Prologue

February 1

Well. This should be... interesting. Harry gazed at the prim writing on the scroll in his hands and shook his head in disbelief. Bugger it all, this was what came of giving in to Hermione's nagging. "You should be more involved in the community, Harry." "Politics isn't a dirty word, you know." "You could meet new people." "The papers are going to talk about you anyway; why not let them talk about something real for a change?"

Maybe it would've worked out better if he'd only listened to Hermione instead of also listening to Ron, who had been ducking Hermione's nagging as long as Harry had, but whose experience far outstripped Harry's, now that he'd married her. It had seemed like such a bright idea when Ron had suggested that maybe, if Harry took on some low-key but ostensibly public position, Hermione just might get off his back. "Just pick one of the Ministry volunteer posts, mate. Dad says there's loads of them where you don't do much more than talk to one person. Like the Uisneach Beltane Liaison post, you know they've been trying to fill that one since Bannerjee retired, and you pretty much only have to talk to the other Liaison. No publicity, no committees, and you can pretend you're taking Hermione seriously."

Taking her seriously. Good idea, Ron. He was going to hex them both.

Maybe he wouldn't have to. They might offer to hex themselves when they heard the results of their friendly advice. That would be nice.

He put the scroll away and pushed all scroll-related thoughts out of his mind as he turned to his work for the day. No point thinking about it any more; there was nothing to be done about it for another two weeks.

Besides, it could've been worse. The name on the scroll could've been Percy Weasley.

ooo000ooo

Bollocks.Draco stared at the memo scroll on his desk. Damn, he should've thought this over more carefully. This stupid Ministry position was supposed to be simple, a way of testing the waters at the Ministry to see if they were warm, to see if he could consider coming back in from the cold. An easy post, too - working with only one other Ministry volunteer, a seasoned veteran who had done this particular duty so many times he could probably do it in his sleep. Easy. Low stress.

Right.

He rubbed his forehead and, despite his irritation, snickered at the bubbly tone of the form letter. Obviously the clerk who'd sent it hadn't bothered to actually read the names on the form before sending it along; that, or she had an interesting sense of humour.

---------------
Mafalda Hopkirk
Muggle-Wizarding Friendship and Respect Department
Ministry of Magic
Re. Muggle-Wizarding Relations Liaison Volunteer for Beltane Eve, Hill of Uisneach

DearMr. Malfoy

Thank you for offering your services to the Muggle-Wizarding Friendship and Respect Department! Your cooperation is highly appreciated in the vital cause of keeping our Muggle friends safe and secure and completely unaware of our existence!

Your first meeting with your partner in this project will take place onFebruary 14, at the Winsome Witch Pub (Dublin), at 2:00pm. You will be expected to go over the details of your duties, and are encouraged to get to know your partner as well, to make your work not only effective and efficient, but also a lot of fun!

Your partner is Harry Potter.

Please let us know if you require us to arrange transportation for you. See you soon!

Sincerely,

Mafalda Hopkirk
---------------

ooo000ooo

(Owl Post)

(From the office of Harry Potter, to Draco Malfoy, Dublin, February 10)
Please confirm that you have received the information from the Ministry and that you will be available to meet Mr. Potter at The Winsome Witch on February 14 at 2:00 p.m.

(From Draco Malfoy to the office of Harry Potter, London, February 11)
I have received the Ministry information, but will be unable to meet at the Witch this Thursday until 4:00. Please let me know if the rescheduling is acceptable.

(From Harry Potter, to Draco Malfoy, Dublin, February 12)
That's fine.

1

February 14

Harry blew out his breath and stirred his tea, checking his watch. He'd arrived a bit early, and was busily telling himself that it was merely due to the fact that the meeting had originally been scheduled two hours earlier. Being early had nothing to do with not wanting to give Malfoy any advantage over Harry by virtue of him arriving at the pub first. It also didn't mean that he wanted the opportunity to act impatient if Malfoy turned up late. Which, if memory served correctly, was highly likely. Malfoy had often used lateness to make an entrance, or to show that he didn't much care about the people he left waiting. Never tardy for Snape or McGonagall's classes, but often strolling in with an insolent smirk ten minutes into Hagrid's lessons. Harry wondered whether Malfoy would come late, letting Harry know that he still didn't think much of him, or fawningly early, playing nice in order to get something from Harry. He wasn't sure which option would be worse.

Then again, maybe he wouldn't do either. Wouldn't make any kind of entrance or show any kind of reaction to Harry. Which was also possible, given that Harry had no idea whatsoever why Malfoy had taken this position in the first place, since it certainly didn't fit in with anything he'd ever thought he knew about Malfoy. Malfoy might have changed. It was possible.

Of course, it was also possible that some day Hedwig might strike up a deep friendship with Pidwidgeon, but he wasn't going to hold his breath for that either.

Harry perused the Quidditch scores in the paper, determined to not play any of Malfoy's little power games should it turn out that Malfoy was still playing them. He would act perfectly normal. Polite, businesslike. No sense in anticipating trouble when there might be none there.

He glanced around the pub as he finished reading the Quidditch pages and turned to the Music section, observing that the place didn't look too bad for a pub on Valentine's Day. Almost empty, fairly quiet, and nothing like the decor in Hogsmeade's pubs, which had always made him think of bands of drunken cupids sicking up all over town. This was far more discreet. Unfortunately, that discretion wasn't shared by all the patrons; to his left, a couple were gazing at one other with such besotted adoration that it was a wonder they weren't accompanied by a chorus of tweeting bluebirds, and to his right, another couple were exchanging come-hither looks with an intensity that would have made the average Knockturn Alley professional look demure. As Harry watched, the woman slid a little closer to the man and pursed her lips in what was probably meant to be a fetching manner. Harry averted his eyes and hoped they'd move the party to a more appropriate place before tongues got involved.

Idly he glanced at his watch. Four o'clock on the dot. He heard a soft throat-clearing and looked up.

"Malfoy." Harry stood up, noting that Malfoy definitely looked a hell of a lot more... mature, or something, than he had the last time Harry had seen him. Might be the glasses. Also very different from the last time Harry had seen him, sporting a short Muggle haircut, Muggle jeans and jumper. "Good to see you." He held out his hand.

"Potter. Likewise," Malfoy said politely, shaking Harry's hand. He looked at his watch. "Have you been waiting long?"

"No, I was just bit early." They sat down. "Do you want to order something before we start?"

"No, that's all right. I'd like to get straight to business."

"Right, good." OK, so far, so good. No unpleasantness yet. They both took out agendas and Harry put his quill and ink on the table before him, noting Malfoy's expensive-looking Muggle ballpoint pen. "So apparently we're supposed to meet five times between now and Beltane and owl in between for anything that comes up. I assume owls are all right?"

"Do you have e-mail?"

"Oh." Harry blinked. "Yeah. I don't really use it much."

"I can do owls, but I live in a Muggle neighbourhood. E-mail would be less conspicuous."

"Right. Noted." Harry cleared his throat and made a note of that, nodding as Malfoy handed him a business card with his e-mail address. "I'll, erm, have to figure out what my address is, probably send you an owl with it-"

"You can just send me an e-mail; I'll get it from there."

Harry nodded, feeling a bit off-balance, and realized that part of what was bothering him was Malfoy's utterly neutral tone. Not even a hint of mockery for Harry's obvious unfamiliarity with e-mail.

"Now, I'm assuming you know how all of this goes, right?" Malfoy said.

"Erm, basically. I mean, they sent me the file and I've reviewed it, but I was told-"

"What do you mean, they sent you the file?"

"I only just took over the position this week. Who were you doing this with before?"

"Before what?"

They stopped and stared at each other.

"You mean... this is your first time as Liaison?" Malfoy said slowly.

"Of course. Oh. Bollocks." Harry bit his lip. "This is your first time too."

"Obviously."

There was a small silence, broken only by a squishy squelching noise from the table to the left of them. Evidently, tongues had arrived on the scene.

"Well, that's a bit awkward, isn't it?" Harry finally said.

"Rather."

"I... don't actually know what we're supposed to do next."

"Nor do I," Malfoy admitted, looking uncomfortable for the first time. "I was expecting... I suppose we'll have to reschedule..."

"I suppose so." Harry frowned, then shook his head and stood up. "No, hold on, I'm not going back home just to come all the way out here again in two days. I'll just go firecall my assistant and see if he can Floo down with the file. He's at our Dublin office today anyway."

Bollocks, he thought as he explained what he needed to his assistant. So Malfoy was new at this too. So much for the easy, low-key volunteer position. They were both going to have to start from scratch, and if Harry's previous experience bore out, they were sure to find that, like most positions held by one person for a very long time, most of the knowledge and skills needed to do the jobs weren't written anywhere.

He came back to their table. "All right, he says he'll Floo down with it. Shouldn't take him more than a few minutes."

"Oh. That's good."

And then Harry realized the implications of his actions. No, he wouldn't have to come back to do their meeting another day, but here he was, with Draco Malfoy, stuck between chirping lovebirds and enthusiastic tongue-slurpers, with absolutely nothing to say, for however long it took Tim to find the bloody file.

Not too bright, are we, Potter?

All right. He'd really hoped they could do this without exchanging anything more personal than work-related information and inane chatter about the weather, but apparently that was not to be. Not only did they not have anything to work on, but for some reason right now Harry couldn't figure out how to smoothly segue into weather-talk for the life of him. Which might have been due to the moans coming from their left and the cooing sounds to the right.

"So." Harry cleared his throat. "How did you, erm, end up here?"

"I took a taxi."

Harry blinked. He had no idea whether Malfoy was being serious or facetious. "No, I don't mean - I mean, how did you end up taking the Muggle Liaison position for this?"

Malfoy's eyebrows went up slightly. "Oh. I heard that the previous Liaison wasn't going to do it any more. It seemed like an interesting idea at the time."

"What are you doing these days?"

"I have a job at Trinity College."

"A Muggle school?"

"Well, yes. I do live in the Muggle world," he said, a faint hint of dryness in his tone. Which, oddly, made Harry feel a little more at ease.

"Right." He nodded. "How did that come about?" And then he was back to feeling like an idiot, because of course, any fool could guess why Malfoy had ended up living in the Muggle world, and it wasn't really a terribly sensitive topic to bring up.

Malfoy's face remained expressionless. "If you mean was living in the Muggle world and getting a Muggle job part of my sentence, no, it wasn't," he said evenly, still perfectly polite, and Harry nodded, grateful that he didn't blush much any more. "I didn't have to do anything after my release, other than refrain from using any magic for three years. But I didn't wish to waste my time, so I ventured out into the Muggle world. Started volunteering, to fill the hours, and wound up teaching. It's not a bad job, so I kept it after the three years were done."

"What do you teach?"

"Music. What are you doing now? I'm not following the wizarding papers too closely these days."

"Oh, I'm not in them any more. Not much, anyway. I was playing Quidditch for a few years, and I was going to go into Auror training once that was done, but they're not exactly family-friendly, so I changed my mind. I'm a curse-breaker now. Work with Bill Weasley, mostly." He barely stopped himself from wincing overtly, and there was a brief silence. Bill Weasley was still horribly scarred and would be dealing with various werewolf tendencies for his entire life, thanks to Malfoy. Oops.

This was awkward as hell. It was obvious neither wanted to be here, Malfoy didn't seem to want to talk about himself much, Harry definitely didn't want to talk about himself, Malfoy didn't keep up with wizarding news much and Harry sure didn't keep up with Muggle news, the couple next to them appeared to have taken lessons from Ron and Lavender Brown's 50 Ways To Snog Inappropriately in Public... what the hell could they possibly talk about?

Malfoy's face had gone even more blank. "Curse breaking? Isn't that dangerous?"

"No, not at all. It's mostly theory. Figuring out puzzles, taking down wards, things like that. Interesting work, too." Harry hoped that his voice didn't sound anywhere near as ill at ease as he felt. "So do you live close to Uisneach?"

"Close enough; outskirts of Dublin."

That was another difference, Harry realized: he thought he detected a hint of an Irish accent in Malfoy's speech. "What's Dublin like? I only ever come here on business."

"Not a bad place to live," Malfoy said, and began to describe the city. Harry nodded politely, noting that Malfoy seemed very calm and cool, very professional. Certainly didn't look as ill at ease as Harry felt.

Then again, Harry probably didn't look or sound nearly as uncomfortable as he felt either. One skill he'd picked up during the war was the ability to act as though everything was under control, no matter what. Feeling somewhat uncomfortable at having to work with somebody he hadn't seen in years, with whom he'd had a conflictive relationship during school, really didn't measure up to most of the stuff he'd done during the war.

It probably didn't measure up to anything Malfoy had done in the war either. Or since the war. Malfoy had worked with Death Eaters, defected from their ranks, served nine months in Azkaban, lived without magic for three years, and got to know and work with Muggles. It was possible that having to interact with Harry didn't rate as a major challenge.

He cleared his throat again, casting about for another topic, but was spared the need to come up with one as he heard the swish of the pub's Floo and spotted his assistant stepping out. "Oh, there we go. That was fast." He sighed in relief and waved Tim over.

"Harry - oh, hello, you must be Mr. Malfoy," Tim said politely. "Harry, I think I've got it all, but let me know if there's anything missing. I'll be at work another hour or so-"

"No, thanks, Tim, I'm sure this'll be all."

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," Tim said, heading back to the Floo.

"See you tomorrow," Harry called out as he opened up the file. "Right, let's see... we've got a map of the site, a list of events going on during the week..."

"All of them? I thought-"

"No no, not all of them," Harry said. "Just the ones where there's a possibility of Muggles and wizards coming into contact. Most events are fine. For the Muggle things, most wizards who know about them are Muggle-borns who know enough not to disrupt anything. And most wizarding events take place at different times and places than the Muggle ones. We're only responsible for the overlaps."

"That's what I thought."

They spread the papers out over the table and they started to sift through them. "Let's see..." Malfoy said thoughtfully, picking up a chart with curlicues and doodles in the margins. "It looks like 'What' is the name of the event, 'When' is time and date, 'Where' is the location, 'Who' describes the participants, and 'Why' is an explanation of why this particular event has to be supervised by the Liaisons." He flipped the page. "What's this?"

Harry took a look. "I think it's yours. Looks like you're supposed to figure out plausible explanations to have on hand for any weird things Muggles might see. Bannerjee seemed to think that was a fun part of the job. I think I have a list of his somewhere..." Harry reflected briefly that he couldn't imagine Malfoy having fun and being creative for anything that wouldn't cause embarrassment to somebody else, but quickly headed that thought off. Keep an open mind, he reminded himself. "Yeah, here it is."

Malfoy nodded, looking it over. "Good, thanks. I'll read it and make a copy for you if you'd like."

"Yeah, sounds good." Harry picked up another page, a small piece of parchment with "Wizarding Representative" emblazoned on the front, and skimmed through it. "Informing wizard participants of restrictions... advise on Muggle behaviour... warn about wards and shields... be ready to contact Magical Law Enforcement, Obliviators, Healers..." He handed it to Malfoy. "I've already got a copy, but you may want one. That way you know what I'm supposed to be doing."

Malfoy nodded and handed Harry a similar piece of parchment with "Muggle Representative" written across the top, and Harry glanced it over. Pretty much what he had already gathered: tourist information, contacting the Wizard Liaison in case of breaches of security by wizards, acting as contact for Muggles aware of the wizarding world, preparing lists of Muggle organizations/people involved in Beltane activities that could potentially come into contact with wizarding activities. Good to have a written copy to refer to.

"I think I'm supposed to set up Portkeys," said Harry.

"Yes, I don't think I've anything to do with that."

This was actually rather interesting, Harry realized as they continued to leaf through the file. Very different from his regular type of work. Very non-magical, dealing with people and activities rather than complex charms or curses. He spared a moment's curiosity as to whether Malfoy might find it interesting because there was magic involved, even if it was so minimal.

"Hold on, I need to file some of this before we go on," Malfoy said, opened his briefcase and shuffled through a few papers, reorganizing them neatly. Harry caught a glimpse of sheets of music along with brightly coloured papers with scribbles on them.

"You teach children?" Harry asked curiously.

"A few." Malfoy moved the children's art work aside. "My classes and most of my private students are adults, but I also lead a children's choir." He moved a few papers over and Harry caught a glimpse of a few photographs that looked like Muggle newspaper clippings of a group of children singing in a field and one of a small dark boy singing in front of the group.

"That's... interesting."

"It's a living," Malfoy said absently, making a few notes in his agenda.

Harry nodded, taking a sip of his tea and allowing himself to observe Malfoy for a minute while Malfoy was occupied. Now that he was more used to the glasses and Muggle clothing, he could see that they suited Malfoy. He looked good, actually. Definitely more mature. Settled. The sharp features and permanent smirk were gone. Hair shorter than it had ever been when they were in school; very inconspicuous among Muggles - as much as that platinum colour could ever look inconspicuous. A small earring in one ear. And hadn't he also had some slight facial scarring during the war? Harry looked for it but couldn't find it. Maybe Malfoy had it removed. Or maybe he covered it with a glamour.

He spared a thought for what he looked like to Malfoy. Older, certainly. He'd never bothered to cover his own scar, but his hair was longer and tied back now, and prematurely shot through with grey here and there. He certainly dressed and looked a lot more like a wizard than he ever had during school or the war. And he couldn't say for sure, but he was fairly certain that he looked a hell of a lot better now than he ever had during school or the war. As did Malfoy. In fact, one could even say Malfoy was fairly attractive now.

He took another sip of his tea, a bit amused at himself. You've been single too long, mate, he told himself, if you're thinking that Malfoy's attractive. Also, word of advice: don't sit near public cuddlers or frotters for your next meeting. It makes your thinking go funny.

ooo000ooo

"I think this is as much as we need to do," Malfoy finally said about an hour later, and they started to put away their various scrolls and writing implements and the couple to their left continued their slow-motion exhibitionist foreplay with undaunted enthusiasm. "You'll send me an e-mail when you've got that sorted out?"

"Yeah, no problem. You've got your list, I've got mine, next meeting is set?"

"I'd say so."

"I'll see you in a few weeks, then," Harry said, and finished packing up.

"See you then." Malfoy checked his watch. "Good, I'm not running late." He stood up, then gazed at Harry for a moment as if just now realizing something. "Well. This was... interesting."

"Yeah, it was," Harry said. Who knew Malfoy could go almost two hours without snideness or rudeness, and even turn out to be semi-pleasant, if humourless, company? It was like discovering that a Niffler could knit and tap dance.

"I'll see you in four weeks, then," Malfoy said in an almost friendly tone, and left. Harry paid for his tea, spared the amorous couple the next table over one last glance, debated asking a waiter to drop a pamphlet on safe sex onto their table, and headed out.

ooo000ooo

Date:February 16
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
This is my e-mail address. I don't have access to it everywhere, but will make a point to check it in the mornings.

Date:February 16
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
Got it, thanks.

Date:February 25
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
I have a list of wizarding groups that caused problems for Bannerjee during last year's Beltane events. I'll bring it to our next meeting.

Date:February 26
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
I've got a list from Stedman as well. I've included it as an attachment.

Date:February 26
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
Let me know if you need help to open the attachments.

Date:March 1
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Thanks. I got the attachments and was able to read them. I'm attaching Bannerjee's file.

Date:March 1
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
Thanks, got it.

ooo000ooo

March 15

"Do you have Stedman's list that I sent you, the one with the Muggles who caused problems at the grove last year?"

Potter flipped through his file. "The ones that didn't seem to react to the Muggle-repelling wards?"

Draco nodded. "Those ones. Stedman figured they may have been people with a bit of magic, just not strong enough to be picked up for Hogwarts."

"Makes sense."

"Two of them have died, so that's one worry gone." Draco winced inwardly; that had been a little blunt. "I think we should still keep an eye out for other people like them and the area should be warded more strongly. One of them had to be Obliviated last year."

Potter nodded and took out another piece of parchment. "Bannerjee's list of wizards who caused trouble has some people on it who act up every single year. Unfortunately, most of them don't do anything bad enough for the Ministry to discipline them, or they always have excuses the Ministry believes. I don't think there's much else to be done about most of them at this point; I'll just be contacting them with a strongly worded letter reminding them not make trouble again."

"Why bother, if the Ministry doesn't do anything?"

Potter shrugged. "We just let them know we're keeping an eye on them; keeps them from getting too out of hand. Plus, if they misbehave enough, the Ministry might decide enough is enough and ban them for a series of minor infractions even if they haven't committed any major ones. Bannerjee got three of his persistent troublemakers banned that way last year."

"I wouldn't mind being able to ban some of my problem cases, but unfortunately they aren't actually doing anything wrong."

"No, I suppose not."

"Oh, by the way I got a call from the Muggle Liaison for Dublin's Beltane."

"Yeah?"

"She heard we're both new at this, so she wanted to remind me that somebody will have to look over the ley lines at the Hill to see if they can figure out where random wizards may be likely to show up. I assume that's your department."

"Yeah, I think so."

"She also suggested I look over the local Muggle papers, so I've bought a few subscriptions. I'm also keeping a watch on internet sites and forums. She said Muggles get enthused about this kind of thing closer to the date itself. They'll probably be posting what they're going to do and where they're going to meet up to the night before."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Yeah, that makes sense," Potter said, obviously pleased, and Draco couldn't help feeling a bit proud of himself - and then immediately feeling sheepish about feeling proud. "On my side," Potter continued, "Bannerjee couldn't be reached about that new coven that's going this year - he's in Australia, apparently - but his daughter said new registered covens just go through the Ministry licensing office, and I don't need to get involved at all."

"Oh, that's good."

"She also said Bannerjee felt that Stedman's letter to the international delegations last year needed a bit more detail on some of our local restrictions. Here let me see..." He scanned a scroll before turning it towards Draco and starting to go through it with him, explaining some of the more obscure scribbled notes.

Their work was going well, he thought as Potter elaborated on the notes. They were working well together, slowly becoming more comfortable with each other. Potter had even smiled a few times.

It was... a little bizarre, actually.

"Yeah, all right." Draco nodded as Potter wrapped up. "I'll write it, you check it over to make sure the restrictions are things we canask them to restrict."

He started working on the letter as Potter read over a report, glancing at Bannerjee's notes now and again to guide him. They were hell to decipher. The man's writing made chicken scratches look like calligraphy, and Draco wished for a nice computer screen to make it all legible.

This was definitely not nearly as uncomfortable as he'd expected it to be. It shouldn't have been a surprise, really; Potter had shown in school that he could hold a grudge with the best of them, but he wasn't usually spiteful just for fun. And they'd both had to work with enough people they disliked during the war that they'd become rather good at it. But this was actually... almost enjoyable.

He paused, re-reading Bannerjee's notes on flying carpets and the common attitudes of foreign wizards towards English restrictions concerning their uses. Vaguely he remembered Father mentioning that attitude as a common problem with his friends from the East.

He suppressed a sigh as he continued the letter, glancing at Potter, who was frowning slightly at the scroll he was reading. Draco had known, even at the time, that a lot of the enmity between them at Hogwarts was due to his own behaviour. Now, with Draco carefully watching what he said and did, there was no friction. He couldn't help but wonder what their relationship would've been like at school if he'd been just a bit more careful back then. No, not more careful - nicer. Not that there had been a hope in hell, back then, of him even pretending to be nice. Why would he? He was a Malfoy; he was perfectly justified in antagonizing his family's enemies, and besides, he didn't need to play nice with anybody, because most people were either scared to death of his family or willing to do whatever it took to gain their favour.

He suppressed another sigh. Nothing like uncertainty and powerlessness to teach you some manners. He finished his letter.

"Here, can you take a look at this?" he said, and Potter nodded and scanned his letter, quickly flipping open a copy of his Pocket Guide to Magical Restrictions in the United Kingdom. Draco waited patiently, glancing over his own copy of Muggle Magical Wards, Seventh Edition.

This was nice, actually. Potter wasn't bad company at all. Easy on the eyes, too. Hair that looked so soft as it fell to his shoulders in a messy tumble of black with silver threading through it, eyes just as vivid green as ever, grace and self-assurance in his movements, an air of being comfortable in his body...

He groaned inwardly. Oh, bad idea. Very very bad idea, allowing himself to feel any kind of attraction to the Boy Who Lived. There was appreciation of male beauty, and there was pathetic mooning, and the Malfoy name might have been dragged through the mud and left there to ooze but that did notmean Draco had to add to the disgrace by developing a puppy-like crush on Harry Potter, of all people. Even if he was fairly fit and even if he did remind Draco of so very many little things he missed about the wizarding world. Robes, longer hair, quills, parchment - all of those small details that spoke in a silent language that Draco understood and beckoned to him with comforting familiarity. How ironic that Potter, whom his family had blamed for endangering the wizarding way of life, should have come to represent that way of life to Draco.

That's all it was, Draco told himself. He just missed his world. And after being on his own in unfamiliar territory for so long, never really sure that he was getting it rightin the Muggle world, Potter just represented safety and comfort, and that's what his subconscious was picking up on and misinterpreting as desire. And wasn't it ironic that here he was, explaining away attraction using a Muggle concept like subconscious misinterpretation.

"Well, that's it for me," Potter said, handing Draco back his letter and starting to put away his things. "Is there anything else from your end of things?"

"No, that's about it for me too."

"So, you'll let me know if you see anything on the internet."

"Yeah, I'll send you an e-mail if I run into difficulties. Or - I can do owls, if you'd prefer-"

"E-mail's fine," Potter said. He checked his watch. "Oh, bugger - I'm late."

"Right." Draco checked his as well and did a double-take. Shite! He was going to be late - how could that be? He was never late. Must have lost track of time. Frowning, he hastily packed up his things.

"You all right?" Potter asked.

"What? Oh, fine, I just, I didn't realize what time it was-" he glanced around and bit his lip. Anti-Apparition wards inside the Welcome Witch, he wasn't connected to the Floo, a very public Muggle street right outside, he'd have to go at least... three blocks before he could Apparate-

"Late for work?"

"What? No, family," Draco said distractedly. Damn. Nothing for it, he was going to be late.

"Looking to Apparate?"

"Yeah," he said and turned, startled, as Potter touched his arm lightly.

"Mini-Invisibility Aid," Potter said, holding out a small red button. "It only works for about ten minutes, but that's enough when all you need is to be able to Apparate in public without alerting any Muggles."

"Oh. Thanks," Draco said, taking the small button.

"No problem. And speaking of family commitments, I have to go." Potter smiled and stepped into the Floo. "See you in April."

"See you then," Draco said, and firmly squelched the stupid little inner voice that said he wanted it to be sooner.

ooo000ooo

Harry stepped out of the Floo and shook the ash from his hair, barely getting his bearings before a small form barreled into him.

"Uncle Harry!!"

"Hello, Jason," Harry said, ruffling the hair of the little boy hugging his legs.

"Alec! Your dad's here!!" Jason shouted, and Harry barely had time to brace himself before another small boy tackled him.

He bent down and squeezed his son, murmuring into his hair. "You're sticky. What've you been doing?"

"Oh wow it was so brilliantUncle Harry, Mummy wouldn't let us have any more lollipops," Jason said, jiggling up and down with excitement, "so I said we had to go into the beehive and you knowwhat's in the beehive Uncle Harry it's totally brilliantand Alec didn't want to at first but Isaid-"

"Slow down, slow down!" Harry laughed.

