Volunteers

Chapter 2

Date: April 14
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I've attached Waleran's planned sermon, in case you're interested. We may have to watch some of the more hot-headed wizards; some of what he's likely to say is rather insulting.
Thanks for being patient with Ben last night, by the way. He was very excited; you're the only wizard he's ever met other than me.

Date: April 14
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I read Waleran's sermon. I wonder if he knows my Muggle relatives.
You're welcome, about Ben. Must admit, I was a bit shocked that you had a son.

Date: April 14
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
So was I.

Date: April 15
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Next meeting is in two days, and I think I've got all the anti-Muggle charms ready. We just need to decide where to place them.

Date: April 15
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
No problem. You know where they're supposed to be set?

Date: April 15
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I've got last year's map, but we'll need to do a walk-through and make sure they're going where they need to go. Not all the events are taking place exactly when & where they did last year.

Date: April 16
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
That would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Date: April 17
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Our house elf is on holiday and Hermione's at St. Mungo's, so I don't have anybody to watch Alec. We'll have to postpone tonight's meeting.

Date: April 17
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Things are a bit busy right now, so I'm not sure when I can next get away. Is it just your son who's the problem? Because if so, you may as well bring him. It's outside; he can run around while we do the walk-through.

Date: April 17
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
All right. Why don't you bring Ben along too? You said he wanted to meet wizard children.

Date: April 17
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Good idea.

ooo000ooo

April 17

"Give me a moment here," Harry said, squinting at the scroll in his hand and attempting to figure out the precise location of one of the ley lines pictured there. Not an easy task, considering the wind whipping around the Hill and trying to snatch the scroll out of Harry's hand.

Draco glanced over at the grove to their left, where the two little boys were chattering excitedly. Well, Ben was chattering; Alec was listening intently and following him as he paced back and forth. Harry's son didn't look much like Harry, except for his eyes, Draco decided. Didn't look a lot like Ginny Weasley either, what Draco could remember of her, though the Weasley colouring was unmistakable.

"Right. Here it is," Harry said decisively, and Draco added a star to his map of the site.

"Do you think we need an Invisibility charm here?" Draco asked.

"Yeah, and around that tree as well."

"No, that's too close to where the Red Men will be coming in; it'll look rather odd if some of them disappear. Just put a Proximity alarm on that one."

Harry nodded and glanced over at the two boys, smiling a bit as he followed them with his eyes. "He's a little shy," he'd said apologetically after he introduced them and Alec clung to his legs and gazed at Draco and Ben, offering them a silent nod and a shy smile. He'd detached fairly quickly, though, joined Ben on the playground, and was now happily following him around.

"They appear to be getting on all right," Draco said, and Harry nodded.

"Alec doesn't say much," he said, apologizing again. "He really is having fun, though."

"Actually that's a bit refreshing, compared to Ben," Draco said. "He never stops talking."

Harry smiled and turned back to his map.

"So you took up curse-breaking to raise him?" Draco asked as he marked another ward location.

"Yeah. Ginny and I were both playing Quidditch for the Falcons. We figured when we wanted to start a family I'd quit and go into Auror training, and she'd stay home with the kids." He frowned and erased a mark on his map, replacing it with a question mark and looking back at the site. "Then when she got pregnant while we were still playing, we figured it would be all right because she was second string; we weren't both going to be practicing or in the air at the same time anyway. We thought she'd take a year off, then rejoin the team and we'd just sort of share the load that way." He scratched another star onto his map and pushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. "Hope it's not this windy come Beltane. Wizard-repellent ward over here, d'you think? There's no reason why wizards should be here, and you said it's going to be the site of one of the Wiccan ceremonies."

"Yeah, good idea," Draco said, and cast the simple charm. "I remember you were both playing. It was surprising when the news came out that you were starting a family."

"Well, we weren't expecting to start quite so early, but we both wanted a lot of kids, so we figured it was all right." He gave a slight smile. "Ginny used to joke that we were going to name our first Alec or Alanna because we wanted to see how far down the alphabet we could go." He paused and frowned at the charm Draco had cast, then widened it a bit.

"So d'you still want more children, some day?" Draco asked ignoring the irritating urge to tuck the errant lock of Harry's hair behind his ear.

Harry seemed startled. "What? Oh, no. No, Alec is enough." He glanced at the grove one last time and they started to move towards one of the trouble spots on their map, a low wall from Neolithic times. The wall had inexplicably been chosen simultaneously as the site for a group of Muggle bards telling tales, a speaker talking about Celtic perspectives on ecology and global warming, a workshop on Celtic knotwork, a group of Scottish witches putting up a monument to Minerva McGonagall, and a group of wizards trying to take advantage of the enhanced magic of Beltane Eve to do alchemy.

"Boys, come on, it's time to go to the wall," Harry called them, and they reluctantly paused their game to follow Harry and Draco. "What about you? Do you want more kids?"

Draco chuckled. "No, not really. Besides, being gay puts a bit of a crimp on the whole child thing. Usually."

"I suppose so." Harry checked his map. "All right, here we are. This should be fun." He pulled his hair out of his face and tied it back more firmly, and Draco decided he wasn't disappointed at all that he hadn't got a chance to tuck it back for him. "So. You suggested an anti-Muggle ward here, but it can't be too strong because of the proximity of the ley line, so we'll have to add some Confundus charms so that any Muggles who wander over here will forget why they wanted to."

"And give the alchemists a counter-charm for the Confundus, too."

"Right." Harry scratched a note to himself. "We should put another Proximity ward here, but in case none of that works, you'll have to be ready to Obliviate-"

"Erm, no I can't," Draco broke in, alarmed.

"Oh have you never done it? It's pretty simple to learn-"

"I can't."

Harry blinked. "What do you mean, you can't?"

Draco looked away. "I know how to do it, but I'm not allowed."

"Not allowed what?"

Damn, he'd forgotten that Harry could be a bit thick at times. "Not allowed to Obliviate," he said evenly. "I'm allowed to do most magic, but I still have some restrictions. I'm on parole."

"Oh." Harry's eyes widened a bit and he blushed. "Oh. That might. Make it rather difficult. Bugger." He paused. "No, that's not - I'll have to talk to the Aurors, we'll get the restriction taken off-"

"N-no," Draco broke in quickly. "Look, it'll - I don't want you to, I don't want it to look like I took this post because I wanted the restrictions taken off. I'm fine with them, it's all magic I don't want to do anyway."

"But you'll have to, for this-"

"I shouldn't have to - it's not the Muggle Liaison's job. Most Muggle Liaisons are Squibs, they don't have to-"

"But your predecessor wasn't. She recommended you, probably because you weren't a Squib."

Draco took a deep breath. "I won't do it," he said firmly. "I don't want anybody to have any reason to suspect me or resent me. We'll have to find another way around this."

Harry blinked, taken aback. He looked down at the site map and Draco could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as he tried to find some way of getting around Draco's restrictions.

Draco turned away and started setting the Confundus charms, fairly sure that his attempt to act blasé about this was failing miserably and reminding himself that this was part of why he'd taken this position in the first place: to get used to the kind of life he'd have as a wizard if he chose to come back to the wizarding world. Assuming coming back was even a possibility.

