𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 4

1.

Potter staggers back like he’s had a few too many butterbeers. Draco thinks that this is awfully familiar, considering how one of the last times they met he had had a few too many butterbeers.

“You’re saying- that-” he shakes his head and laughs, a mirthless little chuckle that settles in Draco’s ears, ringing, echoing.

“I’m saying just leave me alone!” he says, his voice breaking. He clears his throat and tries again, “Just get out, Potter.” He’s so tired. He tries to reach for his wand, but his hand is so heavy, like iron, and drags across his bed. He can’t remember where he left it. Maybe it- was it in the kitchen, when he felt the first pang? Maybe it is in the bathroom, where he tried to charm some of the blood off the floor three days ago, but blacked out instead?

Potter’s glasses are sliding down his nose as he yells. The baby whimpers, something else is in his flat; Draco can hear the sounds of something on his flooring and he cringes, because he hates dogs with a passion and didn’t Potter have a dog a few years ago? A great black oaf?

“If it’s mine, then-”

“Just shut up!” he shrieks. “You ruined my life! You ruined my family! And now you want to ruin this! Just shut up, Potter! I fucking hate you!”

“But you- you drugged me, didn’t you Malfoy? You hate me, but you- and now-” Potter points to the baby, his lip curling up and his brow furrowing. “Now you, have it and-”

“It’s not an it,” he snaps. “It’s a her!”

Potter stops yelling. His eyes are bright and furious and his teeth are clenched. He moves up to the bed and Draco shrinks back, putting his hands out to pick her up and hold her, but instead Potter gets to her first.

Draco freezes. His insides curl the bit of food he found in his fridge yesterday, the last something he’s eaten in nearly a week. But Potter doesn’t move to pick her up and Apparate away, instead he simply stares and touches her cheek with his fingers, the gentlest touch. His face starts to soften as her dark brackish eyes look at him, unfocused and unknowing.

“She’s mine, then?” Potter whispers.

A lump has formed in Draco’s throat and his chokes off any answer he might have had. He’s afraid of Potter, afraid he’ll take her away, afraid he’ll be so so so cold and alone and weak again, but he nods, only once.

2.

Potter lives in a better part of the city, where there are more trees and lawns than derelict alleyways, where there are more automobiles than hags, where there are houses and hedges and Muggles with briefcases. Draco watches them around suppertime, coming home to their wives and families and he’s envious, in a way, of what they have.

Potter comes home around dinnertime, too. For the first few weeks, he buys strange food that comes wrapped in brown paper and tins that Draco has never seen before. Fried things, stewed things, strange sweets that come in crinkling wrappers, yellow on the outside, white and tasteless on the inside. Crisps and chips and curry and beer. He likes Twinkies and Hobnobs best. Mother always used to say he had a sweet tooth.

For the first few weeks, Draco did almost nothing. He could do almost nothing before, except lie abed in his flat, moaning and aching all day. He was so, so tired from the birth. He could never sleep- the baby would wake him up, demanding to bed fed, burped, changed, something. He felt like a zombie, hardly alive, but there was no sweet release of death, either, only an endless half-consciousness with screaming babies and nappies smelling of shit and cracked nipples and bleeding out of-