a/n: guess i'm back? (back again)

The Village

Chapter One

There were always so many people. No matter where he went, crowds and lines and shuffling groups took up the entire sidewalk. Deep in the dark corner of his brain he was always trying to ignore, he wondered how there still managed to be so many people even after such a deadly war.

He pinched his wrist, leaving a small half-moon mark from his nail. No dark thoughts, not today.

He reached the guards, who scanned him up and down, scowled when they found nothing, and begrudgingly stamped his hand for temporary access.

"If you're not out by 2 PM, the ink'll burn your skin," one guard warned. Draco didn't doubt the man's words. Security measures post-war were thorough to the point of overkill.

Overkill. Like the war. Too many kills.

Another pinch.

He swept his robes around his chest and stepped towards the lift, where he was met by another scowl. "Floor?" the attendee sneered.

"Eighteen."

"Stamp?"

He obliged, flashing his hand to the attendee, who let him through with a short huff. The lift ride was short; the attendee took him straight up without stopping to pick up anyone on the other floors who might be waiting.

On floor eighteen he was met with another crowd, this one full of employees too busy chatting about nonsense to notice or scowl at him. He reached a bronze door marked 1808, the number indicated to him on the letter he had received a few days ago. Taking a deep breath, he opened it with as much confidence as he could muster.

"Ah, Mr. Malfoy," a skinny man with floppy jowls and thick eyeglasses greeted him. Mr Douglass Asheby. "Good morning."

Draco opened his mouth to greet Douglass back, but was caught off guard by another presence in the room: a man with jet-black hair, round glasses, and tense shoulders.

"Potter?"

Two days ago, on the morning of September 21, 2003, Draco had been enjoying his morning tea with an orange scone when he received a letter. It wasn't like the form letters he usually received every third Friday of the month reminding him of his monthly parole meeting, but a handwritten letter addressed to Mr. Draco Malfoy. He ripped it open immediately.

Mr. Malfoy,

It is my deepest displeasure to inform you that your aunt, Mrs. Andromeda Tonks, was involved in a fatal vehicular accident last night, September 20th.

We are writing to request your presence at the Ministry of Magic, 18th floor, room 1808 at 11 AM on Tuesday the twenty-third, regarding a mention of your name in Mrs. Tonk's last will. Should you choose not to attend this meeting, the information will be kept private and archived as is protocol.

Our deepest apologies for your most tragic loss.

Signed,

Mr. Douglass Asheby

Senior Will Broker

Department of Life and Death

Ministry of Magic

Draco's knee-jerk reaction to the news was to note the irony of his aunt dying in a vehicle accident after surviving the world's most deadly war. Then he pinched himself as punishment for thinking such a thing.

The news of his aunt's passing wasn't deeply sorrowful to him. He'd never met his aunt, couldn't even recall what she looked like. Still, he knew he was going to attend the meeting. He was curious what Andromeda might have left him, being that she thought his side of the family to be supremely evil. Perhaps she had a plan to leave him some cursed deadly artifact…

Pinch.

Even if it was a deadly artifact, Draco's curiosity was too strong to resist, which was how he ended up in a room with a grumpy Ministry employee and none other than one Mr. Harry Potter.

"Malfoy," Harry greeted. Draco scowled, trying to hide his shock. Just seeing the young man who had been the bane of his existence throughout his adolescence was enough to trigger a landslide of anxiety, a type of visceral nervousness mixed with fury he had tried his best to pack neatly away and ignore.

"What's he doing here?"

Douglass smiled nervously. "Please take a seat Mr. Malfoy, and all this will become much more clear."

Draco sat in a hardbacked chair next to Harry, both of them positioned facing Douglass' desk. Douglass sighed.

"I want to thank you both for being here, and to extend my apologies again for your loss."

Draco stole a small glance at Harry. He had dark circles under his eyes, like he'd either been socked in the face or crying. His hair was a mess, his eyes were red, and he looked closer to 35 than 23.

"Mr. Malfoy, I have met with Mr. Potter previous to this and after thorough discussion, we decided it appropriate to bring you in to read the section of Mrs. Tonk's will that concerns you."

Draco frowned. "Why does Potter get to decide what is or isn't pertinent to me?"

Douglass looked sideways at Harry. "Perhaps I should just read the will. Does that sound good to you, Mr. Potter?"

After noting Harry's weary nod, Douglass pulled out a thick scroll and began to read.

"The most important concern of mine, which I must address with the utmost specificity, is my dear Teddy. According to the wishes of my daughter and her husband, as well as according to my best judgement, Teddy should go to his godfather, Harry James Potter, should he accept the responsibility in the event of my untimely death. Harry, if you're reading this- I am so sorry to thrust this upon you, and trust that Remus and Nymphadora will not look down on you in anger or disappointment if you cannot handle the burden of a child."

