Chapter Text
1 August 2022
Harry is more or less completely hungover. No, there’s no less. He’s obscenely, irrevocably hungover, and he’s never going to drink again, as long as he lives. He groans and hides his face beneath his pillow. It’s too hot to be hungover, and the sun is far too bright, and they’re out of milk thistle, so he’ll have to Floo to Nan’s to get a potion and he’ll probably sick up right by her ever-growing collection of antique brooms—
An enthusiastic knocking jostles the very fibres of his brain.
“Go away, sweetheart. We’re not to be bothered.” Draco groans brutally when the knocking doesn’t cease. “This is why I don’t drink wine anymore.”
“You weren’t just drinking wine. Blaise was making the—”
“Sloe gin fizzes. Merlin.” Draco nuzzles against his shoulder. “You have to hold me. I’m sore.”
“Mmm. You gave me such a good birthday treat.” He refrains from making a joke about getting him pregnant again. Draco hexed him last time. His head is pounding, and the door is pounding, and Draco is trying to burrow into his chest, mumbling about not getting enough attention.
“Dad!” The door handle jiggles. And jiggles again. “Are you decent? Teddy says you’re probably not. He says you’re never decent. That you haven’t been decent the whole of his life.” Her shout is louder this time. “I believe him!”
“Go back to bed,” Draco tries again. “Or if you want to Floo to the apothecary, the address is on the list pinned to the—”
“She just turned eleven. Christ. Do we need to have this conversation again?” Harry Summons his glasses and a probably-clean pair of pants. “Sweetheart, have Teddy go to the apothecary. He knows what to get.”
“He’s still sleeping. Well, he’s not now since I yelled at him.” Her voice sounds like she’s got her mouth pressed up against the door. “You lot have to get up. It’s nearly time. You have to.”
“No, no. I’m not emotionally prepared.” Draco sniffs and wipes his nose against Harry’s chest. He clutches Harry’s arm to try to prevent him from standing, and Harry bats at him.
“We’re adults. Get yourself together.” Harry blinks. Christ, he thinks he might still be drunk. Still, he manages to get dressed. He even finds a set of clothes not covered in gin and lays them out on top of Draco.
Draco is hobbling for the shower when Harry finally opens the door. “Morning, Stellie.”
She thunks her head against his chest, and Harry’s heart clenches when he notices she nearly reaches the top of his shoulder. Even in his compromised state, she takes Harry’s breath away. As ever, she reminds him of all the people he’s loved, all while being so wholly herself that it shatters him. Her hair is a mass of curls in a deep, rich auburn that looks like burnished copper when it catches the light. Her skin freckled like his mother’s, her skin darker like his and his father’s. But her eyes are all Draco; changeable grey-blue, the sky before it rains.
“Morning, you,” she says against his shirt. “Is Papa hiding?”
“He’s in the shower. Probably having a sniffle.”
“Gran says he’s always been like that. That he’s terribly soppy and he’ll be a mess today.”
“Might be.” He hugs her tight, and she lets him.
She pats his back like she’s soothing a baby and snorts against his chest. “You’re a mess as well.”
“Not at all.” Harry squeezes his eyes shut, his head still throbbing. It hurts, how much he loves her. All the ways she’s different from Teddy, all the ways she's the same.
Harry manages with ibuprofen and two mugs of strong coffee, and gets started on breakfast before Draco and Teddy even think of appearing. Teddy is first, rounding the corner from his room, his wet hair turned to a shade of midnight blue from the shower.
“Need a Drying Charm?”
“Don’t you dare let your magic touch me. Might as well smash my head with a mallet.” Teddy shoves a biscuit in his mouth and crunches loudly.
“I’ll get you one from the shed.” Stella shovels forkfuls of mushrooms and sausage into her mouth. When she speaks again, there’s still food in her mouth. “Make it easier on you.”
“This is what I get when I come home. Threats of violence. Potential harm to my person. Draco brewing lethal cocktails. He does know Faerie Absinthe is technically illegal?”
Harry slumps into his chair and hands Teddy a plate. Belatedly, he realises he only has his coffee and not the food that will deliver him to his rightful state. He Levitates it over and tucks in while Teddy and Stella argue over something completely inane. He’s learned to tune it out by now.