Well, this wasn't so bad. So far he'd been working without major hassles; Harry and the Dublin Muggle Liaison didn't make him feel like a pariah, he had come into contact with a few other wizards without problems, and the job was going well. Bumps like this were going to hit every so often. He just needed to find a way to deal with them with dignity more or less intact and he'd be fine.

"Be straightforward about it, keep them off-balance," Montague had advised, when they'd spoken of this as they waited for their release from Azkaban. "They'll be expecting you to act shifty, to want to hide it. Defuse their suspicion before it takes root." Harder in practice than in theory, Draco had found, and even harder to do it now, with Harry, than it had been the first day they'd started to work together. Back when Harry was still just Potter and not a man Draco was almost becoming friends with. Before their kids starting playing together. Before Harry had become somebody Draco was attracted to, whose opinion of Draco actually mattered.

Then again, maybe it was a good thing too, that this was happening with Harry. If Draco came back, eventually he'd probably find someone he fancied and could have a chance of dating, and it was a good idea to get to know how it felt to talk about this kind of thing with somebody important to him.

Harry had been standing and making notes on his map while Draco set the Confundus charms, and he approached as Draco started on the last of them. "Those should be good enough," he commented, glancing around. "The counter-charm will be easy to give out too. And I think I'll ask the Ministry if we can use Wheezes Obliviating thread, it's pretty easy to use. You just hang it around whatever it is you don't want people to see, and then if they see it, the thread erases their memory of just that one thing."

Draco nodded, finishing his last Confundus.

"I'm sorry," Harry said hesitantly. "I hadn't really thought..." he trailed off. "Are you worried about - I mean, obviously, don't answer if you don't want to, but... does it really worry you, what other people think about your reasons for doing this job?"

Draco barely stopped himself from snapping at him not to be thick, but realized that Harry really meant the question. He leaned on the low wall, avoiding Harry's eyes. "I... I know people will talk. It's one of the reasons I didn't come back, after my ban on all magic was up. I know... I know there will always be people who suspect me or hate me." And even if they didn't recognize him right away, he thought grimly, eventually they would learn who and what he'd been, thanks to the bloody Dark Mark still on his arm if nothing else. He took his glasses off and started to polish them, remembering that Father had once said that giving in to the impulse to fidget while speaking of difficult subjects was a sign of weakness.

Bully for Father, then. His opinion didn't exactly count for much these days. He cleared his throat. "I don't want to give anybody more reasons to suspect me. It's not so much for me; I don't care about my own reputation any more - much." He took a deep breath. "But for Ben... I don't want to make any trouble for him. Nobody will know who his father is, for the first little while. He doesn't look like me, except for his eyes, he doesn't have my last name, so he should be fine. I just... I don't want to raise more suspicion about myself, because then if he ever enters the wizarding world, people will tar him with the same brush."

There was a long silence. Draco put his glasses back on and gazed out at the glorious vista before him, vaguely recalling that the tourist brochures claimed that on a clear day on Uisneach Hill you could see twenty of the thirty-two Irish counties.

"Do you want him to go into the wizarding world?" Harry asked quietly, leaning on the wall next to Draco. "Knowing what he might be in for?"

Draco sighed. "I don't know. Mostly yes, I do. I want him to be a wizard. But it might be a relief if he he's not."

"Really?"

There was another long pause. "He knows me as a Muggle," Draco finally said, his voice low. "He doesn't know what I did as a wizard. What his family did. I'm not sure I want to change that."

Harry nodded.

Draco gazed over at the two boys playing, some game that required them to climb the same low wall over and over again. "He'll go to Hogwarts, and he'll probably hear that somebody let Death Eaters into the school once, and that that somebody was me." He'll hear about the fact that a Headmaster was killed by a Potions professor and he'll learn it was because of me. Draco could almost see the words floating between them, as if he'd spoken them out loud. "He'll ask how I did on my NEWTs and I'll have to tell him I never took them. There's so much I don't want to have to explain..."

Harry nodded, his eyes on the children, a pensive expression on his face. "Yeah. It's hard to figure out how to explain some things to your children..." he trailed off and cleared his throat. "I'm - for what it's worth, I'm sorry," he said tentatively.

Draco frowned slightly, unsure of what to say.

"Erm... d'you want to get the kids something to eat?" Harry said, trying to reach past the awkwardness.

"Yeah, good idea," Draco said gratefully, and the next few minutes were spent getting the snacks each had bought for their child, asking said children to come down off the wall to eat, and arguing with Ben, who swore he wasn't hungry and promised he wouldn't be hungry five minutes after Draco had put their food away.

This was a good idea, Draco thought as he bit into a sandwich and brushed some dirt off Ben's face. Very relaxed, very comfortable, and they were past the whole life-long parole issue. He smiled as Alec carefully opened up all the biscuits Harry had brought for him and ate the centres first, stubbornly refusing to eat them the way Harry wanted him to. He caught Harry's eye in amusement; Ben did exactly the same thing, and ended up with crumbs all over himself exactly the same way.

Though Harry handled it with a bit more patience than he did, Draco decided. His green eyes crinkled at the sides as he laughed out loud at something his son said, and it was odd how despite the silvery highlights in his hair he looked somehow younger than he had at Hogwarts. Fatherhood certainly looked good on him.

No, actually, this was a bad idea, Draco realized. This felt casual and relaxed and very very right, and it was far too easy to hope it would be repeated and to feel a pang of regret that it probably wouldn't. Couldn't. He and Harry had to work together for Beltane, but after that they were both going back to their separate lives. The idea of becoming friends with Harry, getting together socially, all of that, was not going to happen. The scandal alone, should word get out that the Boy Who Lived was spending time with a convicted Death Eater, would be enough to dissuade Harry from repeating the experience. Never mind the hue and cry Harry's friends and in-laws would likely raise over the whole situation.

The little boys were eating, Ben continuing to chat a mile a minute and Alec quietly listening with a small smile on his face. Draco gazed at them, still not sure it had been a good idea to have them meet each other. The look on Ben's face when he'd talked to Potter had been too hard to forget or dismiss, though. Like he'd just been given the biggest gift anybody could give him: the gift of being around somebody else who was in on the secret of magic.

"Alec," Harry said suddenly. "D'you know what Draco does?" Alec shook his head. "He's a musician."

Alec turned wide green eyes on him, mouth a bit open, gazing at him in admiration.

"That's what I want to be!" he blurted, and Harry looked at him, startled. Draco realized that until that moment he hadn't heard the child's voice. "What do you do?" Alec asked.

"I mostly conduct choirs and teach music lessons. Right now I'm helping put together one concert for tomorrow and another one five days from now."

"Can we come?" Alec immediately asked his father, who looked a bit surprised.

"Oh. Yes. Yes, of course. We'll be there - not the one tomorrow, but the later one, sure, if we can."

"What are you singing?" Alec asked, and Draco smiled at the bemused expression on Harry's face.

"Well, the concert tomorrow is about the sea - sailing songs, that sort of thing."

"It is Muggle music? Can you play it for me?"

"Well, it's choral music, so I can't really sing it all by myself, but... actually, do you read music?"

Alec nodded.

"Do you want to take a look at it?"

Alec nodded again enthusiastically.

"Well, here's my briefcase, the music's in there," Draco said, smiling as the little boy opened the briefcase and reverently took out the sheets.

"This one's a capella?" he asked.

Draco nodded. "Yes. That one's done by the men's chorus."

