Title: Nine Days' Wonder

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Past Draco/Astoria and Harry/Ginny, Harry/Draco

Warnings: Angst, brief violence

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 7600

Summary: In which Harry is the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and really not interested in Draco Malfoy's snippy little calls about Scorpius. Really.

Author's Notes: This is an Advent fic for enamoril, who requested a long prompt that can be summarized, in her own words, as Mostly angry fire-calling, Harry Defense teacher, Draco snippy insinuating person, and an uninterested self-driven Scorpius is what I'd like to see. I think I can give you that. Happy Advent!

Nine Days' Wonder

"You will speak with me about how you treat my son."

Harry frowned and sat down the glass of water he'd been drinking as he lingered over his essays. "Mr. Malfoy?" It was an effort to remember the "Mr." Though plenty of parents had talked to him over the years since he started teaching Defense, Malfoy still looked enough like his student self to make Harry fall into old habits.

"You don't need to call me by such a title of respect." Malfoy sneered at Harry and folded his arms. At least, Harry thought that was what the little ripple at the bottom of the fire meant. Trust Malfoy to call Harry like this and be arrogant enough to use that kind of gesture. "I know that you don't really respect anyone named Malfoy."

Harry shook his head, trying to remember any time when he might have showed disrespect to Scorpius severe enough to make the boy call his father. He couldn't recall anything. Really, Scorpius was one of the most self-possessed little Slytherins Harry had ever seen, able to climb over insults because he didn't care about them. He cared about succeeding in Herbology more than revenge or gossip or the other social games that preoccupied his peers. Harry would have expected Malfoy to firecall Neville instead of him.

"I haven't given Scorpius a low mark in ages," Harry said, searching his memory. No, the last time he could remember was two years ago when Scorpius had obviously cribbed half his essay from one of the better students in the class. Even then, Scorpius hadn't complained; he just seemed to accept that doing a good job on his Defense essay would ultimately give him more free time than cheating, being caught, and spending hours in detention would.

"Yes," Malfoy said, leaning forwards. "But I know that you haven't given him high marks, either. I want the private tutoring that I know you offer some of your students. Indeed, you have no reason not to offer it to him, unless you...fear certain rumors circulating."

Harry narrowed his eyes and sat up. Yes, when he had come out as gay there had been a flinching reaction from some of the parents whose students he taught, and mutters about Harry and "beautiful young boys." Since Harry had never found any teenager attractive once he stopped being one himself, it was ridiculous. He had ignored the rumors, and eventually they had died down.

Except, apparently, in the minds of idiots like Malfoy.

"Funny," Harry said, in the voice he usually reserved for the moments when he caught someone intending to go werewolf hunting on the full moon. "I would have thought that you had more to fear from rumors than I did."

Malfoy turned so pale that Harry would have been afraid he'd fall and hit his head on the hearth, except he was already kneeling down. "That gossip has no truth to it," he whispered harshly. "None. I cheered the death of the Dark Lord, Potter. I would never join the fools who are trying to return him to life."

"But you can believe that your son is-what were the words the Prophet used?-'lovely and lithe and a favorite of mine.'" Harry paused delicately. "Or are you offering me his favors in exchange for tutoring?"

There was a snap, the most abrupt ending to any Floo call that Harry had ever heard, and Malfoy's face vanished from the fire. Harry chuckled and turned back to the essays. They weren't thrilling, but he had a bit more of a zest for finishing them now.

"And that is how you cast a nonverbal Shield Charm," Harry told his class.

They stared at him, mostly gormless, and Harry checked a sigh. He had no terrible students in this sixth-year class, but a lot of plodders, who needed to be shown the charms and hexes over and over and over again until it clicked together in their heads. Obviously, it hadn't clicked yet.

"Give me a foot-long essay on why nonverbal spells are important to learn, due Monday," he said, and dismissed them. Sometimes research would provide a few of them with the clues they needed to make up their minds that a spell was important.

Off they scampered, all but one, who came up and leaned on his desk. Harry eyed him a little cautiously. It was Scorpius Malfoy, and the firecall from his father was rather fresh in Harry's mind.

"Yes, Mr. Malfoy?" Harry finally asked, when it was obvious that Scorpius wasn't about to gracefully disappear the way Harry had hoped he would.

Scorpius inclined his head. "I understand that my father firecalled you Saturday," he said, "and asked for extra tutoring for me in Defense."

