into a real investigation, Draco. We can turn that house upside down and look for evidence. I have the power to do that.”
“You really think you’d find something?” said Draco with a snort. “The Manor has been searched and ripped apart half a dozen times.”
“But never looking for this,” said Harry.
“No,” said Draco. “I don’t want the Ministry involvement. We’ll do this ourselves.”
“Alright,” said Harry. “Does that mean you agree with me?”
He thought for a moment. I have not seen him. Could it be? Could Abraxas still be alive, after all this time, all the things that had happened to their family? Would Narcissa and Lucius have continued to hide him through the second war? Could they have hidden him for so long?
“I don’t know,” said Draco. “The way I see it, they either killed him, or they’ve held him prisoner for 20 years and both are terrible alternatives.”
“They are,” said Harry, reaching out to rub his forearm.
Draco laughed, bitterly. “And I thought my relationship with them couldn’t get any worse. I thought I’d already dealt with all their bullshit.”
“You couldn’t have known,” said Harry.
“He was my brother,” said Draco, feeling like the words burned him as he spoke them. “And I forgot him, abandoned him, it’s no wonder he haunts me.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” said Harry, lifting his chin gently so that their eyes met. “This is not on you, you were a little kid, and memory modification is powerful magic.”
He felt his lips trembling. “I know, but if I’m having that dream I must always have known, at least in part.”
“This is not your fault,” said Harry firmly, his voice warm and reassuring and everything Draco needed right now. “You having the dream just means that you’ve been fighting against all those restrictions your parents put in your head.”
He blinked and he could feel tears coming down his face. Then why do I still feel so guilty about letting go of his hand , he thought as Harry pulled him into an embrace.
-
The following day they put a tracker on Didi.
It alerted them whenever she left the Manor, and where she went.
She left the house to buy groceries, and to get sleeping potions for Narcissa, but for three days she didn't go anywhere suspicious.
“This is stupid,” said Draco with exasperation. “He’s dead, he’s gotta be.”
For once it was up to Harry to be the patient one. “It’s only been a few days,” he reminded him.
The days had been agony. They had only felt the apartment to visit Andromeda and Teddy, but despite how cheery they were, Draco remained tense and anxious. Every time the tracker went off, he jumped in his seat.
“Is he alright?” Andromeda whispered to him as they prepared lunch in the Kitchen. “He came to me a couple of weeks ago, you know, I thought he was a little strange then too. Preoccupied.”
“Yeah, it’s been a challenging season,” said Harry, who did not want to go into the specifics before they knew anything for sure. “I’m sure he’ll feel better by the New Year.”
Andromeda was quiet, her brown eyes looking intently at him, with a mother’s understanding. “You know, Harry, if you ever need help, I am always here for both of you,” she said.
“I know, and the same goes to you. You and Teddy are very important to us.”
She laughed. “I should hope so. Once you and Draco get married, you’ll both be my nephews,” she said with a wide grin.
Harry blushed. They had never spoken of marriage, or of formalising their relationship, but if the last few weeks had taught him anything, it was that they were more united than he had ever previously realised. This was the first big challenge their relationship had ever faced, and as far as he was concerned, they were dealing with it as well as they could be.
“Well, I don’t know if that will happen, but you already feel like an Aunt to me, and I know you’ve been really important to Draco too.”
“It’s lovely reconnecting with family,” she said with a grin. “When I married, I really thought I’d never have a relationship with any of them again.”
He nodded, wondering what she would say if Harry told her about what was happening.
It was on the evening of the 2nd when Harry and Draco were getting ready to go to a small gathering at Pansy’s that the tracker went off again.
“Where is she?” said Draco at once, trying to look at the small black stone where the elf’s coordinates appeared.
He frowned. “I don’t know, it’s not Diagon Alley, and it’s not Hogsmeade.”
They looked at each other, and Harry reached over for his hand. “Are you ready?”
Draco didn’t answer. He had that faraway look in his eyes, and Harry wondered if he was remembering the snow dream again.
“Draco?”
“Yeah, I’m ready, Pansy will understand.”
“Okay then,” said Harry and a moment later they were feeling the strange compressing sensation of apparition.
They popped into existence in the middle of a wooded area. Despite the fact that it wasn’t six o’clock yet, the world was pitch black.
“Lumos,” said Harry, automatically raising his wand.
The snow was thick on the ground. It weighed down the branches of the nearby trees. There was nothing else in sight, no buildings, or roads, or people. He didn’t notice the small footsteps until Draco pointed them out: “That must be Didi.”
Draco drew his wand too as they tracked her movements about twenty feet further.
They stopped directly between two snowy boulders.
“Revelio,” said Draco, his breath misting around him.
There was a sudden and iridescent golden glow, and then the next moment a strange archway opened up between the two boulders, showing a descending staircase.
Draco took a step towards it, but Harry stopped him.
“Maybe I should go first?” he suggested.
Draco’s eyes moved reluctantly away from the staircase to look at him. Harry was relieved to see that he looked calm, focused. “I want to go first,” he said in a steady voice. “But I promise, I’ll let you know if I need you.”
Harry nodded, and then with raised wands, they slowly walked down the stairs, the archway closing behind them.
-
All we’re going to find is a grave , Draco told himself as they went down the stone steps. He was keenly aware of Harry’s body just behind his as they went further into the subterranean tunnel. With one hand he held his wand, with the other his fingers brushed against the rough stone. He felt like he needed that touch to make this moment real. Part of him could still not believe they were here, but he didn’t have a moment to think about it, he needed to push through, to get to the end.
Finally, they descended into a small circular room. There were torches along the walls with ever-burning flames, but other than that, the room was bare. Draco circled it, touching the stone, until he found the spot where magic lingered like a long familiar scent.
He tapped his wand against the old stone and muttered: “Revelio.”
The golden archway reappeared, its light blinding for a moment before dying away. His stomach twisted when he saw the interior of a room with green wallpaper. He had been preparing himself for a grave. That he could quantify at least. But this. What was he going to do with this? What was he going to do if Harry was correct?
Without looking behind him, he stepped through the archway into the room with the green wallpaper, Harry close behind.
They had entered into a living space. There was a small kitchen, with a circular table and a single chair, a nest-like living room with bookshelves, and an old-fashioned sofa with several knitted blankets draped over it and even an artificial window showing a wintery scene. The room was empty, but he could hear voice coming from the only door in the room, one clearly belonging to Didi, the other-
Draco knew that he had to walk through that door, but suddenly his legs weren’t working. He was hearing his brother’s voice for the first time in twenty years. It was muffled, none of the words intelligible, but still Draco knew that it was him. It was him . And not just in a dream. He shut his eyes.
Harry reached to put a hand on his shoulder, and the touch was so surprising he gasped.
“I’m here,” he whispered, looking at him with those piercing bright green eyes.
I can’t lose it yet , thought Draco. Not when I’m so close. He took a deep breath before heading towards that closed door, and pushing it open.
The room, whatever it was, never quite came into focus. Later, he would not be able to recall any of the details about the furnishing or the wallpaper. As soon as he entered, his eyes were fixed on Abraxas. He looked like their father, and he looked like their mother. His face was less angular than Draco’s; there was softness in the curve of his cheekbones that reminded him of Aunt Andromeda. His mouth was just like Lucius’s and Draco’s, tight, and shaped like a long thin line. His nose was pointed, but there were small pale freckles over the bridge which Draco certainly did not have.
