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Psychometry. n. The practice of receiving psychic impressions about the past and about other people from objects they have regularly handled and used.
A purple pillowcase, smelling of cologne and perfume and sweat and hair.
*
Harry lay staring up into the darkness. His fingers curled into his sides, but nothing could ease the presence of Ginny in the bed beside him, or the single warm spot where her head, occupying the same pillow, touched his. He thought of turning over, but that would only wake her, and then she would murmur a question, and Harry would either have to lie to her or tell her truths that were not meant for two-o’clock in the morning.
When are they meant for, then?
Harry closed his eyes, in the hope that sleep might be hovering and just waiting for an invitation. But nothing swooped down on him and stopped his questions. Still he lay there, and still he revolved the objections in his head, and still none of the old reasons—
The children.
The Weasleys.
Ginny.
I’m married.
I’m a family man.
It would be wrong.
—had the same power any more.
He had done wrong by cheating on Ginny in the first place. He had done wrong by letting lust overpower him some evenings, and love others, and liking still others, and sometimes the desire to stay in Draco’s bed and breathe his scent and pretend that he didn’t have another lover waiting for him at home, as innocent of this man he considered his real lover as spring was innocent of autumn.
But he would do a greater wrong by staying here, by continuing to lie to her. He was in love with Draco, and not with Ginny any more, and though his two youngest children were still in Hogwarts, that had ceased to matter.
Maybe that meant he was a horrible person. But for Harry, it was the point where his eyes finally closed, and his muscles relaxed, and the sleep swooped down and stuck triumphant claws into his brain.
*
A mirror, non-enchanted, so often a victim of shattering followed by hasty Reparo spells that a fine, faint web of cracks sprays across it, a peace offering to a world eager to break it.
*
Tumbling, turning, frantic as a broom flight, grabbing each other, Harry threw Draco against the mirror, heard the glass crack, incanted Reparo before he dropped the wand and tried to rip Draco’s robes off, but the cloth wouldn’t tear, and Draco laughed with a breathless moan, and magicked his own clothes off, and Harry fastened his mouth on a bare expanse of chest, sucked, bit, marked, hungry as though he hadn’t just eaten lunch and didn’t still have the smell of cheese on his breath, his body throbbing with excitement at the thought of doing this with Draco in his own home, where neither Draco’s parents nor Ginny were likely to stumble upon them, because Draco’s parents were in the Manor and Ginny was out for the evening with the children, shushing each other, giggling, then shushing each other more loudly, and Draco rocking his hips, and complaining that he probably had blood and glass dust in his hair and that Harry should have some sympathy for the poor mirror, and Harry snapping back, and biting, and laughing again, and the whole flavor of happiness around them, the richer for being so furtively snatched.
*
A silver-backed hairbrush, wood worn and metal tarnished with frequent use, with a few long strands of red hair still caught in it.
*
“So, Dad, what do you think?” Lily spun around in front of the mirror, and then glanced appealingly up at her father. She started Hogwarts tomorrow, but she had begged so gently to try on her new robes the evening before she went that Harry hadn’t been able to resist giving her permission.
Harry smiled indulgently at her. She did look like a Hogwarts student already. Now that it was the third time, and since he knew Lily was more self-confident than Al had been, there was pleasure mixed with wistfulness in seeing her off. She wore her school robes with aplomb that not even Rose Weasley, two years older than she was, could match. Harry wondered what House crest would decorate her robes come tomorrow evening. He’d had James pegged for Gryffindor and Al for Slytherin from the beginning, and turned out correct each time, but his only daughter was more of a mystery.
“You look beautiful, sweetheart,” he said, and stroked her red hair for a moment. Snape’s memories suddenly filled his mind. Of course Lily got her red hair from Ginny, but she looked so much like her grandmother had at that moment that Harry caught his breath.
Lily smiled at him and turned back to the mirror. Harry watched her reflection absently as she brushed her hair with the old silver-backed brush, not noting how direct her brown eyes had become, and so her question caught him entirely by surprise.
“Do you say that when you sleep with him, Dad?” she asked quietly.
Harry choked on air, and started coughing. He heard Ginny’s voice from somewhere within the house, asking if he was all right; she was examining James’s trunk for any sign of illegal toys and tricks. Harry finally caught his breath, and shouted, “Yes, I’m fine!”
Then he turned to Lily, flushed, already trying to think of lies and explanations and rationalizations.
Her gaze caught his in the mirror again, and it had mischief in it, and love, and a bit of sadness.