Harry nodded. His eyes were fixed on Scorpius, carefully noting the position of his hand and the distance between them, in case he needed to use this as a Pensieve memory later, to prove himself innocent of any wrongdoing.

"I don't want extra tutoring, thanks all the same." Scorpius looked utterly comfortable, standing there with his wrist turned so that he could keep an eye on his silver watch, a modern one patterned after the Muggle device. Harry had the idea that he had budgeted an exact number of minutes to this little meeting, and after that he would be off to study again in Herbology. "If he calls again, I'd appreciate it if you told him that."

"Why don't you tell him that?" Harry demanded, a little frustrated. If Scorpius knew about his father's idiocy, then a reprimand from him would do more than anything Harry could offer. Harry knew full well that Malfoy wouldn't let something go once he'd grasped it.

"I have, but he doesn't listen to me." Scorpius shook his head sadly. "He thinks that becoming an Auror would be a good thing for me, and for that I have to have an Oustanding on the Defense NEWTs. I've tried and tried to explain to him that I'm going to be a master experimental breeder instead, but he isn't listening to me."

"Why does he want you to be an Auror?" Harry asked, staring. He would have thought Malfoy's plans included having his son work in the Ministry, but as a power behind the throne, not on the front lines.

"Because he wanted to be one and never got to be, I think," Scorpius said, frowning a little. "People hold the Dark Mark and our name against him." He looked up. "But I don't mind you not giving me extra tutoring, Professor Potter. I just want to go on and do what I want to do, and if I do it well enough, Father will have to accept me."

Harry gave him another nod. Malfoy wanted to be an Auror? That was even less expected than him wanting Scorpius to be one. "I'll tell him if he firecalls again. I don't know if he will. We said some fairly nasty things to one another."

He wondered a second later if he should have told Scorpius that, but from the way Scorpius twitched his lips and inclined his head, he knew all about it already. "I dare say he deserved it," he said, turning his back to walk away. "Father isn't patient with people who frustrate him, and you always have. The only way to get around it is to be more patient than he is, and more stubborn. That's what I have to do."

He vanished around the corner, and left Harry to blink at the stone walls. He frustrated Malfoy? With what? The grievance over Scorpius seemed to be a new thing, or Harry would have expected to have heard from Malfoy in years past.

It was an interesting fact to consider.

"Scorpius informs me that you have no intention of offering him private tutoring."

"How did you get the address for my private Floo, Malfoy?" Harry wearily set aside the foot-long essays he had assigned the other day. They hadn't been a success. Most of the students were still trying to figure out what he wanted to hear, rather than why learning nonverbal spells would be useful to them, and so had parroted books that talked solemnly about the grandeur and prestige of that branch of magic. If they didn't know that Harry valued everything more than grandeur and prestige by now, they really hadn't paid attention during the last five years they had him.

"That isn't important." Malfoy leaned forwards, his face so intent that it looked as though the lines in it had been cut in butter with a new knife. "He said that you won't-"

"He also wanted me to tell you that I wouldn't," Harry interrupted. Again, he normally never would have brought up a student in conversation with a parent like this, but Scorpius was the kind of kid who could handle it. "And I agreed. He doesn't want to be an Auror, Malfoy. Stop trying to live vicariously through your son."

Malfoy paused. Then he said, not asked, "He told you."

"He mentioned something about it." Harry folded his arms and shook his head. "Why would you want to be an Auror anyway? Do you know how boring the paperwork is?"

"That's all very well for you to say, who got to try it," Malfoy said in a dry whisper. "Someone who got into the training program and wasn't turned away because of the Mark on his arm..."

"That may have been the main reason," Harry said steadily, "but believe me, even if they'd accepted you, you wouldn't have lasted. I didn't last, because I didn't have the patience for dealing with adult fools. When my students don't understand something first go, I can accept it. They're kids. But dealing with adults that didn't understand why they shouldn't use blood magic on a book of Dark spells they picked up without any prior knowledge of what it contained? I couldn't stand it."

The expression on Malfoy's face flickered a little. Then he said, "Don't presume to know anything about me. You don't." The snap of the Floo shutting this time didn't quite set a record to match the first, but it was close.

Harry rolled his eyes and went back to his papers. And if he did entertain the vision of a younger Malfoy, clutching a letter informing him he hadn't been accepted into the Auror program and shutting his eyes bleakly, that didn't matter. Harry's imagination was a lot better than it used to be.

"I understand that you're to have a visitor today."

