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Diagon Alley
Two large bowls of ice-cream clink down on the table before Albus and James, and a waffle cone topped in sprinkles is handed to Lily.
The waitress places a milkshake in front of Harry with a sweet smile, Harry nods at her, but doesn’t really see her. He’s too busy staring nervously at his children.
‘So then,’ says James around a mouthful of ice-cream. He swallows and dips his spoon back into his bowl. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘Hm?’ asks Harry, straightening. ‘What do you mean?’
James raises an eyebrow and glances sideways at Albus.
They share a look that Harry does not like. Lily, of course, is happily occupied by her ice-cream.
‘You brought us out for ice-cream,’ says Albus.
Harry flushes, feeling hot and uncomfortable and a little defensive. Like he is the child and they are the adults. ‘Taking you out for ice-cream isn’t that unusual.’
James grins again and taps his spoon on the edge of his large bowl. ‘Yeah, but letting us getting three spoonfuls plus extras is unusual.’
‘Last time you did that,’ says Albus softly, frowning down at his own bowl. ‘You and Mum were sitting us down to say you were splitting up.’
‘Albus thinks someone is dying,’ Lily pipes up.
Horror and realisation surge through Harry and he shakes his head, waving his hands and almost knocking over his milkshake. ’No, no, it’s nothing like that, I swear. It’s not bad.’
James tilts his head. ‘But there is something?’
Harry rubs his neck. ‘Uh, yeah.’
‘But it’s good?’ asks Albus.
‘Well,’ says Harry, and flushes again. He feels far too hot, even with the small sips of his milkshake. ‘Yeah. I think so. And I hope you do too. I just…’ he sighs and pauses to collect himself. He takes another sip of his milkshake.
Lily, with ice-cream already smeared around her mouth, lowers her cone and says, ‘are you dating someone?’
Harry promptly chokes on his shake.
‘Wait,’ says James, straightening up, his eyes lighting up in that way that reminds Harry of Ginny. ‘Is this about Mr Malfoy?’
‘Uhh.’
Albus perks up. ‘Wait, really? Is it?’
‘Um, well, I…’ Harry flounders. This was not how he saw this going. He was going to broach the subject carefully, ease them into it, talk to them about his friendship with Draco and see how they reacted. ‘You… uh, well, it might be. You know Draco and I are friends.’
They’re all staring at him, silent and waiting and eager. Eager?
Every single time he’s even attempted to have a date since he and Ginny broke up, his children have ruthlessly sabotaged it, to the point where he stopped even trying.
Until Draco, that is. It was unexpected, and both had been unsure if it would last. Hence, they’d kept it to themselves. Now, though. Now it was time to start telling people they were together, and they had decided to start with their children. Draco had wanted to do it together, but given Harry’s experience with his past dates, he wanted to test the waters first.
‘Yeah Dad,’ James says, grinning in a way Harry finds quite foreboding. ‘We know you and Mr Malfoy are friends.’
‘And?’ asks Albus, practically bouncing in his seat. ‘Are you just friends? Or, you know, is there something else you want to tell us?’
‘Subtle,’ James snorts.
‘What? It’s not like we don’t already know!’
‘Yeah but Dad’s trying to tell us so shut up!’
Harry stares at them. ‘Er… what…what’e you talking about?’
‘Dad,’ says James in a way that makes Harry think he must be channeling his namesake. ‘C’mon. You wanna tell us something. Something important. About you and Mr Malfoy…?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ asks Albus.
‘You… you know?’ Harry asks weakly.
Lily looks between her brothers and then back at Harry. ‘You have been much happier since you’ve been dating Scorpius’ Dad.’
‘This is awesome.’
Harry sits back in his chair, feeling at a complete loss. ‘I… how? How long have you known?’
James grins. ‘Ages.’
‘And you just let me sit here embarrassing myself like an idiot for no reason?’
Albus shrugs, ‘well, no offence Dad, but that’s not that unusual.’
Lily nods sagely (as if she’s not dripping ice cream onto the table).
Harry wants to bury his head in his hands, but manages to restrain himself.
‘Aunt Hermione and Uncle Blaise have a bet going about it,’ says James, smirking in a manner just like his other namesake.
Harry glares futilely and James’ smirk grows.
‘Who else knows about this?’ Harry asks.
James shrugs and glances at his siblings. As one (or as close as they can get) they look back at Harry and say in unison, ‘everyone.’
