FIC: Being Draco Malfoy

[mpreg_fest_mod]

Title: Being Draco Malfoy
Author/Artist: ???
Prompt: Prompt 7
Prompter: (DiverTazSC)
Prompt: (Potions Accident, Harry has always wanted a night out as the ever so popular Draco Malfoy, Harry is closeted and in an ill-fated hetero relationship, Harry attempts to brew polyjuice using Draco's hair and - with his usual success- manages to impregnate himself with Malfoy spawn)

Word Count/Art Medium: 20500
Rating: NC-17
Contains (Highlight to view): Old tracksuits, social stress, syringe wands. UST, abysmal dancing, sexual inexperience. Major Fluff.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Epilogue compliant?: Oh no, definitely not, no. NO!
Who is pregnant?: Harry
Notes: Thanks again, Sophy, you are so the best! I love you. Dear DiverTazSC, I don’t know if this is the kind of potions accident, or fic, that you were having in mind; anyway, I hope you’ll like it! <3
Summary: When virgin Harry finds he’s pregnant by his secret crush, dazzling Casanova Draco Malfoy, it’s the end of the world as he knows it – and the beginning of a new dawn.




Chapter 1: Next-door neighbours


He’s in the hallway, looking like he’s from another star. With the hallway being what it is, worn linoleum, stained walls, cold lighting, the epitome of ugly, and him being him.
The contrary of everything unsightly.
Even if he didn’t yet get around to comb his hair, or change out of his night blue brocade dressing gown.

It’s the early afternoon, and I’ve just come back from campus.

“Harry? Can I come over and borrow your notes tonight? Didn’t make it to class today, slept in again…”

I know he did. I’ve been scanning the auditorium for his bright head the whole morning, all through Curse Tort and Magical Property Law, always expecting that weird jolt it gives me to see him. But he never showed up. Same as most days, actually.
I really need to quit the compulsive checking.

“That okay, Einstein?”

“Sure,” I say, aiming at cool.

It’s still a struggle, after all these months.

Our first year at college will be over in two months’ time, we’ve been next-door neighbours in LCWL Hall for over half a year, and for just as long, he’s been living off my notes.
He comes to my room every single night to borrow them, and to lounge on my bed and tell me about the cool folks you meet at the Crystal Balls where he works as a bartender four nights a week, or the clubs he plans to hit that night, and generally the pleasures of going out. Teasing me in every other sentence about my hermit ways.
If it wasn’t kind of absurd, considering, I’d say he’s my best friend.

And yet I can’t shake this tension, a tension that’s got nothing to do with animosity or competition these days.

“Great, see you then, Einstein,” he says, but he doesn’t turn away, he flashes me his smirk.

“Einstein wasn’t a lawyer,” I say, momentarily dazed.

“I know, man, I know he’s famous for his poems,” he replies, grey eyes twinkling down at me, making me feel super dumb for lecturing him on Muggle facts when he knows everything.
He’s like constantly partying, but somehow he still manages to know everything.
He’s smart, and sparkling, and a hundred kinds of beautiful.

Merlin, this thing I have about him can’t go on.

I can’t be infatuated with a guy.
And I’m not.
I’m with Ginny Weasley.
And he is Draco Malfoy.
I’ve got to focus on his faults.
He used to have a ton of those.

Why the heck is it that I can’t think of a single one right now.

His smirk. That smirk he’s putting on to raise my hackles.
I hate that smirk.

It doesn’t make me wonder what his mouth would feel like on mine.

“Hey. Everything okay, darling?”

That’s another one of his nicknames for me; darling. It’s what gay people do, call people darling.
I hate it when he does that.

“All good,” I say, then cough to cover up the tremble in my voice.

For a moment he looks at me, concern creasing his perfect features. I used to think of them as pointy.
When he looks concerned for me, it’s worse than his smirk. My knees go so weak I need to put a hand to the wall.
His scrutinizing gaze intensifies.

The problem is, he knows about the series of operations I underwent after the Battle. Everybody knows about it. I got out of it okay; I couldn’t be a bikini model, with that tube map of scars on my chest, but else I’m all good.
I just can’t face syringe wands or surgical lights or people talking about St. Mungo’s. I guess you could say I’m a little bit damaged that way.

He can’t know that. But hell, it feels like he does.
And like he cares.
And he’s just so damn darn handsome.

“Harry?”

“All good, man,” I repeat, looking at his chest so I don’t have to look at his face.
Only his chest is perfect, too. Wide, and bulging in all the right places.
I’m not checking out his muscle definition. I’m not.
There’s his necklace disappearing in his shirt. I don’t know what kind of pendant he’s wearing on that necklace, but I imagine it resting against his skin, warmed up by his body heat…

I shift my gaze yet again, to his arm.
He’s got nice arms, too, for fuck’s sake.
There’s a single golden hair on his sleeve, shining against the gown’s dark blue. I focus on that hair and say, “I’m just really tired, Dray. Pulled an all-nighter for Magical Creature Rights class, you know.”

He nods.

“Always ready to travel the hard road to bring justice to earth,” he says. “That’s my Saviour.”

“Shut up, Malfoy, or I might decide to duel you,” I retort, my voice a little firmer. “You don’t want that.”

“But I totally do!”

“You sure? You realize it’d ruin that lovely undone look you’ve probably spent hours working on.”

I gesture at his unkempt hair. He cards his fingers through the gleaming, golden strands, grinning down at me.

“You know what Potter, you got a point there.”

I don’t know how it happened that our endless fighting morphed into this friendly banter.
The summer after eighth year, he came back from France, and we met in this dorm, in this very hallway. And he said, “Hey, every day in the Saviour’s presence again, what a treat.”
But there was no edge to it. That old animosity was just gone.

Yes, I would never have thought it possible, but he’s kind of my best friend these days.

He himself has dozens of friends, friends who are very different from his old set.
After his acquittal, he didn’t rejoin the ranks of the old wizard nobility. Those who had supported the Dark Lord but were able to evade prosecution, his father among them, were quietly readjusting in the sanctuaries of their country homes, licking their wounds, focussing their energies on protecting the assets that hadn’t been taken from them as bail or compensation.
Draco never went back to Malfoy Manor. Instead, he came to the capital, enrolled at London College of Wizarding Law, and plunged into the party life of the young and the hip, quickly becoming one of its primary players.

I am back to being the loner I was before Hogwarts, minus the Dursleys.
Ginny, Hermione and Ron have all moved to Devon to study Auroring in Plymouth. Plymouth Magical University is just fifty miles from the Burrow, and offers the most renowned Auroring course in England.
I didn’t come along. Everyone thought I’d become an Auror, I used to think it myself. But if I know one thing, it’s that I won’t fight anymore.
Not using a wand, anyway.

Wizarding Law has always appealed to me. Granted, it comes with a lot of tiresome reading, but it does have to do with justice. And I enjoy the way conflict is being dealt with in law. Words, arguments. No wands, no curses; instead, an established, orderly routine of civilised dispute.
Yeah, some might call my subject stuffy, but I like it.

Draco and I are the only Hogwarts students from our year who enrolled at LCWL.
Dean and Seamus and Neville are in London, too, but they’re over at Mag Med campus, studying to become healers. Somehow it’s like you live in different cities if you live in different dorms.
I guess I could have formed some new friendships. But college is different from school. You can spend whole days on your own without anybody noticing. You go to classes, have your meals at the canteen, but you can still be alone if you want to.

Or if you can’t face the strain of being chatted up by people who just want to talk to you because you’re supposedly a celebrity. Who don’t understand you aren’t up for talking about the Battle of Hogwarts like about a movie or one of your rougher Quidditch games.

I hate being made to talk about the war. It’s just no topic for small talk. There’s nothing entertaining about it, and certainly nothing glamorous. All that a war does is leave people with loved ones lost, and in my case with a fear of operation lamps and with fat ugly scars that are never going to fade. Scars that’ll probably always hurt to the touch, just like those memories don’t bear being touched on. –

Draco stands with his head tilted, observing me. His smirk has softened into a smile.

His smile is something very peculiar. It’s just this gentle twist to his lips, the gentleness paradoxically enhancing the subtly mean aspect of the set of his mouth. It effectively conceals his kindness of soul.
Not from me though, not anymore.
When he smiles at me, it’s like he really does know everything; all these things I never talk about.

Like he understands.

Yeah, his smile is really the worst.

“I need to lie down,” I say, and it’s like the first thing I’ve said that isn’t a lie. And then, because I have this urge to touch him and no reason nor right to do it, I lift my hand and pick that hair from his sleeve.

He gives a low chuckle and a shake of his head.

“You go do that, darling. Bye.”

And then he’s off.

Making the world go dim, taking all the reasons to keep going and stay alive with him. Or so it feels for an absurd second or two.

I need to call Ginny.

*

When I’m back in my room, I sit down at my desk with my wand in hand. But I don’t call Ginny.
Instead, I open my palm where I hid his hair. Levitating it with Wingardium Leviosa, I sit back and meditate it like it was a rare piece of magical gold.

Shoot, I need to clear my head. I get up and pluck a bottle of pumpkin juice from the old cardboard box I’m using as a magical fridge.
I got that box second hand, and it doesn’t retain the frost spell like it’s supposed to. I’ve been meaning to get a new fridge box for a while now, but I never seem to be getting around to it. It seems I just don’t care enough.

I gulp down the lukewarm juice until the bottle is empty. I’m about to throw it in the bin, then I don’t. Instead, I use Cleansio on it, then carefully catch hold of the hair still floating above my desk.
I let the hair slip into the bottle, screw the lid back on and put the bottle on the shelf above my bed.

Pathetic is not a strong enough word for this. For me.
I’m not gay.
I don’t watch gay porn, I don’t fancy guys.
Or him.

I don’t want him to kiss me.

If he ever kissed me, I’d implode.




Chapter 2: A proposal


When he comes getting the notes that night, he’s ready for a tour of the bars.
He’s wearing his purple shirt with the glimmer hex that creates the impression of a flame permanently slithering round his body, and black, very tight jeans.
Jeans that say pinch my ass if you dare do it, sicko.

Or perhaps they only say that to me.

He’s beautiful and hot and radiating energy and purple light and… oh Merlin.
I wish I was him.
I’d like to know what it feels like, just once, to be wanted by everyone, and for the right reasons. For being sexy and gorgeous, not because a guy needed killing and destiny showed its twisted sense of humour by picking you for the job.

Perhaps I should have changed out of my tracksuit, put on something a little more stylish. I did contemplate it, but it felt such a pitiful thing to do that I decided against it.
Besides, he knows my tracksuit. We are so beyond the stage of first impressions. It’s absurd that I’m even having these thoughts.

He has brought sweets from his mother. I don’t really like it when he does that, because it feels like he’s paying me. Like I’m the nerd who fools himself into believing that chocolates mean love.
Narcissa Malfoy’s sweets are top-notch though, nothing like the dry, saccharine chocolates of Aunt Petunia’s. There was a time when I would have killed for those. But in my aunt’s case, chocolates actually did mean love, and she kept them all for Dudley.

“Best regards from my mom,” Draco says as he watches me pick a croacoa bonbon and stuff it in my mouth.

I don’t know if she actually said that, if she knows her son dumps her gifts on his next-door neighbour in exchange for lecture notes. But she does smile at me and calls me Harry dear whenever we bump into each other in the hallway.
Her smile is attractive these days, crinkling up her face like it should. Maybe it’s got to do with the fact she and Lucius Malfoy got separated. She’s still a stunner and likes her stylish outfits. She looks just as out of place at the hall as her son.
I like to think she’s smiling at me and calling me dear because Draco is telling her nice things about me.

I put the parchments I prepared for him next to the chocolate box on my desk, then sit down and open a random book so he’ll know I don’t expect him to stay and pretend this is a social visit.

“Pick another one,” he says, pushing the box of chocolates closer to me. I obey, because those croacoa bonbons are just too good for modesty.

He observes me, his gaze on me strangely intent, like I was his guinea pig that’s been under the weather for a while, and like he just managed to trick me into accepting a food treat.