Harry looked up, blinking and shaking his head. He was never at his best first thing in the morning, and Headmistress McGonagall occasionally took unfair advantage of that, springing surprises on him and getting him to accept obligations that Harry never would have done otherwise.

"What do you mean?" he asked, turning to her. It was Saturday, and most of the students weren't at breakfast. Scorpius Malfoy was, of course, sitting at the Slytherin table with his head bent over a book. A charm made his fork or spoon carefully scoop up precise mouthfuls of food and levitate them around the book without dripping on the pages, so all he had to do was open his mouth.

It had become a matter of importance in the last little while for Harry to know where Scorpius Malfoy was, although he couldn't have said why.

"I see him coming right now." McGonagall, who had got more like Dumbledore as far as her sense of humor went, down the years, smiled into her teacup.

Harry looked up as the doors of the Great Hall flew open. Draco Malfoy strode in, aiming straight for him. Scorpius looked up once, but then back down at his book, with a faint frown, as if his father would interrupt him like this and he wanted to read as much as he could before it happened.

But although Malfoy turned his head a little as if to acknowledge his son's presence, he didn't go up to him. He remained focused on Harry, and beckoned with an insulting little finger. "Potter. We need to talk."

Harry grimaced and stood up. The one benefit to having this happen now was that there weren't many students here to see Harry's expression or Malfoy's summons. Harry would go to him, of course, but not because he was called-more because he didn't want to have this confrontation in the middle of the Great Hall.

"Good luck," said McGonagall behind him, still sounding immensely amused.

Harry shot him a sour look. She sipped her tea again and smiled at him. Useless to ask how she had known that Malfoy had been firecalling him, the same way it would have been with Dumbledore.

I still miss Dumbledore at times, Harry thought, striding across the room to Malfoy, but that doesn't mean I wanted a replacement like this.

Malfoy turned his back just before Harry arrived and swirled his cloak around him in a dramatic gesture. Harry rolled his eyes. He had discovered the spells that Snape had used to do that, and it always seemed a childish indulgence to him. Which probably made it a perfect spell for Malfoy to learn, admittedly.

Then Harry paused, thinking a little. No, it didn't exactly fit the man he had talked to in his fireplace on Thursday.

But he followed in silence, not knowing what a reference to that conversation would do, as Malfoy led him out onto the grounds and towards the lake. There, he finally slowed to a stalk, and glared at Harry out of the corner of his eye.

"I notice that you haven't started privately tutoring Scorpius, yet."

Harry stared at the back of Malfoy's head, and learned why Scorpius found his father exasperating. He seemed to have decided to wipe out the last week, including Scorpius's disinclination for the tutoring, as though it had never happened. Well, now he was dealing with someone not vulnerable to threats of being disowned, which Harry wouldn't be surprised if he regularly used with Scorpius.

"No," Harry said. "And I won't."

Malfoy spun around to face him. It was a cold morning, almost the end of November, with a light dusting of snow on the ground and leaves flying past their faces, but the real intensity at the moment was Malfoy's face just a few centimeters from Harry's, and the awful light in his eyes.

"Why not?" Malfoy whispered. He could have shouted, and it wouldn't have the same impact. Harry thought he could feel his hair blow back.

"Because he doesn't want it, and I don't want to, and I don't owe you anything," Harry said, folding his arms.

"What about that life-debt you owed my mother, and the one you owed me because I saved your life at the Manor?" Malfoy countered, his eyes now silver slits. It wasn't a good look on him, Harry thought. It prevented you from seeing the light in his eyes that was otherwise so impressive.

"I paid the first one when she called on me to testify at your father's trial," Harry said quietly. "That was the condition she set, and I accepted. And I fulfilled the second one when I saved your life that night at the end of our last year."

Malfoy staggered back a step. He licked his lips, and finally muttered, "What night?"

Harry arched his eyebrows. "Well, admittedly, you might have been so drunk that you don't remember it. You were up on the top of the Astronomy Tower, shouting at the sky about how unfair Professor Snape and Dumbledore and fate in general were. We were having a late Quidditch practice, and I flew up to ask you to shut the fuck up." It was satisfying to see the way Malfoy flinched at the word "fuck." "Then you tumbled over the parapet, and I caught you. I didn't count it as an extra life-debt that you owed me because I did owe you one. But it's all done, Malfoy. The debts between us are settled."

"No, they aren't." Malfoy's eyes were wide again, but he didn't look ready to move from the spot. "What about the two I owe you?"