Alec gazed intently at the next song, his eyebrows drawing together in concentration. Draco watched as he mouthed a few of the words, his fingers twitching in rhythm.

"This one could be done a capella too," he said.

"Yes, it could. We're not quite brave enough to handle it without the instruments though."

Alec nodded absently, enthralled by whatever he was seeing on the pages before him.

Draco looked at Harry questioningly. "How long has he been reading music?" he asked.

"About a year."

"Good God."

"Yeah, he reads music better than words. Words are still a bit iffy for him."

"And he's only four and a half?"

"Yeah, it's a bit early. He's very determined, though. Stubborn, too. I've tried to get him interested in other things, you know, playing with other children, finger-painting, all of that... not much success."

"Wow, this one goes from one music type to another," Alec said.

"Yes it does," Draco said, impressed.

"That one's brilliant," said Ben. "There's even a little band to accompany them. You should hear it. The women's voices are a bit screechy, though."

And now Alec's eyes were glued to Ben. "Do you sing in it too?"

"No, I've a different choir. Sometimes we sing baby music." He scrunched his nose in distaste. "Me Mam and Da are in another choir that's really good. I'll sing you a couple of their songs if you like."

"Will you?"

"Yeah. Are you done eating? We can race to that tree!" he said and took off, Alec scrambling up to follow him.

"Now we'd better finish this bloody site map off," Harry said, brushing his trousers off and getting up. "So Ben likes music too?"

"Yeah," Draco said, putting away his music. "Not like your son, though. It's just he's been raised with it."

"I suppose so." Harry gazed at the two boys thoughtfully. "I wish Alec was more interested in other things. I'm glad he's got music, but... he's very small for his age, and he doesn't have very many friends. He spends a lot of time with his cousins, which is nice, but they don't really understand him. And he's a bit scared of his one cousin who's... a bit too much like her father."

Draco nodded, wondering which twin that was.

"He's also not terribly interested in magic," Harry said. "Which I suppose is only natural; he's grown up surrounded by it, so it's just part of the background for him. And the rest of the family doesn't share his passion for music. Unless you count his grandmother's obsession with Celestina Warbeck."

Draco barely suppressed a gag. "I wouldn't count that, no," he couldn't help himself saying, and Harry laughed.

"No, nor would I." He sighed. "He's all right. He's happy. I just wish... I can't help thinking if his mum were here he'd be different."

They finished the ward-setting in companionable silence, then called the boys.

"Can we stay later?" Alec asked as he reluctantly came back.

Harry shook his head. "Can't, mate, you know that. We've got to go visit Auntie Hermione in the hospital, remember?"

Alec nodded, disappointed.

"Why is she in the hospital?" Draco asked, figuring she couldn't be in serious condition or Harry wouldn't be taking his son to see her.

"She's sort of trying not to have a baby," Harry said grimly. "It's three months early so they're trying to delay the birth as long as possible. After the baby's born they'll both have to stay at St. Mungo's for a while, making sure it's all right."

"I can imagine. Three months; that's early."

"Yeah, well, she was hit with enough curses to kill anybody. This is just one of the side effects. The Healers have said she'll never carry to term. She's accepted it."

"Daddy?" Alec said softly, and Harry bent down to listen to his whispers, and smiled.

"Yeah, I'll ask," Harry said. "Alec wants to know if you'd like Ben to come play at our house one of these days."

Draco glanced at Ben, who nodded enthusiastically. "All right, we'll do that."

"Good. We'll set it up by e-mail?"

"Yeah. No problem."

ooo000ooo

Date: April 18
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
There's a new group put together by Waleran. They're going to picket the Wiccan ceremonies, which unfortunately are supposed to be happening right next to the wizarding Transfiguration festival.

Date: April 18
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Oh that'll be exciting. Should I ask what they'll be protesting?

Date: April 18
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
They're protesting the increase of un-Christian ideas and unholy practices in modern society. They're also claiming that by saying that there is such a thing as magic, the Wiccans are denying Christ and making it easier for Satan to seduce the innocent children's souls.

Date: April 19
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
That's wonderful. I'm sure that'll thrill the Christian wizards and witches at the Hill. I don't suppose it'll do any good to tell them Waleran's group isn't talking about them.

Date: April 19
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
You're welcome to try. It should be fun to watch.

Date: April 19
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Somebody hates me. Any ideas on how to deal with this? And when and where is your concert, by the way?

Date: April 19
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
The concert is on the 22nd at 4, choir call at 2:30 in case Alec wants to see the final rehearsal. It's an outdoor event, at Avery Road Park in Dublin. As for the protestors: I'm only in charge of the Muggles. Keeping offended wizards from Transfiguring the protesters into tea cozies is entirely your area.

Date: April 20
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
That's wonderfully helpful. What's the group called?

Date: April 20
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
You're going to love this: Warriors for Innocence.

Date: April 20
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Where do they find these people? That's just bloody marvelous. I'm going to go pour myself a Firewhiskey now.

Date: April 20
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Bottoms up.

Date: April 20
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Laugh while you can; if I can't keep the wizards in line, you'll have to explain to the Muggle public why a group of deranged zealots has suddenly turned into tea cozies.

Date: April 20
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I have confidence in your diplomatic skills.

Date: April 20
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
It's too bad e-mail doesn't lend itself to Howlers.

ooo000ooo

April 21

Oh now that wasn't embarrassing at all, Harry thought as he slowly woke up. Not at all embarrassing to be twenty-six years old and wake up covered in sweat, a groan still on his lips, his sheets sticky with the results of a rather lurid dream. For the third time this week.

He rolled over and covered his head with a pillow. God, that had been vivid. The details of the dream were fading, but it had involved Draco and the small grove near the Hill where they'd set up the last Invisibility charm, and there had been gasping and fumbling and heat and a complete blessed absence of anybody under the age of twenty. He had taken off Draco's glasses and run a hand over his short hair, pulled him close and tugged his Muggle jumper out of his trousers and reached down, and Draco had returned the favour and it had been hot and frantic and perfect. And he could probably allow himself another two minutes to bask in the afterglow before pushing the dream out of his mind and pulling himself together and starting his day.

Besides, embarrassment and inappropriateness apart, the dream was at least a marked improvement on nightmares.

He sat up and murmured a cleaning spell before he forced himself out of bed. Yes, definitely better than a nightmare, whether it was about Voldemort or Ginny. Besides, he had it on good authority, from a Healer at St. Mungo's no less, that this kind of thing was a sign of improvement.

He had been so, so out of it for so long after Ginny, that it was like he'd forgotten all about sex, libido, or any kind of sexual contact, for over a year. When he'd finally started coming out of the deep freeze, it hadn't helped that the only real sexual experience he'd ever had had been with Ginny. She was who he always thought of, and on the rare occasions when he wasn't exhausted and slept like the dead, when he dreamed and woke up panting and hard, his dreams were about her. The emptiness of his bed after dreaming of her was devastating.

It had taken almost two years to start to notice other attractive people around him, and even then he'd shied away from thinking of women that way. He supposed it was good that he was now not only noticing an attractive person, but had even progressed to exchanging friendly e-mails with him and dreaming about him. Pity about the identity of said attractive person. As if life wasn't complicated enough as a single father, the one person his libido had chosen to focus on was... well, "completely inappropriate in every conceivable way" just wasn't putting it strongly enough.

