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lomonaaerenDon't start reading here. This is the second part of a two-part one-shot.
“Dad? Can I talk to you?”
Harry looked up at him with a faint, pleased smile. Al had picked this time deliberately. He knew Harry wasn’t out on a case, and Scorpius was busy studying for an exam in his worst subject—Stealth and Tracking—and wouldn’t surface from his notes until tomorrow. Mr. Malfoy was out of town on a business trip. Scorpius had always been vague about his father’s business, and Al hadn’t cared enough to ask.
It was perfect.
“Sure, Al.” Harry shut the door and motioned for him to take a chair in front of his desk. Al did, his hands clenched on the edges of it. Harry studied him, the smile slipping off his face. “What’s the matter? It sounds serious.”
“It is, Dad.” Al stared at the floor. If he looked too angry or too eager, then his father would probably suspect something, and Al couldn’t have that happening. “I—did you know that I’m dating Scorpius Malfoy now?” He peeked up through his fringe. He hated that his fringe was so much like his father’s, and sometimes he’d tried cutting or changing his hair, but most of the ways he could wear it just weren’t comfortable.
“I didn’t know that,” Harry said, smiling again, “but I suspected. Congratulations. He’s a much more pleasant young man than his father was at that age.”
He smiled wistfully off into the distance, and Al knew, just knew, that he was thinking of Mr. Malfoy and something they’d done together recently. Al broke sharply into his reverie.
“It’s just that—that Scorpius and I started dating before you and Mr. Malfoy did,” he said carefully. “We just didn’t want to tell anyone right away. And then it kind of got swept away in the big row about you two.”
Harry laughed. Al couldn’t remember hearing him laugh that happily in years. “That was something, wasn’t it?” he asked, shaking his head. “But still not as bad as I thought it would be. I think the British public is pretty much tired of me.”
And so am I. But if Al said that before he was ready, then it would ruin everything. It would seem too personal, and Harry would assume that meant he could ignore what Al was saying, all the important things that he needed Harry to hear.
Al cleared his throat. “I just—I wonder…”
“Yes?” Harry leaned forwards, smiling at him, his eyes open and kind and his face so warm that Al could almost imagine he was Jamie or Lily, who were Harry’s favorite children.
Al felt his cheeks get warm, and he shook his head. He couldn’t be distracted by thoughts like that. If Harry could only love him some of the time and not other times, that just proved that he wasn’t a great father after all and the warmth he was showing right now was a lie.
“I think that having two connections between our families like that is strange,” Al breathed. “I don’t think I like it.”
His father’s smile vanished at once, and now his face looked more familiar. He leaned back in his chair and plucked at the desk. “Why?” he asked carefully.
“Well, it’s like two step-siblings dating, isn’t it?” Al countered. “Or the parents of two people who fell in love independently getting married.”
Harry glanced up from under his fringe in turn, and his eyes were hunted. Al wondered why. Since when had his life ever been hard? No one had told him that he was in the shadow of his father and would never be able to establish something worthwhile and important on his own. “I reckon it’s a little like that, yeah.”
“I don’t want that to happen.” Al bit his lip and did his best to summon a look of tormented innocence into his eyes. “There’s enough attention paid to our family because you’re a celebrity.”
Harry’s fist clenched. Al knew he had chosen his words wisely. Harry was sensitive about the fact that reporters bothered his children. He’d tried to give them privacy, but it didn’t always work.
“What are you saying?” Harry asked. “I can’t stop the rumors from spreading or people from speaking insults, which will happen once they find out about you and Scorpius.”
“I’m not giving up Scorpius,” Al said fiercely. “I deserve a chance to be happy.”
Harry blinked at him. “Of course you do. I would never suggest you do that.”
“But that only leaves one solution,” Al said, and leaned forwards on the chair, staring, and waited for Harry to see.
His father’s eyes shut. Green, like his, and his grandmother Lily’s. Al hated it. Why couldn’t he have eyes that were exactly his own, dark or blue or grey like no one else’s in the family? He didn’t want the light brown eyes that Jamie and Lily had inherited from their mum, because then people would say he looked like them and Ginny.
“Al,” his dad whispered.
“I want to be happy,” Al said. “I spent so much of my time when I was a teenager not being happy. I deserve this. I don’t like you dating Mr. Malfoy and I want you to stop.”
Harry made a small tortured sound.
Al had hoped that he wouldn’t have to play this last card, because he didn’t like hurting his father, he really didn’t. But it was necessary. His hair and his eyes and his face and his name and his career weren’t his own; Scorpius had to be.
“If you really love me, Dad, you’ll do it,” he whispered.
Harry looked up at him. His cheeks were ashen, but his eyes were calmer than Al had expected them to be.
“I do love you,” he said. “I promise. But I don’t think I can show that love by giving up Draco.”
“You do a really poor job of showing it,” Al snapped, and rose to his feet so fast that the chair overturned. He stalked towards the door, his temper seething. He would have to find another way to get Harry to give Mr. Malfoy up. It was intolerable that the one different thing he had ever done should be taken away.
“All right.”
Al wanted to hear the words so much that he wasn’t sure he’d heard them at first. He glanced over his shoulder and licked his lips. “What?”
“I said I’ll do it.” Harry stretched one hand towards him, his eyes big with yearning. If he wants me to make nice, then he should have noticed that I was unhappy and Mum was unhappy a long time ago, Al thought viciously. “But I’m asking you to reconsider. Why should you care what people say? Why should me and Mr. Malfoy bother you? You know your mum and I won’t be getting back together. You know—”
“You don’t love me,” Al said. “I knew it.”
Harry’s head bowed until his chin touched the desk. Then he gave a small nod.
Al stood there looking at him for a few minutes until he decided that he had to leave. For some reason, finally winning a victory over his father didn’t feel as good as he had always assumed it would.
*
Al knew when his father and Mr. Malfoy broke up. There was no way that you could have been in the Ministry and not known. But he and Scorpius had a better seat for it than most because they were going through the Auror office at the time to deliver a document to the Head of Magical Law Enforcement.
“What?”
The hissing shout cut through the door of Harry’s office. Scorpius paused and stared at the door with his mouth open. Al crushed his fingers together around the parchment and tried to look as shocked and surprised as he thought he would probably be expected to look.
“No,” Mr. Malfoy’s voice said next, and it shook. “Someone told you to do this. I don’t believe that you chose to do it on your own. Who was it, Harry?” His voice sank, but they were close enough and the voice was clear enough that Al could easily make it out. “Tell me. Please.”
Al held his breath. He could see Scorpius tensing and turning his head, and if his father betrayed him now, then Scorpius might be upset with him. Al didn’t want that to happen. Things were going so well. Why couldn’t they just continue? Why did his father have to ruin things like usual?
The silence broke with Harry’s voice, which said, “I can’t tell you. I mean—why do you think that anyone else had anything to do with it? That’s a little offensive, don’t you think?” He sounded more normal now, and Al found himself taking deep, calming breaths. This was better. Harry’s words would probably get Mr. Malfoy so angry that he would break up with Harry without thinking twice about it.
That was the vision of things that Al had in his head. He could see the expressions on their faces so well. He knew Mr. Malfoy was a cold and proud man who had taken forever to take a regular lover even though he’d been divorced for years. He knew his father carried around a burden of guilt for everything except what he should have felt guilty about, unless someone reminded him of that other guilt, and then he would pick it up, too. It would be easy to break them apart.
The vision in Al’s head didn’t include Scorpius.
He stepped directly across the corridor and knocked on Harry’s office door.
Al froze. Then he glanced over his shoulder, hoping that he had imagined both the movement and the sound, and that Scorpius hadn’t really done that. But Scorpius had his jaw clenched and a cold look in his eye that his father could have been proud of.
It was happening. Al stood still, concentrating on not crumpling the message. When that didn’t work to calm him down, he counted his breaths.
Harry opened the door. His smile was strained, twisted. Al thought he’d probably smiled like that when he was dueling You-Know-Who. “Yes?” he asked. “Oh, hullo, Scorpius.” His eyes went over Scorpius’s head, and he winced. Al stood up straight and glared back. There was no reason for the pain he felt. To cause his father to wince, he must be doing something right.
“I heard what you said,” Scorpius announced.
Harry winced again. “Well, yes, since you were right out here,” he said. Al rolled his eyes. Why was his father always so graceless when he was surprised? You’d think that living forty-four years would have taught him how to recover better.
“And I think that my father’s right.” Scorpius looked over Harry’s shoulder.
“Of course I am,” said Mr. Malfoy’s haughty voice, and he came into view behind Harry. Al had some hope, because his face looked like a marble statue’s, the way it always did, and then he let his hand rest on Harry’s shoulder and nodded to Scorpius. The hand clutched tight; the nod was deep. “I am right because Malfoys always are.”
Scorpius smiled back. Harry stared and blinked. So did Al, with a sinking heart. Couldn’t Scorpius see how alike he and Mr. Malfoy looked? Wasn’t he bothered by it? Couldn’t he see how necessary it was for them to break free from their fathers’ shadows? Scorpius had seemed to understand when Al explained it at school.
Or was that a lie like everything else? Has everyone always been lying to me, and pitying me, and never understanding me?
“Someone put you up to this,” Scorpius told Harry, blunt and fearless, his hand on his hp and his eyebrows raised skeptically. “Now, maybe you don’t want to betray them, and that’s fine.” His tone said that the person who’d done it should be hung from the top of the Astronomy Tower. Al looked at the floor and shifted the document from his right hand to his left, because it was about ready to slide out of his grip with all the sweat covering his palm. “But if you don’t have a problem with my father, if you’re only leaving him because you think that someone else would be happy if you did, then I think you should consider his happiness.” Scorpius’s voice lowered and became even more intense; Al had heard it sound like that when he was proposing another career change. “Doesn’t he deserve some care from you?”
Harry’s eyes clouded, and he looked back at Mr. Malfoy. Mr. Malfoy, of course, had adopted the perfect injured expression just as he did. He raised his hand to Harry’s cheek and cupped it, his eyes wide, his lashes trembling.
Al took the inside of his cheek between his teeth and champed it until the blood ran. Scorpius had hit on the perfect tactic, of course. Harry never listened if you told him he should change his mind—unless you managed to make it clear he was hurting someone else. Al had counted on his plea working because, no matter how happy Harry was, he would give it all up for his children if they asked.
Or he should have. But from the way his eyes shone and the arm he wound around Mr. Malfoy’s waist, he was considering giving all he’d promised Al up for his lover.
And Al had to stand there and take it. If he protested, if he cleared his throat, if he drew too much attention to himself, then either Mr. Malfoy would guess or Scorpius would remember that he’d talked about being worried when their fathers started dating, and that was the end of the game.
“Yes,” Harry breathed, with a look on his face that shouldn’t be in public. Al glanced away, but still had to listen to a voice that shouldn’t be in public, either. “All right. I do—I love you, Draco. I never would have—” He broke off with a choked gulp. “I love you.”
Al didn’t hear Mr. Malfoy’s answer. He was listening to his bitterness.
He said he loved me. He doesn’t.
*
Someone knocked on the door of their office like an earthquake trying to get in.
Al looked up from his desk, where he was completing sample paperwork, in surprise. Scorpius wouldn’t have knocked like that; he felt confident enough to simply walk into the office. So did most of the Aurors who trained them and regularly cursed them as not good enough to be here. Harry would have knocked more timidly, and Lily would have opened the door and peeked around it.