“It’s all right, Dad,” she said. “Really.”
Harry licked his lips, and decided that denial would be pointless. “Yes, I say it,” he said. “I—Lily, it’s not often.”
“But you’d like it to be a lot more often,” Lily said, and then gave her hair a pat with the brush and peered at herself critically.
Harry laughed weakly. “Lily, have you been listening at doors again?” It was the way she had first discovered him and Ginny having sex, and since then, Harry had been careful to instruct her that eavesdropping was a deplorable habit, and that she should talk to him if she had a question about something important. Ginny had rolled her eyes when she heard him lecturing Lily, and pointed out that, if Harry had obeyed that dictum at Hogwarts, he wouldn’t have been alive to have children. Harry had acknowledged that point, but maintained stubbornly that it was different, now they were no longer at war.
“No,” said Lily. “I just watch. I mean, when we went to the train with Al two years ago, the way you looked at him was just so obvious.”
Harry stared at the back of her head again, while Lily went on brushing her hair as if this were the kind of conversation they had every day. It was bad enough that Lily knew he was sleeping with someone male, someone who wasn’t her mum; it was horrible that she knew it was Draco Malfoy, the father of her brother’s best friend.
“I thought we’d been careful,” he muttered.
“You weren’t,” said Lily. “And I’m not going to tell Mum or the boys, because I think you ought to tell them.” She suddenly took a deep breath, and seemed to hesitate. Then she turned to face him, and whispered, “It wasn’t anything I did, was it?”
And Harry was reminded that, wisdom and all, his little girl was still only eleven.
He picked her up and held her close, crushing the hairbrush between their bodies. “No,” he whispered. “Nothing at all. I just fell in love with him, that’s all, and there was nothing that you could have done to change it or prevent it.”
Lily nodded against him, and then said, “Was it something Mum did?”
“No,” Harry said softly into her hair, thinking of the first time he had seen Draco waiting with Scorpius at the station, how he would probably see him there again tomorrow, and the wings that filled his heart and lifted him when he did. “No, it was something Draco did. By being just—more. More everything.”
*
A copy of a very thick book called Wizarding History Since Charlemagne, with a glossy purple cover displaying the diadem of Ravenclaw; it looks like new, never having been read.
*
“Really, Potter. What’s a plebian like you doing in a place like this?”
It took an effort for Harry not to tighten his hold on Al’s hand until he hurt his wrist. Instead, he turned around, gave a nod, said, “Malfoy,” and then gently pushed Al towards the children’s section of Flourish and Blotts. “It’s all right,” he said, when his five-year-old son glanced back at him warily, obviously sensing the conflict thick in the air between him and Malfoy, and not liking it at all. “You look for that series of Matilda the Warrior Heroine comics you wanted. I’ll, er, be right here.”
Al stared back at him one more time, but the lure of Matilda the Warrior Heroine was too strong. He vanished down the next aisle. Harry muttered in relief, and then turned to face Malfoy, ready to snipe.
And then he had to stop, because his memories of Malfoy no longer looked anything like the reality.
Malfoy had grown no taller, and his face had never really changed its features, but he no longer looked—well, the way he had at the end of the war. After scrutinizing him closely, Harry had to say that his fragility, so visible while he huddled in the Great Hall next to his parents, had disappeared. He didn’t carry himself with the sneering self-confidence that had marked his early years at Hogwarts, but with something better, as though he knew his place in the world now. His robes were some odd mixture of cream and off-white and pale blue, and a dark ribbon held his hair back.
And then Harry had to shake his head, both because, since when did he notice other blokes’ clothes, and since when did he stand around and allow Malfoy the perfect chance to insult him?
He looked up, ready for the sneer, but Malfoy’s face was stricken blank with astonishment, open in a way that Harry had never seen it before. He was staring as if Harry had changed as much as he had in the interval. But Harry knew that couldn’t be true. Hermione often said in a despairing tone of voice that he was exactly the way he’d been in Hogwarts, and that he should remember that he wasn’t seventeen any more, and for God’s sake stop encouraging Ron in his delusions!
But—
But Malfoy wasn’t looking at him like he was seeing a growth of self-confidence. Exactly. It was something else, something a little bit different, something Harry thought he could recognize if it were in another person’s eyes.
And then he did recognize it, because Malfoy’s gaze wasn’t so very different from the gazes of women who sometimes looked at Harry in Diagon Alley. Approving, appraising, working towards appreciative.