This is nuts. I’m nuts.
Nuts, and nerdy. I’m probably really going to pull that all-nighter on Magical Creature Rights tonight.

And he’s going to have fun.

I’m not mingling much, but I don’t live under a rock. I know as well as the next hall resident who’s doing what in their private lives.
And Draco is doing guys.
Like all the fucking time.

He doesn’t do dates; he has never gone out with anybody. He goes out, full stop. It seems that he’s following a personal etiquette forbidding him to fuck anyone he hasn’t randomly met at a bar. For him, freedom it is, or so I’ve heard him say. With freedom apparently translating as fucking strangers. All the fucking time.

I guess I should be disgusted by it. By him. But disgusted doesn’t exactly nail what I’m feeling when he’s with me in my room, like now.

Perhaps it’s his scent. The strange, alien truth is, I want to climb him and sniff him all over, like I really was a guinea pig and he my stuffed animal friend that I got for enriched environment purposes, and it doesn’t make any sense.

Oh heck, I wish he’d just take those parchments and leave.
But he doesn’t, he never does.

What he does is linger.

Pick up things and inspect them like he was assessing stuff at a sale.
Mess with the Quidditch posters on the walls, steering the players into near collisions with his wand and chuckling to himself with childish schadenfreude when they fall off their brooms.
Check the fridge box and tell me I need to get a new one.
Have one of his mom’s chocolates and slump down on my bed.
Kick off his pointy snakeskin shoes and stretch his luxury body, claiming he pinched a nerve in his back. Leaving it to my imagination in what particular circumstances.
When he pulls out my pyjamas from under the duvet and smirks because they’re plaid, I start to feel irritated, and kind of fed up with the mess of emotions he elicits in me.

But then he gets up from the bed and reaches for the empty bottle on the shelf above, the bottle with his hair in it, and I tense up like mad.

He amuses himself for a while with letting the bottle do somersaults above his head, then gracefully snatches it from the air.
To my utter relief, he just carelessly throws it in the bin, calling me a slob, then moves on to check out my collection of school Quidditch cups on the window sill.
He leans across my desk, or rather, across me, to get a better look.

It’s funny to think how it used to be my ultimate goal in life to catch the Golden Snitch on the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch before he did.
And how I used to hate him.

“Merlin, was I mad every time you beat me, darling,” he says softly, picking up the cup from fifth year, and for a moment it feels like our minds were magically linked, without any need for Legilimency. “I guess I just couldn’t deal with being a failure and you witnessing it first-hand.”

He laughs, shaking his head, still contemplating the cup in his hand.

Something is pulsating under his shirt, in the area of his pectorals. He’s got those, the shirt he’s wearing leaves no doubt about that. The purple fabric is the super elastic kind. And it’s softly vibrating.
It must be the pendant on his necklace underneath that does this; it almost looks like he was hiding something there that was alive and had a heartbeat of its own.

Or maybe this is just my vision giving out under the impact of the fancy fibre’s magical glow, and of his physical proximity.

I edge out of his way as best I can without letting the ridiculous rise in my blood pressure become too obvious, and surreptitiously stare at him from the side.

He’s close enough for me to see the stubble on his jaw.
He should shave before going out, he really should.

God, he looks so… yeah, I guess dishy is the word, with that shirt on and that golden shadow accentuating his jawline. He’s so going to get laid tonight.

It’s none of my concern. He can shave or not, he can have sex or not.
He’s going to though, because it’s who he is.
A gay man who is one-hundred percent sure of himself and his sexuality and who calls people darling and who gets laid. On a daily basis.
All of London’s wizard twinks spread their legs for him.
And the Muggles probably, too.

Well, I don’t care.
I’m not gay. I’m in a relationship with a lovely girl that I love.
Why should I care.

I know he’s a top.
Not that I’d care, but it’s not like I live under a rock.

“Listen, darling. Why don’t you come join me tonight?”

He has turned around to me. I push back my chair in a reflex to put some distance between us and stare up at him, not comprehending.

“Come on, Harry! Let’s paint the town!”

Let’s…

What??

“No!”

God, NO!!!

The mere idea. Being in a gay club. Being a shaggy mongrel among a hundred birds of paradise. And him seeing it; the contrast, my ordinariness suddenly all standing out.
He knows I’m the plainest guy who ever made the headlines of the Daily Prophet, but there’s no need to rub it in his face.

And also, I’d have to watch him do his thing.

He has leant back against my desk, his stance wide, his long legs framing me as I sit on my chair before him. I feel trapped and so too hot.

“I’ve been thinking about you, darling. You need to live a little. You used to be up for all kinds of shit in the old days, with Granger and Weasley. Where’s that Gryffindor adventure spirit!”

My chair topples over as I get up, blindly retreating.

My spirit.

It blew up in a green blaze that killed a part of my soul. A foreign, evil part, but it had been there for seventeen years, growing as I was growing, getting ingrained in my being, and when Voldemort’s curse extracted it from me in that moment of indescribable agony, I got ripped up, and my soul bled out inside my body, and I only realized it was happening when two days later I started vomiting green blood and collapsed in it.
Next thing I knew I was looking into surgery lamps like into the eyes of a nine-headed monster that was tearing me to shreds. And maybe the doctors saved my life, but they couldn’t save me.

I’m this shell.

He’s been thinking about me.

He has pushed himself off my desk, but he hasn’t stepped up to me. He’s keeping his distance. Thank Merlin he’s keeping his distance.

But he doesn’t let up.

“Come on. We’ve been out for a drink before!”

We haven’t. We’ve met up at Costa’s for a latte and a muffin, that’s all.

“Harry. I’m talking the Bong. Hippest club in town!”

He has no idea how scary that sounds. Or perhaps he does. He’s reaching for my hand.
He has grabbed hold of my hand.

“You’re going to have fun, I promise! I’ll show you how. Okay?”

“No, Dray.”

I extract my hand from his. I just can’t be in my room with Draco Malfoy, holding hands with him.
Even if it’s just him trying to make me go out and find myself a fuck.
It must be a sort of social experiment thing, yeah, I guess he really does see me as his guinea pig.

“I’ll buy you a drink!”

“No.”

“A pumpkin juice!”

“Take Theo.”

Theodore Nott is studying in London, too. He lives at Mag Med Hall, and from what I’ve heard, Draco and his former fellow Slytherin enjoy a notorious strike partnership in the city’s gay clubs. They aren’t an item though. I might have asked a couple of clever questions to make sure.

“Theo won’t join me, he twisted his neck Apparating the other night, and the Bong isn’t on the Floo network. It’s very backyard. So if you don’t come along, I got no one!”

It almost has me scoff. No one. Alright.

“That’s too bad for you then, Dray, but I’m not coming along.”

“Why not?”

“No reason,” I say, feeling panic at his insistence creep up on me.

His smirk ghosts across his features.

“How’s Ginny?”

Shoot, Ginny. Of course, that’s what I should have said.

I’m not coming because I’m with Ginny. Because I’m not interested in hooking up at a club. I already got someone.
Totally forgot Ginny.
And I don’t know how she is. I haven’t called her in a week.

“Ginny Weasley,” he says, pointing at her photo on my nightstand as if he needed to clarify which Ginny.
The photo is lying on its back under another empty bottle of pumpkin juice and a pair of socks and a pile of old Quidditch magazines.

This is sending the wrong message.

Ginny is important to me. Merlin, she’s so much more than that. I wouldn’t have made it through the months after the Battle of Hogwarts, the repeated operations, the torture of rehabilitation, without her and her family.
And eighth year in those makeshift containers south of London that served as a substitute for Hogwarts; those days when I was toiling on like a zombie and people stared at me for being weird, the nights when my chest hurt so much it was like that green curse was ripping me up inside all over again… It would have been intolerable without Ginny by my side, or the visits to the Burrow.
With Hogwarts gone, the Burrow was all I had left by way of home. It is to this day.
I could never break up with Ginny. Breaking up with her would mean losing everything that’s the old times. It would mean losing the connection to the days before the Battle, when I still felt I had a life.

He has picked up the photo, long fingers dexterously peeling it out from under the rubbish, and contemplates it. Ginny’s waving from her broom, grinning broadly. Until the dust on the photo makes her sneeze.

“She’s great. We’re great,” I say, voice trembling.
Shit, my hands are trembling, too.

He puts the photo back and steps up to me.
I don’t meet his gaze. His mouth is at eye-level with me. I bite my lips, like something horrid might happen just from me looking at his.
Something horrible is going to happen, even if I don’t know what’s it going to be.

“It’s all good,” he says in a low voice, like I was an especially nervous foal and he a cowboy intent on calming his charge before getting started with breaking him in.

And that’s so the wrong mental picture.

Is it possible to get a heart attack at age nineteen?

If I had one, he’d have to perform first aid on me. I’d be lying on the floor, and he’d have to touch me. He’d check my pulse, and open my jacket, and put his ear on my bare chest to catch the feel of my breathing.

And here’s another picture that’s wrong on any and all levels.

God help me, I need to get out of this, I don’t really care anymore if it’s dead or alive. Only it seems I can’t move my darned feet. Or my brain.

“Harry? Don’t space out on me, man. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“You don’t. You didn’t. I’d love to join you. Obviously I would. But I’m tired. Plus, I’m not into clubbing.”

“Plus, you aren’t gay,” he prompts. Yeah, I should have said that first.

“That too. Yes.”

He takes another step towards me. Shit, stay back, you mind-shredding sorcerer.

“You don’t look that great, Harry.”

I scoff.

“I don’t mean it as an insult, you know I don’t. Here, have another chocolate.”

I take it, just to make him back off. He watches me munch and swallow, and I just wish he wouldn’t. It’s still good to have the chocolate.

“You sure you aren’t sick?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe a coming cold,” I say. It’s the simple excuse I somehow didn’t think of. If you don’t want to go places, you say you got a cold. Easy as pie.

“I already told you, darling, lie down.”

“I did. I will.”

“Come on, do it now.”

“I will when you’re gone,” I say, feeling like a stubborn two-year-old.
No way am I going to lie down on my bed with him still in my room, looking down on me with that face.
So terrifyingly beautiful, and his eyes on me like he… like…

“Do it now. Else I’ll be worrying about you, and it will spoil my night out, and you wouldn’t want that, would you.”

He’s teasing me, but there’s this something in his eyes…
God, I mustn’t start hallucinating. The quicker he goes the better.

I quickly drop down on my bed and slip under the sheets.

“You always go to sleep fully clothed? What do you keep those plaid pyjamas for?”

I can’t decide what’s worse, him thinking I’m a freak who’d go to sleep fully clothed, or changing into my pyjamas with him watching.

In the end I wriggle out of my tracksuit trousers under the sheets, hoping to somehow save a rest of my dignity.

I kick the trousers out from under the sheets. Merlin, I really wish he wouldn’t stare like he does, like his mom never taught him the first thing about manners. I wish he wouldn’t stay when he’s clearly not wanted.

But most of all I wish he wasn’t so frigging gorgeous in his going out gear, and with his hair framing his head like a heiligenschein.

I rip off my glasses.

Better.
Now he’s just a shadow of light.

“Good night, Dray,” I say as firmly as I can.

“Good night, darling,” he says, quietly, like I was really sick and needed delicate treatment.
Then he’s gone.

Good.
It’s good.
It is.




Chapter 3: Bernie’s


I’ve slept for two hours this afternoon. I did lie down, because he told me to. I didn’t need the extra sleep; I didn’t pull that all-nighter.
My room might be a bit of a mess, I might have motivational issues with managing stuff like getting myself a new fridge, but I’ve got a routine of sleeping six hours straight every night.
With my complete lack of a social life, it’s kind of hard to build up a lack of sleep.

So now, at half past ten in the evening, I’m wide awake.
Thinking about him touring the clubs in pursuit of pleasure.