Harry groans.
‘I have to tell Scorpius about this! He’s going to be so excited! Are we going to live at our house, or Malfoy Manor? Ohhhh please can we live at Malfoy Manor, that would be awesome!’
‘Whoa, whoa,’ says Harry, raising his hands to slow the tide of Scorpius’ excitement.
‘Gees Al, you know they’re just dating right? We can’t move in yet,’ says James.
‘Why not? Aunt Hermione says it’s only a matter of time anyway.’
Harry almost chokes on his milkshake. That’s it, it’s official. He’s going to kill his friends.
As James and Albus argue (and basically plan out) how and where they are going to live, Harry rubs his temples, wondering why he’d even bothered trying to plan this out. Nothing ever goes the way he thinks it’s going to.
‘Are you okay, Dad?’ asks Lily, concern in her soft young voice.
Harry looks up and smiles, if somewhat in exasperation. ‘Yes, honey, of course. Honestly, I’m just glad you’re all okay with this.’
‘Why wouldn’t we be?’ says James. ‘You’re much happier with him. Not like any of those other people you brought home.’
Albus wrinkles his nose. ‘Yeah they sucked. And some of them weren’t very nice to you.’
Harry blinks in surprise, ‘Draco isn’t exactly nice to me either.’
‘Yeah but he never means it,’ says James. ‘And besides, you like it. Mum says you’re a masochist. Whatever that means.’
‘Yeah,’ Albus agrees. ‘It wasn’t the same with those others. You remember that lady Aunt Hermione told him to go out with?’
‘Oh, yeah she was a dud. She kept going on about how the Aurors are too violent and how everything Dad is doing is wrong.’
‘Come on, that’s not fair,’ says Harry. ‘She didn’t mean it like that.’
They both give him a look and he shuts up.
‘Oh! Remember that guy with the tattoos? He kept going on about how the ministry is too soft on bad guys and they should all be killed!’
‘I did not like him,’ says Lily, wrinkling her nose. ‘He almost made Daddy cry.’
‘Yeah, he had to go,’ Albus agrees.
‘Wait a second,’ Harry says, holding up his hands. ‘Is that why you scared them all away? Because you thought they were upsetting me?’
They all look at him, young and innocent and covered in ice-cream, and it hits him square in the chest. Love. They love him. So they’d protected him from people they thought were hurting him. Young as they were they hadn’t understood, and yet Harry can’t fault them. They were right. None of those people had suited him and they, in their innocence, had seen it before he had.
Harry is speechless. He had no idea they’d been paying that much attention. He’d thought that they hated the idea of him dating anyone but Ginny, but they’d just wanted him to be happy.
‘Oh, I’m finished,’ says Lily, blinking down at the remnants of her cone. ‘Can we have more?’
‘I—sure,’ says Harry, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice.
While Albus and Lily take off to choose more ice-cream, Harry glances at his eldest again.
‘So,’ he says, drumming his fingers along the table. ‘Your mother knows about this?’
James nods absently. ‘Oh, yeah. But she said we weren’t allowed to ask you, because the prophet and everyone else are always getting into your business and sometimes it’s just nice for you to have something to yourself.’
Harry feels a warmth curl itself around his heart and smiles, grateful once again for the friendship that still holds him and Ginny together. They may not have worked out as a couple, but they still had each other’s backs.
‘Though, she was complaining that you hadn’t told her yet. She said if you didn’t hurry up and spill the news she was going to tell Rita Skeeter that you were dating that woman from the Lawyers and see if that made Mr Malfoy jealous enough to make a scene.’
‘Oh god.’
__
At the Malfoy’s
Draco sits down at the dinner table, running through what he wants to say to Scorpius in his head. Other than a few attempted (and failed) dates, he hasn’t seriously courted anyone since Scorpius’ mother passed. And even that had not been a marriage of love.
Still, he wants this to go well, and though he won’t say that he’s nervous (he’s not, no matter what stupid Potter and his stupid knowing look says), he has done everything he can to ensure this goes smoothly.
Still, somehow he cannot help but feel that he has forgotten something?
The doors to the dining room bang open and Scorpius, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, and a large smile splitting his face, bursts into the room.
‘Dad! Is it true? Are you and Albus’ Dad finally dating?’