Harry swallowed. He felt as though he had swallowed a great deal of honey all at once, and now it was working slowly down towards his stomach. And he was virtually certain that he was staring at Malfoy in the same way.
Malfoy’s eyelids lowered, and Harry found himself fascinated by the delicate pale fringe of his lashes. He watched the eyes darting beneath the pale skin of the lids, and the movement of Malfoy’s throat as he swallowed in turn. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be watching another man like this, or, really, any other women.
He seemed helpless to stop it.
“If you’re looking for a book,” Malfoy said, in a voice that was so soft it sounded seductive even though the words would have been normal said aloud, “I’ve found this a very good one.” He reached past Harry. Harry, in a trance, stood still, though Malfoy’s sleeve brushed against his face. Malfoy gave him an arch glance as he plucked the book from the shelf and held it out, silently saying that Harry’s not moving away was a message in and of itself.
“It’s called Wizarding History Since Charlemagne,” he murmured into Harry’s ear. “Always good for pretending to concentrate on a serious subject when you actually can’t, or for hiding inappropriate erections.” His eyes flickered down Harry’s body in knowing amusement.
Harry hastily seized the book and held it close to his chest. Malfoy laughed, the sound as soft as the rustling of dry scales.
“I didn’t mean that you had one right now,” he whispered. “Just that you…might have occasion for them—in the future.”
Harry, his hands aching with the weight of the book, his conscience screaming ineffectively at him What are you doing what are you doing what are you doing?, his body pulsing with unaccustomed warmth, met Malfoy’s gaze. The invitation was so clear there that he caught his breath.
But of course he had to answer it.
“I’d like to make occasions for them,” he said hoarsely.
Malfoy closed his eyes completely and hummed. “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll owl you.”
And he slipped away, towards a blond boy accompanied by a tall, purposefully striding dark-haired woman—probably his son and wife—just as Al came back, complaining that the shop had no more Matilda the Warrior Heroine comics.
Harry took Al’s hand and ruffled his hair, which he hated, and which sufficiently distracted him that Harry knew he wouldn’t notice his father’s longing gaze after the strange blond wizard.
Something had just been born between them, in such a strange and sudden way that Harry half-imagined it wouldn’t continue.
But he received Draco’s owl the very next day.
*
A letter folded and refolded so many times that the creases are starting to yellow; they’ll tear next.
*
September 2nd, 2019
Hi, Dad!
I just wanted to tell you that Scorpius and I have played a brilliant prank on James! We Transfigured every Gryffindor thing he owns into a Slytherin one and then cast spells to make sure he couldn’t change them back, and that anything he borrows from anyone else turns Slytherin, too! That’ll ensure that he leaves us alone and stops picking on Scorpius when he catches him alone in the corridors!
Oh, and then James tried to tease Lily for being Sorted into Hufflepuff. She tipped her whole glass of pumpkin juice over his head and stole his wand. So now his wand answers to her, and he has to go around in robes that are not only green, but sticky.
Scorpius says that his dad talks about you a lot, or anyway he notices it whenever you’re in the paper and mentions you. Why is that? I didn’t know you were friends! In fact, sometimes Uncle Ron tells stories about how much you hated each other in school—usually when he’s gloomily predicting that my friendship with Scorpius is going to fall apart at any moment. Don’t let Uncle Ron get half-pissed any more, Dad, he’s upsetting.
I just wanted to tell you that I think it would be really great if you and Mr. Malfoy were friends. Scorpius and I wouldn’t mind that at all! It would make it easier to visit each other and stuff. Seeing each other every few weeks isn’t enough. I don’t think it ever will be, even though Scorpius tells me I’m soppy. But I just can’t see us ever not being friends, no matter what else happens, you know?
Lots and lots of love to you and Mum from me and Scorpius
(and from Lily too, but I told her she had to write her own letters),
Al.
*
A single, creamy white peacock feather, with a blue eye on it so faint that it looks like a shadow on snow.
*
The first time, coming dazed out of Malfoy Manor, Harry startled one of the albino peacocks that strutted across the gardens, and it fled squawking. A feather flew out of its tail. Harry picked it up and stroked it across his wrists and his neck, partially to replicate the feeling of Draco’s lips there, and partially to convince himself that this was not just a dream.
He made sure to heal the love bites before he went home. The feather, he kept.
*
A curl of dark hair, settled in a silver locket with a small crest—a dolphin leaping over a rainbow—imprinted on it.
