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: 8300

Summary: After ten years of marriage, Harry forgets.

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

Chapter Twelve

Christmas day came much more quickly than expected, or at least more quickly than Harry had.

"We're due at the Burrow in the afternoon," Draco said at breakfast. "It used to be early mornings until the Weasley population exploded. Then it turned out the Burrow couldn't hold that many children and all their presents. So now everyone does regular Christmas at home, and then we all meet up there later." The lack of sneering anywhere in this was both very obvious and very not, as if part of Harry always expected Draco to sneer about the Weasleys, while part of him had grown used to the idea that Draco Malfoy didn't often sneer in quite the old ways anymore.

"Alright," Harry said. He wondered if he ought to go up and get the thing he'd made now--but although morning Christmas seemed like it was probably more or less the right time for gift giving, Draco hadn't said anything about what, exactly, the two of them did at home on Christmas mornings. "So what do we do, Christmas mornings? Seeing as we don't, er..."

"We usually sleep in, honestly," Draco continued. "Seeing as we don't have--um, yet."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, a little awkward too.

"We should probably talk about it," Draco said, and for a moment Harry thought he meant the baby. They hadn't talked about very much at all so far, not even since the Glimpsing. Occasionally Draco would glance at Harry and mutter 'Jack' under his breath with a roll of his eyes or even a little sneer--but that was about the extent of things, even though the puffiness Harry had noticed weeks ago had by now become something that was certainly a roundness, not seen very often but stunningly obvious when it was in evidence.

"Talk about what?" Harry asked, when instead of going on to talk about whatever it was he meant, Draco had stared at him intensely, instead, as if he could somehow see the stream of thoughts that were marching through Harry's mind.

"We aren't particularly affectionate in public, most of the time," Draco said, which was how Harry came to recall that out of everyone they were likely to see today, only Ron and Hermione actually knew about his memory. It wasn't something he'd thought to worry about before. Sometimes it seemed like his whole life was made up of things he wasn't thinking about, for whatever reason. "I'm not saying--I don't mean we never hold hands, or whatever, but we're not all over each other around other people. As long as you don't go around sneering about how you don't want to be married to me, we'll likely be alright."

"I'm not usually the one who goes around sneering at things," Harry pointed out.

"I know," said Draco, with a sneer.

Harry grinned. Somehow this had become his default reaction to any sneering.

*

They'd a few hours before they needed to be at the Burrow. Harry spent them, in the beginning, wandering more or less aimlessly through the house: enjoying the friendly chaos of the living room before slipping into the den to eye the stockings hanging from the mantle, which were now full to bursting with wizarding treats. He could see several Chocolate Frogs wiggling near the top of his stocking; several more had actually made it over the edge, and were now twitching on the hearth, stopped from hopping away only by their wrapping.

He found Draco a while later, when he'd wandered up to the third floor, not for any particular reason but that it was warmer to wander that way than to try to go outside. It hadn't snowed the night before, or very recently, but had persisted in looking like snow while remaining dry for the better part of a week, leaving everything very much gloomier than it really ought to have been for Christmas, in Harry's estimation.

The door to Draco's study was open--the door to Draco's study never seemed to be open except when he was going in or out of it--and so Harry peeked his head in to see what he was doing.

"Answering more letters?" Harry asked, since Draco did seem to be bent over a parchment and scratching away with his quill. "On Christmas?"

Draco said, "I find it's a good idea to answer our Christmas cards reasonably close to the day, instead of two months later. Or never, which would generally be your inclination."

"You answer Christmas cards?" Harry said, blinking. As far as he knew, Christmas cards were the sort of thing where people sent you a card, you maybe sent them a card too (if you had remembered to buy them before Christmas and remembered you had them somewhere before February), and that was the end of it. "Why?"

Draco looked up at him. "Have you seen these?" he asked. "How will people survive without some constructive criticism?"

Well, that sounded awful, Harry decided. And, possibly, hilarious. "You can't constructive criticize people's Christmas cards!"

"I think you'll find I can do anything I--"

"Accio parchment," Harry said, and ignored Draco's spluttering protest at this move. The parchment flew into his hands, and he read it over: It was addressed to Dean and Seamus, and so far seemed lightly mocking, not even as mean as the nice other letters Draco had got in the habit of reading aloud. "Oh. You're not being an arsehole."

"People like it when you have opinions on their lives," Draco said, sneerily. It seemed be the theme of the day. "Which, seeing as they generally include at least a paragraph about their lives in the cards..."

"Right," Harry said, though he didn't recall ever having written more than 'Merry Christmas, from Harry' on any card he'd ever sent. Not that he'd ever sent many, or even really developed any Christmas habits yet...except that obviously he had done at some point... "What'd we write in our card this year?"

