The Man Who Forgot

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings/Tropes/Etc: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Mpreg, Past/Referenced Child Abuse, Past/Referenced Character Death

Chapter Length: 9000

Summary: After ten years of marriage, Harry forgets.

The more things change, the more Draco Malfoy is still up to something.

Chapter Eight

By the time Harry stumbled out onto the Quidditch field, the graying afternoon light had gone nearly all the way to dusk. It would soon be properly night, but it didn't need to be any darker than it was to notice that every light in the cottage appeared to be on, so that it stood in the darkness like a beacon, as if meant to guide him back. 

He'd been running, before, heedless of where he was going other than trying not to step into any more stumps. Now, on the smooth turf, he staggered down into more of a halting walk.

By the time he made it across the Quidditch field, he'd more or less caught his breath. His heart still seemed to be beating in his throat, an actually painful pulsing that must surely have meant he hadn't left it behind him, after all. He couldn't think of--the thing he had to ask Draco about, the thing he was almost, very nearly, more or less entirely certain of--and yet he couldn't think of anything else. He couldn't...

He went in the back door. Through the sunroom and kitchen. The drawing room, and then the living room. He more or less expected Draco to be there, messing around with his Pensieve or sitting in his Leaning Chair, as he usually was when Harry had gone for a walk. But there was no one there.

"Draco?" Harry called up the stairs. "Where're you at?" The words echoed through what now seemed more of an empty house than a beaconing one. "Draco?"

There was no answer. He went up to the second floor, and looked in all the bedrooms. Still no Draco. He was about to check the third floor when there came a loud banging noise from down the stairs, followed by the rush of feet--only one person's, from the sound of it, but certainly a person in some kind of a hurry.

Wand drawn, Harry headed back down. He must not have done as silently as intended, because he was only halfway down when someone said, "Harry?"

It was Draco, who, by the time Harry was down to the second to last stair, was standing there, waiting for him. His eyes were very wide and very red in his otherwise pale face, and he had somehow gotten the bottom of his formerly pristine robes covered in dirt and leaves since Harry had been gone.

"Are you alright?" he asked, in a rush.

Harry, who'd been eyeing Draco rather distantly, and with an even more distant sense of unease--what had he been up to, to dirty up his robes?--took a second to parse this, and a second longer to answer it. "Yeah?" he said, not at all certain it was true, but very nearly almost certain Draco was asking about his actual physical self rather than...whatever else. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Why wouldn't you--!" Draco went livid, seeming to choke on his own rage. "You didn't even notice, did you? God, I hate you, I hate you so much-- why do I even--!"

The unease became something much closer to alarm, though still at something of a remove. Was he really standing here talking to Draco Malfoy about anything else right now? "Er, what didn't I notice?"

"You splinched yourself, you fucking idiot," snarled Draco, pulling out a black handful of something from out of his pocket, which on examination proved to be a large chunk of hair. "You don't Apparate when you're upset! You're lucky you didn't take your entire head off! God!"

"Oh," Harry said, and then, "I didn't, though. When I was upset." He couldn't help but point this out. He'd run most of the way home rather than...hadn't he? Or, Draco must be talking about after their row, he guessed, since he hadn't mentioned the other thing yet. He supposed he must have been upset then, too. It was just that it seemed so long ago already...

He reached up, found that his hair had indeed been shorn off from the right side of his head, some of it so closely he could feel the actual skin of his actual skull beneath it.

Draco, meanwhile, had retreated to the living room. Harry followed, just in time to see him sink down onto the Leaning Chair and put his head into his hands. 

"God," Draco said again, in a shuddering sort of breath. "God."

Harry hovered in the doorway. Should he ask about his question now? Draco didn't look as if he was in the mood to answer anything, just at the moment. He rubbed his face with his hands, causing Harry to picture, unbidden and with an odd twisting feeling in his stomach, an image of Draco stumbling through the woods, calling out for him. If he'd gone in the other direction, Harry might have heard him, they might even have stumbled into each other...

Not that that should have stopped him--nothing should have stopped him--but the longer Harry stood there, trying to make himself ask, the more he found he couldn't. He had to ask. He did. But maybe, first, he should just...check. On things. It wasn't like he knew anything for certain, was it? What he was thinking was all, it was based on...circumstantial evidence, that was what it was based on. You couldn't make an arrest based on what he had, nevermind build any kind of case. Not that this was a case, it was just his life...but still...

Harry went back up the stairs. Felt as if he were floating up them, a ghost in what was meant to be his own home. He thought of the third floor, but first he went to his own room.

He hadn't been into the little side room again, the one on what had been Draco's half of the room, next to the closet. He went back in there now. It was not a large room, about half the size of any of the bedrooms, but still not nearly small enough to count as

(a cupboard)

another closet. The spelled ceiling was filled with dark clouds tonight, a handful of stars peeking through this gap or that one. The walls were still pastel yellow, cans of paint stacked by a wall, Gryffindor colors and Slytherin ones having a conversation Harry could more or less follow, this time...and the rocking chair was still there, too, watchful, waiting for the moment when he stepped close enough to it to be noticed...it started rocking, forward and back, even as he turned away...

Next, he went up to the third floor, where he had spent so much of his time lately. The first door on the left was locked, just as it always had been before. 

Harry drew his wand.