Maybe it was Uncle Ron, Al thought, but Uncle Ron wasn’t usually that angry. He called cautiously, “Come in.”
Jamie whipped the door open and stepped inside. Then he cast several complicated locking charms behind him. Al frowned at him. It was unfair that Jamie was training to be a Dragon-Keeper and still knew more spells than Al did. Spells that would be more useful to Al than to him, too.
“What are you doing here?” Al asked. From the look on Jamie’s face, it wasn’t for a joke, but Al reminded himself that his brother was occasionally good at acting, when he had to be for a prank. “Has something happened to Mum?” Ginny had been visiting Jamie Uncle Charlie in Romania while one of the Quidditch teams she reported on played there.
“I figured out what you did,” Jamie said. “It has your fingerprints all over it.” His voice was flat, and his face was dark, and Al suddenly remembered that Jamie had cast spells during the practical portion of his Defense NEWT that stunned the proctors. There was no particular reason for him to remember it, but he did anyway. “I’m only amazed no one else figured it out. You prat. Why would you try to take Dad’s happiness away? This is the only time I’ve ever seen him happy in years.”
Al felt his mouth fall open. Jamie was—well, Jamie. He pranked people and laughed them out of being angry and got along with everyone. He didn’t get angry at them. And he’d always been closer to Ginny than Harry.
Al was the one everyone thought should be close to his dad, because he looked like him.
He swallowed old bitterness, but the thought was fortunate; it reminded him of why he was doing this. He folded his arms and leaned back in his desk. “I think it’s weird,” he said flatly. “Scorpius and I were dating first. Why can’t he and Mr. Malfoy wait, or date other people? I don’t want them to be together.”
“Fuck you.”
Al’s jaw hurt from how low it was hanging. Jamie didn’t say things like that, either. And it was said in an emotionless tone, instead of screamed. Al had always thought Jamie would scream and rage if he got angry. It was unnatural to be that calm all the time.
Jamie stepped forwards and stared at him from across the desk. “That’s childish,” he said. “Vicious. Idiotic. I don’t think you’re that much of an idiot, Al. We’re grown now, and the divorce was years ago. Either you’re still hanging onto pain that’s ridiculous now, especially since Mum isn’t upset, or something else is going on.”
“I don’t think a child’s pain over divorce is ever ridiculous.” Al was glad now for all those books about coping with a parental separation that Aunt Hermione had given him. He could quote them and sound innocent and injured.
“Bollocks,” said Jamie. “Bollocks, all of it. This isn’t about that, I know it isn’t. It’s about you and looking like Dad, isn’t it? I remember the way you tried to change your hair so you wouldn’t look like him and glared at people when they exclaimed over the resemblance.” He leaned closer. “You don’t want him to date a Malfoy because you’re dating one. That’s it. It has to be.”
“If you knew the answer, why did you ask me?” Al said, but he knew his face had twisted when Jamie said those things, and Jamie, curse him, was quick enough to notice that.
“Because it’s the stupidest thing I ever heard, and I hoped you were smarter than that.”
Jamie sounded sad and tired now. He shook his head. Al found that he couldn’t look away from his brother’s eyes, even though they were warm and nice and normal brown Weasley eyes, not these stupid green ones that made everyone have to stare and that Harry just had to give him.
“It’s only your problem with it,” Jamie said quietly. “No one else ever had a problem. Mum thought it was cute that you were so similar. Dad was proud. Scorpius, I know, likes you because you’re you, not him. The teachers were tiresome, but so what? They got used to it and stopped talking about it. And it was your choice to come into the Auror program, where you knew the comparisons would continue. It’s such a minor thing, Al. No one except you has ever cared about it, until now, because you tried to take Dad’s happiness away.”
Al shot to his feet. He couldn’t take this sitting down.
“Do you know what it was like?” he demanded. “He looked like me, he liked to do the things I liked to do, I was in his shadow, everyone remembered him instead of me—it was like he lived my life before I could! And now he’s taken the only friend I ever made away.”
“No, he hasn’t,” Jamie said, wrinkling his forehead.
Al glared at him. Jamie wasn’t stupid. He was being deliberately slow, then, and refusing to understand.
This was why Al had never told anyone about it. He knew it would sound petty to them, and they would try to laugh him out of it. But this wasn’t something that could be laughed away. It was his bitterness, the fate his father had condemned him to by having children in the first place and then not caring enough about giving them lives and independence of their own. Jamie only didn’t feel that way because he was so good-tempered.
“He took the man who looks like Scorpius,” Al said. His words dripped acid, from the expression on Jamie’s face. Good. That was the only way to make him understand. “He had the idea after we did, but he did it anyway. He publicized this silly love affair of his while we were still struggling along in secret. That was the first thing I ever did that he didn’t do, the first thing I could ever be proud of. And he corrupted it.”
Jamie closed his eyes. “You have a very strange idea of corruption,” he whispered.
“This is the way I feel.” Al had calmed a little, because at least he had spoken the truth and Jamie couldn’t accuse him of lying. “There’s no way that you can question it or change it or do anything about it.”
“Really?” Jamie’s eyes opened then, and Al found himself falling back a step. He didn’t mean to. There was no reason. He was the one in Auror training, and not his brother. But still, the fire he saw gleaming back at him for a minute…
“Really,” Al said. “Because Dad will just be more miserable if it comes out. You should have seen his face when Mr. Malfoy was asking him who put him up to it. You’ll hurt them both if you persist.” And now the calmness was real. He had won a victory. He had to have won a victory. After so long of having his life taken away from him, he deserved to win something.
Jamie gave him a dark smile. “I think that’s all true,” he said. “Dad always did have too much regard for you. He’d stop doing things that might have made the rest of us happy because it looked like they were upsetting you.”
Al snorted. “You’re a partial and biased observer,” he said. “Dad never did anything to oblige me if he could help it.”
“You believe that.” Jamie’s voice was soft. “You really and truly believe it.”
“Yes. I can remember him giving Lily treats and listening to the stories of your pranks. But all he did was look uneasily at me and hover over me and nothing else.” Al folded his arms. He felt lighter second by second. He hadn’t realized how good it would make him feel to discuss this with someone else.
“He was uneasy with you because you made it clear that you were displeased with having him for a father,” Jamie said. “Should he have been confident? That would only have convinced you he didn’t care even more.”
Al shook his head. “You’ve got it wrong.”
“And so have you.” Jamie turned his back and walked out of the office without another word.
Al sat back down behind the desk. It was ten minutes before his hand would stop shaking, but so what? He’d made an argument that Jamie couldn’t go up against, an argument that he would never be able to shake from his memory.
Little things like hands shaking were nothing next to that.
*
“Ah, yes, Al, just like that…”
Scorpius had his head tipped back, his blond hair spilling down his shoulders, his eyes shut as his voice escaped in ecstatic murmurs. Al nibbled gently up his shoulder, his tongue flicking out every few seconds to mark the skin his teeth had already touched. They had a fire lit in the hearth that was only used for Floo connections most of the time, and the firelight melted lovingly over Scorpius’s skin.
Al paused until Scorpius started to twist around to complain about him stopping, and then he flicked his tongue again and bit down, so hard that Scorpius twitched beneath him and gave a little startled cry.
“Shite! You’re vicious when you want to be,” Scorpius said, but his words escaped in a long, drawn-out moan, and Al flicked his teeth and his tongue fast again and moved his hands slowly down Scorpius’s chest towards his groin, in contrast. They hadn’t got to spend much time together in the last week and were taking their time now. Scorpius had his shirt off, but not his trousers, and Al still wore his robes.
“I want you so much,” Al said, and that was a confession and answer. From the way Scorpius twisted around after all and claimed Al’s mouth in a hungry kiss, he took it as both. Al threaded his fingers through Scorpius’s hair and did his best to hold on.
Their lips and teeth rubbing and colliding against each other still couldn’t mask the noise of the Floo whooshing up. Scorpius promptly rolled off the desk and hid behind it. Al cleared his throat shakily, sat up, and tried to look as if nothing was wrong, though he knew his blush would betray him. If he and Scorpius were caught snogging in their office, the Aurors would reassign them to different partners. It was one thing for trainees to date, was the view of the Ministry of Magic, but quite another for them to engage in “coital activities” on Ministry premises.
Al was even gladder that Scorpius had moved so fast when he saw the head that was taking shape in the flames.
“Hullo, Mum,” he said miserably.
“Bloody fuck,” Scorpius’s voice said from under his feet. Al kicked the desk to try and get him to shut up, while he inclined his head to his mum and sat up further.
Ginny Potter—she’d kept Harry’s last name because she said that changing it once in her life was quite enough—raised an eyebrow at him. Her lips quivered, and Al was sure that she knew what he’d been up to, but had decided to pretend she didn’t. Al smiled at her. They had always understood each other better than he and Harry had. For one thing, his mother gave a damn whether he lived or died, and if he was miserable or happy while he was alive.
“How’s Romania?” Al added.
“Pleasant.” Ginny rolled her eyes. “Your Uncle Charlie’s conversation hasn’t improved over the years, however. It’s all dragons this, dragons that, and the other morning when he finally seemed to get interested in something I had to say, they brought word that one of the females was laying and he had to dash off.”
Al grinned. “I know the feeling,” he said. “Jamie gets the same way sometimes.”
“Speaking of Jamie,” Ginny said, her eyes sharpening, “your brother brought me an interesting story the other day, and said that I should talk to you about it.”
Al knew that no smile had ever left his face so fast. And then it didn’t help that he started breathing as though someone was torturing him.
Jamie never intended to go to the press. He went to Mum.
That’s not fair.
“It couldn’t have been that interesting,” Al said, trying to play dumb and hoping desperately that it would work, “or he would have told me about it.”
“He said you already knew it.” His mother’s eyes were like pins now, Al thought. The kind that they used to hold squirming bugs that weren’t dead yet in place. “That was the point. That was why he had to come to me.”
No denying what this was about, now. Al took a long, slow breath and released it again. “Mum, it’s not what you think,” he said.
“It’s exactly what I think.” His mother leaned so near that Al thought she would lean out of the fireplace and slap him. “I’ve never understood this insane grudge you have against your father, Al. I only know that it’s lasted for a long time, and Harry’s never done anything to deserve it.”
“He made you unhappy!” Al said, shocked. He’d been the only one to notice the way Ginny got silent around Harry for months before they got divorced, and how her letters never mentioned him at all. “How is that not deserving it?”
“It started before that,” Ginny said. Her voice and her eyes just got sharper and sharper, to the point that Al didn’t think any bugs pinned with them would have a choice except to stop squirming. “When you were a child, I noticed it. Jamie and Lily were happy to wave to people who recognized Harry, but you shrank. I could understand if you hated the publicity. God knows, there was enough of it.” The distaste in her words made Al hope that she wouldn’t be that hard on him after all. If she thought it was hard being Harry Potter’s wife, she must understand, at least a little, why it was harder being Harry Potter’s son. “But you always yelled at him, and not the reporters who crowded around him. Why, Al?”
Al shut his eyes. He knew the answer. He could feel the answer in the sweat along his skin, in the way his fingers gripped the edges of the desk. But if he said it, Mum would be just as deaf to it as Jamie.
“Al? I’m waiting.”
“It was his fault!” Al burst out. That was the answer, the reality, and if they didn’t like it, they should stop asking him. “He was the one who defeated You-Know-Who and had us! Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to go out in public wearing his scar? Why couldn’t he cast a glamour on his face? It was his fault we were famous, and it’s his fault that I look like him, and if would just do something else, then I wouldn’t have to live my life feeling like I was an inferior copy of him!”