I’ve heard about his exploits, his escapades. They’re legend.
I didn’t have to do any snooping to learn about stuff like how he won this year’s costume contest at the Egypt dressed up as a pharaoh with a hex that transformed his head and shoulders into that famous mask with the blue and golden stripes, then managed to have the prize changed from a voucher for a dinner for two to free booze for a private Pharaoh-themed party at the club’s main backroom.
People say he recruited a dozen slaves from a hundred volunteers for that party. I can perfectly imagine how he sorted through the applicants to select the ones to his taste, then changed their clothes to just sandals and grass skirts with no more than a bored flip of his wand.

He so could have been an ancient decadent emperor.

I see him in my mind’s eye, smirking.

“Darling, you need to live a little.”

I guess he’s right. If I don’t live, at least a little, then there wasn’t much point in not getting myself killed by Voldemort.

I’ve long since stopped to subscribe to the wisdom that life’s pleasures are worth its pains, because its pains just really suck, but maybe I’m wrong.

And maybe the fliers littering the Hall’s lobby don’t lie when they say you’re in for the most epic fun of your life if you come attend the all-you-can-drink rave at the so-and-so club next Friday.

And then…
He can’t respect me if I’m this weirdo.
I don’t need him to respect me, obviously.
Or maybe I do.
Suddenly I can’t bear to be who I am.
The boring, damaged Saviour.
Who could never be with Draco Malfoy, not even as his thirteenth slave.

My gaze strays to the bottle in the bin, like I hadn’t caught just his hair in it but a genie, to be summoned in case of need.

In a way, I did.

I can’t be with him.
But I can be the next best thing.

I can be him.

*

I’ve got a Polyjuice base in my medicine kit.

All I need to do is put that base in my folding cauldron and heat it, then add Draco’s hair.

Preparing potions is strictly forbidden in LCWL Hall for fire safety reasons, but I wouldn’t have cared about stuff like that in the old days.
Back when I still had my Gryffindor adventure spirit.

I lock my door with Securio, then get the cauldron out from under the bed.

*

I’m Draco.
There’s my new reflection in the mirror on my door. It’s blurry, until I realize I need to lose my glasses.

My tracksuit looks so absurd on Draco it makes me grin, and that’s his smirk on my face. His face. I watch it, for the first time at leisure.

God, that smirk. It’s so sexy it makes my toes curl.
And my groin twitch.
It’s crazy and a little bit creepy to pop wood from watching yourself in the mirror.

I turn away. I’ve got a plan; I need to focus. I’m going to go out as Draco Malfoy, which means I’ve got to lose this tracksuit and change into my coolest clothes.

As I dig through my cupboard, I realize that all my stuff is really ancient and plain-Jane. Or plain-Joe, whatever.

In the end I decide on a pair of combat trousers and a plaid shirt.
The trousers need a bit of lengthening. Needlecraft magic isn’t my strong suit, but the result of my Tailor hex is passable.
The shirt is okay. I bought it in double XL because I like my clothes baggy, so it fits Draco’s built. And it has got long sleeves. That’s good, because the polijuice didn’t replicate the Dark Mark.

He’s still got that.
Most of the times he keeps it covered up. He has developed a kind of tick actually, a continuous tugging on his left sleeve. He isn’t aware he’s doing it, but I know he’s trying to make sure the sleeve is covering the mark.
There are those times when he forgets about it though; sometimes his sleeve rides up his arm when he pushes his hair back, smiling down at me.
It’s remarkable how I’ve stopped to really see the skull and snakes.
That image used to be so powerful, the icon of ultimate evil.
These days, at least to me, it’s just a friend’s old, tasteless tattoo that he got in his troubled teens.

I button the cuffs, then check my outfit in the mirror.

I look good.
Hell, of course I do, I’d look good in anything that isn’t Harry Potters old tracksuit. I’m Draco Gorgeous Malfoy.

And I’m going to paint the town.

*

Bernie’s.

I picked it because it’s the club that sounds the least gay.
The least scary.

But the moment I’m past the bouncer, who waved me through after he had just told everyone in the queue that the club was full, it becomes clear that I’ve done this thing they call step outside your comfort zone.

In an instant, I find myself in the centre of a group of boys who seem to have been lingering in the hallway with the sole purpose of meeting up with me.

“Hey, D! Good to see you! What’s with the shirt!”

“Draco, sweetie! Gimme a kiss! What’s with the shirt!”

“D! Come here! You know you want to, gorgeous! Love your plaids!”

They touch me, too. One of them, a scrawny boy with the face of a girl and a number of vicious-looking nipple piercings under this torn dragon hide shirt, is hanging off my arm.

I was never good with receiving attention. And then this kind of attention? I plain don’t know what to do with my face. With Draco’s face.
Or what to say.
I’ve got to say something though, or my cover will blow.

It would be so totally embarrassing if he ever found out.
Nobody must find out.
I’ve got to pull through with what I started; I’ve got to play Draco and be convincing.

“Hey,” I say, because inspiration is a bitch, then upgrade to, “hey guys,” trying to sound like him. Self-assured, a little aloof.

It’s bad I don’t know any names. Else I could say something like, Jonathan, please let go of my arm, you are ruining my shirt.

But then Draco would probably call Nipple Piercing darling, anyway. So I try it out, and it works. The guy lets go of me, looking at me with renewed adoration, absurdly.

“How about we go outside for a bit and share a ziggy? My treat,” he chimes.

Turning towards the entrance to the club’s main hall down the corridor, I tell Nipple Piercing I’ll get back to him later. Apparently it was the wrong thing to say. He wiggles his metal-studded tongue at me, clearly labouring under the delusion he just received an indecent proposal.
Obviously; Draco wouldn’t bother with making up excuses if he wasn’t interested.

I hasten towards the blare of music coming from the main hall, hoping to disappear in the noise and bluish darkness. –

The club mostly consists of a vast dance floor with a bar in the centre. The walls are lined with red leather booths, much like in a Muggle steak house. It’s quite nice, really.
Or it could be, if there weren’t so many people staring at me, like I was the Minister of Magic. Or his model lover.
Or like they expected me to perform some kick ass magic on the spot. Maybe not the world-saving kind but rather some fantastic dance stunt or something, but it’s not that different really. Yeah, maybe being Draco Malfoy isn’t that different from being Harry Potter after all.

“Draco! D! Hey, it’s Steve! Over here! Come dancing!”

The dance floor is packed with people. I’ve got no idea which one of the dancers is Steve. But dancing sounds like a good idea. Dancing is better than talking. Safer.

I wedge myself onto the dance floor, answering nudges and smiles with Draco’s smirk, and start moving to the beats.

I have ever only danced at the Hogwarts Christmas balls. And I didn’t do much dancing then, either.

From the corner of my eye, I observe the other dancers, trying to copy their moves.
It’s not that hard. Left foot, right foot, knees flexing, hands swaying.

This is going alright. It’s even kind of fun. I can do this.

People still stare, even more so than they did before it seems. I try to ignore it.

Two guys come dancing up to me. One with a black ponytail, the other with shiny red bangs, both of them in very skinny jeans. I guess one of them is Steve.
They are pretty guys; about my height. About Harry’s height that is.
As Draco, I’m a head taller then they are.
I’m a tall blonde, drawing pretty boys.

Yeah, I really don’t enjoy this as much as I expected.

The crazy truth is, I’m jealous. Jealous of these hot guys that are coming on to me. Because it’s really Draco they are coming on to, and if he was me at this moment, or rather, himself, he’d take them up on their offer.
And I hate that.

Hell, I’d really appreciate it if these two exercised just a little more restraint.
Their hands are all over me, and now they have started taking turns grinding their trim backsides against my front.

I’m a rookie, but even I can read that dance style.

I’m expected to make out with them.
It freaks me out beyond anything. I’m straight, that’s why.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” the one with the ponytail screams over the music. “You coming, D?”

Hell, this is… Out of my comfort zone doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Hell.

I guess I had to expect something like this to happen.
This is a club. People come here to get action.
And these two obviously expect me to give them said action, because I’m Draco Malfoy, super stud.

I have to act my part. Act Draco.

But I can’t do it.

Clumsily, I extricate myself from between the two boys and flee.

Only where to turn to for refuge? The bathroom, the classical choice in cases of social stress, obviously isn’t safe. For want of a better alternative, I head for a booth in the club’s darkest corner and dive right under the table, pretending I need to fix a problem with my sneakers.

They don’t come after me. It seems I have escaped.
But the respite doesn’t last.

“Taking your tragic romance to the next level tonight? Not even getting your rocks off anymore?”

When I emerge from under the table, I see it’s Theodore Nott, with a mug of butterbeer in hand. At least I know his name.

“That why you chose to wear sneakers?” he asks, pointing his mug at my feet. “And that shirt, and those trousers? You trying to scare people off? I can see your socks, man.”

“Shut up, Theo,” I say, prodding him in the ribs like I’ve seen Draco do it.

But playing my part isn’t what’s foremost on my mind.

Tragic romance.

He just said something about Draco and a tragic romance.

“What tragic romance is that supposed to be,” I ask, trying to sound bored.

“Yours? Your excuse for fucking every hole that’s moving?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, darling.”

At least that’s one honest sentence.

“Come on. Are you trying to get back into the closet here? Not gonna work with me, mate. I know your dirty little secret. It’s your own fault. Talking my ear off every time you get drunk. Whining about all the sex, and how it simply never makes you forget your mystery man like it’s supposed to, and how you’ll be in love with the guy forever.”

His brow creases. He seems to be inspecting my shirt, or its plaid pattern. Then, without any warning, he reaches out his hand and slips it inside my shirt, down my chest.

I jump backwards.
But apparently it’s not a move.
Giving me a hearty whack in the shoulder, he cries, “You’re not wearing your amulet, man! So you really got over him? Good for you, Draco! All he ever did was make you miserable!”

He takes a swig of his beer and repeats, “Good for you! I think I know who the fucker is, anyway. I always wanted to tell you, he’s not worth it. Forget him. Stop the sick pining.”

Theodore is so right. That guy sure isn’t worth a forged knut. Mystery man. I wish I, too, knew who the fucker is. I need to cast a real nasty, disfiguring hex at him.

Heck, it’s probably a long-legged, sleek-haired twink with no glasses. And no brains.

Right then, another one of those comes sauntering up to me.
Seriously, they’re like flies on shit as the poet would have it.

This one’s got pink and platinum hair and swimming trunks that must be the result of a paint spell. He’s batting charmed lashes at me.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

I don’t react.

“I’m Sasha, in case you forgot. You up for it?”

“Just leave me be for a sec, Sasha, okay?” I say.

“You sure, gorgeous? I remember your impressive equipment…”

I blush so hard my face feels like coming off.

“I couldn’t walk for a week,” he purrs, leaning in to me. The guy is talking about getting fucked by Draco. I hate him so much I forget being embarrassed to have my equipment addressed.

“Well, I don’t remember yours, darling, but I’m sorry to inform you you aren’t up to my standards,” I say, aiming a pointed glance at his mid section. He looks mortified.

“That was short for buzz off,” I clarify. He walks off, looking utterly deflated.
I guess I should enjoy it. Being able to be nasty without any personal consequences.
Getting to brush off people who think I’m hot. Even if it’s just guys.

That’s it, that’s the problem.
I don’t enjoy this because there’s just guys here. No girls.
Because Ginny isn’t here.
Ginny is my girlfriend, I would want her to come on to me, no one else.

I don’t care if Draco fucked this Sasha guy so hard he couldn’t walk for a week. In fact, I wouldn’t care if he had fucked him so hard he’d dropped dead.

“Darling?” Theo says by my side, mimicking my acerbic tone.

“What’s your problem?” I snap. I turn on him, and he shrinks back a bit. I’m Draco, I’m all kinds of toned, I could crush him without using my wand.
I love Polyjuice.

“You don’t call people darling, at least I’ve never heard you do it before?” Theodore says. “You’re weird tonight, D.”

And shrugging at me, he saunters off.

I take a deep breath, relieved at seeing him leave, when he turns around one more time.

“Didn’t you say you’d check out the Bong tonight? The place not up to your standards, either?”

