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‘Dovedale!’
‘What’s that, I wasn’t attending –’
‘Dovedale, Harry!’
‘Derbs and a bit of Staffs? What of it?’
‘We could slip away to Dovedale for a week. Or three.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, really, Harry. June and July ought to be wholly devoted to our birthdays, oughtn’t they.’
‘If you’re eager to take an angling holiday, chasing up the ghosts of Walton and Cotton, say so, but –’
‘Now, Harry, do be reasonable, it’s not all angling there. Charming countryside, lots of scenic, um, walks, gastropubs…. And, after all. Scorpius nor Albus particularly care for rambles when away from our own country where people have become inured to them, possibly because the randy little fauns cannot stop groping one another sufficiently not to scandalise passing vicars and elderly gentlewomen, of whom Mother has firmly established she’s not one, given her encouragement of them, nor yet do they care for angling, and James and whichever doe-eyed chit he’s pursuing on any given day likely shan’t either, why Jamie won’t simply twig to the fact that he and Rose are perfectly suited I don’t at all know, and it’s blessedly impossible that your evil daughter whom I suspect is somehow secretly Pansy’s would go along even at wand-point and –’
‘Breathe, love.’
‘Well, but, damn it, Harry.’
‘Mm?’
‘I mean, we’ve done any number of things that you laid on for my birthday this year, and I wanted to give you a treat for yours, and I feel as if the whole season has been rather devoted to me, as is meet and right, of course, although I must say you might as well have Stunned me as to have pinned my best split-cane Barder rods to the wall with a garden tool two days before my birthday and the tines skewering a note reading “Not a chance, sunshine, and I’ll see you in the garden” –’
‘Given that we were expecting half the Wizarding world for a garden party for your birthday in two days, I really thought it reasonable enough.’
‘Well, but, Harry, I was terrified you’d damaged them, although of course you’d not done and I’m very sorry indeed that I wanted faith in you, but you really mustn’t handle my rod too roughly – oh, do leave off sniggering, Potter, you know what I mean – and that’s the thing, you did put on that do –’
‘And it rained like buggery.’
‘– And you let me drag you to Glyndebourne, although admittedly you spent the afternoon kipping on the lawns next the hamper and the champers –’
‘I was awake, I simply put my hat over my face and tried to ignore your arguing the score, bar for bar, or rather measure for measure, as it were, with the soprano, loudly.’
‘– The woman had no sense of how to sing Lady Macbeth, Harry, or indeed Verdi, or indeed, come to that, opera, but you meant well, which is more than I can say for your utterly appalling Shakespeare pun just now, by the way –’
‘Draco, she stormed off an hour before the bloody thing was to start and they had to bring out the understudy.’
‘– And quite right, too, the silly cow had no business performing. And you meant well when we went to Lord’s, although it was agonising to watch at the last with the England run rate dropping and the required run rate rising, and you were as heart-in-mouth nervous as I, you must admit, which is more than I can say for the old men in the eggs-and-bacon ties snoring behind us –’
‘I remember it vividly, love. You were watching that last over through your fingers like an eight-year-old watching Daleks from behind a sturdy bit of furniture, Jagger to your left was tearing a hankie to shreds without realising it, and on my right all I could hear was John Major swearing prayerfully under his breath – whilst I was making origami of my tie, as you rightly noted.’
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‘– Yes, and there was the Royal Bath and West, which was a lovely thought on your part, truly –’
‘Bar the monsoon rains and that unfortunate incident.’
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‘– I quite know now how Aberforth must have felt, but your intentions were good, Harry, and the Chelsea Flower Show was very sweet of you, really –’
‘In the interim periods when it wasn’t pissing down rain, yes, and I must apologise again, I’d not realised your allergies were so extensive.’
‘– And we really must do the Cowes Round the Island Race again next year –’
‘With rather better weather, yes, possibly so.’
‘– And you must admit Henley Regatta went well, well, well enough, really –’
‘I had quite forgotten that Cho’s Animagus form was that of a swan.’
‘– And Hurlingham –’
‘I really ought to have cast an Unforgiveable on that Argentine bugger, to larn him to keep his hands to himself.’
‘– And it was a lovely thought to suggest the Royal Highland Games –’
‘Leaving aside midges, rain, and the regrettable incident with your kilts, yes, I suppose. You’re wittering, love, in a disturbingly uncharacteristic fashion. Out with it.’
‘Well. That’s to say. You’ve moved heaven and earth – well, you’ve fought the stars in their courses, actually, and they’ve fought back – to give me a perfect birthday month, well, two, really; it simply hasn’t, er, gone terribly well, in the event.’