Silence. Al knew that misunderstanding was building up against him, and he tried to brace himself to resist it.
But it was hard, so hard that tears stung his eyes. Why couldn’t someone try to adopt his perspective just once? Would it be so difficult for them? Surely it wasn’t as difficult as it was to be Harry Potter’s son who looked just like him and had to be reminded of that every time someone commented on his face?
“That’s ridiculous,” Ginny said. “Harry didn’t choose your appearance, and he wanted to have children. Are you really saying that you want never to have been born, Al, because some people mistake you for your father?”
“It’s stupid,” Al said. “The way people think I’m him.”
“I agree absolutely,” Ginny said. “But blame the ones who think that way. Why should you blame him?”
“He could do something to stop it. He’s the great and powerful Harry Potter. They should listen to him.” Al was aware he was mumbling the words like someone in a fever, but he couldn’t stop. She would understand him if she just listened hard enough. Why not? She had to.
“You have a very child-like conception of him still,” Ginny said softly. “I told him that he shouldn’t have treated you like you were fragile. I know why he did it. He loved you so much, and he was afraid that things would be more difficult for you than for Jamie or Lily. But wrapping you up in silk doesn’t make you fit to face the challenges of the world. You thought he could do anything—I remember the way you would run to him when you were little and hurt and demand he heal you immediately—and that means you think he should be able to do anything still. Even the things you know he can’t affect.”
“I wanted to have something of my own,” Al whispered. “Just once. I thought my relationship with Scorpius was going to be that. And then he stole it because he wanted to sleep with Mr. Malfoy. Why did he have to?”
“I can’t say that I know everything that happens between Harry and Draco,” Ginny said. “But I know one thing. Love can fade away. It happened between Harry and me. Love can also be destroyed. That happened between your Uncle George and Aunt Angelina, because George thought more about Fred than about her. I think you’re awfully close to destroying the love that should be between your father and you because you’re trying to deprive him of his happiness.”
“He doesn’t need it,” Al said. “Not the way I need it.”
“You’re such a child, still,” Ginny said, with a wistful ring in her voice. “So much more than Jamie, or even Lily, who writes me letters full of chatter about boys and robes.”
The whoosh of the Floo said she was gone. Al sat there, feeling as though someone had opened his bones and filled them with isolation. Why did everyone in the world persist in hating and misunderstanding him?
“So that’s it.”
Al jumped and spun around. He had forgotten Scorpius was in the room. But he was, rising up from his crouching position behind the desk, and for the first time since they’d become friends, Al saw that beautiful mouth hard with disdain for him.
“I was just a weapon in your war against your father,” Scorpius said. His voice made Al’s cheeks sting. He stooped down and picked up his shirt, yanking it over his head with a quick motion and then somehow ordering his blond hair with a single shake of his neck. He didn’t look at Al now. “Never someone you really loved or wanted. Just part of your endless series of cries of Understand me, pay attention to me, love me, you don’t love me enough! to him. I should have known.” He strode to the door and yanked it open.
“It wasn’t like that,” Al said, his voice soft and small. Scorpius had always understood him, and now he was walking away, too?
Scorpius glanced over his shoulder, and Al couldn’t face his brilliant eyes or the curl of his lip.
“Yes, it was,” Scorpius said. “I would say that you’re not capable of loving anyone but yourself, except that isn’t true.”
Al looked up with faint hope.
“You don’t love yourself, because parts of you are also parts of him,” Scorpius said, and ducked out the door.
Al lowered his head as the door slammed.
It seemed to close in his heart as well as outside him.
*
He hadn’t realized how much it would all change.
There was no Scorpius beside him when he came back from the training exercises and needed someone to talk to about the near failures, the unfairness of the instructors, or the way that he would succeed next time.
There was no Scorpius bent over the desk and furiously scribbling at a report on their activities that was due in an hour, flashing Al a hurried but charming smile.
Most of all, there was no Scorpius lying on the bed in their shared room, his neck tipped back to expose just enough flesh to make Al salivate, and smiling at him in that coy, secret way that Al knew no one else got to see.
They still shared a room, and an office, and training exercises. But Scorpius attended them all with a cold silence that might as well have put him on the other side of the moon. Al tried and tried to get his attention, but the way Scorpius turned his head to the side and never saw him wounded him all over again.
He tried to tell himself it was nothing, that he could have other lovers, that he would get over this and go on.
It didn’t work.
Because what he missed wasn’t just their lover relationship, new and startling and wonderful as that had been, but Scorpius as a friend.
There were other people Al knew in the Auror training program, but no one he had sailed a flooded Quidditch pitch with, or almost fallen off the Astronomy Tower with when they were both drunk. None had Scorpius’s smile and confidence to call his parents by their first names and be utterly accepting of the reason those parents had divorced. No one else thought House divisions mattered enough to be proud about but not enough to hold apart two people who wanted to be together.
Scorpius was air and light and freedom to Al.
He didn’t know how he had never known that before.
His life was empty without him, and dragged—was grey, and bleak. And while it didn’t help to see his father carrying on with Mr. Malfoy, Al realized after an almost an hour of staring blankly at a photograph on the front page of the Prophet that he no longer really thought about or saw them.
He saw Scorpius.
Walking in silence along the rocks at the bottom of a deep pit he’d never known was there, dragged along by his own tormenting self-consciousness, haunted by the last thing Scorpius had told him, Al came, if late, to the knowledge of the only way to make it all right.
*
“Al.”
There was love and mistrust in the way his father looked at him. The mistrust was entirely new. Al supposed he deserved it after what he’d done the last time he’d been in his father’s office, but it still hurt.
“Hi, Dad.” Al licked his lips. “Could we sit down and talk about this?”
The door locked behind him. The power of the silence wards that Harry set up next made Al’s hair curl. Al swallowed. Did his magic get more powerful when he got happier? Or was it always that powerful and I never noticed?
The list of things that he hadn’t noticed seemed to grow longer day by day.
“Sit down.” Harry gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. Al didn’t remember there being two the last time he was here, he thought as he saw down in the wooden, straight-backed one. The other chair was a large red plush one with golden trimmings. Mr. Malfoy’s taste, he was almost certain.
“Speak.”
Al looked at his father with alarm. He’d practically barked the word, and he leaned back in his own chair with his hands folded behind his head. His eyes were direct and cruel as sunlight. Al flinched, then took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry.”
The words came out of him as if he were pulling up his guts with them. At least they were said now, as much as his stomach ached. And it was bitterly worth it to see Harry’s eyes widen. Clearly, he hadn’t expected that at all.
“I’d like to know why you did it,” Harry said quietly. “And why you’re sorry. I don’t think it was anything I did.”
Al winced and nodded, bracing his hands on his knees. He felt as if he was going to keel over, his head spinning and his heart racing. He would get through this, though, because he had to. “Scorpius broke up with me because he found out what I did,” he said. “And I miss him. And—I always looked so much like you. I started thinking that you had lived my life already and used it all up. They always told me that I was like you. That I looked so much like you. I didn’t know what to do with that. But it shouldn’t have been what I did. I’m sorry.”
Harry remained silent so long that Al thought he wasn’t going to reply and so his apology wasn’t going to be accepted. He almost panicked until Harry spoke.
“I love all my children,” he whispered. “But you were the one who looked up at me and captured my heart. I thought you’d need my help more than Jamie and Lily did. You looked so fragile. I wanted to help you, but I thought I might crush you.
“I know about being a soldier, Al. I know about being an Auror. But I don’t know much about being a father to someone who needs so much from me.
“So I kept a distance from you because I was so terrified of doing something wrong. But that deprived you of some of the care that you should have had, and it made me too afraid of your disapproval, so you had more power over me than you should have. It was unfair to Jamie and Lily, too, and it was one of the oldest disagreements your mother and I had. She thought the way I treated you was wrong. She was right.” Harry took a deep breath and then looked at Al with blazing eyes. Al found himself trembling in his chair. Was that what You-Know-Who saw when he died?
“But none of that excuses what you did.” Harry’s voice was a growling, gathering thunderstorm. “I finally let myself be happy, and you tried to take it away. You would probably have succeeded, too, if Draco hadn’t been stronger than both of us. Why, Al? And no excuses about wanting to keep a Malfoy all to yourself this time.”
Al looked at the floor and shook his head. He was beginning to regret coming here, but what else could he have done?
“I’ve told you all that I thought,” he said dully. “I wanted to be different, and to make everyone stop looking at me and seeing you. That was the only motivation. I didn’t—I didn’t think about destroying your happiness. I just thought about keeping mine.”
Silence, so thick and deep that Al could hear his heartbeat. He wondered for a moment why he didn’t hear Harry’s, and then winced. His mum and Jamie would undoubtedly say that he didn’t deserve to hear a heart that he’d cut himself out of.
Then his father stood up and walked around the desk. Al tensed, but kept his eyes on his lap. His father had never been violent—not with him. He didn’t think he was about to get slapped or pushed out of the chair or cursed.
Well, he didn’t think that, much.
Harry knelt down in front of his chair. Shocked, Al looked up then.
Harry’s face was thoughtful and soft. He reached out and took Al’s elbow, shaking it slightly.
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t think I understand, not completely. But that’s because of the different ways we grew up.”
Al blinked. Where’s the blame? Or else the denial of what I said? Those had been the only reactions when other people heard about what he’d done to his father for so long. Even Scorpius, when they were together and he’d been more patient and sympathetic than anyone Al knew, had thought it was silly that Al was so concerned about standing in his father’s shadow.
“I would have given anything to look like my parents,” Harry said, “before I knew who they were. When I heard that I had my mother’s eyes, that I had my father’s hair and face, and that my parents hadn’t died in a car crash, it was like coming home. It was better than Hogwarts, better than finding out I was a wizard. Hagrid gave me a photo album with pictures of my family. I finally belonged somewhere. I had people who looked like me, and it was wonderful.”
Al nodded involuntarily. He’d seen that album and looked through it several times, though always in Harry’s company. None of his children were trusted to touch it on their own.
“But then,” Harry said, and sighed so hard that his fringe flipped up, “I found out something about my father in fifth year that nearly destroyed all my pleasure in looking like him. He was cruel and a bully to Severus Snape. There was no reason for it. Snape couldn’t be a threat to my father. He was poor, and James was rich. He was in Slytherin, the most despised House in the school, and James was in Gryffindor. My father was an athlete, a prankster, and he had three best friends. Snape was alone. I’d known a few of those things, but not how bad it was. Of course, most of his friends were eager to tell me the good things.”
Al stared. Sometimes people hinted things like that about Grandfather James, but no one had ever said it like Harry just had. Even the professors at Hogwarts who remembered Al’s grandfather, like Flitwick, were more apt to talk about how talented and funny he was than how cruel.
“Gradually,” Harry went on, coming back from whatever distant place he’d been staring into, “I realized that there are some things that you have to forgive people for. I wasn’t born when my father was tormenting Snape and I couldn’t have stopped him. I’m still ashamed he did that, but his pranks weren’t the sum total of him, no matter how cruel they are. Just like this little exploit isn’t the sum total of you.”
Al flinched. He wasn’t sure what cut him more, Harry’s even words or the steady stare of those merciless green eyes.
“That’s the thing we find hard to deal with,” Harry said, very softly, “that people are so mixed. We want them to be good or evil, heroes or Dark Lords. Oh, there are a few like that, but not the majority. When we treat them like that, though, we produce the kind of resentment that turns some into Dark Lords. I don’t think that’s worth the opportunity for some other people to act like heroes.” He shook his head, his mouth hard.