Harry made a small noise like a whimper and Draco felt sorry for him. Seeing him so broken tempered his anger- it was hard to feel prideful against a man in such a pitiful state. A father at 23, and of a small child, at that. It was a curse he wouldn't wish on anyone. Not that Draco hadn't cursed people in the past, just like that necklace and-

Pinch.

"In the event that Harry refuses," Douglass continued. "I have set aside enough money for Teddy to do well enough after he graduates from Hogwarts, and I trust that foster care will treat him decently until he can leave for school.

"But if Harry does accept, there are a few things I must have outlined on paper. For one, Teddy has no family left, and Harry (at the time I am writing this) is too young to have his own family. Teddy has been welcomed by the Weasley family, and I trust that Harry will continue to let Teddy bond with them so he can have some semblance of normalcy.

"There are three more distant relatives of Teddy, but their history means they won't be candidates for his custody. These are, of course, Lucius, Narcissa, and Draco Malfoy."

Douglass paused and peered up at Draco, who didn't move. This was about the child. Was he here just to be berated again for his mistakes?

"It is my deliberate request that Teddy not be allowed contact with Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy until his 17th birthday, whereupon it will become his own choice to seek out a relationship with them. However, I feel it wrong to deprive Teddy entirely of his own blood. It is my understanding that Draco, being a young man in a difficult situation, may not be so toxic a presence as his parents. Therefore, I will defer to Harry's judgement whether or not to allow Draco into Teddy's life."

Douglass cleared his throat and folded up the papers. "It moves on to unrelated things from there. That is, essentially, why we're here today."

Draco looked from Douglass to Harry to Douglass again, rather speechless. All this was about a child- a child he'd never met and hardly knew about, one his parents were apparently too evil to meet, but he was granted the privilege of seeing?

"I'm not sure I entirely understand," he said quietly. "Potter's definitely accepting the child?"

"I am," said Harry gravely. "I'm his godfather."

"But you're hardly an adult yourself-"

"I know," he interrupted. "But I know what it's like to be an orphan, and I can't do that to Teddy."

Teddy. A little boy, his cousin. Draco grew solemn. "So this is you asking if I'd like to be part of his life?"

"No, this is me asking if you deserve to be part of his life."

"Deserve?" he scoffed. "I'm not here to kiss your arse to meet a child I know nothing about."

Harry thrust a hand into his coat pocket and retrieved a crumpled photo, which he shoved towards Draco. "Look, then."

Draco did as he was told. Smiling up at him was a toddler with bright purple hair who was laughing and holding up a plastic fork like it was a wand. He had brown eyes, fat cheeks, and… a pointed nose. His pointed nose, the one his mother, his aunts, and now this Teddy, also had.

"His name is Edward Lupin, but we all call him Teddy. He's a metamorphagus like his Mum. He's five years old and he's got a fiery personality, always up to something. He's smart, Hermione's been sure of that. He loves to read and pretend he's riding dragons. And now all his blood family is killed. Gone. So maybe, Malfoy, stop and consider that this may not be about you, but about this little boy."

Draco couldn't help the small lump that formed in his throat, threatening to expose his humanity. He never knew Tonks, and he hardly remembered Lupin from his third year, but something in him felt connected to this abandoned boy. It wasn't blood- he learned when his aunt held a knife to his mother's throat that blood meant nothing. No, he felt something else for the boy, something like empathy but stronger.

He looked sideways at Harry, conflicted. It was too large a commitment to make on the spot. "Can I think about it?"

Harry sighed and tucked the photo back into his pocket. "Don't take too long."

Draco came home to the polite but reverent greeting of his two rottweiler dogs, who licked his palms gently, knowing better than to jump on him.

"Good afternoon," he said to them. "What do you two think about this? Should I become an uncle?"

The truth was, the moment he saw Potter he knew he was fucked. That anxiety, that immediate compulsion to puff his chest and prove his worth combined with a deep-seated jealousy he couldn't shake, it was still there after all these years.

Blaise was the one that started it all up again, actually. He went to South Africa for law school and met her, and when he came back he talked about her and her friends all the damn time. It was only natural that Draco should develop an obsession- no, it wasn't an obsession, it wasn't nearly that sinister, it was a mere fascination- with them. It wasn't something new; he had had a similar fascination in Hogwarts, albeit then it was mixed with far more disdain and disapproval. Now, it was a yearning, a longing, a curiosity. He wanted what they had. When he saw their faces in a paper, he couldn't help but read the corresponding article; when Blaise mentioned them in conversations, he perked up, devoured whatever information was provided.

