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“Something is wrong with Scorpius.”
They were both curled up on the couch together, Harry sprawled lazily between Draco’s legs with his back against Draco’s chest, head pillowed against Draco’s collarbone. Scorpius was passed out on Harry’s chest, his little fingers clutching in Harry’s shirt, the fabric surely wrinkled from the position by now.
Draco had a book open in his hand, but his eyes flicked from the pages down to their sleeping son, his white-blond hair sticking up in several directions from his nap, his pink mouth parted slightly as he breathed, a wet drool patch forming on Harry’s chest. Just fifteen minutes ago, the two of them had been racing around the living room, squealing and laughing with utter delight while Draco watched them amusedly from the couch.
Scorpius was two years old now and the absolute light of his fathers’ lives. He was far more spoiled than either of them had ever intended, but the little boy was just too cute to say no to. Harry, especially, had a hard time denying their son anything, and Astoria’s prediction that Draco would be the strict parent had swiftly come true—as though either of them had ever had any doubts.
But with Harry’s desire to give Scorpius absolutely everything, Harry also tended to worry far more about their son than Draco did. Every little sniffle and Harry was terrified that Scorpius was coming down with a life threatening illness. Scorpius toppled over and Harry wanted to take him to St. Mungo’s, worried about broken bones. Scorpius refused to eat his vegetables one time despite liking them the day before, and Harry feared that their son was allergic.
Draco didn’t mind Harry’s worry most of the time, and he had no trouble toeing the line between assuring Harry that their son was perfectly fine and indulging his fears a healthy amount. It was a frequent occurrence that Harry would open conversations just like this, insisting there was something wrong with Scorpius, so Draco wasn’t particularly worried about this statement.
“Oh?” Draco questioned, eyes lingering on the sleeping child before they returned to his book, his free hand buried in Harry’s hair, fingertips lightly scratching at Harry’s scalp.
“Yes,” Harry agreed, one hand splayed out on Scorpius’ back, his thumb brushing slowly back and forth over their son’s spine. “He doesn’t talk.”
Draco’s breath caught, attention diverted from his book again.
Draco didn’t answer right away, and the sound of Scorpius’ clunky breathing resonating in the room, mouth half muffled by Harry’s shirt with his position. Harry’s head was tilted down, likely staring at their child as well, and his touch to Scorpius’ back did not falter despite the unsteadiness of his words and voice.
“We’ve already talked to a healer about this,” Draco murmured, throat bobbing slowly. “They said it was perfectly normal for him not to want to talk at this age. Lots of kids show no interest in talking until they can speak full sentences.”
Harry huffed, and his hand moved higher, until he could brush his fingers through Scorpius’ hair, smoothing the strands back into place. Scorpius’ breath hitched slightly at the touch, and he curled up a bit tighter on his father’s chest, toes digging against Harry’s thigh.
“I know that’s what they said, but it’s not normal for him not to be at least babbling. Bill’s kids were all talking real words at eight months. Rose was saying mama and dada at a year. Even Neville and Luna’s twins were speaking by two years, and they were considered late bloomers. But Scorpius is over two now and he hasn’t so much as uttered anything more than screaming and crying.”
Harry was most certainly frowning now, Draco was certain, but with the way his head was angled down, Draco wasn’t able to see.
“And?” Draco asked and resumed the scratching at Harry’s scalp, wanting to soothe his worry away. “Our son is different. He’s special. He doesn’t talk, but he’s still pretty good at letting us know when he’s upset and when he’s happy, isn’t he? He’s happy, and he’s healthy, and he’ll talk when he wants to. We’re aware of the situation, and it’s not like we’re ignoring the problem. I just don’t think trying to rush him is going to help.”
“It’s not just that,” Harry argued, hand moving back to Scorpius’ back to keep him steady as he craned his head back to look up at his husband, face pinched with concern. “Haven’t you noticed other things that are odd with him?”
Draco closed his book and set it down on the arm of the couch so that he could give Harry his full attention, realizing that Harry wasn’t going to just let Draco assure him that things were okay and move on. “What do you mean?”
“I just mean,” Harry sighed, shaking his head, “Scorpius has some strange habits, doesn’t he? Aside from the not talking aspect, he ignores us a lot, doesn’t he?”
“Ignores us?” Draco asked, laughing softly. “Harry, love, he’s a two year old who doesn’t like to hear the word no. Of course he ignores us.”
Harry wasn’t laughing, though, and his expression closed off almost immediately at Draco’s attempts to brush this off with humor. “Just forget it, then. I’m probably just overreacting like always.”