But his eyes were what stood out to Draco the most. In the painting, they had looked like Narcissa’s with that same vivid shade of blue, but now that he was an adult, they appeared different. They were larger and brighter than Narcissa’s, and there was a spark in there which was a stark contrast to her chilliness.
When they entered, Abraxas and Didi were seated at a small table, and a recently opened game of chess between them. Didi was so small in her seat that her legs dangled a foot from the floor. She was facing away from the door, so it was Abraxas who spotted them first. He focused on them at once, but did nothing but blink at them at first, seemingly unsure what to do.
Didi turned around to see what he was staring at, and instantly jumped out of her seat.
“Master Malfoy! Master Potter!” she squeaked, running to them in her swift little feet.
“Hi, Didi,” said Harry quietly.
“Oh, no, oh, no, you cannot be here!” said the elf in true distress, her large eyes welling up with tears as she reached for the helm of Draco’s robes. “Please!” she squeaked. “Go back, go back, Mistress will kill Didi, Mistress-”
Draco didn’t even hear the end of her supplications. He was staring at Abraxas who was slowly rising to his feet. He was taller than either Draco or Harry and chubbier. He was wearing a knitted red sweater, and jeans with patches at the knees. He looked so… real… and human…. like someone Draco might casually see at a coffee shop.
“Abraxas?” he said and his voice sounded young and unsure to his own ears.
His brother smiled. “Draco,” in a voice that instantly brought tears to Draco’s eyes.
He didn’t know what happened to Didi. Maybe he pushed her aside, or stepped over her, or maybe Harry got her out of his way, because the next moment, he was crossing the room to Abraxas and embracing him like he had never embraced anyone in his life. Normally, Draco would not describe himself as a warm person—he was after all his mother’s son—but in that moment, he didn’t feel any restraint, any barrier at all. The only thing he felt was boundless love.
Yes, I loved you , thought Draco as he sobbed into his brother’s shoulder. Yes, of course, you were my brother, and you taught me how to make snow angels and I loved you .
“Draco,” said Abraxas gently, his arms warm around him.
“I never thought I’d see you again.” Why did he sound like a little boy?
“I know.”
“They took you away, right before Christmas,” he said between uncontrollable sobs. “And I didn’t remember, I swear, I didn’t-” he pulled away. He needed Abraxas to understand why it had taken him so long to get here. “They modified my memory. I still barely remember you,” he shuttered. I should have remembered before.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” said Abraxas. He was not crying, quite the opposite actually, he looked delighted, his eyes were roaming Draco’s face and figure hungrily, as if he wanted to take every detail of it. “Blimey, you’re all grown up.”
“You too,” said Draco with something between a laugh and a sob.
“When I last saw you, you were four years old,” said Abraxas, a broad smile upon his face. “Merlin, how old are you now?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
Abraxas nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that makes me twenty-seven then.”
He felt another wave of guilt coming over him. But before he could apologise again, Abraxas had turned his attention to Harry who was holding Didi in his arms, probably to stop her from hurting herself.
“Didi, stop!” he commanded.
The elf’s tiny limbs stopped struggling against Harry, and she went limp.
“Who is he?” said Abraxas to Draco in a timid voice.
“Oh,” said Draco. He had no idea how he was going to explain who the Harry Potter was. “He’s-” he made a humming noise. “He’s my partner ,” said Draco, internally cringing. He wasn’t certain if Abraxas understood what that implied, because he continued staring at Harry with that same cautious expression.
“Can you let go of Didi?” he requested.
“Oh, yeah,” said Harry, who deposited the elf on a nearby chair. Didi stayed still, but there were tears running down her face, and her chest was rising and falling with unusual swiftness.
Harry was looking at both of them, his mind going a thousand miles a minute. Draco was sure that he was already conducting all kinds of plans about what they should do from here, and frankly, he was grateful. He had no idea how to proceed. He had never let his imagination carry him so far.
“Do you have tea?” asked Harry.
Abraxas. “Yeah, I can make us some.”
“No, why don’t Didi and I go make some, while you two chat.”
Draco gave him a weak smile. It was a good suggestion. He and Abraxas had a lot to talk about.
The elf perked up somewhat at being told what to do, and Harry walked besides her out of the room.
He and Abraxas sat down at the chess table. Draco couldn’t stop looking at his face, at his eyes, and the way he moved. He desperately wanted to remember him as a little boy, playing in the snow, but the only image he had to compare him to was his baby portrait. Their eyes met and the connection felt so intense that Draco immediately looked down at the chess pieces.
What were you supposed to say to someone after twenty years?
“I’ve been dreaming about you a lot,” said Abraxas, and Draco’s head snapped up to look at him.
“You have?”
“Yeah, about the day I taught you how to make snow angels. You probably don’t remember. Mother was so angry at me for taking you out without gloves.”
“I’ve been having that same dream,” said Draco. “Every night. I’m calling to you in father’s rose gardens, we’re playing hide and seek.”
Abraxas frowned slightly. “When I first was brought here, I used to ask to see you all the time,” he said. “I missed you so much. More than anything.” A sad sort of smile crossed his face. “More than sunshine.”
“I can’t believe they did this,” said Draco.
Abraxas only shrugged. “They were always sticklers for family traditions.”
“Is this a family tradition?”
“Oh yes,” said Abraxas. “That’s what they told me.” He looked around at the room. “They said generations of disgraced family members had lived here before me.”
“You’re not a disgrace,” said Draco fiercely.
Abraxas looked down at the chess board. “I don’t have any magic.”
“That doesn’t make you a disgrace, and it doesn’t justify them doing this to you.”
His brother was quiet for a moment, and then he tilted his head back and sighed deeply. “I used to wish that you would be like me, that we would be here together. And then I hated you for having things I didn’t, for being the son I couldn’t be.”
“I understand if you hate me.”
“I don’t anymore, I don’t hate anymore, not even mother and father,” he said it in a flat voice, his eyes looking straight into Draco’s.
“How can you say that?” said Draco, because in that moment, he felt nothing but hatred for their parents.
Abraxas shrugged. “I don’t care to be consumed with anger, that’s not the person I want to be.”
“Well then, I guess I’ll be consumed with anger on your behalf,” said Draco. “Because I swear the moment we get you out of here, I am going to go confront her and-”
“I don’t want to leave,” said Abraxas and the words cut Draco short.
“What?”
“This is my home,” said Abraxas in a voice so quiet and gentle that Draco had to strain to hear.
“No, no, you’re not staying here.”
His brother did not reply and Draco felt another pull of anger, this time directed at himself. If he forced Abraxas to leave wouldn’t he be just like his parents? Deciding his life for him? Not giving him any jurisdiction over himself. He bit his lip and tried a different route.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s not really for me to decide.”
There was a tap at the door and Didi entered, carrying a tray with a tea set on it. Draco flicked his wand to move the chess board out of the way and he noticed Abraxas awed expression at this simple display of magic.
Harry had made them Earl Grey tea. His favourite. There was milk and sugar in it, just like he liked, and Draco held it between his hands, feeling the warmth through his fingers.
“Did they ever visit you?” he asked, uncertain which answer would traumatize him less.
“Oh, yes,” said Abraxas. “They used to come every few days in the beginning. They used to try to get me to do magic, they would tell me if I just did a little I could come home again.”
Draco’s eyes burned, but he was determined not to cry. If Abraxas could get through this in that factual tone, then he should certainly be able to.
