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suki_blueTitle: Parity Transformations
Fandom: HP
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17 overall
Summary: Eleven years since he ran from Hogwarts and seven years since the end of the war, Draco has moved on. Now in his late twenties, Draco lives a reclusive life in a tiny village in Hampshire. Never in a million years does he expect to cross paths with Harry Potter again. But he does, and there are two, rather small and rather excitable, complications.
Beta done by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amejisuto. Thank you, darling.
A/N: Compliant with all canon up to HBP so there may be spoilers for any of the first six books. As this fic is already planned out in full, it will not be compliant with book 7 and will therefore contain NO SPOILERS.
Previous Chapters: HERE
June turned to July and the weather got hotter. Draco’s garden burst into flower, Californian-lilacs, hydrangeas and buddleia colouring the edges with intermittent smudges of mauve and purple between vibrant shocks of pink roses and the white and yellow of tree poppies.
The grass was slightly longer than normal, which annoyed Draco greatly as he marched across it, heading for the far right corner of his garden, secateurs and gloves in hand. He itched to mow it shorter, but the hot, dry weather was already browning the tips of the blades. Any shorter and he would end up with bald spots in his lawn. That was no laughing matter.
It was time to cut back some of the early bloomers, Draco had decided. The deadheads just wouldn’t do and the foliage was starting to look untidy. He came to a spotty-leafed lungwort first and started snipping quickly and efficiently.
When the phone started ringing at eleven o’clock, he almost didn’t hear it, and by the time he answered it, he was breathless from the sudden sprint.
‘Hello? … What? No, you’re mistaken … I see … I’ll be right there.’
Draco checked his watch. There was a bus due in two minutes. He grabbed his keys and wallet and threw himself out of the house, hurrying down to the bus stop.
How could this be? Kasen in a fight? At four-years-old?
Draco’s fingers twitched nervously. This was so unlike his son. Yes, Kasen had a little of the Malfoy temper, but he wasn’t a physical boy at all. He’d never tried to hit or bite or kick or any such thing.
Where was that damn bus?!
Draco turned to look into the distance as the sun flashed off the windscreen of a silver Peugeot 307.
‘Hey, get in.’
Draco stared at Potter through the open passenger window.
‘Come on. I’m betting we’re going to the same place.’
‘Has James been fighting, too?!’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Oh, Merlin.’ Draco swung open the car door and climbed inside, the wooden acorn hanging from the rear-view mirror filling his nostrils with the scent of vanilla. ‘I suppose they’ve been fighting each other,’ he said after he’d banged the door shut.
Potter glanced at him briefly as he pulled out of the bus stop. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I really hope not. They’ve been getting on so well.’
Draco nodded even though Potter was watching the road. ‘All I hear is James this and James that.’
‘Yeah, same here. I thought they’d really taken to each other.’
‘As had I.’
They made the rest of the short journey in silence and parked up directly outside the day care centre. They shut their doors in tandem and Potter pointed his keys and locked the car with a beep.
‘I want us to be friends,’ Potter blurted as they walked up to the door.
Draco stopped and looked up sharply, taken aback by such directness.
‘Please tell me we can work this out? I don’t want the boys to fall out. And I want us to be friends, too. There no reason why we can’t anymore.’
Still unsure what to say, Draco nodded, turned back to the door and punched in the security code. They paused at the office door and Draco figured out what he wanted to say.
‘Many things can be undone. This is one of them. We will fix this.’
Looking relieved, though Draco couldn’t work out why, Potter let out a long breath and attempted a smile. ‘Thanks.’
Draco knocked on the door.
‘Enter,’ said a firm voice, and Draco and Potter looked almost guiltily at each other before Draco opened the door.
There, standing to the side of Mrs Thomas’s desk, were Kasen and James and one other little boy who Draco couldn’t quite recognise. The reason for this was that the third little boy was covered from head to toe in yellow paint.