"Alec where - Harry!" Hermione exclaimed, popping her head around the door and smiling at Harry. "I wondered why he went tearing off."

"Sorry I was late," Harry began, and Hermione waved her hand dismissively. He took a closer look at Alec and frowned. "Why's his hair-"

Hermione sighed. "Michelle was trying out hair colouring potions."

"Like father, like daughter," Harry said, laughing. "Did she try them on herself first?"

"Of course, just like Fred. But just like him, she's not averse to trying them on others either."

"She said it would turn blacklike yours, Uncle Harry!" Jason said emphatically. "Like a Potter, an'Isaid Alec's just as much a Weasley as her, but she saidit would turn back but it didn'tand you can turn it back, right?"

"Of course. I think. But first we should ask what she used. You can't just go around reversing magic when you don't know anything about it." Especially considering the source of the potions, he reflected.

"YoulikeAlec's hair, right Uncle Harry? You don't mind it's not Potter-coloured?" Jason asked, his small face scrunched up in a worried frown.

"I'd better like it, there's enough of that colour around me all the time, right?" He ruffled Alec's hair and smiled at him. "It was your mum's hair colour. And my mum's, too. We'll get it back soon, all right?"

Alec grinned at him. "All right, Daddy," he whispered, giving him a hug before following his cousin out the door again as Jason scampered off.

"Alec, don't go too far, we've got to go home!" Harry called after them.

"Okay Uncle Harry!"

"Stay for dinner, Harry," said Hermione, resting against the doorway and putting a hand on her slightly rounded belly.

"Thanks, but you've enough on your hands right now," Harry said. "How many did you have here today?"

"Just Alec and Jason for most of the day. Fred just stopped over with Michelle about an hour ago. Oh, by the way, I felt the baby kick yesterday," Hermione smiled, then straightened slightly, looking startled. "Oh! Hang on!" She grabbed his hand and put it on her belly.

He grinned at her as the taut surface under his hand rippled. "Has Ron felt it? Better yet, has Jason?"

"I told him his little brother or sister is moving. I don't think he understands, though. He kept asking if it's moving, why doesn't it come out. Wants to know if it's a real baby yet."

Harry chuckled. "He's only three. He'll figure it out."

"He won't have much time to do so," Hermione said, sounding only slightly bitter.

"Have the Healers said this one'll be early too?"

"Yes. Not that I mind so much, and I know the Healers will make sure it's all right, but I do wonder what it would be like to carry for more than six months."

"I know." Harry touched her arm comfortingly.

"I'm being stupid," Hermione said impatiently. "I should be grateful, after everything we were hit with. I'm lucky I can bear at all, let alone healthy babies. I've heard the last month is ghastly anyway." She shook her head, dismissing her own complaints. "I think we're going to have to figure out whether it's a boy or girl though, otherwise Jason's going to go mad trying to guess. And of course Molly's hoping for a granddaughter. One girl per generation is not enough," she said, then bit her lip.

"No, it's not," Harry said, keeping his voice light. "Especially when that one is more of a terror than any of the boys, including her father."

"Too right," Fred said, coming into the room and looking harried. "Have you seen her?"

"No, but apparently she's the reason my son's hair is puce," Harry said. "Anything to be done about that, or will it wear off on its own?"

"Oh shite. She got into the samples again. Bugger." Fred ran a hand through his hair. "I'll send you the antidote. It's not that big a deal, it'll turn back within a week... unless it starts singing."

"Singing. My four year old is going to have hair that sings."

"Well. It's not quite singing. It's more like... wailing."

Harry lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Fred. Have you thought of putting ward charms on your samples?"

"What do you think I do, mate? We've got competition, you know. We keep our products safe from theft or tampering. Only our wards don't stand a chance against Michelle," he said, sounding irate and proud at the same time.

"Your parents are getting their own back, you know," Hermione smirked.

"Too right. I just hope I'll get my own back when she's got kids."

"All right, stop," Harry said. "I can barely deal with the idea of you as a father; grandfather is too weird."

"Too right," Fred said again with a grin. "Well, I'd better find her before she gets into trouble. Again. Maybe shouldn't have told her about me turning Ron's teddy bear into a spider." He started out the door.

"Stay for dinner, Harry," Hermione urged again. "Ron'll be back in an hour or so, he hasn't seen you in ages."

"I'd love to, but I really have to go. The meeting with Malfoy went a bit long-"

Fred turned around so fast he nearly smacked against the doorframe. "Malfoy?"

"Yeah."

"Draco Malfoy? What are you doing meeting with him?" he asked, his face a mask of disgust.

"Working with him. He's - get this - MuggleLiaison for Uisneach Hill's Beltane."

"What?"

"He's been living among Muggles for years," said Harry.

"And he hasn't killed any of them yet?"

"Apparently not. You know he's still got restrictions on his magic."

"They only control magic. How d'you know he's not plotting to sabotage the festivities for some-"

"To be honest, it hadn't occurred to me."

"The more fool you, then," Fred said angrily. "Why would you want to work with him anyway?"

"Hermione suggested it-" Harry said, biting his tongue as soon as the words were out and Fred rounded on Hermione.

"I'vetoldyou," he said furiously. "You shouldn't interfere with-"

"Hey, no, she just suggested doing something public, it was Ron who told me to take the Beltane Liaison post." That should be safe; Ron wouldn't be back for a while, and with any luck by then Fred would either be calmed down or gone. And if he wasn't, at least Ron wasn't five and a half months pregnant.

Harry kicked himself for mentioning Malfoy in front of Fred. It had taken George a long, long time to (mostly) recover from the curses Lucius Malfoy had thrown his way during the war. And although George himself was fairly philosophical about the whole experience, Fred had never quite recovered emotionally and was completely unable to maintain a sense of proportion whenever anything about the war, or anything Malfoy-related, came up in conversation.

"Why didn't you just refuse to work with him? Nobody would blame you if you ditched-"

"Well somebody has to-"

"Nobodyshould have to work with him," Fred snapped. "He should've been exiled for good, or locked up in Azkaban with the key melted down, like the rest of his miserable family. Nothing good ever came out of any of them. Bloody monsters."

Alec had run back into the room and was now looking up at his normally cheerful and laid-back uncle with alarm, his eyes round and his mouth slightly open. Harry patted his head comfortingly as an image of the children's drawings and choir clippings in Malfoy's briefcase - Malfoy's Mugglebriefcase - flashed through his mind. He shrugged uneasily. "Maybe he's changed. Looks like it, anyway."

"Kneazles don't change their stripes," Fred snapped. "And anyone who thinks they can is a blithering idiot." Harry met Hermione's eyes in silent apology for setting Fred off, trying to figure out how to get them all out of this unpleasant topic and unwilling to leave her alone with Fred while he was in one of his snits.

"Look, I don't mind meeting with him, it's just a few-"

"You don't mind that he's trying to sneak his way back into our world? You wait, he'll use this to get himself in with the right people at the Ministry and before you know it, we'll be arse-deep in bloody Malfoys again, with their-"

"He's the only one left, Fred," Hermione broke in.

"Only one outside of Azkaban. D'you really think he's not planning to get his parents freed? Spread around the right money to the wrong people-"

"I don't think there's that much money left, frankly. You know the Ministry took-"

"That's what he'd like you to believe," Fred said hotly. "And it's exactly that kind of soft thinking that'll get him and his kind right back to where they were before! What the hell did we all fight for, then, if we let scum like that back in so they can terrorize everyone again with our blessing?"

Harry cleared his throat. "All right, little man," he said to Alec. "Time to go. So, Hermione, you said you were tired - d'you want me to take Jason home with me too? You can have some rest and send Ron to get him when he comes home."

"No, that's fine," Hermione said, and had the sense to not start to bustle about with her usual energy, as she normally did whenever anybody suggested she might need a rest. Playing the pity card with Fred was pretty much the only thing that could make him drop a rant.

"Are you sure? After what the Healer said about the baby coming early?"

"I'm sure. I'll be fine, Harry."

As if on cue, Fred cleared his throat, looking sheepish. "Erm. I'll... I'll just take Michelle home then too. Really, Hermione, if you're tired, just send Jason over to our place. He's no trouble, not when we're already dealing with my little terror."

"Thanks," Hermione said warmly. "I appreciate it. I'll be all right, Ron'll be home soon, and I think your little terror probably wore mine out anyway." She patted Fred's arm and gave him a smile as he set off to track down his daughter.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked once Fred was gone.

"I'm fine, really."

"D'you want to send Jason home with me? Fred's snit aside, I meant the offer."

"No, that's all right." Hermione cleared her throat. "I... I am sorry about this ending up with you and Malfoy working together... I really didn't think-"

"It's all right, really. I wouldn't say this around Fred, but he's really not bad. I think he's changed. On the surface, anyway."

"In what way?"

"Well, the Muggle thing aside - which I still can't quite get used to, by the way-"

"Neither can I," Hermione chuckled. "I've seen a lot of odd things, but I must say the image of Malfoy living among Muggles as one of them, and representing their interests... part of me keeps thinking one of these days you're going to finally break down and admit you've made this whole thing up."

Harry laughed. "Only you'd have to smoke a lot of Gillyweed to make up something like that. But no, it's not just the Muggle thing, he's... I don't know, very polite. Very quiet too." And very attractive, he thought, briefly picturing Hermione's face if he said that last bit out loud. "I don't know much about what he's been doing in Dublin, other than working as a music teacher, but he seems really involved in it. He's even working with children. Has kids' art work in his briefcase, and clippings from the newspaper about his children's choir."

'"All right, now I have officially heard everything," Hermione said, laughing. "Are you sure he's actually Malfoy and not Neville, Polyjuiced?"

Harry chuckled. "I'll check to see if he's drinking out of a hip flask next time I see him." He held out his hand to Alec. "Come on, little man. Time to go home."

"Bye Auntie!" Alec said softly, giving Hermione a hug. "Are we going by broom, Daddy?" he asked excitedly as Harry got his Firebolt from Hermione's front closet.

"Of course," Harry said as they went out the front door. "Let me do the cushioning charm," he said, putting his son before him and holding him close. "Ready? Let's go!" he said, and they lifted off.

ooo000ooo

Date:March 22
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
It looks like the Cork Coven is coming to Uisneach Hill and will be at the South grove at 4PM. Isn't that when the Handstand Band is performing?

Date:March 22
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
The same time. Can you get the Cork Coven to delay? The Handstand Band will be on for two hours.

Date:March 25
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
They think they can work around the band. Unless the Handstand Band does acrobatics while they play.

Date:March 26
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
It's just a name. They're Muggles. They don't do acrobatics.

Date:March 28
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
That was a joke.

Date:March 30
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
Right.

ooo000ooo

April 2

"Archdeacon Ernest Waleran intends to come and denounce pagan immorality," Draco said as he and Potter began their third meeting.

"Bloody hell." Potter rubbed his forehead. "And Bannerjee was so happy when Father Milligan retired."

"Milligan's getting old, and his protests didn't do much last year. Waleran's full of enthusiasm over it."

"Times like this I really wish we could use Obliviating Thread. Just make him forget all about Beltane."

"What?"

"Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes makes it. Works like a charm. You would not believe how many Wheezes products we use in curse breaking, it's a bit disturbing, actually. D'you know what Waleran's going to go on about?"

"I don't think it'll be anything too difficult to deal with. I think we can leave it to the Muggle police. He's not going to be talking about real witches and wizards, just Wiccans and other godless folks."

"Wiccans?"

"Muggle witches."

"Muggles who do witchcraft?" Potter said skeptically.

Draco hid a smile. It was somewhat amusing, being the one explaining Muggle things to Harry Potter. He shook his head. "It's a religion based on reviving ancient beliefs about natural magic. Probably from a time when the wizarding world and the Muggle world were in closer contact. They don't actually perform spells, but they try to connect with the force of natural magic. It's mostly spiritual. Feeling a connection to the land, to the spirits around you. The Earth Goddess, that kind of thing."

Potter was gazing at him, intrigued, and Draco suddenly realized that this wasn't the first time he'd seen Potter look at him with no barriers between them. No awkwardness, no forced politeness, no businesslike briskness. Just curiosity about what Draco was saying and interest in Draco's point of view.

It was rather disconcerting, being the focus of that attention. And... rather nice.

Draco felt himself start to blush and immediately clamped down on his feelings ruthlessly, sternly bringing his focus back to the topic at hand. He cleared his throat. "It's harmless."

"So why would anybody come by to denounce it?"

"Well, some of the beliefs go directly against Christianity or organized religions in general. Wiccans believe in goddesses and wood spirits; that smacks of Devil worship, I suppose. Also, some of the rituals can get a little... distasteful, I guess they'd call it, from a Christian point of view."

"Distasteful? In what way?"

"They burn Christ in effigy."

"What?!"

"No, I'm joking. Mostly there's nothing objectionable, but some of the more hardcore Wiccan rituals involve enactments of the May Queen and the Horned King or Green Man becoming intimate."

"Intimate?"

"You do know Beltane is supposed to be about fertility."

"Yeah, but it's just symbolic. They actually have sex during the rituals?"

"No, they pick out china patterns. Of course they have sex." Potter's face went through an odd combination of surprise, amusement, and uncertainty, apparently not sure whether Draco was teasing him good-naturedly or mockingly. Draco bit his lip. He probably shouldn't have done that, used humour to deal with his own unsettling feelings; he was supposed to be careful around Potter, he wasn't supposed to get familiar, and what if he'd alienated Potter - but now Potter was smiling, evidently having decided to not take offense.

"Right. So we leave Waleran to the Muggle police?"

"I don't see why not," Draco said, relieved. "He won't be insulting any real wizards or witches. I think if any of them do hear him, they'll just be amused."

"Right, then. What's next?"

Draco took out another scroll. "I think... were we going to talk about the Mummers?" He started to flip through his notes, reminding himself to go through the whole mess and reorganize it before their next meeting.

"I wonder if I should bring my son to the Hill." Potter said thoughtfully, stirring his tea as Draco searched his files. "He's very curious about Muggle things."

"Really?" Draco looked up, surprised. He had never heard Potter speak of his son. He knew that Potter had one, of course; the entire wizarding world knew about him, and Draco figured he was the reason Potter always hurried home after their meetings. But until now Potter hadn't mentioned him.

"Yeah." Potter took a sip of his tea. "He'd love the music, too. Though I'll have to tell him the Handstand Band doesn't do handstands. And keep him away from the Wiccans."

"He likes music?"

"Yeah." Potter's eyes were a bit distant. "He's always singing or playing something."

"How old is he?"

"Four and a half."

"And he plays an instrument already?" Draco asked skeptically.

"Piano and a very small guitar."

"That's rather remarkable."

"He's very passionate about it. Spends a lot of his time just playing. Which can make it difficult when he's with his cousins for a long time. They don't really understand when he wants to be left alone with his music. Still, I suppose it's better than him being bored when he's at home without any other kids to play with."

"I loved music too. It's a good hobby for an only child."

"Yeah, that's the way I see it. And he likes his cousins; just doesn't need to be around them that much. He's very quiet, too, which is a bit of a rarity in that family."

Draco nodded, wondering why there was a hint of sadness in Potter's voice.

"Right," said Potter, clearing his throat and putting down his tea. "So, next: the Mummers. That's one of your groups, right?"

"Shite. I thought they were yours."

Potter sighed.

ooo000ooo

Date:April 9
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
I may be late on Wednesday - maybe an hour or so. I've got a rehearsal that may go overtime, but I won't know until I'm there. Shall we reschedule?

Date:April 11
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
No, I have some work I can do at the Witch. Is this for that maritime concert you're doing?

Date:April 11
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
How do you know about the concert?

Date:April 12
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
You had an advert for it in your briefcase.

Date:April 12
From:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To:hjpottergringotts.wz
Yes, I've got two choirs singing at it. One of the directors changed her mind and wants us to add a few songs. We're rehearsing at the church right next to the Witch, so I could probably come in during a break and let you know how it's going.

Date:April 12
From:hjpottergringotts.wz
To:malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Don't worry about it, I'll just wait at the Witch.

ooo000ooo

April 13

Harry looked around the church lobby curiously, abruptly aware that he was in a completely Muggle environment. The total lack of talking pictures, moving furniture, or any of the other familiar details that made up a wizarding environment was unsettling. He normally didn't think about it, but on the rare occasion that he ventured into the Muggle world he was always profoundly shocked by how completely he had left it behind.

"Which way is the choir rehearsal?" Harry asked a young woman mopping the floor near the entrance.

"Down that hallway, sir. Just follow the music."

Harry nodded, realizing that yes, he could hear, faintly, the sound of music. He followed it and ended up in a chapel, where a group of women was singing in the chancel and a group of men was sitting in the pews in the main part of the church.

And there was Malfoy, in front, conducting a song that sounded quite perfect to Harry until Malfoy stopped abruptly.

"No no no. Come on, that's terrible, my five-year olds can sing that part with more accuracy. Here's a hint: you see the little lines on your page, with large black dots and sticks and little dots and all of that? Those are called musical notations. You might want to take a look at them once in a while."

"Come on, Draco, it's good enough-" the woman at the piano protested.

"Really? Good enough for us to wipe the floor with Calhilly Choir's arses with our score? I'm not losing to them again."

"We're not doing the competition till next Sunday, this is just a concert-"

"Oh, so sorry, you're right," Malfoy said snidely. "I forgot, it's only a concert that we're asking people to pay a pretty penny to attend. My mistake, of course we can be sloppy for that."

"All right, ye great arse," the pianist muttered and turned her music back to the beginning.

"Right, then. From the top again. Remember what I said about the little lines and dots on your music. Also note that on page six it says 'ritardando', which is Italian for 'look at Draco'."

They began a song, something about fishing and Japan as far as Harry could tell. He took a seat near the back of the chapel and let the sound wash over him. Sounded lovely, though the words made no sense whatsoever. And the choir was rather good; the voices were blending well, Harry couldn't hear any timing difficulties, the tone was-

Harry's eyes popped open. The tone had been going flat, but then it had gone up, and Harry was almost certain he'd felt a small ripple of very subtle magic right before the correction. He listened carefully as the choir repeated the same bit of melody and started going flat the same way, and felt the ripple again.

He grinned. That had been magic. Real magic, bringing the choir's tone up a bit. Not that he was terribly musical himself, but it was impossible to live with Alec and not pick up something about music. And the choir had definitely been flat there for a moment before an almost imperceptible tug of magic had pulled it up a bit.

He narrowed his eyes. Malfoy's baton... was that... yes. Definitely. Malfoy was using his wand as a baton. Harry grinned again, amused by Malfoy's creativity at getting around the restrictions on using magic around Muggles, because he doubted any Muggle could possibly detect what Malfoy was doing right now. All they could do was enjoy its effects. Harry leaned back, closing his eyes and deciding to do the same.

The women finished and Malfoy called up the men to join them, making a few notations on his music as the choir rearranged itself.

"Right. Ready to sing this one properly, for once?"

"Not to your satisfaction," one of the men grumbled.

"Surprise me. Altos, don't forget you've got your great solo in this, right? Your one and only chance to shine, so don't muck it up. Again. Sopranos and tenors, if I have to grit my teeth through your contrapuntal section the way I did last rehearsal, I willfind a way to make you all cry." Malfoy waited for them to sort themselves out, then the music began. A lovely, slow ballad about time passing too quickly. Harry kept his eyes closed, enjoying the gentle music and wondering if maybe Alec would like to attend Malfoy's concert.

Because Alec loved music, he told himself firmly. Not because Harry wanted to see Malfoy again. Right.

"One, two three!" Malfoy called out, and the music abruptly switched into a fast-paced swinging beat. Harry's eyes opened - he would not have thought you could merge two such disparate musical styles together, but the effect was very powerful. He could almost feel ocean surf pounding near him, and he closed his eyes again, trying to see how Malfoy was creating the effect. He listened to the music while trying to spot the subtle signs of magic in it, without success, and finally just relaxed and listened to the music for its own sake.

And then the choir dropped back into the same slow rhythm as at the beginning for one verse before ending the song. There was a short silence, that lovely pause that occurs when a song is done but its beauty still echoes through the room and the listeners.

"All right, we'll stop there," Malfoy said quietly, breaking the silence, and the choir breathed a sigh of relief. "Men, don't forget to go over the Navy Hymn and Fogarty's Cove."

"Ah yes, your favourite piece," one of the women called out, and the choir laughed.

"My very, very favourite. At least, until the director meets with an accident and can't make it to the concert, at which point it just might mysteriously disappear from our playlist."

"From your lips to God's ear," one of the men said fervently.

"It happened last time. Draco's lucky that way."

"Luck doesn't have much to do with it," Malfoy said. "I'm not too proud to use voodoo, you know. Her own fault for picking awful music." The choir chuckled as they gathered their things and slowly cleared the room. Harry waited until most of them had left the chapel before approaching the chancel where Malfoy was still making notes on his music. He cleared his throat.

"Malfoy."

Malfoy turned around quickly. "Potter?" He frowned. "What are you doing here?"

"Starting the meeting early. Don't worry, I can wait, I just thought it might be easier to meet here, so you wouldn't have to go out of your way."

"Oh. Thanks," Malfoy said after a brief hesitation. "That's going to save me time; I've got all my notes over here." He led Harry through a door at the far end of the chapel and into a small office.

Harry looked around. "This is your office?"

"Close enough to it," Malfoy nodded, walking towards the desk. "Nobody else uses the space, so I took it over."

"Very nice." Harry glanced around, noting children's art work decorating the walls, a few Muggle photographs neatly framed. One was of the choir Malfoy had just been conducting, the other two were of a child who seemed vaguely familiar. Harry peered more closely. It seemed to be... it looked like the dark little boy who had been in the newspaper article, singing in front of the choir.

"Favourite student?" Harry asked, pointing at the photograph.

Malfoy looked over and smiled slightly. "You could say that."

Harry waited for a moment, but no elaboration seemed forthcoming. He cast about for something to say. "I was wondering, did you, during that last piece, were you doing any magic?"

Malfoy's face took on a wary expression as he looked back at Harry.

"I just noticed that your conductor's baton is actually your wand..."

"I cleared that with the Ministry," Malfoy said defensively.

"Oh - no, I - I'm sure you did-" Harry broke off, realizing what he'd sounded like and wondering if he could possibly get used to dealing with Malfoy's legal status some time during this working relationship. Odd how he was starting to forget, sometimes, that even though they seemed to be getting on well, they weren't really friends. And that Malfoy might have some understandable trust issues with him.

Wait - Malfoywas the one who was on probation for life, and Harry was worrying that he might have "trust issues" with Harry?

Harry shook his head, irate at himself. "Sorry, I wasn't - I'm sure you do, that wasn't what I was asking about at all; I just thought, in that last song, it sounded like there was some kind of Music Magic going on. I noticed you were using your wand to bring up the tone in the first song, and I just wondered if you were using it for other spells later. To make the music sound more... erm, more moving."

"Oh." Malfoy's face cleared. "No, I wasn't. Not at all. They're just very good," he said smugly, "though I'd never tell them that."

Harry smiled. "Yeah, they really are. How long have you been running the choir?"

"I don't really run it. I'm in it, and I conduct a lot of our rehearsals and have some input with song selection, but I don't conduct the concerts or do the administration. Don't have the time."

"Draco?" a woman's voice called from the chapel.

Malfoy frowned. "In here!" he answered, and a tall black woman hurried into the office.

"Oh good - ye're no busy, are ye?" she said, and looked at Harry curiously.

"No, just finishing up some planning for the concert. Oh - Kara, this is Harry Potter." She held out her hand and Harry shook it. "Potter, Kara Greely."

"Pleased to meet you," the woman said absently. "Draco, I've got the girls coming over tonight, can you take him, d'you mind?"

"I've got this concert in two days," Malfoy said warily.

"I know, but you're done rehearsals, what are you going to do, sing to yourself? I really need this, Draco."

"Did you just find out about the girls coming over now? Or did you just not think ahead, again?"

"Draco..."

"All right, fine," he said, looking a bit put out. "Where is he?"

The woman looked around. "Ben? He was right here, I swear the wee bugger does this just to piss me off-" the woman trailed off. "Ben! Get your little-"

"Kara," Malfoy said warningly.

"Dad!" A little boy rushed into the room and jumped into Malfoy's arms. Harry's eyebrows rose. It was the little boy from the photographs, same short dreadlocks, same wide smile. He noticed Harry's presence and stared at him, the greyish hazel of his eyes contrasting strikingly with his tan skin.

Malfoy hugged him tightly, and turned to Harry. "Ben, this is Harry Potter; Harry, my son Ben."

Harry realized his mouth had dropped open slightly, and closed it. "Erm. Pleased to meet you," he said, and was surprised when Ben jumped out of Malfoy's arms and held out his hand.

"Pleased to meet ye," he said, shaking Harry's hand enthusiastically, and through his shock Harry noted his heavy Irish accent with amusement. "You're a musician too, are you?"

"I've got to go. Thanks Draco," said Kara. "Goodbye, scamp," she said, giving the boy a swift tap on the behind. "Be good for your Da, right?"

"Right, Mam," he said, still looking at Harry. "So are you?"

Harry blinked. What - "Oh, am I a musician? Erm. No, I'm not."

"Oh. How d'you work with me Da, then?"

"Ben, did your Mum leave your bag in the chapel? Why don't you go get it?" Malfoy said, and Ben nodded, running back into the chapel.

"You... you have a family?" Harry said, nonplussed. "I mean, a family outside of-" he cut himself off before he could finish the sentence with "Azkaban," relieved when Malfoy kindly ignored his verbal stumble.

"A son, yeah," Malfoy said, his tone slightly defiant.

"What... wait a minute." Harry shook his head. "Sorry, I thought, during the war, you told - weren't you gay?"

Malfoy chuckled, sounding amused at Harry's bewilderment. "Yeah, I was. Still am."

"Then... did you adopt him?"

"No, he's biologically mine."

"How - no, sorry, none of my business," Harry said, stopping before embarrassing himself further.

Malfoy smiled. "It was a... bit of an experiment, with an unintended side effect. Good side effect, though."

"I didn't know you had a family."

"We're not married or anything. Kara's a lesbian, actually, so that wasn't ever in our plans. We just take turns taking care of him."

"Oh." Harry blinked a few times. "How old is he?"

"Just turned five."

"Oh. He's - Ben? That's his name?"

"Benjamin Tristan."

Harry nodded. "That sounds..."

"Halfway normal?" Malfoy smiled slightly. "His mum and I couldn't agree on names at all, so we finally decided I'd name a boy and she'd name a girl. I was quite relieved when he was born; she was going to call our daughter Astarte. Or Cerridwen, or Blodeuwedd. She was even thinking of star names - would you believe Aldebaran and Betelgeuse were on her list?"

"Betelgeuse Malfoy?"

"Greely, actually. He's got her last name. Betelgeuse Greely, that would've been dear. She thought it would go very nicely with my name, and I didn't have the heart to tell her it would also go very well with a lot of other insanity. I did put my foot down over that last, though. Told her if she named our daughter Betelgeuse, I would never call her anything but Jane."

Harry laughed. Malfoy smiled, then sobered and said, "Seriously, any child of mine will have enough going against him with his family connections if he ends up in the wizarding world. No need to add to the misery."