“And then they got less frequent as I got older. By the time I was teenager, they were coming just a couple times a month and then-” he shrugged. “They stopped coming.”
“How long ago?”
“It’s hard to remember. Years.”
Draco wondered if this coincided with the war. He took a drink of tea again. “So, Didi brings you supplies?”
“Yeah, she brings me food, but also books, magazines, and records. I have quite a collection.”
It was good to know that his parents had at least done that for him.
“Do you want to see my collection?”
Draco nodded, and let himself be led into the main room. Abrazas had a diverse collection of books. They included volumes that he was familiar with, but also hundreds upon hundreds of Muggle novels from all over the world. It was all organised by region, and Draco was especially stunned to see dozens of volumes in French and German and Spanish.
“You speak other languages?” he asked. Draco himself had only rudimentary French from their visit to Paris.
“I don’t know if I can speak them,” said Abraxas, “but I can write and read them.”
He talked lovingly of certain volumes, lifting them off the shelf for Draco to read the title and author. In these long years, they had clearly been his friends, his companions, his one source of comfort.
His record collection was equally vast, and stored in a magically enhanced trunk. Again, Draco was shocked that many were Muggle records, including some featuring pierced men with heavy makeup and flamboyant clothing.
“They didn’t mind you having Muggle things?”
He shrugged. “No, they said I was allowed to ask Didi for anything I wanted. I don’t think they were concerned about the Muggle influence, I mean I’m practically a Muggle, right?”
Draco had no idea how to answer that, and he glanced back at Harry who was in the kitchen.
After his records, Abraxas showed him his stacks upon stacks of journals and sketchbooks. Draco was astounded by how good he was, especially his landscapes which had been copied from books. He was flipping through one of these volumes when a drawing caught his eye.
It was a lined drawing of their father’s garden, with snow, frozen roses and Draco as he was in his dreams. A small figure, all bundled up, his bare hands full of snow. On the next page, the two of them were laying down on the snow, waving their arms to wake the angel’s wings. Their faces were sketched identically, the same noses, the same bright eyes. He looked so happy in these sketches, so different from how he remembered his childhood.
He shut the book. “I’m gonna talk to Harry for a moment, okay?”
Abraxas nodded and remained on the couch as he crossed the room to where Harry and Didi were having tea.
“Hey,” said Harry.
“He wants to stay here,” said Draco.
“That’s not an option,” said Harry.
Draco quickly cast the muffliato spell over them so that their word wouldn’t carry over to Abraxas. “We can’t rip him from here all of a sudden. This is his home.”
“It’s out of our hands,” said Harry. “I have to report this.”
“Harry-” said Draco pleadingly.
“No, I’m sorry, that’s not negotiable, no matter how much I love you. I will not let her get away with it,” he said, not bothering to keep his voice down because of the spell. “If there’s one thing I have zero tolerance for, it’s child abuse. She belongs in Azkaban.”
“I’m not arguing that,” said Draco. “You can arrest her, but we can’t take him away all at once. He’s been alone here his whole life. We’re the first people he’s seen in years. I couldn’t protect him when we were kids, but I can protect him now. Let him come back gradually.”
Harry considered it for a moment and then nodded. “It'll be difficult, but I can try keeping it off the record, out of the newspapers.”
“I would be really grateful.”
Draco removed the spell and moved to the couch.
“Abraxas-” he said quietly. “Harry and Didi are going to go now, okay?”
“And you’re not?” asked Abraxas.
“No,” said Draco. “I’m gonna stay with you.”
For a moment Abraxas looked like he didn’t know what to say, but then he grinned. “Do you like board games?”
-
That night, Harry returned to their apartment alone.
It had been a gruelling day. He had to explain the situation to Kingsley Shackelbolt himself, and then take a small team to the Manor where Narcissa was arrested for child neglect and forced imprisonment, among other charges. Harry would never forget her stoic face as she looked at him, those eyes boring into his very soul.
He had expected some sort of response from her, anger, or hatred, an attempt manipulation perhaps, but instead she kept her head high and refused to say a word for herself. Privately, Harry wondered if she was really all there. It didn’t do well for someone to live all alone like that, especially consuming the amount of sleeplessness potion that she did.
Harry had cast new protective charms around the Manor himself, making it inaccessible to anyone but him. He left Didi with strict instructions to keep to the house, and although the elf cried and threw herself on the floor, she kept true to Abraxas’s command and didn't hurt herself.
He had left the Manor with a strange kind of disgust. He knew at some point Draco and Abraxas would have to deal with that place, and with all it held, but surely that could wait.
He had stopped by briefly to see Draco again, meeting him in the stone room with the torches.
“I pulled Shacklebolt out of a party,” said Harry. “But he agreed that Abraxas could be under our care, and that it should be kept out of the papers.”
“Thank you,” said Draco, putting his arms around him.
“Are you staying here tonight?” Harry asked.
Draco nodded. “It’s Christmas Eve, and I want him not to be alone for a change”
So, Harry returned to their apartment alone. He knew that he could have gone to Andromeda, or Ron and Hermione, or even crashed the end of Pansy’s party, but the truth was that some solitude would do him well. For a long time he thought about when he himself had been a small boy, hidden away, and hushed up. He had gone through periods of imprisonment, where he was confined to a tiny space. But he had never wanted to stay there. He had always longed to break out and get fresh air. Freedom suited him. Then again, he had been a child, and children were braver and more capable of change.
Still, in a strange twist of fate he felt like he could empathise with Abraxas in a way few other people could.
-
In his brother’s cosy prison, Draco quickly lost all sense of time. He awoke on the couch, stretched out, and underneath one of Abraxas’s knitted blankets. His brother was seated in the kitchen, and instantly perked up when he saw that Draco was getting up. Draco had the feeling that he had been watching him, waiting for him to wake up.
“Good morning,” said Draco as he joined him at the table.
Abraxas smiled. “Morning. Do you want some tea or coffee?”
“What do you drink?”
“I like tea.”
“Then I’ll have some of that.”
Abraxas moved around the kitchen gracefully. His movements were light, and he knew with complete exactitude where everything was. The cups and the spoons and the little bags of loose leaf tea. He didn’t even have to look. He obviously knew every inch of this place, and everything in it.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked as he set the kettle to boil.
“I did,” said Draco. His sleep had been deep and undisturbed by dreams. “You?”
Abraxas shrugged. "I couldn’t sleep, but that’s okay. I’ve probably slept too much in my life, not much else to do.”
He poured the hot water over their tea cups, and then carefully strained it. The room was filled with a delicious aroma, slightly flowery, that reminded Draco of his mother, although he couldn’t place why.
“It’s a jasmine mix,” said Abraxas as he handed it to him.
Draco held the cup in his hands, the vapours rising up to his face. He wondered if Narcissa had had a jasmine perfume, or if it only reminded him of her because she was already in his thoughts.
“How long are you staying for?” asked Abraxas, and Draco got the sense that he had been thinking about that question all night.
“As long as you want me,” said Draco, who had quite made up his mind.
“Really?”
Draco nodded. “We have a lot of missed time to make up for.”
A delighted expression came across Abraxas’s face. “I thought maybe I’d bored you a little last night. I know I talked too much about myself, and how I spend my time. You barely got a word in.”
The truth was that Draco had been avoiding talking about himself because he had no idea where to start. He glanced down at his tea, moving the cup so that the liquid rippled.
