Tempest's Window
Characters: Harry/Draco, their daughter, who clearly has to be an OC, minor HP characters, and other minor OC's
Rating: Teen
Warnings: mpreg, adult stuff
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters are proudly owned and operated by the Compound of JK Rowling.
Length: 15,450 words; 5 parts

*

1. Childhood

They'd known for months she was coming. She was going to be theirs, for always, for the rest of their life. And it was as though they'd known her before she arrived.

It was the way she chose to come that told her nuances, her secret little aphorisms; one father's stubbornness, the other father's pride. She promised to be sugar, spice, everything in the universe that could be nice; but she had a special ingredient she hadn't yet whispered.

She was going to be a Potter. Draco had said so, one quiet Sunday afternoon. 'She's going to be a Potter. I can tell. She's not a Malfoy; we're much to lazy to kick like this.'

She was a Potter now, but no name before it. For all the ways they knew her, she kept them waiting for her name.

Harry looked up from work when Draco wobbled unsteadily into the sitting room. The quill lifted from index rerum, his tired eyes from tight lines of annotations. An hour's long adumbration of thunder and lightning wound up its August charm, with specks of rain hitting the pane.

Draco leaned against the doorway, exhausted smile on his face.

'What, now? In the middle of a blasted tornado?' Harry craned off his spectacles as he dashed to Draco, the placidity in his features almost too eerie.

'You should've expected that,' murmured Draco. 'She is our daughter.'

*

The aroma of her 'all things nice' element became evident as she first inhaled the air of St Mungo's, as she took her first bite at the doctor; and, when denied the act, she took her first scream.

The room's window shattered. Glass trickled to the floor, to the street below. The downpour was suddenly inside, with flashes of cold white, with rich pounds in a blackened sky.

A quick witch seamed the glass. And the doctor chuckled.

'Quite a little tempest we're having.'

Draco and Harry shared a regard of meaningful, silent acumen. She was still in her fathers' arms, but the storm razed and enraptured.

'Tempest,' Draco declared.

Enswathed in pink, she appeared as candy floss and peony blossoms, not as hurricane winds and flooding rains. But she was born in August, a night whose infamous weather was the talk of the country for years to come, and remembered in the ramblings of old men in small villages; and in the wizarding community of Britain, it would be remembered and glorified as the night Tempest Potter was born.

*

Four years passed. Tranquillity bloomed from a sense of accomplishment, an allusion of completeness. The everyday schedules, the working, the aging, were mere fixtures to a house built by two previously adventurous men, pioneering men who now were old enough to smile into the future of continuous hope and love, and old enough to smile at the memory of destiny.

The dear, quaint, bygone shape of destiny. She had been vanquished from their lives at their first kiss. Always applauded, thanked, accepted—but vanquished.

Yet they were wrong in supposing her spirit wouldn't find them again. Draco had the realisation of her presence on a normal autumn Saturday.

'We're going for a walk,' Draco said to Harry. 'Want to go?'

Harry flipped the page of a book on pretence, as the welcome interruption energised his nerves. He thudded the book closed and left it on the next volume in the stack. 'Absolutely. Where's—'

'Upstairs,' he handed Harry a russet scarf, 'getting Miss Crier.'

'She doesn't go anywhere these days without the fair Miss Crier. I'm not complaining.' He kissed Draco's forehead as his husband's nimble fingers aided a helpless fashion sense. 'Thank Merlin she plays with a doll and not—'

Harry stopped when he heard a thud. A single thud. Alarmed, Draco ran ahead, Harry behind, and both rammed into each other in the foyer. At the bottom of the staircase sat Tempest. It wasn't until she saw her parents that she began a hearty wail.

'What happened?' Harry tried to coax it from her. But she cried and clung to him. Draco knelt and searched her for injuries. 'Is she all right?'

'Looks to be. But I don't understand— Tempest, did you fall down the stairs?'

Tempest wiped her reddened teal eyes and shook her liquorice head. The two men were thrown into further confusion.

'It's not like I wanted her to fall down the stairs,' Draco imparted. 'But an explanation would be nice.'

'Maybe she bounces.'

'Harry.'

'What! It happens. Look at Neville's kids, they bounce all over the place. Like a bunch of rabbits they are.'

Draco snickered in spite of himself. It was sorely true that the Longbottoms had a sprightly, spring-inspired brood. 'Tempest hasn't spent enough time around them to have picked it up. And I'm guessing that's more hereditary than something she just happened to learn.'

'What do we do?'

'Well, I don't think there's a thing we can do now. Let's have our walk. Maybe she'll tell us in her own time.' Draco said it and hoped it would be true, but Tempest wasn't much for talking. While intelligent, clever, not exactly shy, she would rather hear than speak.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, Draco often thought.

