Questions and Answers

Ginny walked through the kitchen with a sigh, removing her shoes as she walked toward the stairs, blissfully wiggling her toes. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was early. Barely nine-thirty. Ginny hated formal occasions almost as much as Harry did. She went to events hosted by the Prophet or the Ministry because she had to. She could think of a thousand other things she could do with her evening, besides putting on a fancy dress and high heels, and doing something with her hair. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, and reached for the small zipper tab between her shoulder blades, contorting and struggling to get the zipper down, nearly roaring in frustration when it wouldn't budge. 'Need some help with that?' Harry appeared behind her suddenly, as if he'd Apprarated, his hands sliding up to her shoulders. He found the hidden zipper tab and slowly pulled it down to her waist.

'Thanks.' Ginny sagged back against Harry's chest, taking the first deep breath of the evening. 'I forget how intense it all gets.'

Harry's hands skimmed back up to her shoulders, and began to lightly soothe the knots that bunched her muscles into an agony of tension. 'What was it this time?'

'The "my-kid-can-make-a-goal-blindfolded-and-he's-still-in-nappies" kind of rubbish.' She turned around to face him. 'Was I ever that competitive?'

'Yes,' Harry replied promptly. He kissed the tip of her nose. 'But only about Quidditch and only about how you play it.'

'They gave me a headache,' Ginny moaned softly.

'Massage and some tea?' Harry suggested.

'Bath, bottle of wine, and a massage,' Ginny countered. She cocked her head to one side, listening for something. 'Where's Lily?'

'Ron and Hermione's. We're going to take Hugo next weekend.'

Ginny nodded. 'Fine.' She smiled up at Harry. 'I'll run the bath, you get the wine?'

'Deal.'

Ginny trudged up the stairs to their bedroom and went into the bathroom. She turned on the taps, and went back into the bedroom. She shimmied out of the dress, leaving it in a heap in the bedroom floor. She stripped off the fancy underwear such a dress seemed to require with a grimace, and dropped it on top of the dress. Ginny caught a glimpse of herself in the cheval mirror in the corner. Ginny turned to face the mirror and methodically examined her naked body. She wasn't normally critical about the way she looked, nor was she particularly vain. It wasn't like she had let herself go, but spending several hours in the company of witches at least ten years younger had not done wonders for her body image. She wasn't sure what bothered her more - the fact that she was frowning at the marks childbirth had left on her body, or that she was letting the younger witches and their seemingly perfect bodies get to her. She started to idly trace the silvery marks left on her body from three pregnancies. 'Those are battle scars, you know.' Harry leaned against the doorway, a bottle of wine, and two glasses dangling from one hand.

'Battle scars?'

'I've watched you give birth, Gin. You almost tore my head off when I delivered Lily.' He came to stand behind her. 'Battle scars,' he repeated softly, kissing her bare shoulder. Harry wrapped his free arm around her waist. 'You're still the most beautiful woman in the world, Ginevra.'

'Don't call me Ginevra.' It was an automatic response, said without heat or censure. She pulled the pins from her hair, letting it cascade down her back.

'What brought this on, love?'

Ginny shrugged. 'I dunno. Just being around all those women. If they're not going on and on about their precious sprog's accomplishments, they're going on and on about how they can still wear their game kit.' She made a face in the mirror. 'I don't think I could even squeeze my arse into the trousers if I wanted to. And don't say it!'

'Say what?' Harry set the bottle and glasses on a small table.

'The "you've had three babies, so of course your body's different" spiel,' she grumbled.

Harry unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it on top of Ginny's discarded clothing. He pushed his jeans off and kicked them off to join the rest of the clothes. 'Well, that is what I was going to say, but none of us look like we did when we were eighteen.' He stood next to Ginny and wriggled out of his boxers. Harry ran a hand over his middle. 'Well?'

'Well, what?'

Harry ruffled his hair. 'Getting grey around the edges. Got some pudge that definitely wasn't there when we got married.' He traced the oval-shaped scar over his heart. 'Battle scars of my own.' He looked at Ginny. 'Turned off yet?'

'No. I'm not.'

'Good.' Harry cupped the back of Ginny's head, tilted her face up, and kissed her. 'Come on, then. We have a completely kid-free house, and a hot bath waiting. Don't want to waste it.' He picked up the wine and the glasses. 'I went to Hogwarts earlier.'

Ginny followed him into the bathroom and slipped into the tub with a sigh. 'Why? Something happen to one of the boys?' Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'What did James do?' she asked, accepting the wine Harry handed her.

'No, everything's fine,' Harry assured her as he picked up his own wineglass and stepped into the tub, facing Ginny. 'Quidditch tryouts today, though.'

'Oh, that's right!' Ginny's face lit up. 'How did they go?' Al had sent an owl to them last week saying he was going to go for the open Seeker position.