Then he visibly pulled himself back to the present and clapped his hands briskly together. “I forgive you,” he said. “I hope that you’re able to forgive me in time for all the problems that I never knew I was causing you.” He paused, squeezing Al’s hand, and then added in a different tone, “If you do it again, when you should know better, I think that you’ll find I can still be stern.”
Al shivered and nodded. His father looked stern, the way Al had seen him in newspaper photographs when he dispatched a Dark wizard.
But for the first time in years, Al was not afraid of him.
Harry seemed to sense that. He smiled at Al and hauled him to his feet. “Go on, get out of here,” he said. “I have a lot of work to do.”
Al held onto his hand when Harry tried to pull it back, clearing his throat nervously. Harry watched him, nodding a little when Al coughed hesitantly.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Al said at last. “Really.”
Harry’s eyes softened, and he slightly shook his head. “When you’re young is the time to make mistakes,” he said. “That way, you don’t have as much responsibility that can make you fuck up other people’s lives. Thank you, Al.” And Harry hugged him, roughly and awkwardly, before letting him go. Al couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.
He left slowly, glancing over his shoulder. Harry was already buried in a pile of paperwork, frowning at it.
An unexpected thought squirmed deep in Al’s mind as he walked away from Harry’s office door.
I might want to come back and talk to him again. Not about Scorpius or Mr. Malfoy or looking like him. Just to talk.
*
That was what he did, sometimes. And he concentrated on his Auror work, and talked with his mother and Jamie, and answered Lily’s letters that had been piling up in one corner of his office, and went to dinner with Uncle Ron and got pissed at the pub he favored. Normal things. Things that eased the gallop of Al’s heart and made him think that he could go on living, after all.
It didn’t mean as much without Scorpius, but nothing did, and no matter how much Al tried to get Scorpius to sit down and listen to him, he turned away with a curled lip.
Maybe he would listen eventually. Maybe he would come back to Al and let him explain, which was all that Al wanted to do.
But maybe not, and Al had to face that possibility, too. It was all a consequence of his own stupidity.
He knew he couldn’t promise never to be stupid again, but at least he could promise never to be stupid in that way again.
*
“Albus Potter.”
Al stiffened. He knew already from the name that the person speaking to him wasn’t someone who normally did. Everyone addressed him as Al. Mum and Dad had started that when he was young, because he screamed and kicked when someone called him by his full name. This had to be a stranger.
But the voice didn’t sound like a stranger’s.
Al turned around.
Mr. Malfoy stood behind him, arms folded and eyes so harsh that Al shuddered. He suddenly remembered that they were in a corridor most people didn’t take, buried deep in the Ministry. Al had taken it because he’d been assigned to help out in the Department of Mysteries as a punishment for skiving off. He wished now that he’d taken any other. It was an effort just to breathe, never mind to stand up and pretend he didn’t care.
This close to Mr. Malfoy, which Al had never been before, he suddenly realized that there were differences between Scorpius and his father after all. Mr. Malfoy’s face was more pointed and his eyes harder and colder. His hair was paler, too, which only made sense, because he was older. Al could understand, now, why Scorpius had so hated to be compared with his father. But he really had thought they looked alike.
“Harry told me that you apologized,” Mr. Malfoy said, his voice lingering in a caress over Al’s father’s name that Al hated. “Is that the truth?”
Al wondered for a moment why he seemed so sure that Al wouldn’t lie, and then considered the coldness of Mr. Malfoy’s face again. He probably thought Al wouldn’t dare to lie.
And the stupid thing was, he was right.
“Yes,” Al said. “I did. He suffered enough from what I did, and I decided that even though I don’t like looking like him, that isn’t enough excuse to try and ruin his happiness.” It was the same sort of thing he had said to Mum and Jamie, but he had said it willingly to them. It sounded small and pathetic in front of Mr. Malfoy.
Still, Mr. Malfoy didn’t look as if he considered it that way. He cocked his head, bird-like, studying Al from different angles. Al tugged nervously at his hair, then forced his hand to drop to his side.
“I fail to see why you would resent looking like Harry,” Mr. Malfoy murmured. “Harry is beautiful.”
Al tensed, but recognized the baiting and did his best not to rise to it. “Looking like him makes people think I am him,” he said. “Just the same. You’re not your father, Scorpius told me that, and Scorpius isn’t you. Would you like people thinking you were the same all the time, though?”
Mr. Malfoy paused, as though Al had said something that got his attention. Then he said, “And would you do it again?”
“No,” Al said. He clenched his hands into fists and fought not to show how annoyed he was. His fear was diminishing in the wake of his temper, something that usually happened to him once he had a chance to get used to a threat. Of course, for years no threats had seemed as important as the threat of his father taking over his identity in the eyes of everyone else. “I discussed this already with my father. I don’t have to talk to you.”
Mr. Malfoy gave him a sharp smile, said, “You do have a spine. He will be pleased to hear it,” and started to leave.
Al rolled his eyes, tried to imagine how his father would take to hearing a “reassurance” from Mr. Malfoy, and snorted. At least he could turn away with the knowledge that his dad knew he hadn’t been lying.
“Albus.”
Will he stop calling me that? But under the circumstances, Al thought it best to do nothing more than nod over his shoulder.
“If you hurt him again,” Mr. Malfoy said, in a whisper that coiled along the walls and seemed to echo back to Al from impossible directions, “then I will come on you again in a corridor like this. And there will be a smear of ash to attract the attention of the next curious wanderer.”
It was a stupid threat. But for some reason, Al kept on shivering long after Mr. Malfoy had turned his back and swished away.
*
Al leaned his head on the mantle of the fireplace and sighed. The flames on the hearth warmed him, and he had learned how to cast the spell that made an enchanted window, so he could look out on the same scene that their back window at home showed in the summer: a long lawn with trees in the distance and sun-shadows sprawling on the grass.
It was still lonely, but he thought he’d recover. Lily had written a letter to him that evening that managed to make him smile with its breathless account of Hufflepuff pranks, and she was thinking about becoming a robe designer. Madam Malkin had agreed to take her on as an apprentice that summer, after she left Hogwarts, and see if she would do.
There were good things happening in other people’s lives, even in Al’s. He could survive this.
When he heard the door opening, he thought it was a dream at first, since it was weeks since Scorpius had deigned to enter the room when Al was there. He froze and didn’t look around. Scorpius had probably only come to get some clothes or retrieve a book.
But the footsteps came to a heavy halt behind him, and then Scorpius stood there, breathing. Al swallowed and still didn’t look around.
“My father said you’d apologized to your dad and got your courage back,” Scorpius said. “Was he wrong about the second one?”
Al turned slowly. Scorpius raised an eyebrow at him and shook his head. “Only you would make that mistake in the first place,” he said, “or go on backing away when I acted a bit angry instead of just yelling the truth over my protests. I was acting stupid, but I can’t be blamed, because it was in reaction to your much larger stupidity.”
Al smiled in spite of himself, and reached out. Scorpius rolled his eyes and moved forwards into the embrace. “I’m not going to run away,” he muttered, “or break.”
“I know,” Al said, closing his eyes, and for the first time, he felt as if he really did know.
They stood like that, slightly swaying, for a little while. Then Scorpius pulled back and cleared his throat. Al looked up at him through eyes that he told himself were not misty.
Scorpius gave him a smile with all Hogwarts, and all daring, and all friendship, and all love, in it.
“I have,” he said slowly, “a wonderful idea.”
End.
“Dad? Can I talk to you?”
Harry looked up at him with a faint, pleased smile. Al had picked this time deliberately. He knew Harry wasn’t out on a case, and Scorpius was busy studying for an exam in his worst subject—Stealth and Tracking—and wouldn’t surface from his notes until tomorrow. Mr. Malfoy was out of town on a business trip. Scorpius had always been vague about his father’s business, and Al hadn’t cared enough to ask.
It was perfect.
“Sure, Al.” Harry shut the door and motioned for him to take a chair in front of his desk. Al did, his hands clenched on the edges of it. Harry studied him, the smile slipping off his face. “What’s the matter? It sounds serious.”
“It is, Dad.” Al stared at the floor. If he looked too angry or too eager, then his father would probably suspect something, and Al couldn’t have that happening. “I—did you know that I’m dating Scorpius Malfoy now?” He peeked up through his fringe. He hated that his fringe was so much like his father’s, and sometimes he’d tried cutting or changing his hair, but most of the ways he could wear it just weren’t comfortable.
“I didn’t know that,” Harry said, smiling again, “but I suspected. Congratulations. He’s a much more pleasant young man than his father was at that age.”
He smiled wistfully off into the distance, and Al knew, just knew, that he was thinking of Mr. Malfoy and something they’d done together recently. Al broke sharply into his reverie.
“It’s just that—that Scorpius and I started dating before you and Mr. Malfoy did,” he said carefully. “We just didn’t want to tell anyone right away. And then it kind of got swept away in the big row about you two.”
Harry laughed. Al couldn’t remember hearing him laugh that happily in years. “That was something, wasn’t it?” he asked, shaking his head. “But still not as bad as I thought it would be. I think the British public is pretty much tired of me.”
And so am I. But if Al said that before he was ready, then it would ruin everything. It would seem too personal, and Harry would assume that meant he could ignore what Al was saying, all the important things that he needed Harry to hear.
Al cleared his throat. “I just—I wonder…”
“Yes?” Harry leaned forwards, smiling at him, his eyes open and kind and his face so warm that Al could almost imagine he was Jamie or Lily, who were Harry’s favorite children.
Al felt his cheeks get warm, and he shook his head. He couldn’t be distracted by thoughts like that. If Harry could only love him some of the time and not other times, that just proved that he wasn’t a great father after all and the warmth he was showing right now was a lie.
“I think that having two connections between our families like that is strange,” Al breathed. “I don’t think I like it.”
His father’s smile vanished at once, and now his face looked more familiar. He leaned back in his chair and plucked at the desk. “Why?” he asked carefully.
“Well, it’s like two step-siblings dating, isn’t it?” Al countered. “Or the parents of two people who fell in love independently getting married.”
Harry glanced up from under his fringe in turn, and his eyes were hunted. Al wondered why. Since when had his life ever been hard? No one had told him that he was in the shadow of his father and would never be able to establish something worthwhile and important on his own. “I reckon it’s a little like that, yeah.”
“I don’t want that to happen.” Al bit his lip and did his best to summon a look of tormented innocence into his eyes. “There’s enough attention paid to our family because you’re a celebrity.”
Harry’s fist clenched. Al knew he had chosen his words wisely. Harry was sensitive about the fact that reporters bothered his children. He’d tried to give them privacy, but it didn’t always work.
“What are you saying?” Harry asked. “I can’t stop the rumors from spreading or people from speaking insults, which will happen once they find out about you and Scorpius.”
“I’m not giving up Scorpius,” Al said fiercely. “I deserve a chance to be happy.”
Harry blinked at him. “Of course you do. I would never suggest you do that.”
“But that only leaves one solution,” Al said, and leaned forwards on the chair, staring, and waited for Harry to see.
His father’s eyes shut. Green, like his, and his grandmother Lily’s. Al hated it. Why couldn’t he have eyes that were exactly his own, dark or blue or grey like no one else’s in the family? He didn’t want the light brown eyes that Jamie and Lily had inherited from their mum, because then people would say he looked like them and Ginny.
“Al,” his dad whispered.
