My H/D Career Fair fic: The Tapestry of Kinship, Part 2 of 2
For anyone who is reading this as posted in my journal, rather than on AO3 (where it's complete), here is part 2 of The Tapestry of Kinship. Start here for part 1.
Title: The Tapestry of Kinship
Author: khalulu
Prompt: # 199
Rating: PG-13 (a little non-explicit sex)
Career Choices: Harry: unemployed ?budding artist?; Draco: single father, architect, acupuncturist
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Warnings/Content Notes: EWE, Draco has a daughter.
Summary: Harry is at loose ends, Draco is good with needles, and Draco's young daughter wants to see a certain tapestry repaired. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black will never be the same.
Word Count: about 14,600 (about 6,500 in this part)
Author's Notes: Why does Draco have a picture of a goat on his mantelpiece? Why does Harry have a Dirigible Plum dangling from his doorknob? What kind of house does Narcissa have in Paris? The answers, dear reader, are within.
o0o
Harry was in high spirits waiting for Draco to arrive with his broom. That first flight on the motorbike together a few weeks earlier had been thrilling in its own way, with the forgotten pleasure of the machine thrumming between his legs, and, he now admitted, the pleasure of feeling Draco pressed up against his back, his arms tight around Harry. But nothing beat the joy of broom flying, and they’d begun to meet regularly for flying dates while Mira was at her play group. They raced and dove and spun around until they were breathless and elated, and then flew lazy sight-seeing circuits to relax.
Harry was sleeping better now that he got more exercise, and many nights he fell asleep smiling, with a mental image of Draco flying, all flushed face, windswept hair and sparkling eyes. Or, sometimes, Draco lying under him, eyes darkening, lit by starlight and floating candles.
No time to think about that now, Draco would be here any minute. Harry remembered that he’d picked up some new broomstick polish that he thought Draco might like to try, and ran to get it. He heard the sound of someone arriving in the Floo and as he returned with the polish, found Draco at the door of the drawing room.
“Harry, I haven’t liked to ask, but why do you have an orange radish hanging from the door-knob? It’s starting to wilt,” Draco said.
Must need to renew the Stitch-in-Time thread. “It’s a Dirigible Plum.”
“A radish by any other name would be as strange, when it’s hanging from a drawing room doorknob.”
“Accept the extraordinary, Draco.” Harry examined the orange ball more closely. It was shrivelling up a bit. “So you think it really is just a radish?”
“I’m not going to eat it to find out. Where are you getting your home decorating tips from, The Quibbler?”
Harry grinned. “Close enough. Don’t mock Luna, she’s been very supportive.”
“Luna Lovegood is utterly amazing, and we would all do well to imitate her grace under pressure. We would not do well to imitate her fashion sense.”
“Speaking of fashion, how is your mother? When do you think we should try to bring her and Andromeda together?”
Draco sighed. “I guess we shouldn’t put it off any longer.”
“But first let’s go for a ride,” Harry said.
Draco’s face lightened. He looks happier too, Harry thought.
Draco gave Harry a laughing smile. “Definitely. Let’s fly.”
o0o
Harry was nervous as he waited in Grimmauld Place with Andromeda. It had not been easy to convince her to meet her sister. Harry and Draco had agreed that it would be better if the children were not present.
Narcissa Malfoy arrived with Draco. She looked elegant as always, cool and composed.
Andromeda stood abruptly. “This was a mistake.”
For the first time Harry had ever seen, Narcissa Malfoy faltered. “Andromeda - please.”
Andromeda faced her sister, rigid with anger. “I lost my husband and my child. My only child, Narcissa. My grandson is an orphan. How could you?”
“Dromeda…”
“How could you?”
“I…” Narcissa’s eyes fell. Her voice shook. “I am sorry for your losses.”
“Not only mine. All over this land, wizards and Muggles alike grieve the ones they lost to the mad ambitions of Voldemort and his lickspittle followers like Lucius.”
Narcissa flinched. “Lucius and Draco were all the family I had. You were gone, Bella was in Azkaban. You left, Dromeda. You just left me. What did I know but what our parents had said? What Lucius said?”
“You have a mind of your own, have you not?”
“Please - Andromeda…”
Desperate to be away from this scene, Harry glanced at Draco, who had come to stand beside him. Draco turned to him, silently wrapped an arm around Harry’s waist, and Disapparated them.
They Apparated to an unused bedroom on the third floor. Harry had accepted by now that Draco had his own history with this house, from childhood visits with his mother to her aunt and uncle before they died. Perhaps this room had been Draco’s then. Harry stood quietly, feeling the warmth of Draco’s arm through the fabric of their clothes. He studied Draco’s drawn face and tried to offer comfort.
“Andromeda sounds harsh sometimes, but she’s fair.”
“Fair?” Draco’s arm dropped and he moved to look out a window. “If she is fair, we’re doomed. Mercy is the only hope for Malfoys once we’re talking about the war. If you were fair, Harry Potter, you wouldn’t even talk to me. I’m not sure why you do.”
Harry couldn’t bear the slump in Draco’s shoulders or the bleak tone of this voice.
“Why do I talk to you, Draco? I’ll tell you. I spent my time lying around in a grey fog until one day out of nowhere I heard you say my name. And then suddenly I was in the fresh air of the seaside, with sun sparkling on the water, being interrogated by a bright-eyed little girl and offered biscuits by her funny, charming, adoring father, who somehow was you. And everything has been better ever since.”
Draco had turned to face Harry, his face softening. Harry moved toward him.
“So it was the biscuit,” Draco murmured.
“Idiot,” said Harry.
The moment hung suspended.
“What do you mean, you heard me say your name?”
“Ron had loaned me his Deluminator. You can use it to put out lights, but also, sometimes, when it feels like you’re stumbling alone in the dark, it gives you light back. You hear someone say your name, and let the light inside you, and then there you are. With the person you need to be with.”
He was minutely aware of their breathing, of the space between them.
“I heard a voice say ‘Harry Potter. Scarred it, saved it. Got under it.’ And when I arrived, your daughter said, ‘Why did you do that to my papa’s skin?’”
He heard Draco’s breath catch in his throat. Harry took Draco’s hand and slowly brought it to his lips. “I’m sorry I scarred it.” With his other hand, he stroked Draco’s cheek. “I’m glad I saved it.”
He let his eyes say the rest, lost in Draco’s gaze until they were drawn down, down to those lips that were parting to breathe his name. Draco’s warm arm was around his waist again, drawing him close, and there was one more moment of hesitation, an exquisite anticipation, and then they were kissing. Slow and sweet at first, and then with an eager urgency, until Harry said “Never mind under your skin, just let me under your robes,” which surprised a crack of laughter out of Draco.
“Believe me, I would love to,” Draco said, pulling back to smile at Harry and catch his breath. “But with my mother and my aunt downstairs trying to mend a rift that’s older than I am…” He paused for a kiss. “I can’t give you the attention you deserve.”
“How am I ever going to get enough time alone with you, you responsible family man?”
“If my aunt and mother don’t hex each other, maybe we can recruit them to babysit.”
“Good plan. Do you think it’s safe to go back down there?”
“Soon.” Draco sounded distracted. He drew off Harry’s glasses. “Much better. Now I can see your eyebrows.”
“My eyebrows?”
“You have gorgeous eyebrows.”
“No one has ever commented on my eyebrows before.”
“I can’t help it if the world is full of unobservant people.”
“Personally, I’m much more observant with my glasses on.” But then Draco kissed him again, and Harry had no attention to spare for anything other than the man in his arms.
Finally Draco sighed. “I suppose we’d better check downstairs.”
Harry retrieved his glasses and they walked down to find the two women standing by the front door.
“We need more time to talk,” Andromeda announced. “Harry, would you take Teddy for a few days?”
“Of course,” Harry said.
“Thank you. I will bring him here - he is visiting his grandfather Lupin at the moment. Narcissa and I will be in the Isles of Scilly.”
Narcissa stepped forward to embrace her son, said goodbye, and they were gone.
“Well, that looks like progress,” Draco commented. “So much for the babysitting plan, though.”
“What’s in the Isles of Scilly?”
“Puffins? And two strong-willed witches, soon. Speaking of which, I’d better go pick up my witchlet. Her play group will be over soon.”
“We should get her and Teddy together and have a picnic.”
“Brilliant.”
“Just come by here and we’ll plan something.”
“All right.” Draco moved toward the door and then turned back to catch and swing Harry’s hand with a smile. “Bye then.”