“You went to Hogwarts?” Abraxas spoke the word with a sense of awe, as if it were more than a school, as if it was something sacred.
“I did.”
“And you’re a Slytherin, right? Like mum and dad.”
Draco nodded again, although he wanted to say that he was distinctly not like either of their parents.
“And that-” he cleared his throat. “The man, the one who came in with you, did you go to school with him?”
“I did.”
“You were friends?”
Despite himself, and despite the strangeness of the situation, Draco smirked. “No, no, quite the opposite actually.”
Abraxas leaned forward on the table. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s a long story,” said Draco. “Really long, but I want to tell you, I want you to get to know him.”
And so Draco began to tell the story of his life, as he had never once told it before. He told Abraxas about growing up with his parents' ideas, letting them warp him. He told him about Hogwarts, Crabbe and Goyle, and the intense rivalry that existed between him and Harry, and how he had used it as an excuse to know everything about the other boy.
“I was really obsessed with him,” said Draco. “My whole life revolved around him, and I tried to justify it to myself by saying it was what my parents wanted, or that I hated him-” he laughed at his own foolishness.
“In truth, I just thought he was cute, and”—he laughed again; it was so strange thinking back on this time—“he excited me, he challenged me, he was so full of curiosity, so full of life. I’d never met anyone like him.”
Abraxas was an attentive listener. There was a look of wonder in his eyes as Draco spoke of Hogwarts, and the magic he had grown up with and therefore taken for granted. He was interested in everything, in Draco’s friends, in Harry, in the professors, and the marks that magic had left on his body.
“Just like dad’s,” said Abraxas as he traced over Draco’s dark mark with his long thin fingers.
Draco nodded, yes, in that they were the same and it was useless to say otherwise.
When they got hungry, Abraxas made them omelettes while Draco continued telling his life story, hour after hour. He was at the point where his father got sent to Azkaban for the second time when there was a knock on the door.
Abraxas rose abruptly.
“It’s probably just Harry,” Draco assured him, walking towards the open archway.
It was indeed Harry, dressed in his Auror robes, his eyes looking anxiously over Draco. “You okay?” he whispered as they embraced.
“Yeah, I’ve just been talking a long time.” He looked over his shoulder to Abraxas in the kitchen. “Do you mind if he comes in?”
Abraxas shook his head, but Draco did not miss the way he timidly moved further away from Harry as he entered.
Harry took a seat by Draco’s side. They hadn’t reached the point in the story where they were in a relationship—in fact they weren’t even friends yet where Draco had left it—but he hoped he had made his true feelings towards Harry understandable. He leaned closer to him, and took his hands in a deliberate motion, holding it in his own as he began telling of Lucius’s trial.
The rest of the story took hours, especially because Harry would interject with comments, or anecdotes of his own. By the end, Draco realised that he wasn’t telling his story anymore, he was telling their story.
“We didn’t really have a first date,” said Harry, rubbing circles along the back of Draco’s hand. “We just kinda started hanging out.”
“I used to come round his office.”
“With the bloody worst excuses! Like he needed to borrow my quill, or he wanted to have my copy of the Daily Profit.”
Abraxas laughed.
Draco narrowed his eyes. “Your excuses were crap too! You once said you came to see me, because you bet Seamus you were taller than me. What even was that?”
“Hey, it got us talking right?”
They were looking at each other, and Draco felt a swell of emotion within him. He felt like this ordeal had put their relationship through a trial. And there had been points when they had been close to breaking, close to getting pulled apart, but in this moment, Draco felt like they were more united than ever, like they truly understood each other. They had entered this thing with their eyes open. Draco didn’t believe in fairytales and happily ever afters—they had always said they would stay together as long as it made sense—Draco couldn’t even visualise a future where this didn’t make sense.
As if he realised the importance of this moment, Abraxas spoke just then. “I think you too look really good together.”
Draco could not have foreseen how much his brother’s approval would mean to him. It made him grin. “Yeah?”
Abraxas gave a nod. “Yeah, and it’s like more family for me. Another brother.”
“We’re not married,” said Harry.
“Not yet anyway,” Draco teased.
Harry’s eyebrow shot up. “Is that a promise?”
“It’s a threat,” he said with his characteristic smirk.
-
Draco stayed with Abraxas a whole week. Harry would come by every morning and every evening. They would talk together, or play board games, and slowly Abraxas grew more comfortable in their presence.
For someone who had had almost no human contact for years, he was surprisingly well adjusted. He was polite, and kind, and he had a good sense of humour. They tried talking to him about leaving several times, but he remained adamant that this was his home, and would always be his home. So, they tried another angle.
“Would it be okay if I brought someone with me tomorrow?” Harry asked him over the card table.
“Who?”
“Andromeda,” said Harry. “She’s your mother's sister, but you never met her because she married a muggle-born. She’s really nice, and she really wants to meet you.”
“Just her?” he said cautiously.
“Just her,” Draco assured him.
He agreed, and the following morning Harry arrived with Andromeda. They had tried to keep the news about the Malfoys as hidden as possible, but both Harry and Draco had felt it was important for Andromeda to know.
She arrived with a basket of baked goods and the moment she saw Abraxas she pulled him into a warm hug, laying her head across his shoulder. “I can’t believe it,” she said, barely holding back her tears.
“You’re so big.” She pulled away to get a better look at him. “So much like Draco.”
Abraxas looked sheepishly at his brother, but before he could shy away from the group, Andromeda had put her arm around him and was guiding him towards the kiitchen. Harry remained by the doorway, looking in at the three of them.
He marvelled at Andromeda. She had this innate motherly instinct, much like Mrs Weasley, this instinct to protect and to love, and Harry could already see that it was having a good effect on Abraxas. He looked at ease with her within a couple of minutes, and Harry smiled. Things were going as planned.
-
Every time Harry tried to talk to him about Narcissa, he would shut down. He didn’t want to think about her. Didn’t even want to hear her name.
He was determined to concentrate on his brother and his rehabilitation. He would deal with his feelings towards his parents later, but right now, his sole focus was Abraxas.
Abraxas was doing much better than any of them could have anticipated. He always seemed to be in a good mood, he ate well, and he was very happy each evening when Harry and Andromeda visited. The only issue was that Draco was fairly sure that he wasn’t sleeping. He seemed always awake, eager for conversation, eager for companionship.
“You can’t blame him,” said Harry quietly as they walked around the forest one day. “I remember when I first got to Hogwarts I was so hungry to be around people who liked me. I’d never had that before. And he’s never even had people that hated him. He’s been so alone.”
“I know,” said Draco, kicking a small rock towards an old oak. “But it can’t be good for him, he needs to sleep.”
“Maybe he is, maybe he just wakes up before you.”
Draco shook his head. It was difficult to access, but despite the fact that he hadn’t been able to retreat any of his childhood memories yet and that he had only known of Abraxas a couple of weeks, he felt like he knew his brother, knew him in a way that he had never known anyone before. He leaned against Harry, laying his head on his shoulder and closing his eyes.
He missed him. Missed the nights alone with him. But that could wait, that would wait.
Harry kissed the top of his head. “You’re doing really well you know with all of this.”
Draco pulled away and sighed. He didn’t like how that sounded at all. It made him wonder if he had taken it well because part of him had secretly known all along.
“I know I’ll have to see her again,” said Draco. “But I really don’t want to.”
“There’s no deadline, you can take as long as you want.”