Draco looks worse for the wear when he appears—dark circles under his eyes, hair damp, shirt half-unbuttoned—but he still manages to look haughty when he peers at the three of them. “Has no one gone through to purchase hangover potion? We’ve a Floo connection to town for just this sort of thing.”
“Breakfast,” Teddy says through a mouthful of food. Honestly, Harry doesn’t know where he went wrong. “Then we’re waiting. So you’ll have to suffer with the rest of us.”
“I’m not suffering.” Stella takes a large bite of her breakfast roll and follows it with a swig of orange juice. “Because I’m not as cringe as the rest of you lot. Drinking too much at your age? Cringe behaviour.”
“What about me?”
“You’re cringe 24/7, Teddy. Doesn’t change when you’re pissed off your face at Dad’s birthday party.”
“I’ll go through,” Draco says. “Who taught her all this language?”
“Rose,” Teddy says at the same moment as Harry says, “Teddy.”
“Wouldn’t chance it.” Harry nods at Draco. “Big day.”
“Bollocks.” Draco sighs and groans through the ordeal of loading his plate with breakfast.
When Draco goes to make coffee, Harry catches his eye and winks. “Already made yours. Oat milk, touch of lavender. That’ll help with the hangover, yeah?”
“I suppose.” He picks up his mug. “Thank you, love.”
Draco is pointedly loud getting his breakfast together, banging dishes and tapping his fork against his plate while waiting for toast. He sighs loudly several times and mutters to himself about ‘having to resort to ibuprofen’ when he has the ‘worst hangover of his life.’ This line of complaints balloons into direct accusations that Harry kept ‘plying him with liquor’ and that he’d never been such a lightweight until he hit his forties.
“I thought seventy was supposed to be middle-aged for wizards,” he adds, even louder, sitting down at the table with a thud and a bang of his dish. “But I feel like a hobbled elder. I’m never throwing another party ever again.”
Teddy catches Harry’s eye and grins wryly.
“You said fibbing is against house rules,” Stella says through yet another mouthful of food. “You always throw Dad a surprise party, and he’s never surprised.”
Teddy laughs into his coffee. Even Draco smiles. But when he looks at Stella, he takes a shuddering breath. His attention returns to his coffee and his fry up.
Something hits the kitchen window with a thud. Alarmed wailing and clawing follows. Harry scoots out his chair and squeezes Draco’s shoulder as he walks by. When he opens the kitchen window, Aquila flaps in with another wail. She makes it to the kitchen table and lands next to Stella’s breakfast dish. She tries to hold out her leg and take a swipe at the leftover eggs at the same time and nearly falls off the table in the process.
“Silly bird,” Stella says fondly. She unties the letter and lifts the seal. “Can I read it out loud?”
“That’s the only reason I’m awake,” Teddy says. He takes a long swig of orange juice. “After you read it, I’m going back to my flat and sleeping for the next thirty-six hours.”
Dear Estella Potter-Malfoy,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Term begins on 1 September 2022. Students are required to report to Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Station by 11 AM.
She recites her list of required items, pausing to emphasise that she’ll be needing a wand. “A real one,” she adds. “A really, really nice one.”
“Let me see that.” Teddy snatches the letter and looks it over. “Hm. Says she needs a solid gold cauldron and—what’s this?—a kitten.”
“Did she pay you to say that?” Harry laughs and takes a seat. Beneath the table, he reaches for Draco’s hand and holds it.
“Nope. That’s what it says.”
“Can you cast a spell to make it actually say that?” Stella watches Teddy with that locked-in, intense look she gets when she’s working out how to get her way.
“Give it here.” Harry puts out his hand, but Teddy dodges him. The table dissolves into pandemonium: Aquila screeching and flapping, Teddy trying to hide the letter under his t-shirt, Stella pointedly reciting the reasons she requires a kitten.
“Accio Hogwarts letter!” Draco stands, and the letter flies into his hand. He shrinks it and deposits it in his back pocket. “I am in charge of all Hogwarts shopping trips. That is the way it is and always will be in this household. Stella, you may present your kitten-related arguments after breakfast in the sitting room. Everyone clear on that?”
“Are you crying, Dad?”