There had been a card, which had been sent out what had seemed like six dozen or so times. Harry hadn't paid it much attention, other than noticing that Draco had used a duplication spell to create copies of the original one, instead of writing them all out by hand. It hadn't bothered him at all then, but that was before it had occurred to him that Draco might have included a paragraph about their lives inside then, Who knew what Draco had said about him in them? Or maybe...maybe he'd told everyone about the baby? It wasn't so much that Harry minded--it didn't, really, seem like the kind of thing it was alright to mind about--as that he felt like he ought to have been told, if Draco were going to do something like that.

"This year?" Draco repeated. "Most years I write a paragraph, like everyone else. 'Harry's working himself to death as usual, and neglecting me to write these cards. Not to mention underestimating first years and their Knockback Jinxes.' That sort of thing. Constructive criticism only, of course."

"What'd you constructive criticize about me this year, then?" Harry said.

Draco sighed, not very sneerily now. "Our card this year said, 'Merry Christmas, from Harry and Draco.' If anyone asks, I've been on deadline, so it was your turn to write the card."

"Oh," Harry said, finding this was not quite the relief it could have been.

Draco Accio 'd the parchment back, and returned to scratching.

Harry watched him for a minute, frowning. "It's still Christmas, though," he said. "It's not really meant for this kind of thing, is it?"

"And what kind of thing is it for?" Draco asked. He didn't look at Harry, which might have seemed more dismissive if he had kept scratching, but he didn't.

"Opening our stockings," Harry said at once, though he hadn't, until that moment, meant to bring it up. "When do we usually do ours?"

Now Draco did look up, the corners of his mouth twitching in a not very sneery way. "We usually see how long you can go without bringing it up," he said. "The previous record was about half an hour from now--but we got up earlier than usual today too, so you may actually have broken it. Technically speaking."

"Yeah, sure," said Harry dryly, not knowing whether or not to believe this but absolutely, positively certain Draco was winding him up either way. "We can wait a bit longer, if you want."

"Don't be absurd," Draco said. "There's no need for you to be self-sacrificing when I could be eating chocolate things right now."

*

By the time they Floo'd over to the Burrow, Harry's stomach felt a bit sick--not because he was nervous, or anything, but because Draco had kept stealing stuff from out of his stocking, and so he'd had to eat the rest as quickly as possible to prevent more thefts.

Then he tumbled out of the fireplace, and into a sea of mostly red-haired people, all of whom he'd either used to know or was definitely supposed to know now. By the time Draco came out behind him, he felt more than a bit sick for multiple reasons, most of which seemed to do with there being way, way, way too many people about.

"Merry Christmas, Harry," said someone. Harry didn't see who because, a moment later, every Weasley grandkid seemed to notice him, and to converge on him.

"Er, Merry Christmas," he said, between what seemed like about a thousand, 'Merry Christmas, Uncle Harry's. Then he listened to a bunch of different stories told more or less simultaneously, some of which were about gifts people wanted or had got, and some of which were about how they'd tried such and such hex he'd been teaching in class, though not at home of course, only at Hogwarts before it'd been time to go, and some of them were about how he had to come see x or y or z which might have been a gift or a pet or a Chocolate Frog card with his face on it--

"Alright, alright," said Draco loudly, his hand a steadying presence above Harry's elbow. "Give us some space, you lot."

Somehow, this seemed to be all it took for them to, in fact, be given some space.

"They know I'll withhold presents," Draco confided in a low voice. "Or threaten to, anyhow."

"Oh, yeah?"

"And then you'll give them out sneakily anyway, and right under my nose--but it's a lot of trouble to go to when I might have already switched out nice presents for less-nice ones," Draco continued.

"Right," said Harry, a little absentmindedly, as something had just occurred to him. He glanced around first, to make sure they wouldn't be overheard, and then, in a voice lower than Draco's had been: "I don't know anyone's name. I mean, maybe not not anyone's, but any of the kids' except Alice..."

"You don't need their names, they all answer to 'hey, you,'" said Draco. "And if that fails, you can get just about anyone in the building to pay attention to you if you shout hey, Weasley!"

He did in fact shout this last part, which led to a chorus of 'hey, Draco's back, and a few 'hey, Malfoy's as well as a 'hey, arsehole!' This second thing came from Ron, who approached them red-faced enough to suggest he wasn't entirely sober.

"Hey, mates, might want to get away from the fireplace, yeah?" he said. "We're still waiting on a few." Once they'd moved to a nearby corner--carefully, lest they stumble into anyone or knock over one of the Weasley Christmas trees--which were as unsteady-looking as the Burrow itself from the outside, and everywhere, and, to Harry, very good friends who were much older ones than they'd been the last time he'd come to the Burrow for Christmas--he said, "Good, Harry?"

"Great," Harry said firmly, before Draco could say anything snide, or even just sneery, or notice that Harry had, up until a moment ago, been unsteady enough to actually need that steadying hand. "Merry Christmas, and all."

"Yeah, you too," said Ron.

The three of them navigated through the living room, then, after depositing all the shrunken-and-now-unshrunken presents they'd brought beneath the largest Weasley tree, toward the back of the house. They'd nearly made it out to the garden when Arthur Weasley came up to them and said, "I've got a question for you, Harry."

