Chapter Text
The kitchen at the Burrow was too warm and too bright, and for a moment in the doorway Harry couldn't make himself step into it. He had apparated right to the door from St Mungo’s and now that he was in the fresh air he could smell the ward on him. The smell of the hospital and cleaning potions had become familiar over the last few days and the contrast to the smell of roast chicken was so sudden that Harry had to take a deep steadying breath before stepping into the kitchen.
He was an hour late, maybe more, and they were all halfway through pudding. He’d lost track of time, sitting in the chair beside Andromeda's bed, watching her not quite sleep. The Dragon Pox had gone into her in a way the Healers had been forced to admit that they could not stop. Her skin had a green cast to it, faint as an old bruise, and her hands on the blanket had suddenly looked very thin. She hadn't said much to him. She'd just held his hand in both of hers, the way she had so many times over the last few years, steady and parental as if he was the one who needed looking after and not her.
"Harry, love." Molly was up before he'd properly got the door shut behind him. She took him by the shoulders, reading his face the way he supposed a mother would. Her expression softened and she ushered him towards the spare seat at the table. "Sit down. There's plenty left, I kept it warm."
"I'm all right," he said automatically, even though no one had asked how he was and sat down anyway in the gap next to Ron at the end of the table.
"I know you’re not, but eat anyway," said Ron, and pushed half his own treacle tart onto Harry's plate without being asked.
He took a bite because it was what was expected of him, and his favourite dessert tasted of nothing as he swallowed. Arthur asked him something kind and undemanding about the weather in London and Harry answered. Hermione was watching him from across the table with her brows furrowed. George had gone home already; Ginny was up in Holyhead, training, she was away more than she was home these days. The clock on the wall had all its hands pointing to home, and the ordinary Sunday warmth of it all went on around him while across the country at St Mungo’s Andromeda Tonks lay dying.
He got through his treacle tart and helped clear up, because his hands needed to do something. And when Arthur had gone through to the living room to listen to the wireless and the washing up was scrubbing itself in the sink, Molly put the kettle on and said, "Tell us, then. How is she?"
"She's dying," Harry said and it came out flatter than he meant. "They're not… There's nothing left to try now. It could be a few days. Maybe less."
Nobody said anything for a moment, and Hermione reached across and put her hand over his. Her smaller hand was warm and comforting, so different to the thin hands he had spent most of the afternoon holding.
"I'm so sorry, Harry," she said.
"She's been so good to me," he said, and stopped, because it was so far from the truth it was almost a lie.
Andromeda had been more than good to him. She had supported him through three years of Auror training, the early mornings and the late nights, the exams that had felt designed to break him, and the cases that had followed him home. There had always been a light on at her cottage and tea in the pot and a chair pulled out for him. She'd never made a fuss of him. She'd just been there, reliable, always asking after his week and never flinching at the answers, she knew what Auror training took out of a person. Harry hadn’t realised how much of his life had revolved around her being there for him. But he was noticing it now.
"And Teddy," said Molly quietly. "Where's Teddy, love, while she's…"
"With Narcissa. At the Manor." Harry turned his mug round on the table. "He's been there a few days now. Since she got too poorly to have him."
"And what happens after?" Hermione asked. She'd already worked out of course, that there was going to be an after.
"That's the thing." He felt a bit as if he were forcing the words out, he could hardly believe it himself, and he may as well get it over with. "Andromeda's made her arrangements. She wants Teddy raised by me…and by the Malfoys. The both of us. Shared."
"Shared," Ron repeated, his lips curling as if the word had gone off in his mouth.
"With Malfoy." Hermione's voice was very even, which was how Harry knew she had a great many things to say and was choosing among them. "Harry. I understand she's Teddy's blood, Narcissa, I do, but…Draco? After everything? After what that family…"
"They tried to kill us, mate," Ron said. "Repeatedly. His aunt…Hermione, in their house…" He didn't have to finish his sentence.
"I know," Harry said gently. "I was there too."
The kitchen went quiet again and there was just the crackle of the fire in the hearth and the low sounds from the wireless in the next room to break the silence. Molly set a fresh mug of tea down in front of him and didn't take her hand off his shoulder.
"I know exactly what they were," Harry said. "I haven't forgotten any of it. But the war's been over for four years now. You know Narcissa lied to Voldemort's face to save my life and that's the only reason I'm sitting in this kitchen at all. You know I stood up at Malfoy's trial and at hers and said as much, because it was true." He looked down at his mug of tea. "And they're Teddy's family. His only family left, besides me, and I'm not…I'm his godfather, that's not the same. And he's with them, right now, he has been for a few days now. He's safe and fed and he's cared for and as far as I can tell he's perfectly happy. I'm not going to be the one who tells a four-year-old who's just lost his gran that half his family aren't allowed near him because of a war he wasn't even born for."
