“They are the BEST shoes,” Teddy agreed, before he grinned, stomped his foot on the ground to set off the lights, and changed his hair along with them to match. “They can do like I do, look!”
“That,” Draco said, eyes widening, “might be the coolest thing I have ever seen,” and within ten minutes they were running around the first floor of the house, wrapped up in a game of Pirates vs Robbers, which they seemed to be inventing as they went along.
“He’s odd, isn’t he,” Andromeda said, stepping up next to where Harry was leaning against the doorframe watching them. “Always thought Narcissa could do with a little more odd, myself.”
Harry looked at her sidelong. He wasn’t entirely sure sure what he was supposed to say to that, so he shrugged. “I like him.”
“So does Teddy,” Andromeda said, nodding over to where her grandson’s hair was turning steadily blonder, and Harry smiled.
It’s worked out well, since then. Teddy likes the museum, follows Draco around hounding him with questions, and it makes Harry ache for Remus, the teacher Teddy should have gotten—but that’s nice, almost, in this weird way Harry’s not sure how to explain. It… eases something in him, he thinks, even though it hurts. Maybe because it hurts; Harry doesn’t really know. In any case, it passes a lot of afternoons, and so do walks in Diagon, and day-trips through Harry’s international Floo, and the random visits to odd little festivals Draco insists they make now and again, usually on no more than a few hours’ notice. Harry still takes Teddy to the park alone sometimes—or, well, with Tomato, now—and they run around like they used to, shrieking and laughing and throwing a ball, but sometimes Draco comes. And sometimes, on days like this one, Draco and Andromeda take Teddy out to do something that Harry wouldn’t be caught dead doing (“I’ll see you on skates one day, Potter,” Draco promised, ominously, the night before), and Harry can do what he likes without feeling guilty that he’s…whatever. Depriving Teddy of important childhood experiences due to his inadequacy as a godfather, or something.
“How was it?” Harry says, as they all start shedding coats and hats and scarves onto the tops of various tables. “Did you have fun?”
Teddy beams at him. “Yeah! I only fell once, and I did the whole loop frontwards a bunch of times and Draco taught me how to do backwards, a little. Well, he pulled me mostly. But it was still cool! Oh, but. I felt, um,” Teddy pauses and looks at Draco, who nods encouragingly at him. Teddy bites his lip. “But Draco, I didn’t feel like Uncle Harry abandoned me, lying is wrong—”
“I swear, four blocks of rehearsal and you bring up your morality objection now,” Draco says, though he ruffles Teddy’s hair as he says it, and Teddy grins. “Very well, you are excused from participating. Potter, the jig, as they say, is up: only Andromeda and I felt cruelly abandoned by your refusal to be reasonable and come skating, though that alone is reason enough you have to come next time.”
“I’d say don’t drag me into this,” Andromeda says, helping Teddy off with one of his gloves, “but hey: what the hell, right?”
“Grandma, you said a swear,” Teddy breathes, delighted. Andromeda winces down at him, looking caught.
“I’d just fall on my face,” Harry said, to Draco, leaving Andromeda to the unfortunate task of distracting Teddy from her vocabulary choices. “Probably a bunch of times.”
“I know,” Draco says, “it would be so funny. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“You’re twisted and horrible,” Harry says, rolling his eyes.
“Yes,” Draco says, grinning at him. The little shit already knows that he’s won. “But you want me to be happy, don’t you?”
“God help me,” Harry agrees, cheerfully enough, and retreats to the safety of his kitchen before Draco can do something truly terrible with this little victory, like secure a promise towards future ice skating in writing.
He hums while he works, because tonight is the Gryffindor pub night.
It’s—still pretty weird, looking forward to it. Harry doesn’t look forward to the part at the Bowtruckle, of course; he hasn’t actually attended that bit for a few months, because as it turns out even with someone to talk to he hates a crowded bar, and he and Draco always end up leaving early anyway. But in November, when Harry was getting ready to open The Hollow, Hermione suggested they do a test run with friends and family, and Draco immediately insisted that they do it directly before the piss-up. “It just makes sense,” he argued, when Harry raised his eyebrows. “People should put down a base before they drink like that, and anyway, we know they’re all available that night. Besides, we’re adults, aren’t we? It’s hardly civilized, at our advanced age, to go out drinking without first sitting down to a meal.”
“We’re twenty-six, Draco,” Hermione said. “‘Advanced age’ is a stretch, and not an appreciated one. But I do think that’s a good idea—Harry, what do you think?”
Harry thought Draco was up to something, but he said, “Sure,” anyway, because, actually, it sounded kind of nice.
And it was nice. It is. They’ve done it every month since then; this is their fourth, and Harry’s already grown comfortable with it, developed certain habits and routines. He closes up the restaurant at six, pays whoever on his kitchen staff volunteers to stick around and help out, and then cooks—whatever he feels like. Whatever he thinks his friends might like. That’s actually the best part, however much he does also love getting to see his nearest and dearest in an environment less awful than the Bowtruckle; there’s something centering, grounding for Harry, in the act of putting together a meal, and it’s weirdly easier, afterwards, to socialize with everyone all at once. Draco says it’s because his real destiny in life was to be a hermit and fate got confused, but Draco’s always saying stuff like that. He also says it doesn’t matter why something makes someone happy so long as it does; Harry thinks that part’s probably right.