Harry tugged him back into a kiss, until Draco pulled away breathless. “Play group. Must get to play group.”
“Your hair’s a mess - let me fix it.”
“You’re one to talk. If you start running your fingers through my hair again I can’t answer for what I might do. Going to the play group now.”
“Be like that, then.”
o0o
They ended up going to the seaside with a picnic, and after some initial shyness Teddy and Mira chased each other shrieking through the waves and found strange things in tide pools and ate an enormous amount of food.
“They get on like a house afire,” Draco observed. “It must be nice to have a cousin.”
“I can’t say I enjoyed it much,” said Harry. “But - Tonks would have been your cousin. Did you ever meet her?”
“No.”
“She was brilliant. She was a Metamorphmagus, like Teddy - used to make pig faces to make us laugh. And brave - she was in the Order of the Phoenix.”
“Then she wouldn’t have thought much of me.”
“If she met you now…” - if she’d lived that long…., Harry
thought, and grief caught in his throat.
Draco rested a hand on Harry’s shoulder, and they watched the children splash up glittering drops of seawater, Mira hiccuping with laughter as Teddy made faces for her, his hair seaweed-green.
o0o
Harry and Draco snatched a few trysts together, kissing and finally making love in the mornings when Mira was at her play group, but Harry longed for more. He came over late in the evening a few times, after Mira had gone to bed, and they snogged on the sofa for an hour or so, but that left him frustrated. Finally one night Draco let him come into the bedroom, with a locking charm on the door, a Muffliato to keep their sounds from disturbing Mira’s sleep, and a variant of Extendable Ears to alert Draco if Mira should call for him in the night.
After all those arrangements, Draco looked tense and pre-occupied. Harry wanted to see again the beautiful sated peace of Draco’s face when he was spent from passion. So he stroked, and kissed, and peeled off clothes, and held, and licked, and sucked, and moved against and over and in his lover until they both came and collapsed in each other’s arms. And he forgot about getting dressed, or going home. They slept.
A cry broke into Harry’s sleep and he started awake, feeling the bed shift on the other side. He grabbed for his wand and glasses, having to scrabble to find them in the unfamiliar room. In his alarm and disorientation he was almost in the hallway before he remembered that he was in Draco’s flat, and naked. “Accio clothes,” he whispered, and a dressing gown of Draco’s sailed into his hand. He wrapped himself in it and stepped quietly toward the half-open door of Mira’s bedroom, which was now softly lit. Draco was sitting on the bed, stroking his daughter’s hair. She looked up.
“Mr Potter’s here,” Mira said with a drowsy frown.
“Yes,” her father agreed quietly.
She blinked at Harry and turned to her father again. “Did he come on a sleepover?”
“Sort of.”
“I didn’t know grown-ups had sleepovers.”
“Sometimes they do.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“It was late. Do you want some hot milk?”
“He has a dressing gown like yours.”
“It does look like mine, doesn’t it. I think hot milk would help you sleep.” Draco moved to get up, but Mira shook her head and snuggled up against him.
“I could get you the milk,” Harry offered, and heard a reply that sounded like “nunnaninnimun.”
“With honey and cinnamon,” Draco said. “Thank you.”
By the time Harry had found everything in the kitchen and managed to heat the milk without scalding it, Mira had fallen asleep again.
Draco stood in the kitchen barefoot. “She gets bad dreams sometimes.”
“We’ll work harder on getting the tapestry fixed.”
“Maybe this isn’t going to work out.”
“We’ll think of something. I can do more research. Andromeda and your mother are talking, that’s progress.”
“I don’t mean the tapestry, I mean -” Draco waved his hand between Harry and himself. Harry felt a chill.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t just… I have to think of Mira. She needs stability.”
“And I’m not stable?” That stung. Sure, Harry had been depressed for a long time, but he’d been so much better lately.
“You… you could have anyone, Harry.”
“Anyone but you. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Someone without the complications of single parenthood.”
“Fatherhood has made you who you are.” Harry reached out a hand and tugged Draco over to him. “It was seeing how you care for Mira that made me want to know you now… Love looks good on you, Draco.”
Draco searched his eyes and then let himself be drawn into a long kiss. Afterwards, Draco began, “You could find someone simpler….”
Harry growled.
“But you’d better not,” Draco finished.
“Just as well. I wouldn’t know simple if it bit me.”
Draco laughed into the side of Harry’s neck. “Like this?” He set his teeth lightly on Harry’s earlobe and nibbled.
“Bed, you sexy thing,” said Harry.
o0o
Harry had volunteered to stay with Mira while Draco went to see someone about a possible job as magico-architect on a home renovation. Since the weather was fine, they went to a park near Grimmauld Place. Harry reminded her that it was a Muggle area, so they wouldn’t talk about magic, and Mira nodded.
After they had stopped to pet every dog whose owners permitted it, they reached the playground, and Mira ran off to climb around, nimble as the goat that her mother had sometimes been. She found a sandy-haired little boy to play with, something that involved a lot of running and shrieking and laughing.
Harry chatted with a few of the other parents. There was a lull in the noise and he looked to see Mira standing oddly quiet. Harry walked over.
“What did your mum say?” the boy was asking. Mira was silent.
“What did your mum say?” the boy repeated, cheerful and oblivious.
“Hi, Mira,” Harry said, coming to stand behind her. She pressed herself back against his legs, still quiet.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked. She nodded and he took her hand. “We need to leave now. Bye,” Harry told the little boy.
They walked back hand in hand. “It’s hard to know what to say sometimes, isn’t it,” Harry said. In the wizarding world, so many children had lost parents in the last war that people were more sensitive to those who were orphaned, and no wizarding child would have kept asking.
But Harry remembered when he’d started school in Little Whinging, having no answer when kids asked “What does your dad do?” or “Is your muom coming to pick you up?” Standing silent, turning away. Or days when the Dursleys had left him home alone, and he’d answered the phone to have some well-meaning stranger ask to speak to his parents. What could he say? They’re dead?
“My mum died when I was a baby too,” he told Mira.
She turned to look at him. “But she loved you very much, and she wanted you to be happy. And she would be very proud of you now,” she said, as if reciting something by heart.
“Yeah, she did, and… I hope so,” Harry said.
“And your papa loves you more than anything and he will always take care of you.”
His throat tightened. “He did - he tried - he died too,” Harry found himself saying.
What was he doing, telling his griefs to this little girl? What if he frightened her, what if she worried about Draco now?
Her eyes widened, but there was nothing but sympathy in them. She squeezed his hand. Tears pricked his eyelids. They kept walking.
o0o
The remaining members of the House of Black had gathered with Harry in his drawing room: Andromeda, Narcissa, Draco, Mira and Teddy.
“I will consent to rejoin the family,” Andromeda said, “but not under that motto.”
They all looked at the top of the tapestry. Toujours pur, it read, ‘always pure’: a monument to pure-blood bigotry.
Andromeda cast several spells to remove the words, but they remained. “I’ll burn them off,” she said, but Mira cried “No! No more holes!”
“Let’s add words instead,” Draco said. “We’ll work around the words that are there. What can we celebrate that is pure?”
“A pure heart,” Harry said, looking at Mira Altair.
“And to be sure that ‘pure’ doesn’t sound too narrow -” Draco paused and looked at Harry. “A generous spirit.”
“It’s not honest to say this family has always had those things, any more than to say it’s always been pure-blooded,” Andromeda argued.
“We’ll recommend them, then, as something to strive for.” Draco cast a spell, tracing in the air. When he was finished, a line of golden words was suspended before their eyes. “It means ‘always cultivate a pure heart and a generous spirit’. Can we agree?”
“Yes,” said Andromeda. Mira and Teddy nodded. Narcissa agreed.
Draco cast another spell, and the golden letters moved toward the tapestry. The fabric rippled and wriggled as if trying to escape. “I need back-up,” Draco said, and Narcissa and Andromeda drew their wands.
“By our blood we command you,” Andromeda said, her wand fixed on the tapestry. “We reclaim the House of Black!”
The golden script sank into the tapestry, rearranging the words that were already there. The new motto gleamed across the top of the tapestry: Cultivez toujours un cœur pur et un esprit généreux.
“Now I’m ready to rejoin,” said Andromeda.
Narcissa faced her. She looked as though she were about to begin a solemn and ritual speech, but then her mouth quivered and her eyes filled. She held out her hands. “Sister - Andromeda - please come back to me. Help me rebuild this family with the strength of love.”
