Chapter Text
Harry reads about it one morning on the tube. Even though he is closer to 30 than 20 and has lived in the magical world for longer than he lived in the muggle world, some part of him is just not good at consistently remembering that he is a wizard. On more mornings than he can count, he finds himself already at the station before realizing that he could also apparate to work.
The headline is small, not much more than a side-note in his muggle proved Daily Prophet; it’s a new feature the newspaper introduced half a year ago, adding a spell to its paper to make it appear to be the Times whenever muggles look at it. It’s been hugely popular.
Draco Malfoy, it reads, has committed suicide in his Wiltshire home, hanging himself from an apple tree in his father’s garden.
Harry’s heart constricts so painfully that he can barely breathe.
--
They fucked for the last time just three weeks ago. Draco was snide and rude as always, but fuck – also so funny, and quick-witted and unawed by Harry that Harry never minded much.
If Harry is very truthful with himself, he rather didn’t mind at all.
If Harry is very truthful with himself, he had hoped for months for something different, something more, kept kissing Draco deeper, lingered with his touches, slept over a few times.
If Harry is very truthful with himself, he kind of wants to fling himself in front of the tube that morning.
--
He goes to work that day and let’s himself not think about it. He goes to work for weeks after and doesn’t think about it at all, except for the random little intrusive thoughts popping up in his head; thinking of what Draco liked to eat when Harry is doing his own grocery shopping. Thinking of Draco complaining about beard burn on his skin when Harry does his shaving. Thinking, just once, of Lucius, all alone now in that big mansion after losing wife and son and of what Draco would say about it and Harry gets up from his workbench then and breathes for a few minutes in the toilet.
--
Harry didn’t really think about going into broom-making; when he was floundering around after the war, he met a quite a few professional players through Ginny and got more and more into it with time.
Ginny has long left, but he likes how broom-making manages to be both very magical and very non-magical technical at all and so he sticks to it.
--
The first plunge into nausea comes at his workbench too. Draco has been dead for a month and Harry has had a hard time keeping his breakfast in. He settled down at his bench only to get up a minute later with the sudden inexplicable and unstoppable urge to throw up everything he has ever eaten.
It happens again and again and again and after two weeks he makes his way to St. Mungo’s, however reluctantly.
The news are heart-stopping.
Later, after his mind settles into slow acceptance that some wizards can bear and birth babies, he listens to the heartbeat of his and Draco’s unborn child and tries not to compare it to how Draco’s heartbeat sounded when he allowed Harry to fall asleep on his chest.
--
Harry is probably the only idiot in the magical world who didn’t know about male pregnancies. It’s been a source of pride in pure-blood families for centuries; men able to bear children appear to be some kind of celebrity thing. Harry reads about statistical comparisons of bride and baby bearing groom prizes in medieval England and is quite awed by the numbers, if he is honest.
--
Hermione is, predictably, over the moon with the magic of it all, barely pausing to even ask who the other father is. She floundered forever between law and healing after Hogwarts, never quite making her peace with not being able to do both at the same time.
Ron on the other hand doesn’t stop asking until Harry admits that the other father is deceased. Ron’s somewhat silent afterwards, clearly thinking. Harry isn’t really surprised to find a more detailed and off-public Autor record of Draco Malfoy’s death in his mail one day.
They don’t talk about it after.
--
Harry doesn’t even think of Lucius once after finding out about the baby until he finds himself back at St. Mungo’s with various pains and aches, so tired he can barely keep awake while test after test is done on him.
It was really too good to be true; he is told that male pregnancies require a stable mental, physical and loving bond between the two fathers, as they are entirely magical not biological in nature. Without the second father, Harry will not be able to carry the baby to term.
The groom prizes make a lot more sense now.
--
It’s not unheard of fathers dying during the pregnancies of their partners, he is told while Ron holds his hand. Close and positive contact to remaining relatives of the deceased partners might be able to mitigate the effects long enough until the baby is big enough to survive after birth, he is told; close male relatives such as brothers or fathers are preferable. Simple contact won’t be enough as it would be in the case of the father of the baby; spells will need to be performed and potions have to be drunk and Harry sort of stops listening once Ron and the healer start discussing it all in depth.
If the pregnancy terminates, he is told at the very end, after Ron nudges him to get his attention back, Harry is unlikely to survive unless the baby is stillborn. The healer looks truly sympathetic and sorry and Harry reassures him reflexively until Ron tugs him up.