"Openo." He was certain, in that moment, that the incantation wouldn't work for him...that it had been configured for Draco alone...but then the door swung open, just as it had a few hours before.

He walked in, and this time he barely saw the Mirror of Erised. He didn't want to know, anyway, what he would have seen in it. This time, he was looking at everything else. All the white cloth-covered shapes that surrounded it. Old furniture, he'd thought before...stuff they didn't particularly want, but had kept around anyway.

Now he'd see, wouldn't he?

"Wingardium Leviosa," he said, and the sheet covering the nearest object flew off. What was underneath appeared to be a hideous sculpture...but of course it had been the nearest to him, and thus to the door. The sort of thing he was looking for would be tucked in a corner, wouldn't it? Out of the way, just in case he wasn't too distracted by not seeing his own face in a mirror to have a look around...

"Wingardium Leviosa," he said, and the sheet came off the next covered thing, which this time was a battered old chest of drawers...

"Wingardium Leviosa," he said, and the next sheet flew up, and away...

In the end, he found what he'd thought he might way in the back corner, as far from both the Mirror of Erised and the door as anything could get and still be in the room. All he could think, looking at it, was that Draco must have wanted him to see this. No matter how much he'd tried to throw Harry off the track, no matter how much he'd got vicious at some moments and outright lied at other moments. If he hadn't wanted to risk Harry finding out, surely he'd have...

"Harry?"

Harry turned to see Draco in the doorway, looking at him. Whatever he had or hadn't wanted Harry to see, his voice was now very quiet, his face white and...scared, Harry thought, distantly again. Now his thoughts didn't seem to be so much distant or uncatchable as they were surrounded by...bees, or something, a buzzing that seemed to grow louder by the moment.

"Hi," Harry said, because...he didn't know because what. Because he had to say something, and...

"What are you doing up here?" Draco asked, eyes darting over to the things in the back corner of the room, and then back again to Harry's face.

"Looking," said Harry. "At stuff."

Though now what he was looking at was Draco. Who swallowed, very hard, and had reached out a hand as if to brace himself against the doorframe.

Harry should ask now, right? It couldn't have been clearer that Draco knew what the question would be. He had to expect it. He'd been the one who'd been going to tell Harry, before...

And still, Harry couldn't. Felt lightheaded at the thought of it, so that he wasn't sure he could have got through it, even if he'd tried.

But Draco had been going to tell him...

"I think you had better tell me now," Harry managed. It had turned out to be the only thing he could.

Draco made a sound, a small soft one. There was no telling what it had been; it was the sort of sound that ended in the same moment in which it had begun. "Can we--can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"It can't wait," said Harry.

"I'm supposed to tell you now? When you're looking at me like that?" Draco made the sound again, or one very much like it. Then he took his hand off the doorframe and pulled himself up, straight and rigid. "Alright. I--alright, fine." He raised his chin, and, face still very white, said, "Before you were--before your accident. Um." For a moment, it occurred to Harry to wonder if Draco was no more capable of admitting it than Harry was of asking. Except then, after a beat, or maybe two, Draco swallowed again, Adam's apple bobbing, and said, very quietly, "We were trying to start a family, Harry."

"Oh," said Harry. It was nothing he hadn't known, only it turned out knowing and having the knowledge you thought you had confirmed were two different animals altogether, the difference between an altercation with an adder versus one with, say, a Basilisk. "So how pregnant are you, then?" he asked, forging on ahead. It was the only thing to be done, the only way to get through it.

"It's not really a matter of degree," said Draco. "It's more of a--it starts out being a maybe? And then it's yes, or it's no." He sneered a little, and added, not looking as if his heart were really in it, "Anyway, it could be you who is. For all you know."

"No, it couldn't," Harry said, the one thing he could be absolutely certain of, maybe the only certainty left of his life. He'd gotten checked out at St Mungo's ages ago, the moment he'd learned this was something some wizards could do. Finding out he wasn't one of them had been the a massive relief. This was not a feeling that would have changed. He might have left the Aurors, he might even have married Draco Malfoy, but there was no version of Harry Potter who would ever want his body to be a hiding place for anyone else, ever again. Temporarily or not, purposely or not. It was fine for other people, if they wanted to take all the potions and have all the procedures you had to have if you weren't that one wizard in a hundred, but it wasn't for him, and never would be.

"No," agreed Draco, sneering attempt already wiped away. "And yes. I'm pregnant. There is no chance it can be anyone's but yours. So help me, if you question that much--"

"Wasn't planning to," Harry said shortly. It seemed self-evident that if Draco had been running around on him before his accident, he'd have taken Harry's amnesia as an opportunity to keep on running, or something, rather than stay and...he didn't even know anymore what Draco had been trying to do. "So," he said, trying to get back on track to what he'd been trying to ask, before, and still wanted to even if the buzzing between his ears was growing even louder now. "When're you, you know..."

Draco's chin went back up again, pointy and sharp enough to count as a deadly weapon. "I'm due May eighth," he said, and, before Harry could even come close to figuring out the math, "I'm at about three months. It was--um." He swallowed, and closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them again, he said, in a thick voice that seemed to be trying for brightness without quite making it all the way there,  "We were late for your party, on your birthday. It was your fault, you never seem to care if we make it anywhere actually on time. This time you said you wanted your present early, and I--I've never been much good at resisting you. I'll admit I've more or less stopped trying by now. Even when it's a dreadful idea, guaranteed to make us late."