'James is still one of the Chasers, and Al's the new Seeker. Rosie's Keeping, and Fred moved to Beater with Jacob. Maddie made the team as a Chaser this year, so she's not on the Reserves anymore, and Izzy's the Captain and last Chaser.'

'Neville must really enjoy that trophy in his office. Getting to be as rabid as Minerva was about it,' Ginny mused. 'Scorpius try out?'

'Nope.' Harry shook his head. 'I asked, but he said he just likes to play the pickup games with the kids instead.'

Ginny whistled softly. 'If we thought his father was unhappy with him last year...' She took a sip of her wine. 'You didn't go up strictly to watch the tryouts, though.'

'No. I went to talk to Gareth and Rafa.' Harry tilted his wineglass and let a swallow slide down his throat, humming in pleasure as it warmed a path down to his stomach.'

'Are they going to help you with Malfoy?'

'Yeah. He won't be expecting Gareth in my office, nor will he be expecting the way Rafa can do Legilimency.'

'Isn't that a bit extreme?' Ginny queried, faintly anxious.

'Yes, but so is Muggle-baiting,' he replied grimly.

'Harry, why are you starting with the people on your list? Even though you don't have reason to suspect Malfoy isn't involved, at the very least.'

'I need proof. I need proof they're not involved as much as I need proof if they are involved,' Harry said flatly. 'It's part of their probation that we can do this sort of thing to either clear them or put them back in Azkaban.'

'Kingsley's all right with this?'

Harry blew out an explosive breath. 'He's about as chuffed as I am about stooping to these kinds of tactics.' He shifted, sinking lower into the foamy water. 'I hate my job right now,' he muttered.

Ginny carefully set her wineglass on the edge of the tub. She scooted to Harry's end, sitting with her knees drawn up, between his legs. 'Harry you've always tried to do the moral and ethical thing when it comes to solving a case. But even you've said you have to think like they do sometimes.'

'It doesn't make it right,' Harry told her, his face set in stubborn lines.

'Stop sulking,' Ginny lightly admonished, flicking water in Harry's face.

'I'm not sulking,' he protested, wiping water from his nose.

'Please. You look just like James when he's being fussed at by one of us.' Harry leaned his head against the back of the tub, squinting slightly at the charmed ceiling. 'Harry, look at me.' He obstinately kept his eyes glued to the starry ceiling. 'Harry James Potter, look at me.' The faint steel sharpened in Ginny's voice.

Harry's eyes met Ginny's. 'What?'

'You've done this for twenty years. And even you've admitted it helps to be able to think like them.'

'I've never had to act like they do. Forcibly look in someone else's mind just because of what they did twenty years ago.'

Ginny reached back for her wine and downed what remained the glass. 'You're not just going to do it without their knowledge, are you?'

Harry shook his head. 'No. They'll be aware of what we're doing and why. It's what we'll have to do if they resist that makes me nauseated. Even though I have the right to do it.'

'It's what you do and how you do it that matters, Harry,' she said gently.

'And that's what makes me different,' he said sardonically.

'You wouldn't do anything like this unless you had a good reason.'

'And the proper paperwork,' Harry snorted ironically. 'Between Percy and Hermione, I've got more legal precedent than I can Vanish.' Harry looked at Ginny, searching her face. He knew she wasn't just trying to cheer him up. Eighteen years of marriage had taught him that much. Ginny wasn't one for empty platitudes - neither giving, nor receiving them. If she said something, she meant it.

He mentally shook himself. Not tonight. He wasn't going to bring it home tonight.

Harry reached over the side of the tub for the bottle of wine. 'Your glass is empty,' he informed Ginny, refilling both of their glasses.

'Trying to get me plastered, are you?'

'Nope. Just loose enough to persuade you into trying the massage oil George sent last week.' Harry waggled his eyebrows in what he hoped was a lecherous manner.

'You mean the one that changes its scent based on your mood?'

'Mmmm-hmmmm.' Harry nonchalantly swirled the wine in his glass.

'That hasn't been put out yet.'

Harry leaned forward and nipped Ginny's lower lip. 'We're testing it. He wants to have it ready for the Wonder Witch line for the holidays.'

'It won't leave boils anywhere will it?' Ginny asked warily.

'Nah. George would never let me try something that will result in your hexing his testicles into oblivion.'

'Smart man,' Ginny agreed. 'And you get this enormous privilege how?'

'I still own twenty percent of the shop,' Harry said smugly. 'George and Ron refuse to buy me out. George says he still owes me for fronting the initial investment.'

Ginny rose to her feet and stood in front of Harry, water dripping from the planes and hollows of her body. 'House to ourselves, potentially smashing massage oil... Why are we still in here?'

'No idea.'