“I want to be happy,” Al said. “I spent so much of my time when I was a teenager not being happy. I deserve this. I don’t like you dating Mr. Malfoy and I want you to stop.”
Harry made a small tortured sound.
Al had hoped that he wouldn’t have to play this last card, because he didn’t like hurting his father, he really didn’t. But it was necessary. His hair and his eyes and his face and his name and his career weren’t his own; Scorpius had to be.
“If you really love me, Dad, you’ll do it,” he whispered.
Harry looked up at him. His cheeks were ashen, but his eyes were calmer than Al had expected them to be.
“I do love you,” he said. “I promise. But I don’t think I can show that love by giving up Draco.”
“You do a really poor job of showing it,” Al snapped, and rose to his feet so fast that the chair overturned. He stalked towards the door, his temper seething. He would have to find another way to get Harry to give Mr. Malfoy up. It was intolerable that the one different thing he had ever done should be taken away.
“All right.”
Al wanted to hear the words so much that he wasn’t sure he’d heard them at first. He glanced over his shoulder and licked his lips. “What?”
“I said I’ll do it.” Harry stretched one hand towards him, his eyes big with yearning. If he wants me to make nice, then he should have noticed that I was unhappy and Mum was unhappy a long time ago, Al thought viciously. “But I’m asking you to reconsider. Why should you care what people say? Why should me and Mr. Malfoy bother you? You know your mum and I won’t be getting back together. You know—”
“You don’t love me,” Al said. “I knew it.”
Harry’s head bowed until his chin touched the desk. Then he gave a small nod.
Al stood there looking at him for a few minutes until he decided that he had to leave. For some reason, finally winning a victory over his father didn’t feel as good as he had always assumed it would.
*
Al knew when his father and Mr. Malfoy broke up. There was no way that you could have been in the Ministry and not known. But he and Scorpius had a better seat for it than most because they were going through the Auror office at the time to deliver a document to the Head of Magical Law Enforcement.
“What?”
The hissing shout cut through the door of Harry’s office. Scorpius paused and stared at the door with his mouth open. Al crushed his fingers together around the parchment and tried to look as shocked and surprised as he thought he would probably be expected to look.
“No,” Mr. Malfoy’s voice said next, and it shook. “Someone told you to do this. I don’t believe that you chose to do it on your own. Who was it, Harry?” His voice sank, but they were close enough and the voice was clear enough that Al could easily make it out. “Tell me. Please.”
Al held his breath. He could see Scorpius tensing and turning his head, and if his father betrayed him now, then Scorpius might be upset with him. Al didn’t want that to happen. Things were going so well. Why couldn’t they just continue? Why did his father have to ruin things like usual?
The silence broke with Harry’s voice, which said, “I can’t tell you. I mean—why do you think that anyone else had anything to do with it? That’s a little offensive, don’t you think?” He sounded more normal now, and Al found himself taking deep, calming breaths. This was better. Harry’s words would probably get Mr. Malfoy so angry that he would break up with Harry without thinking twice about it.
That was the vision of things that Al had in his head. He could see the expressions on their faces so well. He knew Mr. Malfoy was a cold and proud man who had taken forever to take a regular lover even though he’d been divorced for years. He knew his father carried around a burden of guilt for everything except what he should have felt guilty about, unless someone reminded him of that other guilt, and then he would pick it up, too. It would be easy to break them apart.
The vision in Al’s head didn’t include Scorpius.
He stepped directly across the corridor and knocked on Harry’s office door.
Al froze. Then he glanced over his shoulder, hoping that he had imagined both the movement and the sound, and that Scorpius hadn’t really done that. But Scorpius had his jaw clenched and a cold look in his eye that his father could have been proud of.
It was happening. Al stood still, concentrating on not crumpling the message. When that didn’t work to calm him down, he counted his breaths.
Harry opened the door. His smile was strained, twisted. Al thought he’d probably smiled like that when he was dueling You-Know-Who. “Yes?” he asked. “Oh, hullo, Scorpius.” His eyes went over Scorpius’s head, and he winced. Al stood up straight and glared back. There was no reason for the pain he felt. To cause his father to wince, he must be doing something right.
“I heard what you said,” Scorpius announced.
Harry winced again. “Well, yes, since you were right out here,” he said. Al rolled his eyes. Why was his father always so graceless when he was surprised? You’d think that living forty-four years would have taught him how to recover better.
“And I think that my father’s right.” Scorpius looked over Harry’s shoulder.
“Of course I am,” said Mr. Malfoy’s haughty voice, and he came into view behind Harry. Al had some hope, because his face looked like a marble statue’s, the way it always did, and then he let his hand rest on Harry’s shoulder and nodded to Scorpius. The hand clutched tight; the nod was deep. “I am right because Malfoys always are.”
Scorpius smiled back. Harry stared and blinked. So did Al, with a sinking heart. Couldn’t Scorpius see how alike he and Mr. Malfoy looked? Wasn’t he bothered by it? Couldn’t he see how necessary it was for them to break free from their fathers’ shadows? Scorpius had seemed to understand when Al explained it at school.
Or was that a lie like everything else? Has everyone always been lying to me, and pitying me, and never understanding me?
“Someone put you up to this,” Scorpius told Harry, blunt and fearless, his hand on his hp and his eyebrows raised skeptically. “Now, maybe you don’t want to betray them, and that’s fine.” His tone said that the person who’d done it should be hung from the top of the Astronomy Tower. Al looked at the floor and shifted the document from his right hand to his left, because it was about ready to slide out of his grip with all the sweat covering his palm. “But if you don’t have a problem with my father, if you’re only leaving him because you think that someone else would be happy if you did, then I think you should consider his happiness.” Scorpius’s voice lowered and became even more intense; Al had heard it sound like that when he was proposing another career change. “Doesn’t he deserve some care from you?”
Harry’s eyes clouded, and he looked back at Mr. Malfoy. Mr. Malfoy, of course, had adopted the perfect injured expression just as he did. He raised his hand to Harry’s cheek and cupped it, his eyes wide, his lashes trembling.
Al took the inside of his cheek between his teeth and champed it until the blood ran. Scorpius had hit on the perfect tactic, of course. Harry never listened if you told him he should change his mind—unless you managed to make it clear he was hurting someone else. Al had counted on his plea working because, no matter how happy Harry was, he would give it all up for his children if they asked.
Or he should have. But from the way his eyes shone and the arm he wound around Mr. Malfoy’s waist, he was considering giving all he’d promised Al up for his lover.
And Al had to stand there and take it. If he protested, if he cleared his throat, if he drew too much attention to himself, then either Mr. Malfoy would guess or Scorpius would remember that he’d talked about being worried when their fathers started dating, and that was the end of the game.
“Yes,” Harry breathed, with a look on his face that shouldn’t be in public. Al glanced away, but still had to listen to a voice that shouldn’t be in public, either. “All right. I do—I love you, Draco. I never would have—” He broke off with a choked gulp. “I love you.”
Al didn’t hear Mr. Malfoy’s answer. He was listening to his bitterness.
He said he loved me. He doesn’t.
*
Someone knocked on the door of their office like an earthquake trying to get in.
Al looked up from his desk, where he was completing sample paperwork, in surprise. Scorpius wouldn’t have knocked like that; he felt confident enough to simply walk into the office. So did most of the Aurors who trained them and regularly cursed them as not good enough to be here. Harry would have knocked more timidly, and Lily would have opened the door and peeked around it.
Maybe it was Uncle Ron, Al thought, but Uncle Ron wasn’t usually that angry. He called cautiously, “Come in.”
Jamie whipped the door open and stepped inside. Then he cast several complicated locking charms behind him. Al frowned at him. It was unfair that Jamie was training to be a Dragon-Keeper and still knew more spells than Al did. Spells that would be more useful to Al than to him, too.
“What are you doing here?” Al asked. From the look on Jamie’s face, it wasn’t for a joke, but Al reminded himself that his brother was occasionally good at acting, when he had to be for a prank. “Has something happened to Mum?” Ginny had been visiting Jamie Uncle Charlie in Romania while one of the Quidditch teams she reported on played there.
“I figured out what you did,” Jamie said. “It has your fingerprints all over it.” His voice was flat, and his face was dark, and Al suddenly remembered that Jamie had cast spells during the practical portion of his Defense NEWT that stunned the proctors. There was no particular reason for him to remember it, but he did anyway. “I’m only amazed no one else figured it out. You prat. Why would you try to take Dad’s happiness away? This is the only time I’ve ever seen him happy in years.”
Al felt his mouth fall open. Jamie was—well, Jamie. He pranked people and laughed them out of being angry and got along with everyone. He didn’t get angry at them. And he’d always been closer to Ginny than Harry.
Al was the one everyone thought should be close to his dad, because he looked like him.
He swallowed old bitterness, but the thought was fortunate; it reminded him of why he was doing this. He folded his arms and leaned back in his desk. “I think it’s weird,” he said flatly. “Scorpius and I were dating first. Why can’t he and Mr. Malfoy wait, or date other people? I don’t want them to be together.”
“Fuck you.”
Al’s jaw hurt from how low it was hanging. Jamie didn’t say things like that, either. And it was said in an emotionless tone, instead of screamed. Al had always thought Jamie would scream and rage if he got angry. It was unnatural to be that calm all the time.
Jamie stepped forwards and stared at him from across the desk. “That’s childish,” he said. “Vicious. Idiotic. I don’t think you’re that much of an idiot, Al. We’re grown now, and the divorce was years ago. Either you’re still hanging onto pain that’s ridiculous now, especially since Mum isn’t upset, or something else is going on.”
“I don’t think a child’s pain over divorce is ever ridiculous.” Al was glad now for all those books about coping with a parental separation that Aunt Hermione had given him. He could quote them and sound innocent and injured.
“Bollocks,” said Jamie. “Bollocks, all of it. This isn’t about that, I know it isn’t. It’s about you and looking like Dad, isn’t it? I remember the way you tried to change your hair so you wouldn’t look like him and glared at people when they exclaimed over the resemblance.” He leaned closer. “You don’t want him to date a Malfoy because you’re dating one. That’s it. It has to be.”
“If you knew the answer, why did you ask me?” Al said, but he knew his face had twisted when Jamie said those things, and Jamie, curse him, was quick enough to notice that.
“Because it’s the stupidest thing I ever heard, and I hoped you were smarter than that.”
Jamie sounded sad and tired now. He shook his head. Al found that he couldn’t look away from his brother’s eyes, even though they were warm and nice and normal brown Weasley eyes, not these stupid green ones that made everyone have to stare and that Harry just had to give him.
“It’s only your problem with it,” Jamie said quietly. “No one else ever had a problem. Mum thought it was cute that you were so similar. Dad was proud. Scorpius, I know, likes you because you’re you, not him. The teachers were tiresome, but so what? They got used to it and stopped talking about it. And it was your choice to come into the Auror program, where you knew the comparisons would continue. It’s such a minor thing, Al. No one except you has ever cared about it, until now, because you tried to take Dad’s happiness away.”
Al shot to his feet. He couldn’t take this sitting down.
“Do you know what it was like?” he demanded. “He looked like me, he liked to do the things I liked to do, I was in his shadow, everyone remembered him instead of me—it was like he lived my life before I could! And now he’s taken the only friend I ever made away.”
“No, he hasn’t,” Jamie said, wrinkling his forehead.
Al glared at him. Jamie wasn’t stupid. He was being deliberately slow, then, and refusing to understand.