Shit. Oh man, I didn’t think of that.
Shit, he’s going to see Draco at some point, and they are going to talk. Draco is going to find out about this.

I tell myself to calm down.

He’ll know somebody polyjuiced into him. He won’t know its me.
He won’t know its me.

I need a drink.
That’s one good thing about being in this club, there’s a bar here, and they are bound to have cold drinks on offer that deserve to be called that.

I walk up to the counter, automatically bracing myself for the task of getting the barkeeper to acknowledge me.
There’s a problem with my body language or something; I’m the kind of guy who gets ignored by bar personnel. At least when I’m wearing lenses and when my scar isn’t visible.
The barkeeper waves at me when I’m still yards away from the counter.

Of course. I don’t have my glasses, or my scar, but I look like Draco Malfoy, king of gay England.

“The usual, D?”

The usual. It’s probably some kind of hard liquor, like firewhiskey mixed with something even worse.
I can’t afford to get wasted. And I will if I drink alcohol. After my operations, the healers told me to avoid it, and now I’m not used to it anymore.

“I’ll have a pumpkin juice,” I say.

Guillaume’s eyebrows shoot up so they vanish under his bright blue fringes. I know his name is Guillaume because it says so on his name tag.

“What got into you, cheri!” he says, the shock bringing out a strong French accent. “You got the stomach flu? You like a snakeweed tea?”

I find that I’d love that, in case he can make it an iced tea, and tell the guy that. He stares at me, then starts laughing.

“You’re shitting me, man! You nearly got me there.”

He wags his finger at me, then goes on to smoothly prepare some toxic looking drink.
He does a couple of the usual barkeeper tricks, like letting the bottles do a break dance act on the counter, then directing two different liquids into the cocktail glass in intertwining spurts, like the DNA double helix.
In the end I get a green and silver striped drink with a little cloud of fog rising from it like liquid nitrogen.
I’m forced to take a sip under Guillaume’s expectant gaze.

I try not to grimace.
By Gryffindor, that’s worse than Poppy Pomfrey’s coughing potion.
My eyes water.
He’s still watching me. No, he’s watching my shirt.

“Where’s your amulet,” he asks. “You over him?”

Hell, so Draco poured his heart out about mystery man to Guillaume, too.
Well, I guess it’s kind of a classic, with the guy being a bartender.

“That man is ancient history,” I say forcefully, wishing he was.
I hate mystery man.

I can’t very well ask Guillaume if he knows who it is.

And I can’t ask how much my usual drink costs, either, so I throw a gold galleon on the counter.

“What’s that supposed to mean,” Guillaume says.

I got no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

“You don’t want that tip?”

“I want our deal? You are buying my drinks at the Crystal Balls, I’m buying yours here? Remember?”

“I just thought your management might not be okay with that,” I say, floundering.

“Sure they are, they know it’s you,” he says.

“They know it’s me?”

He looks at me like he’s fearing for my mental health.

“You make a place a place to be? Mais cheri, you keep saying that yourself! Don’t tell me you don’t remember that, either!”

I meet his gaze. I have to, else he’s going to start suspecting I’m a fraud.

“Sure I remember,” I say, and then, with as much arrogance as I can muster, “Sure I make a place a place to be. It’s what I do.”

“Now that’s my Draco,” he says, pointing at me with his wiping cloth, and before I can tell him Draco is nobody’s Draco, he leans across the counter and continues talking to me in French.

He’s speaking fucking French.

“It was good talking to you, Guillaume,” I say resolutely, then turn to go.

“Guillaume,” he echoes behind me, as if he didn’t know his own name. I wave and start walking away.

“Hey, what’s the matter! What about your drink!”

I can’t drink that shitty stuff.

I can’t do this going out thing.

Catching one last glimpse of Guillaume’s cobalt fringes and bewildered expression, I turn on my heels and Apparate back to my dorm.

*

Okay. Going out as Draco Malfoy was a flop.

But there’s something else I can do before the effect of the potion wears off I realize when I’m in the hall’s squalid bathroom, peeing.

*

At first I can’t even look at my cock in my hand.
His cock in his hand.

I’ve locked my door with a double Securio hex, and soundproofed my room, too, but this is going to be anything but a relaxed wank.
It’s a mindfuck. It feels like I’m jerking him off.

And Sasha got it right, impressive is the word.

Ten inches.
A girth to match.
And uncircumcised.

I fight down the weirdness and the feeling that somehow, he must know what I’m doing.
Heck, I want to beat off, and I’m going to. I can do it too; it’s not exactly rocket science.

I grab my unfamiliar, extra large erection with both hands and concentrate on getting into a rhythm.
Pump up and down, brush my thumb across the glistening crown every couple of seconds, yeah, it’s not that hard.
It’s pretty damn nice, actually.

Oh yeah, it is, yeah, I’m starting to enjoy myself here.

I tackle the fat shaft more aggressively, and as pleasure and heat are swiftly building in my groin, the soundproofing spell starts to make sense.

God, Merlin, this is good.

Groaning and thrusting, I rub myself towards completion, spurred by the sense of doing the wrong thing.

Now I’m relishing the fact that it’s his cock I’m working; relishing its sheer size and the supple feel of the mobile sheath.
There’s a tiny brown birthmark on it.

God, I’m trespassing.

Oh God, I’m coming.

When I spurt the first shot, it hits me straight in the face. The semen slides down my cheek into my open mouth and it tastes like his scent, that’s Dray’s come on my lips and tongue.
I hear myself whimper.
I can’t think about why I’m making that sound.

There I am in the mirror on the door, there’s Draco sitting on my swivel chair, trousers and shirt undone, sculpted chest heaving, king-size cock shooting come across my desk.

It goes on and on, because the sight is just too hot for me to stop.

Eventually I look away from the mirror and lift my butt, twisting my body so I can push my middle finger into myself.

I’ve done this before, if not using my own come but the stuff from the Muggle drugstore to smooth things along.
I’ve read about it; twenty percent of the straight male population use anal stimulation when they masturbate. It doesn’t make me gay.

But I’m imagining it’s his cock that’s pushing into me. Putting its sperm into me.

And that sure makes me less than a hundred percent straight, and a hundred-and-ten percent a pathetic loser.


Chapter 4: A doctor’s appointment


Three days later, I fall sick. I feel nauseous like never before in my life.
After two days of vomiting every half hour, it gets worse. I can’t even hold my pumpkin juice anymore.

That night, I go see the College healer.

I’ve never done that before.
The College healer has the power to have people sent to St. Mungo’s. The place where they got those torture theatres with the monster lamps under the ceiling.

But then this can’t be anything worse than an especially vicious gastritis. Probably triggered by Guillaume’s disgusting striped drink.
People don’t get surgery for having gastritis.
The healer lady will give me a stomach potion and send me home.

She’s double the size I expected, got freakishly bushy grey eyebrows, and she has seen a tad too many sick students in her time, judging from the way she doesn’t even look up from her parchments when I walk in.
She just gives me a random wave with her wand, apparently a standard request to take off whatever garment is in the way of an examination of the area in question.

I lift my shirt and point at my belly.

“I think I upset my stomach, I had a drink the other night that tasted really weird, and…”

She gets up with quite a bit of puffing. I’m still talking about that drink when she puts her wand to my belly. She bends to peer through the wand like through a telescope for two seconds, then stands and says, “Congratulations, dear. You are expecting.”

Okay.

What?

What was that?

Expecting?

Like in, I’m pregnant?!

“Men don’t get pregnant,” I say. Because they don’t.

Only it seems that they do.
The healer lady gets all worked up at my ignorance, at least to the extent of her capacities. She has laboriously sat down again and scribbles away on a parchment, grumbling to herself.

“They teach all kind of crap at Hogwarts, Divination, Astronomy and what not, and then kids get themselves into trouble because they don’t know the basic facts of life.” She shakes her head, working her eyebrows. “Stuffy professors. Stuffy hypocrites.”

Then she sees that I’m about to fall apart like a third hand Quidditch broom.

She gets up from her chair again, this time surprisingly swiftly, hands me a petri dish and pushes me down on the cot by the wall. And then she starts talking. Pausing after every other word, like she thinks I was mentally challenged and needed the extra time to follow.
I do, actually.

“Right, dear, men do get pregnant, at least wizards do. A wizard can get pregnant from another wizard. All it needs is semen being deposited in the anal canal. In the butt. Male pregnancy is very rare though, because it only happens when the sperm donor is the birth father’s ultimate mate. Okay?”

The birth father’s ultimate…

“But he isn’t. He’s no such thing. We aren’t anything like… ultimate mates.”

“Oh,” she says, her thick brows wrinkling up. It makes her look like a character from the Magical Muppet Show, and almost empathetic. “The sperm father isn’t committed to you? I’m sorry.”

She’s kind of nice really, but I’m not in a place where I could appreciate it. I’m kind of preoccupied with words like sperm father, and my life coming crashing down on me.

“But how can I be pregnant from … from …”

“It’s reproductive wizard biomagic. Complicated field. The fact is, a pregnancy can occur in a wizard if, and only if, he feels bonded to his sex partner.”

“Bonded,” I parrot.

“Bonded, like in marriage? Wedlock? Lifelong monogamy? Simply put, the emotion activates hormones in the wizard’s body that make it receptive to the partner’s sperm. It’s not required that the other wizard is on the same page, so to speak, for his sperm to take root in the birth father’s body. Your body.”

My head is spinning, and I can’t talk to this woman about what really happened.
I can’t talk about me using Draco’s body to jerk off, and about putting a finger in me, a finger covered in Draco’s sperm.

She rummages in her healer’s kit that seems to be as spacious inside as Hermione’s beaded handbag, and digs up a pile of leaflets.

Fast facts for single parent wizards. Male pregnancy, your baby’s magical first year, Ministry support and everything you need to know.

Oh my God.
I’m going to be a single parent wizard.

I must have turned even greener than I was when I first came in here. The healer lady looks at me, brows twitching, then does some more rummaging in her kit.
Handing me a vial with a clear liquid, she tells me to down it.

“I’m afraid you’ll suffer from nausea for the whole course of the pregnancy. That would be for another ten to twelve weeks.”

What, ten to twelve weeks? She can’t be serious. Nobody can be expected to deal with regular vomiting for that amount of time.

She doesn’t seem to realize that though. She’s all breezy now, all positive.

“See? It’s not that bad. You’ll be done in less than three months’ time, that’s a third of what women go through. It’s going to put a strain on your body, I won’t lie about that, but you’ll deal.” She grins serenely, then says, “We’ll get the kid with a small operation, nothing worse than an appendix operation. It has proven to do much less damage than natural childbirth with males. Just make sure you come to the hospital as soon as you experience the first contractions. That’ll leave the healers a couple of hours to prepare you for the operation. Don’t worry, dear. You’ll be fine.”

I’ll be fine??

I almost scoff.

Now I’m going to have an operation, too?

Like having the world as I know it go to shit and getting leaflets about single parenthood wasn’t enough, I’m expected to walk into St. Mungo’s and let them cut me up all over again?

“Don’t forget to enrol him at Hogwarts. You can do it before the birth. You’ll want to secure him a place.”

Him.

It’s a son.

“It’s a popular school.”

I nod. At least that, I know.

I walked in here expecting to get a stomach potion.

Now I’m going to enrol a kid at Hogwarts.
My son.

My and Draco Malfoy’s son.

Draco.

Merlin, he can never know.




Chapter 5: A visitor


I’ve moved to a studio in a Muggle tower block outside London. The rent is really cheap; I’ll be able to stay in this flat for a while. Even if they take away my grant. They are going to, because I’m not going to college anymore.
I can’t go to lectures with this vomiting thing going on. And even less so with my waistline corrupted like it is.

I have to drop out, anyway. I can’t go to lectures with a baby, can I.

I’m going to have a baby.
In two months’ time. Already, my stomach looks like I swallowed a bludger.

The one good thing being, I never really made any friends in college, so no one is going to come look for me and see it.