Draco blinked at him, rather surprised, then he pulled himself together ‘What seems to be the problem?’ he said. He realised a split second after he said it, that it was the daftest thing he could ever have come out with. For some reason, Potter had turned away and coughed.
‘The problem is that Kasen has tipped an entire bucket of yellow paint over this poor boy.’
‘A bucket? What on earth were they doing with a whole bucket of it?’
‘They were hand painting, Mr Malfoy, but that’s hardly the – ’
‘Kasen,’ Draco interrupted before Mrs Thomas got going, ‘why did you do such a thing to …’
‘Roland was being mean to James. He kept flicking paint at him and then he called him a rude name. I warned him, Daddy,’ Kasen said, quite seriously, ‘but he said it again. So I tipped the paint over his stupid head.’
‘I see.’ Draco quickly processed this information, his Slytherin brain firing up and slipping into gear. ‘So this boy Roland was bullying James? Is that correct, Kasen?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Kasen replied, his back straightening. He would have looked smart and slightly regal if it hadn’t been for the blob of yellow paint on the tip of his nose.
‘Has this happened before?’ Potter asked his son, kneeling beside him and pulling him a little closer.
James nodded. ‘Are we in trouble?’
‘No, you’re not,’ Potter said.
‘I will not have this level of squabbling at this centre, Mr Potter.’
‘And what exactly has James done?’
‘According to Roland, James provoked him.’
‘I didn’t!’ James cried.
Kasen backed him up. ‘He didn’t, Mrs Thomas. Roland is always picking on people. I won’t let him pick on my friend.’
‘Mrs Thomas, while I don’t approve of my son’s actions, and he will be punished for them, I do understand why he chose to behave in this way. James and Kasen have become firm friends and it is admirable that they would wish to defend one another.’
Actually, Draco felt very proud. He felt like he’d done something good, that Kasen was on the right path and would not grow up bitter and unhappy, like Draco had.
Draco had loved his parents dearly; as he was sure they had loved him. They had given him everything his heart had desired. Almost. Sometimes, a child needed to be reminded he was loved – shown.
Draco had developed his own secret saying: a cuddle a day keeps the Dark Arts at bay. There would never be a day that Kasen would doubt how much Draco loved and cared for him above all other things.
They discussed the matter for a further five minutes whereupon Roland’s mother, Mrs Butter, arrived complete with a plastic sheet and rubber gloves. She was a timid woman, which Draco took full advantage of, and he guilt-tripped her into admitting that it was all Roland’s fault.
‘Don’t you feel guilty at all?’ Potter said, leaning over the back seat to check James’s and Kasen’s seat belts were done up correctly.
‘Not as much as I probably should, I expect.’
Potter shut the back door and climbed into the front, starting up the car. ‘Me neither.’
‘Well, there was no harm done, was there? A little bit of washable poster paint was better than a broken nose and some missing teeth.’
Potter laughed. ‘I love the way your mind works.’
‘So do I,’ Draco said cheerfully.
Draco was feeling far too relieved to feel guilty. James and Kasen were still friends. They hadn’t fallen out at all. They still had each other. Draco hadn’t realised how much he wanted Kasen to have someone special, a good friend, until James came along. It hadn’t seemed important before, but now it was like one more thing that ensured his happiness.
‘Where to?’
‘Excuse me?’ Draco asked, distracted by his thoughts.
‘Where to? I’ll drop you home.’
‘Oh. Erm.’ Damn, Draco hadn’t even considered this snag when he’d taken Potter up on his offer of a lift home.
‘I can drop you at the bus stop,’ Potter said, ‘if you’d rather.’
Draco considered if he would rather. Did he want Potter to have his address? Was the chance of friendship worth the chance of discovery by the wizarding world? He listened the quiet giggling behind him; two children who’d had no part in any of the horror of the war. Draco wondered if he’d ever sounded that innocent, if he’d ever been that innocent.