‘So you thought it might be better if you planned.’
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‘Look, are you quite certain you’ve not been in contact with any Mackled Malaclaws, even as a Potions ingredient?’
‘Has it been that bad?’
‘Well … no. Because – well, you know perfectly well why, Potter, don’t force me to say it.’
‘Because even though we’ve been governed by Sod’s Law in all our doings, from the village fête to Aldeburgh, we’ve been together.’
‘Oh, don’t be soppy, Harry, it’s rather middle-class.’
‘Look, m’love – d’you really wish to give me the perfect birthday holiday?’
‘Of course I do, you fond idiot.’
‘Right, then, I’ll tell everyone we’ve gone to America, and not to write.’
‘POTTER! America? In July? When the Muggles celebrate their rebellion all through July by dumping perfectly good tea in harbours and shooting Squibs, by all accounts?’
‘Shooting off squibs. Fireworks, as we do on Bonfire Night. Besides, that was weeks ago, on the fourth of the month. And I like Americans: I’ve seen them fight.’
‘As have I – all too often. Hearty barbarians, and that’s not counting their Aurors, hardly a cultivated person on the continent. Piratical hearties who believe God’s on their side –’
‘In short, displaced Elizabethan Englishmen. Quite.’
‘Sometimes I miss the old Harry, when you were Wet, before you turned into Colonel Blimp.’
‘Really? Because I’m still madly in love with the Draco Malfoy who left off being a blood-purist and became a positive fixture of the Damascus Rural District Council Roads and Transport Committee. But it needn’t be America, love: I’ll tell everyone we’re off to Australia instead.’
‘But that’s even worse! Bar a few chardonnay socialists, they’re the bloody Texans of the Pacific – and that’s the ALP! Even their fauna include a red-necked pademelon!’
‘Love: it doesn’t matter. I said I’d tell everyone we gone to the ends of the earth, not that we’d actually go.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You do really wish me to have what I want and wish for my birthday, don’t you.’
‘Er. Yes. But –’
‘Then I tell the world we’re away and travelling. We boot the bloody children out of the place. We positively hope for rain. And we stay snug, here, and I promise you: there shall be exploration, and new delights, and not quite virgin territory seized and treasured, and I shall take you to new heights and new horizons and around the sodding world, to places we’ve never been.’
‘Mmmmm. Harry….’
‘And I rather think I shall begin unwrapping my present now….’
‘HARRY! Ahhhhhh….’
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In another wing of the great house, Albus dropped his wand, feeling the minatory slap on his hand from Harry’s wards, and the image and the sound he had conjured faded away, even as his own Scorpius dragged him avidly down upon their bed. Before he became quite incoherent, he said, as he had said on many occasions before, in respectful hope of emulation, ‘Go, Dad.’
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Several days after.
‘Back from the river, then?’
‘Hullo. Yes. Nothing rising now of course, not until evening. I’m quite glad you remembered we owned this bit of water.’
‘I’m very clever. Ask our sons.’
‘No, thank you. I am beginning to believe those lads have significant boundary issues.’
‘Don’t be silly, Draco. They both want parental examples of a sound relationship, and you know damned well my wards don’t allow them any spying that goes too far. It amuses them to think they’ve bested us – and it amuses me to know they’ve not done, and are being surreptitiously educated. And, besides – it worked, didn’t it?’
‘Greatly as it pains me to admit it, Potter, it did, at that. Those who think we’ve buggered off to the ends of the earth leave us alone, and those who suspect we’d simply say that, are now convinced we’ve stayed home for a dirty weekend and don’t come looking for us. We really were brilliant.’
‘Yes, we were. You wittered and wibbled almost convincingly, for a role so wholly unsuited to your character.’
‘And you were almost capable of Slytherin guile, with a little assistance.’
‘Hmm. Yes. Remind someday to tell you a tale of a – hat.’
‘What? Oh, no, Harry, you’re not going to distract me just now with some rubbish about your being considered for Slytherin – nonsense on the face of it. It’s time for another birthday present for you, all nicely wrapped and ready for you play with, as long and hard as you like. Shall I unwrap it, hmm?’
Harry grinned, almost as wolfishly as a Lupin, and grinned the wider in the knowledge that Draco would never quite fathom the whole of what he was grinning about. Draco was sometimes so sharp he cut himself rather than others, but he really was, after all, worth loving, very generous with his undeniable gifts, and a truly brilliant shag.
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END
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