It had been several weeks since Draco had experienced the need to lock his thoughts and memories away in the comfort of his study. At first he had thought it would be impossible to give up his reclusive tendencies, for his father’s shouts echoed in his head alongside the burning glare of red, serpentine eyes.

But Draco had made a conscious effort to avoid the solitude of his study because he saw the flashes of deepest hurt on Ginny’s face when she turned to leave after discovering him in there. Her distressed expressions only further reminded him of his mother, and he couldn’t bear to be like his father. Once, it had been okay for him to covet the solitude, but he had a family now. He endured the screams and the glowering eyes so that he could see them smile.

Over the winding weeks, the cries that haunted him subsided, and it grew less painful to be in the country he abhorred with the people he loved. With Scorpius’s arrival, the house that reminded him of the Manor at every turn was filled with laughter and resounding footsteps, and it was easy to rise from sleep each day and live life normally. And Draco had dared to hope that he might never experience the temptation to return to his seclusion, and that they could be happy forever.

But his son had returned to school several days ago, and shortly after that Ginny had ventured to the Burrow with Lily by her side in an attempt to make peace with her family.

In the time that they’d been gone, a heavy gloom had settled over the house, seeping beneath doors and filling the house with a deathly quiet. Rising in the place of the laughter of his children, the shouts entered Draco’s mind once more.

He considered this as he stared into the raging fire of his study, clinking the ice in his empty glass. It was tempting to refill it, but Draco knew he would regret another glass, especially if Ginny and Lily were to return home.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He didn’t know when they were bloody coming back. Ginny had wrapped her arms around his neck and said it would only be a few days. James and Albus were staying at the Burrow on an extended holiday, she had said. He hadn’t bothered to question her on it, because although he had never heard of children being granted extended holidays from Hogwarts, he had no doubt that if a Potter or a Weasley put in a request to have their children for a little longer due to “familial problems,” that the school would have no problem obliging them.

They had only been gone for two days, but the silence and voices had been enough to drive him mad. Or at least to drink.

Maybe I am going mad, he thought absently. What sane man hears the voices of his dead parents?

He turned to set his glass on the desk and caught sight of a picture resting on the smooth mahogany. His breath stuck in his chest as he picked it up and held it close to his face. He stared into his own eyes, bright and crinkled in laughter. Behind him loomed the giant clock tower in the center of Prague, but it was Lily’s waving green mitten in front of Draco that caught his attention. How happy and carefree they looked together.

When was the last time he had done something with her? Guilt clawed at his chest, and Draco cringed. It had been several weeks.

A loud slamming noise broke Draco from his thoughts, and his fingers fumbled for the picture as it fell to the ground.

He stood up, rushing to open the door, and strode toward the staircase. He heard them moving about downstairs, and waited for Lily’s usual call of “We’re home!” But it didn’t come. All he heard were whispers and careful footsteps.

He finally reached the top of the stairs and looked down as Ginny and Lily set their suitcases down on the floor of the foyer. Lily looked up and gave him a small smile.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said softly.

“Hullo, dragon,” Draco returned uncertainly. “How was your trip?” Ginny looked up sharply and shook her head. Draco sucked in cold air at the sight of her chocolate eyes, dulled and dark.

Lily shrugged and began to climb up the stairs, and it didn’t go unnoticed that she didn’t quite meet his gaze as she passed by him. Draco threw Ginny a look, cocking his head bewilderedly as a door slammed farther down the corridor.

“What happened?” he asked, descending the stairs to embrace her.

Ginny took a step back and busied herself with her suitcase, letting a curtain of fiery hair hide her eyes.

“She wants to be alone,” she replied somewhat coldly, straightening up with her suitcases in hand. “You should understand that signal.”

His chest twisted painfully. “Ginny…”

But she too walked past him and up the stairs, each footstep loud and determined.

For a moment, he stood rooted to the floor, his heart hanging somewhere between chasing his sorrows with another glass of scotch and chasing Ginny up the stairs. A trembling sigh escaped his lips, and his hesitation was left behind in the foyer as he took the stairs three at a time.

Draco was not the least bit surprised to find her sitting on their bed, cradling the family album that he had come to resent, because it only made her sad. The grip on his heart twisted more firmly as he saw her swipe angrily at the tears trickling down her face.

She breathed in deeply and finally looked up at him. “It was a disaster,” she whispered.

He crawled up beside her into the bed and removed the album from her grasp, closing it with a snap and setting it beside them.

“I thought…I thought that things would be better with a little time,” she said in the same quiet tone, her voice strained from holding back tears. “After their letter, and they seemed all right, I thought they might forgive me, but – but they can’t. They hate me. All of them hate me.”

And now her words were coming out in sobs, and Draco pulled her to his chest and let her cry.