This was why Al had never told anyone about it. He knew it would sound petty to them, and they would try to laugh him out of it. But this wasn’t something that could be laughed away. It was his bitterness, the fate his father had condemned him to by having children in the first place and then not caring enough about giving them lives and independence of their own. Jamie only didn’t feel that way because he was so good-tempered.
“He took the man who looks like Scorpius,” Al said. His words dripped acid, from the expression on Jamie’s face. Good. That was the only way to make him understand. “He had the idea after we did, but he did it anyway. He publicized this silly love affair of his while we were still struggling along in secret. That was the first thing I ever did that he didn’t do, the first thing I could ever be proud of. And he corrupted it.”
Jamie closed his eyes. “You have a very strange idea of corruption,” he whispered.
“This is the way I feel.” Al had calmed a little, because at least he had spoken the truth and Jamie couldn’t accuse him of lying. “There’s no way that you can question it or change it or do anything about it.”
“Really?” Jamie’s eyes opened then, and Al found himself falling back a step. He didn’t mean to. There was no reason. He was the one in Auror training, and not his brother. But still, the fire he saw gleaming back at him for a minute…
“Really,” Al said. “Because Dad will just be more miserable if it comes out. You should have seen his face when Mr. Malfoy was asking him who put him up to it. You’ll hurt them both if you persist.” And now the calmness was real. He had won a victory. He had to have won a victory. After so long of having his life taken away from him, he deserved to win something.
Jamie gave him a dark smile. “I think that’s all true,” he said. “Dad always did have too much regard for you. He’d stop doing things that might have made the rest of us happy because it looked like they were upsetting you.”
Al snorted. “You’re a partial and biased observer,” he said. “Dad never did anything to oblige me if he could help it.”
“You believe that.” Jamie’s voice was soft. “You really and truly believe it.”
“Yes. I can remember him giving Lily treats and listening to the stories of your pranks. But all he did was look uneasily at me and hover over me and nothing else.” Al folded his arms. He felt lighter second by second. He hadn’t realized how good it would make him feel to discuss this with someone else.
“He was uneasy with you because you made it clear that you were displeased with having him for a father,” Jamie said. “Should he have been confident? That would only have convinced you he didn’t care even more.”
Al shook his head. “You’ve got it wrong.”
“And so have you.” Jamie turned his back and walked out of the office without another word.
Al sat back down behind the desk. It was ten minutes before his hand would stop shaking, but so what? He’d made an argument that Jamie couldn’t go up against, an argument that he would never be able to shake from his memory.
Little things like hands shaking were nothing next to that.
*
“Ah, yes, Al, just like that…”
Scorpius had his head tipped back, his blond hair spilling down his shoulders, his eyes shut as his voice escaped in ecstatic murmurs. Al nibbled gently up his shoulder, his tongue flicking out every few seconds to mark the skin his teeth had already touched. They had a fire lit in the hearth that was only used for Floo connections most of the time, and the firelight melted lovingly over Scorpius’s skin.
Al paused until Scorpius started to twist around to complain about him stopping, and then he flicked his tongue again and bit down, so hard that Scorpius twitched beneath him and gave a little startled cry.
“Shite! You’re vicious when you want to be,” Scorpius said, but his words escaped in a long, drawn-out moan, and Al flicked his teeth and his tongue fast again and moved his hands slowly down Scorpius’s chest towards his groin, in contrast. They hadn’t got to spend much time together in the last week and were taking their time now. Scorpius had his shirt off, but not his trousers, and Al still wore his robes.
“I want you so much,” Al said, and that was a confession and answer. From the way Scorpius twisted around after all and claimed Al’s mouth in a hungry kiss, he took it as both. Al threaded his fingers through Scorpius’s hair and did his best to hold on.
Their lips and teeth rubbing and colliding against each other still couldn’t mask the noise of the Floo whooshing up. Scorpius promptly rolled off the desk and hid behind it. Al cleared his throat shakily, sat up, and tried to look as if nothing was wrong, though he knew his blush would betray him. If he and Scorpius were caught snogging in their office, the Aurors would reassign them to different partners. It was one thing for trainees to date, was the view of the Ministry of Magic, but quite another for them to engage in “coital activities” on Ministry premises.
Al was even gladder that Scorpius had moved so fast when he saw the head that was taking shape in the flames.
“Hullo, Mum,” he said miserably.
“Bloody fuck,” Scorpius’s voice said from under his feet. Al kicked the desk to try and get him to shut up, while he inclined his head to his mum and sat up further.
Ginny Potter—she’d kept Harry’s last name because she said that changing it once in her life was quite enough—raised an eyebrow at him. Her lips quivered, and Al was sure that she knew what he’d been up to, but had decided to pretend she didn’t. Al smiled at her. They had always understood each other better than he and Harry had. For one thing, his mother gave a damn whether he lived or died, and if he was miserable or happy while he was alive.
“How’s Romania?” Al added.
“Pleasant.” Ginny rolled her eyes. “Your Uncle Charlie’s conversation hasn’t improved over the years, however. It’s all dragons this, dragons that, and the other morning when he finally seemed to get interested in something I had to say, they brought word that one of the females was laying and he had to dash off.”
Al grinned. “I know the feeling,” he said. “Jamie gets the same way sometimes.”
“Speaking of Jamie,” Ginny said, her eyes sharpening, “your brother brought me an interesting story the other day, and said that I should talk to you about it.”
Al knew that no smile had ever left his face so fast. And then it didn’t help that he started breathing as though someone was torturing him.
Jamie never intended to go to the press. He went to Mum.
That’s not fair.
“It couldn’t have been that interesting,” Al said, trying to play dumb and hoping desperately that it would work, “or he would have told me about it.”
“He said you already knew it.” His mother’s eyes were like pins now, Al thought. The kind that they used to hold squirming bugs that weren’t dead yet in place. “That was the point. That was why he had to come to me.”
No denying what this was about, now. Al took a long, slow breath and released it again. “Mum, it’s not what you think,” he said.
“It’s exactly what I think.” His mother leaned so near that Al thought she would lean out of the fireplace and slap him. “I’ve never understood this insane grudge you have against your father, Al. I only know that it’s lasted for a long time, and Harry’s never done anything to deserve it.”
“He made you unhappy!” Al said, shocked. He’d been the only one to notice the way Ginny got silent around Harry for months before they got divorced, and how her letters never mentioned him at all. “How is that not deserving it?”
“It started before that,” Ginny said. Her voice and her eyes just got sharper and sharper, to the point that Al didn’t think any bugs pinned with them would have a choice except to stop squirming. “When you were a child, I noticed it. Jamie and Lily were happy to wave to people who recognized Harry, but you shrank. I could understand if you hated the publicity. God knows, there was enough of it.” The distaste in her words made Al hope that she wouldn’t be that hard on him after all. If she thought it was hard being Harry Potter’s wife, she must understand, at least a little, why it was harder being Harry Potter’s son. “But you always yelled at him, and not the reporters who crowded around him. Why, Al?”
Al shut his eyes. He knew the answer. He could feel the answer in the sweat along his skin, in the way his fingers gripped the edges of the desk. But if he said it, Mum would be just as deaf to it as Jamie.
“Al? I’m waiting.”
“It was his fault!” Al burst out. That was the answer, the reality, and if they didn’t like it, they should stop asking him. “He was the one who defeated You-Know-Who and had us! Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to go out in public wearing his scar? Why couldn’t he cast a glamour on his face? It was his fault we were famous, and it’s his fault that I look like him, and if would just do something else, then I wouldn’t have to live my life feeling like I was an inferior copy of him!”
Silence. Al knew that misunderstanding was building up against him, and he tried to brace himself to resist it.
But it was hard, so hard that tears stung his eyes. Why couldn’t someone try to adopt his perspective just once? Would it be so difficult for them? Surely it wasn’t as difficult as it was to be Harry Potter’s son who looked just like him and had to be reminded of that every time someone commented on his face?
“That’s ridiculous,” Ginny said. “Harry didn’t choose your appearance, and he wanted to have children. Are you really saying that you want never to have been born, Al, because some people mistake you for your father?”
“It’s stupid,” Al said. “The way people think I’m him.”
“I agree absolutely,” Ginny said. “But blame the ones who think that way. Why should you blame him?”
“He could do something to stop it. He’s the great and powerful Harry Potter. They should listen to him.” Al was aware he was mumbling the words like someone in a fever, but he couldn’t stop. She would understand him if she just listened hard enough. Why not? She had to.
“You have a very child-like conception of him still,” Ginny said softly. “I told him that he shouldn’t have treated you like you were fragile. I know why he did it. He loved you so much, and he was afraid that things would be more difficult for you than for Jamie or Lily. But wrapping you up in silk doesn’t make you fit to face the challenges of the world. You thought he could do anything—I remember the way you would run to him when you were little and hurt and demand he heal you immediately—and that means you think he should be able to do anything still. Even the things you know he can’t affect.”
“I wanted to have something of my own,” Al whispered. “Just once. I thought my relationship with Scorpius was going to be that. And then he stole it because he wanted to sleep with Mr. Malfoy. Why did he have to?”
“I can’t say that I know everything that happens between Harry and Draco,” Ginny said. “But I know one thing. Love can fade away. It happened between Harry and me. Love can also be destroyed. That happened between your Uncle George and Aunt Angelina, because George thought more about Fred than about her. I think you’re awfully close to destroying the love that should be between your father and you because you’re trying to deprive him of his happiness.”
“He doesn’t need it,” Al said. “Not the way I need it.”
“You’re such a child, still,” Ginny said, with a wistful ring in her voice. “So much more than Jamie, or even Lily, who writes me letters full of chatter about boys and robes.”
The whoosh of the Floo said she was gone. Al sat there, feeling as though someone had opened his bones and filled them with isolation. Why did everyone in the world persist in hating and misunderstanding him?
“So that’s it.”
Al jumped and spun around. He had forgotten Scorpius was in the room. But he was, rising up from his crouching position behind the desk, and for the first time since they’d become friends, Al saw that beautiful mouth hard with disdain for him.
“I was just a weapon in your war against your father,” Scorpius said. His voice made Al’s cheeks sting. He stooped down and picked up his shirt, yanking it over his head with a quick motion and then somehow ordering his blond hair with a single shake of his neck. He didn’t look at Al now. “Never someone you really loved or wanted. Just part of your endless series of cries of Understand me, pay attention to me, love me, you don’t love me enough! to him. I should have known.” He strode to the door and yanked it open.
“It wasn’t like that,” Al said, his voice soft and small. Scorpius had always understood him, and now he was walking away, too?
Scorpius glanced over his shoulder, and Al couldn’t face his brilliant eyes or the curl of his lip.
“Yes, it was,” Scorpius said. “I would say that you’re not capable of loving anyone but yourself, except that isn’t true.”
Al looked up with faint hope.
“You don’t love yourself, because parts of you are also parts of him,” Scorpius said, and ducked out the door.
Al lowered his head as the door slammed.
It seemed to close in his heart as well as outside him.
*
He hadn’t realized how much it would all change.
There was no Scorpius beside him when he came back from the training exercises and needed someone to talk to about the near failures, the unfairness of the instructors, or the way that he would succeed next time.
There was no Scorpius bent over the desk and furiously scribbling at a report on their activities that was due in an hour, flashing Al a hurried but charming smile.
Most of all, there was no Scorpius lying on the bed in their shared room, his neck tipped back to expose just enough flesh to make Al salivate, and smiling at him in that coy, secret way that Al knew no one else got to see.
