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My contractions start at breakfast, and more than anything else, I'm relieved.
The midwitch wanted me to get to 37 weeks, but my hips are narrow and two babies are too much for my body and I just want them out. Some parents would be worried about having them at 35 weeks, but I'm not. I have confidence in magic and healing. I helped develop the potions that ensure premature babies can breathe healthily, that their brains and hearts and bodies keep up with their full-term peers.
Some people want those extra weeks just to feel ready. But we've been ready for over two years. The bassinet, the burp rags, the nappies. Granger and I had conspired to surprise Harry with a baby shower two summers ago, one month before our child would be born to a young witch who had picked us from a book of prospective parents.
Harry glowed at that shower. And I felt lucky just to bask in that glow, even if I’d always been ambivalent about having a child.
I wasn’t assigned male at birth, but from the moment I could speak, I made it clear that I was a boy and was to be treated as such. My parents, like most pureblood wizards, understood this phenomenon, and supported any and all social and cosmetic transition. They allowed me to change my legal and magical name to Draco, and transfigured all photos and documents of me as an infant to reflect my gender. But they drew the line at my fertility.
Before I left for Hogwarts, I begged my parents to let me take blocking potions so I wouldn't have to suffer puberty with female hormones in a dorm full of boys. But they stood firm. I remember my mother wiping tears from my cheek.
“We love you no matter what. But you have a responsibility to this family and to all pureblood wizards. It is a privilege to be pureblood, and we cannot in good conscience allow you to give that up. I promise, Draco, you’ll understand when you're older.”
My father had his solicitor draw up a document. When I came of age, the arrangement said, I could have access to my vault in exchange for 5 of my eggs (to be carried by a surrogate at the time of my choosing). Then I would be allowed to start taking testosterone potions.
But before any of that happened, the war did.
By the time Voldemort fell, I had no desire to bring more pureblood children into the world.
Hell, I didn't believe that pureblood even meant anything.
The first few years at Hogwarts, before the Dark Lord came back, I was fine. I had so much fun humiliating Potter, keeping his attention on me. Zabini and Nott teased me relentlessly about my feelings for him, but I had the muscle and masculinity of Crabbe and Goyle to hide behind. For a while, I thought that was enough. My rivalry with Potter, my sycophantic cronies.
But when the war begun and I realized how tenuous everything was, how truly dangerous those beliefs about our supremacy were.
I was so alone, and so scared.
Madame Pomfrey would see me monthly to help me alter my appearance through magic. She’d interrogate me about my health and wellbeing, especially when I was so clearly suffering. She thought it was my hormones that were destroying my health in sixth year; she thought the reason I hid my wrist from her was that I was cutting it. She’d ask me if I wanted to know about other trans students. She’d try to get me to connect. But I always rebuffed her. I threatened her job should she utter a word.
Intimacy was vulnerability.
I was already close to losing the only few people I cared about—my parents, Harry, Snape. Should I have a friend —or godforbid a lover —at Hogwarts, then there would just be more for Voldemort to threaten.
But then the war ended.
And I was free.
Finally.
Voldemort was dead, my father was locked up, and for reasons I still don’t understand, Potter had ensured my freedom.
I saw a specialist who made Pomfrey’s cosmetic changes permanent, and who started me on testosterone. And after only a few months of T, a few months of life without Voldemort, everything that had always felt not-quite-right finally clicked into place.
---
I don't know how I know, but I know this isn't a false alarm. I’ve had Braxton-Hicks, those random unproductive contractions on and off for months, but this feels different. Part of me wonders if it’s magic that I know—not that I’m in labor, but that I’m about to meet my sons.
I don't want to bother our midwitch in case I’m wrong, so I floo Mrs Weasley, a trained mediwitch in her own right, to come and examine me.
Harry had made sure she was okay with this once, twice, a dozen times. Would it be too painful for her, helping deliver identical twin boys?
“Just the opposite, my sweet boy,” she said. “I think seeing two healthy children come into this world is exactly what I need.”
She arrives through the floo with her medical kit and an overnight bag. I lead her up to my rooms for the exam.
I’ve been living at the manor for months now, ever since my belly became too much to hide. It’s strange, how this thing, this pregnancy, is probably the thing I’m proudest of. It’s not tinged with the shame or embarrassment that's coloured so much of my life since the war. I never would have expected it, but I’ve never felt such joy as carrying Harry Potter’s children.
The public is less forgiving.
It didn’t take long for the story to break—for someone to see us leaving a midwitch’s practice, my robes falling to the side of my already-gigantic-at-20-weeks belly. The Prophet sensationalizing it, misgendering me, quoting Pansy as saying, “she always knew I was some sort of freak.” It was strange, the way the wizarding world felt about trans people. Transitions were to be done swiftly and discretely, and once “completed” the person was expected never to act in any way that might contradict their gender.
A pregnant man, a Death Eater, the husband of their saviour—I was simply too much for them to handle.
After much consternation we decided, for all of our safety, to hide away at my natal home, where I could spend plenty of time outside in the country, allow my mother and her elf to dote on me, and avoid the threats of the outside world.
And it’s been wonderful. Even though Harry still spends his days at the ministry, it feels like we’re on the world’s longest honeymoon. We walk the gardens and have sex everywhere. We lie on the grass for hours, Harry with his hands on me, just trying to feel where each of the babies are, feel them move and kick, imagine what our future is going to look like as a family of four.
Harry left early this morning to get a jump on work. He kissed my face about a dozen times, and kissed my belly twice as many. I ambled down to the dining room an hour or so later, and was sipping tea, happily eating a scone with clotted cream when the pains started.
I knew they were different because they took my breath away. I tried to ignore them, to focus on the paper, the quidditch scores, but even Mother noticed something was amiss.
Mrs Weasley does what she can to make me feel comfortable as I lie in my bed, wearing only my velvet dressing gown. She sits on the edge of the bed and babbles about going into labor with her multitude of gingers, as if she’s trying to distract me as she presses her hands roughly against the skin of my bump.