It truly wasn't that Draco necessarily wanted to be friends with them, rather, he was truly perplexed at how a group of people could have gone through the same war he did and not turn out as scarred as he had. He didn't understand how it was possible for people to be as interconnected, as unbreakably bonded, as they were. Friendship, to him, was not a commitment or a bond; it was a mutual agreement, a product of circumstance and necessity. He had a morbid curiosity for what it felt like to be one of them, and it made him angry he felt that way.

Seeing Potter in person for the first time in years was surreal. Draco felt as if he knew him, or at least a version of him, and it was unsettling to see him in the flesh. Unlike the photos in the paper, he looked human in real life: he had bags under his eyes and there was pain in his voice. He didn't seem how they made him out to be- a hero with a perfect life and an even more perfect complexion. He was human. It was actually comforting to see.

"Missy?" he called out.

A tiny house elf in a pink smock came running. She was a small, even for an elf, and her limbs were so dainty it looked like she might be at risk to dissolve under the next rainfall. Despite her slight figure, she was a tough and lively house elf, never one to turn down a difficult task. "Hello Master Malfoy. Hows was your meeting?"

"It was fine," he said. "Missy, I have a favor to ask you."

"Missy was just abouts to start lunch."

"This is more important. I need you to go to the Manor and fetch Mother's childhood photo album. Can you do that for me?"

Missy looked all too unenthusiastic to visit the Manor, but agreed nonetheless. "Is theres anything I should tell Miss Narcissa?"

"No. Just the album please."

Draco understood the elf's hesitancy. He, too, wouldn't want to return to the Manor. Directly after the war he'd put all of his inheritance into a private bank vault and then moved into his own place. His parents, both under house arrest, became too much to bear and the house itself was too haunted by his family's mistakes. He needed a new start, to experience independence and learn who he could be outside of his parents' expectations.

So far, he hadn't learned much about himself besides the fact that he harbored large amounts of resentment towards both the world and himself. He'd discovered there wasn't much happening in his life. He'd gotten the dogs for company, the house elf to make sure he ate every day, but he had no friends, no family, no coworkers. He hardly left the house, and his parents had grown cold toward him ever since he left the Manor.

There was a crack and Missy appeared, tottering haphazardly under a behemoth of a photo album. "Miss Narcissa told Missy to tell you to return it soon, and that she heards about her sister. And she wants to talk to you."

Draco sent Missy to the Manor on occasion so he could make sure his parents were doing alright. His mother always asked for him to come visit, but the requests were becoming more desperate lately. Perhaps he would finally reach out to her. He communicated with her via Missy, letters, and short Floo calls, but they otherwise lived completely separate lives.

"Thank you, Missy," he said, taking the album from the elf. He flipped through the pages slowly, looking for Andromeda. His mother had few photos from her youth and the ones she did have were carefully posed and professionally photographed. The first portion of the album was full of portraits of Bellatrix, which he flipped through without a second glance. It was difficult to imagine his psychotic aunt as an innocent child.

Narcissa had several pages of glamour shots posed next to flowers, under hedges, on a sailboat, by the beach. He traced her face wistfully- she was very pretty, serene, but pretty. There was hope in her eyes and he yearned to go back in time, pull her aside, and yell- Don't do it! Don't marry him. He's a coward, and he'll make you a coward, too.

Finally he flipped past the last page of Narcissa's photos, but found the last third of the album was empty. Dozens and dozens of photos all removed. In the very back there was one sheet of photos of all three sisters but Andromeda's face was blacked out.

It was a jarring sight, her existence wiped out just like that.

He was about to close the album when a loose photo slipped out from the back cover. He caught it and saw writing on the back in his mother's familiar loopy cursive.

It's the only one I have of her.

Draco flipped it over and there she was- a young woman, no older than 25, holding a small child who must have been Teddy's mum. Andromeda smiled at the camera and waved, then leaned down to touch her nose to Tonks'. Both of them had that pointed Black nose- his nose.

Draco sighed, knowing exactly what he had to do. What he wanted to do.

Potter,

I have come to the conclusion that I would like to be part of the boy's life. Tell me what the next steps moving forward should be. My schedule is open.

Best,

D. Malfoy

Then, feeling the letter wasn't complete, he reached for his wand, made a copy of the photo, and added:

PS: This photo is for Teddy.

a/n: this will be a dramione story, but like any good love story, it'll take awhile to get there. there will be dark themes including self harm and suicidal thoughts, and there will be some light sex. nothing too wild, though. this story will likely be updated once a week. hope you enjoy!