He gave Potter his address and in return received a smile like Potter knew what he was thinking, like he knew the potential cost, like he understood that Draco had just opened a door and left it wide open.
*****
Draco ran, his heart pounding harder than his feet on the rough, uneven pavement.
Six months and they’d found him.
And there was no-one to save him. No-one but himself.
Icy wind blew his hood down over his back revealing dirty blond, unkempt hair.
‘It’s him! It’s definitely him!’
‘Kill him! The Dark Lord will reward us handsomely for his body!’
Draco whirled around, his damp hair whipping into his face. He pointed his wand at the nearest moving shape and screamed, ‘AVADA KEDAVRA!’
The dark mound dropped, smacking onto the floor with a wet squelch.
‘AVADA KEDAVRA!’
The second Death Eater dropped and Draco, breathing heavily and fighting hysteria, looked frantically around him for the third and final foe. There was no-one there. He tried to force himself to calm down, to breathe more quietly, to make less noise so he could hear. He backed up down the path, looking left, right, left, back, forward, left –
A noise!
Draco scraped the hair out his face and held his shaking wand aloft, pointing at nothing, but ready nonetheless. He felt tears threatening. His life could be cut short at any moment. Any moment. Any moment.
Left, right, left, back, left, back, right, back.
Any moment. Any moment. Any –
‘Boo!’ a deep and amused voice whispered, and then Draco was down, his head slamming hard against the pavement. He was flipped over onto his back and then Draco felt a dead weight pushing against him, hot, stale breath in his face, and when he opened his eyes he wasn’t surprised to see Fenir Greyback grinning down at him.
‘I always wondered what the aristocracy tasted like.’
‘STUPIFY!’
The weight left him and Draco staggered to his feet, his vision obscured by the blood in his eyes and the dizziness in his head. He walked backwards, shaking, and squinting at the figure in front of him. He wasn’t sure, but the half-cloaked face seemed familiar, safe, kind.
‘Draco Malfoy?’
Remus Lupin, a member of the Order. The others would be near.
Feeling like he should have been saved, like this should have been the moment someone held him and told him it was all going to be okay, Draco ran, leaving Remus’s voice and the crack of Apparating Order members far behind him.
*****
Draco didn’t invite Potter in. He’d been tempted. What would have been the harm? But Draco wasn’t quite ready to fling himself all the way into a full-blown friendship with anyone, never mind the man who’d been his enemy for so long.
Kasen whinged when Potter and James had left, and then promptly and firmly refused to eat any lunch. Draco threw away the salad he’d made and let Kasen have a packet of Wotsits instead; it was something, at least.
After “lunch” Draco went back to his garden to finish cutting back the lungwort. He cut off all the deadheads and trimmed back the foliage as far as it would go.
Kasen sat down beside him. ‘Am I going to be punished?’ he asked.
Draco put down his secateurs and regarded his son carefully. Kasen was the mirror image of Draco at the same age, physically identical in every way.
‘Are you sorry for what you did?’
Kasen seriously thought about it, his brow furrowing while he tried to make sense of what was in his head, processing, sorting. ‘No.’
‘Why?’ Draco asked.
‘Because I don’t like bullies.’
Draco’s heart clenched tightly. ‘I’m not going to punish you,’ he said.
Kasen beamed.
‘This time,’ Draco added with a pointy finger. ‘But perhaps you could find a way to stand up for James that doesn’t involve anything messy or James’s father and I being called in. They won’t put up with that sort of behaviour at school, you know. And the last thing you want is to start a rivalry this young.’
‘Okay. Can James come to tea soon?’
Draco rolled his eyes and pulled off his gardening gloves. His lecture had obviously gone in one ear and out the other. ‘We’ll see.’
Kasen fell back against the grass. ‘Please.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘That means no!’
‘No, it doesn’t. It means we’ll see.’ Draco smirked and stood up, collecting his tools.
‘Daddy, you’re so annoying!’
Draco laughed as he walked in the house. ‘You really don’t know just how annoying I can be.’