He pulled on a pair of shorts and a shirt and padded down the hallway to Alec's room, passing Dobby on his way to the kitchen. He smiled tentatively at Dobby and was mildly annoyed when Dobby just gave him a bland, slightly hostile look and began making breakfast. Dobby had been extremely offended that Harry hadn't thought to call him back from his holiday when Hermione had gone into labour, and was showing Harry in various small ways that his behaviour had been unacceptable.

He left Dobby to his huffy breakfast-making and stopped at the door to Alec's room, where Alec and Jason lay sleeping side by side. Harry ran a hand through his hair and gazed at the two boys, so alike in colouring and so different in temperament. They could be brothers for all the resemblance between them. All the Weasley cousins could be, actually. Other than Fleur's two blonds and Fred's younger brown-haired son, all ten - eleven, now, counting Ron and Hermione's new baby - were almost interchangeable in appearance. Remarkably similar in general personality, too - boisterous, cheerful, forthright, affectionate. Alec sometimes stuck out like a sore thumb with his shy near-silence and his sensitive, artistic temperament.

It wasn't that Alec didn't love his cousins, and it wasn't that they didn't love him. But he had never clicked with any of them the way he'd clicked with Ben. He had also never looked at another adult the way he'd looked at Malfoy, like he'd finally met somebody who could understand the most important thing in his life.

There was even an odd sort of symmetry to this situation. Draco had been the first wizard child Harry had ever met. It seemed fitting that Harry's son would be the first wizard child Draco's son ever met. And nice that their meeting had gone somewhat better than his and Draco's at age eleven.

Right. Harry rubbed his forehead, reining himself in. How much of all of this was real, and how much was just Harry finding excuses to feel some kind of bond to Draco? It was nice that Alec found Draco fascinating, at first glance. And very nice that he hit it off with Ben, but that didn't mean a thing. There was no guarantee that an affinity for music could help build any kind of solid friendship - and maintain it past all the problems that such a friendship would bring with it, considering the people involved.

It was just Harry who was grasping at straws, Harry who was feeling lonely and aching for any excuse to see compatibility where there wasn't any. Harry who was feeling so incredibly drawn to Draco, wanting so much to listen to him talk, watch Alec blossom with him and Ben, watch Draco smile at both little boys, so completely different from the person Harry thought he'd known before. It didn't mean anything.

And yet, watching Alec actually talk the other day... it had been like a gift. Unexpected and marvelous. Not for the first time, he wished Ginny could have seen it. Wished Ginny could have seen any of it.

Harry pushed himself away from the door frame and padded down the hallway again, going into the washroom. He'd been planning on waking the boys up himself, but there was no way he could do so when he got into this kind of mood. Not that he allowed it very often, but sometimes there was nothing to be gained by running away from it. Running away from the memories of Alec's birth and Ginny's death and what they did to him.

Ron's face, so white, every freckle standing out in sharp contrast. Hermione shaking and exhausted, the adrenaline of having tried so, so hard to figure out how to stop the birth leaving her with nothing now that it was over. Fred's hand on George's shoulder as George sobbed, his face hidden in his arms. Bill silently holding Fleur close, tears running down his scarred face. Percy standing apart from them all, biting his lip as if he didn't have a right to join them, until Arthur reached out and pulled him close.

God, so many tears, such disbelief. It was supposed to have been a happy occasion. The only girl, the youngest in the family, was going to be a mother, and all of the proud uncles and aunts and grandparents had gathered for a celebration and ended up mourning her instead.

And Alec. Alec, so small, wispy red fuzz instead of hair, perfectly healthy, not knowing that his birth had just robbed his entire family and himself of a mother.

Harry had not known what to do with Alec. It was supposed to be a moment to share with Ginny. They were going to look at him and see whether he resembled her or him more. Whether he had Weasley hair or Potter eyes. Technically, they're Evans eyes, he remembered Ginny pointing out when they'd spoken of it.

And she couldn't share it with him. She was gone, because of him. In a daze, he'd said something like that, not realizing he'd spoken out loud until Molly's head snapped up and she grabbed his shoulders, shaking him, almost snarling in anger. "It's because of you that she lived to be twenty. She would've died when she was eleven, if you hadn't been there to save her. Don't you dare say anything like that again. Ever." She'd taken Alec from the Healer who was holding him. "Take your son. Her son. She can't be here to hold him, so you'll have to do it." She'd shoved the tiny bundle into his arms and he'd only been able to stare at his child helplessly, not knowing how to hold him, what to do, how to react to him. Not knowing how to stop the weak wailing that felt like it was trying to penetrate Harry's numbness, to no effect.

"'E needs milk," Fleur had said after a few minutes, her voice tight. "Give 'im to me, I 'ave more zan my son needs."

Harry hadn't cried. Hadn't been able to, not when Fleur put Alec to her breast, not at Ginny's funeral, not when he'd lain awake for hours at night in those first weeks, not when he and Alec first left the Burrow, where Molly had insisted they stay for the first month. He'd cried the first time Alec smiled. He'd come out of his exhausted numbness and had finally realized Ginny would never see any of it. She wouldn't see the first time he rolled over, sat up, walked, or said Daddy. Harry had cried for what felt like hours, grief-stricken and scared and hopeless. Odd that his son's first smile should've opened the floodgates, but it had, and then he couldn't close them again. For weeks after that he'd felt like he was always on the verge of tears, that everything was overwhelming. Missing Ginny and terrified that he was going to screw this up, because he had no memories of a happy childhood or loving parents, had nobody to emulate when trying to be even a halfway adequate father to Alec. Ginny had had role models, but Ginny was gone. He'd cried several times a day, curled in on himself, leaving Alec to Dobby while he struggled to get himself under control.

He finally had. Slowly, with Dobby's help and with the entire Weasley family constantly by his side, he had made a life for himself and Alec.

Harry shuddered. It had been a terrible time, full of loneliness and grief and exhaustion. He didn't ever want to be reminded of it.

"Dobby, can you get the boys up, please?" he asked as he went into the kitchen. "I'll get breakfast."

Dobby regarded him seriously for a long moment. "Very well, Harry Potter, sir," he said, losing the petulant whine his voice had had since he'd come back from his holiday, and headed down the hallway.

ooo000ooo

"He's beautiful, Ron," Harry said, his voice hushed. Not that there was much danger of the baby hearing him, enclosed as he was in a protective magic bubble hovering a few inches off of Hermione's bed as a Healer ran tests over him with her wand.

"He is, isn't he? So bloody small, though. I thought Jason was tiny; Joshua's barely the size of my hand," Ron said, his voice tired but happy.

"I was that small?" Jason asked, getting up on Hermione's bed to get a closer look at his tiny brother.

"You were," Hermione said, deep shadows under her eyes, but just as tiredly happy as Ron.

"And I was in a bubble too?"

"For almost two months, except when you nursed," Ron told him. "We held you a lot, though. Just like we'll hold Joshua. It's good for him."

"How can you, though? He's in a bubble!"

"You take the bubble, like this," Ron said, reaching out for it as it floated over Hermione's bed. "If you move too fast, it won't let you through and it'll just be like a ball in your hand. If you go really slow, the bubble lets you in." He slowly pressed into the bubble and his hand was allowed in to touch the baby inside. The baby moved slightly as Ron curled his hand around the back and legs until he was cradling the baby's entire body, its head resting on his forefinger and its bottom in Ron's palm.