Unfortunately, destiny thrived on evil.

*

The next winter, Tempest fell ill.

Harry was up in the wee hours, figuring Ministry work out of the office, and keeping track of his personal records. In mid-sentence, the light began to flicker. He eyed the lamp as though he was the one who'd gone insane. He knew he was older, of course, but not so old that his eyesight would play such mean tricks. He let the quill plop to the parchment, the flame in the lamp bobbing once more, to wick, straighten, then extinguish to a purl of smoke. He looked behind him, and all the lights had gone out. Only moon- and starlight streamed through the windows.

Wand ready, he followed instincts up the stairs. As soon as he widened the door open to Tempest's room, he caught a scent that rose the hairs on the back of his neck. A mephitic odour, the smell of chills and sweat and a whimpering child.

Twenty minutes later, neither of them knew what to do. Between them, they had years of healing study, they had never stopped training for a third war, and none of their skills released Tempest from misery.

The lamp was relit, and Draco's eyes were misty, and Harry's eyes were dazed, and both were disbelieving.

'Hospital,' Harry announced. 'Better to be seen as overly concerned than to be buying a pine box.'

Draco nodded. He held his hand cupped to her small forehead. His palm began to burn.

*

Snow piled on the window's ledge. Harry and Draco watched it grow over the three hours they waited at St Mungo's. The storm matured to a frenzy of white whirls and cacophonous thunder that rumbled the building. But the air was warming, and rain soon fell in place of snow, and a pale, blonde, svelte figure aggressed upon them.

Harry shook his shoulder and roused Draco. He hadn't been asleep but was exhausted, eyes burning, mind analogous to the slush outdoors. But at the sight of Healer Lovegood, he stood at attention, gripping Harry's hand.

'She's all right,' Luna announced plainly.

'So we shouldn't have brought her,' Draco stated.

'Quite the contrary. We are relieved you did. Her fever was startlingly high. And something remarkable happened.' Luna's whimsical gaze of school years returned, as if she was amused. 'She's a very interesting little girl, isn't she? You two didn't tell me she could fly.'

Harry didn't know which of them was more surprised: Draco, Luna, or him.

*

'I don't believe it,' Draco mumbled. Dawn crept across the landscape, sending his silver head into an otherworldly glow. He stuck his palms against his eyes, willing the headache and confusion from him. 'It's got to be a joke.'

'Luna's odd,' Harry said, 'but she doesn't lie. And she wouldn't lie to us about our daughter's, er, special abilities.'

'All she said she saw was Tempest hovering a little over the bed. Why does that mean she can fly? Maybe she was just practising non-verbal levitation spells.'

'Oh, that's right, darling, rationalise it to death, because I'm sure that will make it go away. She's four years old; she has no concept of non-verbal spells. There are records of wizards in the past who have possessed levitation abilities, otherwise known as flight.'

'Yeah?' For a moment Draco found hope. Then it diminished. 'Oh for Merlin's sake, Harry, don't bullshit me now. Name one.'

Harry took on a pensive expression, an erudite look that always smashed Draco's heart to hot splinters. It didn't even matter if Harry made it up, just as long as he said it while looking arrogant and intelligent, with a sexy coal forelock hiding the top of the scar.

'Edwinna Albertson Netherwood. Sixteenth century. Rumour has it she was the first one to fly over the Hebrides. Though no one ever actually saw it. Ergo the word rumour. Some rumours do have a basis in fact, however, and legends are— Never mind. We're not in a classroom, are we?' Harry nodded, taking on the airs of a matter-of-fact prim schoolmarm. 'Edwinna Albertson Netherwood. Sixteenth Century.'

The lies were as fulfilling as the truth. Draco crashed to the bed, accompanied by Harry, and the two stared into the brightening ceiling. The passing minutes were thick with self-criticism, doubt, and wonder.

'What if it's true?' Draco eventually asked.

'If it is, it won't change much. We'll adjust. It'll be all right.'

'Merlin,' he mumbled, face twisted, 'I never thought of having a child more gifted than either of us. I don't know if my healthy conceit can handle it.' He laughed as Harry playfully slugged him, playfully wrestled, then lovingly hugged by arms and legs.

*

Draco had his hands in fists, and his face had reddened. Harry patted him on the chest, out of the way, to the innocent-looking creature on the sofa, sitting on her hands. Eight, nearly nine, and already had she mastered the appropriate foundations for getting in and out of trouble. Heaven-sent purity to her doll-like features, but the ambages of her soul remained out of sight, formless, unknown.