Harry blinked, at a loss as to how to respond, and was saved from having to say anything by Ben's return. The little boy came bounding back into the office with a small overnight bag and tossed it onto Malfoy's desk.

"What did you bring this time?" Malfoy asked.

"That story Mam's reading me, I want you to finish it. And I got a sticker in art today, see?" He took out a large piece of paper with what looked like several pieces of felt glued on in an interesting pattern. "Can you put it up?"

"Oh, that's very pretty. Where should it go?"

Ben pointed to an empty spot on the wall, then turned to Harry. "So how d'you know me Da?" he asked.

Harry hesitated and looked at Malfoy.

Malfoy opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and a thoughtful expression came over his face. He gazed at Ben for a moment, then at Harry, and then seemed to come to some sort of decision. He went to the office door and looked out into the chapel, closed the door and turned around, taking out his wand. Ben stared at him, then at Harry, as Malfoy waved his wand over him and Harry felt wards going up in the office.

"Dad?" Ben said uncertainly.

Malfoy held out his hand and Ben took it, a puzzled frown on his small face. Malfoy pulled him close and smiled at him. "Ben. Harry's not a musician; he's a wizard."

The little boy's eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. "Awizard?"

Malfoy's eyes met Harry's. "Yes."

"Like you, Dad?"

"Yes, just like me."

Ben gaped at Harry wordlessly for a long moment before suddenly springing back to life. "Can - can you really... can you do the stuff Dad can do? Can you really - you've a wand, yeah?" he asked, breathless with excitement, and Harry blinked, caught a bit off-balance.

"Erm. Yes, I-"

"Can I see it?"

Harry glanced at Malfoy, who nodded. Harry took out his wand and Ben reached for it, a rapt look of wonder on his face.

"Wow. Wow! I've only ever seen me Dad's. This is brilliant!!"

Harry nodded, smiling, as Ben reverently touched the wand and gently waved it. He noted with approval that the little boy seemed to know enough not to swish it indiscriminately. Malfoy must have taught him something of proper handling of a wand.

"D'you think I can have a wand like this when I get older?"

"Erm." Harry looked at Malfoy.

"We don't know, Ben, remember?" Malfoy said gently. "You show some magical ability, but we're not sure yet how strong it'll be."

"I think I'll be a wizard. Like me Da." He grinned at Malfoy. "D'you have kids too? Are they wizards? Can I see you do magic?"

"All right..." Harry took his wand back and turned a hymn book into a songbird, and Ben laughed delightedly. Harry smiled. Alec had had the same reaction when he'd done it yesterday.

"What about flying? D'you have a broomstick? Can I ride it?" he asked.

Harry smiled. "Maybe. If your dad says it's okay."

"And - and can you turn into an animal?"

"No, that's really, really hard to do. Not very many people can."

"Can you play Quidditch?"

"Yeah."

"What position d'you play? Are you a Seeker?"

"I was, yeah."

"Did you ever play against Dad?"

Harry glanced at Malfoy, who looked amused. He smiled. "Yeah, I did. He was very good."

"Can you-"

"Ben," Malfoy broke in, "I know you're really excited, but Harry and I have some things we have to talk about. Why don't you go play in the nursery while we-"

"But Dad-"

"You can ask him more questions once we're done. Is that all right?" he asked Harry, and Harry smiled.

"Yeah, that's fine. My son's staying with his cousins overnight. I don't need to go home right away"

The little boy looked a bit rebellious, but left the office and Malfoy turned to Harry. "Thanks. Remind me to tidy up after we're done. He's not supposed to use the church nursery, but it'll keep him out of our hair."

Harry nodded, his mind swimming a bit, and sternly turned his thoughts to their meeting, away from the brightness of Malfoy's smile as he held his son, the love and pride in Malfoy's voice when he talked about him - and the way all of that seemed to turn him from a rather fit bloke, about whom Harry had had a few stray inappropriate thoughts, into... something more.

2

Date: April 14
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
I've attached Waleran's planned sermon, in case you're interested. We may have to watch some of the more hot-headed wizards; some of what he's likely to say is rather insulting.
Thanks for being patient with Ben last night, by the way. He was very excited; you're the only wizard he's ever met other than me.

Date:April 14
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
I read Waleran's sermon. I wonder if he knows my Muggle relatives.
You're welcome, about Ben. Must admit, I was a bit shocked that you had a son.

Date: April 14
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
So was I.

Date: April 15
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Next meeting is in two days, and I think I've got all the anti-Muggle charms ready. We just need to decide where to place them.

Date:April 15
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
No problem. You know where they're supposed to be set?

Date: April 15
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
I've got last year's map, but we'll need to do a walk-through and make sure they're going where they need to go. Not all the events are taking place exactly when & where they did last year.

Date:April 16
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
That would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Date:April 17
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Our house elf is on holiday and Hermione's at St. Mungo's, so I don't have anybody to watch Alec. We'll have to postpone tonight's meeting.

Date: April 17
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Things are a bit busy right now, so I'm not sure when I can next get away. Is it just your son who's the problem? Because if so, you may as well bring him. It's outside; he can run around while we do the walk-through.

Date:April 17
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
All right. Why don't you bring Ben along too? You said he wanted to meet wizard children.

Date: April 17
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Good idea.

ooo000ooo

April 17

"Give me a moment here," Harry said, squinting at the scroll in his hand and attempting to figure out the precise location of one of the ley lines pictured there. Not an easy task, considering the wind whipping around the Hill and trying to snatch the scroll out of Harry's hand.

Draco glanced over at the grove to their left, where the two little boys were chattering excitedly. Well, Ben was chattering; Alec was listening intently and following him as he paced back and forth. Harry's son didn't look much like Harry, except for his eyes, Draco decided. Didn't look a lot like Ginny Weasley either, what Draco could remember of her, though the Weasley colouring was unmistakable.

"Right. Here it is," Harry said decisively, and Draco added a star to his map of the site.

"Do you think we need an Invisibility charm here?" Draco asked.

"Yeah, and around that tree as well."

"No, that's too close to where the Red Men will be coming in; it'll look rather odd if some of them disappear. Just put a Proximity alarm on that one."

Harry nodded and glanced over at the two boys, smiling a bit as he followed them with his eyes. "He's a little shy," he'd said apologetically after he introduced them and Alec clung to his legs and gazed at Draco and Ben, offering them a silent nod and a shy smile. He'd detached fairly quickly, though, joined Ben on the playground, and was now happily following him around.

"They appear to be getting on all right," Draco said, and Harry nodded.

"Alec doesn't say much," he said, apologizing again. "He really is having fun, though."

"Actually that's a bit refreshing, compared to Ben," Draco said. "He never stops talking."

Harry smiled and turned back to his map.

"So you took up curse-breaking to raise him?" Draco asked as he marked another ward location.

"Yeah. Ginny and I were both playing Quidditch for the Falcons. We figured when we wanted to start a family I'd quit and go into Auror training, and she'd stay home with the kids." He frowned and erased a mark on his map, replacing it with a question mark and looking back at the site. "Then when she got pregnant while we were still playing, we figured it would be all right because she was second string; we weren't both going to be practicing or in the air at the same time anyway. We thought she'd take a year off, then rejoin the team and we'd just sort of share the load that way." He scratched another star onto his map and pushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. "Hope it's not this windy come Beltane. Wizard-repellent ward over here, d'you think? There's no reason why wizards should be here, and you said it's going to be the site of one of the Wiccan ceremonies."

"Yeah, good idea," Draco said, and cast the simple charm. "I remember you were both playing. It was surprising when the news came out that you were starting a family."

"Well, we weren't expecting to start quite so early, but we both wanted a lot of kids, so we figured it was all right." He gave a slight smile. "Ginny used to joke that we were going to name our first Alec or Alanna because we wanted to see how far down the alphabet we could go." He paused and frowned at the charm Draco had cast, then widened it a bit.

"So d'you still want more children, some day?" Draco asked ignoring the irritating urge to tuck the errant lock of Harry's hair behind his ear.

Harry seemed startled. "What? Oh, no. No, Alec is enough." He glanced at the grove one last time and they started to move towards one of the trouble spots on their map, a low wall from Neolithic times. The wall had inexplicably been chosen simultaneously as the site for a group of Muggle bards telling tales, a speaker talking about Celtic perspectives on ecology and global warming, a workshop on Celtic knotwork, a group of Scottish witches putting up a monument to Minerva McGonagall, and a group of wizards trying to take advantage of the enhanced magic of Beltane Eve to do alchemy.

"Boys, come on, it's time to go to the wall," Harry called them, and they reluctantly paused their game to follow Harry and Draco. "What about you? Do you want more kids?"

Draco chuckled. "No, not really. Besides, being gay puts a bit of a crimp on the whole child thing. Usually."

"I suppose so." Harry checked his map. "All right, here we are. This should be fun." He pulled his hair out of his face and tied it back more firmly, and Draco decided he wasn't disappointed at all that he hadn't got a chance to tuck it back for him. "So. You suggested an anti-Muggle ward here, but it can't be too strong because of the proximity of the ley line, so we'll have to add some Confundus charms so that any Muggles who wander over here will forget why they wanted to."

"And give the alchemists a counter-charm for the Confundus, too."

"Right." Harry scratched a note to himself. "We should put another Proximity ward here, but in case none of that works, you'll have to be ready to Obliviate-"

"Erm, no I can't," Draco broke in, alarmed.

"Oh have you never done it? It's pretty simple to learn-"

"I can't."

Harry blinked. "What do you mean, you can't?"

Draco looked away. "I know how to do it, but I'm not allowed."

"Not allowed what?"

Damn, he'd forgotten that Harry could be a bit thick at times. "Not allowed to Obliviate," he said evenly. "I'm allowed to do most magic, but I still have some restrictions. I'm on parole."

"Oh." Harry's eyes widened a bit and he blushed. "Oh. That might. Make it rather difficult. Bugger." He paused. "No, that's not - I'll have to talk to the Aurors, we'll get the restriction taken off-"

"N-no," Draco broke in quickly. "Look, it'll - I don't want you to, I don't want it to look like I took this post because I wanted the restrictions taken off. I'm fine with them, it's all magic I don't want to do anyway."

"But you'll have to, for this-"

"I shouldn't have to - it's not the Muggle Liaison's job. Most Muggle Liaisons are Squibs, they don't have to-"

"But your predecessor wasn't. She recommended you, probably because you weren't a Squib."

Draco took a deep breath. "I won't do it," he said firmly. "I don't want anybody to have any reason to suspect me or resent me. We'll have to find another way around this."

Harry blinked, taken aback. He looked down at the site map and Draco could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as he tried to find some way of getting around Draco's restrictions.

Draco turned away and started setting the Confundus charms, fairly sure that his attempt to act blasé about this was failing miserably and reminding himself that this was part of why he'd taken this position in the first place: to get used to the kind of life he'd have as a wizard if he chose to come back to the wizarding world. Assuming coming back was even a possibility.

Well, this wasn't so bad. So far he'd been working without major hassles; Harry and the Dublin Muggle Liaison didn't make him feel like a pariah, he had come into contact with a few other wizards without problems, and the job was going well. Bumps like this were going to hit every so often. He just needed to find a way to deal with them with dignity more or less intact and he'd be fine.

"Be straightforward about it, keep them off-balance," Montague had advised, when they'd spoken of this as they waited for their release from Azkaban. "They'll be expecting you to act shifty, to want to hide it. Defuse their suspicion before it takes root." Harder in practice than in theory, Draco had found, and even harder to do it now, with Harry, than it had been the first day they'd started to work together. Back when Harry was still just Potter and not a man Draco was almost becoming friends with. Before their kids starting playing together. Before Harry had become somebody Draco was attracted to, whose opinion of Draco actually mattered.

Then again, maybe it was a good thing too, that this was happening with Harry. If Draco came back, eventually he'd probably find someone he fancied and could have a chance of dating, and it was a good idea to get to know how it felt to talk about this kind of thing with somebody important to him.

Harry had been standing and making notes on his map while Draco set the Confundus charms, and he approached as Draco started on the last of them. "Those should be good enough," he commented, glancing around. "The counter-charm will be easy to give out too. And I think I'll ask the Ministry if we can use Wheezes Obliviating thread, it's pretty easy to use. You just hang it around whatever it is you don't want people to see, and then if they see it, the thread erases their memory of just that one thing."

Draco nodded, finishing his last Confundus.

"I'm sorry," Harry said hesitantly. "I hadn't really thought..." he trailed off. "Are you worried about - I mean, obviously, don't answer if you don't want to, but... does it really worry you, what other people think about your reasons for doing this job?"

Draco barely stopped himself from snapping at him not to be thick, but realized that Harry really meant the question. He leaned on the low wall, avoiding Harry's eyes. "I... I know people will talk. It's one of the reasons I didn't come back, after my ban on all magic was up. I know... I know there will always be people who suspect me or hate me." And even if they didn't recognize him right away, he thought grimly, eventually they would learn who and what he'd been, thanks to the bloody Dark Mark still on his arm if nothing else. He took his glasses off and started to polish them, remembering that Father had once said that giving in to the impulse to fidget while speaking of difficult subjects was a sign of weakness.

Bully for Father, then. His opinion didn't exactly count for much these days. He cleared his throat. "I don't want to give anybody more reasons to suspect me. It's not so much for me; I don't care about my own reputation any more - much." He took a deep breath. "But for Ben... I don't want to make any trouble for him. Nobody will know who his father is, for the first little while. He doesn't look like me, except for his eyes, he doesn't have my last name, so he should be fine. I just... I don't want to raise more suspicion about myself, because then if he ever enters the wizarding world, people will tar him with the same brush."

There was a long silence. Draco put his glasses back on and gazed out at the glorious vista before him, vaguely recalling that the tourist brochures claimed that on a clear day on Uisneach Hill you could see twenty of the thirty-two Irish counties.

"Do you want him to go into the wizarding world?" Harry asked quietly, leaning on the wall next to Draco. "Knowing what he might be in for?"

Draco sighed. "I don't know. Mostly yes, I do. I want him to be a wizard. But it might be a relief if he he's not."

"Really?"

There was another long pause. "He knows me as a Muggle," Draco finally said, his voice low. "He doesn't know what I did as a wizard. What his family did. I'm not sure I want to change that."

Harry nodded.

Draco gazed over at the two boys playing, some game that required them to climb the same low wall over and over again. "He'll go to Hogwarts, and he'll probably hear that somebody let Death Eaters into the school once, and that that somebody was me." He'll hear about the fact that a Headmaster was killed by a Potions professor and he'll learn it was because of me. Draco could almost see the words floating between them, as if he'd spoken them out loud. "He'll ask how I did on my NEWTs and I'll have to tell him I never took them. There's so much I don't want to have to explain..."

Harry nodded, his eyes on the children, a pensive expression on his face. "Yeah. It's hard to figure out how to explain some things to your children..." he trailed off and cleared his throat. "I'm - for what it's worth, I'm sorry," he said tentatively.

Draco frowned slightly, unsure of what to say.

"Erm... d'you want to get the kids something to eat?" Harry said, trying to reach past the awkwardness.

"Yeah, good idea," Draco said gratefully, and the next few minutes were spent getting the snacks each had bought for their child, asking said children to come down off the wall to eat, and arguing with Ben, who swore he wasn't hungry and promised he wouldn't be hungry five minutes after Draco had put their food away.

This was a good idea, Draco thought as he bit into a sandwich and brushed some dirt off Ben's face. Very relaxed, very comfortable, and they were past the whole life-long parole issue. He smiled as Alec carefully opened up all the biscuits Harry had brought for him and ate the centres first, stubbornly refusing to eat them the way Harry wanted him to. He caught Harry's eye in amusement; Ben did exactly the same thing, and ended up with crumbs all over himself exactly the same way.

Though Harry handled it with a bit more patience than he did, Draco decided. His green eyes crinkled at the sides as he laughed out loud at something his son said, and it was odd how despite the silvery highlights in his hair he looked somehow younger than he had at Hogwarts. Fatherhood certainly looked good on him.

No, actually, this was a bad idea, Draco realized. This felt casual and relaxed and very very right, and it was far too easy to hope it would be repeated and to feel a pang of regret that it probably wouldn't. Couldn't. He and Harry had to work together for Beltane, but after that they were both going back to their separate lives. The idea of becoming friends with Harry, getting together socially, all of that, was not going to happen. The scandal alone, should word get out that the Boy Who Lived was spending time with a convicted Death Eater, would be enough to dissuade Harry from repeating the experience. Never mind the hue and cry Harry's friends and in-laws would likely raise over the whole situation.

The little boys were eating, Ben continuing to chat a mile a minute and Alec quietly listening with a small smile on his face. Draco gazed at them, still not sure it had been a good idea to have them meet each other. The look on Ben's face when he'd talked to Potter had been too hard to forget or dismiss, though. Like he'd just been given the biggest gift anybody could give him: the gift of being around somebody else who was in on the secret of magic.

"Alec," Harry said suddenly. "D'you know what Draco does?" Alec shook his head. "He's a musician."

Alec turned wide green eyes on him, mouth a bit open, gazing at him in admiration.

"That's what I want to be!" he blurted, and Harry looked at him, startled. Draco realized that until that moment he hadn't heard the child's voice. "What do you do?" Alec asked.

"I mostly conduct choirs and teach music lessons. Right now I'm helping put together one concert for tomorrow and another one five days from now."

"Can we come?" Alec immediately asked his father, who looked a bit surprised.

"Oh. Yes. Yes, of course. We'll be there - not the one tomorrow, but the later one, sure, if we can."

"What are you singing?" Alec asked, and Draco smiled at the bemused expression on Harry's face.

"Well, the concert tomorrow is about the sea - sailing songs, that sort of thing."

"It is Muggle music? Can you play it for me?"

"Well, it's choral music, so I can't really sing it all by myself, but... actually, do you read music?"

Alec nodded.

"Do you want to take a look at it?"

Alec nodded again enthusiastically.

"Well, here's my briefcase, the music's in there," Draco said, smiling as the little boy opened the briefcase and reverently took out the sheets.

"This one's a capella?" he asked.

Draco nodded. "Yes. That one's done by the men's chorus."

Alec gazed intently at the next song, his eyebrows drawing together in concentration. Draco watched as he mouthed a few of the words, his fingers twitching in rhythm.

"This one could be done a capella too," he said.

"Yes, it could. We're not quite brave enough to handle it without the instruments though."

Alec nodded absently, enthralled by whatever he was seeing on the pages before him.

Draco looked at Harry questioningly. "How long has he been reading music?" he asked.

"About a year."

"Good God."

"Yeah, he reads music better than words. Words are still a bit iffy for him."

"And he's only four and a half?"

"Yeah, it's a bit early. He's very determined, though. Stubborn, too. I've tried to get him interested in other things, you know, playing with other children, finger-painting, all of that... not much success."

"Wow, this one goes from one music type to another," Alec said.

"Yes it does," Draco said, impressed.

"That one's brilliant," said Ben. "There's even a little band to accompany them. You should hear it. The women's voices are a bit screechy, though."

And now Alec's eyes were glued to Ben. "Do you sing in it too?"

"No, I've a different choir. Sometimes we sing baby music." He scrunched his nose in distaste. "Me Mam and Da are in another choir that's really good. I'll sing you a couple of their songs if you like."

"Will you?"

"Yeah. Are you done eating? We can race to that tree!" he said and took off, Alec scrambling up to follow him.

"Now we'd better finish this bloody site map off," Harry said, brushing his trousers off and getting up. "So Ben likes music too?"

"Yeah," Draco said, putting away his music. "Not like your son, though. It's just he's been raised with it."

"I suppose so." Harry gazed at the two boys thoughtfully. "I wish Alec was more interested in other things. I'm glad he's got music, but... he's very small for his age, and he doesn't have very many friends. He spends a lot of time with his cousins, which is nice, but they don't really understand him. And he's a bit scared of his one cousin who's... a bit too much like her father."

Draco nodded, wondering which twin that was.

"He's also not terribly interested in magic," Harry said. "Which I suppose is only natural; he's grown up surrounded by it, so it's just part of the background for him. And the rest of the family doesn't share his passion for music. Unless you count his grandmother's obsession with Celestina Warbeck."

Draco barely suppressed a gag. "I wouldn't count that, no," he couldn't help himself saying, and Harry laughed.

"No, nor would I." He sighed. "He's all right. He's happy. I just wish... I can't help thinking if his mum were here he'd be different."

They finished the ward-setting in companionable silence, then called the boys.

"Can we stay later?" Alec asked as he reluctantly came back.

Harry shook his head. "Can't, mate, you know that. We've got to go visit Auntie Hermione in the hospital, remember?"

Alec nodded, disappointed.

"Why is she in the hospital?" Draco asked, figuring she couldn't be in serious condition or Harry wouldn't be taking his son to see her.

"She's sort of trying not to have a baby," Harry said grimly. "It's three months early so they're trying to delay the birth as long as possible. After the baby's born they'll both have to stay at St. Mungo's for a while, making sure it's all right."

"I can imagine. Three months; that's early."

"Yeah, well, she was hit with enough curses to kill anybody. This is just one of the side effects. The Healers have said she'll never carry to term. She's accepted it."

"Daddy?" Alec said softly, and Harry bent down to listen to his whispers, and smiled.

"Yeah, I'll ask," Harry said. "Alec wants to know if you'd like Ben to come play at our house one of these days."

Draco glanced at Ben, who nodded enthusiastically. "All right, we'll do that."

"Good. We'll set it up by e-mail?"

"Yeah. No problem."

ooo000ooo

Date: April 18
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
There's a new group put together by Waleran. They're going to picket the Wiccan ceremonies, which unfortunately are supposed to be happening right next to the wizarding Transfiguration festival.

Date:April 18
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Oh that'll be exciting. Should I ask what they'll be protesting?

Date: April 18
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
They're protesting the increase of un-Christian ideas and unholy practices in modern society. They're also claiming that by saying that there is such a thing as magic, the Wiccans are denying Christ and making it easier for Satan to seduce the innocent children's souls.

Date:April 19
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
That's wonderful. I'm sure that'll thrill the Christian wizards and witches at the Hill. I don't suppose it'll do any good to tell them Waleran's group isn't talking about them.

Date: April 19
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
You're welcome to try. It should be fun to watch.

Date:April 19
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Somebody hates me. Any ideas on how to deal with this? And when and where is your concert, by the way?

Date: April 19
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
The concert is on the 22nd at 4, choir call at 2:30 in case Alec wants to see the final rehearsal. It's an outdoor event, at Avery Road Park in Dublin. As for the protestors: I'm only in charge of the Muggles. Keeping offended wizards from Transfiguring the protesters into tea cozies is entirely your area.

Date:April 20
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
That's wonderfully helpful. What's the group called?

Date: April 20
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
You're going to love this: Warriors for Innocence.

Date:April 20
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Where do they find these people? That's just bloody marvelous. I'm going to go pour myself a Firewhiskey now.

Date: April 20
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Bottoms up.

Date:April 20
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Laugh while you can; if I can't keep the wizards in line, you'll have to explain to the Muggle public why a group of deranged zealots has suddenly turned into tea cozies.

Date: April 20
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
I have confidence in your diplomatic skills.

Date:April 20
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
It's too bad e-mail doesn't lend itself to Howlers.

ooo000ooo

April 21

Oh now that wasn't embarrassing at all, Harry thought as he slowly woke up. Not at all embarrassing to be twenty-six years old and wake up covered in sweat, a groan still on his lips, his sheets sticky with the results of a rather lurid dream. For the third time this week.

He rolled over and covered his head with a pillow. God, that had been vivid. The details of the dream were fading, but it had involved Draco and the small grove near the Hill where they'd set up the last Invisibility charm, and there had been gasping and fumbling and heat and a complete blessed absence of anybody under the age of twenty. He had taken off Draco's glasses and run a hand over his short hair, pulled him close and tugged his Muggle jumper out of his trousers and reached down, and Draco had returned the favour and it had been hot and frantic and perfect. And he could probably allow himself another two minutes to bask in the afterglow before pushing the dream out of his mind and pulling himself together and starting his day.

Besides, embarrassment and inappropriateness apart, the dream was at least a marked improvement on nightmares.

He sat up and murmured a cleaning spell before he forced himself out of bed. Yes, definitely better than a nightmare, whether it was about Voldemort or Ginny. Besides, he had it on good authority, from a Healer at St. Mungo's no less, that this kind of thing was a sign of improvement.

He had been so, so out of it for so long after Ginny, that it was like he'd forgotten all about sex, libido, or any kind of sexual contact, for over a year. When he'd finally started coming out of the deep freeze, it hadn't helped that the only real sexual experience he'd ever had had been with Ginny. She was who he always thought of, and on the rare occasions when he wasn't exhausted and slept like the dead, when he dreamed and woke up panting and hard, his dreams were about her. The emptiness of his bed after dreaming of her was devastating.

It had taken almost two years to start to notice other attractive people around him, and even then he'd shied away from thinking of women that way. He supposed it was good that he was now not only noticing an attractive person, but had even progressed to exchanging friendly e-mails with him and dreaming about him. Pity about the identity of said attractive person. As if life wasn't complicated enough as a single father, the one person his libido had chosen to focus on was... well, "completely inappropriate in every conceivable way" just wasn't putting it strongly enough.

He pulled on a pair of shorts and a shirt and padded down the hallway to Alec's room, passing Dobby on his way to the kitchen. He smiled tentatively at Dobby and was mildly annoyed when Dobby just gave him a bland, slightly hostile look and began making breakfast. Dobby had been extremely offended that Harry hadn't thought to call him back from his holiday when Hermione had gone into labour, and was showing Harry in various small ways that his behaviour had been unacceptable.

He left Dobby to his huffy breakfast-making and stopped at the door to Alec's room, where Alec and Jason lay sleeping side by side. Harry ran a hand through his hair and gazed at the two boys, so alike in colouring and so different in temperament. They could be brothers for all the resemblance between them. All the Weasley cousins could be, actually. Other than Fleur's two blonds and Fred's younger brown-haired son, all ten - eleven, now, counting Ron and Hermione's new baby - were almost interchangeable in appearance. Remarkably similar in general personality, too - boisterous, cheerful, forthright, affectionate. Alec sometimes stuck out like a sore thumb with his shy near-silence and his sensitive, artistic temperament.

It wasn't that Alec didn't love his cousins, and it wasn't that they didn't love him. But he had never clicked with any of them the way he'd clicked with Ben. He had also never looked at another adult the way he'd looked at Malfoy, like he'd finally met somebody who could understand the most important thing in his life.

There was even an odd sort of symmetry to this situation. Draco had been the first wizard child Harry had ever met. It seemed fitting that Harry's son would be the first wizard child Draco's son ever met. And nice that their meeting had gone somewhat better than his and Draco's at age eleven.

Right. Harry rubbed his forehead, reining himself in. How much of all of this was real, and how much was just Harry finding excuses to feel some kind of bond to Draco? It was nice that Alec found Draco fascinating, at first glance. And very nice that he hit it off with Ben, but that didn't mean a thing. There was no guarantee that an affinity for music could help build any kind of solid friendship - and maintain it past all the problems that such a friendship would bring with it, considering the people involved.