*
Harry opened the door expecting Ron or Hermione, who often visited on Sunday mornings, or maybe a Daily Prophet post owl who had become lost in trying to find one of the windows in their crazily constructed house and knocked on the door instead. He certainly did not expect to find Draco’s wife, Laetitia Albion, standing there.
Harry stared at her, and felt himself flushing. Laetitia gazed back at him with a very faint smile. Harry thought for a moment that she must have learned how to smile that way from her husband, but he realized an essential difference immediately. Laetitia looked as if she were laughing at the world, though very politely, so it would never doubt that she still pitied its foibles.
“Mr. Potter,” she said. “I do congratulate you. There is a point at which I would have considered Draco Malfoy’s heart and soul prizes worth having.”
“Who is it, Daddy?” Seven-year-old Lily was bobbing behind him, with her brothers not much further behind. Even on Sunday mornings, they had lessons in wizarding history and Muggle culture with their mother, and they eagerly looked for any excuse to escape.
“Just a businesswoman,” said Harry.
At the dreaded word “business,” his children fled. They were just at the ages when the adult world bored them immensely, unless it happened to discuss Quidditch or Hogwarts. Harry heard James whooping as he led Al and Lily into the garden, and then the inevitable sound of his sons beginning to fight over the best of the toy brooms before the door closed. Lily would probably steal it while they weren’t watching.
He turned back to Laetitia, and said, “You know. Obviously.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. She had glossy dark hair, but pale brows, as though God had used too much dye on one part of her. “Yes,” she said. “And I am most displeased that he didn’t tell me. We both made sacrifices to be part of this marriage. If he had told me, then we could have parted ways peacefully long since, and I could have had a life of my own while he had a life of his own. Instead, I find that he has been having a sexual affair for four years, and me? Holding to a faithfulness that he obviously considered outdated.”
She held out a locket towards Harry. Harry, who still had bad memories of lockets, made no move to take it.
“It’s only a curl of my hair,” said Laetitia quietly. “A blessing from my family, if you will. My mother would have given it to me when I married, but she was a bit occupied being put into the grave at the time.
“Now. I have settled things to my satisfaction. Draco and I shall separate. I will still be part of Scorpius’s life, and attend important events with his father—seeing my son off to Hogwarts, for example. I will tell no one the reason for our separation.” For a moment, her eyes narrowed with some deeply-held amusement. “The newspapers will think they know it soon enough, anyway.”
“There was a man you loved?” Harry dared to ask.
“Someone I loved and left in London, yes,” said Laetitia. “Since Draco chose a married lover who shares no inclination to leave his wife, I will respect that lover’s privacy. I think you should tell your wife yourself.” Her glance was like a spear. “And I have already claimed all the payment I wish from my cowardly, lying husband.”
“Half his money?” Harry asked, finally accepting the locket. He waved his wand in several detection spells, but on opening it, there was only a curl of hair there, as Laetitia had promised.
“He will never walk without a limp again,” said Laetitia. “Good day.”
And she Apparated from Harry’s front porch.
The next day, the Daily Prophet announced in a scandalized gasp that Mrs. Malfoy had separated from Mr. Malfoy, and that Mrs. Malfoy was very openly living with a half-gypsy witch named Donna, no last name available, in a fashionable flat in London.
Draco’s limp didn’t diminish his agility in bed, but he flatly refused to answer any of Harry’s questions about it.
*
A torn tablecloth, with a tacky pattern of white roses, smelling of linen and must from its long storage; it was too beautiful to simply throw away.
*
Harry lay beside Draco on the tablecloth covering his kitchen table. They had just fucked on it hard enough to rip a hole in the middle. Harry knew he would have to explain the rip to Ginny, and spell away the scent of sex in the air before she arrived home.
But this time was not yet.
This time was his arm around Draco’s waist, and their breaths rushing together , and Harry watching Draco’s sweetly flushed face, and sweat and come and even blood from the deeper bites and scratches covering their bodies, and Harry filled with a love that made his teeth hurt and his head ache and his skin vibrate like a drumhead.
That was the moment when he knew that he was going to leave Ginny. All the objections were still strong and valid.
None of them mattered a whit in that moment, with the sunlight from the window open to the gardens falling over them.
*
Some people might have thought it strange, could they have seen the list of objects that Harry Potter requested from his ex-wife after he moved into Malfoy Manor and before she sold the house.
But those people did not see the list, and they had not seen Draco’s smile when he opened the door to find Harry carrying a change of clothes and not much else, and they had not read the delirious letters of his two younger children, and they did not know about the honored places in Malfoy Manor where the objects were placed, or how carefully they were kept.