Scorpius's Request 8

It was easy to forget, sometimes, how much he missed the Burrow when he was away from it. Molly Weasley, as plump and pleased to see him as she always was, bustled over when he strode in with Scorpius and threw her arms around him in a tight embrace. Harry pressed his face into her hair and, smiling, breathed her in. "Hi, Molly."

"Hello, dear!" She pulled back just enough to scrutinize him. "Oh, Harry, you're always so skinny." He certainly wasn't. Between auror training and the physical demands of his job since, "skinny" hadn't exactly been applicable to Harry in years. But he knew she said the same thing to Ron and to all of her sons, so Harry smiled and didn't argue.

Instead, he nudged the child in front of him. "This is Scorpius Malfoy. Scorpius, say hi to Mrs. Weasley."

His cheeks pinkened, but he held out a hand. Daddy had taught him that it was better to be straightforward. You had to put yourself out there, he said. "Hi, Mrs. Weasley."

Molly, bless her, tugged the child close and gave him one of her cushy hugs. "Hi there." Scorpius giggled, returning the embrace, and Molly swept him up. "Now you just come right with me and we'll play some games with my grandchildren, alright? They're a little older than you are, but I'm sure they'd love to play."

Scorpius nodded, delighted, and looked to Harry as an afterthought. "I can?"

"Yeah, you sure can. I'm just going to be in the kitchen with Ron and Hermione, alright?"

He chewed on his lip nervously. "Did they find daddy?"

Harry held back the sigh. It'd been three days since Ron had released the sketches of the culprits and so far, nothing had panned out. They'd been careful to audit the release on just who was missing on the off-chance that someone would refuse to come forward simply because they were searching for Draco Malfoy.

Molly waved a hand airily. "They're working as hard as they can, Scorpius. They'll find him and, when they do, I'm sure your father doesn't want to see that worry has aged you."

He frowned, not noticing that Molly had started carrying him off. "Worry can make somebody get older?"

"Absolutely," she assured him and disappeared around the corner.

Harry blew out a sigh and started towards the kitchen. Three days since the sketches, three days since discovering that Astoria had gone missing... and three days since learning that she'd walked out on Draco for undetermined reasons. That was all absolutely useless. And tracking down Draco's bloody occupation was proving extremely troublesome for Hermione and, when Harry had asked, Scorpius hadn't known. Guilt ate at him, churned at him, because the nightmares had been getting worse and they still had no leads. They had no idea where Draco lived, what he did for a living, who his closest companions were - Pansy Parkinson hadn't seen him in weeks, Blaise Zabini had better things to do than keep up with old schoolmates, Theodore Nott was going through a stint in Azkaban, and Gregory Goyle was next on Ron's list, but tracking him down was proving just as difficult as finding Draco.

He was frowning as he walked into the kitchen and sank down into one of the empty seats at the table, but the expressions on his friends' faces were extremely intriguing. "What is it?"

"I found it." Hermione held up a folder, smile bright and wide. "And I'm honestly rather surprised by it."

Five minutes later, Harry was surprised as well. He listened with half an ear as Hermione explained how she'd found out - Gringotts had bent to her almighty will because they didn't exactly know that she was on maternity leave and being on leave didn't mean she no longer worked for the Ministry, so informing them that she was with Magical Law Enforcement wasn't technically a lie - and tuned her out completely when she and Ron began to argue - "You should've taken me with you! You're about to have a ruddy baby!"

"That doesn't mean I am a baby! Honestly, Ronald."

Instead, Harry had the folder open and was reading it through rather quickly. The different vaults he'd used, yadda yadda, the various ways in which he kept them strictly separate, yadda yadda, the penname he used, yadda ya - wait, what?

His jaw dropped; he couldn't help it. This was just... No. This was no. Sweet Merlin, this had to be wrong. "He's Ryan Avries?"

"Yes! Can you believe it?" Hermione broke off the argument to beam at Harry as if this wasn't the worst news he'd heard in ages. Bloody hell, Draco Malfoy was Ryan Avries. He'd only been obsessed with the books written by the man for the past four years. A new one appeared in the series every six months and he had them all in his bedroom, well worn with pages curling at the end from the dog-eared flaps he made to mark the pages when something dared interrupt him from reading them.

Hell, he and Neville carried on arguments by owl when the former was at Hogwarts fulfilling his new duties as Head of Gryffindor House and Herbology professor. Who was the Toe-to-Toe Killer, so named for his penchant of removing toes post-mortem? Would the main character of the mystery series, Kian Hopkins, ever admit to his partner, Rhys Patel, that he wanted to be more than just... Auror partners? It was the first novel series Harry had ever run across with a homosexual Auror before and it was written by a man. Hermione had been so obsessed with it and Ron so grudgingly intrigued that Harry had picked up a copy of that first book purely out of curiosity... and with a polyjuice potion in full use. The Prophet would've had a field day if they knew that Harry was reading homosexual erotica because there had been some scenes...