It was just Harry who was grasping at straws, Harry who was feeling lonely and aching for any excuse to see compatibility where there wasn't any. Harry who was feeling so incredibly drawn to Draco, wanting so much to listen to him talk, watch Alec blossom with him and Ben, watch Draco smile at both little boys, so completely different from the person Harry thought he'd known before. It didn't mean anything.

And yet, watching Alec actually talk the other day... it had been like a gift. Unexpected and marvelous. Not for the first time, he wished Ginny could have seen it. Wished Ginny could have seen any of it.

Harry pushed himself away from the door frame and padded down the hallway again, going into the washroom. He'd been planning on waking the boys up himself, but there was no way he could do so when he got into this kind of mood. Not that he allowed it very often, but sometimes there was nothing to be gained by running away from it. Running away from the memories of Alec's birth and Ginny's death and what they did to him.

Ron's face, so white, every freckle standing out in sharp contrast. Hermione shaking and exhausted, the adrenaline of having tried so, so hard to figure out how to stop the birth leaving her with nothing now that it was over. Fred's hand on George's shoulder as George sobbed, his face hidden in his arms. Bill silently holding Fleur close, tears running down his scarred face. Percy standing apart from them all, biting his lip as if he didn't have a right to join them, until Arthur reached out and pulled him close.

God, so many tears, such disbelief. It was supposed to have been a happy occasion. The only girl, the youngest in the family, was going to be a mother, and all of the proud uncles and aunts and grandparents had gathered for a celebration and ended up mourning her instead.

And Alec. Alec, so small, wispy red fuzz instead of hair, perfectly healthy, not knowing that his birth had just robbed his entire family and himself of a mother.

Harry had not known what to do with Alec. It was supposed to be a moment to share with Ginny. They were going to look at him and see whether he resembled her or him more. Whether he had Weasley hair or Potter eyes. Technically, they're Evans eyes, he remembered Ginny pointing out when they'd spoken of it.

And she couldn't share it with him. She was gone, because of him. In a daze, he'd said something like that, not realizing he'd spoken out loud until Molly's head snapped up and she grabbed his shoulders, shaking him, almost snarling in anger. "It's because of you that she lived to be twenty. She would've died when she was eleven, if you hadn't been there to save her. Don't you dare say anything like that again. Ever." She'd taken Alec from the Healer who was holding him. "Take your son. Her son. She can't be here to hold him, so you'll have to do it." She'd shoved the tiny bundle into his arms and he'd only been able to stare at his child helplessly, not knowing how to hold him, what to do, how to react to him. Not knowing how to stop the weak wailing that felt like it was trying to penetrate Harry's numbness, to no effect.

"'E needs milk," Fleur had said after a few minutes, her voice tight. "Give 'im to me, I 'ave more zan my son needs."

Harry hadn't cried. Hadn't been able to, not when Fleur put Alec to her breast, not at Ginny's funeral, not when he'd lain awake for hours at night in those first weeks, not when he and Alec first left the Burrow, where Molly had insisted they stay for the first month. He'd cried the first time Alec smiled. He'd come out of his exhausted numbness and had finally realized Ginny would never see any of it. She wouldn't see the first time he rolled over, sat up, walked, or said Daddy. Harry had cried for what felt like hours, grief-stricken and scared and hopeless. Odd that his son's first smile should've opened the floodgates, but it had, and then he couldn't close them again. For weeks after that he'd felt like he was always on the verge of tears, that everything was overwhelming. Missing Ginny and terrified that he was going to screw this up, because he had no memories of a happy childhood or loving parents, had nobody to emulate when trying to be even a halfway adequate father to Alec. Ginny had had role models, but Ginny was gone. He'd cried several times a day, curled in on himself, leaving Alec to Dobby while he struggled to get himself under control.

He finally had. Slowly, with Dobby's help and with the entire Weasley family constantly by his side, he had made a life for himself and Alec.

Harry shuddered. It had been a terrible time, full of loneliness and grief and exhaustion. He didn't ever want to be reminded of it.

"Dobby, can you get the boys up, please?" he asked as he went into the kitchen. "I'll get breakfast."

Dobby regarded him seriously for a long moment. "Very well, Harry Potter, sir," he said, losing the petulant whine his voice had had since he'd come back from his holiday, and headed down the hallway.

ooo000ooo

"He's beautiful, Ron," Harry said, his voice hushed. Not that there was much danger of the baby hearing him, enclosed as he was in a protective magic bubble hovering a few inches off of Hermione's bed as a Healer ran tests over him with her wand.

"He is, isn't he? So bloody small, though. I thought Jason was tiny; Joshua's barely the size of my hand," Ron said, his voice tired but happy.

"I was that small?" Jason asked, getting up on Hermione's bed to get a closer look at his tiny brother.

"You were," Hermione said, deep shadows under her eyes, but just as tiredly happy as Ron.

"And I was in a bubble too?"

"For almost two months, except when you nursed," Ron told him. "We held you a lot, though. Just like we'll hold Joshua. It's good for him."

"How can you, though? He's in a bubble!"

"You take the bubble, like this," Ron said, reaching out for it as it floated over Hermione's bed. "If you move too fast, it won't let you through and it'll just be like a ball in your hand. If you go really slow, the bubble lets you in." He slowly pressed into the bubble and his hand was allowed in to touch the baby inside. The baby moved slightly as Ron curled his hand around the back and legs until he was cradling the baby's entire body, its head resting on his forefinger and its bottom in Ron's palm.

"Wow!" Jason said quietly.

"Do you want to touch your little brother?" the Healer asked.

Jason turned wide eyes to her. "Can I?"

"You'll have to be very very careful, and you can only touch him a little bit, but yes. Just move slowly."

Hermione moved aside a bit and Ron sat down on the bed, taking Jason's hand and gently guiding it into the bubble. "Wow!" Jason said shakily as his finger softly stroked the baby's tiny cheek. "Wow! He's soft!"

"That's enough for now," Ron said, and Jason carefully pulled his hand out. "As he gets older you'll be able to touch him more, but right now he's very delicate."

"Do you want to touch the baby, Alec?" Harry asked, and Alec quickly shook his head. "You won't hurt him." Alec shook his head again. "Maybe when he's a little older?" Alec nodded.

So incredibly small, Harry thought in wonder. It was hard to believe anybody that tiny could survive, but here he was, all eighteen ounces and eleven inches of him, safely encased in his bubble, resting on his father's hand.

Alec pulled at Harry's sleeve. Harry bent down so that Alec could whisper in his ear. "Yes?"

"Did you ask about Ben and about the concert?"

Harry smiled. "Yes, of course. I e-mailed him."

"Why not the moby phone?"

"Because I don't know his phone number," Harry said.

"Whose phone number?" Hermione asked.

"I have a friend," Alec said proudly, and Hermione and Ron sent startled glances at Harry, not used to Alec speaking without prompting.

"Really? What's his name?"

"Ben," Alec said. "And he's brilliant and he tells stories and he sings and he has a moby phone!!"

"A moby phone?" Ron asked.

"Mobile phone," Hermione corrected automatically.

"Yeah, his mum's a Muggle, only his dad's a wizard. But they're not married, are they Daddy?"

"No, they're not."

"Because Ben said his dad's gay. Like Uncle Remus."

"Oh." Hermione glanced at Harry speculatively. "Really?"

"Erm. Yeah," Harry said, wondering if he sounded as shifty as he felt. It wasn't that he wanted to hide anything, he told himself. He just didn't particularly want to discuss this, either.

"So... Ben's father is single? And gay?" asked Hermione pointedly, and Ron glanced at her, puzzled, then at Harry in surprise.

"Yeah," Harry said.

"How did you meet him?"

"He's brilliant too!" Alec broke in. "He showed me his music! Muggle music, too - it's wonderful!"

Hermione and Ron smiled at him. That was probably the longest they'd ever heard him speak, Harry thought. "That's wonderful," Hermione said warmly.

"That's, erm, brilliant, mate," Ron said, only a bit uncomfortably.

Harry opened his mouth to correct their assumption, then closed it, completely at a loss as to what to say.

"So what did Draco say, Daddy?" Alec asked, and Ron and Hermione's faces went through a rather comical metamorphosis from approval to open-mouthed shock.

"He told me where and when the concert was, so he knows we're coming," Harry said, trying to maintain a casual tone and aware that he was probably failing miserably. "We'll probably talk about having Ben over then."

"Good!" Alec said, beaming.

"Alec!" Jason said, breaking into the conversation. "There's a lady down the hall who's got a house elf baby! She said we can come see it!"

The children ran off and Harry squirmed inwardly, clearing his throat and glancing at Ron and Hermione. Ron's face looked like he was torn between embarrassment and disgust.

"What?" Harry asked defensively.

"Sorry, mate, I just... I thought, the way Alec was talking about his friend's dad, I thought, you know, maybe it was somebody you fancied or something."

Harry looked away, but apparently not fast enough for Hermione to miss the guilty flush on his face.

"You're not," she said slowly. "Harry, you're seriously not."

"Not what?" asked Ron.

"Harry! How could you?" Hermione said.

Harry looked away, realizing there was probably no way for him to manage to pretend to feel nothing towards Draco.

"You're what?" Ron said slowly, looking from Hermione to Harry and back. "You're not serious. You're... interested in him? Malfoy?!"

Harry shook his head dismissively. "Look, it - yeah, all right, a bit, but it's not - I'm just working with him right now and-"

"And your son is getting together for a playdate with his son," Hermione said, her voice hard. "That isn't work-related, is it?"

Harry bit his lip.

"Are you completely mental?" Ron asked, his voice rising in disbelief, and the baby in his hands began to fuss. He closed his mouth and looked like he was counting to ten. "Are you completely mental?" he asked again, very quietly, the forced control of his voice a marked contrast to his words. "Think about Alec!"

"I am thinking about Alec. He just wants to get together to play with a friend-"

"You're letting Alec get attached!" Ron hissed. "To Malfoy's son! To Malfoy!"

"You can't do this, Harry!" Hermione said. "I know you've been lonely, and God knows it would be wonderful if you met somebody who also got on with Alec, and I don't care if it's a man or a woman. But Malfoy?"

"Look, you don't need to tell me all of this, right? I've got a brain. I'm not pursuing anything, it's just-"

"Really? Then what the hell are you doing? Because right now, whether you're... attracted to Malfoy or not-" Ron's voice held more disgust than Harry had heard from him in years, and he had to stop for a moment. "Right now it looks like you're encouraging Alec to become friends with Malfoy's son. How are you going to explain that one when Alec mentions his new friend to Fred?"

"How are you going to explain to Bill that you're spending time with the man who scarred him for life?" Hermione added. "Have you thought about any of that?"

"Malfoy's son is five years old!" Harry said angrily. "He's not to blame for-"

"Don't be so bloody naïve!" Hermione said, furious. "We're not objecting to the child, but you can't pretend that being in contact with him won't put you in contact with Malfoy. If they were older, if they met at Hogwarts, that would be one thing. But at this age?"

"Bloody well think, Harry!" Ron said. "Is Malfoy's son really the only friend you can find for Alec? Or are you just encouraging this because you want to be around Malfoy?"

Harry stared at both of them rebelliously, a hundred objections on the tip of his tongue dying as quickly as he thought of them. Because they were right, and yet. Alec's face, talking to Draco. Ben's face as he asked questions that first night, and yesterday. Alec following Ben around, fascinated by him...

He sat on the nearest chair and looked away from them. They were right, he thought as Hermione took the baby from Ron. They weren't saying anything he hadn't said to himself a hundred times.

So why did he feel like what he wanted most in the world was to defy them?

"I'm not - look, I'm not doing anything," he said quietly. "We're working together, that's all. Come Beltane, we'll be done and I'll probably never see him again." No matter how much he wanted to. Bloody hell. He swallowed hard. "I've got Alec to think of, right? I wouldn't get involved with anybody, I never have."

"It's not that," Hermione said gently. "You've the right to have a life. You know we'd all be happy for you if you found somebody. But that somebody can't be Malfoy."

ooo000ooo

Date: April 21
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Tomorrow is the Avery Park concert. Are you and Alec still coming? By the way, I've arranged for muffling charms for the Warriors for Innocence group.

Date:April 21
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Good idea for the group. Yes, Alec and I will be attending.

Date: April 22
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Ben would like to know if Alec would like to stay a bit longer after the concert.

Date:April 22
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Unfortunately, we've got other commitments soon after the concert. Sorry.

ooo000ooo

April 22

"For the Abide song," Alec asked Draco, "was that supposed to be so soft?"

"Yes. And the entries were a bit sloppy, but it's good that we made that mistake during the rehearsal, because that means it won't happen again during the concert."

"It's beautiful, though, isn't it? It's like you're singing in a big building."

"It's often sung in a church."

"Really? Is that because it's a song to God?"

"Erm. Yes, I suppose so," Draco said, glancing quickly at Harry, unsure of Harry's attitude toward God or religion. Harry was looking at the small pond in front of them, his manner aloof and a bit uneasy, as he had been since he and Alec had arrived. Not for the first time that afternoon, Draco wondered what was going on with him.

"It sounds like a prayer," Alec said.

"Yes, it does. Most of our songs do, in this concert."

"The one with the men was really good. The one for sailors?"

"Yeah, that's a prayer song too," Draco said, getting a bit irate at Harry's distance and promptly at himself for noticing it. What the hell, he wasn't Harry's girlfriend, he couldn't exactly go into a huff and demand that Harry pay attention to him.

Would be nice if he could, though.

"It was really good," Alec was still talking, oblivious to his father's reserve. "The way all the voices went in and out. You didn't need instruments at all. But that one man had a bit of a creaky voice."

"Yes, well, we've only got two baritones, and one of them was a little... under the weather today." 'Under the weather' - a child-friendly euphemism for disgracefully hung over.

"The Hallelujah song is brilliant, isn't it? So beautiful. It felt like the sun was coming out when you sang that last verse. Like the voices were bringing it out." Harry smiled at Alec and Draco took a measure of comfort in that. Maybe he was just preoccupied about something.

"Yeah," he replied. "It is beautiful, but I don't like that we have to mispronounce 'you' just to make a rhyme."

"When's Mam coming, Dad?" asked Ben.

"Not sure, but she'd best be here soon. The women are about to rehearse."

"They both sing in the same choir?" Alec asked Ben.

"Yeah. That's how they met, at choir," said Ben.

Alec looked at Draco admiringly. "I want to be in a choir some day."

"Erm, so has anything come up in the papers or the internet?" Harry asked, breaking his silence. "About Muggles coming to the Hill?"

"No, the last news I sent you is all I know. There's a group that's thinking of greeting the Beltane sun on a particular rise on the Hill, but they're going to run into a spot of trouble with another group from Belfast who's there for the same thing. They're all Muggles, though, they'll work it out."

"And you're still watching the internet sites?"

"Yeah, every day. And I'm watching the newspapers as well."

"You check the news every day?"

"Well, that's the thing with the news. It changes every day, you see," Draco said innocently.

Harry's mouth quirked up a bit at the side. "Thanks. Good of you to point that out."

"D'you know anybody who can turn into an animal?" Ben asked Alec, out of the blue as far as Draco could tell.

"No, but my grandfather used to, and his best friends. They didn't tell anybody though."

"Yeah? I wonder if anybody in my family could. Could they, Dad?"

Draco hesitated, not sure how to answer that one, but Alec interrupted.

"How come you never tried, Daddy?"

"I was a little busy at school," Harry said.

"But it would be brilliant!" Ben said. "I would want to turn into a phoenix!"

"You can't really control what you turn into," Harry told him. "We had a professor who could do it. She was very good at it. But she told me once that when she'd studied it she had wanted to be an eagle. Came out as a cat instead." Ben frowned. "Said she didn't mind the lack of flight, but the hairballs were a nuisance." Draco found himself laughing unexpectedly at the mental image. Harry grinned. "She coughed one up at an Order meeting once. Very funny. Said she'd never spend a week as a cat again."

"Why had she?"

"She got in to see... well, she'd gone to see if she could get into a... certain place," he glanced at Draco and Draco caught the warning. Probably Voldemort's headquarters. "Ended up spying for a while. Had the worst time not pouncing on Wormtail."

Draco snickered. He would've had a hard time not pouncing on him too. The thought of killing the little piece of vermin had been on everybody's mind, he was sure. Sycophantic, cowardly, oily little-

"Did anybody in our family ever do that?" Ben asked.

"Yes," Draco said automatically, immediately annoyed at his slip.

"Really? Who?" Harry asked, and Draco bit his lip.

"Erm." Draco looked from Harry to Ben to Alec and realized that he should probably hand in his Slytherin tie, as he could think of no way to avoid answering the question. He cleared his throat and muttered "My father."

Harry blinked. "Your father was an Animagus?"

"Unregistered."

"Really? That's..." Harry blinked and Draco could see the surprise, uncertainty and reluctant curiosity chasing each other across his face. "That's interesting. So, erm... what was he?"

Draco blushed slightly but made himself answer, realizing he'd completely mumbled when Harry's eyebrows drew together.

"A what? A muck?"

Draco cleared his throat again. "A duck," he said, more clearly.

Harry gaped at him. "A duck?"

"Yes."

"Your father... turned into a duck?"

"A snow-white duck."

All of a sudden Harry burst out laughing, much to Alec and Ben's surprise. Draco felt his own lips twitch.

"Oh," Harry gasped. "You're taking the piss. You're not serious. Lucius Malfoy's Animagus form was a duck?!"

Draco snickered. "I'm not joking, believe me. I never saw it myself, but my mother told me once and..." he trailed off, starting to chuckle. It had been one of his fondest childhood memories, a secret between his mother and himself, because Father had, apparently, been livid. Mother hadn't been able to stop laughing about it, but had cautioned Draco to never, ever tell anyone. Oh well.

"Apparently it was rather mortifying. I'm told. I never saw it - I think my father only did it twice - but I can tell you that my mother almost choked trying not to laugh at him."

"Draco? Where is everybody?" Draco turned to see Kara came striding up to them. "Hello, scamp," she said, tugging on Ben's dreadlocks.

"Mam!" Ben hugged her.

"Am I late?"

"Yes," Draco said shortly. "You're in luck, though, so's your section leader."

"Oh, good. So what've you been up to this week?" she asked Ben, who started to chatter rapidly, letting her in on the last few days. She glanced over at Harry.

"Are you - I met you a few weeks ago, didn't I?" she asked Harry, and Harry nodded.

"Right. And that's your lad over there?" she said, indicating where Alec was leafing through music pages.

"Yeah."

"And your wife?"

"Kara!" Draco said warningly.

Harry blinked, a bit startled. "Oh. Erm, I don't have one. I'm a widower."

"Ah. I see." Kara's sharp eyes went from Harry to Draco and back, and she gave Draco a glance that was probably supposed to be subtle but could easily be correctly interpreted by any alert nine year old. She turned to Ben and Alec. "Come, Ben, why don't we get you lads something to eat before I get called to rehearse, and you can introduce me to your friend." The two boys jumped up and the three of them set off, Ben chattering happily about Alec and Alec giving Kara a shy smile.

"What was that?" Harry asked.

"Nothing," Draco said uncomfortably. Harry was looking at him curiously, and Draco realized that with Kara's rather clumsy efforts, if he didn't clear this up, Harry was going to get completely the wrong impression about Draco's feelings towards him.

All right, completely the right impression, but not an impression Draco was particularly eager to give, considering.

"Kara's a bit of a matchmaker," he said, keeping his voice casual and off-handedly amused. "There's not a man who comes within a few feet of me that she doesn't pair me up with. She's about as subtle as a Blast-Ended Skrewt."

"Ah," Harry said. "Yeah, that's always a bit frustrating." He smiled slightly as if at an inside joke.

"You've a matchmaker too, I take it?"

"You've met the Weasleys," Harry said after a slight hesitation, and Draco shuddered. Subtlety and delicacy had never been Weasley attributes. He could only imagine what it would be like to have any of them trying to help out your love life.

"What, all of them? Throwing any and all available women in your direction?"

Harry nodded, then there was another slight hesitation. "Not women, no, but yeah, a lot of matchmaking going on."

Draco blinked. "I thought you were straight."

"Not totally," Harry said, a bit uncomfortably. "Anyway, they want me to date again. It gets a bit tiresome."

"I can imagine," Draco said, his mind reeling a bit and giving him a sudden dread of going to sleep that night and dreaming of stacks of fit men being flung Harry's way by a crowd of eager freckled ginger cupids.

Kara had come back. "Ben's taken to your little one, hasn't he?"

"Yeah, he has."

"That's his way," Kara said fondly. "He's very protective of smaller children, too."

"Really?"

"Has lots of stuffed animals and dolls that he takes care of, too. Me father thinks it's all rubbish, that I'm making a poofter out of him. Part of why we don't visit me family that much."

"No, I can imagine."

"He is right, though," Draco pointed out. "Ben's got a lot of feminine in him. He's got dolls and loves cooking and taking care of babies."

"Yeah," said Kara, "but he's also built like a rugby team, beats holy hell out of anybody who crosses him, and runs about making dreadful shooting noises day and night. He's got a lot of masculine too."

"He's a lesbian," Draco said seriously. "That's what he is, our son is a lesbian." Kara and Harry chuckled.

"Speaking of which, Draco, could you take our wee lesbian for the next week too?"

"Kara, come on, he misses you-"

"I know, but I've a gig in Belfast. This could be really big, Draco."

Draco scowled at her.

"Look, you're the one that tells me I can succeed in my career here and don't need to move to London. So help me do it."

Draco frowned at her. "You're lucky I like having him around," he said, giving in.

"I know. That's why I picked ye," she said cheekily. "I knew if we ended up with a wean you'd be a far better mother than me."

"Would've been decent of you to tell me that at the time," Draco said sourly.

"You knew enough, don't give me that," Kara sniffed disdainfully. "Oh! Emily's here, time to add my pagan voice to the Christian chorus. Bye, luv," she said, and gave Ben a small pat as she hurried off with one last wink at Draco and another significant look at Harry.

"So does she actually set you up?" Harry asked curiously. "Or is it all just looks and nudges?"

"Mostly looks and nudges. She's tried to do more a few times, but... I can be around Muggles most of the time, but anything closer is awkward long-term. Especially when they wonder about things like why my flat's always cool in the summer without air conditioning, and how do I get from one place to another so quickly without a car." And he was going to stop there. He was not going to mention how much he yearned to be with somebody who understood what he was and what that meant. In a way it was nice, being with Muggles; they didn't know anything about him, or anything about the Dark Mark and what it meant. But it had only taken one of his lovers to mention that he thought the Mark was "sexy" to put him off on the concept of getting serious with any of them. It was hard to feel like getting back into bed with a fellow who said something like that, no matter how innocent the remark.

Sexy. A mark that meant pain and shame and servitude to a terrifying madman. A mark that meant imprisonment, exile from everything he loved, and a permanent reminder that none of it could ever really be his again. That for the rest of his life, he would have to face people who either knew nothing about him, or knew far too much.

"Does she know you're a wizard?" Harry asked.

"Who, Kara? No."

"Hasn't Ben ever let it slip?"

"Oh no, he's under Secrecy. You know, the spell they do on Muggle-born's families. Prevents him from talking about the wizarding world with anybody who shouldn't know about it. I had the Ministry set it when he was about two."

Harry nodded distractedly, his manner slipping back to aloofness.

"Are you all right?" Draco finally asked.

Harry blinked, startled. "Yeah. Sorry. Work."

"All right."

Harry said awkwardly, "So... erm, Ben's very friendly. Very outgoing. Does he have many friends?"

"Yeah, he does. He's a bit different with you and Alec, though. He's under Secrecy, but he wants to talk about magic so much. It's a heavy secret to bear."

"Yeah, it's hard for kids to live with secrets." Harry pushed his glasses up. "Hard for adults, too."

"Must be nice not to have to," Draco said a bit bitterly.

Harry looked away. "I wouldn't know," he said quietly, and Draco wondered at his brooding tone but felt a flash of impatience nonetheless.

He rolled his eyes. "About what? How you killed Voldemort? I'm not talking about anything like that."

"No, not about that," Harry said sharply. "You're not the only one with family secrets."

Draco blinked, taken aback by the near-anger in Harry's voice. "I'm sorry," he said, and briefly reflected that once upon a time those words had been more alien to him than any foreign language. "I didn't mean to offend you. It's just that it's not the same. You don't have anything you'd want to hide specifically from your child."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Harry still sounded a bit angry. "You don't know a bloody thing about my secrets, Draco." He gazed over at Alec and Ben. "I do know what it's like, to look at your child and wonder how the hell you're ever going to explain some of the hard things he needs to know."

"Do you?" Draco asked, almost challengingly. "Like what?"

Harry gave him a sharp look and opened his mouth to speak, then something he saw in Draco's eyes seemed to make him pause. He sighed and seemed to come to a decision, turning and facing him. "Like Ginny," he said, his voice low. "And how she died."

Draco frowned. "I thought she was cursed. By the D- by Voldemort. Wasn't she?"

Harry shook his head. "She wasn't. I was. Voldemort didn't kill her, I did. Or rather, we did."

"'We'?"

"Me and Alec. There's a reason we never revealed the curse, beyond the line that went into the papers about not wanting people to copy it."

"What was it?"

There was a long pause, and Draco opened his mouth to tell Harry he didn't have to tell him, but Harry cut him off. "It's all right. I have to stop hiding it some day. He'll be old enough to tell soon enough. I just don't want it to get out to the press." He took a deep breath. "Are you familiar with the Fluchsamen curse?"

Draco blinked. "It's..." he closed his eyes, trying to remember it. There had been so many curses in his childhood education. "Some kind of family curse, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Purebloods used a few of those in medieval times. They were rather tricky, weren't they?"

"Yeah. It's a bit nasty - not that they all aren't, in their own ways, but this one especially. It makes you kill off your line voluntarily. It doesn't kill you or anybody in your family, but your line dies out all the same, by your own choice. I was rather impressed by it, to be honest, once I was able to think about it. More subtle than what Voldemort usually did. And I was impressed that he hadn't told me all about it; he loved the sound of his own voice so much."

An image of a villain saying "You got me monologuing!" flashed incongruously through Draco's memory, from a Muggle movie Kara had bought for Ben; he quickly banished it as inappropriate.

"The number of times that man could've ended the whole sorry mess between him and me with just a flick of his wand, but he could never stop talking," Harry said, shaking his head. "Going on and on about his evilness, his cleverness... bloody prima donna." Draco snickered, and Harry smiled slightly. "Then again, it's possible the reason he didn't say anything is that I didn't feel like listening to him any more, so I just killed him before he'd really hit his stride.

"Anyway. The curse. The literal translation is Curse Your Seed, in German or Old High German or something, Hermione probably knows. It's a curse upon a man's line of descent. You can father children. You're fine, and they're fine. But whoever 'bears your seed' within them dies in childbirth. And the curse is passed down to all of your male descendants, indefinitely, including those born from your female descendants. So the only way to continue your line is to somehow make sure you only have a daughter - who will kill her mother - and then tell her to only ever have daughters, and to pass the knowledge of the curse down forever and ever, because any son, no matter how many generations it takes, will kill anybody who bears his child. So you or your sons go childless, and your name dies."

"And you didn't know about it until the end?"