I told Ron and Hermione that I can’t meet up at the moment because I took on two more elective courses on Evidence in Wizarding Law and am buried in work.

And I broke up with Ginny. Over the wand.
Because how could I face her, looking all pregnant?
She doesn’t know about the baby, and she never will. I will figure out a way to keep it a secret.

Because how could I ever face her?

Yeah, maybe I didn’t technically cheat on her, but having a baby sure makes it look like I did.
Talk about prima facie evidence.

And what’s worse; to anyone who has read the fast facts on wizard pregnancy, the baby is proof of guilt that I’m in love for life with someone else. With a guy.
What’s worse is, if I don’t keep the baby a secret forever, there’s the risk that he’ll learn what happened.

I can’t face Ginny, but I sure as hell can never ever face him.

No. I’ve got to do this in secret, on my own.

To be on the safe side, I put a Concealment Charm on my flat so it can’t be tracked. It’s a bit like back in the old days when I needed to hide from the Dark Lord.
Only now I’m alone, and I can’t hide from what’s going to happen to me.

All I can do is wait. And watch my belly expand like the frigging universe. And imagine going to St. Mungo’s to have a fucking operation.

Oh Merlin, I’m scared shitless.

*

Ten weeks down.
Two more to go.

I’m looking like I swallowed a keg of butterbeer now.
And I’m thinking of St. Mungo’s all the fucking time.

I can’t go there. I can’t.

There’s just one solution, I’m going to do that other thing, natural childbirth. Spontaneous delivery.

Apparently people bleed to death when they try that. At least wizards do; forty-two point eight percent of them. At least that’s what they say in my leaflet.
But I can’t go to St. Mungo’s.

There’s fifty-seven point two percent who don’t bleed to death, and I might very well be one of them.

I can’t go to St. Mungo’s.

A fifty-seven point two percent chance of survival isn’t zero.

*

I’m scared. Scared.

SCARED.

*

Draco is at my door.

There was a knock, and I threw my cloak on, holding it together above my bare belly and slipping sweatpants, and opened the door, expecting to see the owl from the Wizard Welfare Office. I applied for Housing Benefit, and there have been a lot of letters going back and forth with requests for bank certificates and supplementary information and stuff like that. I got used to having that owl rap on my door, I expected that owl.

And instead it’s him, looking like an actor playing Hollywood’s ultimate ladykiller.

Slacks and a fitting white shirt and his shiny hair grown so it falls into his eyes, eyes all stormy, like he hexed them black.

How did he find me? How…

He’s pushing past me, looking around.

“Why did you leave!” he demands, voice sharp. “Why didn’t you tell anyone a thing? Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? If you chose for some reason to quit your course and move to this dump, I’d have expected you to at least tell me goodbye!”

He expected me to say goodbye.

When I don’t answer, because I can’t line up any words, he marches over to the window like he meant to do something about it, then stops like he forgot what it was.
When he turns around to me, his face is all flushed. It’s blotchy, really.
I’ve never seen him with a blotchy face.

“You’re the best law student at LCWL. You’re the fucking Einstein of Wizarding Law, damnit, you care for that stuff! You can’t drop out! I won’t accept it!”

He runs a hand up his brow, through his hair. It stands on end.
I’ve never seen him with his hair standing on end.

I stare at him. He gives himself a shake.

“I can’t be expected to find someone else to lend me their notes,” he says. “Can I”.

“Dray…”

His hand flutters in a gesture encompassing my unappealing bedsitter.

“What were you thinking, using Concealment Charms on your hidey hole! You thought I wouldn’t find you like that?”

This isn’t about him.
At least he can’t know it is.

“You should go, Dray.”

He turns on me as if I had cast a Slapping Curse at him, eyes ablaze.

“You look like shit, man! Something happened to you! And you are going to tell me what it is, now!”

It’s the moment I break.

I pull the cloak away from my stomach.

His jaw drops.

I don’t care, I’m beyond caring.

I might die of spontaneous delivery, or worse, have surgery.

I tell him, I tell him that I’m pregnant. Safe for how it happened, I tell him everything, and when I get to the part with the surgery, I start crying.

“I can’t have an operation!” I choke. “I can’t do it. I won’t. I’m not going to St. Mungo’s!”

Maybe a part of me hoped he’d sweep me into his arms and tell me that there won’t be any operation, because he knows a charm that’ll get the kid out of me just like that. Maybe that part of me imagined he’d then proceed to tell me he loves me.

But he keeps to his place by the window, still as a statue, all through my outburst.
When I’m done, his eyes on me are like sharpened stones.

“You aren’t serious,” he says in a clipped tone. As if he thought I was winding him up. It helps me pull myself together.

“I am. I’m pregnant. I know it’s weird, but it can happen to wizard males…”

“I know. I’m not judging you for being pregnant, Harry, for Merlin’s sake. I’m telling you you need to have the kid at St. Mungo’s. Harry. You can’t do this on your own; here.”

He seems to really dislike my apartment.

“I can, too,” I say, intending to sound mutinous. I don’t, though. My voice is like a frightened kitten’s.

“You can’t give birth like a woman, Harry. You’re going to get ripped up if you try!”

He steps up to me.

“Darling. I don’t mean to scare you. But you need to understand. You need to let me take you to St. Mungo’s when you have that kid, else you might die. I won’t have you die. You understand?”

I nod.

He nods, too.

“Right. When is your due date.”

That moment, something rips through me, something so powerful my heart seems to stop.
When I can see again, I’m in his arms.

“Okay, darling, it’s starting. Don’t panic. Just hold on. I’m Apparating you to St. Mungo’s.”




Chapter 6: Daylight


A hospital is a place where you stop being a person. You stop being someone who acts, who’s in charge of themselves.

The moment you Apparate beyond those gates, you have delivered yourself up to the system and its supernatural powers.

Outside that place, you might have been The Saviour, or at least someone, but once you’re inside you become that thing called a patient, a unit to be worked on, with vital functions, but no life of its own. All that’s expected of you is to suffer, and comply.
And it’s what you do, because you’ve got no fucking choice. And I’ve been sent through hell over and over at this place, and I couldn’t take even the smell of it if it wasn’t for Draco by my side.

I let him do the talking at the reception desk, holding on to his arm like to a lifeline, waiting in terror for what’s going to happen to me.

The receptionist looks like she’s bored out of her mind by her job, obviously considering her option to order us to go to the waiting area and just stay there for the foreseeable future.
But then another one of those contractions starts rolling, and I go to my knees even as I’m trying to cover it up.
And I know I’ve set the wheels of the place in motion. –


When I resurface from that wave of pain, I’m sitting in a wheelchair, someone has hexed my clothes off of me and replaced them with a hospital gown, and a plastic bracelet with my name on it is attaching itself to my wrist like a handcuff.

I’m being asked to lie down on a gurney by a freakishly fit-looking, shaven-headed nurse who never brooked any opposition in his life I’m sure, then am whisked off to an examination room.

Draco edges himself through the door behind the gurney. I strain my neck to keep him in my line of sight.

“You can’t be in here,” the nurse says.

“I want him here,” I croak from where I’ve been parked in a corner.

“Who are you,” the nurse barks at Dray.

“I’m a friend of Mr. Potter’s...”

“Sorry, only family members allowed on the labour ward.”

He opens the door and motions to Draco to leave. I close my eyes so I don’t have to watch him go.

“I’m staying with him,” Draco says.

“Family only, mister,” the nurse retorts. “This is the rules.”

“And what about people who got no fucking family,” Draco says, the blotches on his face reappearing. “You fucking know he got none! Fuck, he’s the fucking Saviour, for fuck’s sake!”

I’ve never heard him use the f-word before, or refer to me as The Saviour without a trace of irony for that matter, so I’m pretty stunned by that answer.

The nurse needs a second to recover, too, then says, “You don’t get it, mister. There’s no point in staying. He’s going to have his operation really soon.”

“That’s okay. I’m going to stay for the operation, too.”

That moment, another contraction hits. I can’t stop myself from uttering a whimper. Because it really hurts, and because I’m going to have an operation.

Draco is by my side, his hand digging into my shoulder. It feels like he’s trembling. Or maybe it’s me.

“It’s going to be okay, darling,” he says, and then, with his voice all different again, all imperious, “Do something, for Merlin’s sake! Can’t you see he needs a Painkiller Charm? Do your fucking job, man!”

I want to tell him to stop, because you can’t say fuck to hospital staff like that. I need him by my side for as long as possible, I can’t have him be removed by some security wizard with a baton for a wand, and he will be if he shouts at the nurse…

But the next thing that happens is the nurse murmuring a spell, and the pain in my stomach lessening, I’m being helped climb onto a bed, and then I receive a briefing on what’s going to happen.
I’ll have another couple of hours until the operation, because we need to wait until there won’t be any more pauses in between contractions, or so the nurse tells me. Apparently the baby needs to be exposed to those for as long as possible so there won’t be any trouble with his breathing later.

The nurse announces he’ll be back in half an hour to shave me and put magical electrodes on me so they can monitor my heartbeat, and the kid’s, too. And then he leaves, looking past Draco as if he wasn’t there.

He did it, he stood up to a fucking nurse and got away with it.
He changed the rules.
I’d be at his feet with how much I worship him if I weren’t already lying flat on my back.

There’s still that operation waiting down the road, but it makes just a world of a difference to not be alone.
He’ll stay. He’s going to keep me company.

For the next couple of hours.

That means that sooner or later he’ll ask me The Question.

Whose is it.

*

He doesn’t do it.

There’s only this short moment when he busies himself with conjuring a spouted cup and says, his back towards me, his voice all light, “And here I was thinking you were this old-fashioned guy, waiting for the right man to come along, then marry and live happily ever after. But it seems you simply got your fun discreetly.”

“You knew? You know that I’m… I’m…”

“Gay? Of course I knew. Tried to coax you out of the closet, but that didn’t work out, did it. Well, I know why now. You were in a secret relationship. With someone you felt was your mate.”

Of course, he knows how male pregnancy in wizards works. He knows everything, he doesn’t need a silly leaflet with the fast facts. He’s gay and open about it and informed, not a clueless idiot like me.

He has handed me the cup, sitting down on a stool next to my bed. When I’ve obediently sipped some water, he takes the cup from my hand and puts it on the window sill, then leans forward.

“Harry. Where’s the bastard. Why did he leave you.”

I want to say something, feed him that story I haven’t really made up yet, but instead I am swallowed by another contraction. It goes on for almost half a minute this time, leaving me sweaty and a tad disoriented.

“Sorry,” he says when it’s over. “O Merlin, sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Here, have some more water.”

He lets go of my hand and gets me the cup again.

He’s been holding my hand.

The door swings open and the nurse comes in with a razor wand and a handful of electrodes.

He asks “May I,” the way they do it at hospitals, not really asking at all, then Vanishes my gown. It wasn’t much of a gown, but it did its job and covered up my body.

I can’t look at Draco. My belly is enormous.
And it doesn’t help that the nurse is putting foam on it to shave off my pleasure trail now. Hell, I look like a frigging giant plum pudding.

At least I’m wearing one of those funny hospital panties that look like a saucy mini skirt.

But Draco isn’t looking at my belly.

He’s looking at my chest.

Yeah, he has never seen my scars.
O Merlin, he has never seen the ugliness that is my mauled chest.
I think of his, a Greek statue’s immaculate beauty, and for a moment I could cry for being so damaged.

Then the nurse moves the razor wand up my chest and I cry for real, because it makes my scars hurt like hell.

“Stop this, you moron,” Draco cries. “You can’t do that!”

“I need to remove his chest hair so I can hex on the electrodes,” the nurse replies, but he has stopped moving the razor wand.

With a swift motion, Draco reaches out and takes the razor from his hand.

“I’m going to do it,” he says. And turning his back on the nurse, he bends over me, hair curtaining his face, and lowers the wand onto my chest. And then he starts moving the wand tip across the skin in between my scars, slowly, millimetre by millimetre.

“Yeah, I don’t have that kind of time,” the nurse says sourly.