TBC…
Fandom: HP
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17 overall
Summary: Eleven years since he ran from Hogwarts and seven years since the end of the war, Draco has moved on. Now in his late twenties, Draco lives a reclusive life in a tiny village in Hampshire. Never in a million years does he expect to cross paths with Harry Potter again. But he does, and there are two, rather small and rather excitable, complications.
Beta done by
amejisuto. Thank you, darling.A/N: Compliant with all canon up to HBP so there may be spoilers for any of the first six books. As this fic is already planned out in full, it will not be compliant with book 7 and will therefore contain NO SPOILERS.
Previous Chapters: HERE
June turned to July and the weather got hotter. Draco’s garden burst into flower, Californian-lilacs, hydrangeas and buddleia colouring the edges with intermittent smudges of mauve and purple between vibrant shocks of pink roses and the white and yellow of tree poppies.
The grass was slightly longer than normal, which annoyed Draco greatly as he marched across it, heading for the far right corner of his garden, secateurs and gloves in hand. He itched to mow it shorter, but the hot, dry weather was already browning the tips of the blades. Any shorter and he would end up with bald spots in his lawn. That was no laughing matter.
It was time to cut back some of the early bloomers, Draco had decided. The deadheads just wouldn’t do and the foliage was starting to look untidy. He came to a spotty-leafed lungwort first and started snipping quickly and efficiently.
When the phone started ringing at eleven o’clock, he almost didn’t hear it, and by the time he answered it, he was breathless from the sudden sprint.
‘Hello? … What? No, you’re mistaken … I see … I’ll be right there.’
Draco checked his watch. There was a bus due in two minutes. He grabbed his keys and wallet and threw himself out of the house, hurrying down to the bus stop.
How could this be? Kasen in a fight? At four-years-old?
Draco’s fingers twitched nervously. This was so unlike his son. Yes, Kasen had a little of the Malfoy temper, but he wasn’t a physical boy at all. He’d never tried to hit or bite or kick or any such thing.
Where was that damn bus?!
Draco turned to look into the distance as the sun flashed off the windscreen of a silver Peugeot 307.
‘Hey, get in.’
Draco stared at Potter through the open passenger window.
‘Come on. I’m betting we’re going to the same place.’
‘Has James been fighting, too?!’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Oh, Merlin.’ Draco swung open the car door and climbed inside, the wooden acorn hanging from the rear-view mirror filling his nostrils with the scent of vanilla. ‘I suppose they’ve been fighting each other,’ he said after he’d banged the door shut.
Potter glanced at him briefly as he pulled out of the bus stop. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I really hope not. They’ve been getting on so well.’
Draco nodded even though Potter was watching the road. ‘All I hear is James this and James that.’
‘Yeah, same here. I thought they’d really taken to each other.’
‘As had I.’
They made the rest of the short journey in silence and parked up directly outside the day care centre. They shut their doors in tandem and Potter pointed his keys and locked the car with a beep.
‘I want us to be friends,’ Potter blurted as they walked up to the door.
Draco stopped and looked up sharply, taken aback by such directness.
‘Please tell me we can work this out? I don’t want the boys to fall out. And I want us to be friends, too. There no reason why we can’t anymore.’
Still unsure what to say, Draco nodded, turned back to the door and punched in the security code. They paused at the office door and Draco figured out what he wanted to say.
‘Many things can be undone. This is one of them. We will fix this.’
Looking relieved, though Draco couldn’t work out why, Potter let out a long breath and attempted a smile. ‘Thanks.’
Draco knocked on the door.
‘Enter,’ said a firm voice, and Draco and Potter looked almost guiltily at each other before Draco opened the door.
There, standing to the side of Mrs Thomas’s desk, were Kasen and James and one other little boy who Draco couldn’t quite recognise. The reason for this was that the third little boy was covered from head to toe in yellow paint.