A contraction starts, and I try to act as if it’s not bothering me because this is still early, and I know I have a long road ahead, but I have to focus on breathing. Mrs Weasley touches her wand to my chest, to my bump, checking my heartrate and the babies’.
“Seems like early labor, but you’re on your way,” she says. “I think you should let Harry and Susan know to be on alert.”
I decide that I want Harry here, that I don't want to have to wonder where he is or if he'll make it should things pick up. I firecall his office, and I'm relieved that he's still at his desk, not out in the field for me to send some harried ministry worker to track down.
His face lights up when he sees me before falling with concern. “Is everything alright, love?”
“Everything's fine. I just think you should come home.”
“Why? What's going on?”
“I just I think that you should come home.”
The wheels turn in his head for a moment—my sweet, daft plonker—and then his eyes widen. “Now? Is it—”
I raise an eyebrow meaningfully.
“I’ll be right there,” he says, already clearing his desk and gathering his things. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be right there.”
---
When the war ended and Hogwarts had been repaired, Harry found himself rich and listless. Before enrolling in the Auror program, he started the Prince Research Foundation, and by some strange miracle I found myself employed there as a potions researcher. The organization was tasked with using Snape's extensive library of notes for the betterment of wizardkind—improving the lives of werewolves, painlessly regrowing bones and organs, curing the sick and feeding the hungry.
Potter was a nuisance of a benefactor. He'd stop in at odd hours—between his Auror shifts, I presumed—and ask inane questions. It wasn't until he'd been coming by daily for almost two months that I realized he was coming onto me.
“Potter,” I said, “everyone knows you were crap at potions—”
“Oi!” He interrupted me, standing over my shoulder, watching me stir a standard anti-anxiety tonic, “I got an E on my OWLs.”
I scoffed. “Regardless,” I said, elbowing him gently in the solar plexus, “it’s clear to everyone that you're only here because you fancy me.”
I heard his breath catch behind me.
He was suddenly still. “Would that bother you? If I did fancy you?”
I hoped that he couldn't see my smirk, the pinkness of my cheeks in the reflection of the potion in the cauldron. “I suppose if you wanted to take me out—only to a fine establishment, the type the Weasel has never set foot in—I’d be amenable to your advances.”
And so we went out. And he tried to take me home. And I resisted. And he looked deliciously heartbroken.
It was beautiful. The earnestness in his eyes. The rejection. I scurried off the Knight Bus and into my flat.
It was one one thing to enjoy Potter, to get to reject him. But after everything we’d been through, the way I’d hated him and revered him and put all of my faith in him, I couldn't handle him rejecting me just because of my body.
But if Potter was anything, he was a stubborn, persistent fucker.
He didn’t stalk me or harass me like he had when we were boys. He was kind and patient (a side of himself he’d certainly never revealed at Hogwarts), and never pushed me to date him, though he also never seemed to lay off the flirting. He sent me silly notes and brought me lunch. He invited me to spend time with his mildly sufferable friends.
I joined his weekly pub nights, and somehow, one night, he ended up drunk off his arse and I was the only one left to care for him. I took it upon myself to get him home safely, and of course the poor thing got the wrong idea.
I side-alonged him to his house, and he was on me the second we got through his front door. He clobbered me against a wall, one hand squeezing my waist through my shirt, the other braced on the wall behind me. He pressed his forehead to mine for a moment, his breath heavy and soaked in gin. And then Harry Potter kissed me. I wanted to melt into the wall against my back, to stay exactly in that moment, surrounded by Harry’s smell, licking across his lips, welcoming his eager tongue into my mouth. That kiss was better than a hundred orgasms. I told myself that he was drunk, that he wouldn’t remember, that I could just enjoy this for the moment that I had it.
He pulled off me and dragged me through the hall into his living room. He pushed me down on his sofa, kissing my cheeks and my mouth, lying half on top of me.
“Draco,” he murmured into my mouth, “want you so much. Are you waiting until marriage? I'll wait for you. I’ll wait forever for you.”
I pushed him so we were sitting beside each other, his hands still on my thighs, his lips red with spit.
“Potter.” My mouth was suddenly dry. But I had to tell him. Fuck, why was it so hard? It wasn't as if I hadn't disclosed this particular fact to plenty of other men. But I never really cared whether they'd reject me or not. They were muggles. This was Harry. “Listen. I'm trans. You need to understand what that means.”
“Wha—” his eyes were glassy and his cheeks were pink. He looked dopey and in love. “I don't? What does that mean for you? I'll call you whatever you want. Do you feel like a woman?” he kissed me again, wrapping his arms around me. Fuck, why did he have to be so drunk and handsy and delicious.
“No, Potter.” I pushed him back away even as my body screamed for him to cover me. “I don’t— Listen, I was born with female parts. Do you understand?”
He took a few steadying breaths. He too was wishing he hadn't had so much to drink, that the room wasn't spinning. “Okay. Okay.” He was trying to match my seriousness, but was failing. “You had surgery then? Or not? You have a cunt?”
“What the hell is surgery?”
“It's okay,” he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose, his forehead scrunched in earnestness. “I don't care if you have a cunt.”
“No one's ever called it that,” I said. “But yes, I have the same parts I was born with.”
“That's okay!” He said. “That's great. I'll lick your cunt. I don't care.” He kissed me again, long and slow and deep, trying to show me, I presume, exactly how nimble his tongue was, which… it was. Quite. “Draco, please just let me.”
“Potter, stop.”
He froze, then pulled away slowly, looking like a shamed crup. He then leaned over the back of the sofa and vomited on the rug.
I helped him up to his room, his words slurred, apologizing for throwing up on me. Even as I vanished the sick from my robes, I wasn't sure if I was more saddened or relieved.
He said he didn't care, I know, but he was drunk. He'd have consented to anything at that point. He didn't even know what he was consenting to.
And I'd thought about it so much.
I’d imagined how hot and tender it'd be, how intense it would be to be fucked by Harry Potter. To stare into those green eyes as I came.