“Then you should thank Merlin I’m here to help you out,” Draco says, his eyes intent on what he’s doing.

“You aren’t even authorized to be here, mister,” the nurse grumbles. But it’s clearly a rearguard action, and on leaving, he tells Draco to send him a wand message when he’s done.

*

The healer who’s going to do the surgery has come check on me and says we’ll operate before nightfall.
It’s obviously not going to be me who’s going to do any operating, however the guy chooses to phrase things.
I’m going to be the one who’ll get cut up.
Before nightfall.

I’m so scared. And so exhausted. The constantly renewed assaults of the contractions have started to wear me out. When I ask for another pain charm, the healer says I mustn’t have any more of those, because they might affect the kid.

Draco shoots the guy a murderous glance that’s not quite warranted, and the nurse, too, then tells me he knows I can do it.
But I get a glimpse of helplessness in his expression.

When we are alone again, he calls his mother, and a few minutes later her owl is at the window, with a box of chocolates attached to his leg.

The window is a hospital window that doesn’t open to Alohomora so people won’t try and jump out, but Draco is a Slytherin who knows his shit. He Vanishes the glass, then quickly unties the box and sends the owl on his way with a short tickle under the wing.

It’s the smallest of things, that tickling. Giving the family owl a routine caress.
But it’s what suddenly makes me see. Yes, at that moment it strikes me full force how I never got what he is, not even during the last year when he became my friend, and I developed that monster crush.

How I never really saw the wonderful, loving, caring person he is.

I take a piece of chocolate from his hands, returning his smile, hoping he’ll miss the wave of wild, desperate affection that’s pulsing through me.

I’ve just put the chocolate in my mouth when the nurse is back, probably drawn by a sixth sense for funny business.

He checks the window, which looks exactly like before. He prods against the glass, then peeks through, then he looks at me and sees I’ve got something in my mouth.

“What is that. What you eating.”

“It’s just a piece of chocolate,” Draco says, stepping between me and the nurse.

The nurse says Draco can’t give me chocolates.

Dray says it’s hardly making sense to make me watch my waistline at the moment, then adds that the chocolates are completely absorbable so there is no danger of asphyxia under anaesthesia.

I love his smoothness and how he knows these medical terms and the way he’s shielding me. Merlin, I love everything about him. But the nurse clearly doesn’t.

He says that Draco being allowed to be here is a gesture of pure goodwill on the part of St. Mungo’s, and that he better behave accordingly.

“Sorry, sir, will keep it in mind,” Draco says, because I told him he mustn’t call the nurse moron.
But when the guy has left, he makes a face at the door that nearly has me cough up the chocolate it’s so hilariously disrespectful.

He has this knack for lightening the mood, in his very own Dray way. Ever since we met up again as fellow students, every single day, he has made me forget what’s burdensome with his ironic outlook and snarky comments, and he’s doing it even now.

I laugh up at him, and before I can start thinking about things again, he asks me if I already have a name.

I have. I’m going to call the kid Day.
And I realize I should discuss this with Draco, since he’s the other father.

“It’s Day, short for Daylight,” I say, observing him.

“Daylight,” he says slowly. “Yeah, I like that. Day, huh? Sounds a bit like Dray.”

I know it does.

“And light, that’s like my second name, Lucius,” he says, his brow furrowing.

The nurse comes back into the room, and for the first time I’m happy to see him.
But only for ten seconds or so.

He checks my belly with his wand again, then says, “Fine. The slime plug is going to get discharged any moment now.”

Oh man, it’s just great.
I’m at St. Mungo’s, waiting to have an operation, and with my stomach giving me hell every couple of minutes, and now Draco heard that nurse talking about slime plugs coming out of my ass.

I’m spared nothing here.

When the nurse is gone, I tell Draco he can go now.

“You mad? I’m not going anywhere. You hear me? I’m staying.”

And actually witness that plug thing coming out? I don’t think so.

“You got to go. You are missing all your classes,” I groan.

“I quit.”

“What? You can’t do that! You told me I can’t quit…”

“You can’t quit. You’re going to be a kick-ass lawyer. I’m going to switch to Business and Finance. London School of Wizarding Economics.”

Business and Finance. Huh. Makes much more sense somehow. I can totally see him as a banker. Wearing thousand-galleon suits, making millions with shrewd schemes on the edge of shady, and not giving a shit if people call him a Shrake.

“Why didn’t you enrol there in the first place, Dray?”

“What do you think why, Einstein? Didn’t get in,” he says smoothly. Too smoothly. Suddenly I feel that somewhere here, there’s been a Slytherin-style master plan at work.

“Listen,” I start, then the next contraction chokes me off, bringing tears to my eyes. And this time, it doesn’t stop. Wave after wave comes crashing over me.

Drowning in the pain, I hear Draco run to the door and scream for help.

*

There’s a lull. My body is weirdly numb, and my mind is, too, but I register my surroundings again.

People all about, the room filled with hustling activity.
My belly going cold with disinfectant potion. The stench of it.

Draco being ordered to stay back, and refusing, Draco holding my hand, wearing a green mask and cloak.

The surgeon stretching out his hands to have the nurse hex on the gloves.
The anaesthetist healer with a syringe wand.

He tells me it’s a local anaesthesia, and how all their male patients have their Caesarean with a local anaesthesia, and how it’s so great that birthing fathers are able to stay conscious during the operation these days so they can welcome their baby.

With the last bit of breath I got left in my body I tell the guy to knock me out.

It’s my only chance to get through this I know, a general anaesthetic, the kind that never worked on me when they tried to get Voldemort’s venom out of my system.

The healer asks me if I’m sure, then directs the syringe wand at my temple, starting to murmur the spell for the general anaesthetic. I brace myself for the final prick into my arm.

“Wait, Harry,” Draco says.
The healer lowers his wand. The surgeon takes a step back.
In the middle of all the anguish, I still marvel at how Draco does it, make these hospital guys give him space to talk to me.
He isn’t even authorized to be here, yet they treat him like he was a Windsor or something, yeah, it’s like he was wizard Prince William and I the Duchess of Cambridge about to be delivered of his firstborn.

“Harry,” he says, and his face before mine eclipses everyone else, everything else. “You’ll regret that later. This is going to be all different from your other operations. This is about your kid. Daylight. That’s about as far from dark magic as you can get, right?”

“But I’m scared.”

I hate how small my voice sounds.

“You won’t look into the lamps. You’ll look at me.”

The next contraction hits. When I emerge from it, I’m secured to the bed with magical straps, and the mattress is soaked in sweat. There’s blood trickling from the corner of my mouth. I bit down on my tongue. And I can already feel the next pain rolling.

“We have to do it now,” the healer says to Draco. “Local or general?”

“Darling?” Dray says, his voice giving out.

“Local,” I groan around my swollen tongue. “Local, for fuck’s sake.”

*

While they perform the anaesthesia spells, Draco stays by my side and talks to me the whole time.

“You’ll be fine, darling. This is simple surgery spells, it’s all routine, and you’ll heal in no time. And you’ll see Daylight. Just a couple more minutes now, darling, and you’ll see him.”

*

I can feel them do the surgery. I feel the magic of the scalpel wand slice through me, but it doesn’t hurt.
The lamps are there, above me. But I don’t see their glaring monster’s eyes, I only see Draco’s.

Draco’s beloved eyes and his hands holding mine are all that’s real.

And then I feel them touch the kid, they unearth him from where he started his life in obscurity, inside me, and my body tries to hold on to him, and can’t.

*

They put the kid in my arms, and I’m clinging to Draco’s gaze, needing him to lead me over this abyss.

“You did it,” he says from behind his mask, and the grey of his irises has dissolved to glistening silver. “You’ve done it, darling.”

I’ve done it.
It’s over. They still need to patch me up, but I’m holding the little creature that is my son cradled against my chest and Draco is laughing and crying with me, and all is well.

Suddenly I’m flooded with such joy my soul isn’t big enough to absorb it. My hands are moving over the kid, taking in the perfect little form, just feeling.
It’s what I got hands for, I realize, for getting to know my son, for cupping his silky head and supporting his frail weight that’s the weight of the world.

And finally I look at him, really look at him.
Daylight. My baby boy.

He isn’t covered in blood or anything, he’s like freshly bathed, rosy and glowing, his wispy hair a halo of light, and his eyes so, so clear. They look like they’re still seeing the last shine of the beyond, where he came from.
And they are the most beautiful of greys. Like his father’s.

He’s every bit like Draco. He’s the spitting image of him.

“Congratulations,” the nurse says somewhere in the back, his voice gone all soft. “To you, too, mister. Why didn’t you tell us you’re the sperm father?”

And now Draco looks at Day, too, and I can hear him stop breathing. I can feel him turn to ice.

Suddenly his hands on mine are cold, like ice.

The surgeon tells me I’m fine and the baby is fine and that we’ll have some time to ourselves now. Then everybody leaves.
It’s just Draco, me, and Daylight.

But Draco is gone from my side, from our side. He’s by the window, his back turned to the room.

“He’s my son? Harry. He’s my son, too? Merlin, I…”

His voice sounds so agonized and helpless I hardly recognize it.
And it seems I’ve lost mine.

“Harry, if he’s my son, I can’t leave. I can’t do that.”

He turns to me.

“Your mate left. So maybe there’s a father’s slot free for me. Maybe you got some use for me.”

I still can’t speak. He gives a hoarse laugh.

“You don’t want me in your life, do you. Or in his. You’d rather raise him alone than have me around. I get it. I’m just this kid you know who’s trying to make everyone forget he’s a Death Eater…”

Something like a dry cough chokes him off.
It’s intolerable.
He’s a self-centred pleasure-seeker who’s living the high life of the socially blessed and never loses his cool.
I can’t bear to see him break like this.

It seems I was too busy with my own traumas to realize about his, and how deep they run. He’s still suffering from the past, and he’s obviously suffering much more than I ever realized because of his mystery man. The asshole who rejected him and made him feel he’s worthless. That must be why he assumes he’s being rejected by me now, too; why he’s saying these horrible things.
Why he’s still making this horrible, coughing sound.

I need to touch him, do just something, stroke his hair, or feed him a chocolate so he’ll stop. But he’s too far away, and I can’t walk.

“Dray. Do you know how it happened? How our kid happened?”

“Sure I do. You polyjuiced into me, then had sex with your friend,” he says thickly.

He thinks Day is his son because I love someone else, who fucked me while I was Polyjuice Draco.
He knows about the Polyjuice.

“You know about the Polyjuice? That it was me?”

“Come on,” he says with a faint scoff, sounding a bit more like his old self. “People have asked me about my plaid shirt and combat trousers, and insulted me for dancing like a moron. Apparently I ordered pumpkin juice, too. I am no Einstein, but I can put two and two together. You decided you wanted to try out night life after all, but didn’t want anyone to know you’re gay. So you took the first available gay guy’s hair…”

This is so far from the truth, and he needs to know the truth, because our son has just been born and there can’t be any lies. Not at this moment.

“I didn’t polyjuice into you then had sex with a friend,” I say, then close my eyes and take the plunge. “I polyjuiced into you then had sex with myself.”

*

I’ve never seen a person change like he does in the fifteen second it takes him to process this admission. It’s like he polyjuiced into someone else. Into his old, fifth-year self.
He’s all self-satisfied, swaggering, insufferable Malfoy.

He has figured it out. He knows what I did, and that it could lead to Day for one reason only.

He knows that he, Draco Malfoy, is officially, certifiably, magically approved, the love of my life.

It’s cringe-worthy, but I wanted to make him stop crying, and I did.

It’s nice that he’s better. I really wish he wouldn’t look so extremely smug, though.

He has pulled his amulet from his shirt. It’s a beating silver heart. He contemplates it, then shoves it down his pocket like it was an old sweet wrapper to be discarded later.
He’s laughing, looking at me, shaking his head and laughing again like really pleased with himself.

Now it’s me who feels humiliated and worthless.

I guess I should be used to the feeling by now. It’s been my main emotion for the last academic year.