Andromeda took her hands. “Sister, Narcissa, make this a family of welcome for all of us joined by love.”
As they held hands and gazes, slowly the hole next to Narcissa’s name began to fill in, ends of thread lengthening, weaving, joining together . A glint of gold appeared, and Andromeda’s name wrote itself across the tapestry. They waited.
“Where’s Teddy’s name?” Mira wanted to know.
“Maybe we need his mother first,” Harry said. And for her, Tonks, they needed her father first, Ted Tonks. Muggle-born. Would the tapestry accept that?
“I know how to bring Teddy,” Mira said. “Make a line. Hold hands.” She grabbed Draco’s hand in one of hers, and Andromeda’s in the other. “Now we call him, and if he can’t break through us, he’s on our team! Teddy, you run to us when I call!”
Teddy laughed, backed up a little, and his hair flashed blue.
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Teddy right over!” Mira called.
Teddy ran the short distance towards them, holding back so as not to hurt his younger cousin’s hands. Mira held tight, and Teddy bounced back giggling from Draco and Mira’s clasped hands. He toppled into his grandmother’s arms and was swept up in a hug. “We’ve got you now!” Mira cried.
“Look at the tapestry!” Harry said. There was a ripple of energy down where Teddy’s name should be. A line of gold sprang from across Andromeda’s name and spelled out T-E-D…
“Teddy!” Mira crowed.
“No, that’s his grandfather,” Andromeda said, her voice breaking. “My husband.”
T-E-D T-O-N-K-S, and then a line down to N-Y-M-P-H-A-D-O-R-A, and a line across to R-E-M-U-S, and Harry had tears in his eyes. T-E-D-D-Y was spelling itself impatiently below at the same time as L-U-P-I-N was finishing in the line above, and from both ends a line sprang to connect Teddy to his parents.
“Hooray!” shouted Mira.
“Sirius,” Harry said shakily, “you need to come join the party.”
Draco spoke. “Sirius Black, I am your first cousin once removed. Like your brother, Regulus, I took a wrong path and realiszed it too late, but am trying to make amends. Your family needs your integrity. Please come back.” He took Harry’s hand.
“Sirius, I miss you. Look, your favorite cousin Andromeda is here on the tapestry now. And Tonks, from the Order of the Phoenix, you remember? And she married Remus! Remus is here! And their son, my godson, Teddy. Now I’m a godfather, can you believe it? This is Harry, Sirius. Please come home.”
The tapestry rippled as the hole next to Regulus’s name closed up, and through wet eyes Harry saw the gleam of gold. S-I-R-I-U-S.
Harry felt giddy. Draco put an arm around him and Harry leaned into his embrace.
Narcissa produced some champagne she’d brought from France and proposed a toast. Everyone was laughing and hugging and the children were cheering and bouncing up and down.
After a few more toasts, Andromeda and Narcissa began to call out more names for the tapestry. “Uncle Alphard! Come back! Your nieces want you and your nephew Sirius is waiting for you.”
“Who is the one who married the Weasley? Cordelia?”
“Cedrella. Cedrella Black Weasley! Come back!”
The tapestry appeared to have entered into the spirit of things, and was closing up the rest of the holes on its own, supplying the names they had forgotten.
“Look, there’s Phineas. And Marius, he was the Squib, wasn’t he?”
“And Isla who married a Muggle. I’d forgotten about her.”
Mira and Teddy started chanting “It’s our House and we’re all here! It’s our House and we’re all here!”
“You two wild things need to get out of the house for a while, I think,” said Draco, but no one was ready to leave the room with its new glowing names quite yet. Harry kissed Draco when he thought possibly other people were looking elsewhere, but he couldn’t be bothered to worry much about it. Finally they all went out for a walk in the park.
o0o
Harry and Mira were choosing more paints at the art supply shop. Harry had decided that he didn’t much care for drawing, but he really liked playing around with mixing colours. Mira did too. Her the-more-the-merrier experiments usually ended up a muddy brown, but she continued optimistic.
They headed for the door with their purchases. Draco was supposed to meet them after he finished his own shopping.
There was a sudden commotion in the street, a Body-Bind Curse and someone shouting about Death Eaters. Harry ran out the door. Down the street he saw an elderly wizard with an outstretched wand pointing at Draco, who stood petrified with a jumble of packages at his feet.
His heart in his mouth, Harry went for his wand to disarm the attacker and release Draco. Just then Mira shouted “Papa!” and bolted toward her father. The unknown wizard turned with his wand upraised.
Instinctively Harry slammed a Shield Charm around Mira. He thought relief lit Draco’s eyes, but at that instant the attacker grabbed Draco’s arm, and with a pop of Disapparition both were gone.
Harry swore and ran to Mira. She was sobbing as he scooped her up. “I want my papa! I want my papa!”
“I know, I know. We’ll get him back. Hush just a moment, can you, sweet one?”
Harry summoned a Patronus and sent it off to alert the Aurors to the abduction.
Mira clung to him. Harry was desperate to go after Draco. “I want to go look for your papa, Mira, but I have to get you somewhere safe first.”
“I want to go with you!”
“You can’t, dear heart. Your papa would want you to be safe. Let’s take you to Andromeda and Teddy, and then I can go help your papa. Can you be brave, so we can go quickly?”
His only answer was a storm of tears. Harry carried her grimly to the nearest public Floo, hoping that Andromeda was at home.
o0o
Once Mira was settled with a worried Andromeda and Teddy, Harry rushed back to Diagon Alley. He couldn’t get a magical trace. He tried to find witnesses who could identify the elderly wizard, without luck. He stormed into Auror headquarters demanding information, but they had no leads. He looked frantically through their photos of past suspects, but none resembled the wizard he had seen. By nighttime he had run out of ideas.
He went to talk to Ron. “I’m tempted to start Apparating to places at random and call out his name.”
“In the dark? I think you ought to go home and try to get some rest. Sorry, mate, I just don’t see what else you can do. Start fresh in the morning.”
Harry went home, but couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, worried, heartsick, lonely. Missing Draco. Missing Mira. How must Draco be feeling? Because Draco was alive - he had to be alive - Harry couldn’t bear to believe anything else.
He grabbed his wand, cast Lumos, and went down to the drawing room. By the light of the wand he examined the tapestry. There was Draco’s year of birth. No year of death. He was alive.
In the flood of relief, Harry realiszed that he could send a message. He might not be able to find Draco, but his Patronus could. He summoned a happy memory and up floated an image of Draco in bed, morning sunlight on his bare chest, laughing, his eyes drifting down to Harry’s mouth as he moved toward him for a kiss.
“Expecto Patronum!” Harry gave the Patronus his message: “Draco - I’ll find you. I’ll bring you home. Mira is safe. I love you.”
o0o
A couple of hours later Harry was roused from a fitful sleep by a loud sound from the drawing room. He rushed in to find Draco leaning against the mantel, covered in ashes. Draco staggered into his arms.
Unable to speak, Harry held him so tightly that he could feel the motion of Draco’s breathing. Finally he pulled back to ask, “Are you hurt?”
“No - just tired - and thirsty - Where’s Mira?”
“With Andromeda and Teddy. I was so worried. We should get you to St. Mungo’s to be checked.”
“I’m all right…”
“You can barely stand. I’m not taking any chances. I’m taking you there, and then I’ll get Mira.”
Perhaps Draco had run out of energy for arguing. Harry took him to the hospital reception and waited until he was admitted. “I’ll be right back with Mira,” he told Draco as he left.
When Harry returned with Mira and moved to go up to the Spell Damage wing on the fourth floor, the Welcome Wizard at the reception desk stopped him. “Only family members are permitted to visit the patient while his condition is being assessed.”
“But I’m the one who brought him in,” said Harry.
“Only family members…”
“We are family. I have his daughter with me.”
“She may go in when an attendant has time to accompany her -”
“I’m not sending her with a stranger!” Harry said as Mira clung to him.
“Only family…”
“He’s my lover.”
“That is not a recogniszed…”
Harry swore and whipped his wand out. “Expecto Patronum!”
He sent his Patronus to Draco with a message: “They’ll only let family in to see you. Marry me?” The silver stag bounded away.
The desk attendant was shouting at him to put his wand away, but was soon drowned out by the Sonorus boom of Draco’s voice echoing through the hospital. “Yes, Harry Potter, I will marry you, if that’s what it takes to get you in here!”