Draco blinked at him, rather surprised, then he pulled himself together ‘What seems to be the problem?’ he said. He realised a split second after he said it, that it was the daftest thing he could ever have come out with. For some reason, Potter had turned away and coughed.
‘The problem is that Kasen has tipped an entire bucket of yellow paint over this poor boy.’
‘A bucket? What on earth were they doing with a whole bucket of it?’
‘They were hand painting, Mr Malfoy, but that’s hardly the – ’
‘Kasen,’ Draco interrupted before Mrs Thomas got going, ‘why did you do such a thing to …’
‘Roland was being mean to James. He kept flicking paint at him and then he called him a rude name. I warned him, Daddy,’ Kasen said, quite seriously, ‘but he said it again. So I tipped the paint over his stupid head.’
‘I see.’ Draco quickly processed this information, his Slytherin brain firing up and slipping into gear. ‘So this boy Roland was bullying James? Is that correct, Kasen?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Kasen replied, his back straightening. He would have looked smart and slightly regal if it hadn’t been for the blob of yellow paint on the tip of his nose.
‘Has this happened before?’ Potter asked his son, kneeling beside him and pulling him a little closer.
James nodded. ‘Are we in trouble?’
‘No, you’re not,’ Potter said.
‘I will not have this level of squabbling at this centre, Mr Potter.’
‘And what exactly has James done?’
‘According to Roland, James provoked him.’
‘I didn’t!’ James cried.
Kasen backed him up. ‘He didn’t, Mrs Thomas. Roland is always picking on people. I won’t let him pick on my friend.’
‘Mrs Thomas, while I don’t approve of my son’s actions, and he will be punished for them, I do understand why he chose to behave in this way. James and Kasen have become firm friends and it is admirable that they would wish to defend one another.’
Actually, Draco felt very proud. He felt like he’d done something good, that Kasen was on the right path and would not grow up bitter and unhappy, like Draco had.
Draco had loved his parents dearly; as he was sure they had loved him. They had given him everything his heart had desired. Almost. Sometimes, a child needed to be reminded he was loved – shown.
Draco had developed his own secret saying: a cuddle a day keeps the Dark Arts at bay. There would never be a day that Kasen would doubt how much Draco loved and cared for him above all other things.
They discussed the matter for a further five minutes whereupon Roland’s mother, Mrs Butter, arrived complete with a plastic sheet and rubber gloves. She was a timid woman, which Draco took full advantage of, and he guilt-tripped her into admitting that it was all Roland’s fault.
‘Don’t you feel guilty at all?’ Potter said, leaning over the back seat to check James’s and Kasen’s seat belts were done up correctly.
‘Not as much as I probably should, I expect.’
Potter shut the back door and climbed into the front, starting up the car. ‘Me neither.’
‘Well, there was no harm done, was there? A little bit of washable poster paint was better than a broken nose and some missing teeth.’
Potter laughed. ‘I love the way your mind works.’
‘So do I,’ Draco said cheerfully.
Draco was feeling far too relieved to feel guilty. James and Kasen were still friends. They hadn’t fallen out at all. They still had each other. Draco hadn’t realised how much he wanted Kasen to have someone special, a good friend, until James came along. It hadn’t seemed important before, but now it was like one more thing that ensured his happiness.
‘Where to?’
‘Excuse me?’ Draco asked, distracted by his thoughts.
‘Where to? I’ll drop you home.’
‘Oh. Erm.’ Damn, Draco hadn’t even considered this snag when he’d taken Potter up on his offer of a lift home.
‘I can drop you at the bus stop,’ Potter said, ‘if you’d rather.’
Draco considered if he would rather. Did he want Potter to have his address? Was the chance of friendship worth the chance of discovery by the wizarding world? He listened the quiet giggling behind him; two children who’d had no part in any of the horror of the war. Draco wondered if he’d ever sounded that innocent, if he’d ever been that innocent.
He gave Potter his address and in return received a smile like Potter knew what he was thinking, like he knew the potential cost, like he understood that Draco had just opened a door and left it wide open.