"No. There wasn't any sign until Ginny went into labour. It wouldn't have made any difference, though; you can't even use abortion to save the mother's life. Once she's pregnant with your child, she's as good as dead."

Draco felt a bit ill.

"Hermione thinks the reason he chose that curse for me had to do with immortality. You know how they say the only way to be immortal is to live forever or have children? He chose to try to live forever. Hermione thinks that he figured if I stopped him from being immortal by killing him, he'd stop me from being immortal by making sure I didn't have any descendants." He shrugged. "What's stupid is I would've been happy to adopt, if I'd known. I didn't care about passing on my name or preserving the Potter line or whatever. But I did care about Ginny." He tossed a stone into the small pond.

"So I got myself sterilized as soon as I could, the Muggle way and the wizarding way because there was no way I was going to put another woman through what happened to Ginny. Would've had Alec done too, but the Healers wanted him to have the choice when he was old enough. I probably won't ever date another woman again, either; there's no point in tempting fate. And someday Alec will have to know why his mother died, and learn why he will never have siblings, and learn that the only way he'll have children will be to adopt them. But I don't have the first idea how to bring any of this up with him, or when."

That was... yeah, that was pretty high up in terms of Miserable Things You Never Want To Explain To Your Child.

"God. I'm... I'm sorry," Draco said. "That's... I don't even know what to say." He paused. "Do the Weasleys know?"

Harry nodded. "All of them. Our generation, anyway; the oldest of the kids was three when it happened, so there was never a need to tell them. None of them ever bring it up. Percy Weasley made up that story for the Prophet, about her being cursed by Voldemort, got her name on that war monument. I think that was his way of apologizing for being a horse's arse before the war."

There was a brief silence, broken by Harry. "You're being called up," he said, nodding towards the stage.

Sod that, Draco wanted to say, but Ben and Alec were running back to Harry, Alec fairly vibrating with excitement in anticipation of the music. What rotten timing.

"You flew? On a broom?" Ben was saying as they approached.

"Yeah," Alec said, obviously not understanding why Ben would sound so excited by it.

"Dad, can we get one? Can I fly on yours?"

"Of course. I haven't flown in a few years, though," Draco said.

"Can everybody fly?"

"Some people aren't very good at it, or they don't like it. Ben, I've got to go, remember you're to behave while your mum and I are on stage."

"Yeah Dad," Ben said hurriedly. "So how often d'you fly?" he was asking as Draco left.

He reluctantly joined the others on the stage, taking his place next to Kara, his mind elsewhere as they began with Abide. Which did sound exactly as Alec had said. He caught a glimpse of Alec's face as he sat in rapt attention, Ben sitting next to him pretty blasé about the whole music experience but thrilled at being among wizards, and Harry smiling at them both.

What must it be like, to know that your child had killed the woman you loved? He and Kara had never been particularly close, so he could only imagine, but God, what a thing to live with. As they sang, the alto line was coming down to meet the men, all the lower parts staying in unison for a few notes, and he had a sudden image of the space next to him empty, of trying to go on singing without her alto complementing with his tenor. Imagined dealing with that in every area of his life. Nobody to share Ben with, nobody to share the worry and the pride that came with parenthood.

Draco remembered Alec's birth and Ginny Weasley's death. It had been in all the papers, along with speculation as to the mysterious curse that had killed her. The official explanation was that it was an obscure curse that had only manifested itself years later, and what rotten luck that it had done so right when her son was born. She'd been buried with full honours by the Ministry, her name added to the Second Voldemort Rising heroes' monument as the last fatality of the war. Draco had been near the end of his exile at the time, only in contact with the wizarding world through the papers, and he'd read about it but it hadn't really impacted much on him. Once, he would've felt a certain vindictive glee in the downfall of an enemy - in anything that would make Potter unhappy - but Ginny Weasley's death had seemed too far beyond the pale for that. The fact that he'd ended up on the same side of the war as Potter was only part of it. The real reason was that that kind of glee was appropriate for Potter losing at Quidditch, not for his wife dying in childbirth.

So Draco had just looked at the pictures of Potter and the rest of the Weasleys at Ginny's funeral, and the news of Potter's withdrawal from professional Quidditch, and the occasional pictures of Potter alone with a small child, and pretty much felt like saying, "Life's tough, join the club," and nothing more.

Pie Jesu began, and he let himself sink into the soft verses of its lament. Give them rest, the song said, and Draco wondered whether it was meant to give rest to those who had died or those who were left behind. For those who realized that the dead, whether they were at rest or not, continued to haunt the living and affect their lives. Ginny Weasley had been dead four and a half years, but she was yet another reason why there was no way he and Harry could ever be anything but casual co-workers to one another, Harry's orientation aside. Draco still carried the mark of his allegiance to the man who had taken Ginny from her husband and son, and cursed them both. There was no way to get past that.

They ended the song and Draco was almost surprised at the applause, and even more surprised when Kara poked him. "Love, you nearly missed that last entry," she said between her teeth. "I know Harry's quite the dish, but mind you get your thoughts out of his knickers and into the music, at least while we're on stage, yeah?"

Draco nodded at her impatiently. She was right, of course. And not just for the concert; for his sake and for Ben's too. There was too much history here, it wasn't worth trying to get past it just for the lift being in Harry's presence gave him, and he couldn't risk Ben being hurt once it finally dawned on Harry that being seen with a convicted felon really wasn't the done thing. He'd just have to find somebody else to share the wizarding world with Ben. And someone else, somewhat more attainable, to quicken his own pulse and send his thoughts down the kinds of paths they'd been going lately. And hopefully Harry could find somebody else to share music with Alec as well; it really wasn't Draco's concern, after all.

Music was supposed to be a refuge, Draco reminded himself as they began the next song. That was why he'd drifted into it during his exile; because you could just lose yourself in the music and forget that war and loss and exile and heartache existed. For whatever comfort music gave him - or Alec, or even Harry - he raised his voice to sing Hallelujah, and put Harry out of his mind. 

3

Date: April 22
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
I think Ben may be at his mother's place this Wednesday, so we'll have to reschedule the playdate.

Date:April 23
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
That's too bad. I'll let Alec know.

Date: April 23
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Actually, never mind. He'll be here.

Date:April 23
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Good, we'll see you then.

ooo000ooo

April 23

Harry let Joshua roll over in his hand and watched as his tiny chest rose and fell inside the protective bubble and his forehead scrunched up. Hermione shifted in her sleep, murmuring something, and Alec glanced at Harry. Harry nodded reassuringly, amused at how seriously Alec was taking his duty to guard Joshua and Hermione during Ron's brief absence. Also amused at how seriously Alec was taking his self-imposed assignment to closely observe Joshua; apparently Ben had been fascinated by the idea of a baby in a bubble and had asked Alec a million questions about it the other day, which Alec hadn't been able to answer. He'd be ready the next time he saw Ben.

Which would be in two days. Harry berated himself silently over that for the hundredth time.

That had been so stupid. He'd gone to the concert determined to simply fulfill a social obligation and find some way of extricating himself from the mess he'd made, because Ron and Hermione were right. There was no future in getting Alec and Ben together, it was sheer idiocy to think there could be, and there was no point letting himself get further drawn into this ridiculous... thing he had towards Draco.

And then they got there, and Alec was so happy, and Ben was such an engaging little person, and Draco was so patient with Alec, so willing to listen to him and talk with him. So... attractive and interesting. Even hearing him talk about his family had been interesting, because Harry had grown up thinking of the Malfoy family as a group of cold, inhuman bigots. Not that they weren't, but apparently they'd also been a family like any other, with shared secrets and laughter and embarrassing moments.

There was so much that kept drawing him in, no matter how much he told himself that he didn't care and shouldn't be interested. Like the way Draco was also unsure about entering into relationships, as much as Harry was. Like the way it seemed they were both somehow apart from the people around him, Harry by reason of his curse, Draco by reason of his past.

Not to mention the fact that Draco seemed - mostly - comfortable with Muggles. Living as one of them, despite how difficult it must have been to take that step, raised as he had been to hate Muggles. A Malfoy gone Muggle. Talk about Student Least Likely To.

And... well, he'd been dressed in a semi-casual white shirt and black trousers, as were the other members of the choir, but on Draco they looked like an invitation to ogle. Elegant without being ostentatious, complementing his fair skin, leaving him looking so casual and relaxed and...

Oh, not going there, Harry thought in dismay. No, think of something else.

"Where's Jason?" Alec asked, breaking his train of thought.

"He's with Uncle Fred, because his mum and dad are busy with the baby."

"Why's he so little? Philippe wasn't so little."

"Philippe was born after he'd been in Auntie Fleur's tummy for nine months. But Auntie Hermione had a lot of nasty spells thrown at her during the war, so it's hard for her to keep a baby in her tummy long enough for it to be okay." Alec's eyebrows shot up. "Not that Joshua's not okay," Harry said hastily, "but it's going to take a while for him to be able to go home."

"Oh."

Harry gazed thoughtfully at Alec watching his tiny cousin, and felt a lump in his throat. Not that Alec was normally all that intrigued by babies, but... it was hard not to feel a sense of loss at the thought that he would never even come close to this. Never know the thrill of watching his own flesh and blood grow from babyhood, never see his child grow inside the woman he loved.

Never know the heartbreak of losing her in childbirth either, he reminded himself. And with any luck, if Harry figured out how to do it right, he would grow up knowing that procreation was barred to him, but that there was no reason he couldn't still be a father if he wanted to be.

Ron came back into the room, looking somewhat more rested than he had been when he'd left Alec and Harry an hour ago.

"Feeling better?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, much, thanks," Ron said. "Nice to be away from the hospital smell for a while. I don't know how Hermione can sleep through it. You all right, mate?" he asked Alec, who smiled and nodded. Ron ruffled his hair. "Thanks for helping with the baby," he said, taking Joshua back from Harry.

Alec nodded and leaned forward, carefully putting a finger inside the bubble and stroking Joshua's hand.

"Your daddy's here, so I'm going to go now," he whispered to the baby, and went to the corner of the room where he'd left his music books.

"How's Hermione doing?" Harry asked, keeping his voice low.

"She's better. It's taken a lot out of her. She knows he's all right, but she wasn't expecting to feel this bad about him being born so early."

"No, I can imagine."

Ron opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. He gazed at Joshua for a long moment. "Y'know, I don't think we can do this again," he confessed, his voice low. "I... I can't watch her suffer like this. Not again."

Harry cleared his throat, nodding. "Yeah, I know."

"She's just - she's really strong, but I couldn't take how much pain she was in. She nearly-" Ron closed his mouth, his face flushing as he looked away. There was a strained silence before Ron cleared his throat, looking mortified.

"What?" Harry asked.

Ron shook his head. "I... I'm a f-" He closed his mouth again, eyes darting towards Alec, who was humming to himself on the floor. "I'm an idiot," he said. "Bloody hell, that was a stupid thing to say."

Harry sighed, understanding. There had been few of these moments in the last few years; the Weasleys still spoke about Ginny, but only about her life, never her death. Not even indirectly. "It's not stupid. It's hard to watch something like that," he said awkwardly, and he wished the topic didn't have to be a taboo between him and Ron at least. He wished he could figure out how to tell Ron that it was okay for him to have, in the middle of dealing with Hermione's pain, temporarily forgotten that Harry had been through a similar experience himself, with far more devastating results.

Unfortunately, he didn't have a clue how to even begin to say any of that, and never had. Widower and brother to the same woman, they didn't know how to talk about her death and how they felt about it. Not that either necessarily wanted to talk about it, but their silence on the topic led to moments like this once in a while, and it would have been nice to see them gone.

Alec was softly humming to himself, a snippet of one of the songs he'd heard yesterday. It was hard to believe that once he'd been so small he'd been unable to speak or communicate in any way. Totally helpless and dependent on Harry and Dobby for everything.

He'd been so animated yesterday, at the concert. So joyful, and they'd stayed much longer than Harry had planned, though he'd finally had to leave in order to not make a lie of the flimsy "other commitments" excuse he'd given Draco. He hadn't been able to duck out of the playdate issue, but had at least managed to structure it so that there wouldn't be much contact between himself and Draco. Harry would drop off Alec at Draco's house, then pick him up a few hours later. He'd invented an excuse for not being able to stay himself.

An excuse he needed, badly, because he was losing all common sense around Draco. He'd gone to the concert determined to stay detached and had instead managed to not only stay later than he meant to and set up a playdate, but reveal his sexual orientation and the curse behind Ginny's death as well.

And he couldn't even really give himself a good explanation why. With the sexuality issue he could tell himself that it would have felt dishonest to simply agree with Draco's assumption that he was straight, because he wasn't and never had been, and it wasn't a secret, but telling him about Ginny and the curse was harder to explain.

It wasn't a state secret, and nobody had vowed to conceal it forever; only until Alec was old enough that he could be told, and until there wasn't much risk of it getting to the press. And Harry could tell himself that Alec would be old enough soon, that the press was no longer all that interested in him, and that Draco was unlikely to use the knowledge against him or tell anybody about it, but he doubted he could explain to anybody why he felt that way. He wasn't even sure he was right to do so. Draco had shown himself to be quite unprincipled and manipulative in the past; why did Harry feel he wouldn't tell anybody what he'd learned?

And even if he accepted that it was okay and safe to tell Draco, why had he done so? Just because there wasn't any reason to avoid doing something did not mean you had to do it.

He'd been surprised that Draco had asked him if anything was wrong, that was part of it. Flattered that he'd noticed Harry was a bit off. And then he'd been just a bit angry at Draco for assuming that he was the only one with dark secrets, while at the same time wanting to let him know he wasn't alone. That he didn't have to be alone.

The timing could've been better, but then again, there hadn't been much to say after telling him about the curse. Draco had been a bit more reserved afterwards, but he'd probably just been tired after singing through the concert.

He'd looked amazing up there, too. Focused, unselfconscious, part of a group - of Muggles, no less - and not the centre of attention in any way, yet seemingly quite comfortable with that. Pouring his heart and soul into the music. Harry had actually found himself a bit flustered at the end of the concert, when Draco had rejoined them and he'd suddenly become aware that he'd been staring rather closely at him throughout the concert and should stop that now that Draco was close enough to catch him at it.

He sighed, trying very hard to push out of his mind the erotic images that had assailed him once he was back home and trying to go to sleep. Trying to not think of how he'd finally given up and allowed himself to fantasize about Draco, and brought himself off with images of him that were really best left in his subconscious. Images of opening that crisp white shirt, touching the small gold loop earring Draco wore, holding his hand, bringing their lips together, running his hand down Draco's back and to his...

Oh God, this was not the time and place. He cleared his throat, pushing the images out and steadfastly attempting to ignore the heat rising through him and colouring his face, making himself focus on the baby instead and glancing over at Alec, remembering his son's first days.

He'd been so small. Not nearly as tiny as Joshua, of course, but he'd been so small, so soft. So innocent. It had seemed impossible to believe that such a perfect little creature had been touched by Dark Magic before he was even conceived. That Voldemort had reached cold dead hands out from beyond the grave and cursed him, to blight his life and Harry's, and probably make Harry hate him as well. Harry had decided through the miasma of fatigue, guilt and grief that at least he could beat Voldemort there and not let the curse turn him against his own son, who hadn't done anything to deserve their curse.

"D'you think I should bring my songs when I go play on Wednesday?" Alec asked softly, climbing into Harry's lap, and Harry smiled even as he tensed in anticipation of Ron's reaction, should he catch on to what they were talking about.

"That might be nice."

"D'you think he'd like it if we went on your broom?"

"Yeah, probably, but we can't do that. We'll travel by Floo."

"Why can't we fly?"

"They live in a Muggle part of the city," Harry said. "It would look very odd if we came to visit them on a broom."

"They don't use brooms at all?"

"No, not at all. Only for sweeping the floors."

Ron suddenly drew in a sharp breath and Harry tensed. "Please tell me he's not talking about what I think he's talking about," Ron said softly after a moment.

Alec looked at him curiously and Harry swallowed hard, but set his jaw. "All right, I won't tell you," he said evenly.

"Harry-"

"Later," Harry said firmly. "Not right now." He forced himself to maintain the same casual, relaxed pose.

"We are going to talk about this," Ron said, his voice strained, keeping his anger in check.

"Shh, Jason we don't know if your mum is sleeping or not," Fred's voice, uncharacteristically soft, startled both of them, and Harry and Ron locked eyes for a moment, wordlessly agreeing to pause the discussion as Jason and Fred quietly entered the room.

"Hi Jason," Ron said, releasing Joshua's bubble and taking Jason onto his lap. "How's he been?" he asked Fred.

"Good, good. How's-" Fred lowered his voice as he saw Hermione sleeping. "She all right?"

"Yeah, just tired," Ron said. "Don't worry, her bed's spelled silent, you can't wake her up. You didn't give your uncle trouble, did you Jason?" he asked, ruffling his hair.

Jason gave him an indignant look and Fred chuckled. "Ronnie, there's nothing your boy can do that Michelle can't do ten times worse. You showed her, though, right?"

"I'm having nightmares, I swear," Ron said to Harry. "By the time we get Jason back Michelle's going to have him trained to terrorize the whole house."

Fred chuckled and ruffled Alec's hair. "And how are you, little one?" he asked, and Harry was once more amused at how Fred, so quick to skewer so many other family members with his wit and sharp tongue, always had a soft spot for Alec. Ginny had been his and George's favorite sibling, and they both treated her son with gentle affection totally at odds with how they treated the rest of the family.

Totally at odds with how Fred treated the rest of the family. George had mellowed a great deal since the war.

Alec smiled at his uncle and held out his arms, and Fred picked him up from Harry's lap. "You're getting so big," Fred said. "Has Dobby been feeding you rocks again?"

Alec giggled and shook his head.

"What have you been doing? D'you have any new songs you've made up?"

"I have a friend," Alec said, and Harry and Ron looked at each other, startled.

"Erm, Alec-" Harry started to stand up, realizing with a sinking feeling that he didn't have the first clue how to derail the conversation.

"A friend? Who's your friend?" Fred asked.

"His name's Ben. His mummy's a Muggle, but his daddy's a wizard. He works with Daddy."

Fred glanced at Harry, smiling. "Coworker?" he asked Harry.

"No, he's only working with Daddy for a little bit and he's in Ireland and he does music! And Ben does music too!"

Fred's eyebrows shot up and he gaped at Harry in disbelief. Harry's heart sank.

"Please tell me he's not saying what I think he's saying," Fred said after a moment, and Harry winced as Alec frowned at Fred, puzzled.

Ron cleared his throat and shifted Jason on his lap, looking up at Fred. "Fred, don't-"

"He's talking about Malfoy, isn't he?" Fred asked dangerously, and Harry swallowed hard.

Bloody hell.

"His name's Draco," Alec said softly, and winced slightly as Fred's hands tightened involuntarily. "Uncle Fred!" he said, and Fred looked down and loosened his grip.

"You're not serious. Malfoy's son?? Is Alec's new friend?!" he said in disbelief, his voice rising.

Harry took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. "Look, he was - it wasn't planned, we just had to go to the Hill and set out some wards and-"

"And you let that worthless piece of shite get near Alec?!" Fred shouted, and the others jumped in alarm.

"Fred!" Ron said, getting up with Jason still in his arms. Harry noted that Alec and Jason were gaping at Fred, Alec's green eyes wide, his lower lip trembling a bit.

"Stop it!" Harry took Alec from Fred, almost snatching him away. "Get a grip on yourself!"

"What the hell is the matter with you?!" Fred all but bellowed, fury radiating off of him.

Alec buried his head in Harry's shoulder and Harry stroked his hair soothingly while trying to control his own growing anger. "This is none of your business-"

"None of my - that's my nephew you're endangering-"

"I am not endangering my own son - he's found a friend, somebody he can talk to about music and who doesn't scare the hell out of him!" Harry shouted, and the thought flashed through his mind that this was absolutely not the right way to handle this and that as a mature adult and responsible parent his first priority should be to get Alec out of this frightening situation and not to defend his own parental choices, but it was as if he was fifteen years old again and unable to rein in his temper.

"What the hell are you talking about?? Since when do we scare him??"

Alec burrowed deeper into Harry's neck.

"Fred!" Ron said firmly. "Stop it!"

"You're - do you actually approve of-"

"NO, but bloody hell, you're scaring the kids!" Ron said, and Fred had the grace to look abashed.

"What's the matter with you?" he repeated, lowering his voice slightly. "Thought it was so nice playing with the defanged Death Eater that the next best thing was to have your son make friends with his? Putting everybody around you in danger during school wasn't enough, now you want to do the same to your own son?"

Harry sucked in his breath, feeling furious and defensive and he was going to kill Fred. "I am not putting him in danger! Malfoy's not the same person he was in school, and if you'd bother to think for-"

"What, do you have a bloody death wish? Addicted to stupid thrills?" Fred shot back. "Or is this about a different kind of thrill? Is this because Malfoy's a bloody shirt-lifter?"

Harry felt a blush rising even through his anger, and Fred's taunt had obviously been made a mere shot in the dark, but now he was staring at Harry in disbelief. "That's NOT what this is about, is it?"

"No!" Harry shouted back. "And even if it was-"

"After everyone we've pushed your way, are you really this hard up that you'd-"

"Bloody hell!" Ron said furiously. "You're both acting like complete arses!" He put Jason down and pulled Alec out of Harry's arms. "All right, come on, boys, let's go out and let Daddy and Uncle Fred sort this out, yeah?" he said as he ushered them both out of the room, giving Harry and Fred a disgusted glare.

"Is this seriously what's going on here?" Fred said as the door swung shut. "You're wanting a shag, so you're letting your son get to know his and you're going to... what? Bond over fatherhood? Reminisce about the war? Have a good-"

"No!" Harry said forcefully. "It's not like that. Malfoy and his son like music, that's all, and Malfoy's son doesn't know any other wizards, and we just thought that-"

"Oh I see, yes, it's all very twee and darling, I'm sure," Fred said, his voice dripping contempt. "How nice that they're getting along and Alec loves music and oh look, Malfoy likes it too. That's marvelous. At what point is reality going to set in for you? After you shag the bastard, or after Alec's decided he wants Malfoy to be his other dad?"

"It's not like that! I don't want to - I'm not trying to do anything-"

"D'you think Ginny would've wanted her son around that man?" Fred demanded.

"I don't know! Probably not." Harry took a deep breath. "But she's not here, is she?"

"So you're going to replace her with Draco Malfoy?!"

"No. I'm not." Harry sat down, feeling tired. He stared at his hands, a million different emotions welling up. "Look... I can't bring her back, can I? I'm not trying to replace her, I just-"

Fred shook his head and made an eloquent sound of disgust. "You want a roll, go ahead, mate. We'll watch Alec, you can shag as many blokes as you want, girls too, who cares. If that's what you-"

"That's not what I want!" Harry snapped.

"Then what the hell do you want?!"

"Just to not be so fucking alone any more!" he shouted, standing up, and realized to his dismay that his eyes had filled and he was shaking. He took a step back, covered his face with a trembling hand, and breathed in slowly. "I am not going to talk about this. Nobody can talk to you when you get like this." He turned on his heel and went out the door, almost crashing into Ron in the hallway where he knelt with the two little boys, talking to a portrait of a mediwitch holding a baby mermaid.

He swallowed and bent down to pick up Alec again, noting that he seemed calmer, though still a bit upset. Ron gave him a questioning glance before going back into the hospital room.

"What happened, Daddy?" Alec whispered, and Harry pressed his cheek against Alec's and tried to figure out how to explain the situation.

"Erm. Uncle Fred knew Draco a very very long time ago," he said carefully. "And they didn't like each other very much. Uncle Fred thinks Draco's still the same as he was back then." There. That was pathetically inadequate, but it would have to do.

"Was Draco really bad?"

Harry paused again, grateful that the mediwitch and merbaby in the portrait were keeping Jason thoroughly entertained. "He wasn't always a very nice person, but a lot of people aren't very nice when they're young and then they're fine when they grow up. My daddy wasn't very nice when he was at school either. People can change."

"Doesn't Uncle Fred believe that?"

"Not in Draco's case. I can't really explain that part, little man. Uncle Fred's got his own reasons for thinking what he thinks."

Alec nodded, somewhat reassured. Harry put him down. "I'm going to say good bye to Uncle Ron and Uncle Fred, all right? Then we're going home."

Alec trotted over to the portrait and stared up in rapt attention as the mediwitch spoke in what sounded like mermish to the baby. Harry pushed the open door a fraction, stopping as Ron's exasperated voice came out.

"-not telling him it's all right, you idiot! We both told him it was a bad idea!"

"And then you let him go right on doing what he was doing-"

"We're not his parents, Fred! He said they were only working - I didn't know Malfoy was going to invite Alec over and Harry would say yes! We thought he was going to say so sorry, it's not going to work out-"

"But he didn't!! And you're not bloody well-"

"I was going to talk to him later because I didn't want to get into a yelling match with him and scare the hell out of Alec!! Remember, that's who we're trying to protect here? Alec? The little kid who just looked at you like you were about to Crucio his dad?"

"And you don't think scaring Alec is worth it, if it keeps him away from Malfoy?!"

There was a silence. "No, I don't."

Fred made a disbelieving sound. "You're a gibbering idiot, then."

"Maybe you're the gibbering idiot," Ron shot back. "We're talking about Draco Malfoy, Fred. Not You-Know- not Voldemort. Hermione did some asking around, and he's made no trouble since before Azkaban. None. And he's had Aurors watching him night and day just itching for any excuse to toss him back in. If he'd even sneezed wrong they would've got him."

"Oh please-"

"Besides, Harry trusts him. Maybe you should think about that."

"You're not serious!"

"He works with Muggles and kids, Fred! The Malfoy we knew never would've done either. Maybe he's actually changed, you know?"

Fred made another sound of disgust.

"Look, he makes Alec and Harry happy," Ron said, sounding tired. "God knows the rest of us don't have much luck with either of them. Maybe you should trust Harry's judgment for once. Maybe Malfoy deserves a second chance. Maybe he's paid enough for what he did."

"You look Bill in the face and tell me Malfoy's paid for what he did!"

"Stop it," Ron snapped. "You look at Ginny's son and tell me he deserves to keep paying for what Voldemort did!"

"Voldemort didn't let in the Death Eaters that took half of Bill's face off!"

"He was sixteen years old! And that bastard was threatening his parents!"

"Now you're defending him?"

"I wouldn't, if it wasn't for Alec. And Harry."

"We can take care of Alec."

"Oh yeah? Are you going to leave your own kids at home so you can tuck him in every night? You're going to pick him up when he scrapes his knee? Give him his first flying lesson? We all say we're there for him, but it's not the same as him having two parents."

"You want that to be Alec's other parent?"

"No, of course not! I was in his year, I took more from him than anybody else in this family. The bastard almost killed me, remember? But I can see how hard it is for Harry, being on his own like this. Besides, who knows, maybe if he dates Malfoy, he'll finally get over Ginny and start dating other people. Maybe even find a mum for Alec, or another dad."

"I don't want him around my nephew."

"It's not up to you." There was a scrape of a chair. "You're not the only one who suffered, Fred."

"You're an idiot," Fred said, his voice growing closer. He opened the door, pushing past Harry and stalking away without another word.

Ron followed out the door, giving Hermione and the baby a glance as he joined Harry and the boys in the hallway.