"Wow!" Jason said quietly.

"Do you want to touch your little brother?" the Healer asked.

Jason turned wide eyes to her. "Can I?"

"You'll have to be very very careful, and you can only touch him a little bit, but yes. Just move slowly."

Hermione moved aside a bit and Ron sat down on the bed, taking Jason's hand and gently guiding it into the bubble. "Wow!" Jason said shakily as his finger softly stroked the baby's tiny cheek. "Wow! He's soft!"

"That's enough for now," Ron said, and Jason carefully pulled his hand out. "As he gets older you'll be able to touch him more, but right now he's very delicate."

"Do you want to touch the baby, Alec?" Harry asked, and Alec quickly shook his head. "You won't hurt him." Alec shook his head again. "Maybe when he's a little older?" Alec nodded.

So incredibly small, Harry thought in wonder. It was hard to believe anybody that tiny could survive, but here he was, all eighteen ounces and eleven inches of him, safely encased in his bubble, resting on his father's hand.

Alec pulled at Harry's sleeve. Harry bent down so that Alec could whisper in his ear. "Yes?"

"Did you ask about Ben and about the concert?"

Harry smiled. "Yes, of course. I e-mailed him."

"Why not the moby phone?"

"Because I don't know his phone number," Harry said.

"Whose phone number?" Hermione asked.

"I have a friend," Alec said proudly, and Hermione and Ron sent startled glances at Harry, not used to Alec speaking without prompting.

"Really? What's his name?"

"Ben," Alec said. "And he's brilliant and he tells stories and he sings and he has a moby phone!!"

"A mobyphone?" Ron asked.

"Mobile phone," Hermione corrected automatically.

"Yeah, his mum's a Muggle, only his dad's a wizard. But they're not married, are they Daddy?"

"No, they're not."

"Because Ben said his dad's gay. Like Uncle Remus."

"Oh." Hermione glanced at Harry speculatively. "Really?"

"Erm. Yeah," Harry said, wondering if he sounded as shifty as he felt. It wasn't that he wanted to hide anything, he told himself. He just didn't particularly want to discuss this, either.

"So... Ben's father is single? And gay?" asked Hermione pointedly, and Ron glanced at her, puzzled, then at Harry in surprise.

"Yeah," Harry said.

"How did you meet him?"

"He's brilliant too!" Alec broke in. "He showed me his music! Muggle music, too - it's wonderful!"

Hermione and Ron smiled at him. That was probably the longest they'd ever heard him speak, Harry thought. "That's wonderful," Hermione said warmly.

"That's, erm, brilliant, mate," Ron said, only a bit uncomfortably.

Harry opened his mouth to correct their assumption, then closed it, completely at a loss as to what to say.

"So what did Draco say, Daddy?" Alec asked, and Ron and Hermione's faces went through a rather comical metamorphosis from approval to open-mouthed shock.

"He told me where and when the concert was, so he knows we're coming," Harry said, trying to maintain a casual tone and aware that he was probably failing miserably. "We'll probably talk about having Ben over then."

"Good!" Alec said, beaming.

"Alec!" Jason said, breaking into the conversation. "There's a lady down the hall who's got a house elf baby! She said we can come see it!"

The children ran off and Harry squirmed inwardly, clearing his throat and glancing at Ron and Hermione. Ron's face looked like he was torn between embarrassment and disgust.

"What?" Harry asked defensively.

"Sorry, mate, I just... I thought, the way Alec was talking about his friend's dad, I thought, you know, maybe it was somebody you fancied or something."

Harry looked away, but apparently not fast enough for Hermione to miss the guilty flush on his face.

"You're not," she said slowly. "Harry, you're seriously not."

"Not what?" asked Ron.

"Harry! How could you?" Hermione said.

Harry looked away, realizing there was probably no way for him to manage to pretend to feel nothing towards Draco.

"You're what?" Ron said slowly, looking from Hermione to Harry and back. "You're not serious. You're... interested in him? Malfoy?!"

Harry shook his head dismissively. "Look, it - yeah, all right, a bit, but it's not - I'm just working with him right now and-"

"And your son is getting together for a playdate with his son," Hermione said, her voice hard. "That isn't work-related, is it?"

Harry bit his lip.

"Are you completely mental?" Ron asked, his voice rising in disbelief, and the baby in his hands began to fuss. He closed his mouth and looked like he was counting to ten. "Are you completely mental?" he asked again, very quietly, the forced control of his voice a marked contrast to his words. "Think about Alec!"

"I am thinking about Alec. He just wants to get together to play with a friend-"

"You're letting Alec get attached!" Ron hissed. "To Malfoy's son! To Malfoy!"

"You can't do this, Harry!" Hermione said. "I know you've been lonely, and God knows it would be wonderful if you met somebody who also got on with Alec, and I don't care if it's a man or a woman. But Malfoy?"

"Look, you don't need to tell me all of this, right? I've got a brain. I'm not pursuing anything, it's just-"

"Really? Then what the hell are you doing? Because right now, whether you're... attracted to Malfoy or not-" Ron's voice held more disgust than Harry had heard from him in years, and he had to stop for a moment. "Right now it looks like you're encouraging Alec to become friends with Malfoy's son. How are you going to explain that one when Alec mentions his new friend to Fred?"

"How are you going to explain to Bill that you're spending time with the man who scarred him for life?" Hermione added. "Have you thought about any of that?"

"Malfoy's son is five years old!" Harry said angrily. "He's not to blame for-"

"Don't be so bloody naïve!" Hermione said, furious. "We're not objecting to the child, but you can't pretend that being in contact with him won't put you in contact with Malfoy. If they were older, if they met at Hogwarts, that would be one thing. But at this age?"

"Bloody well think, Harry!" Ron said. "Is Malfoy's son really the only friend you can find for Alec? Or are you just encouraging this because you want to be around Malfoy?"

Harry stared at both of them rebelliously, a hundred objections on the tip of his tongue dying as quickly as he thought of them. Because they were right, and yet. Alec's face, talking to Draco. Ben's face as he asked questions that first night, and yesterday. Alec following Ben around, fascinated by him...

He sat on the nearest chair and looked away from them. They were right, he thought as Hermione took the baby from Ron. They weren't saying anything he hadn't said to himself a hundred times.

So why did he feel like what he wanted most in the world was to defy them?

"I'm not - look, I'm not doing anything," he said quietly. "We're working together, that's all. Come Beltane, we'll be done and I'll probably never see him again." No matter how much he wanted to. Bloody hell. He swallowed hard. "I've got Alec to think of, right? I wouldn't get involved with anybody, I never have."

"It's not that," Hermione said gently. "You've the right to have a life. You know we'd all be happy for you if you found somebody. But that somebody can't be Malfoy."

ooo000ooo

Date: April 21
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Tomorrow is the Avery Park concert. Are you and Alec still coming? By the way, I've arranged for muffling charms for the Warriors for Innocence group.

Date: April 21
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Good idea for the group. Yes, Alec and I will be attending.

Date: April 22
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Ben would like to know if Alec would like to stay a bit longer after the concert.