Harry took a slow, careful breath and banished some scenes from his mind. Even if that series had sucked him in so thoroughly he could hardly stand the wait, there were more important things to worry about. ...But there was another month before the next one came out and, oh, sweet Merlin, if they didn't find Draco he'd never know what happened next! Bloody hell!

Ron shook his head, face as red as it always was when that particular author was mentioned. He tended to skip over some scenes and wasn't exactly comfortable knowing his wife and his own Auror partner discussed some scenes with great enthusiasm. "So, yes. Malfoy writes those books. Grand. It doesn't really tell us anything."

"It tells us that we have to find him," Hermione said with no small amount of conviction. "What's Rhys going to do now that his sister was kidnapped?"

"He doesn't even know she was yet," Harry reminded her, but his mind was spinning in the same circles. Harry wanted to know how he'd react, how Kian would react. Draco, apparently, was necessary for that. He looked at the paper that confirmed that Draco was indeed Ryan Avries and was still absolutely stunned. He'd wanked to those books, for Godric's sake.

"Can we please stay on point?" Ron had somehow turned an even deeper shade of scarlet. It was if he could read Harry's thoughts. "We know what Malfoy does for a living. And it seems impossible to connect it to why he was kidnapped. Any ideas?"

"Rabid fan?" Harry wondered and a blush of his own had to be beaten back at the looks on his friends' faces (blank shock for Ron and wicked amusement for Hermione). "Just a suggestion," he defended.

"It is possible," Hermione conceded after a knowing smirk. "But highly unlikely. It's taken me three days to connect it and the goblins only helped because they know about my connection to Harry and to the Ministry." She suddenly looked deflated. "Oh... I think Ron might be right. Considering how difficult it was for me to find out, it seems unlikely that it'll have anything to do with Malfoy's job."

Harry sighed, leaning back in his chair. Another useless dead end. "I've had enough," he announced. "I don't care what Kingsley says, I don't need a break. We're working on this case and I'm going in tomorrow, whether he likes it or not. I'm tired of feeling like I'm not doing anything."

"You mean you're tired of Scorpius thinking you're not doing anything," Ron replied and Harry started to respond, but nothing came out. He couldn't think of a denial because, well, it was true. He felt guilty because as much as he'd coddled and spent time with the little boy, he would still look at Harry sometimes and ask if they'd found his daddy yet. The no was always followed with a why or a when and Harry hated not knowing. He ended up shrugging, looking down at the table.

Hermione sighed. "That's understandable, Harry. I can take care of him during the day. And you know Molly will if you need my help."

"Oh!" Ron suddenly exclaimed, startling the other two. He patted at his clothes for a minute before realizing that he'd removed his robes already. He jumped up and scrambled out of the room. Harry caught Hermione's eye and she only gave a bewildered shrug. Ron returned with a frame and pressed it into Harry's hand. "Have a look, mate."

When Harry looked down, he got his second surprise of the day. It was a photograph of Scorpius and Draco, fairly recent judging by Scorpius's appearance. He watched Draco's already windswept hair get teased even more by the breeze. He was in creamy grey summer robes and his silver eyes stood out, bold and lit with good humor and, when he looked at the child who threw his arms around his neck, love.

Harry watched as Draco pointed out towards where the camera would have been and give a small, smiling wave. Scorpius turned, gave a bright grin and unhooked one arm from his father to wave wildly. Draco's head tilted back in a laugh and Harry longed to hear it. His heart stuttered in his chest and he swallowed hard. This man wrote words Harry had wanked to... How was this possible?

He looked up at Ron, clearing his throat. "Yeah, and?" He was surprised by the steadiness in his voice. Ron looked deflated, so Harry looked back at the picture. His breath caught again when Draco stepped aside and revealed a park in the background. "This is it, isn't it?"

That had Ron rapidly nodding. "The name of it's on the back. I just have to look up the address."

Hermione snatched the picture and gazed at it for a long moment. Both men watched her soften and coo - she cooed at the photograph of father and son. "You can see how much they love each other, can't you? Oh, we absolutely have to get him back."

Alive, they all thought and heavy silence ruled the room for a long few minutes. He'd been violently abducted and it had been three days. They were no closer to finding him than they had been and the odds were... not in Draco's favor.

It was Ron who broke the silence. "We will," he said firmly. "Especially with you actually coming into it for real, Harry. Shacklebolt's been on me to take up another case and stop letting this one take me over. He says it's not even an official auror case."

"Bugger whatever Kingsley says," Harry replied, a fire in his eyes now. He took the picture back and retrieved it from its frame, stared hard at the date and the scrawled name of the park. Two days before Narcissa and Lucius had been killed and the park was... "Where did you get this?"

"And why are you just bringing it up now?" Hermione demanded.