It was the most he'd said all evening. Hermione's concern was still present on her face, although her expression had softened somewhat at his speech.
"All right," she said slowly. "All right. That's… fair. I don't have to like it for it to be fair." She paused for a moment before continuing, "I just worry. For you, and for him. Co-parenting with Draco Malfoy isn't a small thing, Harry. What's he even…what does he do now? Does he do anything?"
"He doesn't have a job," Ron answered in a rush, clearly pleased to be the one with that piece of gossip. "I heard it off Seamus, who heard it off…doesn't matter. No job. I think he just swans about."
Harry didn't actually know what Draco Malfoy did with his days, he had never really given it a second thought, but he felt now that he had to. Images rose up almost unbidden. Malfoy in expensive robes at expensive parties, looking pale and aloof, the way he'd always carried himself at school, as if everyone should be bowing at his feet.
Then the other thought followed, the one that was the reality as far as Harry knew. That there were no parties for the Malfoys any more, not the sort of ones that had mattered to them anyway. Their name, which had once opened every door in Wizarding Britain, was no longer welcome. And he knew it to be true because he never saw the Malfoy’s at any of the galas or events that he was invited to. He genuinely couldn't picture what was left for them. Draco spent a few afternoons a week with Teddy, he knew that much. Andromeda had mentioned it, Draco has him Tuesdays and Thursdays, gives me a break. Beyond that, he knew nothing.
"He has Teddy a couple of afternoons a week," Harry said. "That's all I really know."
"Mm," said Ron, unconvinced, but he let it go.
“I don’t know if I can even…” Harry started, but was interrupted by Molly squeezing his shoulder firmly before sitting beside him so that she could look into his face.
"Now you listen to me," she said. "You are going to be wonderful with that little boy. Do you hear me? I've seen you with him. There's not a kinder, more careful young man in this country, and Teddy adores you. You will not stand in my kitchen and let me hear you think otherwise."
“Molly, I–” Harry tried again, he had only half been listening to her words, his mind racing.
"You will worry that you're not enough. I know you, Harry Potter. And it's nonsense, and when it gets difficult you'll bring him here, and I will help you with every last thing you need help with…Merlin knows I've got the time going spare." She gave a little laugh. "Bill and Fleur have given me the one grandbaby and the rest of you are dragging your heels something dreadful. I've a great deal of grandmothering in me and nowhere to put it. You'd be doing me a kindness."
Harry laughed, which turned into a half-sob before he could stop it. He stared hard down at the table for a moment, blinking away tears before he spoke again. “Thanks, Molly."
"There's plans to make, I expect," she said, standing, "Lots of them."
"Loads." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "I don't even know where to start. There's work, for one, I'm meant to be on rotation. I can't just…Aurors don't often get to leave at five. And the house." He huffed, Grimmauld Place had long been a challenge for him, as if the very bones of the house resisted him living in it, part of why he had avoided spending more time than necessary at home since the end of the war. "You've not seen the state of Grimmauld lately. I've properly been at it eighteen months and it's still half a building site and half a… a museum of horrible things. There's Walburga screaming blood-purist filth for a start, it’s no place for a kid. None of it's a place for a kid yet."
"Then you make it one," said Molly simply. "One room at a time. You’ve got some proper motivation now."
~~
By the time he stepped out of the Floo at Grimmauld Place it was almost eleven, and the first thing he could hear was the muttering.
Grimmauld Place at night did a great deal of muttering and tonight it was coming from the hall, and Harry was unsurprised. The velvet curtains were pulled back and Walburga Black was speaking her vitriol, as she so often did in her deeply aggrieved voice.
"-and the mudbloods tramping through the noble house of my fathers, and the half-blood master letting them, oh, the shame of it, the–"
"Evening," said Harry mildly. He was long past letting her words get to him in any way.
She turned her painted head, saw him, and her face contorted. "FILTH. FILTH IN THE HOUSE OF MY –"
"Yeah, all right." He flicked his wand and the curtains snapped shut over her, mid-shriek, the way he'd got very good at since moving in. The muffled outrage went on behind the velvet for a while and then subsided.
It had been worse, early on, when Kreacher was still alive. She had someone to conspire with then, a living being to do her bidding in the house. Kreacher had died more than two years ago, and he had made Harry promise to cut his head off and mount it with the others, Harry had not, actually fulfilled that promise. He had cremated the old elf in the garden, and then finally been able to take the elf heads down from his main stairs.
Since then, Harry had started to really struggle with the upkeep of the old house. There had clearly been something that Kreacher had been doing to the house, even when he was barely cleaning at all. His mastery of cleaning charms had improved greatly, but it was still more than he thought it would be to maintain an old magical house like Grimmauld Place.
