I. Visionary

From 10 to 2 every morning, Draco makes potions in the workroom in the cellar. They are simple things, not much past NEWT level, remedies for common illnesses for the most part, which he sells in his shop from 3 to 7, after he's had his lunch. Occasionally he will take a commission for something that is truly a challenge, and rearranges his schedule around brewing it. He never takes a commission that requires him to close his shop for more than three days at a time. He fixes his meals alone in the flat above his shop. The place is small, but manages to live up to Draco's opulent tastes most of the time. It should. He had designed the building himself, after all. The workroom in the cellar is cool and well ventilated. It has a good kitchen, and Draco has become almost as fond of cooking as he is of brewing. The sitting room is simple and elegant, with a fireplace on one wall, giant, stained-glass windows on another, and Draco's personal collection of favorite books on the shelves that line the others. One of the doors in the sitting room is magically connected to Draco's personal (and more extensive) library at Malfoy Manor. There is a guest bedroom spelled to decorate itself to the inhabitant's taste, complete with its own bathroom. Draco's room contains yet more books, his magnificent, magical wardrobe, and his bed—one of Draco's greatest luxuries, given the spells on it. The only thing that might have been more pointlessly epicurean is the bathroom, which is nearly palatial—Draco's bent for cleanliness has never left him, and he enjoys bathing as much as he enjoys flying. Malfoy elves are employed to keep the place clean, although Draco never sees them. He doesn't want to, and they know his schedule. He takes Sundays off and visits his parents.

For only an hour a day, Draco goes to the attic. From 9 to 10 every evening, Draco ascends to the only room his the house that he cleans. No one but him has entered it, from the day that the construction wizards finished building the structure. Draco had done a series of exhausting rituals to cleanse the place of their psychic traces, and proceeded to magically modify the room to his specifications. Scrying is his favorite method of attempting to prophesy, and he has magical mirrors, bowls of enchanted water, crystals on chains, and maps of nearly every place in the world.

Tonight, Draco does not feel like scrying. Instead, he seats himself on the floor, in the center of an Arithmantic circle, and meditates. He rarely gets prophecy from this method, but tonight something has drawn him to it. He casts his mind adrift, and then—

He is in a private parlor at The Drowned Dryad, one of the more respected inns in wizarding Llanfaelrhys, the Welsh town in which he lives. A young woman with black hair and startling silver-grey eyes is crying on a couch.

Harry Potter enters. He looks to be about forty years old, so Draco's vision won't be pertinent for about fifteen years at least.

The woman rises and throws herself into Potter's arms. "Da, what am I supposed to do?"

"About what, sweetheart?" Potter says gently, petting her hair. "What's wrong? Why did you want to meet me here, instead of talking at home?"

"I'm in love with Hugo Weasley!" she wails. "Father will never forgive me!"

Potter steers the girl back to her place on the couch. "Oh, Chara, darling, we've known you were in love with Hugo for a very long time. And there is nothing for your father to forgive you for. He loves you, and he wants you to be happy."

Draco's vision begins to spin, signaling the end of the vision, but as he is drawn back to his attic, he sees Potter pull the girl into a hug, and look up, directly into Draco's eyes.

Draco comes back to himself abruptly, shivering as he always does when he uses this method. He stands carefully, not entirely trusting himself, and descends from the attic.

He proceeds to take a hot bath, soothing his body, which is always drained, for some reason, by the trance-state. He emerges, chooses a book, reads in bed until 11, puts down his book and extinguishes the lights with a wave of his wand, and goes to sleep.

The next day Draco rises at 7. He performs his ablutions, makes and eats breakfast, brushes his teeth again, and gets dressed. At 8, he Floos to the Ministry.

Most of the Ministry's employees do not arrive until 9, so it is relatively easy for Draco to check-in and catch his elevator down to the Department of Mysteries. As a registered Seer, Draco is obligated to report his prophesy to the Department, which catalogs, stores, and analyzes it. Draco has never Seen anything momentous, but his scrying abilities mean that he is frequently asked to look for specific people or places, on behalf of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. When that happens, the DMLE tells him as little as they can get away with, and Draco is never told if his prophesy has any effect on their investigations.