Now the sound in Harry's head was less of a buzzing and more of a tremendous screech, not nails on a chalkboard but something more like steel on concrete. Was Draco saying they'd--on his birthday?--

"Anyway, we were late, and it was--honestly, no one seemed to much care. If they even noticed, the Burrow is always such a--but by then I doubt I'd have noticed even if anyone had--do you have to look at me like that?"

"Like what?" Harry asked, when he seemed to have caught up with this, which he knew must have taken longer than it should have. "How am I looking at you?"

"Like you're--like I'm ruining things," said Draco, so miserably it was impossible for Harry not to notice through the head-screeching that his eyes were getting redder, and his cheeks were wet again. "This is why I didn't want to do this today. After all that--it's too much, I can't--fuck. Fuck!" He drew his wand and aimed it at the nearest ugly sculpture, which erupted into flames. "Just," he said, wiping at his face with his hands, "I can't, today. Alright? Can't you--I've told you what you wanted to know. So can you just, go somewhere else now? I'm not saying to leave! But--"

"Alright," Harry said, or thought he might've said it.

He turned away from Draco, and from the things in the far corner of the room, the baby's cot and the little matching dresser, and the other things that it was less obvious what exactly they were meant to be.

He must have gone, like Draco had asked, but later he could never recall the moments that must have led him through the hallway and down the stairs, into the living room and then the drawing room, over by the fireplace...he must have reached into the little bowl of Floo powder that was there on the mantle, but he didn't recall doing that, either...but then he was standing there with a handful of the stuff, some of it slipping from between his fingers...and he threw it into the flames and stepped in...

Whatever address he gave, he didn't hear himself give it, though the words tasted like ashes, acrid and smoky in his mouth.

*

At some point he became distantly aware of someone being there with him. Mostly because whoever it was, they were saying his name.

"Harry?" The person was also giving his shoulder a shake. "Hey, Harry? Can you hear me? Hermione!"

This last bit seemed louder than the rest had, not so much because it had been shouted inches away from his ear, but because of what it meant...

Harry had been sitting with his head in his hands, looking down toward his feet but not actually seeing much of anything. He wasn't sure where he'd intended to go, hadn't until this moment even been sure if where he'd ended up had had any actual relation to his intended destination. There'd been a chair near the fireplace he'd come out of; he hadn't been equipped to look any farther. He looked up and found that he must have landed at Grimmauld Place, after all, because it was Ron who had his hand on Harry's shoulder, Ron who was peering at him with concern. 

"Hey," Harry said, with an absolutely enormous sense of relief. At that moment it didn't seem to matter how much Ron had changed, or that Harry had spent the better part of a month being fucked off with him over the whole Teddy thing. It was just good to see a familiar, friendly face.

The familiar face became two familiar faces a moment later, when Hermione appeared. 

Between the two of them, they had a lot of questions.

"Harry? What are you doing here? Are you alright?"

"What happened to your hair, mate?"

"Does Draco know you're here?"

Harry groaned at the mention of Draco, and put his head back down in his hands again.

"Did something happen between you?"

"Did you, I dunno, have a row?"

"Not exactly," Harry muttered. "I--he's--"

But he found he couldn't say it. Couldn't say that Draco was pregnant. Couldn't even say that he was going to be a dad. He, Harry. 

He actually hadn't gotten quite that far, up til now. Mostly, he'd been listening some more to the buzzing sounds between his ears, wondering a little if this was what Draco had meant, when he said Harry had panic attacks, but mostly just...existing with them, while also being more than a little convinced that if he tried to stand up, the little black spots in front of his eyes would ensure he wouldn't be able to manage it. 

"I think I'm going to be sick," Harry, who was going to be a dad, announced to his feet. For a moment he felt very much as if he absolutely was going to be, even though he wasn't the one who...his thoughts seemed to run headlong into a brick wall, so that he no longer felt as if he might decorate Grimmauld Place's carpeting, but could only let out a groan. This might still have sounded like a sicking up sort of groan, because Ron's feet moved backward rapidly. "Fuck."

He didn't see Ron and Hermione share another one of those married people looks. He just felt it happening, somewhere above him. Then Ron's hand was on his shoulder, giving him a reassuring squeeze this time, as Hermione's feet stepped out of view. Distantly, Harry heard, "1 Hummingbird Lane," and knew she had gone.

After a while, the buzzing retreated. So did the black spots. 

It was around then that Ron, hand still on Harry's shoulder, said, "She's been gone a minute, hasn't she? Wonder what's going on over there."

If it had been a question, Harry thought he wouldn't have been able to answer it again. Since it wasn't one, exactly, he managed to mutter, remembering something Draco had mentioned, much earlier on that day, "He might not still be there."

"Oh, yeah?"

"He might've gone to stay with his mum," Harry said.

"Over your row?" Ron sounded startled, asking this. When Harry managed a glance up at him, he looked it, too. "Must've been a really bad one, he's never done that. So far as I know."

"We didn't have a row," Harry said, though he supposed that thing earlier, after the Mirror of Erised, must almost certainly have counted. The recent one, though...he didn't know about that. What it had been. He couldn't recall if he'd yelled, or even raised his voice. Draco had certainly raised his, but... 