"Did you mean that?" Harry asked after a moment.

"What, about trusting your judgment?"

"Yeah."

"No." Ron cleared his throat. "I can't believe I'm saying this because this is Hermione's line, but you're being bloody irresponsible. For one thing, Fred's not the only one who'll think the same way."

Harry sighed. "I know."

"We're behind you, though," Ron said grudgingly. "I think you're wrong and you're going to royally screw up, but I'm behind you. And Fred will come around. I hope."

Harry nodded, gazing at Alec. This was so stupid. He wasn't actually going to do anything. All this fuss over so little. This thing, whatever it was, between him and Draco really amounted to nothing more than a relationship between their kids. And some thoughts and dreams that were becoming more and more difficult to deny...

"This is all over nothing," he muttered. "Draco probably doesn't want to have anything to do with me anyway."

Ron rolled his eyes. "All right, I don't need Hermione to help me with this one. Come on, you're not that naïve. Malfoy's been shunned for years; d'you think he wouldn't jump at the chance to date you, whether he fancied you or not? The publicity alone-"

"Actually, I think that would repel him more than anything else. He's trying to lie low. For his son's sake."

Ron shook his head. "I'm not going to argue this one with you, but you're bloody daft if you believe that." He rubbed his forehead and sighed. "Look, I mean it, mate. We're behind you even if we think you're being an idiot. You're an honorary Weasley for life, whether you like it or not. You can't get rid of us that easily."

"That alone could be enough to discourage Malfoy even if he does want anything to do with me."

Ron smiled. "Good point." He sobered again. "Just... be careful."

Harry nodded. "Yeah. I'll try."

ooo000ooo

Date: April 24
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
How expensive is Obliviating Thread? I just got a call from a Muggle-born Hogwarts student who says that his mother keeps leaving his spell books and Hogwarts awards out where people can see them whenever he's home for holidays. He's getting embarrassed at how often the Obliviators have to come to his house, and he was wondering if I had any ideas on how to deal with this.

Date:April 24
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
It's not cheap, but it does a fairly good job. You do have to be careful to set the thread where it'll be able to Obliviate people who've seen the thing they weren't supposed to see. They don't guarantee success every time because they've found too many people don't set it right.
Why did he contact you?

Date: April 25
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
He said something about a friend of his who's going to be doing alchemy on the Hill on Beltane, and said she passed on my name, not sure why. Anyway, I guess the Thread's worth a shot. Are WWW still at Diagon Alley?

Date:April 25
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Don't worry about contacting them, I'll just bring one of my rolls of Thread when I drop off Alec tonight, and you can pass it on to the student.

ooo000ooo

April 25

Draco sipped his tea and prepared to re-read the e-mail before him. Janine, one of the choir directors he worked with, had requested his opinion on certain choir matters, and he'd learned the hard way that failing to show her proper deference led to her ignoring even his most sensible suggestions. The woman was almost as overly sensitive as Mother had been; dealing with her was the only thing that could make Draco really pity his father.

"This is brilliant! They all fit together!" Alec was saying, and Draco looked over his screen at the two boys in the living room and smiled. Harry had dropped off Alec and then gone off to Gringott's Dublin branch, saying he'd be back in a couple of hours. The boys had had some disagreement at first about whether to play with Lego or play a video game. Lego had won out, as Alec wasn't all that impressed with the computer, being accustomed to interactive portraits. Which suited Draco just fine; he had some e-mailing that needed doing, and if the boys played in the living room he could still keep an eye on them through the open French doors of the study.

"They're really easy to put together too, if you know what you're doing," Ben was saying in an authoritative, almost condescending tone, and Draco smirked. It was funny how as Ben got older, Draco could often hear himself coming out of Ben's mouth in words or tone.

So, first off, the Kara situation. He looked at what he'd written so far.

I know Kara's not the most responsible choir member, but she's got a hell of a powerful voice. Not letting her sing the solos when she actually shows up for performances is not evenhanded choir discipline; it's petty and bullheaded, and you're shooting yourself in the foot.

All right, how to make that palatable to Janine.

"Hey! It jumped!!" Ben cried out in delight, and Draco looked up again. Ben had a rapt expression on his face and Alec was grinning as they both gazed at a Chocolate Frog.

"Dad!" Ben said, picked up the frog and ran towards the study.

"No magic in the study, you'll short out the computer," Draco said automatically, and Ben stopped at the doorway, disappointed. "It's all right, I've seen Chocolate Frogs before."

"Besides it's only got one good jump. Then you eat it," Alec said.

Ben looked skeptical but bit into it. "Mmm!"

Draco smiled and went back to his e-mail. He could remind Janine of the spontaneous cheering that had broken out during the last performance before Kara had even finished her solo. Or maybe appeal to her vanity; Kara was starting to make a name for herself, and it might give the choir, and therefore Janine, some welcome publicity to include Kara's name in the concert listings. Not to mention the cachet of being able to say that she'd "discovered" Kara.

He glanced over at the boys as he considered how to word his thoughts, and couldn't suppress an amused smile at the scene. If anybody had told him at Hogwarts that some day his son and Harry Potter's would be playing together, he probably would've called St. Mungo's for the poor lunatic. He had a vision of Trelawney predicting this in her misty voice and snickered.

Father would probably have a heart attack if he ever heard of this. Draco's smile faded and he went back to his e-mail.

The new soprano is an excellent addition to the choir as far as adding volume is concerned. However, placing her in the front row makes as much sense as playing a lullaby with a bagpipe. Consigning her to the back row is an excellent plan, especially since she's also a bit of an eyesore. The soprano section will eventually learn to deal with her nails-on-a-blackboard voice. The same cannot be said of our audiences, should her screeching and visually damaging presence continue in the front row.

Of course, the screecher was one of Janine's friends, so again there was this delicacy thing...

"They come with a card, too!" Alec said, and there was a rustle. "That's Albus Dumbelldore!" he said, and Draco looked up again, jolted.

"Who's he?"

"He was a hero, he was really really powerful. He was the only one Voldymort ever feared." Draco swallowed hard. "And he was killed by Sevrus Snape a really long time ago. And my Daddy knew him!"

"He's moving!" Ben exclaimed.

"Yeah, they do that. Sometimes they even leave the card for a while. Here, I've got another one," Alec said, and opened another package.

Draco realized he'd been holding his breath and released it, noticing also that he was feeling a bit nauseated. He shook his head, picked up his tea and took a calming sip before trying to pick up his train of thought. Where was he... right, the shrill-voiced soprano. Next was the issue of having a couple of the baritones join the tenors during one of the men's solo sections in the Freedom Trilogy. And maybe-

"Are you going to marry my Daddy?"

Draco inhaled his tea and choked, barely stopping himself from spitting the tea back into the cup. "What?!" he coughed.

Alec's green eyes were serious. "Are you going to marry my Daddy?" he repeated. "Because I think he'd like that. He feels bad that I don't have a mum. But he said he won't marry another lady. But maybe he could marry you. And then I'd have two parents. And so would Ben."

"If you married Alec's dad would that make us brothers?" asked Ben, and Draco realized his mouth was hanging open and what tea was left in it was about to dribble out. He closed it.

"Yeah," Alec said. "I think so."

"I never had a brother. Mam says she's not having any more babies."

"I never have either. I wanted some, but Daddy says I can't have any. I have cousins though. And Grandmum and Grandad. But only on my Weasley side."

Draco blinked in relief, profoundly grateful - for once - for the annoying tendency of small children to skip from one topic to another with dizzying speed. Grateful also that the two boys didn't appear to need his participation in the conversation.

"I've only got family on me Mam's side too. But not on me Dad's. And we don't see Mam's family very much."

"Why not?"

"Her dad doesn't like mixed people."

"Mixed-up people?"

"No, mixed, you know, because their parents are different."

"You mean half-bloods?" Ben frowned, not sure what a half-blood was, but nodded. Alec's eyes widened. "That's terrible! My Daddy's a half-blood and he's really powerful!"

Ben's frown grew. "He doesn't look like a... half-blood," he said slowly, and Draco felt a hysterical giggle rising in his throat. He suppressed it ruthlessly.

Now Alec was frowning. "What's a half-blood supposed to look like?"

"Brown... er," Ben said. "Browner than him, like me."

"What?" Now Alec looked utterly lost.

"Because their mum is brown but their dad is white. Like mine."

"Why would that matter?"

"I don't know, but Mam's Da says it's really bad to mix like that. What's half-blood mean, then?"

"It's when your mum's a Muggle but your dad's a wizard."

"That's like me!"

"Yeah."

"Some wizards wouldn't like me?"

"Some. Not many. There was a really bad man who hated people who were mixed but Daddy helped to beat him. So did my Mummy. She was a hero."

"Did you help to beat him too, Dad?" Ben asked.

Oh damn, they'd remembered he was here. Draco tried to keep his voice as casual as possible. "Ben, this is all stuff we need to talk about, but not right now. Go play and we'll talk about it later."

"Why not right now?"

Draco swallowed hard but kept the casual tone. "There's a few things you should probably know about the wizarding world, and I imagine a lot of it would be rather boring to hear. Now, would you rather play with your friend, or listen to me tell you about a lot of boring things that happened a long time ago?"

Ben nodded dubiously and started to leave, but Alec stayed where he was.

"He fancies you, I think," he told Draco seriously.

"Who?" Ben asked.

"My Daddy. I think."

"Does he?" Ben asked, pleased.

"Oh yes. He smiles more than he used to, and he says nice things about you."

"I think Mam would like it if you fancied him too," Ben said. "I told her I thought you did. Do you?"

Draco opened his mouth, without a clue as to what was going to come out, and was profoundly grateful when Alec spoke instead.

"My Daddy doesn't like it when Uncle Fred says nasty things about you. He said that-"

"I don't have any uncles," Ben said, and Draco was too flustered to chastise him for interrupting. "Are they nice?"

"I've got loads and loads of uncles. I like most of them. Uncle Percy's a bit dull. He gave me stocks in British Cauldrons Inc. for Christmas."

"I got a bow and arrow! D'you want to see?"

"Yeah!" Alec said, and the boys left the study.

Draco sat back, mind whirling, and wondered again if it had been such a bright idea to invite Alec over. Ben was having a wonderful time, and it looked like Alec was too, but in between the reference to Albus Dumbledore and the skirting of the Malfoy family issue and the talk about marriage and who fancied whom, Draco's own nerves were rather strained. He glanced at the clock. One hour until Harry came to pick up Alec. Too bloody long.

He'd known, damn it, known the day of the park concert that continuing contact with Alec and Harry was a bad idea. He hadn't been able to put off the kids clamoring for a playdate right after the concert, but he'd been determined to get out of it as soon as possible and had actually sent Harry an e-mail making an excuse.

But Ben had looked so heartbroken when he'd been told Alec wouldn't be coming over, and it was only one playdate, and…

God, what a pathetic sap he was. This probably served him right.

He left the study and entered the living room, where Ben was showing Alec his bow and arrow set. He pulled out a few papers and crayons and put them on the floor near the boys, picked up a book, and sat down to read near them so that he could try to deflect the conversation if it started to go near places it shouldn't go. And tried to think of how the hell he was going to look Harry in the eye when he came to pick up Alec.

How disconcerting. He'd been so busy trying to deal with his own reaction to the man and so convinced there could be no reciprocation because Harry was straight that he hadn't even thought to wonder how Harry felt about him. Which he should have. Because there had been a few moments... times when Harry had been unaccountably shy or serious. Times when he'd smiled in a way that hinted at more than simple collegiality. Now that he thought back, there had been many hints of interest here and there, which Draco had ascribed to simple curiosity, but which could very well have been more. He shook his head, annoyed at himself. His parents hadn't taught him to be this oblivious. He wasn't all that fond of most of what they'd taught him, but he shouldn't let go of all of it; some of their teachings had been useful.

He blinked at the page swimming before his eyes, flipped the book shut, and stared blankly at the front cover for a moment. Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire? Bloody hell. He was more flustered than he thought. Because of Harry.

He glanced at the books near the sofa for more appropriate reading material. Guess How Much I Love You, Bonny and the Bowtruckles, and Wicked Wizard magazine. Oops. That last wasn't supposed to be out of the bedroom. While Ben was pretty blasé about the whole "Mum and Dad are gay" thing, he did not need to know the mechanics behind it. In moving wizarding pictures, no less.

Discreetly sending the magazine to his bedroom, he picked up Eragon. That wasn't too bad. He could pick through it for misconceptions about the magical world and probably keep himself from obsessing over Harry.

Glumly he wondered what his parents would have thought of this situation. Whether they would've thought it was marvelous and encouraged him to use Harry's interest in him and Ben's friendship with Alec to worm his way back to respectability in the wizarding world, or whether they would've been horrified at the whole situation.

Father probably would've advised using Harry and Alec. He had always used friendships to their full potential, cultivating personal ties with powerful people no matter their political beliefs, and had cautioned Draco at Hogwarts that being an enemy of Harry Potter's wasn't wise. Mother probably would've been appalled. She wasn't as adept at hiding her feelings - her distaste for Minister Fudge, her disgust towards Muggle-borns, her hatred of Potter, any of it. The idea of Draco befriending Harry would've seemed repulsive and demeaning to her. Though Draco supposed that would've been a toss-up whether that was better or worse than Draco having a half-blood child, or better or worse than the Malfoy name coming to an end with Draco doing nothing to stop it.

Who knew, though. Draco had changed in the nine months he'd spent in Azkaban. Perhaps his parents had too.

For the hundredth time, he wondered how his parents were doing. Wondered why neither one of them had ever answered the letters he'd sent them during his first year of exile. Wondered if they would ever contact him again.

The doorbell rang and Draco started, surprised to realize that it was time for Harry to pick up Alec. Ben had already run to the door, and pulled it open, inviting Harry into their home.

"Hi, I'm sorry, I'm a bit early," Harry apologized, and Draco made a dismissive gesture, feeling unaccountably self-conscious.

Kids imagine all sorts of things, he told himself firmly. Don't think about it.

Not that easy when his libido was quite definitely perking up at the sight of Harry, regardless of whether Harry was at all interested in Draco or not. Harry was smiling at Alec and giving him a hug, listening to Ben's mile-a-minute chatter and nodding, and Draco wanted nothing more than to tell the boys there were biscuits in the kitchen so he could pull Harry close and run his fingers through his hair, capture his lips, ask him if what Alec had said was true.

God, what complete and utter tripe. This was embarrassing. It was as though he'd suddenly dropped into the middle of one of those awful romance novels Parvati Patil was writing these days.

He cleared his throat, looking away as Harry looked at the art work Ben and Alec had made and complimented them on it.

"And Daddy! Daddy! Ben taught me one of his songs!" Alec said, and drew himself up to sing.

"Alec, later, all right? Right now we really need to get going."

"All right, Daddy," Alec muttered, and went to get his toys. Well-trained little boy, Draco thought. Ben would've been arguing a lot longer, and looked like he very much wanted to, but was a bit too much in awe of Harry to actually do so.

"Were they all right?" Harry asked, and Draco nodded, willing himself not to blush just because Harry was speaking to him.

"Yeah, they were fine. He's very well-behaved."

"Yeah, he is. Bit stubborn sometimes, but overall he's good," Harry said, glancing around the flat. He frowned, looking closer at one of the pictures on the wall in the front hallway.

"That's... that's Ben? And you?"

Draco nodded, smiling at the picture, which showed him holding three-day old Ben at the Muggle hospital where he'd been born. "He was so huge. Kara had to have a Caesarean; would've been easy in the wizarding world, but the Muggle doctors had a hard time."

"Were you there?"

"No, she called me from the hospital after he was born."

Harry nodded, eyes still on the photograph. "Why the... erm..."

"The beard?" Draco guessed. "I was still prevented from doing magic, and I didn't want to explain my scar to Muggles," he said, his voice casual. "I use a glamour now, but that was the simplest thing at the time." And easy to get used to as well, since he hadn't been able to shave in Azkaban either. The prison wasn't run by Dementors any more, but it was still dirty, dreary, cold, and miserable, and he hadn't minded the beard much. It kept the filth one layer away from his skin, for one thing. He suppressed a shudder, banishing all thoughts of Azkaban and his exile.

"Was it... was it hard?" Harry asked quietly. "Not being able to use magic?"

"Yes," he said shortly, and Harry drew back slightly, obviously a bit surprised at his curt tone. "Er, very nice being allowed to do it again, though," he said quickly, not wanting to piss him off. After all, it wasn't Harry's fault that the topic still rubbed raw.

"I'm ready, Daddy," Alec said quietly, grasping Harry's hand. "How are we getting home?"

"There's a Floo two streets over," Harry said. "Now say thank you for inviting me," he prompted Alec.

"Thank you for inviting me," he said, and Ben nodded.

"It was nice, right Dad?" he looked up at Draco. "Can he come back soon?"

Draco carefully avoided looking at Harry and said, "We'll talk about it later, right Ben? It's time to get ready for dinner now. Say goodbye."

ooo000ooo

Date: April 26
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Thanks for the Obliviating Thread. I passed it on to the student's family today.

Date:April 26
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
You're welcome. Did you hear back from the Aurors about the Beltane events happening this week?

Date: April 26
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Yes, and they said they don't need us there. They don't anticipate any trouble. They just need us there for May first.

Date:April 27
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Good. I was starting to worry. This hasn't turned out to be quite the sinecure it was supposed to be.

Date: April 27
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
I've noticed. We were only supposed to have five meetings in all.

Date:April 27
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
We're still meeting the night before, to go over the last few items?

Date: April 28
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Yeah, as far as I know.

Date:April 28
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
By the way, Alec's been asking when we're going to invite Ben over. How about Beltane Eve? You could drop him off for a few hours to play, then we could do our meeting; kill two birds with one stone.

Date: April 28
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
LOL! Good idea, I'll tell Ben. Does five thirty sound all right, and then we'll meet at eight? I've got some things to do in London.

Date:April 29
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Sounds good. I'll let Alec know.

Date:April 29
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
By the way, what's LOL?

Date: April 29
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
LOL is Laughing Out Loud. Common internet acronym. I keep forgetting you aren't terribly familiar with the Muggle world any more.

Date:April 29
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
It's been a long time. What were you laughing at?

Date: April 29
From: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
To: hjpottergringotts.wz
Your Muggle version of killing two vampires with one stake.

Date:April 29
From: hjpottergringotts.wz
To: malfoydglobalcafe.ie
Oh. I didn't know there was a wizarding version. By the way, I got a call from the Aurors about one of the events today. I've attached their report of what happened, nothing to worry about, but I thought you'd like to know.
I'll see you tomorrow.

ooo000ooo

April 30

"Ben," Harry said. "I think your dad's going to be here soon. Can you pick up your things?"

Ben gave Harry an innocent pity-me look. "Already? But I haven't finished teaching Alec the song from my choir."

"Maybe you can finish teaching him while your dad and I finish up the plans for tomorrow. Or another time." Harry bit his lip. Damn, he and Draco were supposed to be done working together as of tomorrow; they didn't need to be in contact until next Beltane.

"How are you getting home?" Alec asked.

"We're going to Floo from the downstairs of your building! It's so brilliant! But Dad says he doesn't like it because you get ash in your hair." He frowned. "I wonder if I could get him to buy a broom."

Harry smiled. "I think he might like that. He was a very good flyer in school."

There was a knock on the door. "That's probably my Da!" Ben said, raced to the door and opened it to find a rather disgruntled Draco standing there, shaking ash from his clothing.

"Whoever invented Floo travel was an idiot," Draco said, carding fingers through his hair.

"It's brilliant, Dad!" Ben protested. "'Course it's not as brilliant as a broom," he admitted. "Dad! I got to fly on a broom today!"

Draco grinned at him. "Was it fun?"

"Yeah! You've got to buy a broom, Dad! What kind of wizard doesn't have a broom?"

"One who's been living among Muggles for a very long time," Draco said dryly. "It's one of those hard to explain things."

"And I was teaching Alec the song!" Ben said, and proceeded to chatter at high speed as Draco nodded seriously. He looked at Harry, and Harry felt himself blushing.

This was awkward. There was something a bit odd about Draco, as if he was looking at Harry trying to figure something out. Same as he had been the other day when Harry had picked up Alec, and Harry couldn't figure out why. It was rather disconcerting.

And of course his overactive libido was telling him hopefully that there was mutual interest there, even as his brain popped in to let him know that there wasn't, and that even if there were, it didn't mean anything. Anything good, that is.

"Did you go flying with your dad?" Ben asked Draco.

"Yeah. He bought me my first broom and taught me how to play Quidditch."

"OH!" Ben said suddenly. "I just remembered where I put that toy Snitch!" Both boys ran out of the room.

"What?" Draco asked, and Harry realized he'd been caught mid-ogle, admiring how well Draco wore wizarding clothes and debating whether he looked better in Muggle jeans that showed off his... attributes, or in robes, which gave him a more mature look.

"Oh. Nothing," he said, slightly panicked. "I - it's just hard to think of your father doing regular father things," he blurted, then blushed harder. God no, that wasn't any better at all. I wasn't mentally undressing you, I was just thinking nasty things about your father. Augh!

To his relief, Draco didn't take offense. "No, I suppose not. He did, though."

"Yeah?"

"Well, he wasn't always going on about Voldemort and pureblood issues. He did have other pastimes."

"Like what?" Harry asked, unable to stop the question.

"Well he loved music, and art. And needlepoint... square dancing..."

Harry frowned suspiciously. "Square dancing."

"Oh yes. He studied at Salem for a few years, became very intrigued by American customs. He was quite good at it. Became a decent caller, too - and of course he also loved auctions, he was a very skilled auctioneer..."

"All right, I get it," Harry said, catching a small twitch at the edge of Draco's smile and starting to laugh.

Draco laughed. "I had you going there, though, didn't I?"

"It's not that hard to believe, after the duck thing," Harry said, and Draco chuckled.

The duck thing. He smiled. Imagining Lucius Malfoy waddling and quacking had already got him through one boring meeting with the goblins, and he didn't think the amusement value would wear off any time soon.

There was a knock on the door and Harry went to get it, surprised to see Ron and Hermione at the door.

"Oh! You're out of the hospital!" he said, and Hermione grinned.

"Can't leave for too long, but the Healers say I can be out of bed for a few hours a day now. Molly's got the baby and Jason and she pushed us out." She and Ron suddenly spotted Draco and there was a small silence.

"Oh. Erm. Hello, Malfoy," Hermione said, and gave Ron a small poke.

"Yeah, hi," he said. "Erm. Good to see you."

"Likewise," Draco said stiffly.

Ben and Alec came running into the living room and Ben stopped short. Alec stopped behind him, looking up at Ron and Hermione warily, no doubt remembering that none of the Weasleys had been impressed with his friendship with Ben.

"And who is this?" Hermione said, smiling politely at Ben.

"My son Ben," Draco said, and Ben stepped up and held out his hand.

"Ben Greely, pleased to meet ye," he said, shaking her hand, and Hermione smiled again - genuinely this time.

"I'm Hermione, and this is my husband, Ron," she said, and Ben shook Ron's hand as well.

"Are you a witch too?" he asked, and Hermione nodded. Ben grinned. "Brilliant!"

Harry smiled, amused, as Hermione and Ron exchanged looks of surprise and started answering a bombardment of questions from Ben. He probably wasn't anything like what they could possibly have expected Draco Malfoy's son to be. It would take a lot of determination not to warm up to Ben, he thought, and Hermione and Ron didn't stand a chance against his enthusiastic charm.

"Er, so, are you ready for Beltane tomorrow?" Hermione asked a few minutes later, after Draco had finally succeeded in getting Ben to leave the grown-ups alone by reminding him that he had come to Alec's house to play with Alec.

"Yeah, mostly," said Harry. "There's a few wards to set tomorrow morning, but otherwise it's good. Should go without incident."

"Without further incident," Draco corrected.

"What do you mean?" asked Hermione.

"A few of the events take place before Beltane," Harry said. "Irish dancing festivals, things like that."

"Mostly nothing we have to worry about," said Draco. "The Muggle ones are mostly cultural, so they aren't using any of the magical places the wizards are. Though there was a bit of trouble at yesterday's event."

"What kind?"

"Oh, just a witch who got angry at one of the Irish dancers and used Tarantallegra on him. The man was Obliviated and she was given a warning. She shouldn't have been there at all, but she'd got mixed up with the dates and thought she was going to observe a Wiccan festival."

Ron shook his head. "That's so strange, Muggles claiming to be witches."

"How could anybody actually believe in that rubbish?" Hermione said scornfully. "It's absolute bosh."

Draco looked away, the corner of his mouth quirked in a small smile.

"So you weren't at the events this week?" Hermione asked.

"No," said Harry. "We offered, but the Aurors said they didn't need us. We'll be there tomorrow, though."

There was a small, uncomfortable silence.

"Erm, so... so how old is Ben?" Hermione asked.

"Five."

"And his mother's a Muggle?" Draco nodded. "Where did you meet her?"

"At a Wiccan gathering."

There was a frozen silence before Hermione laughed, and then Ron and Harry joined in.

"Very funny. Where was it really?"

Draco smiled. "Town Hall. We were singing in the same choir."

Hermione and Ron nodded, at a loss as to how to ask what they were obviously dying to know, which was how Ben had come about.

"So, erm," Ron began. "Harry, we were going to ask you if you wanted to come out with us, but you're working..."

"Yeah, last minute things," Harry said apologetically.

"Sorry, we forgot. We're off to Fred's, then. Nice seeing you, Malfoy," Hermione said, and Draco nodded politely.

"Harry, I'll say hello to Fred for you," Ron said, giving Harry a meaningful look as they left.

"All right, let's see to the last minute things," Harry said after the door closed behind them.

"The Celtic music group is moving to the north grove," Draco said, "So at least that's one worry gone."

"The bonfire's going to be difficult to keep wizards out of," said Harry. "There's two of them and it's quite tempting to run through them."

"I've heard it's also tempting to go in and see whether it's true that a bonfire just feels like tickling, the way the Inquisition and Witch Hunt folk said it was."

"Damn, I can imagine," Harry said, grimacing.

"However, I did get rid of one trouble spot. The MoonShadow Wiccans will be coming in at ten, not eleven, so we don't have to worry about them and the wizard jugglers competing for space any more."

"How did you do that?"

"Had an in with their leader," Draco said smugly. "Told her I couldn't take care of Ben at eleven."

Harry blinked. "Their leader... you mean Kara?"

"Yeah, Kara. It's good to know people."

Harry stared at him. "She's Wiccan?"

"Yeah."

"You really did meet her at a Wiccan gathering, then."

"Yeah. At Town Hall."

"Really? She's into that?"

"She's into many things. She's a minority in every conceivable way; black, lesbian, pagan... she often jokes about wanting to move to London so she'll be foreign, too."

Harry smiled. "How did you end up at a Wiccan meeting?"

Draco shrugged. "It was during the first year I was here. I was mostly sightseeing in the Muggle world and I heard about this religion. It sounded bizarre enough that I went to see." He smiled slightly. "It was... interesting."

"I suppose it would be," Harry said.

"Harry," Ben said, racing into the room, "you'll be at Beltane tomorrow, right? You and Alec both?"

"Yeah."

"Are you staying for the bonfires?"

"Probably."