--
After Lucius was paroled after seven years in Azkaban, he moved back into the Manor. His wealth was long gone and redistributed; all other property sold off. But the particular magic of wizarding homes made it impossible to sell or tear down the Manor; the almost sentient being of the house would have made that a murder, Ron tells Harry while they stand in front of the big entrance gate.
Lucius, rumor has it, went into Malfoy Manor on the April morning he was set free and has not come out of it again in the last four years.
I never had to do an official visit to him, Ron says, but I was told that he is achingly polite whenever colleagues needed to come over. He is using magic, but not much of it at all. Nothing dark whatsoever.
It doesn’t exactly reassure Harry.
--
Lucius’ eyes travel down to the now visible bump before settling, cool and grey on Harry’s face.
He has retained his figure, Harry notes; his hair is still shiny and the same pale-blond of Draco’s. It twinges somewhere in Harry’s chest, thinking of that.
The dementors have never been reinstated at Azkaban; otherwise he would probably look different after seven years of it, Harry thinks.
Ron does most of the talking that day.
When he finishes, Lucius asks to feel the baby.
His hands look exactly like Draco’s; it makes Harry draw in a sharp breath; Lucius’ eyes flicking up to his face immediately. He settles his hands carefully on Harry’s tiny bump and doesn’t break their gaze. His face is completely impassive, the kind of mask that Draco never fully managed.
--
Lucius flat out refuses to move to London with Harry, but he settles him into a set of suites right next to his own.
Harry ends up not having to explain much of anything at all really; he sometimes forgets what it can mean to be pureblood; to know about these things, to instinctively understand magic in a way Harry simply never will. Lucius knows the spells he has to do and does them easily, elegantly without once looking them up.
“The potions you’ll have to order yourself,” he tells Harry dispassionately, “I am afraid that my funds will not cover them.”
It such an un-Malfoy thing to say that Harry has to look away from his face.
--
When Lucius finds out that Harry has been to self-conscious to find out how the fuck owl-ordering works for over ten years now, he laughs. Harry has never seen him laugh and kind of stares, but Lucius doesn’t seem to be too bothered with it, just shakes his head.
He sits Harry down that evening and shows him how it is done, arm resting casually on the armrest of Harry’s chair, only just touching his back. It’s how Harry finds out that his constant headache is gone when Lucius touches him, but he doesn’t tell him that.
--
The nightmare tears through him like a lightning strike and Harry wakes screaming and crying four weeks after he moved in.
Lucius apparates to Harry’s bedroom in a heartbeat, wand out and ready to attack before the situation sinks half way in for Harry.
Lucius’ eyes are as cool as ever when he takes in Harry’s face, his shaking hands. He nods once at him and leaves through the door this time, not saying a word.
--
Apparating apparently violates Lucius’ terms of release and Harry travels into London to spend an embarrassing hour explaining the situation to Lucius’ probation officer.
When he comes to the Manor late that day, Lucius sit in the salon, reading one of the highly complicated journals on magical theory Harry has only glanced at once before.
He doesn’t even look up from his text when Harry tells him that there will be no repercussions, only nods at him.
--
The most surprising thing about living with Lucius must be that he is as good with magical cooking as Molly Weasley.
Harry hasn’t been at the Weasleys’ much in the last years, things awkward between Ginny and him and Molly and him and he is happy to eat the way he has gotten used to at Hogwarts and at the Burrow.
He finds out per chance that Lucius grows all the food himself and somehow that strikes him as terrible sad; the idea of him sitting between the plants and watering them because he does not even have a Galleon to himself almost too much to bear.
--
Harry’s hormones are out of whack, have been out of whack for a few weeks and so he finds himself crying at random times throughout the day over the most trivial things. He tries to hide it from Lucius, excuses himself quickly whenever he feels the tears coming, and Lucius lets him go without remark no matter how gracelessly he does it.
--
He is just five months pregnant when he wakes screaming from another dream. Lucius hasn’t barged into his room in weeks during the night and Harry was fine with it, but tonight he is not. He can’t stop shaking, can’t stop the trembling of his limbs, feels so strangely unprotected in his big bed and room. The baby is restless, kicking him and his feet are swollen and painful and he gets up to go down towards the kitchen to get a glass of water.
The kitchen is probably his favorite part of the Manor; it hasn’t been used as a communal eating place before the war, but Lucius has obviously abandoned the luscious eating halls of his own youth. The kitchen is big with a wonderful wooden desk next to the cooking area. It always smells nice in there; the fire is always warm, and Harry has started to love the evenings here when he watches Lucius cook him dinner.