They still shared a room, and an office, and training exercises. But Scorpius attended them all with a cold silence that might as well have put him on the other side of the moon. Al tried and tried to get his attention, but the way Scorpius turned his head to the side and never saw him wounded him all over again.
He tried to tell himself it was nothing, that he could have other lovers, that he would get over this and go on.
It didn’t work.
Because what he missed wasn’t just their lover relationship, new and startling and wonderful as that had been, but Scorpius as a friend.
There were other people Al knew in the Auror training program, but no one he had sailed a flooded Quidditch pitch with, or almost fallen off the Astronomy Tower with when they were both drunk. None had Scorpius’s smile and confidence to call his parents by their first names and be utterly accepting of the reason those parents had divorced. No one else thought House divisions mattered enough to be proud about but not enough to hold apart two people who wanted to be together.
Scorpius was air and light and freedom to Al.
He didn’t know how he had never known that before.
His life was empty without him, and dragged—was grey, and bleak. And while it didn’t help to see his father carrying on with Mr. Malfoy, Al realized after an almost an hour of staring blankly at a photograph on the front page of the Prophet that he no longer really thought about or saw them.
He saw Scorpius.
Walking in silence along the rocks at the bottom of a deep pit he’d never known was there, dragged along by his own tormenting self-consciousness, haunted by the last thing Scorpius had told him, Al came, if late, to the knowledge of the only way to make it all right.
*
“Al.”
There was love and mistrust in the way his father looked at him. The mistrust was entirely new. Al supposed he deserved it after what he’d done the last time he’d been in his father’s office, but it still hurt.
“Hi, Dad.” Al licked his lips. “Could we sit down and talk about this?”
The door locked behind him. The power of the silence wards that Harry set up next made Al’s hair curl. Al swallowed. Did his magic get more powerful when he got happier? Or was it always that powerful and I never noticed?
The list of things that he hadn’t noticed seemed to grow longer day by day.
“Sit down.” Harry gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. Al didn’t remember there being two the last time he was here, he thought as he saw down in the wooden, straight-backed one. The other chair was a large red plush one with golden trimmings. Mr. Malfoy’s taste, he was almost certain.
“Speak.”
Al looked at his father with alarm. He’d practically barked the word, and he leaned back in his own chair with his hands folded behind his head. His eyes were direct and cruel as sunlight. Al flinched, then took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry.”
The words came out of him as if he were pulling up his guts with them. At least they were said now, as much as his stomach ached. And it was bitterly worth it to see Harry’s eyes widen. Clearly, he hadn’t expected that at all.
“I’d like to know why you did it,” Harry said quietly. “And why you’re sorry. I don’t think it was anything I did.”
Al winced and nodded, bracing his hands on his knees. He felt as if he was going to keel over, his head spinning and his heart racing. He would get through this, though, because he had to. “Scorpius broke up with me because he found out what I did,” he said. “And I miss him. And—I always looked so much like you. I started thinking that you had lived my life already and used it all up. They always told me that I was like you. That I looked so much like you. I didn’t know what to do with that. But it shouldn’t have been what I did. I’m sorry.”
Harry remained silent so long that Al thought he wasn’t going to reply and so his apology wasn’t going to be accepted. He almost panicked until Harry spoke.
“I love all my children,” he whispered. “But you were the one who looked up at me and captured my heart. I thought you’d need my help more than Jamie and Lily did. You looked so fragile. I wanted to help you, but I thought I might crush you.
“I know about being a soldier, Al. I know about being an Auror. But I don’t know much about being a father to someone who needs so much from me.
“So I kept a distance from you because I was so terrified of doing something wrong. But that deprived you of some of the care that you should have had, and it made me too afraid of your disapproval, so you had more power over me than you should have. It was unfair to Jamie and Lily, too, and it was one of the oldest disagreements your mother and I had. She thought the way I treated you was wrong. She was right.” Harry took a deep breath and then looked at Al with blazing eyes. Al found himself trembling in his chair. Was that what You-Know-Who saw when he died?
“But none of that excuses what you did.” Harry’s voice was a growling, gathering thunderstorm. “I finally let myself be happy, and you tried to take it away. You would probably have succeeded, too, if Draco hadn’t been stronger than both of us. Why, Al? And no excuses about wanting to keep a Malfoy all to yourself this time.”
Al looked at the floor and shook his head. He was beginning to regret coming here, but what else could he have done?
“I’ve told you all that I thought,” he said dully. “I wanted to be different, and to make everyone stop looking at me and seeing you. That was the only motivation. I didn’t—I didn’t think about destroying your happiness. I just thought about keeping mine.”
Silence, so thick and deep that Al could hear his heartbeat. He wondered for a moment why he didn’t hear Harry’s, and then winced. His mum and Jamie would undoubtedly say that he didn’t deserve to hear a heart that he’d cut himself out of.
Then his father stood up and walked around the desk. Al tensed, but kept his eyes on his lap. His father had never been violent—not with him. He didn’t think he was about to get slapped or pushed out of the chair or cursed.
Well, he didn’t think that, much.
Harry knelt down in front of his chair. Shocked, Al looked up then.
Harry’s face was thoughtful and soft. He reached out and took Al’s elbow, shaking it slightly.
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t think I understand, not completely. But that’s because of the different ways we grew up.”
Al blinked. Where’s the blame? Or else the denial of what I said? Those had been the only reactions when other people heard about what he’d done to his father for so long. Even Scorpius, when they were together and he’d been more patient and sympathetic than anyone Al knew, had thought it was silly that Al was so concerned about standing in his father’s shadow.
“I would have given anything to look like my parents,” Harry said, “before I knew who they were. When I heard that I had my mother’s eyes, that I had my father’s hair and face, and that my parents hadn’t died in a car crash, it was like coming home. It was better than Hogwarts, better than finding out I was a wizard. Hagrid gave me a photo album with pictures of my family. I finally belonged somewhere. I had people who looked like me, and it was wonderful.”
Al nodded involuntarily. He’d seen that album and looked through it several times, though always in Harry’s company. None of his children were trusted to touch it on their own.
“But then,” Harry said, and sighed so hard that his fringe flipped up, “I found out something about my father in fifth year that nearly destroyed all my pleasure in looking like him. He was cruel and a bully to Severus Snape. There was no reason for it. Snape couldn’t be a threat to my father. He was poor, and James was rich. He was in Slytherin, the most despised House in the school, and James was in Gryffindor. My father was an athlete, a prankster, and he had three best friends. Snape was alone. I’d known a few of those things, but not how bad it was. Of course, most of his friends were eager to tell me the good things.”
Al stared. Sometimes people hinted things like that about Grandfather James, but no one had ever said it like Harry just had. Even the professors at Hogwarts who remembered Al’s grandfather, like Flitwick, were more apt to talk about how talented and funny he was than how cruel.
“Gradually,” Harry went on, coming back from whatever distant place he’d been staring into, “I realized that there are some things that you have to forgive people for. I wasn’t born when my father was tormenting Snape and I couldn’t have stopped him. I’m still ashamed he did that, but his pranks weren’t the sum total of him, no matter how cruel they are. Just like this little exploit isn’t the sum total of you.”
Al flinched. He wasn’t sure what cut him more, Harry’s even words or the steady stare of those merciless green eyes.
“That’s the thing we find hard to deal with,” Harry said, very softly, “that people are so mixed. We want them to be good or evil, heroes or Dark Lords. Oh, there are a few like that, but not the majority. When we treat them like that, though, we produce the kind of resentment that turns some into Dark Lords. I don’t think that’s worth the opportunity for some other people to act like heroes.” He shook his head, his mouth hard.
Then he visibly pulled himself back to the present and clapped his hands briskly together. “I forgive you,” he said. “I hope that you’re able to forgive me in time for all the problems that I never knew I was causing you.” He paused, squeezing Al’s hand, and then added in a different tone, “If you do it again, when you should know better, I think that you’ll find I can still be stern.”
Al shivered and nodded. His father looked stern, the way Al had seen him in newspaper photographs when he dispatched a Dark wizard.
But for the first time in years, Al was not afraid of him.
Harry seemed to sense that. He smiled at Al and hauled him to his feet. “Go on, get out of here,” he said. “I have a lot of work to do.”
Al held onto his hand when Harry tried to pull it back, clearing his throat nervously. Harry watched him, nodding a little when Al coughed hesitantly.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Al said at last. “Really.”
Harry’s eyes softened, and he slightly shook his head. “When you’re young is the time to make mistakes,” he said. “That way, you don’t have as much responsibility that can make you fuck up other people’s lives. Thank you, Al.” And Harry hugged him, roughly and awkwardly, before letting him go. Al couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.
He left slowly, glancing over his shoulder. Harry was already buried in a pile of paperwork, frowning at it.
An unexpected thought squirmed deep in Al’s mind as he walked away from Harry’s office door.
I might want to come back and talk to him again. Not about Scorpius or Mr. Malfoy or looking like him. Just to talk.
*
That was what he did, sometimes. And he concentrated on his Auror work, and talked with his mother and Jamie, and answered Lily’s letters that had been piling up in one corner of his office, and went to dinner with Uncle Ron and got pissed at the pub he favored. Normal things. Things that eased the gallop of Al’s heart and made him think that he could go on living, after all.
It didn’t mean as much without Scorpius, but nothing did, and no matter how much Al tried to get Scorpius to sit down and listen to him, he turned away with a curled lip.
Maybe he would listen eventually. Maybe he would come back to Al and let him explain, which was all that Al wanted to do.
But maybe not, and Al had to face that possibility, too. It was all a consequence of his own stupidity.
He knew he couldn’t promise never to be stupid again, but at least he could promise never to be stupid in that way again.
*
“Albus Potter.”
Al stiffened. He knew already from the name that the person speaking to him wasn’t someone who normally did. Everyone addressed him as Al. Mum and Dad had started that when he was young, because he screamed and kicked when someone called him by his full name. This had to be a stranger.
But the voice didn’t sound like a stranger’s.
Al turned around.
Mr. Malfoy stood behind him, arms folded and eyes so harsh that Al shuddered. He suddenly remembered that they were in a corridor most people didn’t take, buried deep in the Ministry. Al had taken it because he’d been assigned to help out in the Department of Mysteries as a punishment for skiving off. He wished now that he’d taken any other. It was an effort just to breathe, never mind to stand up and pretend he didn’t care.
This close to Mr. Malfoy, which Al had never been before, he suddenly realized that there were differences between Scorpius and his father after all. Mr. Malfoy’s face was more pointed and his eyes harder and colder. His hair was paler, too, which only made sense, because he was older. Al could understand, now, why Scorpius had so hated to be compared with his father. But he really had thought they looked alike.
“Harry told me that you apologized,” Mr. Malfoy said, his voice lingering in a caress over Al’s father’s name that Al hated. “Is that the truth?”
Al wondered for a moment why he seemed so sure that Al wouldn’t lie, and then considered the coldness of Mr. Malfoy’s face again. He probably thought Al wouldn’t dare to lie.
And the stupid thing was, he was right.
“Yes,” Al said. “I did. He suffered enough from what I did, and I decided that even though I don’t like looking like him, that isn’t enough excuse to try and ruin his happiness.” It was the same sort of thing he had said to Mum and Jamie, but he had said it willingly to them. It sounded small and pathetic in front of Mr. Malfoy.
Still, Mr. Malfoy didn’t look as if he considered it that way. He cocked his head, bird-like, studying Al from different angles. Al tugged nervously at his hair, then forced his hand to drop to his side.