"Yeah?" It still wasn't a question, or at least not a very specific one--but this time, Harry couldn't manage to say anything in response. He didn't know what he'd have said, anyway. Ron continued, carefully at first: "Is he pissed off about that thing in the Prophet? You ought to tell him it's a little hard (ha!) to shag the Charms professor when you're not even on the premises." He stopped talking for a second, indecision rolling across his face, then added, "Teddy's not, either, I checked."

"It's not that," Harry said. "I'm going to be a dad."

"Oh, you guys get Rumours! now? Didn't think you did anymore, after that one feature they did--"

"No, really," Harry interrupted, feeling a little lightheaded, as if the black spots had been lurking just around the corner and were happy to come back to ambush him again now he'd given them an opening. "I'm going to be. He told me."

"Draco did?" It was not really amusing at all how relieved Ron seemed when Harry confirmed this by nodding at his feet. "Oh, mate," he said with feeling, clapping Harry on the shoulder and then leaving his hand there some more, a heavy but calming weight. "That's some bad timing, there."

"Yeah."

Ron sat down next to him, which, since Harry was in an armchair, meant the part of the chair to his left dipped abruptly down. "It might not be so bad, though, right?" he said. "You've been trying for a while, haven't you?"

"Apparently," Harry said, though thinking back he didn't know that Draco had said how long they'd been trying for. Only that they had been. "I don't remember that, though. And I don't..."

He trailed off, not decided on what he didn't, exactly, only that he didn't it very strongly.

"Yeah," Ron said. He brought out a flask from somewhere, sipped it then offered it to Harry.

Whatever it was, it burned on the way down, enough to make him cough a little, and his eyes tear up a bit.

They'd passed the flask back and forth a few more times when the fireplace flashed greenly. Out of it stepped not Hermione but Draco.

"Oh, lovely," he said after a surprised moment, taking them in. He might have been going for cold and drawling again, but his voice was so phlegmy and his eyes so red and puffy that it probably wouldn't have come across if Harry hadn't been expecting it, listening for it. "You're drinking. That's just--!"

He made as if to go right back through the Floo again.

"I'm not drunk," Harry said, truthfully: he wasn't anywhere near as close to it as he'd have liked to be. Still, he shoved the flask back at Ron.

"Me, neither," Ron said loudly, and then, even moreso, "Congratulations!"

"...Thank you," said Draco, rather stiffly, and then, to Harry, "What did you go and tell him for?"

Harry abruptly felt far too sober to be having this conversation or any like it. But Ron had made the flask disappear again, so that all that was left for Harry to do was say, "Er. Was I not supposed to?"

"No!"

The fire flashed green again. Hermione appeared in the flames, then stepped out of them, with a look at Draco so sympathetic that there was absolutely no doubt that...

"You told Hermione," Harry pointed out, reasonably enough, he thought. "Why shouldn't I tell Ron?"

"Because you--because I'm the one who's--I'm going home," Draco declared; only he'd have had to go around Hermione to go anywhere by Floo, and she had the kind of look on her face that said she wasn't planning on moving, and so he ended up not going anywhere at all.

"You said you didn't want to be alone at the house," Hermione said, very gently. "You shouldn't be, either, Harry. You've both had a bit of a shock."

Personally, Harry thought he'd had more of a shock than Malfoy, all things considered. Or at least more of a, well, a surprise. This was not a thought that ended up coming out of his mouth, ringing so false as to pull him up entirely, so that he had to stop at least long enough to figure out why. Then he knew, suddenly and much more soberly than he wanted to, that he'd never be able to think of Draco by that name again, no matter how much he tried, or what either of them said or did. Maybe it was that you couldn't think of the person who was having your baby by their surname. Or maybe it was just that Harry couldn't. Either way, it was something that was over now.

"Yeah, alright," he managed, probably a few seconds after he ought to have managed it.

Hermione and Ron shared a look, the meaning of which Harry had no chance of deciphering. Then Ron ducked out of the room as Hermione led Draco over to sit in one of the other armchairs. A very distant part of Harry thought he ought to protest this: Hermione fussing over Draco instead of him, Draco being here at all when Harry had got here first. The rest of him didn't have anywhere near enough energy for any of that, even if it hadn't been for the way his stomach twisted whenever he got a look at Draco's face, the red puffiness around his eyes. This second feeling that was not anywhere near as distant as Harry would have liked it to be, and might even have been enough to have him put his head into his hands again, if he hadn't been so aware that Draco was watching him in his turn.

Ron came back after the silence had grown awkward, but before anyone had even more awkwardly tried to fill it. He had a cup of something steaming in each hand.

"Calming Draught," he said, handing one to Harry, and the other to Draco. 

Draco took his, held it in both hands, seemed to take a deep whiff of the steam coming off it. He lifted it to his lips, then hesitated. "Is it..." he said.

It was a question Harry couldn't begin to decipher. 

It seemed Ron could, though.

"Won't hurt the sprog," he said easily, as if Draco Malfoy being pregnant with Harry's baby were a completely normal thing, the exact sort of development you'd expect of a Friday night.

"Is that true?" Draco asked--but he wasn't looking at Ron when he did.

Hermione said, "Yes, it's perfectly safe."