Lucius sits at the table when he enters, only illuminated by the kitchen fire. His head is in his hands, an almost full Whiskey bottle next to him. It doesn’t look like he drunk more than a sip of the glass he poured himself.
He is crying soundlessly, tears rolling down his cheeks like rivers. Harry has a flashback to cornering Draco in that Hogwarts bathroom so long ago and he stands motionless, watches with a heavy heart. When he finally goes back upstairs, Lucius is still crying without making a sound.
--
Harry goes to the Weasleys the next Sunday. He hasn’t felt particular well the last week, images of Lucius and Draco intermingling in his mind. He’s had a nightmare almost every night except for Saturday night when Lucius came by just after Harry had settled into bed and talked for 50 minutes about something he had read in his journals, voice calm and slow while Harry got progressively comfier and sleepier. It was the only day in the week in which Harry has not woken up screaming.
Ron and Hermione haven’t told the others about his pregnancy he finds out. Molly is tearful, George snide, Fleur and Bill are full of advice Harry would probably be interested in if Ginny wouldn’t whisper homophobic remarks to Percy every few minutes.
He excuses himself to go to the bathroom after starters, nerves frayed and mind so anxious that he needs a breather.
He hears the bell ring but doesn’t react to it; it’s not his house after all. When he comes back down, Lucius Malfoy stands tall and proud facing off the Weasleys, face so impassive as if he spends his Sundays over at the Burrow regularly.
Most of the Weasleys draw the conclusion that Lucius must be the father and the shouting starts pretty much immediately. Lucius simply looks at Harry and tells him that the stress he is under is harming his unborn child.
Harry thinks he remembers Lucius dimly of talking about a tracking spell that would allow him to know if Harry was distressed when out, but Harry hadn’t even noticed him putting it on him this morning.
When Molly, George, Ginny and Percy are all suitably disgusted with the baby being Draco’s child after all, Arthur tries to offer Lucius a seat on the table. Ginny’s face is red when she screams at Arthur about it; how can Arthur dare invite someone who hurt her terribly; Harry isn’t even family.
Lucius goes to him then, tugs him close and apparates them before Harry can even think of something to say.
--
Not family, not family, not family runs like a badly-built and jaunty looping melody through Harry’s mind. He’s not a Weasley; he knew that, and he remembered it again when he broke up with Ginny, but it still hurts. Ron’s furious on Harry’s behalf, Hermione pitying, Bill undecided but what does it matter really; in the end Ginny has only spoken the truth.
Harry doesn’t have a family; Harry hasn’t had one in almost 30 years, has only gotten enough glimpses to truly, deeply crave one. Sirius or Remus hadn’t been all that interested in Harry when it comes down to it, but they gave him more than Harry had had before. The Weasleys went out of their way to make him feel welcome even if their love of him turned out to be conditional after all.
The worst must have been Hermione and Ron and they didn’t mean any harm. Harry should have known that family always also means exclusiveness; they maybe didn’t want to have a private life apart from Harry, but they still needed it to grow as a couple.
Harry should have known that he doesn’t deserve a family just like Uncle Vernon has said.
--
Lucius probation officer looks distinctly uninterested in Harry trying to explain why Lucius has had to apparate yet again. This time he has to pay a fine and it goes onto official record.
Just like last time, Lucius doesn’t appear to be interested in it at all, but Harry notes that the journal he is reading when Harry gets back is the same one he was reading when Harry got back the last time.
--
Lucius comes to him a few days later, simply gets into Harry’s bed where Harry is yet again crying from loneliness and grief at four o’clock in the morning.
He settles Harry on his chest, one hand combing through Harry’s hair slowly, the other loosely wrapped around Harry’s fingers resting on Lucius’ chest. They don’t talk, and Harry soon feels drowsy despite the weirdness of having Lucius Malfoy touch him, having Lucius Malfoy in his bed in just his pyjamas. Harry snuggles closer because he knows that there is probably not anything Lucius cannot handle once he has decided he will handle it and Harry being clingy right now doesn’t bother him after having made the decision to come to Harry in the first place.
“I’m sorry Harry,” Lucius says when Harry hiccups through a shaky explanation of why he’s so hurt about Ginny’s comment that is mostly truthful.
Lucius lets go of his fingers to rub a hand over Harry’s belly just before he falls asleep and Harry goes boneless with the feeling of it, so warm and protected that he seems to drift apart like a humulus cloud in a breeze.