"I never intended to claim them," Harry said. "Why should I? You have nothing I need."

He had meant the words simply, like the words that he had used to tell Malfoy that he didn't intend to give Scorpius private tutoring, but Malfoy reeled as if they had been a slap in the face. For a second, he stood there staring. Harry couldn't help seeing how young that made him look, and wondered if the self-assured expression he had worn through both of their firecalls, and then again this morning, was the real mask.

Harry extended his hand without thinking, moved to help by what he had seen in Malfoy's face.

Malfoy slapped his hand away, and the ringing crack it made on his palm made Harry a little less sympathetic than he had been. But Malfoy was backing away from him, shaking his head, and gave Harry a smug look now, as though the other had never existed.

"Nothing you need, you say?" he whispered. "You're wrong about that. You're always wrong." And he turned and walked so rapidly towards the gates that led off the grounds to Hogsmeade that Harry thought it would have been a mistake to follow him.

Harry stood there in the cold wind for some moments before he went back inside.

"Professor Potter? I wanted to apologize."

Harry started and glanced up. He was at a corner table in the library, spread with books, readying himself for the special class that he was going to start teaching his Defense NEWT students next week. Most of the other professors didn't make much use of the Hogwarts library, since they had their own book collections, but Harry was still building his, mostly by finding useful books in the library and ordering copies.

Scorpius Malfoy stood in front of him, his expression solemn. Harry found that he wasn't even tempted to laugh by the little potted vine Scorpius held in his arms, which at the moment was sucking on Scorpius's ear with friendly leaves.

On the other hand, Harry couldn't forebear some comment. "Should it be doing that?" he asked, gesturing at the vine.

Scorpius waved a hand at him in return. "Oh, yes. I made myself immune to her venom months and months ago." He leaned forwards, eyes fixed on Harry. "But I wanted to apologize. I think my father is going to do something very stupid, and I wasn't a party to it, but I think it's going to be very stupid because I know him. I wanted to apologize beforehand."

Harry sighed and took off his glasses so that the words on the page before him would become a little blurred and stop distracting him. "Do you think anything will convince him that you don't want to be an Auror?"

"Only my success in another field." Scorpius absently stroked the vine that twisted up the side of his neck now, and seemed to be experimenting with how many folds it could get around his throat at one time. "And that might not come for another two years, until I can leave Hogwarts and start pursuing my Mastery in Herbology."

Harry blinked. "I thought a Mastery in Herbology usually took two years in itself."

"Not for me."

Harry bit his lip so he wouldn't smile, and studied Scorpius again. "It's a shame that your father can't see you the way you are," he murmured. "He would have reason to be proud."

Scorpius half-smiled. "Thank you. And-it's a shame that whatever my father is going to do, I think it's going to affect your public reputation. That's always the kind of revenge he's pursued, when he's s done it in the past."

Harry frowned, going over the gossip he remembered from the past few years in the papers, as well as what he'd heard when he was still working as an Auror. "I don't remember him doing that."

Scorpius snorted. "Honestly, most of the people he's pursued have been small-time Ministry workers whom he thought insulted the Malfoy family. But none of them was big enough to make the Prophet really interested in the scandal." He regarded Harry with half-closed eyes. "I think you will be, though."

Harry grimaced and sighed. "Thank you for warning me. I'll deal with that when it comes out."

Scorpius gave him an approving look. "I wish Father could have more of your personality," he said, and walked away, carefully cradling the pot in his arms and studying his silver watch. "Excuse me. But it's time to water her unless I want her to start developing pods that could poison the whole castle."

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. He hoped that Neville knew what he was doing with Scorpius, letting him handle dangerous plants like that-although, honestly, Scorpius probably would have done it on his own if Neville hadn't allowed it.

And his mind returned, more insistently than ever, to Scorpius's father and the scars that still seamed his personality.

Maybe I could understand. But there are certain levels of stubborn idiocy that still surprise me. If he isn't sensitive to me, then he ought to be sensitive to what's due his own son.

"How do you like that, Potter?"

Harry slowly looked up. He saw no reason to afford Malfoy too much attention. Attention was just what he wanted, Harry thought, what he'd always wanted, and it would be his pleasure to help deprive Malfoy of some of it. "Like what? I'm afraid I've been a little busy today, and mostly stayed in my quarters. That means I won't have seen whatever trap you tried to plant for me in the Daily Prophet."

Malfoy's mouth promptly turned down. "You have no right to speak to me like that," he whispered.