Only somehow I can’t deal anymore.

I guess you can’t give birth to a baby holding hands with the other father, who’s also the man you’ve tried not to be in love with for almost a year, without having your mind kind of reorganized.

For a couple of hours, my life was worth the pain. And it was pain of the serious kind. I was hurting and freaking out because of the healers and the lamps, but I was with him, and he stood by me, and it was all I’d have ever dreamt of, if I had ever dared to.

And then that perfect moment when his arm was around me and Day. Like we were family.
Like this was our future that was starting.

It’s not required that the sperm father is on the same page, so to speak.

I bury my face in Day’s hair.

“Hey, hey what is it, Harry!”

He’s gone down on his knees by my bedside, looking up at me, and his hand goes to my face. His thumb strokes up my cheeks, catching the tears.

“What’s wrong? Are you in pain? Shall I call the nurse?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Shall I take Day? You need rest, darling. You been through a lot.”

The way he cares, really cares, makes it so much worse.
And the way he’s holding Day, cradling him, rocking him against his chest and kissing his head.

It didn’t take him even a moment to start loving his son.

God, I know why I fell in love with this man, even if I didn’t have the brains to realize it when it happened.

He loves our son.
At least he loves our son.

Fuck those tears. What’s left of my dignity is dissolving in a puddle of salt water and snot.

He doesn’t seem to notice. He gets Day to sleep with a funny little song about flying on a broom on a fine day. It’s a traditional tune from the Malfoy nursery or so he’s telling me, and now he’s bending over the baby cot by the window to carefully lower him into it.

“You know, Harry, I feel cheated,” he says, standing.

Okay. I guess we have to have this talk, so better get it over with.

“I know,” I say, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not okay to polyjuice into someone without asking their permission. And then… I know I messed up. I made you a father and you never got to make that decision…”

“You didn’t get that one right, Einstein. I feel cheated you made me a father and I never got to sleep with you.”

I open my mouth, then shut it, blushing like never before.
He’s still standing by the cot, arms crossed now, smiling sardonically.

“Are you going to blush every time I talk about sex?”

“I… what… no, I…” I splutter.

“…Because if you do, I’m going to talk about it a lot more in the future. You look totally kissable when you blush.”

In the future?

Kissable?

He’s walking up to my bed. I stare up at him, like a rabbit ready to be eaten. He bends down to me.

“Fuckable.”

I feel myself blushing harder.

“Merlin, Harry,” he says. “You need to say something at some point. You can’t have a guy come on to you and never ever say anything in return. The minimum would be, sod off, jackass.”

He’s coming on to me. When he knows I love him.

“Don’t sod off, jackass,” I murmur.

His face lights up.

“Now you’ve said it. You want me.”

“You know I do,” I whisper.

“It’s still nice to be told to not sod off.”

He dugs up the silver heart from his pocket and looks down at it. It’s vibrating in his palm with its strange, magical pulse.

“I’ve been wearing this for years. Since seventh year. Remember when you wrestled my wand from my hand in Malfoy Manor?” He laughs, shaking his head. “That was a moment in the middle of hell, but you touched me, and all I wanted was make it last. And the last thing I did with my wand before I let it go was cut a curl from your hair. You never noticed, did you. That’s the beauty of messy hair.”

I don’t understand what he’s telling me. He let me take his wand? Is that why it gave me its allegiance, is that why I could beat the Dark Lord? –
He took hair from me, too?

“I used it for a hex. Locked it into this heart and charmed it. Wearing it made me feel like you were mine.” He smirks, looking like a total crook, and beyond vulnerable.

My mind reels. He’s been wearing that heart for mystery man. He’s in love with mystery man. He’s telling me the guy is me. That’s what he just said.

I’m mystery man.

He puts the amulet on the nightstand, dismissing it, turning to me.

“See, darling? I want you, too.”

He doesn’t call people darling.
Only me.
Because I’m mystery man.

I can’t process this. I’ve just had an operation, and a baby, and now the man I had resigned myself to pine for in vain for the rest of my life is telling me he wants me.

“Why would you want me?”

I search for his smirk, because that kind of line surely deserves it. But it isn’t there.
There’s no smirk, no wink, no laughter in his eyes. Their cool grey suddenly looks like molten, strangely sizzling. It scares me and makes my heart flutter with something very different from fear.

But I really don’t get it.

“You can’t even be respecting me,” I say.

His brows come up.

“Why wouldn’t I respect you, Harry.”

“I drink pumpkin juice and I’m this terrible dresser,” I blurt.

Now he scoffs, and smirks.

“Oh yes, you do, and you are. But you’re also hero. No, let me say it. Just this once. I don’t mean the hero from the headlines. I mean the true one. Who had the courage to take on an evil others didn’t even dare name. And who defeated that evil because he was the only one who had the strength. And who paid the price for it. Harry.”

His voice is catching in his throat, but he goes on.

“You could have hardened with what happened to you, to make it hurt less. Or just give up. You could have sought refuge in vanity, or party potions. But you didn’t. You’re too noble and too strong for any that. There’s not a soul on earth I respect more than you, Harry.”

I look at him, silent, because I know he’ll never spell this out again. Then I ask, “But why would you want me.”

Yeah, it’s a real bad line, and now I’ve said it twice. But still, why would he?

He shakes his head at me.

“Okay, so you really want me to spell it all out. Perhaps I was wrong about that vanity and nobility of character thing. Right. Okay then.”

He sits down by my bed like for a bedtime story.

“I want you because you are the cutest guy I ever met. You could wear a pillow case and still look delicious. Shut up, I know you do, I used Transmuros on the dorm showers once. Yeah, sue me, lawyer. I know you got the perfect Snow White colouring all over, and the most wonderful hip bones and just enough muscle to not be meagre. I know you’re more hung than you’ve got a right to with your modest size. Quiet, I’m not done. Your hair makes me want to run my hands through it for the rest of my life. Your eyes give me wet dreams. And your lips, the way they stretch when you smile, the way they fill out when you listen…”

His eyes have zoned in on my mouth.

And then he bends forward and kisses me.

I’ve always imagined I’d implode when he’d do that.
I don’t.

I faint from it.

When I’ve fought my way back to consciousness, he has pulled back, looking shell shocked.
It’s too humiliating for words. But then I guess you could say I have been through a lot.

“You okay, darling? Merlin, I’m sorry, Harry. I wasn’t thinking. You need to rest…”

He steps back from the bed as if he didn’t trust himself to keep his hands and mouth off of me.

O hell, I love that.

“You know, Dray, I feel cheated, too,” I say, gingerly sitting up. “That I got pregnant from you when I never even went out with you that night.”

“Really,” he says.

His eyes are suddenly dancing, full of mischief.

“Then that’s what we’re going to do, as soon as you’re back on your feet. Do things in the right order at last. Get a babysitter, go to a club. Dance… and then who knows what might happen.”

His smile hits me in the heart, then slithers down to my groin and all the way to the tip of my toes.

“You are asking me out. You want to go out with me.”

“I do, darling.”

I know he’s just answering my question. I know it’s absurd to feel this hospital room has just turned into something like a temple of God, just because he told me he’s going to take me to a gay club. But then he says it again, quietly, solemnly, the smirk gone.

“I do.”

And this time I know it’s not just in my ears, this time I know it’s a promise.

Sacred, and for life.




Chapter 7: Going out


He’s at the door of our tiny student family housing flat to pick me up.
He left for a walk twenty minutes earlier to be able to do that.

His outfit is the same he wore that night at the dorm when he tried to talk me into hitting the clubs with him.

He looks like he’s from another star.

I polyjuiced into him, but I never looked anything like him, I realize. Because his beauty isn’t just in his features and his physical perfection, it’s in his way of moving, in his grace and his easy, natural superiority.

He steps up to me and his hand is on my shoulder, lightly, as he brushes a kiss on my brow.
I strongly feel the intimacy of it, the monopolizing, as if we didn’t yet know each other and he meant to stake his claims right at the beginning of our first night out.

He asks me if I got someone dependable who’ll lend me their notes, because I have skipped the evening lecture on Law of Charmed Negotiable Instruments, then compliments me on my outfit.
It’s black jeans and a plaid shirt.
Plaid has had a revival; people are wearing it all over the place these days. I suspect it’s got to do with the fact that Draco Malfoy chose to wear a plaid shirt to Bernie’s the other night.
That shirt is not what I’m wearing tonight though; my shirt is new and fitted, because Dray put in a veto against my old one. Inspecting our reflection in the mirror by the front door, I tell him he had a point.

Day cries a bit when we kiss him goodbye, and Narcissa tells us to make it quick.
She forces a chocolate on both of us, because young parents are sleep-deprived and “need all the energy they can get.”

Grandmothers are supposed to say things like that and hand out sweets I know, though I never had one. But Narcissa Malfoy is not your textbook Granny with her supermodel mane and gowns and air of sexy sophistication. Plus, she’s a Slytherin.

I’ve come to think there’s more to those chocolates than meets the eye. But I trust her like a Molly Weasley these days, and I do need all the energy I can get tonight, so I take two pieces.

We kiss Day again, and he realizes something’s amiss and starts crying.

Narcissa shows him his teddy bear and sings that song, Out in the garden, on each fine day, with my snitch I like to play, I fly my broom, I fly my broom, I fly my broom on each fine day…, and motions to us to use the moment, and we do it and Disapparate, feeling like criminals.

We Apparate in the street before the house, giggling. Our gazes meet, and we fall silent in synchrony, and then Dray puts his hands to both my shoulders and leans forward and kisses me.
He doesn’t pull me in, and his deliberate restraint fills me with breathless anticipation.

He takes me to Bernie’s.

When we walk from the Apparition VIP lounge into the club, I trail a couple of steps behind him, feeling dizzy, and it’s not the aftershocks of Apparition. I feel like in a dream, this is so surreal.
I’m back at Bernie’s, with Draco as my date.

He moves through the crowd with utter confidence, and o yeah, this couldn’t be any more different from the first time I came.
It’s like a home match now, no fear, almost no nerves.

Every couple of steps Dray turns to give me his smile, teeth flashing, and it sends a thrill down my body that I think I’ll drop to my knees, or else fly away.
I don’t take in the surroundings. It’s all blue lights and faces to me, because I have eyes only for him.

*

Draco heads for the bar to buy us a drink.
When he says hello to Guillaume, I realize I did everything wrong as Polyjuice Draco.

I didn’t ruffle Guillaume’s blue fringes. I didn’t let him kiss me.
I didn’t call him Joe.
Apparently nobody calls him Guillaume.

What does he wear the silly name tag for then?

And he can call himself Joe all he wants, he’s still a French guy with hair that’s way too blue.

But of course Draco wouldn’t mind that. The obvious truth is, he likes it.

I’m positively grateful when a group of three sexy boys walk up to us with the unmasked intention of ganging up on Draco to get into his pants. They wedge themselves between me and Draco, interrupting Joe-Guillaume, who has started to talk French.

I step back to give them space to do their thing.

Anything so I don’t have to listen to any French.

Draco realizes something isn’t right at that point.
He shoves the three guys to the side, nods at Joe and pulls me away.

“Hey darling! What is it.”

I can’t tell him that. It’s not cool to be jealous. Least of all of a Frenchman.
His gaze follows mine, and he laughs and pulls me backwards into his embrace so I feel every muscle in his body.

“Joe’s just a friend! You’ll love him once you know him.”

I don’t think that’s true, but I can’t talk, not while I feel his body warm and strong against my back. His arms around me, his thighs pushing against my butt.
His head is bowed down to me, his lips are in my hair and his breath tickles my ear.

“Come on, darling, let’s dance.”

*

Dancing with him is magical.

I still don’t know how to move, I can’t do this snapping of hips and twisting of shoulders that in the club’s magical lighting turns him into an archaic deity of sex. I still try, and I guess I’m making a fool of myself, again, but I don’t care.
Because Dray is dancing with me, and he looks at me like I’m the only man in the club. The only man in the world.

