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The Leaky Cauldron was unusually busy; someone in Magical Bugs was celebrating a promotion, and all the employees of the ward seemed to have shown up with the sole intention of getting obnoxiously drunk. They kept letting out raucous cheers, and Hermione kept shooting nasty looks over her shoulder when they did.
“What was so urgent?” she asked, and then cried, “Oh, Ron!” as he accidentally knocked a full pint into her lap.
Fifteen minutes later, Ron sat down with his replacement drink and a slice of pie for Hermione as his apology.
“Now what’s going on?” Hermione asked, smoothing down her freshly spelled-dry skirt.
Harry took the final swig of the Butterbeer he’d been steadily draining since they’d arrived. His thumbnail worked beneath the edge of the bottle wrapper as he asked, “When I came out, why didn’t either of you tell me wizards can get pregnant?”
Ron and Hermione stared at him. Just as Ron’s mouth opened, a wild synchronized shriek erupted from the Magical Bugs folks, and he had to shut it until they quieted down again.
“They can’t,” Ron said, looking baffled. “Are you…do you think you’re pregnant?”
“Me? No, no. No. But…someone I've been seeing is.”
“Who have you been seeing?” Hermione asked. “And do you seriously think men can get pregnant?”
“I know Muggle men can’t, but I thought maybe the magic…how is he pregnant, then?”
“How is who pregnant?” she asked again.
Harry pulled off the last shred of wrapper and dropped it atop the pile he’d created. “Draco Malfoy.”
“Harry,” Ron said, very pale beneath his freckles, “there is no bloody way you got Draco Malfoy pregnant.”
“He says he is,” Harry muttered, staring at the bare bottle in his hands. “Why would he lie?”
Ron and Hermione stared at Harry, and then at each other.
Across the pub, Magical Bugs flared to life again.
———
Draco’s favourite thing in his life was his flat. It was small, which made it easy to keep clean, and it had a wall of exposed brick, and when his downstairs neighbor wasn’t smoking he could open the window and stick his head out for some fresh air.
The flat was first, but he had a long list. Sunday supper with his mother, Wednesday drinks with Pansy and Blaise, taking walks through Muggle streets without the dragging weight of cloaks, drinking full glasses of wine without anyone there to tell him not to, ordering takeaway and eating it on the sofa with his socked feet tucked under him…
Until very recently, Harry Potter had been one of those favourite things. Then, during a very busy period at work, he’d forgotten his contraceptive potions, and even the damn hormone potions which he’d never forgotten before, and then Harry bloody Potter had showed up all sunburnt from a stakeout in Madrid, with his roughened hands a size too large for his body, and he’d taken Draco by the chin and kissed him like he was Harry’s favourite thing, too.
The forgetfulness was his own fault, and the timing wasn’t anybody’s. What made Harry fall off the list was the way he’d walked out without a word when Draco told him he was pregnant.
Like it wasn’t a million fucking times harder for him. The fucking triggered dysphoria alone, nevermind that he was nauseous and tired and too ashamed to see about fixing any of it.
He hadn’t wanted to be pregnant, and he still didn’t, but it was hard to undo a lifetime of brainwashing. Sometimes he stood before the mirror and pressed a hand to his still-flat stomach and thought, You could be the only chance to continue the Malfoy line.
It was a stupid line. It should die off. Logically. He wasn’t thinking logically when he spoke to the growing poppyseed inside him.
Draco was leaned against his open window, looking out over the small playground of the nursery next door, when Harry’s owl swooped down on him. The letter said: Wizards can’t get pregnant, what are you on about?
He started to wonder if he’d died during the war, after all, and he’d finally made it to Hell.
———
Harry opened the door, and had to leap aside as Draco stormed in. He looked gorgeous, as always, and was wearing Harry’s favourite trousers. If Harry wasn’t so angry and confused he would’ve taken them off very quickly. Instead he settled for a few stolen glances and flopped down onto his sofa.
“I hate when you do that,” Draco said, sitting very carefully in an armchair. “You’ll break the furniture.”
“I hate when you lie about being pregnant,” Harry shot back. “What was even the point of that, by the way?”