--
It’s Harry’s 30th birthday a while later. He floos to meet Ron and Hermione for lunch, not feeling up for much more. He doesn’t feel like celebrating.
For over 12 years after the battle, Harry has somehow made due with life. He doesn’t want to continue that; he doesn’t want to feel so unsteady mentally any more. It’s exhausting, and Harry will soon have to care for another human and he can’t even care for himself.
Lucius was a basket case when he was sentenced to Azkaban but somehow, he managed to work out most of his own emotional baggage and now he’s a fully well-functioning adult who can even deal rationally with painful memories in a non-self-destructive way.
It gives Harry a lot of hope.
When he comes home, he finds a birthday cake and a present from Lucius and he’s so touched he can’t even say thank you, just goes and hugs Lucius.
The present turns out to be bathrobe; weeks ago, Harry complained to Lucius about needing one. Harry’s so touched by him remembering that he almost gets into a crying fit again.
In the evening, Lucius cooks them dinner. It’s so nice and domestic that it makes Harry ache with longing.
--
Harry starts to water Lucius’ plants, all his tomatoes and salads and paprika. Lucius uses a spell for it, but Harry likes to feel the sun on his face, likes to smell all that fresh produce smell. It’s quiet and peaceful out in the gardens behind the Manor and Harry sort of gets why nobody would want to leave it behind.
He stumbles upon the apple tree by chance and it’s not like Harry would know which one it was; Lucius has at least 50 of them. But his magic knows somehow, and the baby knows somehow and the grief that wells up in Harry is so intense that it drops him to his knees.
All the what-ifs of his life are tied to that tree.
All his guilt is too.
From the file Ron gave him, Draco didn’t have friends or even casual contacts, kept to himself at work, worked overtime more than anyone else. He spent all of his nights alone at the tiny one-bedroom apartment he could afford.
His book shelf had been full of psychology books when Aurors had searched his flat after his death; he had marked passages that explained how to deal with traumatic events.
He had needed help, and nobody had given it to him.
Harry can’t think of it for too long without wanting to put himself on another one of Lucius’ trees.
--
Lucius’ hands are warm when they cup Harry’s cheeks two weeks later. Harry has spent a lot of time in front of that apple tree by then; Harry hasn’t felt very human just as long.
“You are an idiot, Potter,” Lucius says.
Lucius carries him back inside the Manor, brings him up and settles him in Harry’s bed without breaking a sweat.
Harry has never had that final growth spurt; even pregnant he can’t hold on to any excess weight. Lucius towers over him; is a full head taller and Harry wouldn’t want to do arm wrestling against him even in jest; he has seen the man’s fitness routine.
The baby has not been dealing well with the exposure to the place of death of one of his fathers, Harry is told by the healer frowning at his stomach.
The thought of hurting his child is painful. Lucius tuts at him when he tears up, resting his hand softly on Harry’s brow for a moment.
“It’s part of fatherhood to hurt your children from time to time without wanting to,” he tells Harry softly, “it doesn’t make you a bad father, Harry; it’s just something that happens.”
“Closer contact,” the healer says before leaving, “between you and the grandfather would be advisable for the next few days.”
--
Closer contact in Lucius’ book means that Harry is now woken up with a cup of tea each morning. Lucius carries the paper with him when he settles next to Harry and Harry wakes up slow while Lucius pets his hair, rests a hand on his belly.
Throughout the day, Lucius will find Harry multiple times wherever he is, calmly wrapping him into his arms, calmly stroking Harry’s growing belly.
They never talk to each other, but it’s still so intimate, so tender, so –
it’s so loving that it floors Harry, leaves him untethered and wallowing, waiting for more, aching for more of it. He’s never been touched like this, by anyone. No one has cared about him like this, or at least giving him that much touch without second thought. No one has sheltered him like Lucius does, taking him in without question even though Harry knows his relationship to Draco was more than fraught with conflict after the war.
It upsets a lot of what Harry thought true.
--
The question that brings it all to crush to the ground and burn is stupid; Harry has not even thought it through. It just stumbles out of this mouth like things sometimes do for Harry.
“A Malfoy heir?” Lucius says. Harry hasn’t seen the sneer in so long, he forgot how much he hates it.
“It’s an illicit child and a half-blood,” Lucius says dismissively, angrily, punishingly, “it does not have the blood to be a Malfoy heir. There will be no more Malfoys after me; your child will not be more than a Potter.”