After leading me into a linen closet by mistake, Harry managed to get us to his bedroom. He plopped onto the bed. I pulled his boots off, patted his thigh. “On your side, Potter.”
He made an adorable little moany sound as he rolled toward the edge of the bed and grabbed my hand, stopping me from walking away. “Don't go home, Draco,” he slurred. “Stay in the guest room. Please. Please.”
I don't know what possessed me, but for some reason I did stay.
When I woke up and realized where I was, though, I wanted to curl up under the covers and die.
I heard a quiet knock at the door. “Draco, you up?” Harry called softly.
I wondered if I could just stay silent until he got in the shower and then I could apparate out without him hearing me.
But then the door creaked open and he came in with two mugs of tea. He set them down on my nightstand and sat on the side of the bed.
“Draco,” he said. I was silent, my heart racing, my chest tight, so afraid of what I was about to hear. “I want to apologise for my behavior last night.”
I didn't know what to say to that, utterly baffled. I took a sip of tea. Of course he made it exactly how I liked it.
“You were clearly not interested in having sex, and you were pushing me away and I didn't stop trying. And I think I said some… Maybe inappropriate things about your body? I know it's not an excuse, but I hadn't slept or eaten out in the field for a day and I was very drunk. And I … I really like you, Draco. And I'd really like to date you. If you want.”
I think I gaped at him for a solid minute before I finally made enough sense to say, “Have you ever been with a trans person before?”
He shook his head. “But I’m not fussed. And I like you. I think you're fit as hell. Can we try dating again?”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes, and took another sip of tea. Fuck, it was good.
---
I’m back at the dining table, my mother force-feeding me toast with butter and jam, when I hear Harry barrelling in through the front doors, his feet stomping crassly through the house, calling my name as if he’s here on some rescue mission. Always in character, that one.
He looks mildly disappointed at the site before him, the mums sipping tea while I look on, disinterested. “Did I miss anything?”
“Not a thing,” I say reaching a hand out to him, “let’s go for a walk.”
“Narcissa, Molly,” he nods to them as he attends me.
He helps me up from my chair, and we take our time heading out the side door and into the gardens.
We try to keep the conversation light as we roam the lawns, stopping only when I have a contraction. They hurt, but they’re not unbearable, and once they’ve passed it’s like they never even happened. We talk about Puddlemere United and the Harpies, we talk about the case Harry’s working on, we talk about plans for a fundraiser for the Prince Foundation. We do not talk about what’s happening, or what’s about to happen.
I do sense, though, that when I am contracting, Harry has an uptick in excitement. I catch glimpses of his face and instead of being horribly concerned that his husband is in pain, I can see that spark he gets when something joyful and dangerous is happening.
---
Falling in love with each other was fast and strange.
All those ideas about him that I harboured in my mind as a lovestruck teenager were spot on. Despite how I acted, I always knew Harry wasn't the golden boy just because of his stupid scar. But because he was golden. I’ve grown to adore that stupid scar, by the way. I kiss it to wake him up in the mornings. I kiss it when I'm riding him.
As it turned out, most of Harry's assumptions about me were right, too. I was a spoiled and entitled child, and I did revel in his failures—but only because he'd rejected me (again, with good reason, the whole spoiled and entitled and violent and blood-purity-obsessed thing.)
And Harry had also seen me change. He said that was why he started hanging around me at work. How at first he was suspicious, didn’t understand why I would take a job at a nonprofit. But that he had seen how different I was before the war, during, and since.
“Reminds me a bit of Dumbledore,” he’d said once. His arm was around me, and we were tucked into a booth at the back of the pub, sipping beer and watching his friends dance like the moronic Gryffindors they were.
“Did someone put something in your drink?” I sneered, peering into his glass for effect.
“No, I mean it,” Harry said. “He bought into all that muggle domination crap, back when he was young. But he changed. Like you.”
“I’m sorry, Potter, but I think I’ll have to check you into St Mungo’s with Gilderoy Lockhart if you keep talking like that,” I said. I tried to wrestle his drink from him and we laughed and kissed and spilled beer all over the table.
He did have a point though.
And I think Harry also understood exactly how painful that change was.
How everything I believed—that we were better because of our blood, that my father was strong and infallible and the only acceptable type of man to be—turned out to be a lie, how I had to tear down every notion of who I was in the world and start from scratch. Going from an aristocrat to a researcher wasn’t exactly sexy, but somehow it felt like making amends. And every day without my father to look to, I had to figure out what kind of man I wanted to be.
Harry and I connected there. We didn’t usually talk about sex and gender; I answered most of Harry’s questions about my body and my transition early on, but after that, it never was really an issue. Once, though, after we’d been dating half a year or so, as we laid together after fucking, Harry snuggled up under my chin, listening to my heartbeat, he whispered, “I’m figuring out how to be a man, too.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, scratching my fingers against his scalp.
“Arthur is really the only consistent man in my life, and I love him, but … Everyone else died.” His voice was so small. “I want to be a good godfather to Teddy. I don't want him to feel like I did. Alone.”
“He adores you, you know.”
Harry smiled into my chest. He kissed it lightly. “Do you think you want to be a father someday?”
I wondered if Harry could hear my heartbeat pick up. “I like children,” I said, slowly, carefully, “but I'm fairly committed to letting the Malfoy line die out.”
Harry laughed. “When I was a kid I absolutely yearned for my biological parents. Then, I met Hagrid and then my godfather and I just realized, it didn’t fucking matter. My aunt was related to me and she never gave a shit about me. I just wanted someone who loved me. I think I have that with Teddy. But he’s not mine, y’know. Andromeda still has full custody. I’d like to give that to a kid who’s mine.”
I realized that he wasn't sharing this for no reason. “You want to have a family, then,” I clarified.
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, fuck, I’m scared, y’know. I don’t know how to be a father. But it’s still—it’s important to me.”
Fuck. This was do or die, wasn’t it. I took a deep breath. “If I were to end up with someone who wanted to have a family,” I said, “I would be open to adopting children.”
I felt him smile against me again. “Cool,” he said. The tosser.