“Good enough to be getting on with,” said Harry. “I’m off to visit my husband now.” He hoisted Mira up into his arms and took off in the direction the Patronus had gone, leaving the Welcome Wizard sputtering.
Once they found Draco’s room Mira squirmed out of his arms and ran to her father. Harry hung back a moment until Draco reached out and pulled him down to sit on the bed. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Draco said. “Now that I have you two, I’m fine. Exhausted, but fine.”
“I’ll let you sleep, then... I should notify the Aurors.”
“Don’t you dare leave me,” Draco whispered.
“Wasn’t going to,” Harry said.
“Never mind Aurors. Get closer.”
Harry studied him.
“Truly, Harry, there is no danger. I just want you.”
“Mira, let’s take our shoes off,” Harry said. “Pull back the covers so we can get in. Our family is going to take a nap.” He closed the bed-curtains with his wand, and cast a quiet Shield Charm.
The hospital bed was narrow, but as they all had their arms wrapped around one another, it didn’t much matter. Mira made a contented mumur as she snuggled up against her father. Harry pulled the blanket up over them all. He pressed a light kiss to Draco’s cheek. “Nice use of the Sonorus charm.”
“Nice Patronus, O My Betrothed.”
“I’ll teach you how to make one. You concentrate on a happy memory.”
Draco smiled, his arm tightening around Harry. His eyes drifted shut. Mira’s eyelids fluttered.
Harry watched the two of them, their faces peaceful, their chests rising and falling steadily. His own breath slowed and deepened, following their rhythm, and he slept.
o0o
Later that day, the Healers confirmed that Draco was free to go.
“I’d feel safer if you were at Grimmauld Place, until this is sorted out,” Harry said.
“I’ll tell you what happened tonight, after Mira’s asleep,” Draco said.
“Mira, would you like to come on a sleepover to my house?” Harry asked. She nodded.
They had a quiet dinner. Mira was subdued, and fell asleep soon afterwards, leaning against her father on the sofa as they looked at a storybook. Draco carried her upstairs to the bedroom next to Harry’s that they had gottenmade ready for her. Harry followed.
“I don’t want to leave her alone up here,” Draco said.
“Come sit in my room and we can talk. We’ll hear her if she wakes.”
Draco followed Harry into the bedroom, but made no move to sit.
“Draco… I will listen to anything you are willing to tell me. And then we need to find this wizard and stop him before he does something like this again.”
“He won’t. He’s just an old man.”
“A crazy, dangerous - ”
“Grieving old man. He lost his daughter, years ago. She was murdered by Death Eaters in the first war.”
“But what’s that to do with you? You were a baby then.”
“He thought…” Draco’s face twisted. “He thought I was my father.”
“You don’t look anything like him.”
Draco gave a tired laugh. “I doubt many people would agree with you.”
“You don’t. You’ve grown into someone completely different. Anyone who can’t see that is an idiot.”
“Well, he was just an old man who’s been living alone for too long with only his grief for company. And when he saw me, something snapped.”
“What did he do? Did he hurt you?”
“No, he tried a few spells to punish me, but he didn’t have the heart to make them effective. Mostly he just talked, talked and cried. I couldn’t say anything, because of the Body-Bind Curse.”
“Draco....”
“Finally your Patronus came. It confused him. He didn’t know why it called me Draco, instead of Lucius. He switched to Incarcerous, but loosened the gag so I could speak. I told him that I wasn’t Lucius, I was his son. I told him that I was sorry about his daughter. I told him that I had a daughter too.”
“So he believed you?”
“Not at first. We were both very tired by then.”
“Why did he change his mind?”
“He showed me his daughter’s picture. He was sobbing. I cried too. He said… he said that my father would never have cried.”
Draco was shaking. Harry wrapped him in his arms.
“She was just a little girl, Harry. She was just Mira’s age.”
“Oh, Draco.” Harry held him while he wept.
“Come.” Harry drew Draco to the bed and they shed their clothes and lay together quietly. Harry stroked Draco’s hair and they slept.
Early the next morning Harry woke to find his lover smiling at him. Harry moved to kiss him but Draco pushed him gently onto his back, then planted kisses down his body until Draco took him in his mouth. Harry’s hands trembled on Draco’s head. He was lifted by passion until he cried out and fell back.
Draco took Harry’s hand down and placed it on himself and they moved together until Draco too cried out, and Harry drank in the beautiful sight of his lover’s face lost to passion. Undone by love.
They slept again and woke when sunlight spilled warmly over them. “Well,” Draco said, “now that we’ve announced our engagement to the wizarding world at large, what are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t care about the world at large, but I never want that to happen again, some officious prat in a hospital trying to keep me from seeing you because he’s decided we’re not family.”
“I’m not sure what’s necessary for the Ministry to recognisze a marriage. I suppose we can always make our own ceremony. Mira might enjoy being a bridesmaid. She and Teddy could pelt each other with flowers.”
“Hermione would fight a legal battle for us. And if that tufty-haired wizard who always does the marriages and funerals won’t do it, I’ll bet Luna would be willing to officiate.”
“As long as I don’t have to wear radishes.”
“Dirigible Plums.”
“Those either. My mother will be wanting to design the robes, and I feel sure that jewelry made of orange produce will clash with whatever she comes up with.”
“You and Mira should move in here. There’s loads of room. You could open a magico-acupuncture studio and an architectural office both.”
“Don’t you think that having an Unplottable address might be bad for business?”
“Spoilsport. I’ll give art classes for children. We’ll have a room just for messing about with paint. Mira and I can run a dog-walking business for Muggles in the neighborhood.”
“Oh, you two are going to gang up on me and get a puppy, I can see it now.”
o0o
As it happened, neither the Ministry nor the tufty-haired wizard were agreeable to the idea of their marriage. But Hermione did take on the legal battle, Luna did officiate, Narcissa did design the robes, and Mira and Teddy did pelt each other with flowers and tumble around with a shaggy black puppy named Snuffles. Harry and Draco exchanged vows and neither of them wore Dirigible Plums, although Luna wore enough of them to make up for everyone else. Hagrid baked Rock Cakes and no one cracked a tooth on one (perhaps because no one actually ate one, but they did vanish from the plate). Many Weasleys came, and Mira and Victoire, who had met at play group, chattered in French while Teddy pestered George for tricks and Draco conversed with Bill and Fleur about raising bi-lingual children. The Quibbler wished the happy couple well, and The Daily Prophet, though not invited, filled pages with speculation.
On their return from a honeymoon in the Isles of Scilly (to see the puffins), Harry, Draco and Mira stepped out of the Floo into the drawing room at Grimmauld Place. The afternoon sunlight seemed to make the lettering on the tapestry gleam even more than usual. Mira ran over to the wall. “Look! It’s our House and we’re all here!”
“Mmm-hmm,” Harry said, feeling a little tired at the thought of unpacking.
“We’re all here!” Mira repeated. She tugged Harry and Draco over to look.
On the other side of Draco’s name, a new golden line linked to a new golden name. Harry Potter.
“See? Isn’t it pretty?” Mira said.
“It’s beautiful,” Draco said.
Harry’s eyes stung. Let anyone try to keep me away from my family again, he thought fiercely. If the Ministry doesn’t like my marriage, they can take it up with the tapestry of The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
He looked at his husband and his daughter. “Beautiful,” he repeated. Pure hearts and generous spirits.
Anything is possible.
o0o
End Notes: In addition to using characters and a world belonging to J. K. Rowling, this story echoes a few other writers’ phrases. The endearment “O Best Beloved” comes from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. “Dearest freshness” is from Gerard Manley Hopkin’s sonnet God’s Grandeur. You Sexy Thing is a song by Hot Chocolate.
Zubenelgenubi ("The Southern Claw") is a star in the constellation Libra, formerly in the constellation Scorpius. Booboo is used by some as a name for the star Eta Draconis in the constellation Draco, but how it got that name is a bit of a mystery.
A few links for anyone interested:
Here is Mira’s favorite cinematic dance number, with that funny man Donald O’Connor, Make ‘Em Laugh, and her second favorite, with that other funny man Gene Kelly dancing in puddles and Singin' in the Rain. You can see the two of them together in Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses, another number from the same film - imagine if the Weasley twins were tap-dancers sent to elocution lessons. Mira’s grandmother prefers the elegance of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, dancing Cheek to Cheek. (The fancy dancing starts a couple of minutes in.)