Draco reports to the Sub-Division on Immediate Person-Specific Oracles for this one, since he already knows one of the people he Saw. Ironically enough, this is the division in which Potter works.

After the war, Potter quickly ditched law enforcement, learned how to read, and joined the Department of Mysteries IPSO subdivision, citing a wish to help people deal with the being at the whim of fate, since no one ever really considered how the subjects of prophecy feel. Draco idly wonders how often people show up, still making prophecies about the Chosen One.

Potter is the only one in the office when Draco enters. He conjures a chair for Draco, and summons a cataloguing form.

Draco sits. He and Potter get along without fighting, these days. Of course, that might be because they never say a word to each other that doesn't go on one of the cataloguing forms. This includes words such as "Hello," "Goodbye," and "Thank you."

Potter speaks. "Prophecy class?"

"Vision."

Potter's quill scratches the word down. "Medium?"

"Meditation-trance augmented by Arithmancy. Circle-structured, with an inscribed pentagram as a focusing agent."

Potter is obviously using shorthand, the quill is not scratching nearly enough to take all that down. Perhaps he is drawing Draco's Arithmancy diagram?

"Dated?"

"June 25th, between 9 and 10 in the evening."

Potter refills the quill and blots it. "Estimation of timeframe?"

"About twenty to thirty years in the future."

The quill squeaks. "Subjects, in order of appearance."

"Unknown female, late teens to early twenties, referred to as 'sweetheart,' 'Chara,' and 'darling;' and Harry James Potter, aged between forty and sixty years, also referred to as 'Da.'"

The quill ceases its scratching abruptly.

Slowly, very slowly, Potter places the quill on his desk, pushes back his chair, and stands. Draco has the impression that Potter is trying to tower over him.

"You think you're funny, Malfoy? Telling me I'll have a daughter when they told me I'll never have children? How did you find out? If Xav—if Healer Winslow told you, he's forsworn, and I'll have him—"

"Potter, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Now if you'd perform the extraction spell, I have a schedule to keep."

Potter blinks. "Oraculi sortem," he incants, bewildered.

Draco feels the dizzy, tugging sensation of the spell as it copies the memory of his vision into a vial of clear liquid on Potter's desk, and is grateful that he is still seated. He takes a moment to collect himself, rises, and leaves without another word to Potter.

He arrives with just enough time to change into work robes, then descends to the cellar to brew his potions of the day.

In the evening, Draco is once again drawn to the pentagram. He has barely settled into his trance when the vision possesses him. This happens to him even less often than the impulse to work in a trance. When he is possessed by prophecy, it means that he is in his own body, some years in the future, and limited to that body's field of vision, although he can take note of details that seem unimportant in the moment, but do a great deal to help him determine when he can expect the events he is seeing to occur.

Draco is looking into a mirror. Potter is behind him, eyes on the floor, shirtless, perched on the footboard of the bed. Draco does not recognize the room.

"Are you sure about this, Draco?" he asks shyly.

"Yes," Draco says, turning from the mirror. "Look at me, Harry."

Harry raises his frightened eyes to meet Draco's burning ones. Draco steps forward, settling his hands on Harry's hips. He leans in toward Harry and whispers in his ear: "I'm sure." Then he gives an audacious lick to Harry's earlobe.

Harry shudders but tilts his head toward Draco's mouth to ask for more.

Draco feels a surge of lust and triumph. He pushes Harry back onto the bed and proceeds to Harry's mouth. He feels Harry surrender to him completely.

Draco is pulled from the vision violently. This is how he knows that he is not permitted to see what comes next. He knows that it will be important. And he knows that sometime, very soon, he'll get to fuck Potter.

That thought excites him more than anything has for months.

Draco lies in the pentagram for a very long time, just thinking about his vision.