"Alright," Draco said, and drank.

For lack of a reason why not, Harry sipped at his too. The effects were immediate, the buzzing cutting off almost as soon as he'd started, a sense of peace seeming to drape over him. It didn't hurt, either, when Ron came over with his flask again and poured a generous amount of its contents into Harry's cup.

"Hey." Draco already sounded less stuffy than he had before. Harry had only a moment to wonder if he was about to be on the receiving end of an actual lecture about drinking now, when Draco added, "I want some."

"Not a chance," said Ron cheerily. 

He crossed back over to Draco's chair just long enough to give him a pat on the head. Draco made a very rude gesture, then went back to sipping his potion--sulkily, now. It wasn't long before instead of sitting so stiffly, he began to slump backward. After a few minutes, he yawned, just an isolated one at first, but then one right after the next, as if he couldn't help himself. Maybe he couldn't. Certainly Harry couldn't help but watch him. The buzzing was gone, and the aching void inside him with it; what was left was a wondering sort of blankness that would surely become something more on the line of surreal later. Maybe he would be better able to deal with it then, or maybe he wouldn't. For the moment, he could just sit there, his cup warming his hands, and consider Draco Malfoy, who it had turned out he was more than just married to, without having to come to any sort of conclusion about the whole mess.

Behind him, or somewhere off to the side, Ron and Hermione were talking together in low voices, conferring without him. Even if it hadn't been for the Calming Draught, Harry thought he would have been too weary to mind...

*

"I'll sack him," said Ron in a raised voice. "Then I'll kill him, then I'll sack him again."

Harry, who'd been tiptoeing around Grimmauld Place of a Saturday morning since he'd woken up in the second-floor bedroom, came to a halt just outside the kitchen doorway. From within came the sounds and smells of breakfast, as well as Hermione saying, "Posthumously?"

"Yeah!" Ron said. "Guess I'll have to bring him back to life for the second sacking. Might need your help for that bit."

"I can't resurrect people, Ron."

"Bet you could if you wanted," said Ron. "Unless you actually work in one of the other Chambers..."

"You know I can't talk about work." She didn't sound particularly firm, but more fondly rote-ish, as if this were well-trodden ground between them. It felt to Harry warm and comfortable, and he felt himself relaxing a little, hearing his best friends like this, twenty years on.

"Yeah, yeah," Ron said, who now sounded as if he were talking around a mouthful of food. "But seriously, I'm sacking him, first thing."

"I don't know if you really want to--morning, Harry," said Hermione, who'd spotted him as he inched forward.

"Morning," Harry said, and saw no reason he shouldn't grab the nearest plate from the stack on the counter, and start filling it with eggs and pancakes. In fact he didn't even really think about it, it came so naturally. It didn't hurt, either, that the pink gumminess seemed to have gone entirely from behind his eyes, leaving him cheerfuller than he could have imagined the night before. "Who're you sacking?"

He didn't mean anything by it, or feel it was a question with much relevance to him until Ron, who had a forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth, suddenly looked uncomfortable and strange. It was a marked difference from the way he'd looked before; Harry disliked it enough for it to take a moment for him to realize the one possible reason why.

"It's Teddy?" he said. "You're sacking him? Why?"

"No one's getting sacked," said Hermione. "Ron's just blowing off steam. Isn't that right, Ron?"

"See for yourself," Ron said grimly, and waved a copy of the Daily Prophet in Harry's direction. 

The paper was folded over to a story considerably shorter than the previous day's, but no less infuriating, as it claimed to include an interview with the Boy Who Lived himself about the state of his marriage.

"But I didn't give any--" Harry said, and trailed off as he got to the part about what he'd allegedly said in this alleged interview, which had occurred at Hogwarts, where he'd apparently been cornered not by a pack of reporters, but by a pack of students. And then he'd said... 'Not that it's any of your ruddy business, but things are fine between Draco and me. We're still shagging on the daily, nothing to do with where I lay my head at nights,' Harry read to himself, incredulous. 'Oh buggeration, I'm not meant to talk about shagging to you lot, am I?'

"Sacked," Ron said when Harry looked up. "He's sacked."

Harry's face was so hot it felt as if he might belch out flames the next time he opened his mouth, if not go up in them entirely. Still, though...

"I dunno," he said, and couldn't quite believe he was about to say the next bit, for multiple reasons, "it does sound kind of like me. I mouth off to reporters, right?" He closed ranks around reporters, was how Draco would've put it. "Or people who try to mind my business in general. I'd have said the same thing if anyone had asked me..."

"Guess that's true," said Ron, seeming to perk up a bit. "Not as out of character as it could've been, was it? It's just the 'you lot' bit that's questionable, really..."

"He's said things like pretty often in the past," Hermione said. "Remember his first few years teaching? You were in the papers for similar slips every other week, Harry..."

It was at this point that Harry's common sense caught up with him just enough to add, in case anyone thought he had actually come around on the whole Teddy thing, "I don't say 'buggeration,' though."

"Better start, yeah?" Ron grabbed several pieces of toast on his way out of the kitchen. "I'll be back, just have to fire-call Minerva before she can sack him..."

And then he could be heard clomping up the stairs, and then there was quiet.

Harry finished loading up his plate, then sat down at the table with his food. "Where's Alice, anyway?" 