---
Susan Bones is our midwitch. A wonderfully discrete woman whom Harry trusted from his days as a young revolutionary. She arrives in the early afternoon and has me lie on my bed to check my dilation—four centimeters—and suggests I relax in the bath for a few hours to preserve my energy. Harry and I retreat alone to the ensuite, promising to let the others know if something changes.
Harry helps me into the water. I'm slow and cumbersome. I ease myself down while Harry keeps me from slipping.
Harry sits on the edge of the tub.
My first contraction in the tub comes, and it is indeed less intense, but I almost want to get out because I miss Harry holding me.
Before the pregnancy, I never asked for help. The Dark Lord had drilled into my head that I was alone. That I was unworthy of pity. That only he could offer me salvation. That asking for help made me a failure.
And I believed it.
I rebuffed Snape. I rebuffed Dumbledore. I nearly spat on Harry when he spoke for me in court. I never let the laboratory assistants at the foundation near my workstation. I had to do everything on my own.
But being pregnant with twins was humbling. I could hardly get up on my own. Couldn't reach things. Couldn't brew. Had to use magic to do the most mundane of tasks and even then, the hormones and the tiny wizards inside made my spells inconsistently powerful.
So I learned to let my husband do what Harry Potter does best—help.
It's still a struggle though, and my cheeks are warm as I whisper, “will you get in with me?”
Hardly a moment later, Harry's banished his clothes and has slid behind me. The water rises further up my bump, warm and soothing. I sigh, relaxing into Harry, the light scratch of his chest hair against my back. He kisses my shoulder and rubs his hands in large circles over my belly.
I still his hands, holding them tight against me as the next contraction starts. I breathe as slowly as I can, my eyes closed, my back pressing into Harry's chest, a low moan escaping my lips as the pain crests.
It subsides, and I relax back into him.
And then I feel it.
“Oh my God,” I say.
“What?” Harry says. “What is it, love?”
“Oh my God .”
“Are you alright, should I call Susan?” Panic rises in his voice.
“Are you fucking hard right now, Potter?”
He coughs and sputters. I wish I could I turn around and see the look on his face. I am trying not to laugh, but his erection is pressing right into my lower back, as long and hard as it is on any given Saturday when we wake up late in the morning, naked and lazy and warm.
“I can't believe I'm here in pain giving birth to your fucking babies and you are fucking getting off on this ? I had no idea you were a sadist, Potter, this is wildly inappropriate.”
He's frozen behind me. “I’m sorry I swear I'm not turned on I just… My husband is naked and moaning against me!”
“MOANING!?” I say, mock incredulously.
“It's all very intense—I can't help it!”
I can’t hold it in anymore, a great laugh bursting from me.
I hear Harry drop his head against the back of the tub.
“I don't really understand you, Potter, but I must say I'm flattered. Now I know if I gain five stone all I have to do is moan and you'll still want to fuck me.”
“You could gain ten stone and I'd still want to fuck you,” he whispers in my ear. “I love you so much, Draco, you know that, right? It's so much more than how you look. But you do look amazing, you know that, right?”
The next contraction starts, and I clutch Harry's wrists as I start to breathe through it. He keeps talking.
“You are the sexiest fucking man on the planet and you're giving me babies. Do you know how hot that is?”
The contraction is long. I want to scream but I'm afraid if I start screaming now I won't make it through the birth. I keep breathing and trying to focus on Harry's words, on the warmth that his praise brings me, I let it act as a counter to the battle in my body.
“I am so proud of you,” he continues. “I am so in awe of you. You are so much stronger than anyone knows. Fuck, Draco, you're doing so well through labor, you are so strong.”
We continue like this for what must be hours. The light changes. The sun is setting. Harry keeps the water the right temperature with the occasional flick of his wand. He rubs my belly and massages my shoulders and presses my hips together during contractions.
Susan pops in to check my dilation. Four centimeters. Still.
“As long as you're comfortable and your waters haven't broken we have nothing to worry about. I'll check back in later,” she says with a smile, closing the door.
As soon as she's gone, the panic sets in. Suddenly there isn’t enough air in the room. My body, my chest, my skin is too tight.
“No. No.” My breathing is too fast. Too high. “Potter I have to push out two babies and I'm still only four centimeters? I can't keep going like this. I can't do this. Men aren't supposed to do this—” my voice has gone all squeaky.
“Shhhh, shh,” he soothes wrapping his arms all the way around my chest and holding me so tight. “You can do it. You can do it because you are doing it.”
I take high pitched breaths, trying to keep myself from crying through the next contraction. Trying to keep the panic from taking over.
“Take me to the muggles,” I cry. “Have them cut the babies out.”
“If you want to go to the muggles, we can still go to the muggles,” Harry murmurs into my hair.
“I don't want to go to the muggles,” I sob as I catch my breath. The contraction comes to a slow and arduous end. Tears slip out of the side of my eyes.
Harry holds me. “Do you want me to touch you?” He whispers.
Lord. Potter and his moaning fetish.
“As if you could reach,” I scoff. He snakes his hand down, but I bat it away.
“What about your nipples? The midwitch said that could help, yeah? Get things going.”
“Alright,” I say. “But it's only to help with labor.”
Potter takes the bottle of bath oil from the the ledge of the tub and drips it across my chest. He corks it and I close my eyes, dropping my head against his shoulder. I focus on taking deep, low breaths, just as Susan had forced me to practice these past few months. I try to remember what my mother told me, that everything would be terrible but panicking wouldn’t help.
Harry starts by rubbing his fingers in slow, slow circles over my nipples. They’re swollen, tender, but his soft, smooth touch feels wonderful. I sigh as the next contraction starts, and Harry can feel the change in my body, the tension in my breath.
“Should I stop?” he asks.
I shake my head. He keeps rubbing circles and I focus on those, his fingers on my nipples and the palms of his hands cupped against my pecs, on his presence around my body as the pain runs its course.
After the contraction ends, Harry turns his hands and lightly pinches my nipples, rubbing them softly between his thumb and forefinger.
