𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 17

1.

He asks Potter the date and he doesn’t know what to say when Potter tells him it’s August 16th. He’s been ill for so long- for nearly two years that the passage of time doesn’t seem real until he climbs out of bed, two days later, into the shower by himself.

His legs shake. Draco looks down at them. They are thin and pale and atrophied and he would barely recognize them, if it weren’t for the mole on his right knee. The water pools under his feet, grey and cool as it swirls down the drain.

Some things don’t fade, like the shaving spell Father taught him, all those years ago. His face, though, is gaunt and drawn and he has more lines in the corner of his eyes than he ought to. He looks dull in the mirror, which scowls at him and drawls, “Go eat something, would you?”

The hallway smells of baking, wafting upstairs from the kitchen. “Since when did Potter bake?” he mutters. The carpet feels strange on his bare feet, and the robes floating around his legs, too- so different from the bedsheets and pajamas he has grown used to.

Under his steps, the stairs creak. A face looks up at him from the living room, out from behind the telly and says, “Daddy?”

It takes Draco a moment to recognize Viola. Yes, he has seen her time and time again this past while, but never full conscious or alert. His eyes were blurred with cramps and pains in his belly, fever or slumber. He almost doesn’t recognize her, this gangly almost-teenage girl, dressed in a green shirt that pulls a little tighter over a swelling chest.

He stops walking full when he sees the two big eyes staring at him from beside Viola.

“James,” he murmurs, who simply stares with his saucer-dish eyes, dark slate like the lake at Hogwarts. He doesn’t look like Potter. He doesn’t look like Draco, either, with mousy-brown hair and soft, round features that look more like a Longbottom than a Malfoy.

Viola turns to him and says, “It’s all right. It’s just Daddy” but James doesn’t move closer, shrinking away slightly when Draco steps closer. His chest constricts, his breaths coming shorter, harder because this isn’t what is supposed to happen. His children are supposed to run up to him with open arms, thrilled that he’s better, that he is walking around now, that he wants to get back to his normal life.

A pot bangs in the kitchen, and the stove door slams.

“What the hell are you doing?” a voice shouts, before a door slams again, and there is a squeal of pain.

Draco rushes inside to find Abraxas, standing as tall as him, sneering at a house-elf. The house elf holds a cake pan in his hands with something resembling a tea cozy.

“Father?” Abraxas whispers. “I didn’t think-”

“That’s right,” Draco says, his voice cracking, “whatever Potter gave me worked.”

“Snape’s potion,” Abraxas says. His eyes shift away from Draco and darken, watching the house elf set the cake pan on the table to cool. He pulls a chair out from the table and sits down the wrong way, draping his long arms over the back and shaking his head. “It worked.”

“So Potter had Snape make a potion?”

“Yeah,” Abraxas says, but his voice is hollow and even more distant than his visage.