He shook his head. “No, they still have my memories, and I intend to get those back. All of them.”
Now that he knew what his parents had been capable of, he saw them in an entirely new light, his whole childhood was different than he had imagined. And if they had been willing to erase one son out of existence and manipulate the memories of another, what else might they be hiding? The thought made his skin crawl, but he needed to know.
-
The snow was thick on the ground and the sky above was powder blue the first time they took Abraxas out of his dungeon. He was wrapped up in several of his knitted sweaters, had a thick hat over his heads, and most of his face was shielded by a large scarf in Slytherin colours. Even so, Harry would never forget the look in his eyes as the first, cold wind gust of the outside world hit his face, blowing back the loose strands of his blonde hair.
Draco was beside him. He was also dressed in Abraxas’s creations, a purple hat with matching a scarf and gloves, but he barely seemed conscious of his appearance or his surroundings, all of his attention was on his brother.
“It’s so bright,” he said, standing immobile.
“The light reflects off the snow,” said Draco.
Draco put his hand on Abraxas’s forearm and gently guided him forward. His boots made the snow crumble and crackle, and he looked down with surprise at it, eyes huge and blue.
Harry walked several paces ahead, giving them space. He could hear Draco telling him stories of snowball fights and sledding races at Hogwarts, clearly trying to get him to feel at ease. They didn’t walk far from the dungeons, instead making a loop around it, circling it with their footprints.
The first day they only stayed fifteen minutes or so, but each day, they would stay out longer and stray further from his home. By the fifth day, they were engaged in a ferocious snowball fight, the three of them running like kids between the trees, their hands freezing with clumps of snow.
There was such joy on his face when he moved. Even though he was older than them and had had one of the most miserable lives Harry could imagine, there was still some sort of childish joy about him. It appeared in his broad smile, and in the twinkle of his bright blue eyes.
“Thank you, for getting me to go outside,” he said to them one evening as they sat around a bonfire outside, passing around a little thermos of hot chocolate.
Harry and Draco looked at each other. Their plan had been to get him out slowly, gently, in a way that wouldn’t startle or upset him, but they both really did want him to come out.
“We were wondering if you wanted to go somewhere with us,” said Draco, taking Harry’s cue.
Abraxas looked down at his boots on the muddy snow.
“Just for an evening. Andromeda wants the three of us to go have dinner with her and Teddy.”
His eyes instantly rose to look at Draco. They had all noticed that from the moment Andromeda had mentioned Teddy, Abraxas seemed to have a particular interest in him. Teddy was afterall the exact same age as Abraxas had been when his parents had locked him up. All of Abraxas’s relations with the world had been as a little kid, so it made sense to Harry that he wanted to meet him. Abraxas did sometimes look and behave like a kid himself.
“Where?”
“They have a nice little place, very quiet.”
He made a small thoughtful noise and then said, “Just us?”
“Just us,” Draco assured him.
-
Teddy was already blonde when they came up to the gate of Andromeda’s house. He was dressed in a black coat, Harry’s old Gryffindor scarf draped over one shoulder. When Abraxas saw him, he stopped walking.
“Are you okay?” Draco whispered, gesturing for Harry to walk on.
“He looks just like us.”
He really did. He had changed his nose to be pointy like theirs, and although he had kept his eyes his natural brown, their resemblance was quite strong.
Draco put his arm around Abraxas’s shoulder.
“If you're not ready for this, we can go back. Andromeda will understand.”
He shook his head. “No, I really wanna meet him.” Suddenly a joyous smile spread across his pale features. “I can’t believe we have a cousin.”
“Yeah, I guess the family keeps getting bigger.” And just wait until we introduce you to the Weasleys , thought Draco.
When they walked up to the gate, Andromeda hugged them both, and started listing off the many, many dishes she had prepared for their arrival. While she talked Teddy looked up at them, his expression quizzical.
“And how are you?” asked Draco, leaning down to look him in the eye. “Do you think Abraxas and I look alike?”
Teddy nodded. “I wish I had a brother,” he said.
Draco knew that feeling, he had spent years wishing he had one too. “Well, Teddy, I’ll let you borrow mine, how about that?”
Teddy and Abraxas both laughed.
“He can make snow angels, and have snowball fights with you.”
Teddy turned bright eyes towards Abraxas. “Really?”
“Yeah,” said Abraxas. The word was barely outside of his mouth before Teddy was grabbing hold of his hand and pulling him into the yard. He had to run to keep up with him, their footsteps sinking in the snow.
Harry wrapped his arms around Draco’s waist, putting his chin on his shoulder. “They both look happy.”
“Yeah,” Draco answered. It should have been a happy moment for him, but it wasn’t.
That should have been us, he thought. We should have grown up together, played together. That should have been us.
-
From the day Abraxas and Teddy met, everything was different. Suddenly, Abraxas seemed in no hurry to return to his dungeon, his highest happiness was now running around with Teddy, telling him stories, and teaching him all the many skills and crafts that he had perfected over his long imprisonment. There was something effortless and natural between them.
Soon, Abraxas was spending nights in Andromeda’s guest room, and slowly, his things migrated over to the shelves of her house, until he was spending half of his time with them.
“Come home with me,” Harry whispered to Draco, on one of these nights.
“I can’t,” said Draco as he continued to set up the sheets on the couch to spend the night.
Harry pulled at his arm. “He’s okay here, he hasTeddy and Andromeda, surely you can come home for one night.”
Draco shook his head. “No, I’d rather stay.”
He leaned down and took a seat beside him on the sofa. “Draco-”
“I’m staying, if you don’t like it, then-” he shrugged.
“You can’t be with him forever. You’re gonna have to let him go.”
Draco glared at him. “I can’t believe you’d say that, I just got him back.”
“I know,” said Harry as gently as he could. “But Draco, he's not a little kid. He’s gonna have his own life, and his own interests, and sometimes those aren’t going to include you.”
For a moment, he thought Draco was going to blow up and they were going to fight again, but instead, his boyfriend seemed to deflate with a sigh. He leaned back against the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. “I hate that we’ll never get those years back. I hate it so much. I don’t know how he bears it.”
“I think he’s just happy you found him.”
“Well, I’m happy too, but I’m also… bitter… and angry… and”—his teeth grinded together—“I fucking hate them.”
Harry rubbed at his shoulder. “You have every right to.”
“But he doesn’t hate them. He’s not bitter or angry. I don’t know… maybe he’s just a better person than me.”
“Maybe he’s just healing differently,” Harry offered, shifting on the sofa until he was leaning against him. He loved the feeling of Draco’s arms going around him, and he felt him sigh, his breath hot against Harry’s neck.
“I have missed sleeping with you,” Draco admitted.
Harry laughed. “I should hope so.”
Draco leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
“Does that mean you’ll come home with me tonight?”
“Only if you treat me right.”
He laughed, his hand sliding up Draco’s leg as he turned to kiss him. It had been so long since they had been alone together, and even longer since they had been intimate. He’d be lying if said he didn't crave it, but that hadn’t been his intention when he asked him out for the night.
“We really don’t have to do anything,” said Harry, breaking away from him. “I just don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
Draco smirked. “Right,” he said in a deeply sarcastic tone.
-
It's selfish. It’s cowardly. It’s weak.
These thoughts were swirling around in Draco’s head as he and Harry made out in the entrance of their apartment. Their hands shedded off layers of winter clothes and dropped them to the floor.