*****

Draco pulled a letter from his shirt pocket. He had asked the house-elf to sneak it from the box where Daphne kept the letters from Scorpius and bring it to him. He re-read the most recent letter Scorpius had sent to Daphne from school. He tried - and failed - to find the same sense of detachment his father would have had.

Oh, yes. Draco Malfoy could still feel something for his son. But it wasn't something he could name. He looked down at the letter, confused. Draco knew Scorpius enjoyed playing Quidditch with his... Friends. Thinking of them by their names left a bitter taste in the back of his throat. But to not even try out...

Draco set the letter down and started into the flames of the fireplace in his study. He honestly couldn't blame Scorpius for only playing recreationally. Draco had hated playing for the House team and had sometimes faked an injury to avoid playing. He only played to please Lucius, who expected it of him.

Draco picked up his glass of Firewhisky and an old photograph of Scorpius at the age of eight or nine. He was industriously pruning lavender in the late summer sunshine. Even at that early age, if not earlier, Scorpius did what he wanted. Draco wondered if Scorpius was happier for it. Sometimes, late at night, when he'd drunk too much whisky, Draco wondered how different his life would be if he'd been a fraction as audacious as his son.

He wouldn't have that damned Mark on his arm, branding him as a traitor for the rest of his life. Draco painfully recalled the night Scorpius saw it. He poured another glass of whisky, noticing his hand trembled slightly. Draco tossed back the contents of his glass in a one gulp.

He took a deep breath and reached for the cufflink on his left sleeve. Slowly releasing the breath that threatened to strangle him, Draco slid the cufflink from his cuff and slowly rolled the sleeve past his elbow. Draco looked down at his forearm, alabaster-pale and sparsely dusted with fine, white-blonde hair. He steeled himself and slowly turned his arm over, forcing himself to look at it.

Draco had never really examined it closely. Until now. He felt his gorge rise, and his right hand closed around the bottle on the low table next to him, and took a large swallow, without bothering with the heavy-bottomed crystal glass. He remembered the night he received the Mark from Lord Voldemort. It had hurt like nothing he had ever known before. It seemed to set every nerve ending on fire. He recalled the shameful tears that fell silently down his face to the taunting jeers of his aunt Bellatrix. When he was really drunk, Draco considered sending Molly Weasley a thank-you note for killing Bellatrix. He had hated Bellatrix almost as much as he hated Potter. Dear Auntie Bella, with her nose shoved up Voldie's arse, he snorted.

He hadn't looked at the Mark that night, either.

For more than twenty years, Draco avoided looking at it. He managed to bathe, dress, and even, on those rare occasions before Scorpius was born, have sex with his wife without looking at it.

He hated the Mark and what it had done to his life.

Draco drank another large swallow of whisky. He let himself wonder how it might have been different if he'd allowed the Order of the Phoenix to hide him and his mother.

It galled Draco now to remember. Dumbledore was dying anyway, and would have died with or without Draco's help. He remembered the lengths to which Snape would go to protect the students at school his seventh year. Especially the Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and Gryffindors without giving it away to the Death Eaters on the staff that year.

Draco wanted to apologize. To Rosmerta. To Katie Bell - no, Katie Weasley, now. Even Goyle. For getting them mixed up in it all. He even found himself wanting to apologize to Ron Weasley for the poisoned mead incident. He had been secretly relieved when word spread that Potter managed to use a bezoar and saved Weasley's life. Draco lifted the bottle to his lips and the level of whisky dropped by several inches.

He knew he was drunk. He only wanted to apologize to them all when he was drunk.

It was the whisky talking, he tried to convince himself. Draco traced the Mark slowly, like Scorpius had done that night.

The Mark was faded. Its once-stark black lines now a washed-out grey.

No wonder his own son didn't respect him.

How could Scorpius respect him when it was obvious Draco despised his own life?

Draco looked at the mantle over the fireplace. A portrait of his father hung there. He often wondered why he left it there, allowing his father to watch him drink himself into a stupor on more occasions than he wanted to count. Then again, after the war, Lucius had done the same thing on more than one night. Most people thought the sentence in Azkaban and the war were what had broken Lucius. True, he had been broken by those years, but it was the aftermath that shattered him. The nights locked in a room in the Nice villa, drinking cheap wine or whisky. By then, Lucius hadn't cared.

Draco saluted the image of his father, who gazed down dispassionately at his son, with the nearly-empty bottle of whisky. He drained the bottle, grimacing as it settled in his already-churning stomach and burned.

The empty whisky bottle fell from Draco's limp fingers and rolled across the rug. His head lolled to the side and his eyes closed to slits, watching the dancing flames.

In a matter of minutes, Draco's eyes closed and he began to snore softly.

The fire flared for a moment, and illuminated the faded Mark on his arm, making it seem as crisp as the day it had been burned into his flesh.