Draco’s smile dropped from his face quickly, and he reached out to gently grab Harry’s chin, tilting his head back until they could look at one another again, thankful that Harry was nap-trapped with Scorpius dozing contentedly on his chest, preventing him from getting up. “Hey, hey, no,” Draco mumbled, thumb swiping gently over the stubble on Harry’s jaw. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disregard your feelings. If this is something that is concerning to you, then I want to hear about it. I want to talk about it. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were being serious about this.”
Harry softened a bit, and Draco leaned down just enough to kiss the top of Harry’s messy curls, releasing his chin when he was certain Harry wasn’t going anywhere.
“I know that a ton of kids get an attitude at this age, and that he gets really angry when we tell him no, but I think it’s something different,” Harry went on, softer this time. “It’s not just him ignoring us because he’s upset. Just the other day, he was pulling on Padfoot’s tail, and when you told him no from across the room, he didn’t react. It wasn’t like he was purposely ignoring you and was upset that you were telling him no, it was like he… Like he couldn’t hear you say no.”
Draco’s gaze shifted to the armchair near the fireplace, where their all black rescue cat, Padfoot, was curled up on the cushion, sleeping just as peacefully as Scorpius. Padfoot had been an unexpected addition to their family before they’d had Scorpius, and the cat was still adjusting to having a newly mobile two-year-old living in the home. Scorpius, meanwhile, was still learning how to be gentle with the cat, and Harry and Draco both had to frequently reprimand their son for tugging at Padfoot’s limbs and fur when the cat attempted to wriggle away from the child.
“I see,” Draco admitted, replaying the incident over again in his head.
At the time, Draco had been frustrated that Scorpius hadn’t left Padfoot alone even when Draco had firmly said no, and had continued to torment the poor cat with his haphazard attempts to play until Draco had marched over and forcefully tugged Scorpius off of him, giving Padfoot the opportunity to dash away.
Scorpius had immediately burst into tears and had been inconsolable for nearly an hour afterwards, and Draco had felt incredibly guilty the entire time.
But the handful of times Draco had called out No and Scorpius, the little boy had not reacted. Draco had chalked it up to the attitude their son had discovered since turning two, and the trouble they were having getting Scorpius to listen to them.
“But it’s not just that,” Harry continued, seeming to gain confidence now as he spoke. “It’s so hard to get his attention, isn’t it?” Harry turned his neck to look up at his husband. “You’re always complaining that you’re constantly calling his name, and he’s just refusing to respond to you. Even when you’re sitting right there next to him, he doesn’t look up when you repeat his name.”
“Yes, but you don’t seem to have that problem,” Draco grumbled, a frown on his face. “He responds to you. He loves you, and he’s always coming when you call him.”
Harry hesitated, likely sensing the troubled territory that they were wading into. “He loves you, too, Draco,” Harry assured him, but Draco just huffed softly. Of course Draco knew that Scorpius loved him, but Scorpius tended to prefer Harry. He was always more excited to see Harry, always climbing into Harry’s lap, always wanting to be held by Harry. Draco struggled not to feel personally slighted by a two-year-old, but it was tough when he loved Scorpius more than anything.
It wasn’t Harry’s fault directly, but Draco was certain it had something to do with the fact that Draco was always the one to reprimand Scorpius and punish him. Harry was the one who stayed home with Scorpius during the day while Draco was out at work, and by the time Draco made it home, he was frequently exhausted and unable to run around with their son the same way Harry could. It seemed to be all Scorpius wanted to do since he took his first steps, and Draco struggled to keep up with him.
Harry had been trying to convince Draco for two years now to quit his job and stay home with his family. It wasn’t like they needed the money, after all, but Draco still felt as though he owed the world a debt for letting him walk free instead of locking him away in Azkaban after the war.
Perhaps his self-made obligations were beginning to become too much of a burden, as it was now affecting his relationship with both his husband and his son.
Harry, thankfully, didn’t continue pushing that train of thought.
“I know it seems like Scorpius responds better to me, but he didn’t used to. He used to ignore me a lot, too, and I would get really frustrated. But I started changing the way I talked to him. If I wanted him to come to me, I’d gesture for him to come over, and he responded a lot better than me just asking him to come over. When I tell him no, I make sure to shake my head as I’m speaking, and yeah, he pouts, but he listens,” Harry explained, chewing on his lip. “And, you know, you’re always complaining about how it seems like he’s not listening to the words that you’re saying, yeah?”
“You’re making this seem like I’m the only one who gets frustrated by our son’s quirks,” Draco complained, only half-heartedly. “I’ve heard you say the exact same things I am.”
Harry laughed quietly, but without any real humor. “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry, that is true. It does seem like we sit here and we talk to him, but he looks like he’s not even listening. We’ll tell him why he can’t pull Padfoot’s tail and then we let him go and he immediately tries to do exactly what we just said not to do. It’s frustrating, I know.”