"Oi. I got it last night before I came home. You were so excited about finding out what he does that I forgot all about it."

"Where, Ron?"

"Malfoy Manor. I went back to check the scene again for any clues, ask the elves a few more questions. And I asked one of them about the fidelius charm, y'know, on where Malfoy lives. To see if they could give me any clues on who the secret-keeper was. You know they all got pretty tight-lipped on that one as they'd been ordered not to say, but one of them gave me that picture and said it was a place Malfoy liked to take Scorpius. He didn't say it was the one near their house or anything, but from how careful he was with his wording I could tell that he was trying hard to give me information while still following orders."

Harry nodded, only half-listening as Hermione launched into a effigy on how unfair it was that the elves wanted to help but couldn't. If only S.P.E.W. had been able to go further than it had. The Ministry had passed some laws, but not everything she wanted them to and - "Harry, where are you going?"

"To show this to Scorpius. Then Ron and I are heading for this park."

"But Harry-"

"Right, then." Ron got to his feet, cutting his wife off and most likely earning a spot on the couch for the night. "I'll get our robes, yeah?"

"Shrink them down and pocket them, but yeah. I know this park. It's half-Muggle."

He didn't listen to Hermione's question about that, walking out of the room to find Molly and Scorpius. When he called out to the child, he poked his head out of the clump of tiny bodies that had found and surrounded the dog Arthur had wanted after his children had all moved out. "Can you come here?" Harry called and Scorpius wriggled away and scrambled over.

"Are we going home?" he asked. "I'm not ready to yet! We just caught the dog. I've never seen a dog like that before. D'you think daddy will get me a dog?"

"Maybe," Harry replied, squatting down to the boy's level. He showed him the picture carefully and watched those big eyes shine.

"That's me and daddy at the park! See? There's the slide!" He pointed and Draco shuffled to the side, the soundless laugh spilling out again. "And the swings!" His finger moved to the side, his other hand coming up to take the picture from Harry entirely. "Grandmama took this. It was on the floo."

Harry smiled slightly, trying hard to imagine Narcissa Malfoy going to a children's playground that was originally intended for Muggles until a little Wizarding area had been set up. Now it was half and half, though pretty rampant in intermingling. Harry knew of it due to one simple reason: it was less than a mile from Number 4 Privet Drive.

It looked less miserable in the picture of the two Malfoys, but the address was the same. Would he notice if a house were missing on any of those streets? He hadn't been there since one visit and one stilted conversation after the War, when he'd told the Dursleys that they were safe. Uncle Vernon had given him an awkward handshake, Aunt Petunia had stared into his eyes all of five minutes before fleeing, and Dudley had asked where Harry was going to stay now.

"At Hogwarts," he'd replied, standing on their doorstep and unwilling - and uninvited, for that matter - to go in any further. "To help rebuild. I'll be staying in that world now. I'm getting a law enforcement job." He'd given Uncle Vernon a look then, daring him to say anything about 'his sort' having law enforcement. "And I'll be getting a family. I doubt anyone in the Wizarding world will trouble you again."

Ten years later he had the job, but not the family. That had fallen through when he'd realized that Ginny just... wasn't his type. She was beautiful and vital and he still had the best conversations with her when she was home in the Quidditch off-season, but she had all the wrong bits.

Draco has the right bits, a sneaky voice in his head said. He swallowed and banished it. He'd sent one - one - letter to Ryan Avries around the time when he'd first started reading his books. It had been a short, stilted letter that had taken entirely too long to write and even longer to send. But he'd mortified, worried that the letter would get out and make it to the Prophet, where it would be reported that Harry Potter read smutty mystery novels.

Years later, no such thing had occurred, but he'd kept the response Avries - Draco, he now knew - had sent back. He'd never quite worked up the nerve to send another and now Harry was strongly regretting that.

He turned his attention back on Scorpius, who was looking at him expectantly. "What?"

The boy looked at the photograph in his hands, then back at Harry. "D'you want me to show you where they took daddy from?" he asked in a little, frightened voice.

Harry opened his mouth to object immediately, but paused and a thought crossed his mind that should've been obvious. "Actually, Scorpius, I have something else you could do." And it was something they should've done before this. "I'll be right back."

"Okay..." And then Scorpius threw his arms around Harry's neck and hung on for all he was worth. "I'm glad daddy told me to find you."

Harry pressed his face in the pale hair, breathed in the scent of dog and the shampoo he'd needed that morning after a flour incident and child. He let himself hold on to Scorpius until he heard Ron clear his throat and then Harry was drawing back. "You know what, Scorpius? I'm glad, too."

That earned him a shy smile that Harry gladly returned before getting to his feet. "I have to get something from my flat. I'll meet you back here in a minute."

"What about the park?"

"We'll go after this. It's important." With a nod, he Apparated on the spot.