When he goes to sleep, it is hours past his normal self-imposed curfew. He manages to wake on time to report his vision to IPSO without disrupting his routine, but only just. He is more than relieved to discover that Potter is absent. Now that the thought of fucking Potter is in his head, he's not sure if he could look at him without making his lust painfully obvious.

Draco nearly ruins the Drowsy-Relief Draught he brews that afternoon, so preoccupied is he with his vision. That night, when he goes to the attic, he meticulously avoids the inscribed pentagram. He attempts to scry with a bowl of holy water for over an hour, but no visions appear. It is both a relief and a disappointment. He sleeps uneasily, but keeps his normal hours.

It takes four days for Draco to break. He is exhausted from improper sleep, is a day behind his brewing schedule for having ruined a batch of Pepper-up Potion, and has seen no visions of any kind since he refuses to use the pentagram. He has a splitting headache, and he can no longer resist the temptation to know if he will see Potter again.

Draco closes the shop early, skips dinner, and goes to the attic. He seats himself in the pentagram and draws he first breath in his meditation when the vision seizes him.

He is in St. Mungo's. A sign on the wall says 'Marcella Mortensen Maternity Ward.' He is sitting on a bench, with a little girl on his lap.

"Will Da be okay?" she asks Draco.

"Yes, Chara. He'll be just fine," Draco answers. He feels his gut twist at the words. He isn't sure.

Ron Weasley appears in his line of vision. "Draco?" he asks. "Do you want me to take her?"

Draco feels numb. "When they let me in," he says.

"Daddy?" the girl, Chara asks. "Are you okay?"

"I'll be fine, sweetheart," he says. "I'm just nervous." He hugs her close.

Weasley has deposited himself in the chair next to Draco. "It never gets any easier, Draco," he informs him. "You'll make yourself sick with worry every time, even though you know it'll turn out all right. Now stop choking your daughter and give her to me."

Draco loosens his hold on Chara. She presses a kiss to his cheek and crawls onto Weasley's lap. "Daddy worries about Da all the time," she says matter-of-factly. Da says Daddy doesn't know how to not worry.

Hermione Granger walks into the room. Draco is on his feet in an instant. "How—" he begins, but she cuts him off.

"Harry is fine. So are your sons," she says. "Come see them. Ron will bring Chara in in a few minutes."

Draco follows her out of the room, and down the hall. Harry is there, weary but satisfied, a face like he often wears after sex, but this face is different because Harry is also holding two small bundles.. "Draco," he says. "I want to introduce you to your sons: Scorpius Lucius, and your heir, Severus Albus Malfoy."

Draco smiles and bends to kiss Harry. "I love you," he says. Draco picks up his sons, first Scorpius and then Severus. They are absolutely identical, but already Draco can see them growing into the names Harry has chosen for them. They are good, strong names. Severus will make a fine Malfoy heir, and Scorpius will be his staunch defender.

Weasley enters with Chara. She squeals, flings herself on Harry and then demands to hold her brothers. Harry and Draco help her, smiling.

The scene fades to black as Harry brings little Severus to his breast to nurse, while Chara cradles Scorpius.

Draco wakes more gently from this vision than any he has ever experienced. He wakes with a sense of contentment unlike any he has ever known. He's in shock.

Later, Draco will pace, and rage, and hate that his Sight has predetermined this for him, but in this moment, he basks in the pure love of that future moment. It is assured. That moment will belong to him.

In the pleasant haze the shock has left him in, Draco decides that he will not report this vision to the Ministry. Let Potter be surprised about his future for once.


A/N: I began this story last spring, around the same time that the first chapters of "Rational Decisions" were posted. Then RL went to mental & emotional shit. So if anyone is reading this is reading that story, I'm sorry. I finally got back into working on my fanfiction at the end of NaNoWriMo, and this is the piece that kept my attention. "Rational Decisions" will probably be updated soon. This piece is listed as complete, although I may add chapters periodically. Each segment will be a complete episode-this will probably just be a series posted as a single story. Enjoy. As always, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.