I don’t even care. I don’t care. I need this.
There was a sense of abandon as he pulled Harry into the bedroom. He wanted to shut off his mind. He wanted to forget everything that was happening, and wrap himself up in the comfort and pleasure of Harry’s body, his taste, his eagerness.
Fuck.
He stumbled on to his knees on the carpet, pulling Harry’s pants down to his ankles. Why had they ever stopped doing this? Why had it been so long? He thought as he wrapped his mouth around his boyfriend’s cock.
He never remembered being like this before. It was like he was drunk on his desires. His nails dug into Harry’s hips as he pulled him deeper into his mouth. He wanted Harry to know how much he had missed him, how much he wanted him. He could feel his cock at the back of his throat as he swallowed and tightened around him, hearing Harry’s moans as if from very far away.
When he was spent in his mouth Draco licked the cum carefully off his lips.
“We’re not done,” he said, pushing Harry down on the bed.
He wanted absolutely all of him today. He felt an insatiable desire for him. It burned red hot and pushed everything else right out of his head. For those moments, nothing else existed for him. He fucked him hard and rough, pushing as far into him as he could, until he had Harry screaming his name, and when he finished, Draco was fucking him again.
He wished it could have lasted forever. That they could have done it over and over again until their bodies were bathed in cum and sweat and there was nothing but delicious peace in the air. But after the second time, they were both exhausted, and they lay tumbled together on the bed, trying to recover their breathing.
“I got marks all over me,” said Harry.
“Is that a complaint?”
Harry draped one of his long legs over Draco’s. “No.”
The room was dusty. Harry had never mastered cleaning spells, and he clearly hadn’t been opening the window enough. There was a distinctly musty smell in the air that had nothing to do with the sex.
“You’re a slob,” he said as he eyed the large pile of laundry that prevented the closet door from closing properly.
“I’ve been busy, and I didn’t know you were going to come over.”
“Bad excuses both.”
Harry didn’t move but his eyes glanced over Draco’s pale naked body. “Is this just for tonight or are you moving back in?”
He groaned. The truth was that he didn’t know. He had a life to return to, but he also felt responsible for Abraxas. “I really missed this,” he said instead, his hand stretching to caress Harry’s thigh.
“But?”
“I gotta make sure he’s alright first.”
“He’s doing well, he liked staying with them.”
“I know. Andromeda even offered to make it his permanent home.”
“She did?”
Draco nodded. It felt like that was where Abraxas would fit in best. With a mother figure and a little brother. There was certainly no room for him in their tiny apartment, and even if he did come to stay with them, they had jobs that took them away for most of their time. He would be alone, and in the middle of London.
“That’s probably what’s best for him.”
“I know, but-” he shook his head. “I feel like he should stay with me, you know. I feel like I abandoned him once, and I don’t want to do that again.”
“You didn’t abandon him,” Harry reminded him.
“You know what I mean though, it just feels like I’d be leaving him to be someone else’s problem-” He winced as he said it. “Not problem, I didn’t mean he was a problem.”
“He’s not a problem for us, and he’s not a problem for Andromeda or Teddy, they love him. But him living with them doesn’t have to be a permanent solution either, it can just be for now, you know, to get him out of that place. And then later, maybe we can get a place with a spare room, or hell, he might live on his own, build his own life.”
Draco kissed Harry’s forearm, the closest bit of him that could reach. “You’re right. It’s not for forever.”
“Yeah. Also, it’s not for us to decide. Have you talked to him about it?”
“Not yet,” said Draco. “Actually-” he tilted his head, staring straight up at the ceiling. “Before anything changes, I think I have to speak to my parents.”
He felt Harry beside him. “Don’t you think it’s too soon?”
“I just want my memories back,” Draco answered bitterly. “And then I’ll never see them again, never talk about them again.”
There was resolution in his words, but he knew that committing to this was going to be difficult. He had spent so much of his life loving them, idolising them, letting their ideas fill him up like ink on an empty page. Even his father, who he hadn’t seen in almost seven years, still played a part in his day-to-day life. He was still reminded of him each time he looked in the mirror, and every time he looked at Abraxas.
They were not easy to erase, but he was going to do his best to scorch them out for good.
-
Azkaban was completely reformed after the war. The dreaded Dementors had been banished, and taken much of the mist and misery of the island fortress. It was still a desolate place, however. There were spells to keep away the sunlight, and each cell had been enchanted to disallow any magic use inside, human or not.
The cells themselves were comfortable. They had beds and desks, and proper wash rooms. The low risk criminals were even allowed luxuries like windows, books, and muggle music devices. They also had meals together, supervised by the Wardens, who patrolled between the tables in invisibility cloaks.
The life of the high risk criminals, most of whom were previous Death Eaters, was different. Their rooms were bare and windowless, and they were not allowed out. Harry had been in here for work-related reasons on several occasions. But he had never seen Lucius; in fact, Harry had sort of avoided him. He knew that he was indeed in prison and under those conditions, but he knew that seeing him there would have stirred all kinds of emotions in him. After all, Draco was nearly put in prison alongside his father.
He had been saved mostly because he had joined the Dark Lord before coming of age, and therefore while still a child. Moreover, Harry had gone into detail about how Draco had saved them at Malfoy Manor, failing to identify them for the Dark Lord. These two facts had saved him from incarceration, but it had been a close call.
“Are they together?” said Draco as they reached the first gate of the Fortress of Azkaban.
“No,” said Harry. “Her trial hasn’t started, so she’s kept in a low-security area. She’ll probably be moved up though.”
He nodded curtly.
Harry had the urge to grab his arm, to hold his hand, but he knew that this was not what Draco needed at that moment. All his emotions were hidden, and his face was a perfect blank mask. Harry didn’t want to be the one to break it. It was best if he was impersonal as well, but that had always been difficult for him.
Behind them, there were several guards and two members of the Ministry who specialised in Memory modification, extraction and recuperation. Draco had wanted them to be alone, but that was out of Harry’s hands. There was protocol to be followed, and things he couldn’t skip over even if he was “the chosen one”.
There were two security checkpoints which they passed quickly enough, and then they were brought to a long thin corridor with a door at the end. Their guards stayed at the entrance, while Harry, Draco and the two wizarding employees entered with them.
The room was narrow, but long. There was an old wooden table, with four chairs on one side, and a single chair on the other, this one with chains around it. His stomach turned at the thought of Draco seeing his mother in chains.
Draco and Harry sat in the middle seats. He tilted his foot underneath the table so that it was gracing against Draco’s. The Ministry employees were at either side of them, in their ostentatious matching red robes. They hadn’t been seated for long when the door opened again, and a female guard entered with Narcissa.
She was wearing the long, grey robes that were given to prisoners awaiting trial, but otherwise she looked much the same as last time they had seen her. Imperious and pale, her long hair partly coiled around her, partly streaming down, smooth and untangled.
Draco had no reaction as she entered, nor as she was guided down to her seat, the chairs wrapping like snakes around her arms. To keep from grimacing, Harry looked down at the floor, keeping his gaze steady, knowing that the best thing he could do for his boyfriend would be to stay indifferent.
“Draco,” she said in that polite, fake voice of hers.
“Mother,” he said, mimicking her tone exactly.
Her blue eyes went through each of the figures around them and then landed on Harry. “Hello, Harry.”