“You can go harder,” I say.
He practically purrs as he pinches harder, twisting and playing with my nipples now as if we really were in the middle of foreplay. And I’m lost for a moment, surrounded by warmth, surrounded by Harry, just the two of us as we always are.
That illusion, however, is shattered when my next contraction comes on strong, seemingly out of nowhere and I find myself having to move and twist because the babies are suddenly shifting, moving down inside of me.
“Fuck Fuck! Potter, I need to stand. I need to stand!”
In an instant, Harry banishes the water so we don't slip and he helps me to my feet as if I weigh nothing.
I press my hands and the top of my head against his chest as I feel enormous pressure downward and my waters break, splashing into the tub below us.
---
No one would say that Harry James Potter didn’t know hardship. I wish I could say I had nothing to do with that, but I spent years reveling in the obstacles I could create for him. But I never really got to see the fallout; Harry always put on a front for me in school. He always seemed happy with Granger and Weasley, and while I was masterful at getting a rise out of him, seeing that flash of anger, that fight-or-flight that would always end in fight, he refused to let me see any sign on weakness.
But once we were married, I had a front row seat to his vulnerability.
And I didn’t know the depths of pain he could feel until I saw him give up Meena.
He held her and kissed her and told her he loved her and put her into the arms of the social worker to be returned to her biological mother.
And I closed the door and he began to sob. Great wailing cries as if someone had died. I sat beside him on the sofa rubbing his back as he wailed.
“I know,” he gasped “she belongs — with her — biological — family but — she's mine! I named her! She belongs with me!”
The adoption process had been long and trying, even for Harry Potter. Adopting a child to two queer men, one of whom sported the Dark Mark, raised a lot of eyebrows. It took endless home visits and questionnaires, endless paperwork and interviews and intrusions into our lives.
But finally a young witch, Veronique, a few months pregnant and barely out of Beauxbatons, had recognized Harry’s photo at the agency and chosen us as the parents for her child.
We got to know Veronique, a bit. We made sure she had the best of care. We prepared our home for the baby. We both arranged for paternity leave, and set up care for the baby for when we'd return to work.
And then Meena was ours.
She was bald as a bludger, with big brown eyes. It was impossible not to love her, this helpless little thing that that had been left in our care. I looked forward to raising her, to seeing the kind of person she'd become. But there was no mistaking—she was Harry’s. He hardly let me change a nappy or warm a bottle; I had to practically pry her from his arms to get him to sleep.
Not too many days later, Veronique’s boyfriend proposed, and she changed her mind. She wanted her baby back. And because Harry is so open and so giving and spent his entire childhood yearning to be reunited with his biological family, he didn't fight it.
I would have kept her, but he wanted to give this child—the child he’d held and fed and stayed awake with for two weeks and whom he loved above himself—what he never had.
But it came at a price.
“I just need time,” he kept saying.
We went back to our lives, to the way things had been before Meena.
I was alright. Everyone kept asking if I was okay. But as lovely as baby she was, I hadn't bonded with her the way Harry had.
Harry was depressed. Depressed in a way I didn't know he could be. He looked like I did in my sixth year. Bags under his eyes. His skin hanging off his body.
He lost interest in sex.
He lost interest in everything.
Weasley and Granger were worried. They said he didn't even want to spend time with the kids. I thought it was just grief, just time he needed.
Three months later, an owl came from the adoption agency, asking if we wanted to be back in consideration for available infants, or if we'd be interested in opening our home to an older child immediately.
I found the note in the bin.
Three months after that, we got an update from Meena's family. They sent dozens of pictures of Meena, of her at family events, her Christening (they kept her name in our honor), her tiny Christmas pajamas, her big gummy smiles, her crown of flowers at her parents’ wedding.
I found Harry one afternoon sitting at the kitchen table staring at them, his eyes red and his face splotchy. He looked like an alcoholic hitwizard from the animated comic books I read as a child.
I sat down beside him and covered his hand with mine.
He didn't respond.
“Harry,” I said. He looked up at me. I almost never used his given name. “We can't go on like this. You chose to let her go. And she's happy. You deserve to be happy too.”
“Do I?” Harry snapped his hand away. “Do I? Why is it that every single fucking semblance of a family I get is ripped away from me? Is this my punishment? For letting all those people die for me?”
We’d had this fight before. Harry would go to this dark place, and I would have to climb in after him just to get him to see light again.
“Your mother is the only person who died for you,” I said, steadily. “And I know that if Teddy or Meena were in danger you would do the same and never for a moment think it was their fault.”
He grit his teeth, even as his lip trembled.
“But I need you to stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
He gasped, ready to come back at me with more anger.
“No,” I interrupted him. “Listen.” I put my hand on his knee. He flinched, but left it there. “I know that what you went through as a child makes these things hard for you, and I am trying to be as patient as I can be. But our adoption failing has nothing to do with who you are. Do you understand me? It was a fluke.”
He looked back down at the photos, shaking his head, tears dripping down his face.
“I looked into the Mirror of Erised and I saw my family,” he whispered, “and then I spent the next seven years tearing families apart.”
“Oh, enough.” He looks up at me, shocked by my brusqueness. “That's utter nonsense and you know it. Voldemort ripped families apart. He ripped your family apart. Do you realize who you're talking to? I actually hurt people. You are the love of my life, and I have to wake up everyday knowing that I poisoned your best friend. Do you think we'd be together if Weasley had died? I certainly don't deserve happiness Potter, but here we are, fucking in love and fucking married and fucking happy.”
Harry looked as if he didn’t know whether to curse me or kiss me or break down laughing. I felt the same way.
“Are you happy?” he said.
“Right at this minute? No. I'm annoyed at my very annoying and emotional husband. Because he is the strongest, bravest, kindest person on this planet who has never hurt a living soul and for some reason he thinks he deserves his rotten luck.” I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair. “Honestly, it would drive anyone mad.”
“I hurt you,” he said quietly.