“James wouldn’t even speak to me, and he and Albus punished Lily. She was so excited to tell them about you and our new house, and they were cruel to her. Their own sister. And it’s not even her fault!” Ginny whimpered.

A monstrous, angry force welled up in Draco’s chest. Damn Potter and his brats, for doing anything to hurt his little girl! They didn’t even bloody love her, couldn’t forgive her because of his blood that ran in her veins – a trait she had no power to control.

“And Mum…she said – said it would be best if I tried to rectify my mistakes,” she blubbered on, “and ask Harry for forgiveness! My own mother! More loyal to Ron’s best mate than her own daughter.”

It took every ounce of control Draco possessed to keep from shouting and railing against every goddamn Weasley and their self-righteous notions. He hated every last one of them – the almighty bastards! But he knew that Ginny didn’t need that. What she needed was for him to hold her and whisper that it would be all right.

“I love you,” he breathed, kissing her temple.

She buried her face further in the crook of his arm, clutching at the sleeve of his sweater. “Draco?” she murmured.

“Yes?” he returned softly.

“Can we go out – do things – as a family?”

He looked down at her, his eyebrows knitted together.

“I mean – I know I shouldn’t let it get to me. I shouldn’t listen to one thing they said to me. But…George said maybe if we didn’t stay…holed up here, and went out, maybe people would get more used to the idea of us…” she trailed off, sounding so hopeful it broke his heart.

Truth be told, the very idea of spending a day at a Quidditch match or somewhere else public sent his skin crawling, but he had absolutely no will power to tell her no.

“Okay.”

It had been over twenty years since he had walked the streets of Diagon Alley. He had refused to do so even when Scorpius needed to buy his first wand, and Celia had taken him by herself.

But it was amazing how perfectly he still knew the place and how very little had changed. The same battered signs hung from every doorway, the same stones paved the roads, and the same round and unblinking owl eyes stared out from the emporium window.

But it was the differences that made Draco’s breathing come a little easier. The racing broom models and dress robe styles that caught his eye were quite different from those of his childhood. Perhaps the place had changed.

“When I go to Hogwarts, will you buy me a broom like Scorpius’s, Dad?” Lily asked excitedly, tugging at his sleeve and pointing into the window display.

Draco blinked for a second, stumbling out of his thoughts and thrown by the thought of his daughter leaving to attend Hogwarts in another year and a half. Her eyes were shining a bright, hopeful blue.

“Of course, dragon. You could be on the same team as Scorpius,” he added a little mischievously.

Lily stuck out her lip, and Draco thought he saw her mother grin slyly. “I don’t want to play with Scorpius!” she insisted. “I want to play against him!”

“But then you’d have to play with James,” Draco pointed out.

Lily’s face fell, and Ginny shook her head warningly. A horrible plunging feeling gripped Draco’s stomach as he realized it was too soon to be teasing her about her brothers.

“Do you want to go see Uncle George?” Ginny asked kindly, swooping in to his rescue as always.

Lily brightened considerably. “Yeah! Can I get something?”

Before Ginny could tell her no, Draco cut in. “Of course, dragon.”

She squealed in delight and ran ahead of them. Draco shoved his hands in his pockets and avoided Ginny’s stare. When it turned out to be impossible, he glanced at her guiltily.

“I’m sorry! She looked sad…”

Ginny clucked her tongue but smiled. “You’ll have to learn to be firm with her, you know.” She laughed and reached for his hand. He looked at her nervously, sure she could feel his quickly beating pulse in his palm. She ran her thumb along his knuckles.

“I’m glad we could do this,” she said softly. “You know, be a real family.”

Draco chuckled. “We really are.”

“I love you.”

That dangerously happy bubble rose in his chest again, and he was about to return the sentiments when a pair of dark eyes caught his.

He looked the woman over, from her pulled back brown hair to her pointed purple shoes, and determined that he had never seen her before. But from the intensity and familiarity of her glare, he might have thought her one of the girls he had ditched at The Dragon.

He stuttered for a moment, tearing his eyes away from the strange witch’s, and said, “Yeah, me too.”

Ginny gave him a funny smile and tugged him towards the door of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

He returned the smile half-heartedly, unable to shake the cold feeling running through his veins. He felt sure he had seen that stare before.

Draco looked up sharply as Ginny’s fingers slipped from his and she glided across the store to embrace her brother. He slid his hands back into his pockets, looking around awkwardly.

Witches and wizards of all ages crowded among the displays. He searched for a flash of reddish hair but found none. Lily must already be in the back room, Draco thought with half a smile.

As Ginny began to chat with her brother, Draco pushed through a crowd of adolescents toward the back. He looked back at Ginny, whose eyes were bright and whose gestures were growing larger with each sentence, both actions which he recognized as her signs of delight.