"If I don't have a right, who does?" Harry leaned forwards, deciding he could spare some attention after all. "Someone else you're trying to destroy? Except that I hear you usually deal in smaller victims."

"You should have tutored my son!" Suddenly Malfoy's face was alive with rage, and so was his voice, which Harry thought was something that neither of them had counted on. "If you had just agreed, instead of clinging on to this grudge that you have against the Malfoy family-"

"There is no grudge," Harry interrupted, his voice even cooler than he had intended to make it. "I don't hold one against Scorpius. I find a lot to admire in him, even though he doesn't want to be an Auror and you shouldn't make him in some futile hope to recapture your lost youth. And I could even find a lot to admire in you, that you care so much about his future, if there was any sign that you were paying attention to what he actually wanted!"

So he was shouting before the end, too. Honestly, Harry thought, he had the right to get worked up on the behalf of one of his students who wasn't being well-served by his own father. He was far more irritated by what Malfoy had done to Scorpius than what he was trying to do to Harry.

"Scorpius understands the way things are." It was hard to tell, in the fire, but Harry thought Malfoy was probably flushing. "He understands that since I got divorced, and Malfoys never do that, and I didn't make a name for myself, and Malfoys never fail at that, then it's up to him to bring glory and pride to the name."

Harry blinked. Then he said, "Why couldn't he do that as a Herbology master?"

"Because it's not prestigious enough!"

"You should think about the consequences of your actions more often," Harry pointed out, leaning forwards. "Then maybe you wouldn't place so many hopes on Scorpius. I know that you're the same age as me, Malfoy, just forty-two. You have more than enough time to change things and make something of your life."

"My advisor, are you?" Malfoy was practically spitting the words, as though he wanted to drill holes in Harry's forehead, alongside the scar. "My divorce is a fact. My failure is a fact. You even mocked me with it a week ago-"

"I mocked you because you wanted to force me to do something that you can't force me to do, and that Scorpius doesn't want," Harry interrupted ruthlessly. "And I don't see why the fuck you can't still pick yourself up and do something." Yes, the flinch when Malfoy heard the word "fuck" was still satisfying. "So you're divorced. Contract a second marriage to another pure-blood witch with a lot of money. And start trying to increase your political influence through charitable events. You could-"

"You, with your waste of a life, are going to start telling me how to manage mine?" Malfoy demanded in a loud, incredulous voice.

Harry laughed at him. "Who gave you the impression that I considered my life a waste? I'm where I want to be, doing useful work. I was an Auror for a long time, and did useful work there as long as I could stand it. I got divorced, too, but neither of us cared that much about each other in the end." He winced. He should have sensed that he was gay a long time before he did, and then maybe he never would have married Ginny and caused her the kind of pain that came from finding that out.

But he shook his head and moved on. He had refused to devote himself to reliving his guilt, the way he knew some people would have wanted. It was Voldemort who had wanted to destroy him with guilt. Harry was pretty sure that doing anything that was the opposite of what Voldemort wanted was a good idea.

And Voldemort also would have wanted the feud between Malfoy and Potter to live on, down the generations. Harry continued, "I chose what I wanted. Why don't you choose what you want? Why are the mistakes you made since the war, if they're mistakes, so horrifying, but what you did in the war isn't? Why are you tarnished forever? Scorpius doesn't think you are. He's disappointed in the way that you go about pursuing revenge, but he's said nothing about you being weak or a failure or whatever you want to call yourself."

Malfoy's eyes widened until Harry thought they would expand beyond his face. Then he whispered, "And you don't care about what I sent to the paper."

"I was telling the truth when I said that I spent the whole day in my office, and I haven't seen it yet," Harry retorted steadily. "Maybe I'll care when I see it."

There was another snap, and Malfoy disappeared from the fire. Harry sighed. He was tempted to go in search of the Prophet and figure out what Malfoy meant. There was probably a copy of it that one of the other professors was done with...

But in the end, Harry didn't do that. It would be giving the childish side of Malfoy too much credit.

The childish side, and not the sides he wanted to encourage.

"That, I really don't understand," Harry muttered, scanning the first page of the Prophet.

"What?" Neville asked, from his right side, where he was studying two bean pods he'd plucked out of his breakfast. He motioned for the salt, and Harry grinned as he handed it over. He thought he was one of the few people at Hogwarts who didn't find Neville's propensity to turn his breakfast into an experiment off-putting.

