The first time Harry Potter saw Draco Malfoy again, it wasn’t in a courtroom, or at some Ministry ball soaked in champagne and past-life grudges. No, it was in a cramped, pleasantly musty apothecary tucked between a Muggle tailor and a secondhand bookshop in Soho. The kind of place no one would think to find either of them—and yet, there they both were.
Harry was holding a sleeping Teddy Lupin on one hip, the boy's dark lashes fanned against flushed cheeks, breathing softly into Harry’s neck. His other hand clutched a scroll of potion prescriptions that Andromeda had insisted be filled today.
He stepped into the shop, bell jingling above the door, and glanced around at the warm, wood-paneled interior and neat shelves lined with everything from powdered bicorn horn to dried valerian roots.
Behind the counter, pale as frost and half-bent over an inventory scroll, was Draco Malfoy. His hair was longer now, tied at the nape in an effortless knot, and he wore a charcoal-grey robe rolled to the elbows, revealing elegant hands stained with ink and herb residue. There was a smudge of green along his cheekbone. He looked tired. Lean. Different, but unmistakably Draco.
For a long, stupid moment, neither of them spoke. The air between them felt immediately charged, electric with the weight of a thousand unsaid things.
Draco looked up slowly, his gaze flicking from Teddy to Harry. His mouth twitched, but not into anything resembling a smile, “Potter.
“Malfoy,” Harry returned, cautious. “You’re here.”
Draco tilted his head, something unreadable in his eyes.
A long beat passed. Teddy stirred against Harry’s shoulder, soft and oblivious.
Harry cleared his throat. “I just need these filled.” He approached the counter and slid the scroll across.
Draco scanned it, fingers brushing the parchment. “Andromeda’s still using that old potion for his lungs? Surprised she hasn't updated it.”
“Hm.” There was a pause, like the eye of a storm. Then Draco added, “Must be nice, Potter. Ever the perfect Godfather”
Harry stiffened. “What's your problem, Malfoy?”
“Oh, forgive me,” Draco said, sarcasm beginning to curdle in his voice. “Didn’t realise I needed permission to speak to the Harry Potter.”
Harry frowned. “Is this what this is going to be? Your bitter commentary while pretending you’re above it all?”
Draco’s eyes narrowed. “You think I’m pretending? You walk in here, still smelling like the Ministry’s moral superiority complex, and expect me to act like nothing ever happened between us in the past?”
“I don’t expect anything,” Harry said sharply. “But I didn’t come here for this.”
“No. You came to parade the perfect godfather image, I suppose. Or maybe to see what became of the boy you hated and saved in equal measure.”
Draco scoffed. “That’s a convenient rewrite.”
“Fine. I didn’t like you. But I never wanted—”
“To see me here?” Draco cut in. “Behind a counter, selling potions, raising a child I never thought I’d have alone?”
Harry’s voice dropped, quiet but firm. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You don’t know what you mean,” Draco muttered, turning away sharply. “You never did when it came to me.”
The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was taut with restraint, with all the fights they’d never had the chance to finish, with everything that had been simmering for years. Harry tried to take a breath. “Look, I didn’t walk in here expecting a reunion. I didn’t even know this was your shop. Can we—can we not do this right now?”
Draco gave him a long, unreadable look. Then his eyes flicked again to Teddy, who had nestled deeper into Harry’s shoulder.
“I’ll get your potions,” he said finally. His voice had cooled, but not softened. He turned, pulling ingredients with mechanical precision.
A long moment passed, filled only by the quiet clink of glass and soft grinding of herbs. Harry glanced around, then spotted a pale blue pram tucked behind a curtain in the corner. His chest tightened.
“You have a son?” he asked, tentatively.
Draco didn’t look up. “Scorpius. Ten months.”
“Are you doing it all on your own?”
Draco’s hands slowed slightly. “Yes.”
Something in Harry’s chest twisted. “That can’t be easy.”
“It’s not,” Draco said, and for a second, he sounded human again. Tired. Honest.
Their eyes met. And suddenly, they weren’t shouting. They were just two men, bruised by life in different ways, standing in the same small room.
Draco handed him the bag and he left.
Harry didn’t mean to see him again. That was the truth.
He’d tried to forget it—the way Draco’s voice had cracked just slightly when he said he was raising a child alone. The way his fingers trembled, almost imperceptibly, when their hands touched. The fact that Harry hadn’t looked away.
But that night, sleep had evaded him. Teddy had long since gone to bed, curled up under a blanket Andromeda had charmed to emit a faint lullaby, and Harry had stood for hours at the kitchen sink, staring into the darkness beyond the window.
Ten months old, Draco had said. Andromeda mentioned a baby recently, hadn’t she? Something in the Prophet about an anonymous donor, whispered in the background of some article Harry barely skimmed.
It could be a coincidence. Probably was. Except—
He’d donated once. Years ago. Anonymously. For a Muggle clinic, of all things. He’d been twenty-three and reeling after the war, desperate for some abstract hope, some idea that part of him might go on in the world even if he didn’t know how to be a part of it. He hadn’t thought of it in years.
He didn’t want to think about it now.
But then two weeks passed. Teddy needed another round of potions. And before Harry could stop himself, he found his feet turning again down the same little alley in Soho.
This time, Draco wasn’t behind the counter. Instead, a small boy with pale blond hair and shockingly green eyes stood near the herb racks, clutching a stuffed thestral and babbling nonsense to himself.
He would have recognized those eyes anywhere.
“Scorpius!” Draco’s voice echoed from the back. Then he appeared, hands dusted in asphodel, a towel thrown over one shoulder.
He saw Harry. Then, very slowly, his eyes flicked to the boy.
Harry looked at Draco. “He has my eyes.”
Draco didn’t blink. “Coincidence.”
Harry’s voice was quiet, almost gentle. “No, it’s not.”
Draco set the towel down. Walked forward. Each step, deliberate, “I didn’t know. It was anonymous. I didn’t know it was you.”
“I didn’t know it was you,” Harry repeated. “I never would’ve—”
“Wouldn’t have what? Donated? Existed in a world where you could’ve fathered a child and walked away?”
Harry flinched. “Don’t do that.”
Draco was shaking now, whether from fury or something else, Harry didn’t know. “You don’t get to come in here and make this complicated. I had a plan. I was fine.”
“No, he’s mine.” Draco’s voice cracked. “You don’t get to swoop in with your sad eyes because you had a revelation and your moral high ground and lay claim to something you abandoned before you even knew it existed.”
“Would it have changed anything if you had?”
The little boy looked between them, blinking wide green eyes, oblivious.
“I want to be part of his life,” Harry said. “I don’t know how yet. But I want to try.”
Draco’s jaw clenched. “You don’t get to want. Not without earning it.”
“I’ll earn it,” Harry said, and for once, his voice was steady. “Even if you hate me for it.”
Draco looked at him for a long, long time. Then, softly:
“I don’t hate you. That is the problem, believe me.”
Scorpius dropped his thestral and waddled forward, holding his arms out.
Harry reached out without thinking—and froze as the boy grasped his finger.
But Draco didn’t stop him.