“No. I’m allergic to the peppers your father keeps mixing into perfectly good beans.” Draco dabs at his eyes and aims a Drying Charm at his hair. It falls, loose, over his shoulders in a wave of blond shot through with threads of silver. “We’ll go to Diagon Alley after lunch.”
“Will you go with us, Teddy?” Stella polishes off the last of her breakfast and follows it with a too-large gulp of orange juice that nearly bursts out of her mouth.
“If I can pick out your cauldron.”
“Deal.” Stella sticks out her hand, and Teddy regards her with a considering expression before shaking.
The madness slowly calms after Draco sits down. He scoots his chair closer so they’re touching, so Draco can lean against him when Stella rereads her Hogwarts letter again, when Teddy starts cleaning up and talking about extra supplies she’ll need once she’s settled in at school.
“Shoes for the shower so you don’t get Bundimun Foot,” he starts.
“That can’t be real.”
“It definitely is. Vic came down with a bad case of it. Laid up for a week in the infirmary. Best to take a really strong antifungal cream with you, just to be sure.”
“Revolting.” She scrunches her nose at him.
“Extra set of robes. Mine caught fire in first-year Potions. Plus, you’ll need dress robes with a wide, starched lace collar and thousands of pearl buttons for the Yule Ball.”
“I can’t even go to that yet!”
“Best to be prepared. You never know when McGonagall will call on you and expect you in your dress robes. She requires it if you come to her office hours.”
“She does not. Tell me things I’ll really need.”
Draco watches the back and forth like it’s a high-stakes Seeker’s Match. Teddy lobs off a few ideas that aren’t half bad—a Muggle torch and a magical one, a new coat that should match any house colour, a cat carrier should she acquire a kitten.
“She’ll be alright.” Harry places a kiss on Draco’s temple. “We’ve got an entire house in Scotland. She can come home on the weekends if she likes.”
“I’m more worried about us.”
“We’re entering the prime of our lives. There’s everywhere to go from here.”
“So you say. I like it here best, though.”
Harry catches the tail end of their conversation.
“…and you’ll need an extra blanket.”
“What? Why? Don’t they have proper beds?”
“It’s cold” —Teddy leans very close to Stella and gently taps her on the nose— “in the dungeons.”
Unfortunately for Teddy, she’s close enough that she can flick him in the face. She does so, hard. “You’re such a bellend—”
“None of that.” Draco’s voice is far louder and closer than it needs to be for Harry’s throbbing head. “You will get sent to Minerva’s office if you call the wrong person a bellend. And Teddy, we’re not going to tease anyone for what their house might or might not be. The chips will fall where they may.”
“I’m not teasing. I’m just right.” He nods at Stella, then at the chess set on the dining table. “Best two out of three?”
“Fine.”
Teddy forgoes napping to play chess with Stella. He beats her once; she beats him twice. By the time Draco has come back from the apothecary, Teddy is lazing on the sofa, Aquila dozing behind him. Harry distributes sandwiches to everyone where they are, leaving his and Draco’s on the counter.
“Is it time?” Harry catches Draco by the hand and pulls him in close when they’re done tidying the kitchen.
He huffs indignantly but relents and rests his head on Harry’s shoulder. “Not yet. Let’s wait a little longer.”
“Alright.”
The day is hazy and warm, the green of late summer in every cell of Brookbriar Glade. Harry is forty-two years old—and he’s nineteen and he’s thirty, falling in love with Draco, parting ways, and finding him again.
When he looks at Teddy and Stella, he sees them as they were when they were very small: a round-cheeked six-year-old with blue hair, a red-faced, colicky baby. Then: an uncertain thirteen-year-old boy headed back to school, trying to trust the tumult of his magic. And their daughter, clever Stella, on the cusp of growing up.
Before they follow Teddy and Stella through the Floo, Harry takes Draco’s hand in his and kisses it. “Will you be alright?”
Draco squeezes. “Not for a while. But I will be.”
The trees, thick and green, cast shadows along the old hardwood floors and the thrifted wool rug. Aquila ruffles her feathers and settles in her sleep. The clock in the hall chimes the quarter hour, and a moment of quiet settles over Brookbriar Glade. They step through the hearth, hand in hand.