“I’m not lying, you absolute pillock.” Draco pulled something out of his pocket and shoved it at Harry. It was a folded sheet of parchment, and when Harry opened it a small photo fell out. He picked it up, and his mouth went very dry as he looked at the tiny black and white spot floating slowly toward the edge.
“That’s the-?”
“The baby, yes.” Draco’s eyes were fixed on the photo. “Or fetus or clump of cells or what have you. I don’t know yet if I’ll let it become a baby.”
“Hermione and Ron said you couldn’t be pregnant.”
Draco went very red, and then very white. His mouth opened, then closed. Finally, he snarled in a hoarse voice, “You told them?”
“I wanted to know why no one had mentioned wizards could get pregnant! And they said they can’t! So how did this happen? Are you part-veela or something?”
Draco let out a very creative and massively hurtful string of vulgar insults, ending with, “And how did it escape your notice, you fucking badger, that I have a vagina?”
Harry blinked. “A what?”
Draco blinked. “A what, what?”
“What’s a vagina? Is that your - you know.” He gestured at Draco’s crotch.
“My…is that…Harry what the bloody fuck is going on? Are you seriously telling me you didn’t know I was trans?”
“Which magical creature is that?”
“Merlin fuck.”
Draco stood up and fled to the kitchen. Harry didn’t follow, feeling aggravated and confused and, despite everything, turned on by the view of Draco’s arse in those trousers as he sped away.
When Draco returned it was with two glasses of water, one of which he held out for Harry to take. Once he was curled back up in the armchair, he took a sip and a big breath.
“Harry. You do know…generally speaking, people born with penises are told they’re a boy, and people born with vaginas are told they’re a girl?”
Harry cocked his head.
“And you do know, generally speaking, witches get pregnant because they’re the ones with the vaginas and, you know, a uterus and ovaries and all of that.”
Harry blinked.
“And surely you’ve realized, since we’ve knocked boots at least a hundred times, that I have a vagina?”
“I didn’t know all of that,” Harry said finally.
“So then…did you never question that our genitals look very different from each other, yet we’re both men?”
Harry shrugged. “Not really. I thought maybe it was a Pureblood thing, or some blokes just have - vaginas, you called them?”
“Well, yes, some do, but - Salazar, how have you been making me come when you don’t even know basic anatomy?”
Harry shrugged again. “You got louder when I touched that one spot.”
“It’s called a clitoris, Harry. Now drink your water, we’re going to be here a while.”
———
The maternity ward in St. Mungo’s was quietly tucked away on the ground floor, as it had not been very long at all that the wizarding world had caught up to the idea of prenatal care and not being Stunned during childbirth.
Inside one room, Draco laid out on the exam table, his shirt rolled up to expose the protruding belly while the healer muttered spells over it.
“And I just want to confirm,” Draco said, a little too loudly, “that I will be delivering surgically?”
“Of course, Mr. Malfoy.” The healer gently pulled his shirt back in place, and with another wave of her wand glamoured his belly away. “Are you two finding out the gender?”
“The genitalia,” Harry corrected from where he leaned forward on a plastic chair. “And no, because it doesn’t matter, right, Draco?”
“Actually, I’d like to know.” Draco shrugged. “Unless they tell us differently later, it’s still interesting.”
“Of course,” the healer said, and smiled. “It’s a boy!”
“For now,” Harry added.
Out in the lobby, Draco said, “I should make a new badge. Harry Potter, World’s Greatest Ally.”
Harry beamed. “Am I really?”
“No, you nitwit.” Draco bumped his shoulder affectionately. “A boy, though. What should we name him?”
“James Sirius,” Harry said, and Draco shot him a look of revulsion.
“Absolutely not. James can be his middle name, how about that?”
“Fine. What’s your suggestion?”
“What do you think about Scorpius?”
“Scorpius James Malfoy Potter. Now that’s the name of a Chosen One. We’re practically begging for a new evil Wizard to rise up.”
Draco snorted. “It’s a constellation. Like Draco.”
“Ah, well.” Harry took Draco’s hand as they stepped out on the street, and looked affectionately at the invisible belly. “In that case, it’s perfect.”