"Alright," Harry said, grinning; if there was one thing he was familiar with here, it was the kinds of questions Arthur had for him at Weasley family gatherings.

"Can you tell me how a Bootooth works?" Arthur asked.

Harry spent a couple seconds racking his brains, but couldn't come up with the first possibility of what that was meant to be. Grinning a bit less, he said, "I dunno. Maybe ask Hermione? Her parents are dentists..."

"No need for that," said Draco. "I know all about Bluemooth--which is what it's actually called, Arthur."

"Oh, really?" Arthur said, not sounding at all as if he doubted this (although Harry, despite not knowing anything about any of it, felt he ought to have); sounding, in fact, as if he were ready to soak up whatever mountain of misinformation Draco had on the subject.

"Of course," said Draco, and proceeded to ramble on about whatever Bootooth/Bluemooth was, or whatever he thought it was, his hands gesturing wildly. Harry didn't understand half of what he was saying, but he wasn't listening all that closely, either. Mostly, he was thinking about how weird it was, seeing Draco so at ease here. Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley had hated each other, not to mention all the cracks Draco'd made about Ron's family, at school...

It was weird, but it was good, too, Harry thought.

*

A few minutes later, they made their way out to the garden, where Bill, Charlie, and Ginny were already huddled together, each holding a brightly colored plastic cup with snowmen or reindeer dancing around on it. They were having a spirited conversation, which might have been about anything, but turned out to actually, when Harry was close enough to hear, be about:

"I really think Percy might bring it home this year," said Bill.

"It'll never be Percy," Ginny scoffed.

"Yeah," said Ron, jumping right in. "Mum doesn't care about promotions."

"She definitely doesn't," Charlie said. "Jobs are negative weight only. Ask how I know."

Ron continued: "If she did, I'd've won when I made Head Auror."

"Oh, would you shut up about Head Auror, already?" said Ginny, with a grin. "So sorry to have interfered with your magnificent victory."

"You did it on purpose," Ron said, with the kind of offense that seemed only to come with siblings, and to last forever. "You had a plaque made!"

Harry, standing a few feet away, decided it was safe enough to ask Draco, "Er, what'd Ginny do?"

"Mmm," Draco said, looking around. Then he pointed at a small red-headed boy following around several other red-headed boys, and who had tripped over his own two feet at least twice since they'd gotten out to the garden. "That one. I think?"

"You think?"

"In case you haven't noticed, there's a dizzying number of Weasley grandchildren around here today," Draco said. "Running count's at twelve, maybe? Or maybe it's ten and the twins just make it seem like more? You're the one who usually keeps track of this stuff."

"Right," said Harry, and found that his head was spinning all the more, and wished someone, maybe Hermione or perhaps even Draco himself, had given him anything like a study guide for this.

"They've got a lot of cousins and stuff here this year, too," said Draco. "It's not usually quite this crowde-- watch it!"

At some point, Ginny had got Ron in a headlock, and the two of them were now flailing around. It was only a quick step back that kept Draco and Harry from going down with them when they landed in a heap on the ground, both laughing.

"Anyway, neither of us is winning this year," said Ron when he and Ginny had both got up and dusted themselves off to the sound of Bill and Charlie laughing their arses off in the background.

"Er, winning what?" Harry asked.

"Christmas, obviously," said Ginny.

Harry ignored Draco pinching him in order to ask, "How do you 'win' Christmas, exactly?"

"Of course you wouldn't know, you've never managed it!" said Ron, with a sort of wild look in his eyes, and doing a jerking thing with his head which seemed to indicate that Harry should shut the fuck up before anyone made out that he didn't know about things he apparently ought to have.

"Yeah he did, remember?" Ginny said. "The year he started at Hogwarts. The only year anyone's ever won 'cause of work."

"Yes, you've always been Molly's favorite," Draco chimed in. "Despite not actually being a Weasley."

"It was a slow year, though," said Ginny. "He'd never have pulled it off otherwise."

"True," Draco agreed.

"Right, no one was having any sprogs that year," Ron said, having apparently decided everything was alright after all, or at least that making weird faces at Harry wasn't going to help anything, so he may as well try strong hints.

"Or this year," said Ginny. "So it's all up in the air."

"Yeah..." Ron said, and though he managed not to glance at Draco, Harry didn't, which was how he noticed the sour look that had come across Draco's face, though quickly erased for something quite a lot more neutral.

"If you'll excuse me," Draco said, and went back inside. While he didn't quite storm or even stomp off, he still didn't have what you'd call a very happy posture as he stood by the window to talk to some random Weasley cousin instead of them.

"Oh, fuck," said Ginny, with a wince. "Sorry, Harry, I forgot you're still trying..."

"Er..."