And here is a Provençal goat - this one is a male, but the females look very similar (and can also have horns and beards), and they come in various colors. Did you know that goats climb trees?
Title: The Tapestry of Kinship
Author: khalulu
Prompt: # 199
Rating: PG-13 (a little non-explicit sex)
Career Choices: Harry: unemployed ?budding artist?; Draco: single father, architect, acupuncturist
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Warnings/Content Notes: EWE, Draco has a daughter.
Summary: Harry is at loose ends, Draco is good with needles, and Draco's young daughter wants to see a certain tapestry repaired. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black will never be the same.
Word Count: about 14,600 (about 6,500 in this part)
Author's Notes: Why does Draco have a picture of a goat on his mantelpiece? Why does Harry have a Dirigible Plum dangling from his doorknob? What kind of house does Narcissa have in Paris? The answers, dear reader, are within.
o0o
Harry was in high spirits waiting for Draco to arrive with his broom. That first flight on the motorbike together a few weeks earlier had been thrilling in its own way, with the forgotten pleasure of the machine thrumming between his legs, and, he now admitted, the pleasure of feeling Draco pressed up against his back, his arms tight around Harry. But nothing beat the joy of broom flying, and they’d begun to meet regularly for flying dates while Mira was at her play group. They raced and dove and spun around until they were breathless and elated, and then flew lazy sight-seeing circuits to relax.
Harry was sleeping better now that he got more exercise, and many nights he fell asleep smiling, with a mental image of Draco flying, all flushed face, windswept hair and sparkling eyes. Or, sometimes, Draco lying under him, eyes darkening, lit by starlight and floating candles.
No time to think about that now, Draco would be here any minute. Harry remembered that he’d picked up some new broomstick polish that he thought Draco might like to try, and ran to get it. He heard the sound of someone arriving in the Floo and as he returned with the polish, found Draco at the door of the drawing room.
“Harry, I haven’t liked to ask, but why do you have an orange radish hanging from the door-knob? It’s starting to wilt,” Draco said.
Must need to renew the Stitch-in-Time thread. “It’s a Dirigible Plum.”
“A radish by any other name would be as strange, when it’s hanging from a drawing room doorknob.”
“Accept the extraordinary, Draco.” Harry examined the orange ball more closely. It was shrivelling up a bit. “So you think it really is just a radish?”
“I’m not going to eat it to find out. Where are you getting your home decorating tips from, The Quibbler?”
Harry grinned. “Close enough. Don’t mock Luna, she’s been very supportive.”
“Luna Lovegood is utterly amazing, and we would all do well to imitate her grace under pressure. We would not do well to imitate her fashion sense.”
“Speaking of fashion, how is your mother? When do you think we should try to bring her and Andromeda together?”
Draco sighed. “I guess we shouldn’t put it off any longer.”
“But first let’s go for a ride,” Harry said.
Draco’s face lightened. He looks happier too, Harry thought.
Draco gave Harry a laughing smile. “Definitely. Let’s fly.”
o0o
Harry was nervous as he waited in Grimmauld Place with Andromeda. It had not been easy to convince her to meet her sister. Harry and Draco had agreed that it would be better if the children were not present.
Narcissa Malfoy arrived with Draco. She looked elegant as always, cool and composed.
Andromeda stood abruptly. “This was a mistake.”
For the first time Harry had ever seen, Narcissa Malfoy faltered. “Andromeda - please.”
Andromeda faced her sister, rigid with anger. “I lost my husband and my child. My only child, Narcissa. My grandson is an orphan. How could you?”
“Dromeda…”
“How could you?”
“I…” Narcissa’s eyes fell. Her voice shook. “I am sorry for your losses.”
“Not only mine. All over this land, wizards and Muggles alike grieve the ones they lost to the mad ambitions of Voldemort and his lickspittle followers like Lucius.”
Narcissa flinched. “Lucius and Draco were all the family I had. You were gone, Bella was in Azkaban. You left, Dromeda. You just left me. What did I know but what our parents had said? What Lucius said?”
“You have a mind of your own, have you not?”
“Please - Andromeda…”
Desperate to be away from this scene, Harry glanced at Draco, who had come to stand beside him. Draco turned to him, silently wrapped an arm around Harry’s waist, and Disapparated them.
They Apparated to an unused bedroom on the third floor. Harry had accepted by now that Draco had his own history with this house, from childhood visits with his mother to her aunt and uncle before they died. Perhaps this room had been Draco’s then. Harry stood quietly, feeling the warmth of Draco’s arm through the fabric of their clothes. He studied Draco’s drawn face and tried to offer comfort.
“Andromeda sounds harsh sometimes, but she’s fair.”
“Fair?” Draco’s arm dropped and he moved to look out a window. “If she is fair, we’re doomed. Mercy is the only hope for Malfoys once we’re talking about the war. If you were fair, Harry Potter, you wouldn’t even talk to me. I’m not sure why you do.”
Harry couldn’t bear the slump in Draco’s shoulders or the bleak tone of this voice.
“Why do I talk to you, Draco? I’ll tell you. I spent my time lying around in a grey fog until one day out of nowhere I heard you say my name. And then suddenly I was in the fresh air of the seaside, with sun sparkling on the water, being interrogated by a bright-eyed little girl and offered biscuits by her funny, charming, adoring father, who somehow was you. And everything has been better ever since.”
Draco had turned to face Harry, his face softening. Harry moved toward him.
“So it was the biscuit,” Draco murmured.
“Idiot,” said Harry.
The moment hung suspended.
“What do you mean, you heard me say your name?”
“Ron had loaned me his Deluminator. You can use it to put out lights, but also, sometimes, when it feels like you’re stumbling alone in the dark, it gives you light back. You hear someone say your name, and let the light inside you, and then there you are. With the person you need to be with.”
He was minutely aware of their breathing, of the space between them.
“I heard a voice say ‘Harry Potter. Scarred it, saved it. Got under it.’ And when I arrived, your daughter said, ‘Why did you do that to my papa’s skin?’”
He heard Draco’s breath catch in his throat. Harry took Draco’s hand and slowly brought it to his lips. “I’m sorry I scarred it.” With his other hand, he stroked Draco’s cheek. “I’m glad I saved it.”
He let his eyes say the rest, lost in Draco’s gaze until they were drawn down, down to those lips that were parting to breathe his name. Draco’s warm arm was around his waist again, drawing him close, and there was one more moment of hesitation, an exquisite anticipation, and then they were kissing. Slow and sweet at first, and then with an eager urgency, until Harry said “Never mind under your skin, just let me under your robes,” which surprised a crack of laughter out of Draco.
“Believe me, I would love to,” Draco said, pulling back to smile at Harry and catch his breath. “But with my mother and my aunt downstairs trying to mend a rift that’s older than I am…” He paused for a kiss. “I can’t give you the attention you deserve.”
“How am I ever going to get enough time alone with you, you responsible family man?”
“If my aunt and mother don’t hex each other, maybe we can recruit them to babysit.”
“Good plan. Do you think it’s safe to go back down there?”
“Soon.” Draco sounded distracted. He drew off Harry’s glasses. “Much better. Now I can see your eyebrows.”
“My eyebrows?”
“You have gorgeous eyebrows.”
“No one has ever commented on my eyebrows before.”
“I can’t help it if the world is full of unobservant people.”
“Personally, I’m much more observant with my glasses on.” But then Draco kissed him again, and Harry had no attention to spare for anything other than the man in his arms.
Finally Draco sighed. “I suppose we’d better check downstairs.”
Harry retrieved his glasses and they walked down to find the two women standing by the front door.
“We need more time to talk,” Andromeda announced. “Harry, would you take Teddy for a few days?”
“Of course,” Harry said.
“Thank you. I will bring him here - he is visiting his grandfather Lupin at the moment. Narcissa and I will be in the Isles of Scilly.”
Narcissa stepped forward to embrace her son, said goodbye, and they were gone.
“Well, that looks like progress,” Draco commented. “So much for the babysitting plan, though.”
“What’s in the Isles of Scilly?”
“Puffins? And two strong-willed witches, soon. Speaking of which, I’d better go pick up my witchlet. Her play group will be over soon.”
“We should get her and Teddy together and have a picnic.”
“Brilliant.”
“Just come by here and we’ll plan something.”
“All right.” Draco moved toward the door and then turned back to catch and swing Harry’s hand with a smile. “Bye then.”
Harry tugged him back into a kiss, until Draco pulled away breathless. “Play group. Must get to play group.”