I scoffed. “You gave me some very badass scars that show how rugged and manly I am.” I scraped a fleck of dirt from beside my fingernail. “I'm really quite grateful.”
We sat in silence for long time. The sun began to set.
Finally, he stood and placed his hands on my shoulders. I wrapped my arms around him, letting my head fall to his chest so I could listen to his heartbeat through his tee-shirt.
“I'm sorry, Draco,” he murmured. “You're the family I choose.”
We made love that night for the first time in months. I sank down onto his cock and rubbed myself against his pelvic bone, and watched the way he looked at me, like he couldn’t believe I was real. After I came, and he flipped me over and rutted inside me until he came, his chest pressed to mine, his face buried in my neck, his weight relaxed completely on top of me, and a thought occurred to me; we didn’t have to adopt.
I mean, I knew that, of course It was always in the back of my mind. Harry knew I didn’t want biological children, so he never pressed the issue. But with him lying there, my hands tight in his hair, I let the the thought wend its way into my mind.
We fell asleep like that, all tangled together, Harry’s come drying on my legs. I dreamt that night of having a big pregnant belly, of Harry’s smiling face as he knelt before me and kissed it. I dreamed of what our child would look like, with dimples and curly blonde hair, running into Harry’s outstretched arms.
I didn’t say anything to Harry when we woke up. We both had our tea, and kissed each other goodbye, and went to work.
And I made an appointment with a healer.
---
Things change quickly after my waters break. Susan checks me each hour—five centimeters, six centimeters, seven—and I pace around the house, only stopping to try to cope with contractions; standing, leaning, lying, sitting. Nothing has ever felt so ridiculous as trying to be comfortable when my body is pulling itself open from the inside.
We're standing on the balcony now. The contractions come every few minutes, strong and long. When one hits, Harry holds me like we're slow dancing. I wrap my arms around his neck and he pushes my hips together. I won't come apart.
I press my face into his neck and try to match his breathing. Try not to groan too much. Try not to scream in Harry’s ear at the peak. Try to listen to the encouragements he whispers in my ear. How brave I am. How grateful he is.
There’s something freeing about being outside, about gripping the railing as I wait for the next contraction to come. It’s cool, and I can see owls swooping over the trees, hunting. I look over the grounds and smile slightly, thinking about how this place is going to belong to my children someday. Though they won’t grow up here, it will be a haven they can return to. Can sell if they come on hard times. Can turn into whatever they can dream for an estate this size. I think about how this place that was once my hell, my prison, the main thing that kept me from wanting children, was now the place of my greatest joy, the place I’m bringing them into the world.
The pain begins to squeeze me and I hold tight to the railing. Harry reaches for me but I shake my head, pushing air out of my lungs with intention. “Hips,” I gasp, then let myself moan with impunity. But this one isn’t ending. It’s as if my pelvis is splitting open, pain shooting down my legs and up into my chest, Harry’s hands doing so little to help, and I scream into the night.
---
I ended up seeing two healers and mediwitch, the first of whom told me that as soon as I stopped T, I'd start my cycle and be able to conceive, the second of whom said my eggs and uterus and cervix were all in excellent condition to carry a child to term, and the third of whom explained exactly how to track my ovulation for the best chance at getting pregnant.
I didn't tell Harry that I was thinking of having a baby. Maybe it was the Slytherin part of me that liked keeping a secret after so many years of sharing absolutely everything. I liked the planning, the manipulation. That by doing this, without any encouragement or self-flagellation from Harry, I would somehow win our relationship.
At least, that’s what I told myself. I pushed down how deeply scared I was of seeing Harry hurt again. I didn't want to see that glimmer of hope in his eyes, that joy he had when we got approved by the adoption agency, when we got that first owl from Veronique, just to be snuffed out again.
What if it took months? Or years? I had no siblings and only had one cousin—what if the Black family carried some messed up incestuous gene that would make me lose child after child?
But being off T had me completely off-balance. Testosterone was supposed to be the aggressive hormone, but without it, I was suddenly on edge, pieces of that vicious teenage boy peeking out again. Harry asked me what was wrong, and I told him that I was testing a new potion at work whose fumes were making me irritable, when in actuality, I hadn’t been brewing at all.
Harry started doing better. He spent more time with his godchildren. He could talk about Meena without crying. He even wrote her a letter for her first birthday. He was excited to tell me about his cases again. He seemed to be finding peace.
And only a few months later, I fell pregnant.
Harry had been the one to ask me out. To propose. To plan every detail of our wedding. To run point on everything related to the adoption and on Meena’s care. I had spent our entire relationship in disbelief that someone like him could love someone with a past as twisted as mine.
I never believed in fate or soulmates before Harry. But, sometimes, I looked at our lives as if they were running parallel, one the rippled shadow of the other. Where Harry was neglected, I was spoiled. Where Harry had goodness, I was cold. Where Harry had friends, I had pawns. Where Harry had to vanquish darkness, I was tasked to snuff out light. Where Harry had love, I had fear.
And yet here we were; our lives revolving around one another, deciding every single day to love one another, to stay committed, to stay married, to fight through our weaknesses.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would tell him. Not where we met—we couldn't agree on that, anyway. Not at the lab—too impersonal. I thought about taking him to Hogwarts, to one of the places he'd saved me, to where our haphazard romance of mutual animosity began.
But this wasn't about our past. It was about our future. About our home and hearth, about what we were building together.
Harry hadn't set foot in the nursery since we sent Meena away. Harry had painted it for her himself, using almost no magic. Everything in yellow and white, with lavender polka dots. I knew that we couldn't bring a child into this room as it was; this was Meena’s room, and we needed something for the next chapter.
The joy of magic was that as soon as I was able to verify my pregnancy, the midwitch could tell me I was having twins. There was a part of me that was pained that I knew before Harry, that knew it wasn't fair I got to know all of this so far ahead. But I also revelled in the fact that I got to enjoy every bit of giving Harry this gift.
Harry would be travelling on a mission with the Aurors for two weeks. I tried not to let on how worried I was. Instead I threw myself into preparing for his return.
