A Different Alter

((((Present))))

\"Harry?\"
Harry looked up from the tabletop, which he had been staring at for what seemed an eternity. Ron had been sitting with him for those ages, in silent support. As soon as the doctor\'s had come, he\'d been kicked out of the room and told gently to waihat hat had been nearly four hours ago and he had gone way past terrified fifteen minutes after calling for the doctor. And now, Hermione had emerged, speaking to him softly.
\"Yes?\"
\"You have a daughter.\" She said sweetly, her face split in a cheerful grin. \"A healthy beautiful hterhter.\"
Harry jumped from the table and pushed passed her into the room that was designated as Draco\'s. There was a small crowd around the bed, but he pushed past them all. Obviously unconscious, Draco was sagged against the mattress, his face gleaming with sweat and the stench of too much magic rising from him in gusts.
\"He\'ll be fine, Harry.\" The voice was familiar and it was only then that he remembered Draco asking for Snape\'s name to be added to the list. The blonde had trusted no one else to mix the potions necessary.
\"Here, Harry. Say hello to your daughter.\" It was Hermione again, holding a small bundle, bending his arms the right way.
Then *she* was there. The new center of his very existence, his soul mate, the love of his life, his everything, his all and he whispered to the beautiful, sleeping, wonderfully red healthy, girl in his arms how precious she was. He wasn\'t aware of the tears on his cheeks or the quiet finishing sounds of all the visitors shuffling outside. Gently, Harry sat down on the bed, trying not to jar the unconscious body.
\"I love you.\" He said quietly to his daughter. Uttering words that he knew Draco would never accept, so had remained on the tip of his tongue since the day they had both been foolish boys in a supply closet. \"I love you forever, my own.\"
Suddenly, miraculously, her tiny eyes opened and they were a vibrant blue. She stared up at him, transfixed for a long moment, before she fell back to sleep.
\"Let me put her in her crib for a while, Harry. You need some sleep. Let us take care of all of you for a little while.\" Hermione again and Harry nodded distantly, wanting to cry out when she took his daughter away to be set gently in her tiny crib, installed in Draco\'s room. He rose to leave. \"Where are you going?\"
\"To bed...\" He trailed off and then realized where her confusion lay. She thought that he slept here. With his lover. And for a moment, anger flared in him as it always did when he thought of the distance both physical and emotional that Draco put between them. Why shouldn\'t he sleep here? On this of nighnights....
He let Hermione guide him to a chair while she magiced the sheets, the bed and the slumbering man clean. When she left, closing the door quietly behind her, he shed his clothing, leaving on only boxers and got into bed, curling around the other love of his life.
When he awoke, it was to a thin pale cry and the sight of Ron Weasely cradling a tiny bundle, cooing. Draco slept on, but Harry rose to take the baby in his arms again.
\"She won\'t eat.\" Ron said softly. \"We\'ve all tried, but she won\'t take the bottle and it\'s not like Malfoy\'s equipped or anything. The doctor called out for the wet nurse he usually uses, but she may not be here for another hour or so.\"
Harry could only stare at the tears on his daughter\'s face, willing her to drink from the tiny bottle Ron had pushed into his hand. She only stared at it for a moment before wailing again.
\"What is all the noise about then?\" Came a mumbled noise from the bed. With a start, Harry looked to the bed. Draco was sitting up, slowly unused to the ordinary lightness in his body. All the extra weight he had put on was gone. He looked as if had never been pregnant at all. Someone had slipped a shirt over him for modesty\'s sake and his hair was stuck up in all directions. He looked tired.
\"Your daughter. She\'s healthy, but she won\'t eat.\"
\"My....\" Draco trailed off, listening to the tiny wailing cry. Without a word, Harry came to his side.
\"Hold out your arms.\" He instructed softly. Draco complied, his face blank and Harry gently settled the crying baby into pale slender limbs, his fingers lingering over long on the thin lines left of old hurts. Instinctively, the blonde cradled the baby to his chest. Almost instantly, she stopped crying and just as she had with Harry looked unblinkily up at the one who had bore her.
\"Oh.\" Draco said so softly it was barely heard. Her eyes were more focused then someone a day old had a right to be.
\"Here, maybe if you try...\" Harry pressed a bottle into Draco\'s freer hand. She instantly accepted the nipple and drank nosily. \"Ron, tell the doctor we won\'t need his wet nurse. She just wanted her.........\"Harry paused searching for a title, \"Draco.\" He finished lamely. Ron scurried out.