“Your hair’s a mess - let me fix it.”
“You’re one to talk. If you start running your fingers through my hair again I can’t answer for what I might do. Going to the play group now.”
“Be like that, then.”
o0o
They ended up going to the seaside with a picnic, and after some initial shyness Teddy and Mira chased each other shrieking through the waves and found strange things in tide pools and ate an enormous amount of food.
“They get on like a house afire,” Draco observed. “It must be nice to have a cousin.”
“I can’t say I enjoyed it much,” said Harry. “But - Tonks would have been your cousin. Did you ever meet her?”
“No.”
“She was brilliant. She was a Metamorphmagus, like Teddy - used to make pig faces to make us laugh. And brave - she was in the Order of the Phoenix.”
“Then she wouldn’t have thought much of me.”
“If she met you now…” - if she’d lived that long…., Harry
thought, and grief caught in his throat.
Draco rested a hand on Harry’s shoulder, and they watched the children splash up glittering drops of seawater, Mira hiccuping with laughter as Teddy made faces for her, his hair seaweed-green.
o0o
Harry and Draco snatched a few trysts together, kissing and finally making love in the mornings when Mira was at her play group, but Harry longed for more. He came over late in the evening a few times, after Mira had gone to bed, and they snogged on the sofa for an hour or so, but that left him frustrated. Finally one night Draco let him come into the bedroom, with a locking charm on the door, a Muffliato to keep their sounds from disturbing Mira’s sleep, and a variant of Extendable Ears to alert Draco if Mira should call for him in the night.
After all those arrangements, Draco looked tense and pre-occupied. Harry wanted to see again the beautiful sated peace of Draco’s face when he was spent from passion. So he stroked, and kissed, and peeled off clothes, and held, and licked, and sucked, and moved against and over and in his lover until they both came and collapsed in each other’s arms. And he forgot about getting dressed, or going home. They slept.
A cry broke into Harry’s sleep and he started awake, feeling the bed shift on the other side. He grabbed for his wand and glasses, having to scrabble to find them in the unfamiliar room. In his alarm and disorientation he was almost in the hallway before he remembered that he was in Draco’s flat, and naked. “Accio clothes,” he whispered, and a dressing gown of Draco’s sailed into his hand. He wrapped himself in it and stepped quietly toward the half-open door of Mira’s bedroom, which was now softly lit. Draco was sitting on the bed, stroking his daughter’s hair. She looked up.
“Mr Potter’s here,” Mira said with a drowsy frown.
“Yes,” her father agreed quietly.
She blinked at Harry and turned to her father again. “Did he come on a sleepover?”
“Sort of.”
“I didn’t know grown-ups had sleepovers.”
“Sometimes they do.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“It was late. Do you want some hot milk?”
“He has a dressing gown like yours.”
“It does look like mine, doesn’t it. I think hot milk would help you sleep.” Draco moved to get up, but Mira shook her head and snuggled up against him.
“I could get you the milk,” Harry offered, and heard a reply that sounded like “nunnaninnimun.”
“With honey and cinnamon,” Draco said. “Thank you.”
By the time Harry had found everything in the kitchen and managed to heat the milk without scalding it, Mira had fallen asleep again.
Draco stood in the kitchen barefoot. “She gets bad dreams sometimes.”
“We’ll work harder on getting the tapestry fixed.”
“Maybe this isn’t going to work out.”
“We’ll think of something. I can do more research. Andromeda and your mother are talking, that’s progress.”
“I don’t mean the tapestry, I mean -” Draco waved his hand between Harry and himself. Harry felt a chill.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t just… I have to think of Mira. She needs stability.”
“And I’m not stable?” That stung. Sure, Harry had been depressed for a long time, but he’d been so much better lately.
“You… you could have anyone, Harry.”
“Anyone but you. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Someone without the complications of single parenthood.”
“Fatherhood has made you who you are.” Harry reached out a hand and tugged Draco over to him. “It was seeing how you care for Mira that made me want to know you now… Love looks good on you, Draco.”
Draco searched his eyes and then let himself be drawn into a long kiss. Afterwards, Draco began, “You could find someone simpler….”
Harry growled.
“But you’d better not,” Draco finished.
“Just as well. I wouldn’t know simple if it bit me.”
Draco laughed into the side of Harry’s neck. “Like this?” He set his teeth lightly on Harry’s earlobe and nibbled.
“Bed, you sexy thing,” said Harry.
o0o
Harry had volunteered to stay with Mira while Draco went to see someone about a possible job as magico-architect on a home renovation. Since the weather was fine, they went to a park near Grimmauld Place. Harry reminded her that it was a Muggle area, so they wouldn’t talk about magic, and Mira nodded.
After they had stopped to pet every dog whose owners permitted it, they reached the playground, and Mira ran off to climb around, nimble as the goat that her mother had sometimes been. She found a sandy-haired little boy to play with, something that involved a lot of running and shrieking and laughing.
Harry chatted with a few of the other parents. There was a lull in the noise and he looked to see Mira standing oddly quiet. Harry walked over.
“What did your mum say?” the boy was asking. Mira was silent.
“What did your mum say?” the boy repeated, cheerful and oblivious.
“Hi, Mira,” Harry said, coming to stand behind her. She pressed herself back against his legs, still quiet.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked. She nodded and he took her hand. “We need to leave now. Bye,” Harry told the little boy.
They walked back hand in hand. “It’s hard to know what to say sometimes, isn’t it,” Harry said. In the wizarding world, so many children had lost parents in the last war that people were more sensitive to those who were orphaned, and no wizarding child would have kept asking.
But Harry remembered when he’d started school in Little Whinging, having no answer when kids asked “What does your dad do?” or “Is your muom coming to pick you up?” Standing silent, turning away. Or days when the Dursleys had left him home alone, and he’d answered the phone to have some well-meaning stranger ask to speak to his parents. What could he say? They’re dead?
“My mum died when I was a baby too,” he told Mira.
She turned to look at him. “But she loved you very much, and she wanted you to be happy. And she would be very proud of you now,” she said, as if reciting something by heart.
“Yeah, she did, and… I hope so,” Harry said.
“And your papa loves you more than anything and he will always take care of you.”
His throat tightened. “He did - he tried - he died too,” Harry found himself saying.
What was he doing, telling his griefs to this little girl? What if he frightened her, what if she worried about Draco now?
Her eyes widened, but there was nothing but sympathy in them. She squeezed his hand. Tears pricked his eyelids. They kept walking.
o0o
The remaining members of the House of Black had gathered with Harry in his drawing room: Andromeda, Narcissa, Draco, Mira and Teddy.
“I will consent to rejoin the family,” Andromeda said, “but not under that motto.”
They all looked at the top of the tapestry. Toujours pur, it read, ‘always pure’: a monument to pure-blood bigotry.
Andromeda cast several spells to remove the words, but they remained. “I’ll burn them off,” she said, but Mira cried “No! No more holes!”
“Let’s add words instead,” Draco said. “We’ll work around the words that are there. What can we celebrate that is pure?”
“A pure heart,” Harry said, looking at Mira Altair.
“And to be sure that ‘pure’ doesn’t sound too narrow -” Draco paused and looked at Harry. “A generous spirit.”
“It’s not honest to say this family has always had those things, any more than to say it’s always been pure-blooded,” Andromeda argued.
“We’ll recommend them, then, as something to strive for.” Draco cast a spell, tracing in the air. When he was finished, a line of golden words was suspended before their eyes. “It means ‘always cultivate a pure heart and a generous spirit’. Can we agree?”
“Yes,” said Andromeda. Mira and Teddy nodded. Narcissa agreed.
Draco cast another spell, and the golden letters moved toward the tapestry. The fabric rippled and wriggled as if trying to escape. “I need back-up,” Draco said, and Narcissa and Andromeda drew their wands.
“By our blood we command you,” Andromeda said, her wand fixed on the tapestry. “We reclaim the House of Black!”
The golden script sank into the tapestry, rearranging the words that were already there. The new motto gleamed across the top of the tapestry: Cultivez toujours un cœur pur et un esprit généreux.
“Now I’m ready to rejoin,” said Andromeda.
Narcissa faced her. She looked as though she were about to begin a solemn and ritual speech, but then her mouth quivered and her eyes filled. She held out her hands. “Sister - Andromeda - please come back to me. Help me rebuild this family with the strength of love.”
Andromeda took her hands. “Sister, Narcissa, make this a family of welcome for all of us joined by love.”