Ben grinned. "Me too. We go every year. Even before I was born, me Mam says."

"Really?"

"And I was born because of Beltane, too!" Ben said. He raced out the door, yelling, "Alec! You're going tomorrow too!"

Harry looked at Draco questioningly. Draco looked both disconcerted and amused.

"What did he mean?"

"Ah." Draco looked at Harry as though trying to figure out how to word what he was about to say. He cleared his throat. "It means that's how he was conceived."

"What?"

"The experiment with the unintended side effect. Kara was the May Queen, and the Horned King/Green Man got sick at the last minute. Kara asked me to substitute."

Harry's eyes widened. "And you did?" Draco nodded. "You mean... you had sex... in public?"

"Well, yes," Draco said, looking like he was trying not to laugh.

"Did you actually... were you a Wiccan?"

Draco looked away. "No, not really. It was interesting stuff, but not terribly logical. I did get to have sex though, that was nice."

"Erm. With a woman?"

"It's a bit harder to conceive with a man," Draco pointed out. "Sex is sex. I don't swing that far off that I can't do it with a woman at all."

"Erm." Harry became aware that he was blinking rather more than normal.

"You all right?" Draco asked, more amused by the second.

"Just a bit of a shock, that's all."

"You're telling me." He laughed, openly now. "You should see your face."

"Right. I just... it's, erm," Harry blinked, steadfastly refusing to allow any images of Wiccan ceremonies to form in his head. "Wasn't there anybody else?"

"To be honest, I never really quite understood that part. She said something about how since we were both gay it was symbolic of still respecting the gods of fertility or something, I really couldn't follow it at all. The original Green Man was also gay and it was a big deal, apparently." He shrugged. "Whatever."

"You weren't nervous?"

Draco sobered abruptly and looked away. "I was," he finally admitted. "But not that much. Getting up the courage to speak to Muggles at all took months. Having sex in public? Dead easy, once I'd done that."

"Was it really that difficult?"

Draco regarded him seriously, obviously trying not to snap at him. "Think about it for a moment. You're locked up for nine months, and when you're let out it's only on condition that you not perform any magic at all, because if you do you'll be locked up for the rest of your life. You can't risk being around anyone in the wizarding world because you know you'd probably perform some simple charm accidentally, but you've been raised thinking that Muggles are subhuman evil vermin." He scowled at Harry. "I know you're the Boy Who Lived, the great hero of the wizarding world. Everyone knows you're brave. But try to convince me that you wouldn't be terrified to make the first move."

Harry bit his lip. Yeah, not that difficult to believe after all. "I guess... I guess I hadn't really thought about that."

"It shows."

They was a strained silence.

"Right." Harry cleared his throat. "Erm. Let's go over our notes. I think we were going to talk about the Mummers again?"

ooo000ooo

"Daddy, d'you fancy Draco?" Alec asked later that night, after Draco and Ben had left.

Harry choked on his tea and started to cough. "What?!"

Alec frowned. "That's funny. Draco did the same thing when I asked him."

"Did what?" Harry coughed out.

"Choked on his tea."

"When you asked him what?"

"I said I thought you fancied him. Ben thinks he fancies you. Did you know he doesn't have any uncles?"

"You said what?" Alec blinked, startled. Harry closed his eyes and counted to ten. "You said what?" he repeated a little more calmly, once he could trust his voice again.

"I asked him if he was going to marry you. Because you're both not married. Do you like each other?"

Harry blinked.

"I think it would be nice if you got married. Grandmum said Mummy would've wanted you to get married again. And if you did then Ben could live here, or maybe we could live where they live, and there would be music all the time and-"

"Alec, wait!" Harry broke in. "It's not... look, it's complicated. It wouldn't work."

"Because of Uncle Fred?"

"It's not just Uncle Fred, little man. A lot of people think the way he does."

"But you said Draco's changed," Alec said, frowning.

Harry stared at his son. This was so ridiculously simple, yet so difficult, to express in words. He took a deep breath. "You're going to have to trust me on this. It's complicated, and it wouldn't work. I'm sorry."

He swallowed hard as Alec turned away, drawing in on himself, a look of profound disappointment on his small face. Damn, that always got to him. He reached out to pull Alec close. "I'm sorry, little man. It would... you're right, in a lot of ways it would be nice, but it really wouldn't work out. Trust me on this, okay?"

Alec stayed stiff in his arms. "D'you fancy him?" he asked.

Harry sighed. "Yeah."

"Ben said he fancies you too."

Harry closed his eyes. Yes, now that he was honest with himself, there had been signs of that from Draco, and Ben just might be right, and Harry was stupid to have convinced himself the signs weren't there. But it didn't mean anything. Even though what he wanted most to say was "What did Draco say when Ben said that?"

"Alec. We can't. It would be too risky, and we've both got responsibilities. Real responsibilities, to real people."

"You're being silly," Alec said, and sounded so much like Hermione that Harry had to stifle a smile. "You're really being silly."

"Silly or not, it's time for you to get ready for bed," Harry said, and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, little man."

ooo000ooo

"Dad."

"Yes?" Draco asked, absorbed in marking an assignment. No, idiot, that's a minor key, he wrote. And you're a hopelessly minor musician, so you should get along with it just fine.

"Why didn't you tell me about being a half-blood?"

Draco looked up. "What?"

"Alec said some wizards don't like half-bloods. Is that true?"

"Some wizards. Not many."

"Are you a pureblood?"

Draco nodded.

"Was your whole family purebloods?"

"Mostly, yeah."

"Did they hate half-bloods?"

Draco sighed. Oh, he was not ready for this conversation. Not now, and probably not ever. He considered lying, but couldn't quite gather up the guts to do so. "Ben... it's not... it's not quite the same as your grandfather not liking me for being white and you for being half-white. And it's nothing at all like being black in Dublin. Most wizards are half-bloods and Muggle-borns. It's not like you'd be the only one."

"Did your Mam or Da hate half-bloods?" Draco lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Is that why you never talk about them?"

"There's a lot of reasons for that," Draco said, and met Ben's grey-hazel eyes, so much like his own. The only thing about his son that was. "That is one of the reasons, though," he admitted reluctantly.

"When did they die?"

Draco frowned. "I never told you they died."

"You never see them and you never talk about them. I thought they died."

"No."

"Then where are they?"

Draco swallowed. "Ben..."

"Why don't you ever see them?"

"My parents and I... it's complicated. They... they believed some things I didn't agree with."

Ben frowned. "Do they know you're gay?"

"Oh. Yes, I suppose they do. It never came up."

"Do they think that's bad too, like Granddad does?"

"No, probably not. That's different in the wizarding world. Most people don't care about that."

"Then how come you live here, when you're a wizard?"

Draco stood up. "Ben, we'll talk about my parents another time. There's a lot you're just too young to understand, and I'll try to explain when you're older. Right now we need to get you ready for bed." He put down his marking, setting a small spell on the last assignment to remind himself to go through and take out the many rude comments he'd made throughout.

"Will there really be other wizards at Beltane tomorrow?"

"Yeah. You won't be able to talk to them, though. Not this year."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm supposed to be keeping the wizards and Muggles apart."

"But why?"

"Same reason you're not allowed to talk to your mum about the wizarding world."

"I think she'd like it if I could. 'Specially with her being Wiccan and all."

"Yeah, probably, but we really can't. It's for everyone's protection."

"Why?"

"Muggles are afraid of us."

"So... Muggles are afraid of wizards," Ben said slowly, "and wizards don't want half-bloods."

Draco pressed his lips together, annoyed at himself for basically telling his five-year-old that he was likely to be simultaneously rejected by two different groups of people. How comforting. "I've told you, not all wizards think that way. Not even most of them."

"Alec doesn't. He's brilliant, isn't he?"

"Yeah. Come on, brush your teeth."

"Can you do it? I really like that spell."

Draco smiled. "All right," he said, and waved his wand. Ben squealed.

"Can you tell me the story about the nasty hippogriff and the really dumb giant?"

Draco blinked. Ah, yet another reason he and Harry could never go anywhere. He winced as he pictured Harry's face if he overheard Ben telling Alec about Hagrid and his vicious giant chicken.

"No, I'll read to you instead," he said, selecting one of the magical children's books on Ben's shelf and settling down to read to him. One of his first purchases after regaining permission to use magic, when Ben was a year old. He still remembered the terrifying thrill of going into Diagon Alley for the first time since the war, as well as the humiliation of having to ask for permission to do so. Having to explain about his son to a condescending witch at Magical Law Enforcement's Parole department, and being turned down on his request to use a glamour to hide who he was.

He finished reading Nonny and the Norwegian Ridgeback, kissed his son's forehead and left the room, going back out to finish his marking.

Your interpretation of this sonnet is brilliant. Unfortunately, you appear to have confused your musical theory class with English literature.

It is inspiring to see how much you have managed to write without actually saying a single thing.

They were all right, he and Ben, he found himself thinking, unable to concentrate on his work. Ben was happy enough without contact with the wizarding world. Tomorrow he'd see some wizards and witches and hopefully he'd be happy with that, and then over the next year maybe Draco could start dropping by the wizarding areas in Dublin, get to know some of the people there one-on-one, then bring Ben to see them.

If only the Ministry had allowed him to emigrate off the Isles. The Continent was too close, but he could have introduced Ben to the wizarding world in North America or Australia without fear that his son would be judged by association with a former Azkaban inmate. As it was, the best he could hope for was that Ireland's wizarding community would be more forgiving than England's, and that when – if – it came time for Ben to go to Hogwarts, there would be less chance of one of his classmates knowing who his father was.

I despair of the future of Muggle (scratched out) Irish music.

What your paper lacks in originality, it makes up for in ignorance.

He stood, giving up on marking for the night, and looked in on Ben, who was sleeping peacefully. Draco sat on the bed beside him, thinking.

He wanted, so badly, to go back. To be back among his own kind, no matter the consequences. He'd probably be shunned, he'd be a pariah, but he would at least be home.

And he wanted, so badly, to pursue whatever this was between himself and Harry. To touch him, feel the magic humming under his skin instead of the blankness he felt with Muggles. Wanted to run hands through his hair, touch their lips together, pull him close, bring him off, hear him moan... and damn it, he was getting hard again. It seemed like he spent half his life hard and frustrated these days. He considered going to his room to deal with it as he had been doing more and more often lately, but knew it wouldn't really help. He'd just end up tired and feeling let down again.

Instead, he stayed where he was, gazing at Ben, the reason he couldn't let this follow its course.

It was too risky. If it weren't for Ben, he'd go for it, on the assumption that even if things didn't work out romantically in the end, the status boost of being seen with the Boy Who Lived would be a definite plus. But he had Ben to think of. And Ben didn't need to have his father getting publicity again, being talked about in the papers.

He sighed, taking Ben's hand in his own, pushing his hair off his forehead. When had he become someone who would avoid what he wanted, and not take risks he wanted very much to take, because of another person? Especially a half-blood? His ancestors on both the Malfoy and Black sides were probably spinning so fast in their graves you could measure the vibrations.

"Why don't you ever see them?" Ben had asked. "How come you live here, when you're a wizard?"

How could he come close to explaining any of that to his son? He pictured Ben's face if he told him about the war, about Azkaban, pictured his hazel eyes going round with shock, his respect for his father diminished.

And where could he begin? What could he tell Ben about that part of his past?

There'd been no Dementors in Azkaban, no torture, no starvation. But Azkaban was cold, dark, dank and dirty, everything in it harsh and ugly. The food was barely edible, sparse, and always tepid and tasteless. His cell was bare and empty of everything but himself. No wands, no books, no paper; nothing.

Nothing to do except sit, day after day after day, alone in a tiny cell for all but one hour, his only diversion the voices of the other inmates housed in his block. The only time he saw human faces was during the noon meal when they were allowed to congregate in the courtyard. Nothing to do but wait for each long day to end and cycle through every emotion from resentment to hunger to anger to regret to hatred to fear to exhaustion to despair to boredom. Always, always boredom.

He'd only ever talked to Mother and Father at lunch, because the prisoners under life sentence were not housed in his block. Father had been thin, unshaven and vacant-eyed when he and Mother got there, having already served more than three years. Mother's fine robes had been exchanged for inmate's garb that was old and threadbare before she'd ever put it on. He'd watched Mother's luxurious hair go stringy and dull and lifeless, her eyes become empty as she aged before his eyes, and he'd been glad there was no mirror to show him what he looked like. He wasn't sure it was a good thing that he'd only seen himself, dirty, bearded, thin and broken, at the end of his sentence, when he was too tired and defeated to care about his appearance any more.

Maybe he'd deserved Azkaban, though at the time he'd been full of contempt for the people who'd put him away for the crime of having been on the losing side of the war. Full of hatred at the hypocrites who put his mother away, because Mother hadn't done anything to deserve her sentence, other than be wife and mother to two Death Eaters and refuse to renounce her beliefs. And maybe he'd deserved exile as well, though at the time he'd seen it as just another way for the ones who'd won the war to step on those who'd lost. But he didn't know how he felt about any of it any more.

How could he explain any of that to Ben? How could he explain why Mother and Father were still in there, and why they had never written back to him, when he couldn't explain it himself? How could he explain it so that Ben wouldn't lose all respect for him, but would understand why it wasn't a good idea to be too open with the identity of his father in the wizarding world? And should he tell Ben, or hide from him, the fact that the reason he wasn't going to pursue anything with Harry was that he couldn't, for Ben's sake?

If only he could go to somebody for advice. A friend or a relative. Somebody who would understand, someone he could trust.

His eyes fell on a small goddess figurine on Ben's bookshelf, that Kara had given to Ben, and he thought for a while, debating within himself. It had been a long time, but...

He picked it up almost reluctantly, weighing it in his hand, running fingers over its smooth surface.

I don't know if I'm doing the right thing here, he told her, feeling hesitant and somewhat foolish as always when he dabbled in this, and he almost started to put the figurine back on her shelf. He didn't normally do this much any more. He didn't need it, not like he had when he'd first come here. Religion is for the weak, Father had always said, but it was the only thing that had kept him relatively sane in those first months after leaving Azkaban, when he'd been so alone and confused that he was willing to talk to anything that might listen, willing to give gods and spirits the benefit of the doubt and get what comfort he could from them.

He touched the figurine again, stilled his thoughts. I'm doing the right thing here, right? he asked tentatively. Taking Ben to the Hill tomorrow, without telling him about my past? I suppose it's kind of too late to back out of that one.

He gazed at Ben, who mumbled and rolled over in his sleep, and his thoughts refused to lie still. Dimly he remembered Kara saying that a proper attitude during prayer was restful meditation, and that one reached not for some outward deity but towards one's own divinity or something incomprehensible like that, but restful meditation seemed about as far away as the moon right now.

Help me. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing.

I don't even know if I'm doing the right thing by not pursuing Harry. I know we're supposed to honour love and physical attraction, and treat our body's wishes with respect. But I have a child to think of. I'm not trying to reject a gift of the goddess, I'm just trying to do what's right. Am I?

I wish I believed you could send me a sign.

Oh why am I even talking to you? I don't even know if I believe in you. He sighed and gently put Ben's figurine back on the shelf before leaning down to give him a kiss and heading for his own bed. 

4 

Beltane, May 1, 2007

"When did you get here?" Harry asked, yawning and checking his watch. "You weren't here for the sunrise-greeting, were you?"

"Yeah. Out of sight, though. I put Ben by the grove with the Invisibility Charm and got him to sleep while I watched from over there."

"Anything to report?"

"Nothing. Other than a very nice sunrise with rather a lot of odd waving of flags."

"Wasn't it a Wiccan group greeting the sun?" Draco nodded. "Wouldn't you know what they were doing?"

"Wiccans are rather eclectic. And I was only involved with the one group, for a few years. This group did nothing recognizable to me. Where's Alec?"

"Sleeping too. He's under my Invisibility Cloak in the south grove. Mind if I put him near Ben?"

"No, go ahead."

"I'll, erm, do a walk-through after that."

"I already have, but go ahead. Let me know if I missed anything."

Harry went to pick up Alec and wondered if Draco felt as self-conscious as he did. Wondered if there was any chance of picking up their relatively comfortable coworker relationship, now that the boys had so helpfully brought to light what Harry at least had been trying to not admit, even to himself.

It did explain why Draco had been so ill at ease with him the last few days, though. Harry started his rounds on the charms and wards around the Hill, glancing back at where Draco was sitting by the tree near where the boys were hidden, reading a book and looking perfectly comfortable. Harry envied him his composure.

He looked amazing today, too. Completely Muggle, of course, and he'd replaced his regular small gold loop earring with a small star in a circle, but those jeans were really rather... erm...

Harry glanced over at the small knots of people arriving on the Hill, trying to classify them. There was a group of Muggles, judging from their mobile phones and radio, and probably tourists, judging from the proliferation of cameras. A larger group of Muggles, probably pagans, carrying tambourines and waving incense around. Then there was a small wizarding family, obviously trying to dress like Muggles and failing utterly: the mother wore a pair of leather pants, t-shirt and tiara, the father wore jeans and a tuxedo jacket, the child wore what looked like a Jedi costume, and all of them sported bright yellow fishing boots.

Harry snickered. The funny thing was that had they simply dressed as wizards, they would have blended in, as more than a few Muggles were dressed in archaic clothing today. He made a mental note to remember to point that out to any wizards who contacted him for next year's Beltane. Assuming he took the Liaison post again.

He wandered over to one of the wizarding groups, introduced himself and jotted down what they were there for, reminding them about the restrictions in place for the Hill. Chatted for a while, then glanced over at Draco and saw that apparently Ben and Alec were up and watching the wizard jugglers near the low west wall.

Continuing to walk around, he checked to make sure that everybody who was looking in the direction of the jugglers was a witch or wizard, and continued to make his presence known to newly arriving wizards until he saw that Draco and the boys were done with the jugglers and had been joined by Kara. Draco spotted him and waved him over as he approached the group.

"You didn't see the sunrise, then?" Kara asked Ben as Harry approached. "That's too bad. Next Beltane, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Having a good time with yer Da?"

"Yeah!"

"Have you seen anything interesting?"

Ben shook his head and Harry frowned. He'd seemed fascinated by the jugglers they'd seen; why wouldn't he - right. Wizard jugglers.

"That's too bad."

"But Harry and Alec are here!"

"I noticed," Kara said, and smiled. "Alec, do you know anything about the rituals around Beltane?" Alec shook his head. "How about I take you two to the top of the Hill, and I'll tell you about them?"

"The child-friendly version please, Kara," Draco said in a pained voice.

"Aye, I'm not so daft as all that," Kara said impatiently. "Run up, boys, and I'll catch up to ye." They ran off and Kara stepped a bit closer to Harry and Draco. "Listen, I've no idea what's going on between the two of ye, but ye'd best talk it out before we come back down the Hill. Ye both look like ye haven't a clue what to say to each other, and it's a bit pathetic." She started to follow the boys, but paused for a moment. "And mind ye keep it to talkin' only, yeah? 'Tis a holy time, not a day to indulge in things that don't show honour to the day."

Harry felt somewhat flummoxed and was gratified to see that Draco looked the same way. There was a strained silence.

"I ought to be used to her doing things like that to me," Draco finally said. "She does it often enough."

Harry chuckled nervously. "Should I ask?"

"Pretty much what she said. She'd like us to talk."

"What was the bit about the holy day?"

Draco shook his head impatiently. "Wiccan rubbish. Or rather, Kara rubbish. Kara thinks that because Beltane is a celebration of fertility, that any kind of sex that doesn't have anything to do with fertility is a 'desecration'." He rolled his eyes. "Don't ask her to elaborate on that when there's other Wiccans around, please. You really, really don't want to get Wiccans arguing over who's the most connected to the true tradition of Wicca."

"Right." There was another uncomfortable silence.

"Is she - with Alec, is she going to tell him about the rituals that, erm-"

"She'll tell him about the regular Beltane rites; the Red Men and the White Women and all of that, ending in the symbolic thing between the May Queen and the Green Man. That's the one that Waleran's Warriors for Innocence are going to protest and the funny thing is the people in it aren't even Wiccan, for the most part. They're just actors. The real Wiccan ritual is done in private. Well, relatively private. It's only for the coven members, since they don't want to be arrested for indecency." Draco smiled. "Poor Waleran. Frothing at the mouth over a play, without having a clue that a few yards away there's public sex going on. It's hysterical."

Another silence.

"Alec told me what he said to you," Harry finally blurted out. Oh, that was so very much not how he'd wanted bring this up. Twenty-six years old and still reverting to doyouwanttocometotheballwithme. He stared at the ground, rather mortified.

"About?"

"About me being... erm, attracted to you," Harry said, and tried to will his cheeks to not heat up, to no avail.

Even deeper silence. Draco wasn't saying anything. Anything at all. Bugger.

"Yeah," Draco finally said.

Nicely noncommittal. Very helpful.

Harry took a deep breath. "I, erm..."

"Did he tell you that Ben thought I was attracted to you too?" Draco asked, and Harry envied the steadiness of his voice.

"Erm. Yeah. He did." Harry paused. "I... I didn't mean to - that is, I didn't ask him to say anything like that. I hadn't talked to him about anything like that."

"Are you saying it wasn't true?" Draco asked.

"No! Erm. I mean." Harry swallowed hard and forced himself to look up. "I didn't talk to him about any of it. I don't know where he got the idea." He paused. "The, erm, right idea."

"Oh." And now, to Harry's utter shock, Draco was blushing. His fair skin was rosy red and he was dropping his eyes.

"I know your son said-" Harry began.

"I didn't tell him anything either." Draco cleared his throat. "Not that he got it wrong."

"Oh."

This was rather excruciating. Partly in a good way, because it was always flattering to find that somebody fancied you, and Harry felt an odd sort of disbelieving joy at the thought, but...

"I don't think," Harry began. "I mean, I would like to, very much, you know, but I think - it's not really a very good situation for-"

"No, it's not." Draco broke in. "It's not, I agree."

"Right. We'll just, erm... not do anything about this, then." He cleared his throat and looked away from Draco, though he suspected he probably had the same expression on his face that Harry had.

Draco glanced past Harry and winced. "Damn. One of the jugglers just dropped his Fizzing Whizbees in front of three Muggles. You'd best go Obliviate."

"Right. Yeah."

He gazed at Draco for a moment, trying to express how sorry he was for this, because he'd probably done something to encourage Draco despite knowing it couldn't go anywhere, and it wasn't that he considered Draco's past a problem but it was just the situation...

He hesitantly touched Draco's arm, realizing it was the first time he'd touched Draco since the day they'd started working together, much to his shock. In his mind, they'd touched so often - especially in the last week or so since Harry's fantasy life had sort of taken on a will of its own.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too," Draco said quietly, and gestured towards the open-mouthed Muggles and sheepish juggler. "I think you need to deal with those people before they start screaming."

ooo000ooo

"Hello, Harry."

Harry turned around. "Hermione?" he said, surprised, then frowned warily. "What are you doing here?" He glanced from her to Ron, who was standing behind her looking torn between embarrassment and irritation.

"We found out about the monument to McGonagall," Hermione said a little too brightly. "So we came to see the dedication ceremony."

"Don't forget the Alchemists too," Ron muttered.

"And the Alchemists, of course," Hermione added. "That sounded very interesting as well."

"Yeah." Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Look, don't you two have a child you should be taking care of?"

"He's fine. They're both fine, actually," Hermione said cheerfully.

"Yeah. Both fine," Ron repeated. "So we're here to see the monument and the Alchemists. And for no other reason at all."

Harry nodded. "Right. Hermione, you're a terrible actress."

Hermione dropped the chirpy attitude. "All right, Molly made us come."

"Oh good."

"Yeah, well," Ron said sourly. "Fred ran off at the mouth yesterday."

"Oh God."

"Honorary Weasley, I'm telling you." Ron shrugged.

Harry blew out his breath in annoyance. "Look, nothing's going to happen. We talked already."

"What?"

"We talked. His - Kara, Ben's mother, sort of pushed us to talk and we did, and nothing's going to happen, and everybody's clear on that."

"What exactly did you talk about?" Hermione asked curiously.

"That we both... erm, you know, are interested. And that it wouldn't be a good idea. And that's that."

"He is interested, then?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah." Despite the situation, Harry couldn't stop a smile at the thought. It was a bit of a thrill, knowing that another person wanted you. Being desired, not by some poor deluded groupie who'd read one too many columns on the Boy Who Mourned, but by somebody who knew you. It had been a bloody long time. "But nothing's going to happen."

"That's... that's good, Harry." Hermione patted his arm comfortingly and cleared her throat. "So how has the day been so far?"

"Fairly good," he said, and moved aside as an almost nude woman painted bright blue and wearing leaves in her hair wandered past, leading a goat on a leash and talking animatedly on a mobile phone. "Only one problem with a juggler accidentally dropping some magical stuff in front of Muggles."

"Where's Alec?" Ron asked.

"With Draco and Ben, watching the Mummers." As if on cue, Harry suddenly heard his son's voice, raised in anger over the music from the Mummers.

"No! I don't want to!" Alec said, and Harry felt a start of alarm. He quickly located Alec, Ben and Draco in the audience and hurried towards them.

"Ben, he doesn't want to. You can't have your way all the time," Draco was saying as Harry came closer. "And Alec, if you don't tell him, he can't know you don't want to play that game."

"But I don't want to! And he's being mean!"

"Maybe, but he just wants to play." Their voices dropped and a group of longhaired tourists smelling of patchouli came between Harry and Alec, blocking his view. By the time he reached them, Alec and Ben were happily playing together again as if nothing had happened.

"What's going on?"

"Oh nothing," Draco said. "Ben was trying to get Alec to play some kind of shooting game, only Alec didn't want to."

"What did you say to stop the fight?"

"Nothing much, just reminded them they'd been playing just fine before their argument and told them to get back to it. Though I did think Alec was going to hit Ben for a moment there."

"Alec?"

"He's got a good punch, mate," said Ron, who had followed Harry. "Most of the time he just hides or runs away, but when he's angry, look out."

"You've told me that, but I never see it."

"That's because when you're there he just runs to you," said Hermione, arriving at the scene. "He doesn't like confrontations."

"Hello," Draco said warily.

"Hello," Hermione answered politely. "We're here for the dedication of the monument to McGonagall," she said, elbowing Ron as he made a disgusted sound.

"Yeah, that should be a lot of fun. How's it supposed to be kept from the Muggles, though?" Ron asked. "A whole monument?"

"Charms," Harry said. "All over the place. It'll look like a small shrine to the goddess Athena to Muggles."

"And why here, anyway? She was Scottish."

"She came here during the war," Draco said. "Used the ley lines to help figure out where Delphina Macnair was."

Ron and Hermione stared at him. "How do you know that?" asked Hermione.

Draco shrugged. "I heard it from Delphina," he said evenly.

Ron and Hermione reddened slightly and Harry winced. Three guesses as to where he'd heard it.

"Draco!" Kara called out, dodging past a troupe of burly men with Celtic knotwork tattoos all over their chests and arms, and reaching Harry's group slightly out of breath. "Listen, we've got enough people here to sing the Freedom Trilogy but we need a tenor-"

"Not interested. How d'you figure you've enough to sing anyway?"