“It is,” Draco agreed readily, and his free hand slid down to rest against Harry’s on Scorpius’ back, the steady up and down of his son’s breathing easing the conversation. “But these are all completely normal things, Harry. We talked to the healer about it, and they aren’t concerned.”
“I know,” Harry sighed, his fingers fidgeting under Draco’s on Scorpius’ back. “I know they said this was fine and that’s just how our son is, but I still can’t stop thinking that something is wrong. I can’t help but think that maybe– maybe–”
Harry’s voice trailed off, heat creeping up his neck, and he ducked his head.
“Maybe what?” Draco pressed, forehead wrinkling in confusion.
Harry didn’t respond right away, but Draco could see Harry attempting to gather his thoughts as well as his courage. Whatever conclusion that Harry had come to regarding their son’s behavior, it clearly weighed heavily on him, and Draco gave him the time to find the right words.
“I know I’m not a healer, and that I’m constantly thinking something is wrong with Scorpius, but I know my son. I know something is going on with him. Something bigger than me just being overprotective of him and worried about every little thing.” Harry’s shoulders squared, and his head tilted back until he could look his husband in the eye. “Draco, I think Scorpius might be deaf.”
The world felt as though it had just fallen out from under Draco.
Scorpius, their son, deaf?
“What?” Draco croaked out, voice cracking on the singular word.
“I didn’t want to believe it at first,” Harry said quickly, the words pouring out of him like vomit now. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Maybe he’s not intentionally ignoring us. Maybe he just can’t hear us. He doesn’t respond when we call to him because he can’t hear us. He looks like what we’re telling him is going in one ear and out the other because he’s unable to hear what we’re saying. He isn’t talking, or even babbling, because he doesn’t know he’s supposed to be talking right now. He isn’t mimicking us speaking to him because he doesn’t know we’re making noise.”
Draco’s gaze fell to Scorpius, his features relaxed and peaceful in his sleep. Could there be truth to what Harry was saying? Could their son really be deaf?
“No,” Draco protested, voice weak and half hearted. “No, that can’t be true. Scorpius can’t be deaf. He would– we would know if he were. We would have known a long time ago if he couldn’t hear us. Harry, the healers said he was perfectly fine. There’s no way that they could miss something like this, something this important.”
“Draco,” Harry murmured, and the sound of his own name made Draco flinch, just slightly. “How many people do you know that are disabled? How many people do you know that have mental disabilities? How many people do you know that are blind? Deaf? Unable to walk? Mute?”
The realization that Draco had never known anyone disabled hung in the air, suspended between them as if Stupefied.
“Well, there was Professor Moody,” Draco pointed out feebly. “I suppose he was the only one, though.”
“Exactly,” Harry nodded. “Moody was disabled. The wooden leg, walked with a limp and everything. He had trouble walking up the stairs at Hogwarts because of it, and yet there was no accommodations for it, were there? Even though the Castle is constantly changing, it didn’t adapt for him. It wasn’t something anyone talked about. Remus was the only other disabled person I know in the entirety of the Wizarding community, Draco.”
“So what are you saying?” Draco asked, a defensive edge in his tone in spite of himself. “That our son is a freak in the community? That he’s abnormal?”
“Of course not,” Harry rebuffed calmly. In Draco’s humble opinion, Harry was far too sedate about this possibility. There was none of the panic that Draco was currently feeling at this life altering news, and it only helped him to realize that Harry had come to this conclusion long before he brought it to Draco’s attention. He’d had plenty of time to accept this possibility as reality. “What I’m saying is that there are so few disabled people in our community that maybe the healers have never encountered a deaf individual before. We already know that wizards are less susceptible to illness and cancers like Muggles. Maybe they’re also less susceptible to disabilities, too, which is why the healers wouldn’t be looking for one with Scorpius.”
Scorpius shifted in his sleep, his leg tucking in against his body as he turned his head, lying his cheek directly in the puddle of drool he’d been leaving this whole time.
Draco couldn’t stop staring at their little boy, trying to wrap his mind around it all..
Scorpius. Deaf.
“What do we do?” Draco whispered, eyes growing damp, heart clenching in his chest. This would completely change all of their lives, and the idea of their son struggling had Draco’s stomach clenched with fear. Scorpius was already going to have a hard time living in both his and Harry’s shadows, but to have this on top of it?
Draco didn’t want that for his son.
“I think we should take him to the Muggles.”
Draco’s first instinct was to laugh. The Muggles? They couldn’t possibly be of any use if the most capable wizarding healers weren’t able to recognize what was going on with Scorpius. A second later, though, Draco recognized that the prejudice he’d worked hard to overcome had reared its ugly head again, and he tucked it carefully back into a box in his mind before he could act on those feelings.