He hadn't even thought about her the night before, but it seemed like an obvious question now, at breakfast time--and much better than continuing to talk about Teddy's 'I, Harry Potter, shag Draco Malfoy every day of my life' speech.

"She spent the night at the Burrow," Hermione said. "Molly and Arthur take all the kids every other Friday and Saturday. The idea seems to be that if they ensure their children have a little time for themselves, they might end up with a few more grandchildren."

Harry was torn between feeling a bit guilty he'd interrupted what might or might not have been Ron and Hermione's date night, and a lot like he'd been wanting to get away from the subject of people's sex lives and couldn't understand why it wasn't taking. 

"What about Draco? Have you, er, seen him yet this morning?" he asked, vaguely recalling that Ron or Hermione had ushered Draco to one of the other guest rooms ahead of doing the same to him, the night before.

"I haven't," Hermione said. "He seemed really exhausted, he's probably still sleeping." She paused for a few seconds, then said, very gently, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Harry shoved half a pancake into his mouth, then became uncomfortably aware that he'd done it without answering her first, and chewed and swallowed as quick as he could. "Definite no," he said, and shoved the other half in.

"All right," she said, and very surprisingly didn't say anything else.

"Aren't you going to, er," Harry said several pancakes later, feeling oddly bereft she hadn't kept going.

"Yes?"

"Talk at me anyway? Whether I like it or not."

"You really don't like it when people meddle in your marriage," said Hermione. "You're very protective. I've learned to respect that." A beat, and then, "That said...you really should talk to someone, Harry. If not Draco or either of us, then a professional."

"I don't need to talk to a professional!"

"You're clearly not coping well," Hermione continued, very gently. "And that was before you knew about Draco's pregnancy. You don't have to go through everything alone, you know." She chewed her bottom lip for a second, considering him. "You actually did know, before you lost your memories; it's one of the ways you've changed, over the years."

The only thing Harry was changing right now was his mind. It was fine, he decided, if Hermione had changed enough not to want to give him any unsolicited life advice. 

Grasping for something, anything else to talk about, he said, "So how long have you been an Unspeakable, anyway?"

The look she gave him said that she knew exactly what he was doing, but would let it stand for now. "A while now," she said.

"What do you do there?" Harry went on. "And, what all goes on in the Department of Mysteries these days?"

"I can't talk about it," Hermione said, with a little smile that came off as really rather smug.

*

Draco swept into the kitchen a minute or two after Ron came back to say that everything was all sorted now. He looked much fresher than he had the night before, with no remaining sign of all the crying.

"Please tell me you've seen today's Prophet ," he said to Ron, brandishing his own copy in front of himself.

"Yeah," Ron said.

"You giving him the sack?"

"Nope," said Ron. "He's on probation with Minerva, but otherwise good."

"...Missed the fireworks, did I?"

"I'm afraid so," Hermione said.

"Damn." 

"I could have you both arrested," grumbled Ron good-naturedly.

Draco went over to the counter and took the full plate that had been sitting there, which in retrospect must have been meant for him since Hermione had put it together, which she'd done not long after telling Harry he should talk to someone. He sat down with it and dug in as he seemed to look back over the Prophet article. At no point did he so much as glance toward Harry, though Harry had felt exceedingly visible since the moment he'd arrived.

"Are you ignoring me right now?" Harry asked, when this seemed to have become as pointed as Draco's face.

"Well spotted, Chosen One," said Draco sweetly, still not looking at him. "You ought to have been an Auror, with deductive skills like that."

"Oh, fuck off, Malfoy," Harry said, finding suddenly that Draco's surname wasn't as far out of his reach as that after all. 

"Ohhhhh, strong words from our hero. That's Harry Potter himself, everyone. Whatever shall I do?" Draco turned to Ron again, seeming not to have noticed (or maybe just not caring about) the way Ron and Hermione were both wearing the same expression Harry thought he probably did when people's sex lives came up in conversations. "If nothing else, you really ought to sack him for not knowing better than to give the time of day to Harold Skeeter."

"Why are you being such a dick?" Harry asked. He had a distinct sense of whiplash; it was as if, instead of talking to the Draco he'd gotten used to over the last month, he was encountering, say, the Draco from fourth or fifth year. The one who'd liked nothing more than to jab at Harry's sore places, see if he could get a reaction... "--Wait," he added, catching up with the last thing Draco had said, which supposedly hadn't been directed at him, and was now filling him with a slow-rising sort of horror. "Who Skeeter?"

With obvious relish, Draco said, "Harold Skeeter. One of the hundreds of wizarding children whose parents call him...well, I'm sure you can guess."

Harry could in fact guess. It had started within twenty-four hours of Voldemort's defeat. Every wizarding baby born on May 2, 1998 must have been named after him, as well as a good percentage of those born over the following summer. It had kept on after that, too, at an only slightly less alarming clip, so that he'd had to start ducking into alleyways or otherwise disappearing himself whenever he happened to spot strangers with babies coming towards him in the street. All the 'we named our baby for you' stories were bad enough, but being expected to hold and/or kiss all the Harry babies had been uncomfortable indeed.

"Oh, yes," Draco went on. "So many wizarding babies, named for the Boy Who Lived." There seemed to be something hard underneath his sneer now, which somehow made Harry hate being called that even more than he usually did. 