Date: April 22
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Unfortunately, we've got other commitments soon after the concert. Sorry.

ooo000ooo

April 22

"For the Abide song," Alec asked Draco, "was that supposed to be so soft?"

"Yes. And the entries were a bit sloppy, but it's good that we made that mistake during the rehearsal, because that means it won't happen again during the concert."

"It's beautiful, though, isn't it? It's like you're singing in a big building."

"It's often sung in a church."

"Really? Is that because it's a song to God?"

"Erm. Yes, I suppose so," Draco said, glancing quickly at Harry, unsure of Harry's attitude toward God or religion. Harry was looking at the small pond in front of them, his manner aloof and a bit uneasy, as he had been since he and Alec had arrived. Not for the first time that afternoon, Draco wondered what was going on with him.

"It sounds like a prayer," Alec said.

"Yes, it does. Most of our songs do, in this concert."

"The one with the men was really good. The one for sailors?"

"Yeah, that's a prayer song too," Draco said, getting a bit irate at Harry's distance and promptly at himself for noticing it. What the hell, he wasn't Harry's girlfriend, he couldn't exactly go into a huff and demand that Harry pay attention to him.

Would be nice if he could, though.

"It was really good," Alec was still talking, oblivious to his father's reserve. "The way all the voices went in and out. You didn't need instruments at all. But that one man had a bit of a creaky voice."

"Yes, well, we've only got two baritones, and one of them was a little... under the weather today." 'Under the weather' - a child-friendly euphemism for disgracefully hung over.

"The Hallelujah song is brilliant, isn't it? So beautiful. It felt like the sun was coming out when you sang that last verse. Like the voices were bringing it out." Harry smiled at Alec and Draco took a measure of comfort in that. Maybe he was just preoccupied about something.

"Yeah," he replied. "It is beautiful, but I don't like that we have to mispronounce 'you' just to make a rhyme."

"When's Mam coming, Dad?" asked Ben.

"Not sure, but she'd best be here soon. The women are about to rehearse."

"They both sing in the same choir?" Alec asked Ben.

"Yeah. That's how they met, at choir," said Ben.

Alec looked at Draco admiringly. "I want to be in a choir some day."

"Erm, so has anything come up in the papers or the internet?" Harry asked, breaking his silence. "About Muggles coming to the Hill?"

"No, the last news I sent you is all I know. There's a group that's thinking of greeting the Beltane sun on a particular rise on the Hill, but they're going to run into a spot of trouble with another group from Belfast who's there for the same thing. They're all Muggles, though, they'll work it out."

"And you're still watching the internet sites?"

"Yeah, every day. And I'm watching the newspapers as well."

"You check the news every day?"

"Well, that's the thing with the news. It changes every day, you see," Draco said innocently.

Harry's mouth quirked up a bit at the side. "Thanks. Good of you to point that out."

"D'you know anybody who can turn into an animal?" Ben asked Alec, out of the blue as far as Draco could tell.

"No, but my grandfather used to, and his best friends. They didn't tell anybody though."

"Yeah? I wonder if anybody in my family could. Could they, Dad?"

Draco hesitated, not sure how to answer that one, but Alec interrupted.

"How come you never tried, Daddy?"

"I was a little busy at school," Harry said.

"But it would be brilliant!" Ben said. "I would want to turn into a phoenix!"

"You can't really control what you turn into," Harry told him. "We had a professor who could do it. She was very good at it. But she told me once that when she'd studied it she had wanted to be an eagle. Came out as a cat instead." Ben frowned. "Said she didn't mind the lack of flight, but the hairballs were a nuisance." Draco found himself laughing unexpectedly at the mental image. Harry grinned. "She coughed one up at an Order meeting once. Very funny. Said she'd never spend a week as a cat again."

"Why had she?"

"She got in to see... well, she'd gone to see if she could get into a... certain place," he glanced at Draco and Draco caught the warning. Probably Voldemort's headquarters. "Ended up spying for a while. Had the worst time not pouncing on Wormtail."

Draco snickered. He would've had a hard time not pouncing on him too. The thought of killing the little piece of vermin had been on everybody's mind, he was sure. Sycophantic, cowardly, oily little-

"Did anybody in our family ever do that?" Ben asked.

"Yes," Draco said automatically, immediately annoyed at his slip.

"Really? Who?" Harry asked, and Draco bit his lip.

"Erm." Draco looked from Harry to Ben to Alec and realized that he should probably hand in his Slytherin tie, as he could think of no way to avoid answering the question. He cleared his throat and muttered "My father."

Harry blinked. "Your father was an Animagus?"

"Unregistered."

"Really? That's..." Harry blinked and Draco could see the surprise, uncertainty and reluctant curiosity chasing each other across his face. "That's interesting. So, erm... what was he?"

Draco blushed slightly but made himself answer, realizing he'd completely mumbled when Harry's eyebrows drew together.

"A what? A muck?"

Draco cleared his throat again. "A duck," he said, more clearly.

Harry gaped at him. "A duck?"

"Yes."

"Your father... turned into a duck?"

"A snow-white duck."

All of a sudden Harry burst out laughing, much to Alec and Ben's surprise. Draco felt his own lips twitch.

"Oh," Harry gasped. "You're taking the piss. You're not serious. Lucius Malfoy's Animagus form was a duck?!"

Draco snickered. "I'm not joking, believe me. I never saw it myself, but my mother told me once and..." he trailed off, starting to chuckle. It had been one of his fondest childhood memories, a secret between his mother and himself, because Father had, apparently, been livid. Mother hadn't been able to stop laughing about it, but had cautioned Draco to never, ever tell anyone. Oh well.

"Apparently it was rather mortifying. I'm told. I never saw it - I think my father only did it twice - but I can tell you that my mother almost choked trying not to laugh at him."

"Draco? Where is everybody?" Draco turned to see Kara came striding up to them. "Hello, scamp," she said, tugging on Ben's dreadlocks.

"Mam!" Ben hugged her.

"Am I late?"

"Yes," Draco said shortly. "You're in luck, though, so's your section leader."

"Oh, good. So what've you been up to this week?" she asked Ben, who started to chatter rapidly, letting her in on the last few days. She glanced over at Harry.

"Are you - I met you a few weeks ago, didn't I?" she asked Harry, and Harry nodded.

"Right. And that's your lad over there?" she said, indicating where Alec was leafing through music pages.

"Yeah."

"And your wife?"

"Kara!" Draco said warningly.

Harry blinked, a bit startled. "Oh. Erm, I don't have one. I'm a widower."

"Ah. I see." Kara's sharp eyes went from Harry to Draco and back, and she gave Draco a glance that was probably supposed to be subtle but could easily be correctly interpreted by any alert nine year old. She turned to Ben and Alec. "Come, Ben, why don't we get you lads something to eat before I get called to rehearse, and you can introduce me to your friend." The two boys jumped up and the three of them set off, Ben chattering happily about Alec and Alec giving Kara a shy smile.

"What was that?" Harry asked.

"Nothing," Draco said uncomfortably. Harry was looking at him curiously, and Draco realized that with Kara's rather clumsy efforts, if he didn't clear this up, Harry was going to get completely the wrong impression about Draco's feelings towards him.

All right, completely the right impression, but not an impression Draco was particularly eager to give, considering.