Harry stood and looked at the velvet curtains for a moment, considering them as he so often did. The greatest improvement to the house would surely be getting the old hag off the wall. And over the last eighteen months he'd tried everything to get that portrait down. Every charm he thought might help from increasingly desperate afternoons in the library, even levering at it with a crow bar he had picked up at B&Q. The permanent sticking charm under it was old and mean and made by someone who'd really meant it to stay. The wretched woman wasn't going to come off the wall for him, and maybe not for anyone.
Harry headed up the stairs, but despite his weariness, he didn't go to bed. Instead he went into the room across from his.
It was a typical Black bedroom like all the others, with high ceilings, heavy carved furniture that had long since gone grey with dust, a window that was probably painted shut and wallpaper that was peeling at the cornice. Harry lit the lamps with a flick of his wand, took off his robe, rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
He didn’t like to open with using spells on the old Black furniture, you never knew what would happen, so he hauled the great ugly wardrobe away from the wall. Behind it he found a patch of damp and a smell so he got down on his knees to deal with it, grateful that at least for this part he was confident to use magic. He stripped the bed of its mouldering hangings and bundled them out onto the landing, he used cutting charms along the window until the old paint cracked and it practically screamed as he opened it up two inches to let in some of the cold night air. He stood there for a moment, breathing it in and thinking.
This was for Teddy, a bedroom near to his own, so that when his godson stayed with him, that he would have somewhere that was his, not a corner, or a cramped space, and certainly not a camp bed that got packed away. This was to be a room with his name on it, that belonged just to him while he was with Harry.
He didn't know what colour Teddy would want the walls. Teddy, who could turn his own hair any colour going, who'd been bright bubblegum pink the last time Harry had seen him. What did a four-year-old need in a room, beyond a bed and somewhere for the toys and a person nearby in the night when they woke up frightened?
Harry realised, kneeling on the hardwood floor, that he'd never once been asked what he wanted in a room, in his whole childhood, because nobody had ever cared enough to bother. He'd had a cupboard and then he'd had a room with bars on the window and a cat-flap in the door. He had grown all the way up before he had been able to have a space for his own.
Whatever else he got wrong, and he had no illusions that he would get it all right, he was not going to let Teddy grow up anything close to the way he had, surrounded by people who couldn't be bothered to want him. Teddy was going to be wanted so hard and so plainly that he'd never once have to wonder. By Harry, and by his great-aunt Narcissa, and even, Merlin help them all, by Draco Malfoy, if that was what Andromeda had decided was best.
Harry worked at it until two in the morning, then he washed the dust and grime off before laying down in his own bed, staring at his closed bedroom door, and thinking about the bedroom across the hall and hardly slept.
~~
He went to St Mungo's first thing in the morning before his shift. He had a list of things to talk to Andromeda about. He'd written some of them down on scrap of parchment in the small hours of the morning, questions about the arrangement, about what she actually wanted, and about how this was even supposed to work. He'd thought, if she was having a clear morning, that he might get some answers.
The Healer met him in the corridor before he reached the ward proper. He knew, from her face, before she said a word.
"It was in the night," the Healer said softly. "She wasn't in any pain at the end, Mr. Potter, I promise you that. She'd been very settled these last few days. Almost…ready, I'd have said."
Harry stood in the corridor in silence. At the healer's words, the list in his pocket had become a list of questions that would never have answers.
"She left this for you." The Healer was holding out a folded square of parchment, his name on the front in Andromeda's long looping hand. "She gave it to me three days ago. She made me promise I'd see you got it, after..."
He took it, and went and sat down on the hard chair in the empty corridor, the same one he'd sat in while waiting to be let into her room, and for a long moment he just held the parchment without opening it.
Then he took a deep breath, opened the letter and started to read.
Harry,
If you are reading this, then I have gone, and I asked them not to send for you. I’m sorry, there was never going to be a kind way to leave.
I want you to be sure of my wishes, I have told them to you, but here they are, for you, in writing. Narcissa and Draco have received a similar letter, and so has Mr. Tuttle.
Teddy is to have all of you. You, and my sister, and Draco. The whole lot of you for his family. I know what I am asking. I know what stands between you and them, and I am not such a fool as to think four years and the end of a war have washed it clean. But I will not have that child raised the way I was raised, taught that family is a question of the right blood and the right name. He is to grow up knowing he was wanted by all of you, and I have set it all down properly besides, so that no one can be clever and argue it away.
You might think you are not enough for him. You are wrong, and I am too tired to argue about it, so you will simply have to take my words as that of a dead woman, which, in my experience, carries weight. I have watched you with my grandson for four years and you have never once been less than exactly what he needed. Family is not only the people you are born to, Harry. You above anyone alive know that.
Look after my grandson. Kiss him for me.
And forgive me, I am so very tired, and Ted has been waiting for me for a long while now, and I should like to go and find him and Nymphadora both.
All my love,
Andromeda
Harry read it twice. Then he folded it back along its creases, sat with it in his hands in the empty white hospital corridor, and didn't go to work.