"Good work, Gin," said Ron, with a renewed sort of wild-eyed look at Harry, though this one was a bit harder to read, seeing as keeping Draco's pregnancy secret couldn't be the Head Auror's job the same way keeping Harry from letting on that he didn't remember things was. "Wonderful going, incredibly subtle--"

"Tell Draco sorry for me, would you?" Ginny said. "I've got to hex my brother now..."

"Er, alright," Harry said, and went over to where Draco was. The Weasley cousin was just leaving, possibly, judging by the look on his face, because Draco had just been nasty at him. "Hey," he said, settling in next to Draco so that they were looking out on the back garden together.

"Hi," Draco said.

"Ginny says she's sorry for talking about babies when we're trying to have one and haven't done it yet," Harry said.

"Is she now?"

"She said she was," Harry pointed out. "Funny, isn't it? At least a little bit?"

It was ironic, at minimum. Lording secrets over everybody else there seemed like it ought to be the kind of thing Draco really enjoyed; but he just continued watching everyone else, with an unhappy little twist to his mouth.

"Everything alright?" Harry asked.

"Yes," Draco said. "No." He looked around, then asked, in a very low voice, "You're not still in love with her, are you?"

"Er," Harry said, and although it was obvious who Draco meant, the only person he could have meant, it still took him a moment to wrap his head around being asked that question right now. "No?"

"...So persuasive," Draco said tightly. "I have no trouble believing you, when you're so careful to answer my question with yet another question."

"I'm not still in love with Ginny, alright?" Harry said, very carefully not thinking about why Draco cared so much about things like whether Harry still had feelings for his ex. "Now would you shut it?"

Draco didn't seem to mind Harry answering him with a question this time. "Alright," he said. "Good."

Ginny and Ron were still going at it, loud and raucous and fun; watching them, Harry could hardly help thinking about it, a little, now Draco'd brought it up. Or maybe he would have anyway, since he'd been more or else avoiding Ginny from their breakup until the last time he could remember before he'd woken up married to Draco Malfoy. 

They'd been good together, before the war and for a little while after. Mid-summer, things had gotten weird, and weirdly strained. Then, less than a week before Ginny'd been due to go back to Hogwarts for her seventh year, they'd had a fight. They'd never fought before then, but this one had been a blow-out. It had made up for all the other fights they'd never had.

Harry didn't remember how it had started, or even how it had middled. It had been the kind of fight that narrowed down to a few things near the end. Ginny'd said something about how he'd gone into hiding with Ron and Hermione and left her behind, obviously upset about it--even though it'd been an understanding between them before it happened, or Harry had thought it was, at least. So then he'd said, hot-faced and upset too, by then, that they'd invited themselves along, as she might have done for herself if she'd really wanted to. It wasn't like he'd been stopping her, had he? She hadn't liked that one bit. Said it wasn't fair. So then Harry had asked who it wasn't fair to, then. What, exactly, they'd said to each other after that, he didn't remember again, except that the whole thing that turned into shouting for a while after. 

They'd stayed together a while after that, if you could call owling each other more and more anemically for the next few months staying together. They'd broken up right before Hogwarts had let out for Christmas, but it was never the actual breakup Harry remembered. It was always that fight.

He'd spent a year, maybe up to a year and a half thinking he'd marry Ginny someday. Watching her son--one of three kids she'd had with Neville, Hermione had said in her letter months ago--playing in the garden Harry thought about it again. It was the sort of thing he might have wondered about wistfully, once, not very long ago as far as he was concerned: where they'd have ended up living, what their kids would have looked like. But now it seemed to be something that wasn't meant to go anywhere even in his own mind. He couldn't picture it anymore. Even trying to think about it had him thinking, not that Ginny might have had his baby, if things had been different, but that Draco Malfoy was having his baby, when it came to the way things were.

He didn't know how long he'd been thinking-but-not-wondering when Draco said, hesitantly, "...Did you want to talk about it?"

"Er, no," Harry said, coming back to himself and where he was all at once. "Definitely not."

"Oh, thank Merlin," Draco said. "I'd have had to hex you and then myself. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find something lovely and non-alcoholic to drink."

He sounded faintly miserable about this, as if 'lovely' and 'alcoholic' weren't words one could generally expect to go together. He might've had a point on that one; as soon as Harry had his own brightly-colored cup to sip out of, he found himself thinking that it really would have been a miserable thing, after all, if the Firewhisky were anything that didn't burn going down.

*

For a while, Harry drifted around the edges of things, occasionally being cornered by one Weasley cousin or another, and always saved by Ron, Bill or Ginny when they didn't politely go away after a few minutes of talking to him. Overall, though, even the people who were excited about him being Harry Potter didn't seem as excited as they would have been twenty years ago.

Eventually, he found Draco again, in the living room this time, drinking out of a dull, mud-colored cup as he watched some younger Weasleys playing games (most of which were ones they'd played with Deirdre at one visit or another). Harry hadn't seen any other cups like that, and decided Draco must've transfigured it to make some sort of point about his miserableness.

"Hey," he said.

"Hello," said Draco, so sulkily there was definitely something going on.

