𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 22

1.

In the distance, there is the faint sound of breaking glass. Draco doesn't realize that his hand is emptied of the soapy dish until he hears the crunch of shards under his father's boots. He is rooted in place as the swirling scent of his father's cologne reaches his nose.

He is a child again, on his father's knee, in his father's office, touching his father's objects in the cabinet, learning how to fly a broom as his father watches and nods and tells him to pull back. The smell is strong, like incenses in Knockturn Alley, and rich.

His body falls falls falls and cannot get up, yet he doesn't move.

"So this is where you have been hiding?" his father says.

No! he screams. "Yes," he murmurs, his stomach plummeting when his father's lip curls up, "Muggle scum" on his breath.

Draco watches the scene unfold, much like a program on the telly. He can feel his body standing, ready to slump forward, his mouth open as he stops himself from breathing. This is not real, this dream. He will wake in bed, with Potter beside him, and his father will be dead, food of the fish in the icy northern sea.

But his father simply stands, breathing, as real as Draco is.

"You're dead," he manages, choking on the words. His throat has closed up. Bile burns his stomach, rising, rising with a moan, pained and awful and shameful. "You're a ghost."

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" his father whispers. His mouth is set in a thin line as Draco nods, once, and too late. His father sits at the edge of the couch, his eyes shifting to the sides, taking in the telly, the Muggle photographs, the door to the kitchen where he can see the microwave, everything, everything Muggle, except for a scrubbed-out cauldron in the bottom of the closet in the backroom.

His fingers touch the edge of a facing chair as he sits himself down onto the cushion, perched on the precipice. His eyes search his father out beneath the new lines in his face, beneath the new glaze over his cold eyes, watching him, roving over him, this house, judging.

"So you married a Muggle," his father murmurs, stroking the arm of the couch with the tip of his wand. His eyes roll to Draco as he speaks, narrowing them.

"I- no," Draco says.

"A Muggleborn, then," his father says. He considers for a moment, his tongue touching his lower lip before he leans closer to Draco. "And you have children with her."

He can't bear to deny it, to admit the truth, so he nods, the lump in his throat pressing, and the twisting in his stomach so tight he can hardly focus on anything besides the gut-wrenching agony of these moments. The clock ticks, time spreading into eternity. His father sits in silence, calculating his situation for hours and Draco grows smaller by the second.

He is the child again.

"They're my family," he chokes. "They're-"

"Yes, I see," his father says. "You have a daughter," he adds, turning to the entranceway. His eyes move over Pyrrha as she stands awkwardly, holding the doorframe and biting her lip. "And will you introduce us?" his father says, standing up slowly and holding his hand out, palm raised for Pyrrha to take.

Draco swallows the lump in his throat and inhales slowly. "Pyrrha," he murmurs, nodding to her as she walks forward, casting him a tentative smile. "My father," he whispers, his breath catching as his father reaches for Pyrrha's hand and a dark smile curves his lips.