"Stop it," Harry said.

Draco didn't stop. Instead, he leaned over the table, face twisting into something quite a lot viciouser than a sneer as he went on: "Hogwarts is just overflowing with children called Harold, Henry, Harriet...Harvey and Harrison have been more popular in recent years, but people have had to get creative, too. The latest new one I've heard is Hadrian."

"You're making that one up," said Harry.

"No, actually, but I am winning our fight. In answer to your first question," Draco said, and then, so viciously now he might've been having triplets he was trying to keep Harry from finding out about. "Not surprised you failed to catch on, you really are incredibly--"

And, Harry was much too tired for this. He had been to start with, from the moment he'd woken up in a life that didn't feel at all as if it could be his own. 

"Alright, fine, no need to get nasty," he said loudly, the better to cut off whichever synonym of 'stupid' Draco'd meant to go with. "We don't have to call our one after me if you don't want."

Draco stared at him for a moment, eyes wide, the viciousness dropped from his face as if it had never been there to begin with. He stood up from the table so quickly that his chair fell backwards onto the floor, then fled the kitchen in a flurry of robes.

Harry stared after him. "What the fuck."

Both Ron and Hermione looked stunned, which was enough for Harry to surmise that what had just happened was at least as bad as he'd thought it was, and possibly even a good deal worse.

"Er," he said. "I've got to--"

He rushed out of the kitchen, but by the time he got to the stop of the stairs, there was no sign of which way Draco might have gone.

*

Hours later, Harry discovered a red park bench about twenty yards from the edge of the Quidditch field behind their house. It was half-covered in ivy, with Draco Malfoy currently sat on the other half. 

Draco didn't look at Harry as he sent a Patronus off to let Hermione and Ron know he'd found him, or as he crunched through the underbrush toward the bench, but did spare him the briefest possible sidelong glance when Harry made to sit next to him.

"See?" Draco said. "You're not the only one who can run away to hide out in the woods. I can do it too. Probably better than you."

"I dunno about that. You haven't ever managed to track me down," said Harry. "Potter one, Malfoy none, right? Isn't that the way it goes?"

Draco sniffled, rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his robe. "Maybe I just haven't cared to look for you."

"Haven't you?"

"No." Draco didn't sound vicious at all until suddenly he did again, another whiplash-y swerve in subject: "If you tell me to get rid of it, I'll curse your dick off."

Harry didn't even having to think about it. There were plenty of other things to think about, probably, but that wasn't one. "I wouldn't."

"Of course not, you're much too noble," Draco said, bitterly now. "You'd never say, 'I'm busy, stop bothering me, can't you just take care of it and leave me the hell alone while you're at it.' Even if you'd mean it if you did say it, the words would never agree to fall out of your stupid Gryffindor mouth."

"Er. What?"

"Back in sixth? Me and Pansy...?" Draco made an exasperated sound. "--I forgot you wouldn't know that story. Nevermind."

Harry was, he decided, plenty happy not to know that story, actually. "I wouldn't mean it," he said, sticking to what seemed, to him, the most pertinent part of this conversation. "I don't know what I think about it. Other than it's the maddest possible turn for my life to have taken. I'm just being honest!" he added, before Draco could get vicious again. "I'm not trying to..."

Hurt Draco's feelings? Start him crying again? Any of that. Definitely not get Draco going after whatever sore points he could reach again, baiting him...

"You never are," said Draco. "That's what makes this all so--" He took a deep, loud breath, then seemed to start over. "Whatever you think--now it's out in the open, you have to know I wasn't trying to hide it from you. I don't want you to think that. I was just--I was waiting? I thought you had to remember soon, that we'd be able to--I didn't mean for it to be like this."

"Yeah," Harry said, and discovered that whatever direction this conversation might go in, he didn't want to hear anymore about the hiding a baby from him Draco had been doing while he was busy not trying to hide a baby from him. "So, er," he said. "I must have been happy about it? You know, before."

Draco made a sound, the same low soft one from yesterday, or at least one in the same family. "I hadn't told you yet," he said. "I would have! When I was certain. But we'd had our disappointments--no, I mean, nothing grisly...no miscarriages, anything like that. But they were disappointments, all the same. I was going to tell you, whether it was yes or no, but I just--I wanted to know which it was, first. I didn't want it to be dragged out, if it was just going to be no again."

What this sounded like to Harry, odd as it was to think about, was that Draco had been trying to spare him. It was another odd, whiplash-y sort of thought, which lingered there with him as Draco went on:

"I was going to tell you after my appointment at Mungo's, the day you were..." Draco said. "And then you were--and I actually was, this time--and then I was waiting, alright? But now you might never, even with--" He let out a loud, shaky breath, and used the sleeve of his robe to wipe his eyes. "I wish I'd told you," he said, in a small voice. "God, I wish I had."

"So, I would have been happy," Harry said, feeling his way around this, as a thought.

"Yes, idiot. Deliriously. You would have--" Draco let out another sound, which might have come off as the same sound from before if there hadn't been something that sounded horrifically like a sob in with it. "But you aren't happy about it now. Obviously."