He looked ahead again to navigate through the mobs of people, stopping short just in time to keep from knocking into a boy in his late teens. The young man seemed almost startled for a moment, taking in Draco’s face before looking him up and down.

“Watch it,” the boy snarled, his hand clutching something tightly in his pocket. Draco watched in shock as the teenager spit at his feet and brushed past him roughly. His brain refused to function for a moment, producing blips of thoughts, until Lily was suddenly at his side.

“Look at this, Daddy! You can grow real fangs! Look, they drip blood and everything! Daddy?” she faltered, coming to a stop mid-bounce. She shook his arm, eyes suddenly a ferocious gray but full of what he recognized as concern. “What’s wrong?”

Ignoring his pounding heart, Draco forced a smile. “Nothing. Let’s get that then, shall we?”

They edged their way to the register, but now the stares where everywhere. Hard, gleaming eyes beneath knitted brows dug into him. Draco whipped his head around to see more of them, growing closer and larger, as if they were closing in on him. He nearly gasped as sharp pains poked at his lungs and throat. Ginny’s hand was suddenly on his arm.

“Are you all right?” she asked, eyes widened and face white.

He shook his head wordlessly, trying to find his breath.

“Here,” he gasped, pushing the product into her hands. “Buy this. I need air.”

He stumbled out onto the street, his fingers tugging at his hair and his head spinning. Suddenly, Diagon Alley seemed exactly the same as it had always been. The same jeering faces and angry stares emerged from behind the façade of happy stores and family outings. It was all the same.

He could even feel them now, as he shrunk back against the brick wall, taking his pride and sanity with their filthy words and judgments.

“Draco?” her voice called from very far away now. He could barely hear it.

“Careful, miss,” a voice said fearfully. “Do you know who that is?”

“Of course I know who it is,” Ginny snapped. “He’s my husband.”

Maybe he imagined the words. Maybe I’m dreaming. But they made the pain lessen anyway.

There were whispers all around and the increasing shuffling of feet. “Come on, Draco. Let’s go home.”

He blindly let her guide him, completely unsure of their path or destination. It caused panic to seize his chest, but he had little choice in the matter. Nevertheless, the trust came painfully.

And then he couldn’t remember anything at all. His world was simply black, his senses distorted and unreal until something was thrust between his lips.

The liquid burned in his throat, and he coughed and sputtered, but things came back slowly.

She was staring at him with hard eyes softened by tears, and he knew that stare was so very different from those that had pierced him in Diagon Alley.

“Draco,” she breathed, pressing cold hands to his face. “Oh, Draco.”

He blinked, looking about the bedroom in bewilderment. “Lily-?”

“Is with George,” Ginny whispered.

The weight of the afternoon crashed down upon him, flashes of angry eyes clouding his vision. She reached out to touch him again, but he recoiled.

“Draco…” she whispered again, her voice thick with tears. “Draco, I’m sorry.”

He inhaled sharply. “Do you even know what you’re sorry for?” Anger was building in his chest, persistent and irrational and massive.

Her tears were falling in earnest now, her hands shaking as she fussed with the bed sheet.

“I didn’t think – I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would be like that,” she pleaded. “I just wanted us to be a family – a real family!” She was sobbing now, almost as frenzied as he was. Where that would have softened him only hours ago, now it only fed his rage.

“Damn it, Ginny! We are a real family!” Draco retorted. “Just because we don’t go marching up Diagon Alley every weekend doesn’t make us any less of one! Why isn’t what we have good enough for you?”

She swiped at her tears, anger marring her features too now. “Well what do we have, anyway? You sit in your goddamn study, sulking, refusing to tell me what’s wrong! Tell me, what is it we have?”

“We have a daughter,” he said in a tone of deathly quiet. “The two of you are the only things that matter to me. Else I wouldn’t have moved back to this bloody country.”

“Why do you resent it so much?” she shouted, her fists clenched. “We all had to live through that war, Draco. We all suffered! Fred died, for heaven’s sake!”

“It’s not that war that keeps me awake at night, Ginny! It’s what happened after!”

Silence consumed the room as they breathed heavily, staring at each other.

“Your family didn’t go through what I did after that war. I’m bound to them forever. Forever, Ginny! Twenty years later, people still spit on me like the filth he was! And you want me to go into the center of wizarding England, parading Harry Potter’s ex-wife and daughter as my own?”

“It’s not my fault that your parents were Death Eaters, Draco,” Ginny replied quietly. She looked at him with remorse, truly sorry for her mistake, but also for his experiences, he knew.

But she didn’t – couldn’t – understand the demons that ate away at his life in this country. He couldn’t give her what she wanted.

“Nor is it mine.”

Author notes: Thanks to all of you who keep leaving reviews. I hope you continue to. :)