Silence. All of Draco’s carefully planned speeches go flying out the window and Draco closes his eyes. Right. That’s what he was forgetting. Potter is an idiot.
It takes everything in him not to apparate over there and smack Potter upside the head. They’d talked about this.
‘Yes,’ says Draco calmly (and not at all peevishly), ‘it is true. I was actually hoping to tell you tonight, over dinner. I-’
‘That is awesome news! Does that mean Albus and I are going to be brothers? I mean, it sucks about James. He’s so annoying. But, I suppose it could be cool to have an older brother. And, hey, does that mean they’re going to come over here more often? And do you think we can get the family discount at Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes? Oh, oh! You have to tell Uncle Blaise, he’s going to be so annoyed that he lost his bet with Mrs Granger.’
A. Bet?
Draco doesn’t stab anything. A remarkable feat of self-restraint on his part. He congratulates himself. Really. He should be given an award for putting up with his so called “friends”.
Scorpius throws himself into a seat, dropping a crumbled bit of parchment onto the table next to his plate. Draco doesn’t incinerate the offending, news-stealing letter. He congratulates himself again.
Though, in retrospect, as Scorpius launches into a speech about how amazing it is that Draco and Harry are going out, and can they tell other people, and does Draco think Harry will let him have a look at his snake collection, Draco thinks that perhaps his evening has gone perfectly after all.
He’s still going to kill Blaise though.
__
Somewhere else
Blaise shudders and blinks a few times. ‘Oof.’
‘Alright mate?’ asks Ron, slapping him on the back with one hand and placing a drink in front of him with the other.
‘Just a sudden chill,’ says Blaise, shrugging off the unsettling feeling.
Across the table, Hermione smirks. ‘I bet I know why,’ she says, sipping from her wine glass.
Blaise straightens. ‘What? Why?’
‘No more bets,’ says Ginny darkly, and pouts in that way she does when she and Harry are bickering. ‘Harry’s already upset about the last one. Now he won’t give me any details.’
Ron gags. ‘Why would you want details?’
Ginny smirks. ‘I’m not a prude, like you. Besides, I need to know what sort of shenanigans are happening around my kids.’
’No more than the shenanigans you two get up to I’m sure,’ says Hermione wickedly, glancing between Ginny and Blaise.
‘Hang on, back up,’ says Blaise, before this can descend any further into his romantic life than it usually does. ‘What bet are we talking about exactly?’
‘The one where you owe me ten galleons,’ says Hermione smugly.
Ginny nods and drops her chin into her hand. ‘Yep, it’s official. They are dating. They told the kids this afternoon.’
Blaise stills, recalling his earlier chill. ‘Oh I am so dead.’
The others laugh. Traitors.
__
Home
‘Well, that wasn’t so bad,’ Harry murmurs, leaning into Draco on the couch.
Draco glances sideways, a soft smile hidden in the corner of his mouth. ‘And yet you were worried.’
‘Not worried, per se.’
‘Mmhm. Well, at least you got tell your children.’
Harry sighs and drops his head onto Draco’s shoulder. He slides a hand into Draco’s and squeezes. ‘I told you I was sorry. I told Albus not to say anything. And I locked away his owl.’
Draco snorts. ‘You are hopeless.’
‘Yes,’ says Harry quietly, and kisses Draco’s cheek. ‘For you.’
A chorus of groans and objections erupt around the room.
‘Get a room!’
‘Gross!’
‘Eww, no kissing in front of the children!’
‘Awww!’
- That last one from Lily, who claps her hands in excitement and beams at them in joy.
Draco feigns confusion. ‘I’m sorry, you want me to kiss him again?’
‘No!’ James, Albus, and Scorpius shout.
Draco smirks and points at the TV he helped Harry set up to play in Grimmauld Place. ‘Then I suggest you watch the movie, not us.’
There’s some good natured grumbling, but the kids all return their attention to the TV. James lounges in the single armchair, happily munching his popcorn and sneaking chocolates to Lily when he thinks Harry and Draco aren’t watching. Lily, sprawled across the rug on the floor, sketching one of the flowers Draco had brought her from his garden, giggles every time a chocolate slides her way. Albus and Scorpius sit huddled together on the other couch, whispering plans of world domination and just generally up to no good.
Happiness settles into Harry’s chest, and he drops his head onto Draco’s shoulder again.
Yes, he’d say that wasn’t so bad at all.