\"She loves me.\" The blonde said, softly, reverently. \"I can feel it....\"
\"I felt it too.\" Harry said solemnly. \"She\'s our daughter.\"
\"Ours?\" Draco looked up and he remembered his plans of escape, his thoughts of leaving this precious girl to Harry, to ending it all, trying again with a surer thing. He could not, would not now. There was no chance of it. And how could he, now, seeing true love, knowing it? \"I love you.\" He told his daughter as she drifted back to sleep.
\"She\'s amazing.\" Harry whispered reverently.
\"I love you.\" Draco said again, but this time his eyes were on Harry.
\"What? But....I thought...you never.....\"
\"I love you both. You\'re my family now. Forever.\" Ice blue eyes brooked no argument.
\"I love you too. With all of my heart.\" He leaned forward, over the sleeping babe and kissed thin lips softly, pulling back to rest their foreheads together.
\"She needs a name, Harry.\"
They had never quite wanted to name the baby, not sure if it would live to bear it and now it was more then necessary that she had one.
\"I never thought...\"
\"I did.\" The whisper was weak, almost embarrassed. \"I\'ve thought for a long time when you went to Romania for a week with Ron to visit his brother....I thought about it quite a lot.\"
\"Did you settle on anything?\"
\"Not then....but I think I have now. It\'s Greek....it means \'two together\'. Short and it doesn\'t rhyme with anything horrid. Something with a little bit of strength and not at all ordinary.\"
\"I like the meaning. What\'s the name?\"
\"Syna.\" It was a soft, silbant sound and pleased them both with its hissing beginning.
\"Syna....\"The dark haired man rolled it on his tongue. He looked at his daughter\'s sleeping face. \"Sleep well, little Syna.\"
Together, they settled her in her cradle, watching her sleep a while longer.
\"Oi, Potter.\"
\"What?\"
\"How are two blokes like us going to raise a little girl?\"
Harry\'s eyes widened and he chuckled softly.
\"Carefully, I suspect. And with as much help as we can beg, borrow or steal!\"
((((Five Years Later))))

With a frustrated sigh, Draco pushed through the crowded street. It was Friday afternoon in Diagon Alley and the shops were doing brisk business as people stocked up for the weekend, buying impulsive things to bring home for their families. Usually, Draco would have lingered here himself, picking up a few choice foods and books, but right now he was late for a very important appointment.
\"Hey watch it! Oh! Mr. Potter, sir, I do apologize!\"
Draco flashed the flustered man a toothy grin, before hurrying onwards. He would never ever get tired of people calling him Mr. Potter or Harry being referred to as Mr.Malfoy. He wasn\'t sure why they couldn\'t just handle the hyphenation. His theory was that the average person\'s brains were simply not large enough to remember more then one fact about most people they knew. When he told his mate, Harry had only smiled vaguely at him and continued grading papers. It was enough to make Draco wonder if he\'d made the right choice by telling Harry to give up adventuring and take the position as the Defenses Against the Dark Arts Teacher at Hogwart\'s while Draco himself went in with Hermione to start up The One Stop Potion Shop here in Diagon alley, taking over when the owners of The Apothecary retired. It seemed Harry had only become more peaceful and tolerant as the years went on and sometimes, Draco just wanted a good old-fashioned fight.
Such thoughts fled his mind, having arrived at his destination. He mounted the stairs, trying to ignore the sticky third step that always makes him want to look down, but he really firmly, doesn\'t want to know. He can hear the rise and fall of voices as he opens the door at the top of the step and he tenses, waiting for it....
\"Mommy!\" The impact hit at roughly fifteen miles an hour, the top speed a five-year-old girl can manage after a lony iny in kindergarten. He swept her up, hugged her tightly, laughing a little.
\"Hello, birthday girl.\" He said into her mottled hair. \"Do you feel older?\"
She nodded solemnly against his shoulder.
\"Do you have your things?\"
Another nod.
\"Ready to go?\"
\"Yes, please! I wanna go home and show Daddy my berfday cwown.\" She pointed to the top of her head where there was indeed a decorated gold piece of paper cut jaggedly on top. On the front the words \"I\'m the Birthday Girl\" paraded around an animated picture of Syna herself, waving.
\"Mr. Malfoy-Potter? Do you have a moment, please?\" The soft voice came from Margot, the beautiful young woman who for the most part ran Kali\'s Kindergarten since Kali herself had disappeared a few years back. Carefully, Drset set his daughter down.
\"We\'ll go in a minute, little one.\"
\"I didn do anyfing wwong, Mummy, honeswy!\"
Surprised, Draco looked down at his normally well-behaved girl. She stared up at him, one eye his own icy blue, the other the piercing green of Harry. It seemed that she was a perfect blend of them both, down to her bi-colored hair that fell in locks alternatively blonde and brown, proving to Harry once and for all that Draco was, in fact, a natural blonde. Her personality was purely her own though and Syna had proved to be a well-behaved child outside of the usual mistakes that kids made.
