The real reason Draco had come over that Friday night was to ask if Harry and Teddy wanted to come over to the manor the next day. It was a difficult day for both Draco and Scorpius; it was Tori's birthday and although they always tried to celebrate it, it was bitter sweet and it worked best if Scorpius had a distraction too.
Harry suggested they both came to him. What with Teddy still not being 100% settled after the accident, he was slightly worried that the manor might make Teddy anxious.
'Hey bro!' Scorpius announced as he stepped through the Floo into Walpole Street, his imperial mint already clattering against his teeth. 'I brought you a pressie.'
'Hey bro! Wotcha got?' He was snuggled under the duvet again watching a film with Harry. He'd pulled his bedding downstairs after sleeping in Harry's room again, although Harry made him sleep on a put-you-up bed to try to introduce some distancing again.
'Papa gave me some drawing stuff ages ago, I find it good when I can't find words or don't want to speak about mum but want to express my emotions. I thought you might like it too so I asked papa if we could get you some too.'
'Ace!' Teddy said, 'thanks bro! Thanks Mr Malfoy.'
'It's no problem, Teddy,' Draco replied and Harry thought that Draco looked rather attractive, with his hair slightly ruffled and in a pale blue jumper which seemed to make his eyes greyer.
'Why don't you take it all up to your room, Ted, and use your desk to draw at?'
'Okay, Dar,' the boy said happily. 'Come on, Scorp.'
'Ted!'
'Yep, Dar.'
'Take your bedding up too, please.'
Teddy groaned but pulled it after him.
'How's he doing?' Draco asked.
'Good, if he doesn't think about it too much. Then he goes and remembers the angle of his foot and starts limping even though he doesn't need to. How about Scamp? How's he been today?'
'Alright really, surprisingly. We had pancakes for breakfast, it's a bit of birthday tradition, and I told him about Teddy being a bit unsettled and he was the one who suggested the drawing things. He thought Tori would like the idea too, it was Tori who could draw, I've still got some of her artwork. So, he made me take him to the shops after lunch before we got here.'
'It's very kind, thank you. I'm sure Teddy will really like it.'
'Don't be so bloody polite, Potter!'
Harry looked at Draco in surprise and then muttered, 'I think I'll go and check on dinner.'
Draco sighed, 'sure.' He followed Harry through to the kitchen where the smells of roast dinner greeted them with full force.
'I never took you for a chef, Harry.'
'It's about the only good thing to come out of living with the Dursley's, all that petty slavery meant I learnt how to cook pretty quickly. What about you? I was surprised to see your mother doing the cooking at the manor and you making pancakes, I thought you'd have a House-elf for such matters.'
'We did, but maman likes it. When we used to go to France, she would trawl the markets and buy fresh fish and salad, cheeses and bread that was still warm from the bakery. That was in the days before Hogwarts, before everything changed. I guess during house arrest she wanted something to do with her time so she went back to it. She loves it and has been teaching me and Scorp.'
Dinner was delicious, Harry had gone full out with producing a traditional roast dinner with chicken and stuffing, roast potatoes and parsnips, and Yorkshire puddings.
The boys chatted happily about what they had been drawing before dinner. Scorpius had done a picture of how he imagined his mum to be. He'd given Tori wings because he thought she must be an angel watching over him from heaven. It made Harry feel sad, especially as he could only think of his own mother, not much older than Tori, whose life had also been taken away from her so prematurely. It made him feel slightly morose and tetchy though he tried to cover it as best he could.
Teddy had been brave and had drawn his accident like a cartoon by folding his piece of paper in four. In the top corner, he'd drawn him and Scorpius climbing the tree in the orchard. Harry smiled at the green apples he'd drawn in the tree even though it was winter and the picture also showed the snow falling. Next to that, he'd drawn a picture of him falling past Scorpius with a speech bubble saying 'Oh no, bro! It's slippy!'. That was followed by a picture of him on the ground with Harry and Scorpius next to him and his foot at a funny angle. Harry looked remarkably like he was wearing a cape. Harry in the picture was saying, 'it's okay Ted, I'll rescue you.' And the final picture was him in St Mungo's with Scorpius next to him as they shared the chocolate frogs that littered the bed and Scorpius with a speech bubble which said 'I've got a card with your dad on'.
Harry was very proud of him, though he noticed Draco frowned.
'Is there a problem?' he asked quietly.
'Just noticing how your son imagines you as the hero in your cape,' he sniped.
Harry ignored the comment but Teddy jumped to his defence, 'No, that's meant to be Dar's new coat, I'm just not very good at drawing.'
'It's perfect, Ted. I love it.'
'Will you stick it on the fridge, Dar?'
Harry immediately got up from the table and did as requested. 'There!' he said. 'Now you and Scamp have pride of place on my fridge!'
'Forever noble, Potter! Playing down that hero-complex of yours!'
Although Harry was surprised at Draco's change in tone towards him, he simply asked, 'who would like pudding? I think I've got icecream and fresh strawberries. Draco?'
'For Merlin's sake! Will you stop? You've been tip-toeing around me ever since Teddy's accident. In the old days you would have jumped down my throat or sent me hurling across the room with the flick of your wand. What's happened to you?' he snarled at the other man.
The boys stared at them both with wide eyes.
Harry quirked an eyebrow and, trying to sound calmer than he was, said, 'I think you should come with me, now.'