Then again, Neville had put up with a lot from Harry over the years, including questions about teaching, from when he first began, that Harry could now recognize as incredibly naive. So it made sense that Harry could more easily return the favor than a lot of people.

"Malfoy was supposedly going to put something about me in the paper that would embarrass me because I'm refusing to privately tutor his son," Harry said, and flipped the Prophet's pages to look more in the middle. Maybe Malfoy hadn't come up with more than stale gossip, and so the editors hadn't been interested enough to make it the lead story.

"Oh," said Neville, swallowing a part of his breakfast that apparently wasn't interesting enough to be spared eating. "I think I can answer that one. Astoria Greengrass has a controlling interest in the paper. And her divorce from Malfoy was pretty bitter, you know."

Harry looked up and blinked. "But Scorpius told me that his father has taken revenge through the paper other times."

Neville shrugged. "Maybe those weren't important enough to make her interfere. But she might not want to make negative publicity for the paper, the way they could reporting on you." Harry nodded. After years in the wizarding world, he never understood what made the public take his side on some issues and turn against him at others, but at least the Daily Prophet had felt the backlash of disapproval, too. "And she'll keep Malfoy from getting what he wants, if she can."

Those words lingered in the back of Harry's mind all through the day. His divorce from Ginny had been regretful, but amicable, and he'd never had another lover who hated him so much that he wanted to frustrate everything Harry did after they broke up. What would it be like to have someone like that in your life?

So when Malfoy firecalled that evening, Harry was ready and waiting for him. Malfoy looked a little startled not to see him with a pile of essays in front of him, but said immediately, "Did you reconsider it?"

"No," said Harry. "Did you see that your revenge didn't make it into the Prophet?"

"The Quibbler would publish it," said Malfoy, his voice and his nose both high and furious.

Harry simply shook his head. "Luna's a friend of mine," he said. "And I don't see why you're so intent on getting revenge on me for a perfectly reasonable refusal, anyway. You know that Scorpius isn't interested in Defense, or at least not any aspect of it that can't be applied to plants. Why would getting a Mastery in Herbology not be prestigious enough?"

Malfoy had folded his arms again, to guess from the ripple of motion below the line of his face. "Because it would just mean working with plants," he said, and Neville would have taken offense at the tone in his voice. "Because Potions and Defense could lead to prestigious careers even if Scorpius can't be an Auror. Herbology doesn't."

"Why is Potions any better than Herbology?" Harry asked. "It's glorified Herbology, is all. You can't be good at Potions without knowing the plants that are the ingredients."

"Potions can lead to money," Malfoy hissed. "Herbology doesn't."

Harry snorted. "That really shows that you don't pay attention to anything outside your own little bubble," he retorted, not caring how much he was probably pissing Malfoy off with his words. "Neville got lots of commendations as well as lots of money for breeding those Shifting Roses of his. You probably have some in your own gardens now. The roses that change color depending on the hour of the day?" he prompted, as Malfoy still looked blank. "Scorpius loves them."

Malfoy glanced away. "The house-elves handle all matters like that. I have no reason to do so."

"But if you became more involved in your son's life, then he might do more of what you want," Harry said. He didn't think it was that likely-Scorpius would remain self-possessed and interested in what he was interested in, stepping calmly around all objections to the contrary-but it made a good argument. "If you cared about what he likes-"

"He's a Malfoy," Malfoy interrupted. "What he likes isn't important. Only what the family wants."

"Who besides the two of you is left?" Harry snapped. "You might as well say that the family is what you want and what he wants, and you're both one person, so why shouldn't his vote count as much as yours?"

Malfoy looked as if no one had ever presented this argument to him before. Harry snorted and leaned back. "Really," he said. "You keep talking about your family as though it has nothing to do with you and your own desires, as though it's an institution you serve, but it's only you and Scorpius. Your desires affect it. So do Scorpius's. Why isn't that true?"

Malfoy shook his head. "There are traditions that we can't deny-"

"Scorpius is denying them," Harry said. "Either he knows that his desires matter most if Malfoys' desires matter, or you didn't do a good job of impressing on him that his family is this changeless marble monument."

Malfoy was obviously flushing all over his face now. "You're talking about things that you know nothing about," he hissed. "What matters to you is your mother and her family."

It was such a ridiculous accusation that Harry laughed. Malfoy clenched his fists and nearly disappeared from the fire again, if Harry was any judge, but then shook his head and said through gritted teeth, "Someone has to do something to restore the prestige of the name."