"Are you alright?" Harry asked.

"Fine."

Harry's head was starting to get pleasingly fuzzy around the edges, but not enough so that he couldn't see right through this. "No, you're not," he said, a little loudly, then looked around and said, taking care to make it soft enough so no one would hear, "I'm not in love with Ginny, git."

"I know," Draco said. "Would you stop bringing that subject up now?"

"I only did just now!" Harry said, fairly certain this subject had now been brought up twice, and Draco had been the one to start it the first time.

"I suppose."

"Has someone been an arsehole to you?" Harry asked next. "I can hex them."

Now Draco just rolled his eyes. "Unnecessary. Everyone's been fine. I just...it's nothing."

Harry thought back to everything that had happened since they'd got here... "Er, Draco?"

"What?" Draco snapped.

"Did you want to win Christmas?"

"No!" Draco scowled at him. "I mean--usually yes? Obviously, we would have been the center of things this year if you hadn't gone and--um. But it's--it doesn't--it's not important, is it? Not this year. I mean, everything's fucked anyway, isn't it? So I don't care about it."

None of this was said very convincingly. In fact, it became more unconvincing the longer Draco went on about it, while looking pointedly in a direction that wasn't at Harry.

"Right," Harry said, feeling something gathering in his chest, but not sure what it was yet, other than being some kind of determination. "Alright."

Draco did look at him then. "No, really," he said. "It's fine. I don't--on the list of things that ultimately matter, this isn't among them. So you can stop looking at me like that."

"Alright," Harry said, very sure that whatever was or wasn't on the list of things that ultimately mattered, this particular subject was on the list of ones that mattered rather a lot to Draco right now.

He obtained another brightly-colored cup, then another after that, and did a bit more wandering around, absentmindedly socializing whenever anyone talked to him, as the determination in his chest rose some more. Then he went into the kitchen, which he hadn't realized he was avoiding until he decided, all at once, to unavoid it after all.

"Hi, er, Molly," he said to Molly Weasley, who had just removed several wonderful and pastry-looking things from out of the oven on long pans which now hovered in the air. 'Molly' felt like a very weird thing to call her, but Draco had told him he called Ron's parents by their given names now, and had for some years...

"Harry!" she said, and rushed over to squeeze him into a warm, cushiony sort of hug. "I'm so happy you made it, we haven't seen you in months..."

"Sorry," said Harry, not missing the censure in this, not least because it was incredibly familiar: he'd been on this end of it on the regular ever since Auror training had started. "I've been, er, really busy..."

"So I've heard," Mrs. Weasley said, and then, before Harry could panic about what, exactly, she might've heard, she added, "Ron says you've been helping him with a case?"

"Er, yeah," Harry said. "Can't really talk about it, though."

It did not take much thinking to reach this conclusion, which was also what he'd had to say to loads of people when going through his training. Thankfully it still came naturally.

"You didn't tell you you'd lost weight," she said, eyeing him in his Weasley jumper, which he'd put on prior to coming over (his was red with an H on the front, while Draco's was green with a D on the front), and which didn't hang as snugly as it might have done. "Haven't you been eating?"

"Plenty!" said Harry, though he suspected he'd have been eating more if he really had been stuffing his face at Hogwarts for one or more meals a day, instead of sticking with the portions they had delivered from the Free Elves. Even when there was extra, he didn't like to go for it, in case Draco wanted it instead (which he did, usually)...not to mention, there were all the walking he'd done in the woods... "I've been eating loads of stuff, all the time," he added, but thought it unwise to protest when she pushed a biscuit on him, and then a few more. They were good biscuits, so it wasn't like he even wanted to complain, really... "Draco's been eating, too," he said, feeling that pointing out that Draco had gained weight might be a bit too obvious, especially since he'd resized his jumper back at home...which come to think of it, was something Harry maybe ought to have done as well...

"How is Draco?" Mrs. Weasley asked, with a significance Harry didn't think he was imagining, and that made the determination twist around in his chest so that he knew exactly what he'd come in here to talk about.

"Er, fine," he said, trying to think of how to test the waters around this subject, but not, with his mouth still half-full of biscuit, really sure how. "He's great, really!"

"I've seen some stories in the Prophet about you two," she said, more carefully now. "Now don't get upset, dear, I know not to believe anything they've said without asking..."

"Er," said Harry, this being more or less a development that must have arisen at some point during the last twenty years; the Molly Weasley he knew had still been more likely than not to believe every printed word. "What kind of stories?" he asked, and then abruptly remembered a certain one, and added quickly, "The one about me and the Charms professor is pure rubbish though!"

"I know, dear," Molly said. "You'd never run around on Draco! The nerve of them to even suggest it!"

"Yeah..." said Harry, deciding abruptly that it was very much time to move on with his master plan. "So what kinds of stories were you wanting to know about, then?" he asked, feeling almost certain this would take them closer to.