He lifted his gaze. “Hello Mrs Malfoy.” He couldn’t make his tone either fake or polite, and it sounded serious and harsh by contrast. He leaned forward on the table. “This is not a family visit, we’re here on Ministry business.”
“Oh, and what could that be?”
“As you know, you are under investigation for child neglect, child abuse, and breaking with Squib protective laws A6-A11, as well as under suspicions of memory manipulation and unlawful document destruction.”
She tilted her head at these charges, her eyes moving Draco. “When did the old ways become forbidden? When did we allow them to.”
“When they’re inhumane,” answered Harry. “When they put the welfare of children at jeopardy.”
She raised a thin eyebrow. “I have never done anything to endanger either of my sons.”
His blood boiled. How could she speak that way, after all she had done to them? He couldn’t understand it. She looked very much like a woman, and like a mother, but she was utterly heartless, an alien creature that he could not understand. “You are admitting that you have two sons,” he said, pushing ahead with the line of questioning they had agreed upon beforehand.
“Yes.”
“And you admit to locking one of those sons up in a dungeon since he was seven years old?”
“Yes.”
Underneath the table, Harry grabbed his robes in his fist. He had to keep his head straight, his face blank. He had to play along. But this wasn’t what he was good at. “And yet you say you never endangered him?”
“It is what is best,” she looked down at the chains that bound her hands. “Your laws will never touch our traditions. They are older, and wiser, and they have been in place for thousands of years before your silly little Ministry was even thought of.”
“So, you’re saying that this is a family tradition.”
She nodded. “It is for the welfare of the family, and the honour of the family name, and for the child.”
“How?” said Harry, and this time, he couldn’t hold back the rage in his voice.
“What alternatives are there for such cursed children,” she said. “They do not belong in our world, and we cannot surrender them to the world of Muggles ,” she said the word with clear distaste, as if it was something filthy on her lips. “What we do is a kindness.”
Harry chanced a sideways look at Draco, who was still immobile, staring forward at his mother, his eyes revealing nothing.
“When you imprisoned your son, and destroyed any evidence of his existence, you altered official documents and modified memories, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“How was that accomplished?” asked Harry. He couldn’t understand it. There were the documents in the Ministry, in St. Mungo’s, along with dozens of people who must have known Malfoy’s first son.
At this Narcissa shook her head. “I am not certain of that, Lucius took care of those details.”
“You don’t know anything then?” he said, leaning forward across the table.
“I assumed gold switched hands, and Lucius used some of his connections. We had those in abundance, old friends, distant relations.”
“And the memories?” said Draco.
“Oh,” said Narcissa, and suddenly a dreadful smile came over her features. “Is that why you have come?”
“Why else?” he answered.
“It’s an old spell, an old ceremony, actually, carried out under a moonless sky.”
“A spell that makes everyone forget someone?” said Harry. He had never heard of such magic.
She gave a small nod. “Yes, their memories of that person are lost, irretrievable.” Maybe he imagined it, but it appeared to Harry that she spoke the words with pleasure.
There was a nasty silence. Harry wanted so desperately to look at Draco, to reach for him, but he didn’t want to make him lose his mask.
“Do you have your memories of him?” said Draco. “Do you remember the day he was born? When he learned to walk? When he took me out on the snow without gloves on?”
For a second he thought her composure would slip. There was certainly a minute change in her expression, but she barely missed a beat before replying. “Yes, as your father and I were the ones who conducted the ceremony, our memories are still intact.”
Abruptly Draco stood up. “We’re done here,” he said, leaving the door before Harry even had a chance to stand.
Narcissa, too, seemed confused by this, as she donned a frown on her face when he cast a final glance in her direction, her eyes blue fixed on the spot where Draco had disappeared.
Harry followed him closely down the corridor, past security, while the Ministry officials and the guards were lagging behind.
“Draco,” Harry whispered.
“We’ll talk when we’re home,” he answered firmly.
-
An hour later, they crossed the threshold into their apartment. Even though it was still dusty and the clothes from the night before were still laying on the floor, Draco found that he was glad to return to the place. He sat on the sofa, Harry by his side.
“Are you okay?” he said quietly. He hadn’t touched him yet, not at the prison, or when they returned to the Ministry to file the report of the meeting. It was like he was afraid that he might break down with the slightest show of affection.
He pulled Harry into an embrace, wrapping him up in his arms, feeling his warmth against him. “The thing is, I don’t care, Harry. I don’t care how they did it. I just really wanted to remember him, and apparently, I won’t ever have that.”
“I’m so sorry, Draco,” said Harry, squeezing his waist.
“Me too,” he answered.
He lay his head against Harry’s shoulder, so thankful to have him here, so thankful to be with someone who was so supportive and loving and present. Seeing his mother had shaken him up more than he had realised. She was cold. She was so callous. It was so strange to think about how long he had loved her, getting nothing but her iciness in return.
“I really thought I knew her,” he said, the tears coming out despite his intentions to remain stoic. “It’s so scary to think about the fact that just a few months ago, I was living with her. You know, I thought we had really repaired our relationship. I had forgiven her and now-” He found that he couldn’t talk anymore, he was incoherently sobbing into Harry’s shoulder.
But maybe that was a good thing. What was the point of hiding his feelings, of being stoic, of being like either of his parents? He let Harry pet him and kiss his forehead and hold him, taking all the security that he could from the strength of his body, the softness of his voice.
He reached for Harry’s hand, holding it in his own. “I just don’t understand what kind of people could do that to a little kid. The fact that she remembers holding him, and telling him bedtime stories, and then just casting him away, as if he was nothing to her.”
“I know. I know.”
“What kind of mother does that?” He wiped his face on the sleeve of his sweater. “I always thought she would do anything for me. She was always so protective, and I thought that was love. But I guess it was just pride-” he laughed. “Pride in our bloody fucking lineage. It’s so sick. She would have locked me up too if I didn’t have magic.”
Harry summoned a box of tissues from somewhere, and Draco gratefully took a bunch and blew his nose loudly. “And I don’t know what I’m gonna tell him.”
“Abraxas?”
“Yeah, I don’t know how I’m gonna-”
“Don’t,” said Harry. “He doesn’t need to know, he doesn’t want to know. He hasn’t asked about them once. And he has Andromeda now, she can be his mother figure, like she’s been for us.”
Draco sunk into the sofa. He closed his eyes. It wasn’t evening yet, but he was exhausted. Harry went to the kitchen and he heard the sounds of the kettle coming on. When he came back, he had two cups of peppermint tea, and Draco took his gratefully, sitting as close as possible to Harry.
“You’re right,” he said.. “I don’t want him to know.”
-
They returned to Andromeda’s place in the evening to find her plopped on the sofa watching a muggle movie while Teddy and Abraxas prepared dinner. “I’m not allowed to know what they’re cooking, it’s a surprise,” she said with a grin.
Draco went to join the other two in the kitchen while Harry took a seat beside her.
“How was today?” she asked in a low tone.
More out of habit than anything, Harry cast muffliato around them with a wave of his wand. “She was very direct, didn’t try to sugar coat anything, just told it how it was.”
“Probably ‘cause she doesn’t feel any guilt about it,” said Andromeda quietly.
“Yeah,” said Harry. “I think her lack of remorse was hard for Draco.”
Andromeda was quiet for a moment. The TV flickered on before them, showing flashes of other people’s lives. “We were raised on those ideas, you know, but that doesn’t justify anything. Plenty of us broke out of that way of thinking sooner or later, like me, and Sirius, and Regulus and Draco. You come to see how things really are, but my sisters never did.”