*****
Draco ran, his heart pounding harder than his feet on the rough, uneven pavement.
Six months and they’d found him.
And there was no-one to save him. No-one but himself.
Icy wind blew his hood down over his back revealing dirty blond, unkempt hair.
‘It’s him! It’s definitely him!’
‘Kill him! The Dark Lord will reward us handsomely for his body!’
Draco whirled around, his damp hair whipping into his face. He pointed his wand at the nearest moving shape and screamed, ‘AVADA KEDAVRA!’
The dark mound dropped, smacking onto the floor with a wet squelch.
‘AVADA KEDAVRA!’
The second Death Eater dropped and Draco, breathing heavily and fighting hysteria, looked frantically around him for the third and final foe. There was no-one there. He tried to force himself to calm down, to breathe more quietly, to make less noise so he could hear. He backed up down the path, looking left, right, left, back, forward, left –
A noise!
Draco scraped the hair out his face and held his shaking wand aloft, pointing at nothing, but ready nonetheless. He felt tears threatening. His life could be cut short at any moment. Any moment. Any moment.
Left, right, left, back, left, back, right, back.
Any moment. Any moment. Any –
‘Boo!’ a deep and amused voice whispered, and then Draco was down, his head slamming hard against the pavement. He was flipped over onto his back and then Draco felt a dead weight pushing against him, hot, stale breath in his face, and when he opened his eyes he wasn’t surprised to see Fenir Greyback grinning down at him.
‘I always wondered what the aristocracy tasted like.’
‘STUPIFY!’
The weight left him and Draco staggered to his feet, his vision obscured by the blood in his eyes and the dizziness in his head. He walked backwards, shaking, and squinting at the figure in front of him. He wasn’t sure, but the half-cloaked face seemed familiar, safe, kind.
‘Draco Malfoy?’
Remus Lupin, a member of the Order. The others would be near.
Feeling like he should have been saved, like this should have been the moment someone held him and told him it was all going to be okay, Draco ran, leaving Remus’s voice and the crack of Apparating Order members far behind him.
*****
Draco didn’t invite Potter in. He’d been tempted. What would have been the harm? But Draco wasn’t quite ready to fling himself all the way into a full-blown friendship with anyone, never mind the man who’d been his enemy for so long.
Kasen whinged when Potter and James had left, and then promptly and firmly refused to eat any lunch. Draco threw away the salad he’d made and let Kasen have a packet of Wotsits instead; it was something, at least.
After “lunch” Draco went back to his garden to finish cutting back the lungwort. He cut off all the deadheads and trimmed back the foliage as far as it would go.
Kasen sat down beside him. ‘Am I going to be punished?’ he asked.
Draco put down his secateurs and regarded his son carefully. Kasen was the mirror image of Draco at the same age, physically identical in every way.
‘Are you sorry for what you did?’
Kasen seriously thought about it, his brow furrowing while he tried to make sense of what was in his head, processing, sorting. ‘No.’
‘Why?’ Draco asked.
‘Because I don’t like bullies.’
Draco’s heart clenched tightly. ‘I’m not going to punish you,’ he said.
Kasen beamed.
‘This time,’ Draco added with a pointy finger. ‘But perhaps you could find a way to stand up for James that doesn’t involve anything messy or James’s father and I being called in. They won’t put up with that sort of behaviour at school, you know. And the last thing you want is to start a rivalry this young.’
‘Okay. Can James come to tea soon?’
Draco rolled his eyes and pulled off his gardening gloves. His lecture had obviously gone in one ear and out the other. ‘We’ll see.’
Kasen fell back against the grass. ‘Please.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘That means no!’
‘No, it doesn’t. It means we’ll see.’ Draco smirked and stood up, collecting his tools.
‘Daddy, you’re so annoying!’
Draco laughed as he walked in the house. ‘You really don’t know just how annoying I can be.’
TBC…