“I fail to see why you would resent looking like Harry,” Mr. Malfoy murmured. “Harry is beautiful.”
Al tensed, but recognized the baiting and did his best not to rise to it. “Looking like him makes people think I am him,” he said. “Just the same. You’re not your father, Scorpius told me that, and Scorpius isn’t you. Would you like people thinking you were the same all the time, though?”
Mr. Malfoy paused, as though Al had said something that got his attention. Then he said, “And would you do it again?”
“No,” Al said. He clenched his hands into fists and fought not to show how annoyed he was. His fear was diminishing in the wake of his temper, something that usually happened to him once he had a chance to get used to a threat. Of course, for years no threats had seemed as important as the threat of his father taking over his identity in the eyes of everyone else. “I discussed this already with my father. I don’t have to talk to you.”
Mr. Malfoy gave him a sharp smile, said, “You do have a spine. He will be pleased to hear it,” and started to leave.
Al rolled his eyes, tried to imagine how his father would take to hearing a “reassurance” from Mr. Malfoy, and snorted. At least he could turn away with the knowledge that his dad knew he hadn’t been lying.
“Albus.”
Will he stop calling me that? But under the circumstances, Al thought it best to do nothing more than nod over his shoulder.
“If you hurt him again,” Mr. Malfoy said, in a whisper that coiled along the walls and seemed to echo back to Al from impossible directions, “then I will come on you again in a corridor like this. And there will be a smear of ash to attract the attention of the next curious wanderer.”
It was a stupid threat. But for some reason, Al kept on shivering long after Mr. Malfoy had turned his back and swished away.
*
Al leaned his head on the mantle of the fireplace and sighed. The flames on the hearth warmed him, and he had learned how to cast the spell that made an enchanted window, so he could look out on the same scene that their back window at home showed in the summer: a long lawn with trees in the distance and sun-shadows sprawling on the grass.
It was still lonely, but he thought he’d recover. Lily had written a letter to him that evening that managed to make him smile with its breathless account of Hufflepuff pranks, and she was thinking about becoming a robe designer. Madam Malkin had agreed to take her on as an apprentice that summer, after she left Hogwarts, and see if she would do.
There were good things happening in other people’s lives, even in Al’s. He could survive this.
When he heard the door opening, he thought it was a dream at first, since it was weeks since Scorpius had deigned to enter the room when Al was there. He froze and didn’t look around. Scorpius had probably only come to get some clothes or retrieve a book.
But the footsteps came to a heavy halt behind him, and then Scorpius stood there, breathing. Al swallowed and still didn’t look around.
“My father said you’d apologized to your dad and got your courage back,” Scorpius said. “Was he wrong about the second one?”
Al turned slowly. Scorpius raised an eyebrow at him and shook his head. “Only you would make that mistake in the first place,” he said, “or go on backing away when I acted a bit angry instead of just yelling the truth over my protests. I was acting stupid, but I can’t be blamed, because it was in reaction to your much larger stupidity.”
Al smiled in spite of himself, and reached out. Scorpius rolled his eyes and moved forwards into the embrace. “I’m not going to run away,” he muttered, “or break.”
“I know,” Al said, closing his eyes, and for the first time, he felt as if he really did know.
They stood like that, slightly swaying, for a little while. Then Scorpius pulled back and cleared his throat. Al looked up at him through eyes that he told himself were not misty.
Scorpius gave him a smile with all Hogwarts, and all daring, and all friendship, and all love, in it.
“I have,” he said slowly, “a wonderful idea.”
End.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 08:44 pm (UTC)My friend MountinAsh and I ask your permision to translate your fic Kestrel to Russian.
We tried to contact you by e-mail and also comment in this LJ (see http://lomonaaeren.livejournal.com/102509.html?thread=7628653#t7628653).
We hope to get your answer. Resently our company has joined a very good artist, who wants to illustrate Kestrel.
Your kasmunaut
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 09:09 pm (UTC)I always thought H/D and AS/S at the same time was a little silly, but you made it work!
I like Scorpius so much, he's really cute. Poor Harry, Al being so selfish, and Al's so vurnerable, I do know this feeling myself, to want to be special and seen for who you really are...
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 09:12 pm (UTC)The swirl of emotions really let us see what kind of strange chaos was always haunting Al. It was enough that I honestly felt so sad for him when the comparisons stopped but Al kept holding on to that image of being little Harry.
Draco and Scorpius were completely in character and stayed true to what the next generation of Malfoys would be like. (at least in my mind)
I really really liked this. You should write more second gen!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:58 am (UTC)Yes, people were insensitive to Al, but in the end, he inflicted a lot of the damage on himself.
If I can find another second gen plot that intrigues me as much as this one did, then I will.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 09:36 pm (UTC)Great job!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:58 am (UTC)I have a fondness for James and Lily, and think they should be brought into stories more.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 09:38 pm (UTC)Draco, James and Ginny were great. And I loved poor Harry, I wanted to hug him so much...
You've done an amazing job!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:58 am (UTC)Al had to learn to see his father as a person who could be unhappy, a person he could hug.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 09:48 pm (UTC)Given how strongly he wanted to distance himself from his father, I'm surprised he DIDN'T accept Slytherin.
I'm glad that Scorpius managed to forgive him in the end.
[Oh, and *were* H&D together before his divorce was finalized? I wasn't certain.]
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:59 am (UTC)Al has a mixture of longing to be different and longing to be true to his own nature, which he thinks is his father's nature. So he wasn't going to allow himself to be "driven" from Gryffindor, just as he wanted to be an Auror and so decided to be one.
(No. This story takes place almost three years after Harry divorced Ginny, and this is the first time they've been together).
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 11:06 pm (UTC)That’s the reason I couldn’t feel really angry about Al’s actions, stupid as they were. I felt such a mixture of emotions while reading this! One moment I wanted someone to smack Al, the next I pitied him, then I was smiling over something and a minute later I wanted to hug Harry… Damn, this was a good read.
You did a great job portraying the similarities and differences between Harry and Al, and between Scorpius and Draco. I especially enjoyed the contrast between Al and Scorpius concerning that, and also the contrast in their relationship with their parents. While Al kept saying how cold and withdrawn Draco was, I got the feeling Scorpius was close to Draco (even if Al’s words made me think there was a gap between Draco and Scorpius just like the one between Al and Harry at first).
I loved the way you wrote Harry and Draco but I enjoyed Ginny and James more. Especially James.
Walking in silence along the rocks at the bottom of a deep pit he’d never known was there, dragged along by his own tormenting self-consciousness, haunted by the last thing Scorpius had told him, Al came, if late, to the knowledge of the only way to make it all right.
That was my favourite sentence.
I have been waiting for this one-shot for a while, I’m very happy with it. It definitely was worth the wait :D
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:01 am (UTC)Al is young, but at a certain age, you have to give up expecting other people to fix your problems if you want to grow up. I think Al had reached that stage, but it took a real shock to wake him up and make him realize it.
Yeah, Al never knew Draco (or Scorpius, or Harry) as well as he thought he did. He's really not very perceptive.
James is one of my favorite second gen characters, for some reason.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 11:15 pm (UTC)What's so great about this story is how IC Draco and Harry were, and how well developed Scorpius and Al were (since we have no real idea of them IC). I thought Al's angst and frustration was really well portrayed, and by having this solely in Al's POV, I actually felt like I understood how he got to the conclusion that his dad was at fault for everything.
I have to ask, though: if Al was already struggling with the attention on his father as a young child, why did he choose Gryffindor over Slytherin? To avoid more press? Since it would have helped distinguish him in the long run...
All in all, this just made my day. And Draco pondering why Al wouldn't want to look like Hary, as Harry is beautiful, was just sweet and yet a barb at Al all in one. Yay!
*huggles this story*
-Jolene
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:02 am (UTC)That's one reason I wrote this story, although I avoid most second gen and AS/S fics. So many I tried to read were idealized fluff, or simple retreads of H/D without the conflict. I needed an Al I could believe in.
Al has a strange mixture of wanting to be different from Harry and wanting to surpass him. So, just as he became an Auror to be a better Auror than his dad, he became a Gryffindor to be a better Gryffindor than Harry could, too.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:03 am (UTC)Al may not quite deserve his happy ending, but I wanted to show that people did love him- it just wasn't always expressed the way he thought it should be.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 12:05 am (UTC)That's SUCH a different Al than what I'm used to read, but it's really refreshing to get your perceptions of the NextGen'ers shaken up a bit from time to time :D
But DAMN! Al was frustrating me SO BAD!!!! O.O I still enjoyed this story a LOT though. Really amazing. I did catch a few typos though, but that's really the most minor problem of minor problems xP
An amazing, interesting, and different -in the awesome way!- read, my dear! :D
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:04 am (UTC)This is a frustrating read, but deliberately so, since Al frustrates the people around him, too. This way, you get to share their emotions!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 01:21 am (UTC)Amazing work Lo, just amazing.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 02:59 am (UTC)great story
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:15 am (UTC)Al was literally incapable of communication like that by the time he was in the Auror program. Otherwise, he would have been able to explain himself better.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 04:38 am (UTC)But marvelously so.
I recall being a selfish little idiot as a kid. This fic resonates with life and the potentially strange dynamics within parent-child relationships.
I enjoyed Scorpius as the ray of light in Al's life. He's an adorably charming little nitwit. you can feel the genuine love he and Al have for each other. Even in the midst of Al's stubbornness and downright hatred for his father.
Harry & Draco are a strong, loving, durable presence in the story.
I likes it. Muchly.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:16 am (UTC)Scorpius is the only reason that Al turned out even as well as he did. Without a friend, I think he would have sunk into bitterness and isolation and stayed there.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 04:59 am (UTC)But this was fantastic!
Al was such a prat, I just wanted to shake him through out the whole thing.
I really enjoyed the family interplay and real life strains that get in the way. A very realistic portrayal.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:16 am (UTC)Don't worry. I tend to think the same thing. It's the reason I don't read many of them, because they're too fluffy for me.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 07:09 am (UTC)Although, I have to say there were more than a couple of times I wanted to reach into the computer and smack Albus in the back of the head.
This was a wonderful story! Thanks for sharing it.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:16 am (UTC)Al was meant to inspire that reaction. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:17 am (UTC)Yeah, that seems to be a pretty common reaction. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 09:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:17 am (UTC)Whew.
Date: 2009-11-28 12:17 pm (UTC)Re: Whew.
Date: 2009-12-03 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 03:12 pm (UTC)I find it a bit difficult to see Albus resenting his father his entire life, but I can completely see how he could get so caught up in his own anger and arguments that after a while he doesn't even realise what he's saying is illogical.
Fantastic story- very different and interesting.
Thank you very much for writing it and sharing it. =)
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:19 am (UTC)I think Al probably loved his father at least some of the time. But remember, this is from his perspective only. By the time he started becoming conscious of his emotions, he would only have been able to admit the hatred.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 07:49 pm (UTC)Now I want to know what Scorpius's new idea is... ;}
C Dumbledore
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:19 am (UTC)The idea of using Harry's resemblance to James only came to me later in the story, but I think it was a fairly good idea. After all, it's the kind of thing that Harry would probably use to show his son that fathers could be imperfect but still loved.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:20 am (UTC)Al probably loved his father some of the time. But he's not a very perceptive kid, and the hatred was a stronger emotion for him, so that's what he focused on, even when he shouldn't.
In the end, Al had to make that decision before Scorpius came back, or I don't think it would have been worth anything.