Harry thought about it. It was surreal, dizzyingly so. "I don't know how I feel," he said honestly. "Though I did, er. Sort of figure I'd have kids, someday." If he'd looked into the Mirror of Erised at twenty, he was sure that was what he would have seen, or part of it: himself with a family, the ones who hadn't been born yet alongside the dead and the gone... "Just, not yet, and not..."

Flatly, Draco said, "Not with me. You've said so often enough. I promise I'm not about to forget. So you can leave off all the reminders, if you please."

"Right," Harry said, a little too concerned about possible dick curses to continue that particular subject even if it had been what he wanted to talk about, which it...really, very much wasn't, at this particular moment. "The, er, nursery's nice."

"The nursery," Draco repeated, oddly incredulous. "I suppose it's alright. Not that you'd know. You think anything wider than a cupboard is just wonderful." Before Harry could wrap his head around the idea of Draco knowing about his cupboard, Draco went on: "I suppose next you're going to have another enormous crisis. 'I'll be a terrible father because I was locked in a cupboard and left to go hungry, probably beaten within an inch of my--'"

Harry jumped up from the bench, had his wand in his hand before he could even think about it, or remember that hexing Draco wasn't something he could actually consider anymore, even fleetingly. 

"What's your problem?" he demanded, because it was better than trying to have a reaction to any of that, or, or, doing something stupid, such as pointing out he hadn't, actually, ever been beaten bloody...and it wasn't like Uncle Vernon had taken his belt to him on the daily, or anything; in fact he'd only tried it the once that Harry recalled, which had somehow resulted in a glittering confetti that had papered the inside of Harry's cupboards for months...it had at least made the place nicer to look at for the next year or so, six turning into seven long before he'd had the first clue why things went weird around him, sometimes...but there was no way he could, or wanted to, or ever would say any of that to anyone, nevermind Draco sodding Malfoy. "Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Sorry!" Draco said, looking actually alarmed this time instead of sneering more into it as he had before. "I'm sorry, I just--"

"You're just, what? An enormous fucking arsehole? Yeah, I noticed!"

"I wasn't actually--I wasn't trying to be. This time. You're not as, um, sensitive about that subject anymore? You aren't with me, at least. Usually. Sorry."

Maybe it said something about how different Draco really seemed, most days, that Harry found he could actually accept this. Or maybe it was just the surreality of the day. Or maybe he really had gone mad, and was actually in the Janus Thickey ward right now, ranting to a cactus on his nightstand about how he was married to Draco Malfoy, who was having his baby, far off in the future where nothing had turned out the way it had been meant to, and so what did it matter if he let Draco get away with mocking his childhood, too?

"Fine," he said gruffly, tucking his wand away again. 

They looked at each other. Draco's eye were less red than they had been the day before, which somehow resulted in him somehow looking even more unhappy than he had then.

"Aren't you going to sit back down?" he asked, sounding oddly plaintive.

Harry sat. For a few minutes, no one said anything.

Then, horribly, Draco said, into the silence, "You love me, too." Harry sucked in a breath, but before he could react, or even decide whether he wanted to react, Draco kept talking: "Madly, I could say, but really it's--I don't know? You, um. You may have died for the rest of them, but you lived for me. No, I'm not saying--it's not that you're not suicidal, or anything. It's just--it's a different thing. That's all." For a few seconds, Harry thought maybe Draco had finished, that there wasn't going to be any more of this. This proved to be a futile sort of wish. "I know this isn't anything you think you want, right now. But I wish you would at least try. It's not about me. If it were, I'd--it's not just about me."

"Yeah," Harry said. There didn't seem to be anything much else to say, just at that moment. Draco must have thought so, too, because they stayed there for what felt like a long time, neither of them saying much of anything else.

*

That night, Harry sat on his bed, really considering his potion for the first time since that other first night. He took the bottle into his hands, watched the liquid sweep around inside the glass, blue with little golden specks swimming around it...

Draco was going to have a baby. Harry had put it there, whether he remembered that bit or not. He was going to be a dad, whether he ever remembered or not. That changed things, didn't it? Or at least it probably should have done. And it wasn't like he really disbelieved it, anymore, that he'd been in love with Draco Malfoy. Leaving aside everything else, the sheer madness of it, there was no chance he'd ever have tried to have a child with anyone he didn't love and, and, even trust. Completely, for both the love and the trust. He'd never have wanted to, if he wasn't sure...if he hadn't been a hundred, a thousand percent certain...he would never have, otherwise.

So, he must have been sure, then. He must have been beyond doubt, that other Harry, the one he didn't remember being.

The thing was, Harry thought, as the lamplight of his room caught those little gold specks, one by one, that believing it to have been true didn't make a difference. Or, even if it did make a difference, it didn't change anything. Not for him. Not for the Harry he was now, the only Harry he remembered being. 

When it came down to it, no matter what he'd done or felt, before, he just...couldn't. Could you know something was true, and still be unable to accept it? Not because it was so unbelievable--though it was that, still--but because you just couldn't see it?

Him and Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy and him.

If he could see it...

But he couldn't. He could almost, he thought, see that other, third person, the one he hadn't met yet, but would...but he couldn't see this. With anyone else, he might have been able to. It was just...Draco Malfoy...

For the first time since that other first night, dumping the day's dose of his potion actually seemed like a decision he was making. Possibly even the wrong one, now. He didn't know. Couldn't, for the first time, be certain.

Yet he just couldn't see himself doing anything else.