“The Muggles?” Draco echoed, in a far less judgmental tone than he’d first had at the thought. “Are they going to be able to help?”
“I think so.” Harry sounded far more confident than Draco felt, which helped soothe Draco’s nerves a bit. “Something like this is a lot more common in Muggles. I used to go to primary school with a deaf girl, so they’d be familiar with this kind of disability.”
The idea of going to the Muggles for help left Draco feeling completely out of his depth. He was better about accepting that Muggles weren’t terrible and as clueless as he’d been led to believe as a child, but admitting that he needed their help with the most precious thing in his life had Draco’s stomach flipping over and twisting in on itself, fearing the worst.
“What if I did this to our son?” Draco choked out, eyes dampening with tears.
Harry blinked in surprise, caught off guard. “What do you mean?”
“What if I did this to our son?” Draco repeated, a touch more urgently. “What if I made him deaf? He’s my biological child, Harry. What if– what if I gave this to him? What if it’s my fault there’s something wrong with him?”
“Hey,” Harry murmured, and his arm stretched up at an awkward angle to touch Draco’s cheek, brushing the pad of his thumb along it. “Listen to me, yeah? This isn’t your fault. Sometimes things like this just happen, okay? And it’s not like you intentionally did this to him. You can’t blame yourself, okay? This is not your fault.”
Draco wasn’t certain that he could believe that, but he leaned into Harry’s hand anyway, sniffling.
“And there’s no sense in pointing fingers, is there? We don’t even know for sure whether he’s deaf yet, so let's stop worrying about who is to blame, and let’s focus on what we are going to do about it, yeah?” Harry soothed, and Draco nodded shakily. “Let’s get an appointment scheduled for him, and then when we have the results, we can figure out where to go. This is not the end of the world, and we are not going to be alone. The Muggles will be able to help us figure this out if he turns out to be deaf, all right?”
Draco nodded a second time, taking a faulty breath as he tilted his head just enough to kiss the palm of Harry’s hand. “All right,” he agreed, barely audible. “All right.”
“No matter what happens, we’re going to do what’s best for Scorpius,” Harry assured him. “And we’re going to do it together.”
“Together.”
Draco’s next breath came easier, envisioning the plan they had set forth. There was something wrong with Scorpius, but they were going to figure it out. And even if he did end up being deaf, they were going to figure out how to best navigate that. At the end of the day, they were still going to have their son, and Draco knew that no disability was going to make him love the little boy any less. Children were a challenge, so what was one more? They could handle this.
“Together,” Harry repeated again, his fingers warm and reassuring against Draco’s cheek. “The first step is finding out whether he’s deaf, and there’s just no point in worrying about what we’re going to do after that until we know for sure, yeah? Like I said, the Muggles will have experience with deaf individuals, and they’re not just going to let us struggle with figuring out how to handle this. They’ll have resources for us to check out so we can best cater to his needs.”
“Right,” Draco breathed, the panic that had squeezed his lungs only a moment ago easing a bit with Harry’s grip on the situation. “Right, I suppose that makes sense.”
Harry smiled up at his husband, and if they didn’t have a sleeping child trapping them as is, Draco was certain Harry would’ve dragged him down into a kiss. “It’s all going to be okay, you’ll see. He’s got a whole support system around him, and the more information we have about what’s going on with him, the better prepared we will be to handle whatever he throws at us.”
Draco couldn’t help the soft laugh that came out more as an ungainly wheeze than a chuckle, and he looked down at his son, the rosy tinge to his cheeks and nose he always had when he was asleep. Draco had always known that having a child was going to be difficult, but he’d expected that the bulk of the issues would come when he was older, when the rest of society started poking their nose into Scorpius’ business—it was bound to happen, being their child. But the sweet child that had stolen Draco’s heart since he’d come into existence was constantly upturning Draco’s expectations. This was no different.
Still, the realization settled heavy on Draco’s heart. “He’s going to struggle so much more if he’s deaf,” Draco whispered, eyes pricking with tears. “Everything is going to be so much harder for him.”
“I know,” Harry murmured, his hand falling from Draco’s face to find his hand, lacing their fingers together and giving him a firm squeeze. “I know it will. All we can do is help him through it the best that we can and let him know that this isn’t going to make us love him any less.”
Draco squeezed Harry’s hand back, then brought Harry’s knuckles to his lips. Atop Harry’s chest, Scorpius slept on, blissfully unaware. Draco wondered how long he would get to enjoy that simple innocence, how long it would be before he noticed he was different from his peers. For now, though? He was willing to trust that if Harry knew where to find answers, they could figure it out as a family. One step at a time.