"Well," she said, "The papers keep having you at St Mungo's...and Draco hasn't had a drop of alcohol since you walked in the Floo. I was wondering if, maybe, there was something you might like to tell your family...?"

How Molly could have known what Draco was or wasn't drinking in all the chaos outside the kitchen was a magic beyond Harry, and one he wasn't planning on worrying about.

"Er," he said, and stuffed an entire biscuit in his mouth, and then his hands into his pockets. "You're my family," he repeated once the biscuit had gone down, not so much because he hadn't known it, but because of the way she'd said it, so matter of factly...as if it were something that was true not just now, but had always been, through all those years he didn't remember living through. As if it were a thing much older than it had ever seemed to him before. "Yeah," he said, not sure what he meant it about, which of the things in question...he found that all the Firewhisky he'd had thus far wasn't quite bracing enough, after all, and took a very deep breath before blurting out, "We haven't really told anyone yet. Just, we kind of wanted it to be private, for a while...and not all over the papers, you know..."

"Oh, Harry," Molly said, and hugged him again. "I'm so happy for you," she said, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her apron. "So very happy for you both..."

"He's due on the eighth of May," Harry added, mostly because it felt as if it were the right kind of thing to add. Part of him wanted to also say that they were having a boy, but something seemed to hold him back...if Draco was going to end up pissed off about this, then surely he'd be even more pissed off the more Harry said, right? And...it seemed like the kind of thing they should maybe talk about, too, before they went around sharing it with other people. Harry hadn't even mentioned it the last time he'd been over to Grimmauld Place; as far as he knew, Draco had told no one except his mum about that bit...

"How lovely," Molly said, and hugged him again before shoving even more biscuits into his hands.

*

What Harry had been expected to happen came about a few minutes later. He'd not so much been shooed from the kitchen as a gaggle of kids had come loudly into it after biscuits, leaving him to slip back out again. He got another bright cup--filled with water this time, as he'd an idea being hydrated and somewhat less fuzzy might be a good idea, over the next while--and found a corner near enough to Draco to see him, but not quite near enough for Draco to notice his nervousness, or, even worse, ask him about it.

Draco was talking to someone else--not a Weasley cousin, this time, but Teddy, who'd arrived by Floo a minute before that. He'd just changed his hair into a whitish blond when Molly Weasley came out of the kitchen, making straight for them.

Draco said something, probably 'Merry Christmas,' or 'the Burrow looks fantastic. I don't and have never had anything nasty to say about it.' (Harry was shit at lip-reading, but thought his idea was probably better than whatever had actually come out of Draco's mouth.) Then Molly said something that made Draco's eyebrows shoot all the way up his forehead, until they seemed poised to keep going up his skull until they met his hairline. He shot Harry an incredulous, but possibly not enraged look, and mouthed something at him that seemed like it was probably either 'you told her?' or 'what the fuck, Potter?'

Harry shrugged, and, feeling ever so slightly mad, winked at Draco. Then he tossed back a large mouthful of water, the rest of what was in his cup. By the time he looked back to where Draco was, Draco's entire demeanor had changed, and he and Molly Weasley were...jumping up and down, while holding hands? Okay, Harry thought, grinning when the next words to come out of Molly's mouth carried far enough for him to hear them: "...A boy!!!..."

Harry didn't mind they hadn't talked about it first, he decided. He couldn't have done otherwise, the way Draco looked right now.

The next hour or so were a blur of congratulations. Everyone Harry knew in the crowd and the people he didn't too, all came up to him to talk about it.

"You wanker," said Ginny, coming over to stand with him a little while after this had started, so they could both see Draco, sitting on a big plush chair in the living room, by all appearances keeping court. "I'll have my apology back now."

"Yeah, sorry," Harry said, shrugging in a way that hopefully didn't give off 'I haven't actually had a real conversation with you since we broke up, even if that was twenty years ago for you' vibes. "You know how he is."

He'd hoped this would do the heavy lifting for him, and indeed it seemed to: Ginny snorted, and shoved into his shoulder with hers in a companionable sort of way. "Yeah, as if you aren't," she said, grinning. "Massive wankers, the both of you, setting this up. You deserve each other. Even I didn't have the stones for a pregnancy announcement on Christmas."

"Ha!" Harry said, forgetting for a moment he hadn't set it up, and hadn't even known winning Christmas was a thing until they'd got here. "Sounds like jealousy to me."

"Yeah, right. Just wait til you're through the first six months of never sleeping through the night. Ask again if I'm jealous then."

"Will you be?" Harry asked. Draco had seemed to notice them standing here, and was giving him what seemed like a hard look; Harry winked at him again, feeling even madder than he had the first time, and a bit as if he were in a freefall. Draco's face went on to do a different, much funnier thing before he resumed whatever story he'd been in the middle of telling his audience.

"I'd say not," said Ginny. "Unless yours is the cutest baby ever seen."

"He is pretty cute," Harry said, the sense of freefall turning into something warmer and softer in his chest as he thought back to the Glimpsing and what they'd seen there...