He got up and led Draco out of the backdoor from the kitchen so they were standing outside in the badly lit garden of Walpole Street, shivering against the dark of the cold December night.
'What was that about? And, while we're here, why did you snap at me earlier, when you told me not to be so polite?'
'It doesn't matter.'
'Now you're the one tip-toeing around! Sure it matters, otherwise you wouldn't have snapped.'
They were almost hissing at each other in whispered aggressive tones because they didn't want the boys to hear them arguing.
'We just... I don't know, what's happening between us, Harry? What's going on? I feel like everything is on tenterhooks. I want to be here with you, or for you to be with me, I really want that, you know that. I always have. I've surely spelt that one out clearly enough. But this? It's all so ambiguous. One minute I think you really like me, you know, more than just friends. Merlin, that moment at the manor. And then the next minute you've pulled away and are being all remote and polite to me, like you're just here for Teddy and Scorpius. I don't know where I stand in all this.'
'So, what are you trying to achieve? Hmm? Why are you trying to provoke me into having a blazing row with you in front of the boys? Or is this your way of trying to push me into action, into slamming you up against the wall and snogging you senseless? Or getting me to throw you over my shoulder and take you to bed?'
'Yes!' Draco practically sizzled.
'Well, it's a bloody strange strategy, especially as that's shallow and meaningless and therefore equally as ambiguous. And what about Teddy and Scorpius? What will it do to them if their dad's suddenly start shagging each other into the ground and then it just as quickly falls apart? Like it has just now. You've just confirmed one on my biggest doubts about getting into a relationship with you. That we can't easily leave such a volatile past behind. I can't put Teddy through that uncertainty. I can't do that to either of the boys.' Harry knew his arms were flailing by his sides, his hands clenching, as he tried to restrain his own frustration at the uncertainties that constantly circled his mind.
'Stop sacrificing yourself, Harry. You're always putting others first, what about what you want?'
They were standing too close together again.
'I want to be certain, that's what I want. You've come back into my life after all this time, you're so different, you're so much the same. There's so much I need to know about you first. I have questions. There's Confessions haunting me, confusing me. You using Jane Eyre as an analogy for everything, we're talking in metaphors, and at the centre of my life is Teddy. Teddy comes first. He always comes first.'
'What about you? When do you come first?'
'I don't need to come first.'
They were practically nose-to-nose.
Suddenly Draco reached up and, shakily, cupped Harry's face, his fingertips buried in his hair as he looked intently into his eyes, stopping Harry from moving away. 'That is not true. That is so not true. You need to come first, you need someone to do that for you. Practicality and logic don't equal all. Don't you get it? That is precisely what Jane has to learn with St John Rivers...'
'Will you stop with all the Jane Eyre shite...' Harry wrenched away, turning from Draco, his heart thumping at the intense proximity they'd been in.
'No.' Draco grabbed Harry's arm but failed to pull him back around. 'No. I want you to see and it's the only way I can explain it. Look at me, Harry,' he pleaded. 'When St John asks Jane to marry him, she realises that to be with him she would have to sacrifice who she is, he is utterly representative of the conformity which Jane has come to live by without Rochester in her life. This is how you now live: all this bloody conventionality. Don't you see, Harry, that being married to this expressionless life you have is slowly killing you. Harry, if Bertha represents Jane's unleashed passions, St John is her suppressed emotions and I can't bear to see you become like him: unyielding and emotionless, "no longer flesh but marble". What happened to the passionate forceful determined boy from school? No! I can't stand it, you can't become this person. You have never been this and now you're surrendering yourself for a cause once more. You've already sacrificed too much. You need someone to give you that passion again, and that means mutual emotional dependence in your life beyond what you and Teddy give each other, you need love.'
'Teddy gives me love,' Harry hissed angrily.
'Not the right sort, he cannot support you emotionally. It's not equal, it's a parental-child love that involves a power dynamic and lacks the both the mutuality and the passion that you need, that you have in your heart.' Draco was prodding his finger against Harry's chest. 'If you suppress that love, you become no more than Voldemort.'
'You go too far, Draco.'
Draco had blanched, realising he had said the wrong thing, 'I'm sorry, I don't mean...'
'I think you should leave,' Harry said coldly.
'Please, Harry...'
'Dar?' came Teddy's hesitant voice, pushing the door open. 'Is everything okay?'
'Yes, but Draco and Scorpius have to leave now.'
Draco looked at him, pale faced and regretful. 'Harry?'
But Harry shook his head, 'I think it's for the best, don't you?'
He walked back into the kitchen and held the door open for Draco to follow, leaving it on no uncertain terms that there was nothing further to be said on the matter.
'Papa?' Scorpius looked at his father, 'is it true we have to go?'
'Yes, Scorp,' Draco sighed. 'Unfortunately, I need to get back to do some studying. You'll have to finish this off another day.'
'When, papa?'
'I don't know...' Draco sighed.
It was with a heavy heart that Harry slumped back into the sofa after Draco and Scorpius had left.
'Why did you have to argue?' Teddy had screamed at him before they'd barely left through the green flames of the Floo network. 'Why did you have to go and ruin everything?' And he'd run off of his bedroom, slamming his door shut after him.
Harry picked up the nearest thing to him and flung it across the room in anger. The book slapped against the wall and thudded as it hit the floor. It didn't make Harry feel any better to see his copy of Jane Eyre bent open at the spine with its pages crumpled by the impact, but he left it where it was, too upset to move.
*****