"Kara's a bit of a matchmaker," he said, keeping his voice casual and off-handedly amused. "There's not a man who comes within a few feet of me that she doesn't pair me up with. She's about as subtle as a Blast-Ended Skrewt."

"Ah," Harry said. "Yeah, that's always a bit frustrating." He smiled slightly as if at an inside joke.

"You've a matchmaker too, I take it?"

"You've met the Weasleys," Harry said after a slight hesitation, and Draco shuddered. Subtlety and delicacy had never been Weasley attributes. He could only imagine what it would be like to have any of them trying to help out your love life.

"What, all of them? Throwing any and all available women in your direction?"

Harry nodded, then there was another slight hesitation. "Not women, no, but yeah, a lot of matchmaking going on."

Draco blinked. "I thought you were straight."

"Not totally," Harry said, a bit uncomfortably. "Anyway, they want me to date again. It gets a bit tiresome."

"I can imagine," Draco said, his mind reeling a bit and giving him a sudden dread of going to sleep that night and dreaming of stacks of fit men being flung Harry's way by a crowd of eager freckled ginger cupids.

Kara had come back. "Ben's taken to your little one, hasn't he?"

"Yeah, he has."

"That's his way," Kara said fondly. "He's very protective of smaller children, too."

"Really?"

"Has lots of stuffed animals and dolls that he takes care of, too. Me father thinks it's all rubbish, that I'm making a poofter out of him. Part of why we don't visit me family that much."

"No, I can imagine."

"He is right, though," Draco pointed out. "Ben's got a lot of feminine in him. He's got dolls and loves cooking and taking care of babies."

"Yeah," said Kara, "but he's also built like a rugby team, beats holy hell out of anybody who crosses him, and runs about making dreadful shooting noises day and night. He's got a lot of masculine too."

"He's a lesbian," Draco said seriously. "That's what he is, our son is a lesbian." Kara and Harry chuckled.

"Speaking of which, Draco, could you take our wee lesbian for the next week too?"

"Kara, come on, he misses you-"

"I know, but I've a gig in Belfast. This could be really big, Draco."

Draco scowled at her.

"Look, you're the one that tells me I can succeed in my career here and don't need to move to London. So help me do it."

Draco frowned at her. "You're lucky I like having him around," he said, giving in.

"I know. That's why I picked ye," she said cheekily. "I knew if we ended up with a wean you'd be a far better mother than me."

"Would've been decent of you to tell me that at the time," Draco said sourly.

"You knew enough, don't give me that," Kara sniffed disdainfully. "Oh! Emily's here, time to add my pagan voice to the Christian chorus. Bye, luv," she said, and gave Ben a small pat as she hurried off with one last wink at Draco and another significant look at Harry.

"So does she actually set you up?" Harry asked curiously. "Or is it all just looks and nudges?"

"Mostly looks and nudges. She's tried to do more a few times, but... I can be around Muggles most of the time, but anything closer is awkward long-term. Especially when they wonder about things like why my flat's always cool in the summer without air conditioning, and how do I get from one place to another so quickly without a car." And he was going to stop there. He was not going to mention how much he yearned to be with somebody who understood what he was and what that meant. In a way it was nice, being with Muggles; they didn't know anything about him, or anything about the Dark Mark and what it meant. But it had only taken one of his lovers to mention that he thought the Mark was "sexy" to put him off on the concept of getting serious with any of them. It was hard to feel like getting back into bed with a fellow who said something like that, no matter how innocent the remark.

Sexy. A mark that meant pain and shame and servitude to a terrifying madman. A mark that meant imprisonment, exile from everything he loved, and a permanent reminder that none of it could ever really be his again. That for the rest of his life, he would have to face people who either knew nothing about him, or knew far too much.

"Does she know you're a wizard?" Harry asked.

"Who, Kara? No."

"Hasn't Ben ever let it slip?"

"Oh no, he's under Secrecy. You know, the spell they do on Muggle-born's families. Prevents him from talking about the wizarding world with anybody who shouldn't know about it. I had the Ministry set it when he was about two."

Harry nodded distractedly, his manner slipping back to aloofness.

"Are you all right?" Draco finally asked.

Harry blinked, startled. "Yeah. Sorry. Work."

"All right."

Harry said awkwardly, "So... erm, Ben's very friendly. Very outgoing. Does he have many friends?"

"Yeah, he does. He's a bit different with you and Alec, though. He's under Secrecy, but he wants to talk about magic so much. It's a heavy secret to bear."

"Yeah, it's hard for kids to live with secrets." Harry pushed his glasses up. "Hard for adults, too."

"Must be nice not to have to," Draco said a bit bitterly.

Harry looked away. "I wouldn't know," he said quietly, and Draco wondered at his brooding tone but felt a flash of impatience nonetheless.

He rolled his eyes. "About what? How you killed Voldemort? I'm not talking about anything like that."

"No, not about that," Harry said sharply. "You're not the only one with family secrets."

Draco blinked, taken aback by the near-anger in Harry's voice. "I'm sorry," he said, and briefly reflected that once upon a time those words had been more alien to him than any foreign language. "I didn't mean to offend you. It's just that it's not the same. You don't have anything you'd want to hide specifically from your child."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Harry still sounded a bit angry. "You don't know a bloody thing about my secrets, Draco." He gazed over at Alec and Ben. "I do know what it's like, to look at your child and wonder how the hell you're ever going to explain some of the hard things he needs to know."

"Do you?" Draco asked, almost challengingly. "Like what?"

Harry gave him a sharp look and opened his mouth to speak, then something he saw in Draco's eyes seemed to make him pause. He sighed and seemed to come to a decision, turning and facing him. "Like Ginny," he said, his voice low. "And how she died."

Draco frowned. "I thought she was cursed. By the D- by Voldemort. Wasn't she?"

Harry shook his head. "She wasn't. I was. Voldemort didn't kill her, I did. Or rather, we did."

"'We'?"

"Me and Alec. There's a reason we never revealed the curse, beyond the line that went into the papers about not wanting people to copy it."

"What was it?"

There was a long pause, and Draco opened his mouth to tell Harry he didn't have to tell him, but Harry cut him off. "It's all right. I have to stop hiding it some day. He'll be old enough to tell soon enough. I just don't want it to get out to the press." He took a deep breath. "Are you familiar with the Fluchsamen curse?"

Draco blinked. "It's..." he closed his eyes, trying to remember it. There had been so many curses in his childhood education. "Some kind of family curse, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Purebloods used a few of those in medieval times. They were rather tricky, weren't they?"

"Yeah. It's a bit nasty - not that they all aren't, in their own ways, but this one especially. It makes you kill off your line voluntarily. It doesn't kill you or anybody in your family, but your line dies out all the same, by your own choice. I was rather impressed by it, to be honest, once I was able to think about it. More subtle than what Voldemort usually did. And I was impressed that he hadn't told me all about it; he loved the sound of his own voice so much."

An image of a villain saying "You got me monologuing!" flashed incongruously through Draco's memory, from a Muggle movie Kara had bought for Ben; he quickly banished it as inappropriate.

"The number of times that man could've ended the whole sorry mess between him and me with just a flick of his wand, but he could never stop talking," Harry said, shaking his head. "Going on and on about his evilness, his cleverness... bloody prima donna." Draco snickered, and Harry smiled slightly. "Then again, it's possible the reason he didn't say anything is that I didn't feel like listening to him any more, so I just killed him before he'd really hit his stride.