Ginny grinned again. "Awww," she said. "That look almost makes me want to forgive you. But only almost, mind." She gave him a quick hug, not as warm or cushiony as Molly's, but a real and welcome thing all the same. "Congrats on joining the parents club, Harry," she said. "Now I've got to go finish drowning my sorrows at how you've cheated me out of my win."

"How were you going to win?" Harry asked. "Thought it was Percy."

"I'm the girl and the baby," said Ginny, departing with a wink of her own. "Percy was never going to win over me for something as weak as a promotion."

Harry laughed, and turned back to watching Draco.

*

A while later, someone said, "Oi, Harry!"

Harry, who'd been congratulated by four red-haired people he didn't otherwise recognize in a row (one of whom had started off by saying 'Harry, you dog!' which had been easily in the top five of most humiliating things anyone had ever said to him, or, he was sure, anything anyone ever would), had snuck out the back for some peace and quiet. He hadn't found quiet, because there was still a gaggle of kids playing out there--this time it was some game he didn't recognize, which involved half of them on their broomsticks and the other half not, as the half who weren't either dodged the half on their broomsticks or tried to knock them off them whenever they swooped down--but there had been peace of a sort there, for the first while at least. 

Now, he turned to see George, headed his way.

"Hey, George," Harry said, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He hadn't thought of Fred until just this moment. How hadn't he thought of Fred, on today of all days? The last couple Christmases he remembered had been full of him...but it had been twenty years...was he still meant to be thinking of Fred every time he saw George? Did everyone else? Did anyone? Was he giving everything away right now?

George, though, grinned at him, in a striking and probably, Harry would decide later, really good contrast to the way Harry remembered him, the last couple years but the last couple Christmases especially... "Mum says congratulations are in order," he said easily. "Thought I'd come out and give you my condolences."

"Er," Harry said. "Thanks. I think."

"'Course," said George. "I bet you're going to tell me no one's offered you a cigar yet."

"Er," said Harry, momentarily distracted by the sight of two more kids joining the fray in the back garden: two tall, red-headed boys who looked very like how Fred and George had when he'd met them, other than looking incredibly, even insanely young. "Not yet?"

"Then today's your lucky day," George said, passing Harry what did in fact seem to be a cigar, then offering him a light off the end of his wand.

If there was an alarm flare from somewhere, Harry never saw it, or felt it, beneath thoughts of Fred, and George's twins, and possibly even his own impending fatherhood. He didn't, at least, until he'd taken the first few drags of the cigar, and George's easy grin had changed into the sort of delight that anyone who'd ever met either of the Weasley twins would have known to fear.

"What?" Harry said, or tried to say. In truth, what came out was more of a "HONK!"

The cigar had fallen from his hand, which wasn't actually a hand anymore. It seemed, when he looked at it, to be more of a flipper.

"Seal Stogies," said George with no little satisfaction. "I was planning to test them on your beloved, til Mum cornered me. Seemed to think I'd best not touch a hair on his head this year..."

"HONK," Harry said, again, just as his ears began to tingle, and possibly to shrink, causing his glasses to tumble from his face. He reached out for them, a reflex that had them bouncing off his flipper, then to the ground. He reached for his wand, which didn't go well either, seeing as his flippers didn't seem to bend that way. His wand seemed to have absorbed into his seal-ness anyway, just as his clothing had done, was in the process of doing...he sank down to the ground as his legs melted together into a tail, or whatever seals even had back there, he didn't know...rear flippers, maybe, he found as he wiggled his back end around a bit. 

Someone was laughing at him. Everyone was laughing, all the kids who'd been playing the broomstick game now gathered around.

"HONK," Harry said, in lieu of a rude gesture, and flippered his way through the crowd. The flippering became more of a barreling once he'd got started. As he reached the kids, he became aware that, alarmingly, he didn't really know how to put on the brakes; but thankfully, they all got out of the way, aside from several littler ones that the bigger ones decided to toss onto his back as he passed them.

By the time he was back inside, he was flippering again, less because he'd figured out the brakes than because he'd stopped putting in any effort at speed. He was extremely aware of the fact that Ginny's youngest kid was practically sitting on his head, and someone's else's even younger kid was bouncing on his back, and maybe Draco Malfoy of all people was used to having other people's kids ride around on his shoulders, but Harry most definitely wasn't. He was too aware of all of this to pay very much attention to the way everyone inside was stopping to stare at him, too, as he made his way to the living room.

"HONK," he said to Draco, and would never be sure, afterwards, exactly what would have come out of his mouth, if he'd actually been able to talk.

Draco, who was sitting in a plush armchair, and had been saying something about how he couldn't stand baby names starting with the letter J, looked down at him. "Well," he said, as a slow grin spread across his pointy features. "Trying to steal my spotlight, I see."

"HONK!" Harry said, instead of being able to ask how he could steal the spotlight when it was his baby too they'd won Christmas with...