\"She truly didn\'t.\" Margot went on softly. \"It was one of the boys. He was teasing her about something, I wasn\'t sure what...\"
\"He said I was a fweak cause I had two daddies and when I tole him I had a mummy and a daddy, he thwew a bwock at me.\"
\"He what?\" The ice in his voice could have given the sweet teacher frostbite had she not hastily explained.
\"The child has been removed from the school for the incident. He had two strikes against him. What I wanted to tell you was what happened next. Syna\'s friend Roger Weasely stepped in front of her just when the block would have hit her. I was sure that he was going to get a concussion, but Syna...\"
\"I kissed and made it bettah!\" She said, looking impishly up at the two adults. \"I kissed him where the block hit and it was bettah.\"
\"It\'s true. I didn\'t believe it myself. I think you might want to talk to your husband about testing her range of ability. I\'ve never seen anything like it myself.\"
I , Dr, Draco almost wanted to tell her, once when I had a paper cut, I let her kiss it and it healed. Once she found a bird that had flown into the window and I was sure it was dead, but it fluttered out of her hands and into the sky...But he told her nothing. Harry had been quite firm that they wait until Syna was old enough to understand her power before they began examining it.
\"Thank you for telling me, Margot. I\'m sure Harry would be interested to hear about. We\'ll see you on Monday.\" He picked Syna up again. \"Come on, munchkin, let\'s go home.\"
They walked through the busy streets and because it was her birthday, he bought her a sweet cake at one of the stands and let her eat it all before they got home. Harry would undoubtedly disapprove, but that was part of the fun. They popped into One Stop Potion Shop to say goodnight to Hermione. She handed Draco a colorfully wrapped present, whispering loudly that it was \'for later\'. She gave Syna a birthday kiss and sent them on their way home by floo.
\"Happy Birthday!\" Harry was waiting for them by the fiace,ace, accepting a brief kiss from Draco before sweeping Syna up in his arms. \"I made you your favorite dinner! Fish eyes with cabbage sauce!\"
\"Ewwwwww! Daddy! You know that\'s not my favowite!\" Harry laughed and set her down.
\"Good cause I all I had left in the house was spaghetti with ketchup and meatballs.\"
\"Yay!\" She bounced, flashing them both a happy smile. \"Look! I have a cwwone!\"
\"That\'s because you\'re a Birthday Princess.\" Harry said gravely.
\"I\'m gonna put down my things and be wight back!\" She informed them, using the phrase Harry had repeated many nights when he came home to an exuberant welcome, before scampering off to her room.
\"So beautiful, how was your day?\" Draco purred, leaning in for a much more leisu hel hello kiss.
\"Boring enough. Yours?\"
\"Long and apparently, our daughter is much more powerful then we thought....\" He gave his mate a quick outline of the afternoon\'s events.
\"I guess I could ask Dumbledore to try and get a measure on her. She\'s like nothing else any of us has seen....\" Worry lines creased the scarred forehead.
\"She\'ll be all right, luv. You\'ll see.\"
\"Yes, I suppose you\'re right...Mummy.\"
Draco thwaped him on the back of the head out of habit. It was a long standing joke that since she was old enough to speak, Syna had referred to Draco as her mother, despite the fact that no one could remember teaching her that it was so. She had grown up insisting that Draco was her mother seemingly never confused about his gender. To her it was title of honor and it could not be revoked. In his heart of hearts, Draco wouldn\'t have it any other way.
\"It seems that Potter-Weasley alliance has transferred to a new generation. \" Draco mused idly.
\"So it seems, so it seems. Ginny will be happy to hear her son has continued the tradition I\'m sure.\"
\"Back!\" Syna announced. \"Can we have dinnah?\"
\"Only if you say the right word.\" Harry reprimanded gently. She seemed to think for a minute and then with a dainty stamp and a practiced expression she said,
\"Now!\"
\"Draco!\"
\"What?! You can\'t prove anything!\" The once sinister blonde was betrayed by his own laughter.
\"Honey, what\'s the right word?\"
\"Pwease. I know dat, but Mummy said it would be funny to say somthin\' else, just dis once.\" She looked appealing at Harry. \"Don\'t be mad at Mummy, Daddy. He was just bein\' silly.\"
\"I\'m not mad, honey.\" He assured her, rolling his eyes at his laughing mate. \"Just remembering that your Mother will never change.\"
\"Look who\'s talking.\" Draco muttered, winking over Syna\'s head. \"Mr. Prim and Proper lives on.\"
Darkly, green eyes snapping, Harry growled into his lover\'s ear.