"Then it'll have to be you, since I don't think Scorpius has any intention of becoming an Auror," Harry said.

Malfoy shook his head again, dismissively this time. "I already told you about all the ways I failed..."

"And none of those are irrevocable," Harry said firmly. "I even gave you a number of solutions to them. If you want to make your family beloved and powerful again, Mr. Malfoy, then you have the power to do it yourself, without tangling your son up in ridiculous chains that he'll never follow the tug of."

"You understand nothing," said Malfoy, with a hiss. "I'm too old to become an Auror. They wouldn't take me with the Mark on my arm even if I wasn't."

"Then," Harry said, lowering his voice, "and I'll go slowly so that you can understand the big words, try something else."

Malfoy snarled at him and vanished from his fire. Harry rolled his eyes and picked up his quill, because now that he was done waiting he really should start on these first-year effusions about what a boggart was.

But in the back of his mind, he had to wonder if their conversations would always end with Malfoy disappearing like that.

"My dad firecalled me last night. He was really angry."

This time, Scorpius had come up to him in the middle of the Great Hall, after most of the other students had already left dinner. He was carrying the vine again, but not potted this time, instead slung along his arms like a friendly snake. Harry smiled. He could imagine the way that Scorpius guarded his bed at night, since he wasn't a Parselmouth or especially good with the Defense spells his father wanted him to learn.

"About your mum blocking his revenge from appearing in the paper?" Harry asked, stretching his arm out to retrieve a cup of hot chocolate the house-elves were under standing orders to bring him. As Harry grew older, he needed the warmth of the steaming drink in his bones.

"That was good, wasn't it?" Scorpius agreed, not appearing in the least surprised that Harry could know that. Maybe Neville had told him, though; Harry knew Neville and Scorpius were close. "But no, he was angry because you told him that he could restore the family honor." Scorpius paused, regarding Harry carefully.

"Do you think I was wrong?" Harry raised his eyebrow as he sipped. He understood a lot more about teenagers than he had his first year back at Hogwarts, but that didn't mean he always knew how they would react.

"No," Scorpius said. "I just want to know how you convinced him of that. I've said it, but he doesn't listen to me."

Harry lightly touched Scorpius's shoulder. He heard a lot more under those last words than either Malfoy might be aware of. "I didn't convince him. He was still dismissive when he insisted on ending the conversation."

"But you did," said Scorpius, staring at him. "Didn't you know? He's hired a Potions master to come to the house and give him lessons. He hasn't even discussed doing that in years. And I know he used to take pride in his Potions skills, but they got rusty a long time ago. So he says, anyway," Scorpius added thoughtfully, as if just remembering that not everything his father said might be the truth.

Harry smiled and pulled his hand back. "So he's doing something about it. That's good. But are you sure that I was the one who convinced him to?"

Scorpius gave Harry the look he was more used to from teenagers, the one that said all adults were stupid and he didn't understand why they were running the world. "Who else could it have been? I told you, he doesn't listen to me."

"Himself," Harry said softly.

Scorpius stared at him; then his eyes became hooded. "You know, for a Gryffindor you're intelligent enough sometimes," he said.

"Why, thank you," Harry said, and stood up. He was still smiling as he made his way back to his quarters, where another stack of essays awaited him.

"This is all your fault!"

This time, the firecall came through so early on Sunday morning that Harry stumbled out of bed to confront it. His fault, he supposed, for not making sure that the Floo was tightly locked and warded the way he usually did on weekend nights. He rubbed his hair so it stood up, sort of, and put his glasses on, and asked, with a yawn, "What is?"

"This!"

Malfoy's face appeared in the fire. Harry blinked, not understanding for a second what was so strange about its appearance. Then he realized that Malfoy's eyebrows were utterly gone, and singe marks were in their place.

Harry burst out laughing.

Malfoy spat something so strong that Harry had no idea what it meant, and then the flames changed and darkened. Harry tried to smother his laughter, concerned that Malfoy was ending the conversation before Harry could speak with him about Scorpius and the way he obviously longed for his dad to pay attention to him.

But instead, a spinning figure appeared in the darkening flames, and Malfoy burst out into Harry's rooms. His face was bright red with humiliation, and he flung himself at Harry as though they were long-lost friends.

Harry found himself on the floor for a moment, under Malfoy. Then he twisted elegantly to the side, and suddenly Malfoy was the one who was gaping up at him, his eyebrow-less face pale instead of red.