"Anyway. The curse. The literal translation is Curse Your Seed, in German or Old High German or something, Hermione probably knows. It's a curse upon a man's line of descent. You can father children. You're fine, and they're fine. But whoever 'bears your seed' within them dies in childbirth. And the curse is passed down to all of your male descendants, indefinitely, including those born from your female descendants. So the only way to continue your line is to somehow make sure you only have a daughter - who will kill her mother - and then tell her to only ever have daughters, and to pass the knowledge of the curse down forever and ever, because any son, no matter how many generations it takes, will kill anybody who bears his child. So you or your sons go childless, and your name dies."

"And you didn't know about it until the end?"

"No. There wasn't any sign until Ginny went into labour. It wouldn't have made any difference, though; you can't even use abortion to save the mother's life. Once she's pregnant with your child, she's as good as dead."

Draco felt a bit ill.

"Hermione thinks the reason he chose that curse for me had to do with immortality. You know how they say the only way to be immortal is to live forever or have children? He chose to try to live forever. Hermione thinks that he figured if I stopped him from being immortal by killing him, he'd stop me from being immortal by making sure I didn't have any descendants." He shrugged. "What's stupid is I would've been happy to adopt, if I'd known. I didn't care about passing on my name or preserving the Potter line or whatever. But I did care about Ginny." He tossed a stone into the small pond.

"So I got myself sterilized as soon as I could, the Muggle way and the wizarding way because there was no way I was going to put another woman through what happened to Ginny. Would've had Alec done too, but the Healers wanted him to have the choice when he was old enough. I probably won't ever date another woman again, either; there's no point in tempting fate. And someday Alec will have to know why his mother died, and learn why he will never have siblings, and learn that the only way he'll have children will be to adopt them. But I don't have the first idea how to bring any of this up with him, or when."

That was... yeah, that was pretty high up in terms of Miserable Things You Never Want To Explain To Your Child.

"God. I'm... I'm sorry," Draco said. "That's... I don't even know what to say." He paused. "Do the Weasleys know?"

Harry nodded. "All of them. Our generation, anyway; the oldest of the kids was three when it happened, so there was never a need to tell them. None of them ever bring it up. Percy Weasley made up that story for the Prophet, about her being cursed by Voldemort, got her name on that war monument. I think that was his way of apologizing for being a horse's arse before the war."

There was a brief silence, broken by Harry. "You're being called up," he said, nodding towards the stage.

Sod that, Draco wanted to say, but Ben and Alec were running back to Harry, Alec fairly vibrating with excitement in anticipation of the music. What rotten timing.

"You flew? On a broom?" Ben was saying as they approached.

"Yeah," Alec said, obviously not understanding why Ben would sound so excited by it.

"Dad, can we get one? Can I fly on yours?"

"Of course. I haven't flown in a few years, though," Draco said.

"Can everybody fly?"

"Some people aren't very good at it, or they don't like it. Ben, I've got to go, remember you're to behave while your mum and I are on stage."

"Yeah Dad," Ben said hurriedly. "So how often d'you fly?" he was asking as Draco left.

He reluctantly joined the others on the stage, taking his place next to Kara, his mind elsewhere as they began with Abide. Which did sound exactly as Alec had said. He caught a glimpse of Alec's face as he sat in rapt attention, Ben sitting next to him pretty blasé about the whole music experience but thrilled at being among wizards, and Harry smiling at them both.

What must it be like, to know that your child had killed the woman you loved? He and Kara had never been particularly close, so he could only imagine, but God, what a thing to live with. As they sang, the alto line was coming down to meet the men, all the lower parts staying in unison for a few notes, and he had a sudden image of the space next to him empty, of trying to go on singing without her alto complementing with his tenor. Imagined dealing with that in every area of his life. Nobody to share Ben with, nobody to share the worry and the pride that came with parenthood.

Draco remembered Alec's birth and Ginny Weasley's death. It had been in all the papers, along with speculation as to the mysterious curse that had killed her. The official explanation was that it was an obscure curse that had only manifested itself years later, and what rotten luck that it had done so right when her son was born. She'd been buried with full honours by the Ministry, her name added to the Second Voldemort Rising heroes' monument as the last fatality of the war. Draco had been near the end of his exile at the time, only in contact with the wizarding world through the papers, and he'd read about it but it hadn't really impacted much on him. Once, he would've felt a certain vindictive glee in the downfall of an enemy - in anything that would make Potter unhappy - but Ginny Weasley's death had seemed too far beyond the pale for that. The fact that he'd ended up on the same side of the war as Potter was only part of it. The real reason was that that kind of glee was appropriate for Potter losing at Quidditch, not for his wife dying in childbirth.

So Draco had just looked at the pictures of Potter and the rest of the Weasleys at Ginny's funeral, and the news of Potter's withdrawal from professional Quidditch, and the occasional pictures of Potter alone with a small child, and pretty much felt like saying, "Life's tough, join the club," and nothing more.

Pie Jesu began, and he let himself sink into the soft verses of its lament. Give them rest, the song said, and Draco wondered whether it was meant to give rest to those who had died or those who were left behind. For those who realized that the dead, whether they were at rest or not, continued to haunt the living and affect their lives. Ginny Weasley had been dead four and a half years, but she was yet another reason why there was no way he and Harry could ever be anything but casual co-workers to one another, Harry's orientation aside. Draco still carried the mark of his allegiance to the man who had taken Ginny from her husband and son, and cursed them both. There was no way to get past that.

They ended the song and Draco was almost surprised at the applause, and even more surprised when Kara poked him. "Love, you nearly missed that last entry," she said between her teeth. "I know Harry's quite the dish, but mind you get your thoughts out of his knickers and into the music, at least while we're on stage, yeah?"

Draco nodded at her impatiently. She was right, of course. And not just for the concert; for his sake and for Ben's too. There was too much history here, it wasn't worth trying to get past it just for the lift being in Harry's presence gave him, and he couldn't risk Ben being hurt once it finally dawned on Harry that being seen with a convicted felon really wasn't the done thing. He'd just have to find somebody else to share the wizarding world with Ben. And someone else, somewhat more attainable, to quicken his own pulse and send his thoughts down the kinds of paths they'd been going lately. And hopefully Harry could find somebody else to share music with Alec as well; it really wasn't Draco's concern, after all.

Music was supposed to be a refuge, Draco reminded himself as they began the next song. That was why he'd drifted into it during his exile; because you could just lose yourself in the music and forget that war and loss and exile and heartache existed. For whatever comfort music gave him - or Alec, or even Harry - he raised his voice to sing Hallelujah, and put Harry out of his mind.

ooo000ooo

Author's Note 1: The songs sung during the concert are Abide With Me, Pie Jesu, and Hallelujah. That last is a recording of my own choir, which unfortunately doesn't do the actual performance justice. ::sniff:: Alec and Draco mention one other song, the Navy Hymn, which Draco's choir had performed for their maritime songs concert and then reused for the sacred music concert. Recycling: it's not just for the environment any more.

Oh! Just realized Pie Jesu is my choir too. Hee!

The lyrics and music can be found at

http://annafugazzi.livejournal.com/40412.html

Author's Note 2: "You got me monologuing!" is from The Incredibles. Great line. I thought of Voldemort right away :)