\"I\'ll show you Prim and Proper after the birthday girl goes to bed tonight, Mr. Malfoy-Potter.\"
Draco only grinned at him like a lunatic, a laugh still bubbling in his chest.
The dinner went smoothly and Syna was allowed to open some of her presents. The rest could be opened tomorrow at the official party with friends and...well... closer friends. The Malfoy-Potter household didn\'t have much of an extended family. She fell asleep later then usual, excited with the new talking doll that Hermione had given her.
Quietly, Harry retreated from the pink bedroom after having read her Rapunzel ( her favorite) for the third time, she was fast asleep, clutching the new doll. He made sure that the small nightlight that she still favored was on, before beating a hasty retreat to the master bedroom.
Draco was already showered and in bed, curled loosely in a sheet, pouring over the monthly inventory intently. Feeling decidedly active, Harry shed his clothing rapidly and plucked the sheets from his lover\'s hands with ease. The blonde didn\'t protest, rolling on to his back, an amused expression lingering on his face.
\"Is there something you wanted?\"
\"Always.\" Harry breathed against pale . \". \"Forever.\"
\"I think I have eternity free, but I\'ll have to check my schedule.\"
\"Smartass.\"
\"Tightass.\"
\"Bitch.\"
\"Takes one to know one.\" Draco said with an air of finality. As an after thought, he stuck out his tongue.
\"Very mature.\"
\ tha that wasn\'t an insult.\" A flash and Harry was pinned under the lithe line of white. \"It was an invitation.\"
It wasn\'t until much later when they were both almost asleep that Harry whispered in hir. r. HappHappy Anniversary.\"
Draco shifted sleepily, a satisfied smirk lingering on his lips.
\"Your present in the top drawer of your desk at school.\" Draco muttered.
\"I know. I\'m just lucky I didn\'t need a pen when I had a meeting with Professor McGonnagle. I\'m going to keep it there though. It\'ll keep me going when conferences with my first-years get supremely dull.\"
\"Mmm.\"
\"Don\'t you want to know what I got you?\"
\"I thought I already got it.\"
\"Well yes, but I\'ve got something else.\" A cool band slid around Draco\'s ring finger. \"I know we never said vows or anything and I wouldn\'t ask you too, but I found out that they decided to destroy the temple, so I asked for piece of the alter. I had it formed into two rings.\"
\"Perfect.\" Draco assured him, accessing the thin black band around his finger.
\"I love you.\"
\"I love you too, now let me go to sleep, so we can wake up with Ms. Early Bird tomorrow.\"
They shuffled into their usual position for sleep, Harry lying on Draco\'s shoulder the paler man curled around him. In the stillness of the night, they clung together as any other couple would at home. They were no ordinary couple, to be sure. Their lives had taken a strange twisting path that ultimately bound them together closer then blood and sex. They were each other\'s only family.
\"Mummy.\" A quiet voice startled Draco from sleep and found Syna at his side.\"I had a nightmare. Can I sweep wi\'h you and Daddy, just fah tonig\'t?\"
\"Of course, Prima Donna. Shove over Harry.\"
Muttering Harry made room, rearranging himself for his daughter though he was barely conscious. When both Harry and Syna were asleep, Draco allowed himself to shed the tears that had come to his eyes when the ring had slid around his finger. This was his place now, he was tied here, closer then it seemed possible. With Professor Snape, the Weasley\'s overpowering clan and the Grangers all coming tomorrow, the house would be filled with those who laid some claim to his tiny family. Parties, once Draco\'s forte, had become something to be endured.
It had become abundantly clear as he aged that he was much better suited to moments like these, his daughter in his arms, his husband a breath away and teetering on the edge of sleep. It was the worst type of sappiness to think such things, the type he usually accused Harry of, but in the darkness of the night when everyone else slumbered, he could relish everything from the sweet ache sex had left him with to the precise feel of his daughter\'s light breath against his arm. But the best....the best part of all was that tomorrow he would still have it all. As long as he lived and breathed this was his. It made him more comfortable to label the emotion greed though he knew it was far more complicated then that.
There would always be the voice of the cocky young Draco Malfoy, who pleaded to be off somewhere more glamorous, doing powerful work or the broken young man crying for release. But Draco Malfoy of now, knew precisely how to deal with those voices. He fell asleep, face buried in his daughter\'s hair and one hand clasping Harry\'s, their new black rings clicking together reassuringly in the darkness.

~Finis~