Draco squinted at him a little harder, then made a complicated sort of face. "I wish he hadn't done that," he said in a low voice which seemed to be meant only for Harry. Then, in a more normal one: "No need to get testy, Harry. You make an attractive enough seal." He seemed to trace something with his finger in the air above Harry's forehead--Harry could just guess what it was, and would have honked about it if it hadn't been for a commotion going on at the back of the room, right at that moment--

"George Weasley!" Molly said, sounding apoplectic.

"Now Mum, you didn't say anything about the hairs on Harry's head," George pointed out in a grinning sort of voice.

"Nonetheless--!"

This went on for a few minutes, more or less the same sort of thing that happened at every Weasley family gathering, except that instead of Fred being there to join in, it was George vs. Molly until the point a couple younger voices chimed in saying, "We thought it was brilliant, Dad!" and "Who wouldn't like to be a seal for Christmas?"

It was at this point that Draco, who'd been staring at Harry in a way that seemed to be getting more complicated by the moment, said in a carrying voice, "How long are we being a seal for Christmas, if I may ask?"

"They're not meant to last more than half an hour tops," said George, sounding abruptly more businesslike. "And he didn't inhale much of the smoke, so he's likely to change back in the next few minutes."

This turned out to be true. A few minutes later, just as all the laughing-about-seals and stuff was tapering off, Harry slipped back into his normal shape. One moment, he was a seal, honking at Draco whenever he said something particularly rude about either Harry or the name Jack in general (everyone else, Harry was pleased to hear, seemed to think it was a fine enough name, and that constellations were more or less out these days), and occasionally bouncing a ball back at whoever had transfigured one to toss at his nose (this had actually turned out to be quite fun, so that he wouldn't have minded being a seal a while longer). The next moment, he was himself again, sitting on the floor by Draco's feet and squinting around at things. Everything seemed to be brighter than it had been when he was a seal, but also a bit fuzzier...

"Still got all your fingers and toes?" asked George, who, once he was finished being shouted at, had come in closer to see his handiwork.

Harry took the opportunity to make that rude gesture.

"Yes to fingers," said George cheerily. "How about toes?"

"How about no?" Draco said. "The odor from his feet will take down the room."

"Fair enough. You'll count his toes tonight and let me know if any are fused together, yeah?"

"Shut up, both of you," Harry said, having wiggled his toes and not felt like any of them were fused or anything. He got out his wand and Summoned his glasses. This took several tries, as did putting them onto his face, as if there were a disconnect between his brain and his hands and mouth. No one else seemed to notice this, though. There seemed to be too much else to talk about, between the baby and his having been a seal and everything else everyone had going on...

He didn't really know what else people were talking about, or what anyone had going on. He tried to listen, but even the nearest conversation--between Draco and Bill and Molly, now most others had wandered off again--seemed little more than a confused buzzing between his ears, colliding with the pink gumminess in an odd, spinning way...

After a while of this, something which Harry would later think must have been Draco's wand tapped him on the shoulder, seeming to dispel the worst of the buzzing. "Alright, Harry?" Draco asked, in a low voice indeed.

"I," Harry said. "Er. Yeah?"

"Very convincing," Draco said, and then, when Molly and Bill had finished what sounded like a disagreement on the best way to get babies to start sleeping through the night (why everyone seemed so obsessed with this particular subject was beyond Harry), said, "So sorry, Molly, but I think we may need to dash out early." Before Harry could say he was fine, and they absolutely didn't, and he didn't know what Draco was talking about, Draco added, "I'm afraid I'm a bit more worn-out than I expected to be. I'd best go home and have a lie-down..."

The way he said it made it sound like he didn't actually know if this would be an acceptable reason for leaving Christmas early, which meant Harry wasn't sure either; all his other Christmases at the Burrow had either also been sleepovers, or had been day-long affairs he hadn't even tried to leave until well after midnight. 

Then Molly said, "Of course, dear. Just let us get your presents together, and some Christmas dinner to take home..."

"Alright, thanks so much..." Draco said, and then, once she and everyone she'd drafted to help her get stuff together had disappeared from the room: "Can you stand up?"

"Yeah," Harry said, though it hadn't occurred to him to try until Draco had asked...how long had he just been sitting on the floor with all of that buzzing going around his head?

"Can you Floo, do you think?" Draco asked next.

"'Course I can," Harry said, and tried the standing up bit. It went fine until he was all the way on his feet, at which point he found himself leaning against the nearest Weasley Christmas tree, which began leaning against him back, almost leading him to tumble into whatever was left of Draco's lap. "...Maybe not."

"You're alright," Draco said, low and calm, though Harry's heart was now a heavy thudding in his chest, and when he tried to steady himself with a long deep breath, it caught sharply within him before he was anywhere near finished. "I'll Side-Along you home. It'll be alright."

Being told everything was alright in a tone such as that had never once made Harry think anything was, in fact, alright.

No, Harry thought as Draco got out of his chair in order to steady him once again, something was actually really wrong here...