I invited Luna to help me design a new nursery. The rest of our home was light and airy, washed white to open up the low ceilings of the tudor cottage. We didn’t live in Godric’s hollow, but as soon as Harry had seen this property, so similar to the one he was born into, he knew we had to move in.
Luna and I decided to make this new bedroom an homage to Harry’s second true home.
We used a bit of magic to expand the space, to make room for two babies instead of one. We decided on a large cot where they could sleep together. The cot and other furniture was originally white, so I transfigured the paint into a dark varnish to highlight the cherry wood, just as Harry had described in the Gryffindor dormitories, with tall posts and a canopy of scarlet curtains which Luna magically embroidered with tiny silver lions and snakes. The ceiling was Navy blue between the beams, with hundreds of tiny shining lights that would change to reflect the stars and constellations that could be seen above. And on the walls, Luna painted a great silver stag and a great silver dragon that, with a wave of a hand, would fly around one another, playing and protecting each other through a forest of slowly shifting trees.
I pulled out our old trunks and filled them with blankets and clothes that my mother had saved from my childhood, along with a few new toys that I bought just for the twins. We piled the children’s books Hermione had foisted upon us in one corner. And finally, the rocking chair that practically had an indentation of Harry’s bottom from the two weeks he spent with Meena. That I transfigured into a long floating loveseat where Harry and I and our babies would all be able to sit and rock as a family.
I waited on a chaise in the back garden when he came home from his expedition. Harry's weekends spent with his hands in the dirt had given us a lovely garden, lots of flowers and vegetables, and a grassy area where Teddy used to play, and he had once hoped Meena would someday. I was sipping a sparkling grape juice and hoping the nausea that had suddenly made its first appearance would abate so I could have a meal with my husband.
The pop of Harry’s apparition and the creaking of the old gate announced his safe return.
“Hey, love,” he said, smiling down at me, the setting sun shining behind him like a halo. He sat on the chaise beside my legs, then leaned forward to kiss me, wrapping his hand around my neck. “I missed you so much,” he mumbled against my lips. I smiled against his.
I reached to the small table beside the swing and handed Harry a glass of champagne.
He took it with a smile. I picked up my glass and clinked Harry’s.
“To our future,” I said.
He looked at me sideways but took a sip.
“What are we celebrating?” He asked, holding his glass up to the light.
“I'm making you something,” I said.
“Dinner?”
I scoffed. “You know I don’t cook, Potter. This is something else. Do you want to come inside and see?”
He followed me back inside and to the nursery. We stood in front of the door.
“Go ahead,” I said.
He steeled himself, looking so nervous. And then he pushed the door in and gasped when he saw what was inside.
I followed behind him, watched him take it all in. His eyes full of awe and wonder.
“You did this?” He said.
“Luna helped.”
“It’s beautiful.” I stood behind him, holding his hips, resting my chin on his shoulder as he stroked the wood of the crib and watched the patronus paintings play. “Okay,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it.
“Okay?”
“Okay. We can start the adoption process again.”
“Ah, well. If you'd like to adopt another baby, we can discuss that down the road, but I have other plans for this room.”
Harry turned around to look at me. I took his hands in mine, laced our fingers together, rubbed the back of his hands with my thumbs.
“We’re not going to have a baby?” he asked, his brow furrowed above his glasses.
“We are going to have a baby.” I took a deep breath. “Potter, I'm going to have a baby.”
He shook his head, confused, sure he'd heard me wrong.
“Actually, two babies. Twins.”
“I don't… I don't understand.”
“I’m pregnant.”
His mouth fell open. “What? How?”
“Do I really need to explain this to you? McGonagall really did a rough shot with you Gryffindors. Well, when two people love each other very much—”
“Stop,” he whispered with a smile. He looked like he was using all his might to hold back tears. “How?”
“I stopped T about six months ago—I know,” I said. “I know, I should have told you sooner, but I didn't want to get your hopes up. I mean, it's still early, only six weeks, and there can be complications with twins, but—”
And suddenly I found myself being kissed. Slow and deep and strong. He kissed all over my face, pulled me into a tight hug.
“I feel like I'm dreaming. I would never have asked you to do this. I can't—are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?” He pushed me back, squeezing my shoulders tight, searching my face for some evidence that this was all a hoax.
I laughed. “Look around, Potter. We’re not turning back now.”
“And twins?”
I nodded. “Twin males, yes. The midwitch thinks they're identical, but it's too soon to tell.”
“Twin boys,” he said with awe. “We're going to be fathers to twin boys.”
“Well, likely boys. And there's always a chance of miscarriage, you know. I don't… You need to know that. But we can try again. As long as it takes.”
And he’s hugging me again now, tears wetting my neck.
“Thank you, Draco,” he mumbles into my skin. “Thank you so much.”
---
If you were to ask me which is worse—the Cruciatus Curse or childbirth—at this very moment, I wouldn’t be able to make a distinction.
I think I’m dying.
I'm sitting on the toilet with a large china bowl on my lap. I'm vomiting from the pain, from the war that’s raging inside my body. I want to tell Harry to go away, that I don't want him to see me like this, but I can't speak. The contractions are long and horrific and coming with almost no break. In the the few seconds of respite, all I can do is catch my breath and sip water from the goblet that Harry offers me. I look up at him gratefully as he wipes my face with a damp flannel. And then the pain is back and I can do nothing but surrender to it, let myself groan and scream, because this must be the end.
There can’t be much more than this, or there would be no children.
I suddenly want to cry for my mother and thank her and tell her I understand why I’m an only child. I want this to be over.
“Take this,” I whimper, and Mrs Weasley rushes over to relieve me of my vomit bowl. “Bedroom.”
Harry helps me up and somehow— Merlin, somehow—we make to my bedside. Harry moves to help me up onto the bed, but I shake my head and fall to my knees beside it. A contraction is starting and I think I’m about to vomit again, but instead I feel enormous pressure beneath me, and I realize that my body has begun to push.
Susan and Harry flank me, waiting for the contraction to end.