As they held hands and gazes, slowly the hole next to Narcissa’s name began to fill in, ends of thread lengthening, weaving, joining together . A glint of gold appeared, and Andromeda’s name wrote itself across the tapestry. They waited.
“Where’s Teddy’s name?” Mira wanted to know.
“Maybe we need his mother first,” Harry said. And for her, Tonks, they needed her father first, Ted Tonks. Muggle-born. Would the tapestry accept that?
“I know how to bring Teddy,” Mira said. “Make a line. Hold hands.” She grabbed Draco’s hand in one of hers, and Andromeda’s in the other. “Now we call him, and if he can’t break through us, he’s on our team! Teddy, you run to us when I call!”
Teddy laughed, backed up a little, and his hair flashed blue.
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Teddy right over!” Mira called.
Teddy ran the short distance towards them, holding back so as not to hurt his younger cousin’s hands. Mira held tight, and Teddy bounced back giggling from Draco and Mira’s clasped hands. He toppled into his grandmother’s arms and was swept up in a hug. “We’ve got you now!” Mira cried.
“Look at the tapestry!” Harry said. There was a ripple of energy down where Teddy’s name should be. A line of gold sprang from across Andromeda’s name and spelled out T-E-D…
“Teddy!” Mira crowed.
“No, that’s his grandfather,” Andromeda said, her voice breaking. “My husband.”
T-E-D T-O-N-K-S, and then a line down to N-Y-M-P-H-A-D-O-R-A, and a line across to R-E-M-U-S, and Harry had tears in his eyes. T-E-D-D-Y was spelling itself impatiently below at the same time as L-U-P-I-N was finishing in the line above, and from both ends a line sprang to connect Teddy to his parents.
“Hooray!” shouted Mira.
“Sirius,” Harry said shakily, “you need to come join the party.”
Draco spoke. “Sirius Black, I am your first cousin once removed. Like your brother, Regulus, I took a wrong path and realiszed it too late, but am trying to make amends. Your family needs your integrity. Please come back.” He took Harry’s hand.
“Sirius, I miss you. Look, your favorite cousin Andromeda is here on the tapestry now. And Tonks, from the Order of the Phoenix, you remember? And she married Remus! Remus is here! And their son, my godson, Teddy. Now I’m a godfather, can you believe it? This is Harry, Sirius. Please come home.”
The tapestry rippled as the hole next to Regulus’s name closed up, and through wet eyes Harry saw the gleam of gold. S-I-R-I-U-S.
Harry felt giddy. Draco put an arm around him and Harry leaned into his embrace.
Narcissa produced some champagne she’d brought from France and proposed a toast. Everyone was laughing and hugging and the children were cheering and bouncing up and down.
After a few more toasts, Andromeda and Narcissa began to call out more names for the tapestry. “Uncle Alphard! Come back! Your nieces want you and your nephew Sirius is waiting for you.”
“Who is the one who married the Weasley? Cordelia?”
“Cedrella. Cedrella Black Weasley! Come back!”
The tapestry appeared to have entered into the spirit of things, and was closing up the rest of the holes on its own, supplying the names they had forgotten.
“Look, there’s Phineas. And Marius, he was the Squib, wasn’t he?”
“And Isla who married a Muggle. I’d forgotten about her.”
Mira and Teddy started chanting “It’s our House and we’re all here! It’s our House and we’re all here!”
“You two wild things need to get out of the house for a while, I think,” said Draco, but no one was ready to leave the room with its new glowing names quite yet. Harry kissed Draco when he thought possibly other people were looking elsewhere, but he couldn’t be bothered to worry much about it. Finally they all went out for a walk in the park.
o0o
Harry and Mira were choosing more paints at the art supply shop. Harry had decided that he didn’t much care for drawing, but he really liked playing around with mixing colours. Mira did too. Her the-more-the-merrier experiments usually ended up a muddy brown, but she continued optimistic.
They headed for the door with their purchases. Draco was supposed to meet them after he finished his own shopping.
There was a sudden commotion in the street, a Body-Bind Curse and someone shouting about Death Eaters. Harry ran out the door. Down the street he saw an elderly wizard with an outstretched wand pointing at Draco, who stood petrified with a jumble of packages at his feet.
His heart in his mouth, Harry went for his wand to disarm the attacker and release Draco. Just then Mira shouted “Papa!” and bolted toward her father. The unknown wizard turned with his wand upraised.
Instinctively Harry slammed a Shield Charm around Mira. He thought relief lit Draco’s eyes, but at that instant the attacker grabbed Draco’s arm, and with a pop of Disapparition both were gone.
Harry swore and ran to Mira. She was sobbing as he scooped her up. “I want my papa! I want my papa!”
“I know, I know. We’ll get him back. Hush just a moment, can you, sweet one?”
Harry summoned a Patronus and sent it off to alert the Aurors to the abduction.
Mira clung to him. Harry was desperate to go after Draco. “I want to go look for your papa, Mira, but I have to get you somewhere safe first.”
“I want to go with you!”
“You can’t, dear heart. Your papa would want you to be safe. Let’s take you to Andromeda and Teddy, and then I can go help your papa. Can you be brave, so we can go quickly?”
His only answer was a storm of tears. Harry carried her grimly to the nearest public Floo, hoping that Andromeda was at home.
o0o
Once Mira was settled with a worried Andromeda and Teddy, Harry rushed back to Diagon Alley. He couldn’t get a magical trace. He tried to find witnesses who could identify the elderly wizard, without luck. He stormed into Auror headquarters demanding information, but they had no leads. He looked frantically through their photos of past suspects, but none resembled the wizard he had seen. By nighttime he had run out of ideas.
He went to talk to Ron. “I’m tempted to start Apparating to places at random and call out his name.”
“In the dark? I think you ought to go home and try to get some rest. Sorry, mate, I just don’t see what else you can do. Start fresh in the morning.”
Harry went home, but couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, worried, heartsick, lonely. Missing Draco. Missing Mira. How must Draco be feeling? Because Draco was alive - he had to be alive - Harry couldn’t bear to believe anything else.
He grabbed his wand, cast Lumos, and went down to the drawing room. By the light of the wand he examined the tapestry. There was Draco’s year of birth. No year of death. He was alive.
In the flood of relief, Harry realiszed that he could send a message. He might not be able to find Draco, but his Patronus could. He summoned a happy memory and up floated an image of Draco in bed, morning sunlight on his bare chest, laughing, his eyes drifting down to Harry’s mouth as he moved toward him for a kiss.
“Expecto Patronum!” Harry gave the Patronus his message: “Draco - I’ll find you. I’ll bring you home. Mira is safe. I love you.”
o0o
A couple of hours later Harry was roused from a fitful sleep by a loud sound from the drawing room. He rushed in to find Draco leaning against the mantel, covered in ashes. Draco staggered into his arms.
Unable to speak, Harry held him so tightly that he could feel the motion of Draco’s breathing. Finally he pulled back to ask, “Are you hurt?”
“No - just tired - and thirsty - Where’s Mira?”
“With Andromeda and Teddy. I was so worried. We should get you to St. Mungo’s to be checked.”
“I’m all right…”
“You can barely stand. I’m not taking any chances. I’m taking you there, and then I’ll get Mira.”
Perhaps Draco had run out of energy for arguing. Harry took him to the hospital reception and waited until he was admitted. “I’ll be right back with Mira,” he told Draco as he left.
When Harry returned with Mira and moved to go up to the Spell Damage wing on the fourth floor, the Welcome Wizard at the reception desk stopped him. “Only family members are permitted to visit the patient while his condition is being assessed.”
“But I’m the one who brought him in,” said Harry.
“Only family members…”
“We are family. I have his daughter with me.”
“She may go in when an attendant has time to accompany her -”
“I’m not sending her with a stranger!” Harry said as Mira clung to him.
“Only family…”
“He’s my lover.”
“That is not a recogniszed…”
Harry swore and whipped his wand out. “Expecto Patronum!”
He sent his Patronus to Draco with a message: “They’ll only let family in to see you. Marry me?” The silver stag bounded away.
The desk attendant was shouting at him to put his wand away, but was soon drowned out by the Sonorus boom of Draco’s voice echoing through the hospital. “Yes, Harry Potter, I will marry you, if that’s what it takes to get you in here!”
“Good enough to be getting on with,” said Harry. “I’m off to visit my husband now.” He hoisted Mira up into his arms and took off in the direction the Patronus had gone, leaving the Welcome Wizard sputtering.