Tonight the first guest arrives at 6:15. Harry steps out of the kitchen to greet them, but it’s Blaise, because of course it is; he says, “Harry, Draco, Andromeda. Tedward,” and breezes right past all of them to the Floo grate, where he promptly sticks his head in the fire.
“My name is not Tedward,” shouts Teddy, who has had this exact fight with Blaise easily twelve times. “It’s Teddy Remus Lupin!”
“You’re only encouraging him,” Draco says in a carrying undertone. “What you have to do, you see, is pretend like it doesn’t bother you.”
“Well, that sounds healthy,” Ron says, walking in with Rose under one arm, Hugo tucked against his chest in one of those baby sling things Harry himself can never quite figure out. “Teddy, what’s he telling you to pretend doesn’t bother you?”
“Blaise called me Tedward again,” Teddy says sullenly. “My name’s not Tedward! He knows it’s not!”
“Ah,” says Ron. He hands Rose to Harry, ignoring Harry’s raised eyebrows. “Well, you can’t take that, can you? Got to think of a name to call him back, that’s what I say.”
“What a sage parenting move, Ron,” Andromeda says, dry. “Do remind me to return the favor in a few years, won’t you?”
Ron laughs, but he pales a bit. Harry gives him a wincing little nod of greeting, passes Rose off to Draco, and goes back to his kitchen, where everything is, if not calm, at least always under control. He waves and shouts hellos through the long, wide serving window as more guests arrive—Molly and Arthur, Ginny and Neville, George and Angelina, Bill and Fleur and Victoire. That’s one of the nice things about these nights; because they’re not starting off at a bar anymore, everyone can come, not just whoever could find babysitters or, in the case of Molly and Arthur, the energy and will to spend an evening in a pub with a bunch of wasted twenty-somethings. Percy and Penelope show up next, and then Hermione and Seamus and Dean, and then Blaise pulls his head from the fire and actually joins the party. Harry’s just put down his whisk and come to say a proper hello to everyone when Pansy walks through the door.
She’s holding hands. With Luna.
“Oh my god, what?” Draco says, striding over to them. Harry, who recognizes that tone of voice as well as that purposeful gait, follows him pretty sharpish, and so sees him raise a hand and point an accusatory finger at Pansy. “What? You never said! Not a word! Not a peep! How long have you kept this from me?”
Harry thinks it says a lot about how used to the Slytherins in their lives the Weasleys have gotten that no one really bats an eyelash at this behavior. The only person who reacts at all is Blaise, who reaches for some bread, and even that is only because Harry didn’t think to put out popcorn.
“Actually,” Luna says, smiling at Pansy, “we met almost exactly a year ago. At that one pub night—you remember, Harry. Of course, it was all under rather false pretenses, but it all worked out in the end.”
“A year ago,” Draco says, voice cracking on it. “Pansy, an entire year?”
“Well,” Pansy says, wincing slightly, “the thing about that is—”
“Wait,” Harry says, casting his mind back. The last time he remembers seeing Luna hook up with someone at a pub night…“Pansy, you were that girl? Vi? With the pink hair?”
“Are you kidding me,” Draco says, all in one breath. “Potter knows more about this than me, Pansy? Potter? Him?”
“We live together,” Harry says mildly, solely for the entertaining reward of Draco’s scowl.
Draco does not disappoint. “You would be better off remaining silent, you wretched imbecile. ‘The girl with the pink hair,’ honestly. I can’t believe you never said!”
“What was I supposed to do?” Harry says, eyebrows climbing. “List off for you every person I’d ever encountered in my life who wasn’t like, one of my close friends?”
“A true partner,” Draco says, with a pained little sniff, “would have been willing to make that sacrifice, yes.”
“You are mental,” Harry says, a little fonder than he really means to. “How was I supposed to know it was Pansy, anyway? I mean, why would I look for Pansy at a Gryffindor piss-up? It was weird enough running into Blaise.”
“There’s a point,” Draco says, turning his narrow-eyed stare on Blaise, who just pauses with a slice of bread halfway to his mouth and offers Draco a Cheshire Cat smile. Draco huffs out a little noise of irritation and then rounds on Pansy again, who at least has the good grace to look a bit caught. “What were you both doing there that night, Pansy? I never did believe Blaise’s, ‘I was just a little afraid he might kill you,’ routine.”
“Hey,” Harry says, to Blaise.
Blaise rolls his eyes. “Please. I am, of course, being misquoted. Draco, I said I was a little afraid that you might kill him.”
“Makes a lot more sense,” says Harry, grinning.
“You hush,” Draco says. He takes a half step backward into Harry’s space without looking round, even as he says, “Go cook something, isn’t that your job?”
“I work alone, anyway,” Pansy snaps, pulling the attention back to her. “I didn’t even know Blaise was there that night; I got a little—distracted.”
“By me!” Luna says, and waves the hand that isn’t holding Pansy’s a little. “And then her Polyjuice wore off right in the middle of—”
“You know, darling, maybe we don’t tell them that story,” Pansy says quickly, though it’s too late; Draco’s face is rapidly turning purple, and Blaise looks about half a second from breaking down in a fit of hysterics. “I—well! Look! It’s your own fault anyway, Draco! I only went that night because—I mean, Blaise said Potter was assigned to your case, and I remembered what you were like in school, and I figured I had one shot to prevent the worst possible outcome.”