“I’m going to check you,” Susan says, and her fingers are inside me. “You’re fully dilated, Draco, and the head of your first baby is coming right down. Just wait for the next contraction and go ahead and push if it feels right.”
If it feels right. As if any of this feels right. How could any of this possibly feel— oh, fuck , it’s happening again.
I’m pushing down and making the most vile sounds, some cross between moaning and screaming and grunting. I’ve lost all control. I’m trying to grip the side of the bed, and I can’t tell if anything is happening, if the babies are moving down, if I’m even helping with the pushing. It just feels like chaos.
When the contraction ends, I’m crying slightly. This was supposed to be the good part—pushing, action, after waiting so many hours. But I’m helpless. I’m exhausted.
“I don’t want to do this,” I sniff, bracing my hands on my thighs.
“You can absolutely do it, Draco,” Susan says.
“I know I can ,” I snap at her. “But I don’t want to.”
Another contraction begins, and sometime during it, as I’m flailing for something to grip, Harry climbs onto the bed in front of me. He’s lying on his stomach, his face right above mine, and he holds out his hands so I can grab onto them.
I hold tight, even as the contraction ends.
“I know you don’t want to do this, but you have to,” Harry says, and he's quiet, but forceful. For a moment I don't see my husband, rather the youngest Head Auror in Ministry history, the rebel who roused schoolchildren to fight a dictator. “You’re going to do it for us. For our family.”
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, that he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but instead a groan comes out and I’m pushing down again.
“Give it all you've got, love,” he says, and I remember that this man, this leader, this speccy git, is why I do want to do this.
I grip Harry’s hands, the bones of his fingers and muscles of his palms thicker and stronger than my own, and I hold my breath and bear down as hard as I can.
“Excellent push, Draco,” Susan says. She’s behind me now. She’s waving her wand to make sure all three of us are safe, while she keeps her other hand on me, fingers pressed inside me. “A few more like that and your baby will be crowning.”
So I hold steady. I breathe. I wait. I push.
I breathe. I wait. I push.
“That’s it, Draco, here comes the head.”
And I’ve never felt such burning pain.
I look into Harry’s eyes and we are back in sixth year and he is splitting me open.
I hold Harry’s hands and we are in the room on hidden things and he is pulling me from the fire.
“Reach down and catch your baby, Draco,” Susan says.
I let go of Harry and suddenly, there in my own hands, brought right to my chest, resting on top of my bump, is the slimiest little red thing, and I can’t believe I’m holding my son.
I look at him and he begins to make the most beautiful crying sounds and I feel … everything. “Hello, Scorpius,” is all I can say. “You’re here. Hello! Hello.”
As if they’re in the distance, I hear Harry, upon Susan’s command, say a quiet Diffindo to sever the umbilical cord. I am so enraptured by Scorpius’s tiny face—his tiny legs and arms and hands and feet—that I almost forget this isn’t over and that there is another baby still inside me.
But then I feel a gush of liquid—blood, I realize—and a shooting, knife-like pain in my pelvis.
Susan’s instructions are quick and serious.
“Draco, Molly is going to take the baby and get him cleaned up. Do you think you can get on the bed?”
I let Molly take Scorpius and wrap him in a blanket. Harry is beside me now, holding me. I look up to the bed and I think maybe he can help me climb up, but then a contraction comes and I'm screaming and trying not to bear down.
“Harry,” Susan instructs. “Get behind Draco and help him off the floor. I need to get under him to deliver the second baby.”
I want to curl in on myself, to stop the pain, which is somehow worse than the contractions before. My insides feel as if they're are being ripped out of me, but I let Harry curl his arms under my armpits and pull me to my feet. I'm half-standing, half-squatting, and Susan is under me, her hand inside me.
“Push down, Draco,” she says. “Push down hard.”
I'm pushing now, with all my might, the contraction seeming to go on forever but I'm not screaming now. I'm grunting with the effort, holding onto Scorpius’s cries like a lifeline, like proof that I can get a baby out of me, waiting for the chorus of cries of my two children.
And as he moves through me, so much faster than his brother, I open my eyes so I can see Susan catch him and hold him up to me and Harry.
“Here he is!” She exclaims, and Harry pulls me up all the way so I'm fully standing in front of him. He wraps around me and he’s crying and kissing the side face as I try to catch my breath.
“You did it, love.” He presses the side of his face to mine. I am dazed and thrilled and full of love. “Look at that. You made us two beautiful sons. They're so perfect, Draco. You're so perfect.”
---
We're in bed now, tucked in shoulder-to-shoulder by our mothers and Susan who left us with two tiny babies. They’ve been fed warm bottles and medicine to help them grow, and are both mostly asleep, milk drunk and just as exhausted as I am. We’ll go home—to our home—in a few days, but for now we're resting and taking turns letting the boys lie naked against the skin of our chests.
Molly tied a green bow around Scorpius’s ankle and a red one around Sirius’s, otherwise we probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Sirius’s head is a bit rounder than his brother’s, but they both have loads of soft black hair, and black eyelashes, and blue eyes—which all of us agree will only be temporary. Harry hopes they’ll turn grey. I hope they’ll be green.
Otherwise, they just look like smushed little babies. The most beautiful perfect tiny smushed little babies anyone has ever seen.
And Harry, Harry is smitten. He’s holding Scorpius in his arms and he has this look on his face, like there is nothing better, nothing more important than this baby and this moment. He coos as him, kisses his hair, whispers, “you are so loved, little one, you are so loved.”
I look down at Sirius. I can’t believe I could love something I made this much, that something that is part of me, part of my father, part Malfoy, could be this perfect. But these little Potters, Sirius Severus and Scorpius James, are absolutely divine.
When I look up, Harry is staring at me, looking obnoxiously sentimental. More in love with me mere hours after he’s seen me scream and vomit and shit and bleed than he was that first time he kissed me on his doorstep.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
I lean forward and so he can kiss my lips. I kiss his.
“I love you,” I say. But he knows that. The evidence is in his arms.
He knows he's the family I choose.