Once they found Draco’s room Mira squirmed out of his arms and ran to her father. Harry hung back a moment until Draco reached out and pulled him down to sit on the bed. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Draco said. “Now that I have you two, I’m fine. Exhausted, but fine.”
“I’ll let you sleep, then... I should notify the Aurors.”
“Don’t you dare leave me,” Draco whispered.
“Wasn’t going to,” Harry said.
“Never mind Aurors. Get closer.”
Harry studied him.
“Truly, Harry, there is no danger. I just want you.”
“Mira, let’s take our shoes off,” Harry said. “Pull back the covers so we can get in. Our family is going to take a nap.” He closed the bed-curtains with his wand, and cast a quiet Shield Charm.
The hospital bed was narrow, but as they all had their arms wrapped around one another, it didn’t much matter. Mira made a contented mumur as she snuggled up against her father. Harry pulled the blanket up over them all. He pressed a light kiss to Draco’s cheek. “Nice use of the Sonorus charm.”
“Nice Patronus, O My Betrothed.”
“I’ll teach you how to make one. You concentrate on a happy memory.”
Draco smiled, his arm tightening around Harry. His eyes drifted shut. Mira’s eyelids fluttered.
Harry watched the two of them, their faces peaceful, their chests rising and falling steadily. His own breath slowed and deepened, following their rhythm, and he slept.
o0o
Later that day, the Healers confirmed that Draco was free to go.
“I’d feel safer if you were at Grimmauld Place, until this is sorted out,” Harry said.
“I’ll tell you what happened tonight, after Mira’s asleep,” Draco said.
“Mira, would you like to come on a sleepover to my house?” Harry asked. She nodded.
They had a quiet dinner. Mira was subdued, and fell asleep soon afterwards, leaning against her father on the sofa as they looked at a storybook. Draco carried her upstairs to the bedroom next to Harry’s that they had gottenmade ready for her. Harry followed.
“I don’t want to leave her alone up here,” Draco said.
“Come sit in my room and we can talk. We’ll hear her if she wakes.”
Draco followed Harry into the bedroom, but made no move to sit.
“Draco… I will listen to anything you are willing to tell me. And then we need to find this wizard and stop him before he does something like this again.”
“He won’t. He’s just an old man.”
“A crazy, dangerous - ”
“Grieving old man. He lost his daughter, years ago. She was murdered by Death Eaters in the first war.”
“But what’s that to do with you? You were a baby then.”
“He thought…” Draco’s face twisted. “He thought I was my father.”
“You don’t look anything like him.”
Draco gave a tired laugh. “I doubt many people would agree with you.”
“You don’t. You’ve grown into someone completely different. Anyone who can’t see that is an idiot.”
“Well, he was just an old man who’s been living alone for too long with only his grief for company. And when he saw me, something snapped.”
“What did he do? Did he hurt you?”
“No, he tried a few spells to punish me, but he didn’t have the heart to make them effective. Mostly he just talked, talked and cried. I couldn’t say anything, because of the Body-Bind Curse.”
“Draco....”
“Finally your Patronus came. It confused him. He didn’t know why it called me Draco, instead of Lucius. He switched to Incarcerous, but loosened the gag so I could speak. I told him that I wasn’t Lucius, I was his son. I told him that I was sorry about his daughter. I told him that I had a daughter too.”
“So he believed you?”
“Not at first. We were both very tired by then.”
“Why did he change his mind?”
“He showed me his daughter’s picture. He was sobbing. I cried too. He said… he said that my father would never have cried.”
Draco was shaking. Harry wrapped him in his arms.
“She was just a little girl, Harry. She was just Mira’s age.”
“Oh, Draco.” Harry held him while he wept.
“Come.” Harry drew Draco to the bed and they shed their clothes and lay together quietly. Harry stroked Draco’s hair and they slept.
Early the next morning Harry woke to find his lover smiling at him. Harry moved to kiss him but Draco pushed him gently onto his back, then planted kisses down his body until Draco took him in his mouth. Harry’s hands trembled on Draco’s head. He was lifted by passion until he cried out and fell back.
Draco took Harry’s hand down and placed it on himself and they moved together until Draco too cried out, and Harry drank in the beautiful sight of his lover’s face lost to passion. Undone by love.
They slept again and woke when sunlight spilled warmly over them. “Well,” Draco said, “now that we’ve announced our engagement to the wizarding world at large, what are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t care about the world at large, but I never want that to happen again, some officious prat in a hospital trying to keep me from seeing you because he’s decided we’re not family.”
“I’m not sure what’s necessary for the Ministry to recognisze a marriage. I suppose we can always make our own ceremony. Mira might enjoy being a bridesmaid. She and Teddy could pelt each other with flowers.”
“Hermione would fight a legal battle for us. And if that tufty-haired wizard who always does the marriages and funerals won’t do it, I’ll bet Luna would be willing to officiate.”
“As long as I don’t have to wear radishes.”
“Dirigible Plums.”
“Those either. My mother will be wanting to design the robes, and I feel sure that jewelry made of orange produce will clash with whatever she comes up with.”
“You and Mira should move in here. There’s loads of room. You could open a magico-acupuncture studio and an architectural office both.”
“Don’t you think that having an Unplottable address might be bad for business?”
“Spoilsport. I’ll give art classes for children. We’ll have a room just for messing about with paint. Mira and I can run a dog-walking business for Muggles in the neighborhood.”
“Oh, you two are going to gang up on me and get a puppy, I can see it now.”
o0o
As it happened, neither the Ministry nor the tufty-haired wizard were agreeable to the idea of their marriage. But Hermione did take on the legal battle, Luna did officiate, Narcissa did design the robes, and Mira and Teddy did pelt each other with flowers and tumble around with a shaggy black puppy named Snuffles. Harry and Draco exchanged vows and neither of them wore Dirigible Plums, although Luna wore enough of them to make up for everyone else. Hagrid baked Rock Cakes and no one cracked a tooth on one (perhaps because no one actually ate one, but they did vanish from the plate). Many Weasleys came, and Mira and Victoire, who had met at play group, chattered in French while Teddy pestered George for tricks and Draco conversed with Bill and Fleur about raising bi-lingual children. The Quibbler wished the happy couple well, and The Daily Prophet, though not invited, filled pages with speculation.
On their return from a honeymoon in the Isles of Scilly (to see the puffins), Harry, Draco and Mira stepped out of the Floo into the drawing room at Grimmauld Place. The afternoon sunlight seemed to make the lettering on the tapestry gleam even more than usual. Mira ran over to the wall. “Look! It’s our House and we’re all here!”
“Mmm-hmm,” Harry said, feeling a little tired at the thought of unpacking.
“We’re all here!” Mira repeated. She tugged Harry and Draco over to look.
On the other side of Draco’s name, a new golden line linked to a new golden name. Harry Potter.
“See? Isn’t it pretty?” Mira said.
“It’s beautiful,” Draco said.
Harry’s eyes stung. Let anyone try to keep me away from my family again, he thought fiercely. If the Ministry doesn’t like my marriage, they can take it up with the tapestry of The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
He looked at his husband and his daughter. “Beautiful,” he repeated. Pure hearts and generous spirits.
Anything is possible.
o0o
End Notes: In addition to using characters and a world belonging to J. K. Rowling, this story echoes a few other writers’ phrases. The endearment “O Best Beloved” comes from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. “Dearest freshness” is from Gerard Manley Hopkin’s sonnet God’s Grandeur. You Sexy Thing is a song by Hot Chocolate.
Zubenelgenubi ("The Southern Claw") is a star in the constellation Libra, formerly in the constellation Scorpius. Booboo is used by some as a name for the star Eta Draconis in the constellation Draco, but how it got that name is a bit of a mystery.
A few links for anyone interested:
Here is Mira’s favorite cinematic dance number, with that funny man Donald O’Connor, Make ‘Em Laugh, and her second favorite, with that other funny man Gene Kelly dancing in puddles and Singin' in the Rain. You can see the two of them together in Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses, another number from the same film - imagine if the Weasley twins were tap-dancers sent to elocution lessons. Mira’s grandmother prefers the elegance of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, dancing Cheek to Cheek. (The fancy dancing starts a couple of minutes in.)
And here is a Provençal goat - this one is a male, but the females look very similar (and can also have horns and beards), and they come in various colors. Did you know that goats climb trees?
