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When Draco returns to Malfoy Manor, everything is dark. The moon is clouded over, only the faintest beams of anemic light cutting through the gloom.
The house should not be so quiet. The blackness of the night should not be so absolute.
Something is wrong.
His wand is out, his body coiled into a defensive stance as he makes his way to the front doors. He feels for the wards and finds they have been ripped to shreds. The magic that blew them apart has lingered, the scent of ozone heavy in the air, a bitter taste on his tongue. He sees a heap of clothing on the paving stones, and it takes a moment to realize that inside the clothes, there is a person. He pokes at the figure with the toe of his boot but it doesn’t move.
Once inside, he scans the foyer. It’s too dark to see much near the entry, but on the grand staircase, beneath the towering windows that let in moonlight, he can see more bodies. He resists the urge to sink to his knees.
He left Scorpius in his room earlier tonight, in the care of house elves. He can hardly breathe around the tightness in his chest, the clenching terror. It’s waiting to be set loose, to be ripped out from his insides in an animal howl of pain.
He runs up the stairs, side stepping the dead without looking too closely, then hurries silently down the hallway. The reek of death is everywhere.
Scorpius.
He cannot do this. Cannot face it.
He must face it.
He knows what he will do if his son is dead. There is no question. Scorpius is the only reason he is still here, still scrambling for the Dark Lord, trying to survive.
He finds Scorpius’s door unlocked. A sickening thrill sweeps down his spine. He braces himself.
The first thing Draco registers is that it’s bright inside, the room blanketed in the golden glow of the bedside lamp. The lamp is shaped like a giraffe, Scorpius’s favorite animal.
Next, he sees Scorpius. His boy is asleep, cradled in the arms of someone who cannot be here because he died in the Forbidden Forest a decade ago. Draco knows this with wretched certainty.
After the fighting had died down, after the Dark Lord claimed victory, Draco returned to the forest. Potter’s body had been left in the clearing to rot. Draco knelt beside him and wept until the sky grew brighter with the rising of the sun. Then he gathered wildflowers, armfuls of purple dog roses and sweet honeysuckle, heaps of delicate columbine and golden kingcup. He yanked them out of the earth one by one until his hands were stinging and bloody from the scrape of sharp stems and leaves.
Potter was even more beautiful in death, or perhaps it was merely the first time Draco allowed himself to really, truly look at him. He spent a long time arranging the flowers. When they finally seemed right, he pressed a soft kiss to Potter’s forehead, right at the apex of that infamous scar, and made his way back to the castle.
So yes, Potter is dead. Draco knows this for a fact.
Yet here he is, holding Draco’s slumbering son in his arms, his eyes a too-bright green, his hair inky black and wild.
“How?” Draco manages.
Potter rises from the chair and carries Scorpius to the bed, setting him down so gently that Draco’s heart hurts. “Your son looks like you,” Potter says, speaking for the first time.
“How?” Draco says again, dizzying at the sound of that familiar voice. He never thought he’d hear it again. “You’re dead.”
“Not entirely,” Potter replies.
“I don’t understand—” Draco begins, but something in Potter's expression stops him.
“You cried for me,” Potter says, his eyes roving over Draco's face. “Why?”
For a moment, Draco can’t move or speak. Potter looks almost the same as he did ten years ago, but there’s an uncanniness to him now, something in the dangerous flash of his eyes that leaves Draco cold all the way to his bones.
“You set flowers around me. You put them in my hands. In my hair.”
“Shut up,” Draco says. He is lightheaded, unsteady on his feet now that the unbearable tightness has loosened.
Scorpius is alive.
Potter is alive. Draco wonders if he is dreaming.
“I have to tell you, I thought you’d be happier to see me,” Potter says.
Draco shivers.
Potter is right. Draco should be happy to see him.
And perhaps he is; it’s hard to tell. He picks through his jumble of feelings and finds that actually, he is furious. He shoves Potter before he can think better of it. “You were supposed to win,” he says.
Potter just stares at him with those unnerving green eyes.
“You were supposed to save us. You were supposed to save me,” Draco sobs, pushing him again, even harder this time. He wants to laugh and cry. He wants to fight Potter and kiss his mouth.
Potter has no wand, but suddenly, Draco’s legs fly out from under him, and he crashes to the floor. Potter looms over him, staring down at him with a blank expression. “You wanted me to win?”
“Of course I did!” Draco hisses.
“And yet, you’ve been serving Voldemort all these years.”
Draco flinches. He doesn’t like when people say that name—still—and he is ashamed of all the things he has done and not done in the last ten years. “Yes, but I—you died. What choice did I have?”
Potter kneels next to him, his robes fluttering in a nonexistent breeze. Draco realizes he can sense Potter’s magic, the surge and pull of it. It is strong; stronger than it ever was. And it was always frighteningly strong. “Why did you do it?” Potter asks him.
“Do what?” Draco asks, his heart pounding at Potter’s proximity, at the electric sizzle of Potter’s magic.
“The tears. The flowers. The kiss,” Potter says.
“How—” How could he know all that? No one was there. Or, rather, Potter was there. But he was most decidedly dead at the time.
“Why?” Potter asks again.
“Because. Because I…” Draco swallows hard. Why had he done it? “Because I hadn’t wanted you to die. I’d wanted your side to win.”
“My side,” Potter echoes. “Did you cry for Professor Snape? Did you cover Hermione in flowers? Did you press kisses to Ron’s face?”
Draco shuts his eyes tightly. “No.”
“Then why did you do those things for me?”
“Because I loved you!” Draco cries, then slaps a hand over his mouth. He feels a hot rush of tears now, the humiliated sort. Silly, that he should be so embarrassed about this after all that’s happened. But he is.
Potter moves Draco’s hand away, then brushes gentle fingertips over Draco’s lips. Potter’s eyes are green fire, too brilliant to be real. But he is real. He is. And he’s touching Draco’s mouth soft as the flutter of moths’ wings.
“Have you become a creature?” Draco whispers.
Potter shakes his head, his fingers trailing down Draco’s throat. Draco doesn’t mean to groan at the feel of it, but he does, a little. “Will you help me now?” Potter asks.
“Yes,” Draco replies without hesitation.
“What would you do to help me?”
“Anything,” Draco says, meaning it. “Anything.”
“In that case, I will let you live,” Potter says, standing. His brutal magic brushes against Draco’s skin and Draco remembers to be afraid. Because suddenly he knows, with terrible certainty, that Potter is no longer entirely human.
He remembers the state of the Manor, the hallways lined with bodies. “Did you kill them all?”
“I am not the same boy who died in the forest,” Potter says. “You need to know that.”
Draco does know that. He’d known it the moment he laid eyes on him. Potter is still Potter, only he isn’t. He is both more and less than what he was before. “I know.”
“But you’ll serve me anyway.” When his eyes meet Draco’s, Draco’s sure he can see all the way through him, to all the things he’s kept hidden for so long.
Draco nods.
Potter smiles, and Draco feels his own blood run cold at the sight of it. Potter reaches down to pull Draco to his feet, and once Draco is standing before him, Potter presses a kiss to his mouth. “If you betray me, I will kill you,” he says, no trace of a smile on his lips now, or in his eyes. Looking at him feels like staring into a raging fire—no, like stepping into one. Draco feels like he’s being eaten alive by flame.
“I won’t betray you,” Draco promises, and Potter kisses him again. Potter’s mouth is cool and dry despite the heat of his gaze.
“No,” Potter says, looking Draco over. His breath smells strange, like ashes. “I don’t think you will.”