"I still keep in training," Harry panted into his face. "Necessary when I duel students." He tightened his hold warningly when Malfoy tried to bring a knee up into his groin. "Will you tell me how you getting a potion wrong is my fault?"

"Because you were the one who told me that I should try something, and this is what happened instead!" Malfoy gestured in rage at his face, so enraged, in fact, that he nearly put out his own eye. "So you owe it to me to-"

"I don't owe you a bloody thing," Harry snapped back, some of his amusement leaving. "What you owe your son is a different matter, and I wish to Merlin that you would pay some fucking attention to him!"

"Everything I do is for Scorpius!" Malfoy tried to rear up, but Harry held him down easily. "Even this. If he can inherit a family name that does have some glory attached to it, then he'll do fine, even if he never does anything to augment it himself."

Harry made a disgusted sound. "That you can't see Scorpius is already a wonderful person on his own..."

"I'm trying to-"

"What he wants from you and what you think he needs are not the same thing," Harry interrupted, not caring about, or for, the way Malfoy gaped at him. "You listened to me once before, enough to at least start training with Potions again. Will you listen to me now? He's spoken to me, and I know. I've never heard him sound desolate or upset, except about the fact that you don't listen to him."

"What he wants is stupid."

Harry drew back, really tempted to punch the git in the face. But he stayed his hand, remembering Scorpius's words, thinking about what it would mean to Scorpius if the one professor he felt he could talk to about his father punched that father.

Instead, he gripped Malfoy's shoulders and shook him so hard that his teeth rattled. It was pleasant, and it had the ability to get his attention. Malfoy blinked at him and said nothing as Harry bent down into his face and hissed at him.

"You have a son who is a wonderful boy, a good student, and passionate about something. You should be encouraging that passion, even if it's not for politics or Potions or becoming an Auror. You have a son who knows what he wants, and he's made all the strides he needs to get it, because you don't pay attention to him and his mother probably doesn't, either. For him, if not for yourself, you should be trying to live your life better.

"And I know that your wife frustrates you, and you feel like a failure, and you let your own passion go because-who knows? You already felt like a failure, or you decided that it wouldn't finance your family. But that doesn't matter. You've got other people to live for besides yourself. Do it." He did punch Malfoy, at last, but in the shoulder, where it wouldn't leave a mark. "Idiot."

Malfoy lay there, staring up at him. Harry frowned and lifted his hands, wondering if he had stunned the bastard somehow.

Then Malfoy murmured, "What about you?"

"Of course I have other people to live for," Harry began.

"No." Malfoy shook his head, his eyes dark and smoky in a way that Harry had never seen before. "I mean, could you become someone I could live for?"

Harry choked and stared at him. "Why would you think that?"

"Because no one's cared that much about what I do in years," Malfoy said simply. Then he flushed. "Except Scorpius, and I know now that I haven't been fair to him. But..." He reached up, and grabbed Harry's chin, and although Harry could easily have broken away, he stayed still to see what would happen. "I also know that I might have more than one person to impress."

He pulled Harry closer, and again Harry could have pulled away, but again he waited to see what would happen. If Malfoy would actually do what it seemed he was aiming to. What it would taste like if he did.

Then Malfoy did kiss him, and it was wonderful. Harry found that he was opening his mouth, his tongue touching Malfoy's before Malfoy had planned on it, if the way he jerked beneath Harry was any indication. Harry gripped his hair and manipulated Malfoy's head the way he wanted it, and it was more wonderful still, even if Malfoy didn't have eyebrows at the moment.

Malfoy tore away from him and closed his eyes. Harry waited again. Malfoy was the one who had to make the decisions here, to see if he regretted it or not.

But Malfoy licked his lips and whispered, "Will you want me this much if I take a long time to improve where Scorpius is concerned?"

Harry grinned. "Yes. I'll be right there, and I can help you."

Malfoy opened his eyes, and they had a challenging glint in them. That was the part that had been missing all along, Harry thought, changing his face before now far more than the lack of eyebrows since had-although Harry hadn't noticed until now. He had seemed half-alive, shrill, excitable, not a living being, and not a caring parent, invested in a false image of Scorpius that was more than three-quarters the ghost of himself.

Now he whispered, "And what about when my eyebrows grow back?"

Harry kissed him again for answer, making it deep, making it rolling, making it so wonderful that even Malfoy gasped and reached out for him, that even Malfoy became Draco, that even Scorpius might approve.

The End.