"Well between the ones from our choir, and the MoonShadow Coven members who sing in the Cork Choir, and my friends Claire and Phylisha, we've got just enough. We've even got drums and a keyboard from the Handstand Band! We really need a tenor, though."

"I'm busy."

"Draco, I need you," she said, cocking her head to the side and pouting a bit.

"Good for you. I need to watch Ben."

"You can watch Ben, can't you Harry?" Kara asked, to Harry's slight alarm. "Draco, it's important. There's a man from the WindMusic label here, I want him to hear my solo."

"Oh for God's sake. I told you, I've got things to-"

"Well I've things to do too," Kara said doggedly, and Harry could see how Draco had ended up having a child with her; the woman had almost no sense of boundaries whatsoever.

"Come on, you've got plenty of friends to watch Ben, can you not do this for me?"

Harry choked back a laugh at the pained expressions on Ron, Hermione and Draco's faces. "Sure, we'd be glad too," he said brightly. "After all, what are friends for, right?"

ooo000ooo

The Handstand Band wasn't bad, thought Harry as he looked over the crowds near dinner time. Not really his kind of music, but it was all right. Alec was of course enjoying the concert very much, though he didn't listen with the same rapt attention as he did for choirs or traditional Celtic music, and Ben had actually successfully drawn him out to play during part of the set. Very different from the impromptu performance by Kara and her entourage; Alec had been spellbound as they wove together some medieval-sounding chants with African music and a gospel-like solo, belted out rather impressively by Kara. Even Ron and Hermione had been awed.

As for Harry, he'd been staring at Draco the whole time. And it seemed Draco looked at him fairly often too, especially when Kara began her solo, and he'd grinned at Harry's astonishment.

Rather unsettling, finding yourself that focused on one person.

Harry looked at his watch. Almost the end of the Band's performance, and almost dinner time. Hermione had gone back to St. Mungo's a few hours ago, though Ron had stayed and Harry was now glad he had. Everything had been going relatively smoothly, but the Liaison posts appeared to be fairly time-consuming and it had been handy to have Ron and Kara as back-up child-minders.

It was nice to sit and listen to some music for a while and just enjoy the day, knowing that for a couple of hours at least there was little chance of simultaneous Muggle-wizarding events coming into conflict. In fact, most of the wizards on the Hill were being very helpful and considerate of Muggles and had cooperated with Harry and Draco without a hitch. Mostly.

He yawned, noticing that the Band had begun a new song. Something about the Green Man. Appropriate, he supposed, though the lyrics didn't seem to have all that much to do with Beltane.

Bad idea, listening to the song, though. Because now Harry couldn't seem to stop imagining Draco as the Green Man, Kara as the May Queen, pagan dancers and music and fire and possibly tongues and this was a bad idea and he should stop very soon.

Right. He sent his mind off elsewhere. For example, off to imagining what it must have been like for Draco to enter the Muggle world, and how afraid he must have been, if he'd consider public sex no problem after successfully overcoming the terror of interacting with Muggles.

"I hadn't thought of it before," Harry had said.

"It shows," Draco had shot back.

Harry ran a hand through his hair and sighed as he tied it back again. Why the hell did he want Draco, anyway? He might have learned some manners and not be deliberately obnoxious any more, but he was no angel. Still prickly, defensive, sarcastic...

He had changed, though. He wasn't the same malicious, bigoted prat he had been. There was warmth and caring and honesty there that Harry hadn't seen before.

People changed. Who knew when or how or why it had happened to Draco, but he had changed, mostly for the better.

Harry started as a small owl landed on his shoulder and hooted at him softly, gently pecking his ear.

"Trouble?" Ron asked. "Hey, isn't that the owl you and Malfoy are using to contact each other here?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "Not sure there's any major problem, though; she doesn't have a message and she doesn't seem all that upset..." He glanced around, saw Draco and a young woman in robes arguing near a grove of trees, and he set off towards them, Ron behind him. The owl hadn't been alarmed, and it looked like whatever had happened wasn't a big problem, but Harry still wanted to check it out personally.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Draco was saying angrily to the haughty-looking young witch. "You've scared the piss out of him-"

"Fine one you are to talk about scaring the piss out of Muggles, Malfoy," the witch said snidely.

"You'd like a taste of what I got, then?" Draco shot back without missing a beat. "Because I'll be happy to call the Aurors if you'd like. They're right over there."

"Bit of power's gone to your head, has it?"

"Absolutely. I've got Aurors working for me for a change. I think I'll do this for the rest of my life. And having you arrested would be an ideal first step."

"Nice place for the last Malfoy to end up," she sneered at him. "Errand boy for the Ministry."

"Thank you, I think so too." He smirked at her. "Now, would you please keep arguing for just thirty more seconds, so I can justify calling the Aurors? And if it's not too much trouble, I'd appreciate it if you'd hex those bloody bagpipers too, do us all a favour-"

"Piss off," the witch said, and Disapparated.

Draco blew his hair off his face, looking angry and tired.

"You all right?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, fine."

"Trouble?"

"Stupid twit decided to turn an old man's cane into a serpent. I called the Obliviators and put a tracking spell on her wand. Hopefully she's disgusted enough with me to stay away for the rest of the day. Excuse me," he said, and pushed past Ron and Harry to where an elderly man was sitting on one of the benches, looking bewildered.

"It was a snake," he was saying dazedly.

"I think you've had too much sun. D'you want me to call your daughter?"

"It was a snake," the old man insisted, looking at his cane.

"It just looked like it, Philip," Draco said impatiently, "because you've had too much sun. There's a nurse on duty - oh, here she comes." The old man looked up as an Obliviator approached and sat down next to him, murmuring comfortingly to him and nodding a dismissal to Draco.

"Do you know him?" Ron asked curiously.

"Who, Philip? Yeah, he's a bass in my choir. Half-deaf and often nods off during rehearsals, but he's still got a fine voice and he remembers lyrics. Not a lot else, though. Perfect target," he said, curling his lip in disdain. "Oh, wonderful, his daughter's here." He headed off to intercept the daughter while the Obliviator did her work.

"That's the young Malfoy, isn't it?" said a witch behind Harry.

"Yeah," another replied. "The son. Draco."

"What's he doing here?"

"Muggle Liaison, I think."

"Yeah, he's Muggle Liaison," Harry confirmed, turning around to see a group of three women and one elderly man.

"Why? Is he a Squib now? Or is this part of his sentence?" one of the witches, a blonde, asked.

"Yeah, working with Muggles as part of a sentence," the old man said scornfully. "Justice the Ministry way. Replacing prison time with going to a park and talking to Muggles."

"As a matter of fact, he's doing this as volunteer work," Harry said mildly.

"Should've been kept locked up, like his parents," the youngest witch in the group said bitterly.

"The boy didn't do much," the blonde pointed out. "Just let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts."

"That's not enough for you? My niece was there that night," the old man said. "He could've gotten her killed."

"He was under duress," the blonde said mildly. "And he served his time. Besides, you know what they said at his trial. Dumbledore offered him sanctuary; he would've wanted him out."

"How inconvenient that Dumbledore didn't have a chance to tell us that."

The oldest witch, who hadn't spoken yet, clucked her tongue at him. "Who knows. He may turn out to be a decent sort."

"I won't hold my breath," the young witch answered.

"He's on parole for the rest of his life," said the old woman.

"Sure. For magic," the old man spat derisively.

"Oh dry up, Francis," said the old woman. "It's Beltane; time for new beginnings and all that."

Ron gave Harry a thoughtful look as the group moved away. They made their way back to Alec and Ben, as the Handstand Band finished their performance to wild cheering from the crowd.

Kara approached them running. "Have you seen Draco?"

"Um, no, he's - oh. He's done now," Harry said, pointing out where Draco was saying goodbye to Philip's daughter.

"Oh good. I've a favour to ask him," Kara said, hurrying off to intercept him. Harry rejoined Ron and the two little boys, leaving the place where the Handstand Band had performed.

"Ron," Ben was saying. "You've got the baby in the bubble, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Brilliant! Can he talk yet?"

Ron shook his head. "He can't really do much, yet. He-"

"When will he be out of the bubble?"

"Erm. When he's ready, I suppose. In a few weeks."

"I'd love to see that. Muggles have nothing like that."

Ron nodded.

"Mam doesn't want another baby, but I like them. D'you know about Chocolate Frogs?"

"Erm. Yes."

"Alec showed one to me. One was of a really powerful wizard. What was his name?" he asked Alec.

"Albus Dumbelldore."

"Dumbledore," Ron corrected automatically.

"Did you know him?" Ben asked.

"Yeah, he was our Headmaster at school," Ron said.

"D'you think my father knew him?" Ben asked, and Harry and Ron exchanged a startled look. "Me Dad never says anything about the wizarding world, but I think it's brilliant. Did you know that his parents didn't like half-bloods? That's terrible, don't you think?"

Harry traded a worried glance with Ron. It was not a good idea to continue down this route without knowing what Draco wanted to handle it, but he had no idea how to divert Ben.

"Er, so Ben," Ron said. "Have you ever seen anybody play chess?"

"Yeah."

"Ever seen Wizard Chess?"

Ben's eyebrows went up. "Is it different from regular chess?'

"Oh yes," Ron said, and launched into an animated description of his favourite pastime, much to Ben's delight. Harry excused himself, going in search of Draco and spotting him fairly quickly, talking to Kara near a group of musicians. He called Draco's name and hurried towards them, realizing neither one had heard him as Kara's words were blown Harry's way by the stiff breeze.

"How is it going with you and Harry, then?"

"Fine," Draco said flatly.

"Augh, lad, that's no 'fine' tone of voice there. Will ye be getting into his knickers?"

"No."

Harry stopped, realizing neither could see him and feeling guilty for spying on them, but not guilty enough to make his presence known.

"And why not?"

There was a silence. "Too much history."

"What, between the two of ye?"

"Yeah."

"Draco, me darling, ye have to let go of history sometimes, right? It's Beltane. Time for new beginnings."

"I can't. And he wouldn't want to, even if I did."

"That's a lie as big as my ego, darlin'. He's a step away from bending you over the nearest rock and taking you without lube. Or possibly falling flat on his back for you, or using that pretty mouth of his on you, it's hard to tell."

"I think you're maybe a wee bit dramatic," Draco laughed, and Harry was amused at the hint of Irish accent in his voice. "But no, it's not that he doesn't want to. He just doesn't want to act on it."

"That's a bit of a crime, pretty man like that going home alone. That little one needs his Da paired up, too. Needs another adult in his life."

Draco shrugged. "Maybe. Won't be me, though," he said, sounding bitter. "Even if I wanted to be."

"Do you?"

Draco looked away.

She nodded and put a hand on Draco's arm sympathetically. "Well, I'm off to Kerry's. You'll be all right?"

"Yeah, of course. Don't forget to say goodbye to Ben."

"Of course." She sighed. "I can't believe I'm missing Beltane."

"WindMusic Record's too big an opportunity to pass up."

"Don't I know it. They've no promised anything, mind. Just want to talk to me tomorrow early."

"Good luck."

"Thanks, love," she said, and kissed him before leaving.

Harry stood for a moment, debating whether he should go to Draco or not, then crept away.

ooo000ooo

"It's been a long day, little man," Harry said at sunset as he picked up Alec, who nodded tiredly. "Nothing but the ceremony and the bonfires left."

"Well, I'm off," said Ron. "D'you want me to take Alec?"

"Do you want to go home with Uncle Ron?"

Alec shook his head. "I wanna watch the fires," he said softly.

"He says he'd like to stay."

"Are you still working?"

"Not really. There's no more official wizarding events going on. And there's Aurors here in case of random problems."

"Well, I'm off then. Bye, Ben," Ron said, and Ben grinned and gave his hand a firm shake.

"Good night, Weasley," Draco said politely.

"Bye, Malfoy. Harry," Ron said, turning to him and pausing for a moment. "Happy Beltane, mate," he said and gave Harry a clap on the shoulder, a brief glance and a resigned shrug at Draco, which Harry understood to mean, "Well - if you must."

"Good night, Ron," said Harry, and Ron Apparated away.

"What are they doing?" asked Alec as the Blue Men gathered at the bottom of the Hill. "Kara told me but I didn't really understand."

"It's supposed to symbolize the new year," Draco said. "Beltane celebrates new life, because it's springtime, so there's new flowers and plants, and a lot of animals have their babies in the spring. The story they act out is about life and death, and order and chaos. Those are the Blue Men," he said. "They're leading the May Queen in."

"Who are they?"

"The Blue Men are the Guardians of Order and the May Queen is a symbol of women and fertility - that's having babies."

"And the goddess," Ben added.

"And the goddess," Draco agreed, his eyes shadowed for a moment. "Goddess of growth, and new beginings."

"And who's that?"

"The Horned King. Some people say he represents the old year."

"Why are they lighting a fire?"

"That's a new flame," said Ben. "It's for new life."

"They say in the old days, all the lights of the year would come from that one flame lit here," Draco told Alec. "All the flames you'll see in the procession today - the torches, the bonfires - will come from the one they're lighting right now."

"Who's that?" Alec asked, having to speak louder as a large group of women in white walked past.

"That's the May Queen and the White Warrior Women," said Draco. "They're going to greet all four elements."

"You mean like Earth, Fire, Air, and Water?"

"Yeah, very good," Draco said, smiling.

"Auntie Hermione taught me about those," Alec said proudly, then turned to Harry and whispered into his ear. "I can't hear Draco very much. Can he carry me?"

"Oh. Erm," Harry said, and leaned closer to Draco. "Alec's having trouble hearing you," he said as Alec held out his arms, and Draco took him, giving Harry a small smile.

Harry took Ben's hand, keeping him close as the crowd got thicker, and he and Ben followed Draco and Alec as Draco talked him through the greeting of the elements, the stop at the Fire Arch to mourn all that had been lost in the last year, and the appearance of the Red Men leaping from a grove.

"They look kind of scary," Alec said, his voice almost lost in the wild tumult of sound from the actors and the crowd.

"They're supposed to look scary. But you'll see, they'll try to catch the May Queen for the Horned King, but they won't be able to."

"I can't see, Harry," Ben shouted from somewhere around Harry's waist, and he picked him up, noting that he was a great deal heavier than Alec. Draco must have developed some pretty good arm muscles. "The Red Men are brilliant, aren't they? When I'm grown up, I want to be a Red Man!"

Harry chuckled as they went past and laughed at Ben's happy shout when they were defeated by the White Warrior Women, who killed the Horned King and presented his body to the May Queen.

"Is he really dead?" Alec asked, his eyes wide.

"No no, he's just acting. Now watch, the May Queen will bring him back to life, but he'll come back as the Green Man, the force of new life."

They headed up the Hill with the procession, to watch the symbolic marriage of the May Queen and Green Man and the lighting of two bonfires, signalling the end of Winter and the coming of Summer, as the Horned King costume was thrown into the fire and the entire procession danced around it.

"Is that the end?" Alec asked, as people from the audience began to join the actors around the bonfires.

"That's it. That's the last ritual of Beltane. From here on it's mostly just watching the fire and dancing."

"That's brilliant," Alec said, rubbing his eyes and laying his head against Draco's shoulder.

"And that's how come I was born," said Ben sleepily.

"Who are they?" Alec asked, yawning and pointing at a group of people nearby. Draco turned to look, and smirked.

"They call themselves Warriors for Innocence."

"Who's that?"

"They don't like the ceremony. They're protesting against it. Saying it shouldn't be put on."

"They look funny, don't they?" Ben said. "Waving those sticks and papers about and pretending to shout."

Harry stifled a laugh. It seemed Draco had been a bit too enthusiastic with the muffling charms, not that Harry was complaining.

"Why don't they want the ceremony?" Ben asked.

"I'll tell you when you're older," Draco said.

"Where's the more... literal ceremony?" Harry asked him, his voice low.

"Probably back there," Draco said pointing to a dark, secluded area at the base of the Hill.

"Not as public as I thought."

"No, and the other participants don't actually look. Well, they're not supposed to. It's anybody's guess whether they do or not. It's still nothing the poor Warriors would approve of."

"No, I suppose not," Harry chuckled.

"Can we go sit, Harry?" Ben asked.

"Yeah, come on, let's go over there," Harry said, leading them to the Neolithic wall, close enough to see the bonfires but not close enough to be trampled by the increasingly frenzied - and somewhat drunken - dancing. He and Draco put down the children and sat, and Alec crawled into Harry's lap, facing the fire.

"I'm thirsty," Ben said, and Draco pulled a small flask out of his pocket and surreptitiously enlarged it before passing it to Ben, who gave it to Alec once he was done.

"D'you want any?" Draco asked Harry.

"Brought something better," Harry said. "Butterbeer?" he asked, taking two bottles out of his own pocket.

Draco's eyes lit up and he grinned as he took a bottle. "Haven't had one of these in a long, long time," he said, taking a long drink.

Harry drank his beer, gazing into the bonfire as the dancing grew merrier and the flames rose higher, their heat feeling very pleasant in the slightly chilly night air. Alec's movements gradually grew more and more infrequent, until he was still, a warm, soft presence on Harry's lap, sleeping peacefully even as the noise grew louder. Harry glanced at Ben, leaning against Draco, his own eyelids drooping, and marvelled at the ability of tired children to sleep through almost anything.

They gazed at the bonfires, at the Beltane actors and the other revelers who'd joined them dancing around and between them, and Harry felt incredibly tired. Worn out from the long day, the Liaison duties, the events, and the ideas and desires and emotions that he'd spent most of the day pushing away.

He carefully pointed his wand at the ground next to him, Transfiguring a patch of grass into a small quilt, and placed Alec on the ground next to him, then nudged Draco and pointed at the quilt. Draco nodded and carefully placed his own sleeping child next to Alec, and they sat back with their backs to the wall. The Butterbeer sat warm and comfortable in Harry's stomach as he gazed into the fires, with their fascinating patterns and ever-changing colours; at the couples and wizards and Muggles and pagans and protestors and tourists, and what looked like a nun wearing a t-shirt that said "God's blessings on our Wiccan brothers and sisters."

He sighed, his mind reaching a perfect plateau of blankness and calm. Turned and saw a quiet, peaceful look on Draco's face as well and almost decided not to say anything. But... well, Gryffindor and new beginings and all that.

He licked his lips nervously and made himself speak. "Draco?"

"Mmhm?"

"About that 'not a good idea' thing we were talking about this morning?"

Draco stiffened slightly and Harry almost regretted disturbing his serenity. "Yeah?"

"Is that... is that set in stone for you? Or can we change our minds?"

Draco's brows drew together, but he didn't turn or look away from the fire. "Yeah, I suppose," he said slowly. "Why?"

"Because," Harry said, clearing his throat. "I think - I've done a lot of thinking today."

"And?"

"I know this is probably very stupid and a very bad idea." And bound to end badly, and bound to hurt other people, and he - they - both had responsibilities and both knew better...

"Yeah..."

"And it would be hard to explain to people."

"No doubt."

"We'd be being selfish."

"Horribly."

"But I... I think that..." He moved closer hesitantly and Draco frowned, looking at the fire, and opened his mouth, about to speak, then closed it. He seemed to be debating himself, and Harry waited patiently for a while before finally speaking again.

"Draco?"

Draco nodded, but still hesitated. "All right, I don't really know how to say this, but... don't play with me," he said stiffly.

"What?"

"I - I'm risking rather a lot, mostly things I shouldn't be risking, like my son's future. Don't - I'm not expecting promises or forever or anything, but don't-" he stopped. "Don't do this on a whim, all right?"

"I'm not doing this on a whim," Harry said, a bit annoyed. "I... I'm risking some things too. I mean... for one thing I haven't been with anyone since Ginny died, all right? This isn't a whim."

Draco's eyebrows went up. "Four and a half years? You've not..."

"I went to some Muggle bars," Harry said, turning away, his voice low. "All right, two bars, to be exact. I... it didn't go terribly far. I don't even know what I'm doing," he confessed, wishing he didn't feel so bloody exposed and uncertain and vulnerable.

"How far did you go?"

Harry shrugged. "I... hand job, blow job. I... I've never even done that to somebody else-" He stopped. "I don't know what I'm doing and if you're worried you're going to get hurt, well so am I."

The silence from Draco was almost palpable. Then Harry felt a touch on his shoulder, a gentle tug, and slowly turned around, unable to meet his eyes.

He heard Draco take a deep breath. "You're not playing around, then."

"No."

"I don't need your pity, either," Draco said quietly. "If you're going to try to 'rehabilitate' me, or-"

"I'm not. And I don't need your pity either," Harry said, somewhat stung.

Draco nodded. He moved closer and Harry swallowed nervously.

"What?" he said, feeling stupid and lost in the face of Draco's serious gaze, the flames from the bonfire flickering before them. Draco's eyes searched his, and Harry swallowed hard when Draco picked up his wand and quietly, without looking away from him, cast a discreet visual concealment charm around them. Felt his heart skipping beats as Draco put down his wand and dropped his gaze to Harry's mouth.

Lean forward. Let go. He could almost hear the words out loud, but neither of them seemed able to take that step.

He took a deep breath, leaned forward, and gently pressed his lips to Draco's, closing his eyes, and relief flooded him as Draco made a small sound in his throat and accepted the kiss. It was hesitant and nervous, and Harry was torn between relief that he hadn't been pushed away yet, terror at going any farther, and a burning need to do just that. He shyly parted his lips, feeling Draco sigh into his mouth and open his own, their tongues touching tentatively.

Oh God.

Suddenly he nearly felt like crying, everything was too sharp, too raw and he wanted it all far too much. He started to pull back, but as their mouths drew apart felt Draco's fingers on the back of his head, tangling themselves in his hair. He breathed in, shocked to realize that Draco was trembling, his breathing rapid and shallow.

"Draco?"

Draco pulled back slightly and Harry instinctively brought up a hand to his cheek to still him, both suspended motionless for a moment before Draco relaxed slightly and came closer again.

Harry drew in a shaking breath, his fingers caressing Draco's face slowly, feeling the slight roughness of stubble and the almost undetectable outline of the scar that ran along his jaw, and leaned forward again.

Draco moved in to the kiss, parting his lips again and slowly exploring the inside of his mouth, running his hands down Harry's back, then pressing him gently back against the wall. Harry moaned, mortified as soon as he heard the sound, but Draco smiled against his mouth and brought both hands into Harry's hair, undid the tie that held it back and ran his fingers through it. Harry shivered; that felt rather spectacularly good, for some odd reason. It seemed such an intimate thing, somebody combing through his hair with his fingers. Never had anybody done that, since he'd kept his hair short while he was with Ginny and hadn't indulged in anything resembling intimacy with either of the nameless Muggle men he'd snogged at those bars.

He reached up to remove Draco's glasses and his own and carefully set them down next to them with a glance at the sleeping boys.

"They're all right," Draco whispered before capturing his mouth in another kiss.

"I know," Harry murmured between kisses, hardening with alarming speed. Oh, God, he'd missed this so much. Four and a half years without it. He felt dizzy, shivers racing through him as they kissed deeply, drawing closer, one of Draco's hands now cupping his cheek, the other caressing the back of his neck, and he ran a hand down to Draco's waist, pulling him a bit closer.

And then he was lost. Hands roaming tentatively over his body, stroking his face, threading through his hair, lips caressing his, exploring his neck and up to his earlobe. Draco's lean body shivering under his touch, Draco gasping as Harry kissed his way down the side of his neck, his skin salty and warm under Harry's tongue.

"Oh God," Draco moaned softly, dropping his head back, and Harry gasped as he found himself almost painfully hard. God, yes, he wanted to say, but couldn't figure out how over his racing heart. How long had he been cut off so completely, not feeling another heart beating against his or the thrill of making another person gasp and shiver, making do with nothing but his own hand touching him, such a completely inadequate substitute for this overpowering heady rush of sensation... and he needed so much more, felt such an overwhelming urge to move so that he ended up in Draco's lap and felt how hard he was, so they could thrust against one another...

The thought flitted across his mind that he was about an inch away from coming in his pants, in public and next to two sleeping children, from nothing more than Draco's lips and hands touching him almost chastely along his face, neck, and hair, bringing him to the brink without so much as undoing one button of his clothing. And judging from the way Draco was panting and softly moaning, he was getting close as well, which probably wasn't anything he wanted to do in public either, concealment charms and previous experience with Wiccan ceremonies aside.

Harry pressed his lips together, slowing them down a bit, feeling Draco gasp and nod as they separated slightly, still holding one another, unable to fully stop and bring themselves back from the edge too quickly.

"Not here," he murmured.

Draco nodded. "And not tonight," he said. "Have to get the boys back home."

"Right." He drew close for one last slow kiss before they parted reluctantly, leaning back against the wall.

Draco swallowed, taking one of Harry's hands in his, looking down at their clasped hands. "That was..." He shook his head.

"You all right with this?" Harry asked, finding words a bit difficult for some reason.

Draco nodded. "I mean it, though. This is... this probably isn't a good idea."

"I know." Harry sighed. "I want to try anyway, though."

"Me too." Draco glanced around. "Erm, discreetly, though. I don't much want to end up in The Prophet any time soon."

"Yeah, of course," Harry said, promising himself a long talk with Fred as soon as humanly possible.

They smiled at each other for a moment, then Draco broke their gaze. "I'd best take Ben home. I've got work tomorrow."

"Yeah, me too." They let go of each other and stood, and approached the boys quietly. Harry smiled down at Alec, sleeping curled up on the makeshift quilt, and carefully picked him up.

"Going home Daddy?" he mumbled, not opening his eyes.

"Yeah, little man. We're going home." He settled Alec against his shoulder. "How are you getting home?" he asked Draco, standing with a soundly sleeping Ben in his arms.

"Kara went home with one of her friends and left her car for me to take Ben home. You?"

"Portkey. I left one next to the tree with the Obliviating Thread."

"Let's go." They started out, walking down the hill in companionable silence, and stopped next to the tree, inside the Thread's influence.

"We're off, then," Harry said.

"Right." They gazed at each other shyly and then Harry stepped closer to kiss Draco as well as he could with two sleeping children separating them.

"I'll send you an e-mail?" he said.

"Yeah. I'd like that."

"Good-bye."

"I'll see you later."

Harry knelt down, taking Alec's hand and putting it on the Portkey, and murmured the spell to activate it. Draco and Ben disappeared in a whirl as the Portkey took them.

"Are we going home Daddy?" Alec mumbled sleepily as they landed in Harry's front hall.

"We are home," Harry said, taking Alec to his bed.

"Are we going to see Ben and Draco again, Daddy?"

Harry smiled. "Yeah, I hope so. Soon."

Alec smiled and snuggled down under his covers. Harry stroked his hair back and watched him sink back into a deep sleep.

"You were right, little man," he whispered. "I was being silly. Thanks for straightening me out."

He touched his fingers to the portrait of Ginny on Alec's wall, smiling as she waved to him. Then he gave his son a kiss and headed for bed.

-End

Author's Note: In case anybody is in Ireland around Beltane some day: Uisneach Hill does indeed exist. It was once known as the physical and spiritual center of Ireland, the place of the goddess Eri, from which Ireland gets her name. It's an hour or so from Dublin, ley lines do converge there, rituals were carried out there in ancient times, there is a Neolithic wall, and on a clear day you can indeed see twenty of the thirty-two Irish counties from the top of the Hill.

Sequel: Ember To Ember