Yet becoming clearer with the falling away of years.

Harry took over. He was not the disciplinarian, that was Draco. Harry had always been the affectionate ear, the hand of supportive, gentle guidance.

'You heard what your father said.' Harry huffed when she wouldn't look at him. 'You're not to go up there again. What if someone had seen you floating through the air?'

She rolled her eyes to him, lids narrowed, rimmed in black by thick lashes. 'What if someone did? I wouldn't care. They're just Muggles. What do they know?'

'Tempest, if you'll just wait a couple more years, you'll be at Hogwarts, and you'll be able to fly all you like round the grounds. But not here. I know you're frustrated, believe me I know what it's like to be in your situation. When I was a kid I used to commit magic without knowing it, and I grew up with your Uncle Dudley. Imagine growing up like that, not knowing the world really has a place for people like us.'

'Oh Merlin,' she cursed, 'this one of those "back-in-my-day" talks that makes me bored.' Tempest stood up, edging to leaving the room. But she looked back at her parents, a pitying cock to her shapely little head of long obsidian coils. 'It isn't the same, you know. You two didn't fly. And I wager there's a whole mess of things I can do that you can't. I'm going to my room.'

Harry's fingers hid his eyes. Draco slipped an arm at his waist.

'That went well,' he said, sighing. 'She's getting out of control, Harry.'

'I know.'

'And I'm scared to death.'

'So am I.'

'What happens now?'

Harry gripped his hand. The fingers were cold with fear. 'Love her, have faith in her. She might grow out of it, like you did.'

'I was never like that.' Draco headed away. 'That's what scares me.'

*

Harry found something more to do for her. She was to start at Hogwarts a year early, unprecedented, but it helped to be on good terms with the majority of staff. He had used it to his advantage, to the advantage of his gifted, discouraged child.

Draco and he were there, standing beside her, in Ollivander's of Diagon Alley, the moment she held her first wand. The new Ollivander, already in his fifties, took nearly forty minutes to decide which wand suited her. He never pulled out any but what he thought was immediately correct.

'Got to find the right one to start,' Ollivander said, shuffling about the narrow aisles and reams of narrow boxes. 'Afraid that if I put the wrong one in her hands, London won't survive.'

Draco laughed, because it seemed the sort of thing a wand maker would say in front of any child's parents. But Harry's brow furrowed, and he looked from Ollivander to Tempest. She was curiously examining the space about her, the wonders of a new world, radiant skin flawless like Draco's, luminous black hair like Harry's, and a charisma that neither of them had ever claimed. She possessed herself well for a child of ten, with control, dignity, unsurpassed in her age group. Strangers thought her twelve, thirteen years of age, though small for her height, and slight, she had a wisdom forever on display. More than one friend, relative, or stranger had used the phrase, 'She's an old soul.'

Even Ollivander had said it. He finally brought round a box. He set it on the work surface, still lidded, and edged it forward. 'Think you'd better take it out of the box, Miss Potter.'

The lid was caked in years of dust. But Tempest did as she was told, for this instant she was disinclined to be fractious. She wrestled off the lid, calm, and rolled back the tissue paper, still calm, and lifted from it a wand of eleven and three-quarters inches, darkly stained, the necrosis of black cherries.

A silence so eerie suffocated all aspects of noise, the din from the Alley gone, their own breathing gone. Then a wind came from nowhere, swirled loose papers into the sky, cobwebs fluttering in high, neglected corners. The cyclone formed a plume overhead, more and more opaque, till it was a storm cloud and rain pattered their heads.

Instinctively, Tempest gave the wand a flourishing twirl. The storm cloud disappeared, a rainbow in its place. The colours of the spectrum glowed in every inch of the building, and its arc soared out the front window. Coos and ahs were heard from Alley shoppers.

Harry had tears in his eyes, and his hand desperately pinched Draco's. Breath against his throat burned as he whispered, 'My God.'

Tempest pulled the wand to her, the rainbow aglow behind and above. She gave a tip of her head to Ollivander. 'Thank you.'

He nodded dumbly in return. 'Right, my pleasure. European beech, said to be the trees of the elves—if you believe in that, Miss Potter. A good length for you, something you can grow into, eleven and three-quarters inches. Nice wand, should last you an eon, my dear.' He gave her the empty box hesitantly, as if he feared being too near her.

'What's its core?' Draco asked as he settled the bill.

Ollivander gave him sickles for change, a slight shake of his head. 'It doesn't got no core, sir. She doesn't need one. Core's inside her, it is. Well, have a nice day, gentlemen. And you, Miss Potter, good luck at school, not that you need it.'