“How was Abraxas’ night here?”
That made her smile. “I think it went well. He finished a book I lent him, and he made us breakfast. He’s such a sweetheart.”
“He is,” said Harry. “And he seems really happy here.”
“He is, and as I told Draco, he can stay as long as he wants, you know I’m more than happy for the company. And he and Teddy just get on so well.” She sighed. “You know when Ted and Dora died, I really thought my family was over, but thankfully, that’s not how things have worked out.” She stretched out her arm around Harry’s shoulder. “And I love you, all three of you, and you are always welcomed in my home.”
Harry leaned forward, hugging her. “Thank you, I know you really mean that.”
She laughed. “I do. Merlin, if it were up to me, all three of you would move in here. And I’d have this house full of sons.”
Harry laughed too. “Well I think Draco and I are good where we are, but if Abraxas is willing to stay with you, I think that would be brilliant.”
Andromeda cocked her head. “Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s up to him, but it just makes more sense than having him in the city, in our tiny apartment, you know. It’s quiet here, and he’ll have fresh air, and like I was telling Draco, it doesn’t have to be forever. But I think this would be a good place for him.”
“I would love that,” said Andromeda, and before Harry knew it, she was hugging him again.
-
“You’re sure about this?” said Draco as he helped pack up Abraxas things into a magically extended cardboard box. They were back in his prison, making stacks of things he wanted to bring to Andromeda’s.
His brother grinned at him as he carefully placed a stack of books in. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“I just don’t want you to feel like you’re being forced to move,” said Draco.
“I don’t feel like that,” said Abraxas. “And I like it there.” An absolutely radiant smile came onto his face. “It’s better than anything I could have ever imagined. Having two people all the time, and that big yard-” Draco loved the gleam in his eyes as he spoke. “And you’re all so nice to me.” He shook his head. “I never thought I’d get that.”
“You deserve kindness,” said Draco, trying to keep the anger from his voice. He still felt so furious when he thought of Abraxas as a sweet, affectionate little boy of seven, stuck in here all by himself.
Abraxas smiled sadly at him, and put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t say anything, but Draco got the feeling that his brother knew exactly what he had been thinking about. It was strange, but in moments like these, despite how much more Draco had experienced in life, he felt like he was a small boy, and his older brother was comforting him. He really never seemed angry or sad about what had happened; he was just grateful of the circumstances he found himself in now.
They continued packing, putting away all the things that Abraxas had spent the better part of two decades collecting and making. Draco tried to be as careful and organised as possible—he knew how much these items meant to him.
When they finished, the rooms looked bare. The only thing that remained in them was the furniture.
“What are we gonna do with this place?” said Draco.
“I’d like to keep it,” his brother answered.
“Really?”
“Mhm. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I did have some good times here,” he bumped his shoulder playfully against Draco. “I’ll always remember that first day I saw you—happiest day of my life.”
Draco put his arm around him. “Then we’ll keep it, and we can come back here if you want.”
“Thank you.”
They walked out, Draco levitating the box in front of them.
Andromeda’s guest room was across the hallway from Teddy’s room. It was a small bedroom, but with a very large window overlooking the garden and the little blue fence that penned it in. They had bought a new bed and fresh sheets and pillows to go with it, so that the whole room was set up to Abraxas’s tastes.
There was enough room for all his things, but he only put his most precious items and books around the room, keeping the rest of them in a magical box in the closet. Draco helped him organise the place, finding shelves for his games, and places for the numerous art pieces he had made.
“Can you hang this one up?” said Abraxas as he handed him a new piece Draco hadn’t seen yet.
It was made in watercolors, and quite recent. It showed him and Abraxas, with Teddy, blonde and pointy-nosed standing between them. “Merlin, he really does look like us,” said Draco as he stared at it.
Abraxas laughed. “Yep.”
Draco put it up with several older pieces above the nightstand, and then stood back, staring at how well the room had come together.
Previously, this was the room he and Harry had occasionally used when they stayed the night, but now it was almost unrecognisable. It looked so homey. There was a knitted blanket over the bed, and another against an armchair. There were little toys at the top of the bookshelf, and then shelves of Abraxas’s much loved books. There was a place for his records, and his notebooks, and with the window open, the fresh February sunshine was streaming in, pure and gold.
“I made this too,” said Abraxas as he lifted up a second sketchbook. Draco glanced down to see an intricate line drawing of himself and Harry wearing the matching hats and scarfs that Abraxas had insisted on making them.
He felt himself welling up. He couldn’t even manage a thank you. Instead, he pulled his brother into a hug. “I love you.”
“I love you, always have,” Abraxas answered, squeezing him.
-
They apparated home together, returning to the apartment which Harry had spent all day cleaning. He had put away the loose clothes, did several loads of laundry, dusted every surface he could reach, and reorganised their closets.
Draco raised his eyebrows as he entered. “Finally becoming a domestic little husband?” he teased.
Harry laughed, pulling him into a hug. “If that’s what you want.”
“So, you’ll marry me?” asked Draco abruptly.
Harry pulled back and stared at him. He hadn’t taken the word husband seriously at all “You want to?”
Draco nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t think it was important to me, but now it is.” He took Harry’s hand gently in his own. “I know we’re already a family, but I guess I want to make it official.”
“Oh,” said Harry.
When he was a kid, he had dreamt of a very traditional family. Mother and Father. Kids. He had yearned for that so much, for loving parents, for brothers and sisters. The Weasley’s had been a replacement for all he had lost and all he would never have.
But now that he was older, those institutions weren't as important to him anymore. He didn’t need a marriage, he didn’t need kids, and like Draco had said they were already a family. They were united, now more than ever. But if it was important for Draco, then Harry really had no reservations.
“Where’s my ring?” he teased.
Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s a spontaneous, romantic proposal, I don’t have a bloody ring.”
“Well, I’ll give you my answer after I get a nice ring then.”
Draco poked him hard. “So demanding.”
Harry leaned forward and kissed him. “You’re one to talk. Look who suddenly needs me to marry him.”
He felt Draco’s hand squeeze his ass. “I don’t need to, but I do want to.” Harry gazed into his eyes and kissed him again.
They had tea together, seated in the little nook in the kitchen, the window open to the city night, with its lights and its noise. Harry kept teasing Draco about the ring, and Draco kept teasing him about the shotty cleaning job. But underneath all that, Harry felt tremendously grateful to have him home.
At night, they lay in bed together, Draco’s head against his chest, his arm across his body, their legs intertwined.
“Sometimes,” said Draco into the darkness, “I really can’t believe all this happened.”
Harry kissed the top of his head, holding him closer, tighter. “I know, but I guess it’s best to think of it like Andromeda said, the family expanding.”
Draco nuzzled against him, and Harry wrapped his arms around his slender body.
“Sometimes I really miss the dream. I miss being that little boy.”
“I know what you mean,” said Harry. “When I first met the Dementors, I had this sick fascination with the memories they conjured up in my head. It was the only place I ever heard my mothers voice. Strange to think that I was once just a happy baby, with parents who loved me.”
Draco’s hand lowering to grab hold of Harry’s.
“I don’t think anyone has ever understood me like you.”
“I know, I can’t quite explain it either.”
“It’s like our lives are inverted versions of each other’s,” said Draco and before Harry could begin to comprehend the beauty of what he said Draco was kissing him again, and again and again.