*

Later, in a booth, we share a pumpkin juice and a glass of Guillaume’s striped poison Dray claims is the best drink in the world. Someone walks up to us.

Sasha.

His hair is black tonight, and he’s wearing a fishnet belly tee, and he’s hotter than I can ever hope to be, and my heart drops a little.

He nods at me, acknowledging me with a kind of hasty reverence, then turns to Draco.

“Seriously, pumpkin juice?” he purrs. “Listen, I’m considering letting you make it up to me.”

Draco looks confused.

“Make what up to you.”

He doesn’t remember Sasha’s name. Ha.

“What you said about me? About my dick being too small?” Sasha specifies, surprising me with his candidness and lack of regard for his dignity.

Draco looks surprised, too. He shoots me a piercing gaze, then tells Sasha his dick is fine and he didn’t know what got into him when he said it wasn’t.
And then he says he’s with me.

“But you don’t do dates,” Sasha says.

“I don’t. Harry isn’t a date. We are going out.”

Now Sasha is really looking at me.

“So it’s true? You and Harry Potter? Didn’t know you were a VIP babe, Malfoy. Let me know when you’re back in the game.”

“You know what, man, you can get lost now.”

Yeah, he forgot the guy’s name, and he has told him to get lost.

But he did sleep with him.

Sasha stalks off. When Draco talks again, I hear his voice like from far off.

“So you really did set out to ruin my social standing, and not just with your plaids. You stole my hair, then went and pissed off my conquests. Very Slytherin for a Gryffindor, I must say.”

I know I should laugh along, and I want to, I really do. But I’m unable to hide my feelings.

I get up and walk away, not caring where I’m going.

“Harry!” he cries, coming after me. All across the dance floor, out into the cool, dusty corridor.

A few yards from the exit he catches up with me and grabs my arm. I turn around, shaking him off, crying.

“I’m sorry!” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“You got nothing to be sorry for,” I croak. “It’s not like you cheated on me or something.”

“Harry. I’m sorry. Really I am. You know I only did what I did because I hoped it would help me get over you! You got to understand. My amulet didn’t just help me cope, I couldn’t live without it! And I hated that, I wanted to make my feelings for you go away, that’s why I hooked up with people like I did.”

I know it’s the truth.

I know that nothing about him is what it looks like at first glance.

He’s the centre of attention wherever he goes, yet he always needed to hide who he was. He has always been admired, and at the same time secretly struggling; suffering. Feeling like a failure, first because of his father’s expectations in him, and later because of those who’ll always be judging him for his past.

Yeah, I understand what it means to be him. I have for a while now, not since I became him using Polyjuice, but from the moment he showed me that hidden silver heart.
And perhaps I’ve known since much earlier, since when I first learnt to love his crooked smile.

It’ll still take me a while to get over the fact that what, fifty percent of the guys in this club know him in a way I don’t.
In a way they have no right to.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, reading my mind, his eyes on me, pleading.

“You’ve always told me how much fun you were having, going out,” I blurt out, blindly looking at the waving DJane on the bill on the black wall next to me, hating how whiny and accusatory I sound.

“It wasn’t fun,” he says with such emotion, such rawness it makes me look back at his face. “Going out and hooking up is only fun when you’re looking for something, hoping for something. When it’s a treasure hunt. For me, it was a tranquilizer. A trick I used on myself. Like the amulet with your curl.”

“You know I’d have given you my heart instead of that bloody lock of hair any day, if you’d ever asked!” My eyes have started streaming with fresh tears. “Why couldn’t you do it, Dray? Why could you hook up with all these guys, but couldn’t ask me if I wanted to be yours?”

I know I’m being unreasonable. I know I’ve been acting like a fool myself, taking emotionally incompetent to unknown levels actually. I wait for him to point that out to me, but he doesn’t.

He stands before me, his right hand tugging at his left sleeve. He has never performed this automatism with such tense insistence.

“I was scared you’d turn me down,” he says hoarsely, all the while pulling that sleeve down over his wrist. His fingers are creating tiny tears in the shirt’s delicate fabric. “Please don’t go, Harry. Please. Please stay with me.”

I don’t know what it is that makes me get a grip at last, having him reveal his feelings to me like that, like I never thought he would, all defences down, or seeing him ruin his magical designer shirt without him even noticing he’s doing it.

He loves that shirt. I mustn’t allow this to go on.

He mustn’t look like that, my gorgeous, arrogant, snarky Draco, like a kindergartener who’s been told he hasn’t been a good boy and wants his teddy bear.

I feel I might break in half with how much I love him.

I grab for his hand and tell him I want to go home.



Chapter 8: Home


When we’ll get back, Day will be asleep in his cot.

Draco will take his mother home, and when he’ll Reapparate three minutes later, I’ll be in bed, naked under the sheets, nerves aflutter.

He’ll stand by the foot of the bed and look at me and lose his clothes, just like that, and I’ll pull back the sheets eventually, for reasons of equity.

I’ll squirm under his swirling silver gaze, and he’ll tell me I’m the most beautiful man that ever walked the earth.
I’ll say the same to him, and it’ll be the truth.

He’ll jest and say that’s just how I feel because he’s the first guy I ever took home from a night out.

And then we’ll stop quipping.

He’ll be so gentle. The hard lines of his face blurred by passion and love. His erection warm and firm against me, so real.

I’ll try to hide mine, turning onto my belly, foolishly.
He’ll move me back around with strong, sinewy hands, exposing me, and he won’t laugh at my blush, which will be fierce. His breathing will be dry and fast, and his eyes will burn.

He’ll be hovering over me, pressing up to me from the side, our bodies lined up. Connecting. My scars touching his perfection.

The caesarean scar will be invisible, but the others, the old ones, will stand out an angry red with my blood heated like it is.

He’ll put his fingers on my chest, gently, gently. He’ll stroke the skin between my scars, and then he’ll stroke the scars.
And in a small, still active corner of my brain I’ll realize they’ve stopped hurting to the touch. They’ll still be there, the past will still be what it was, but my scars will have stopped hurting to the touch.

He’ll take one of my nipples between his fingers and start rolling and tweaking it, and I’ll gasp out with the flash of pleasure zinging through me, and with the fact I’m having my nipple being made stand out.
But before I can die of shame, his hand will move to my hip, and linger there for a few moments, then slide down to my ass.

He’ll palm the swell of my butt cheek.

And it will feel obscene to even have a butt cheek, let alone having it caressed, and nothing will be in my head anymore but that caress.

His voice will be ragged when he’ll ask me how I want it. And I will just hold on to his burning gaze, because my voice will be gone and because I won’t have a clue how I want it.

He’ll slide an arm under my neck, cradling my head against his shoulder, and his hand on my ass will move into my crack, and his eyes will never leave mine.
He’ll spread me open, fingers intruding, and when his thumb will brush against my entrance, the strangest sound will break from my throat and my body will rock into the touch.

He’ll smile, a ghost of his nasty smirk that’ll turn the hot flame in my groin to wildfire.

Twisting backwards to touch his wand on the nightstand, he’ll conjure a condom and lube.
He’ll roll on the condom, whispering a jagged explanation how he doesn’t want to get me pregnant again just yet, and how he doesn’t trust himself to keep protection in mind.
And then he’ll empty the whole of the tube of lubricant into his palm with disconcerting purpose, sliding one hand back between my cheeks and wrapping the other round my startled, throbbing cock.

But he won’t move his hands then, he’ll just stay like that for seven eternities, keeping my ass parted and holding me, eyes closed, breathing hard, and I’ll spill precome over his fingers in endless ribbons of white.

I’ll realize I mustn’t be embarrassed about it, not at this point, but it’ll be such a blatant proof of how I’m losing control, and of how much I’m wanting him.

It’ll cross my hazy mind that I should be doing something to him, too. But then his thumb will stroke across my leaking tip, like finally answering its call for attention, and simultaneously he’ll start circling my entrance with a finger tip.

Swamped with heat, I’ll spread my thighs to give him all the access I can. Shame will have stopped making sense, there’ll be nothing but the crazy intense sensation of his touch.

And then his finger will slip inside me, and I’ll yell out and come into his fist.

I’ll want to say sorry and joke about my blunder, but I’ll just sob and grunt and fuck into his fist, my vision swimming, and he’ll keep both his hands on me, blissfully milking me and pushing into me from behind, till the end.

I’ll clumsily scramble onto my knees then and tell him to fuck me, and I’ll suddenly realize I’m afraid it’ll hurt.

He’ll take my face in his hands and kiss me, taking his sweet, sweet time, and on breaking the kiss, he’ll tell me this is not how we are going to do things.
He’ll say that this is not going to be about justice or self sacrifice.

He’ll get rid of the condom. It’ll rip, because it’ll be much too tight on his massive, jutting cock.

Sitting up, he’ll put his hand to my neck and guide my head down to his crotch.

I’ll grab hold of his root and heavy, swollen balls and start sucking on him, and though I’ll know it can’t be anything at all expert, his breathing will instantly become ragged and his cock will thicken so much it must hurt.

It’ll make me bolder, and I’ll take advantage of the new possibilities of jerking off this delicious cock, enjoying to finally have it within reach of my mouth.

I’ll learn that the effects are way different when you tease a cock that actually belongs to another man.
When I’ll lick his slit, then let him slide in and out of my mouth full length, mimicking a fuck, his hand will jerk to my butt and he’ll thrust a finger in me.
He’ll go in deep this time, then add a second finger, stretching me, and his grip on my neck will almost become too much.

I’ll start choking on his fat tip, and the same moment he’ll arch his back and come down my throat, crying out Merlin’s name, and mine.

I’ll recognize his taste and try to swallow everything. But he won’t stop, and in the end I’ll have to opt for breathing.
He’ll plop from my lips, and his last shot will hit my jaw and hair.

He’ll exhale with a long shudder, and my name will be a sigh caressing my sweaty brow, and our eyes will meet in a shaken, glorious moment, and then there’ll be a screech from next door.

We’ll clean each other up haphazardly, hectically, while Day’s crying will turn to a frenzied shrieking.

Slipping into his dressing gown, Draco will tell me to stay put and that he got it, but I’ll totter after him on naked feet, with a bed sheet wrapped around me, loath to allow even a few yards of distance between us.

He’ll say I’m stubborn, and I’ll retort that it wouldn’t be fair if he did all the night shifts on his own just because he does the parental leave thing, and he’ll give me his softest, meanest-looking smile and say I love you.

And I’ll skip a heartbeat and say, you, too.

Draco will lift Day from his cot and tell him his daddies are there and all is well. He’ll conjure the bottle he prepared earlier.
Day will drink his bottle in one go, ignoring Draco’s admonishing to take it slow, then go into hiccupping.
Nestled against Draco’s shoulder, he’ll look about with wide baby eyes, grabbing Draco’s hair and pulling, clearly having decided the night is over.

He’ll bite his little fist, and embark on some more whining, and Draco will say it’s teething and ask me to pop by at the potionery on my way home from college the next day and buy teething gel.

I’ll put it on my wand’s errand list, and marvel at the fact that I actually like running errands these days.

I’ll make a note to also buy some lube, then think of earlier, squirm a bit, and tell Draco that I’ll try to perform better next time.

Draco will nod and say he’ll teach me the ropes or maybe book a course for us, else we won’t ever be able to let people watch. And when I’ll stare he’ll say, you were talking about dancing, weren’t you.
And he’ll grant me the classic Malfoy smirk.

Then he’ll cry out because Day ripped a handful of hair from his scalp, and it’ll be my turn to laugh.

It’ll be hard to stop, because of the chronic sleep loss and debilitating exhaustion that only parents of a newborn know.

My ear will itch, and I’ll find a sticky spot that we overlooked earlier.
I’ll remove it with my wand, leaning back against Day’s abandoned bed, watching Draco rock our son in his arms and sing that silly little tune, the Malfoy nursery rhyme, and I’ll understand that this is my life.

And my soles will be icy on the floor boards, and the fatigue will creep up on me full force, and the euphoria will be like a thousand golden suns dancing in my salvaged soul.

***