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Ron’s terrier Patronus burst into the expanded kitchen of Grimmauld Place.
Draco had been poring over replenishing their own stores of Hangover Potion, which had been depleted by Blaise and Ginny’s yearly bash two days prior. His hair was a mess, the stands over his forehead curling as he chopped the frog liver finely. Three more stirs and then he could add it alongside the crushed artichoke root and then leave simmer on low for another few hours while he prepared dinner.
“Come to the cottage right now,” Ron’s terrier rushed, in a voice less commanding than what Draco was used to from hearing him on the job, and in a tone much more stressed than afterwards at the pub. “Bring all your antidotes, hurry.”
Message delivered, the small dog dissipated, leaving Draco alone and jittery with nerves and discomfort. He missed its presence immediately.
Draco rushed over to the cabinet where he kept all his extras –certainly he had shelves full in the DMLE, where he worked as a potions consultant to the aurors, down the hallway from their bullpen offices. But he kept duplicates in his own home too, one’s he’d made using ingredients he purchased from his own vaults and tweaked outside of the staid Department regulation, referring to some of Severus’ old notes from his potions’ mastery research as well as Draco’s own personal grimoires. It was more work, much more, than was required of him, and yet it was the only thing that made him feel safe.
He himself had not been a well-beloved figure, and he knew that many in the masses still crooned for his blood. Harry was disliked by everyone who may have turned a blind eye to Draco’s deeds, though perhaps the population who wanted Harry and Draco dead overlapped significantly, if Barty Crouch Jr’s repulsion towards the Death Eaters who evaded Azkaban was anything to go off of.
And that wasn’t to mention the risk Hermione run, trying to overturn generations-long legislature with grit, sweat, and sheer determination, making a nuisance of herself at every wizengamot meeting and fillabustering every bill she thought undermined her own goals. Her ruthlessness had Draco’s admiration, but her methods left her with a teeming crowd of political enemies.
Draco’s nerves only worsened when Teddy had come into his werewolf genes a year prior and who the Prophet had found out about three months ago, leaking information about his lycanthropy all over magical Britain. Teddy had shied away from the attention, overwhelmed by his new status and unsure how to manage this new part of him.
“Draco always calls you little bear, you know?” said Harry one night to Teddy, while the little boy was staying with them. Draco was in the kitchen, where he was making a dish he found disgustingly plebian for the little boy, and trying to sneak as many vegetables into the sauce as he could without him finding out.
Teddy nodded, morose. His hair was the color of the dishwater in the sink. He had been taking Draco’s Wolfsbane brew since he presented, and Draco had been fiddling with it in his free time to see if he could make something gentler for Teddy, something that didn’t leave him so drained and depressed the next day. Thus far into his research, he had begun wondering if it would be worth it to simply scrap the original wolfsbane recipe, which was not made with health or wellness so much as containment in mind, and try his hand at starting over.
“And you know who is always with the little bear in the sky?” Harry asked. Teddy shrugged, playing with the stuffed dragon he had purloined from the Dragon Room in Grimmauld, refusing to look away from his soft, shiny green scales. “The Great Bear, Ursa Major. He looks scary, and sometimes he is, because he spends a lot of his time invisible.” This was factually incorrect, Draco couldn’t help thinking. Obviously Harry thought the truth could be stretched if it helped Teddy understand himself, which Draco felt a rush of warmth to think. “But he’s only scary because he wants to be seen, you know?”
Draco paused in the kitchen and watched as Harry petted the little boy’s hair, as though he truly was a little bear.
“We all have darkness inside of us,” Harry told Teddy gently. “That doesn’t mean that part of us is evil. It can seem scary, when we feel angry or overwhelmed. But when the big bear is upset, the best thing we can do is sit with him, and try to feel what he’s feeling. He’s only trying to protect you, little bear. And if you let him, maybe you’ll find out that he’s not so scary after all.”
Teddy’s hair had stayed dishwater brown for the rest of the evening, but Draco had had to excuse himself from the kitchen for a quarter of an hour and collect himself. He hoped that someday maybe Teddy would understand. Maybe with the help of Draco’s brew, if he ever got the recipe done up enough for mock trials.
So Draco was in danger from his hatefully crooning masses, Harry was still target number one for all escaped Death Eaters and their sympathizers, Hermione was on track to becoming a political martyr, and Teddy was the unwitting child representative of a still-feared minority group. On top of this, little toddler Rosie was perpetually hovered over by Molly’s brood but nonetheless so small and helpless—all the risks of it set Draco’s teeth on edge. No wonder his mother had taken such pains when he was small to keep him wrapped up in the Manor like a fragile piece of artwork. It seemed to go against his very nature to let Rosie and Teddy run around like he knew children were supposed to when they were in his care, his gaze veering from watchful to paranoid too many times to count.
Draco shrunk his entire potions cabinet, knowing that the transfiguration would weaken the wood but not caring enough to stall himself, and rushed out of the floo.
“I would say it was Blaise’s fault,” Ginny sighed, “but it was definitely Gewnog’s gummies that Rosie got into.” She looked at Ron unhappily, her eyes wide and pleading. “I’m sorry! But Rosie’s fine, right?”
Draco nodded, nose still in one of his potions texts for detoxification of magical and muggle sources. He was reading over the section on marijuana.
“She’s still very small, so it’s a good thing you caught her right away,” he said. “I couldn’t give her a sobriety potion because it has eye of newt—that’s not gentle enough on a child’s stomach. But my cure-all works well enough.”
“See!” Ginny exclaimed happily. “Well enough. She’s fine.”
Draco sighed. “I’d still take her to the healers in the morning.”
Ron glowered at Ginny. “You’re lucky Hermione has been arguing with the Wizengamot since noon about Centaur’s being status, or she’d have smeared you across the walls of Blaise’s fancy mansion.”
Ginny nodded heartily, gesturing to the opulent kitchen that neither she nor Blaise ever use. “Oh, absolutely. But because I’m your only sister and therefore your favorite, you’ll never tell.” She grinned, full of feeling, her smile as bright as her hair. “Call it a bonding experience between Rosie and me. I’ll be her cool aunt who introduced her to drugs at a young age.”
Draco snorted. Ron glowered some more, holding Rosie a little tighter.
“Not until fourth year at the earliest,” Ron scowled. “Preferably, not ever, but I don’t want her to get the Percy treatment at school.”
Ginny gagged. “There’s only so many Weasleys who can specialize in cauldron bottoms before our name is completely ruined forever.”