#draco burning his life down to rethread the universe for young harry seems very appropriate to me

[oflights]

wip snip 4.2

thank you for the tag, @elskanellis! your snip is so intriguing 👀

in return, have some more of time travel fic: extremely gooey and tender and basically what the next 10k or so words are going to be (the fic is currently 20k lmao) before things get Bad again. still heartbreaking in its tenderness, though, because baby harry is heartbreaking (a contextual reminder that he is 7 in this snip!!! adult harry is henceforth "potter" from draco's pov).

“This is for me?” Harry asks, doing another turn, clutching at the still unnamed dragon in his hands. “All of this, the bed and—I can—”

“Harry,” Draco says softly, coming closer and dropping to crouch again, ignoring his protesting thighs starting to truly feel all the activity of the day. “Yes, all of this. You can sleep in the bed, you can name your toy—it’s all yours. This is what looking after you means; everything that I can offer is yours now. I promise.”

“Do I have to—” Harry starts, and Draco simply doesn’t want to hear where that’s going.

“No. You don’t have to do a single thing. It’s just yours. Because—because you’re a guest, and a kid, and kids deserve these sorts of things no matter what.”

“Oh,” Harry says, sounding genuinely startled in a way that makes Draco want to punch—someone. Perhaps Vernon or Petunia Dursley, or perhaps Albus Dumbledore. He did not ever imagine he would one day find new and more infuriating reasons to resent Dumbledore this long after his death, but he supposes life is surprising that way.

Harry breaks up his surprised, revelatory stance with another yawn, and this time Draco makes sure his tone brooks no argument when he directs him to the bathroom with the pajamas. To keep busy and shove down the punching urge, he resizes another set of clothes from the wardrobe for the morning, startling himself when he leans too far in and his hand disappears through the back wall.

“Oh, right, I should warn you,” Draco says when Harry returns, changed and padding gingerly towards the bed. “The wardrobe is a portal to the treehouse, so be careful if you go too far into it.”

“You have a treehouse?” Harry asks with a gasp, and Draco smiles at him, striding over and pulling the quilt back for Harry to settle in.

“You have a treehouse. I’ll show you tomorrow, if you’d like.”

He waits as Harry clambers onto the bed and settles against the mound of pillows, smoothing the quilt over him and then making sure the dragon is tucked in, too. “Any ideas on a name?” Draco asks softly, tweaking the dragon’s snout. “Do you want to sleep on it?”

“Can I name him after a—a con—a constellation? Like you?” Harry asks, frowning in concentration.

“Yes, of course you can. Which do you fancy?” Draco sits on the bed near Harry’s feet and leans back on his hands, gazing up at the ceiling as it cycles over them. “There’s Cygnus, the swan I was telling you about—he was my grandfather, you know, and right by Draco, so that’s convenient. There’s Pegasus, too, a type of flying horse, and Cepheus, he was a king in Ancient Greece—well, he chained his daughter up to a rock, so maybe not the best role model, but a cool name nonetheless. Just stop me if anything grabs you, really.”

“What’s that one?” Harry asks, squinting up and pointing; Draco makes a mental note to solve the glasses issue as soon as possible. He looks where Harry’s pointing, southwest of the quadrant he’d been explaining, and spots the most recognizable constellation there is.

“Ah, that’s Orion. The hunter. He was a Giant, you know, and he got pretty boastful, so Gaia—super powerful Earth mum, you did not want to get on her bad side—sent a great big scorpion after him. They fought, so you’ll never see Orion and Scorpius—that constellation all the way over there—in the sky at the same time. But Ophiuchus—he was a Healer, that one over there, see how he’s sort of between Orion and Scorpius? He gave Orion some medicine and saved him from Scorpius.”

Harry’s eyes are drooping closed, but he still murmurs, “Really? Is that all true?”

“Well, sort of. They’re stories, myths; all the stars have stories. There are different versions and they change depending on who you talk to, but I have my favorite versions because they’re the ones my mum told me.”

Draco checks in to see that Harry’s eyes are almost completely closed, and keeps talking hoping they’ll close further; how many times had his mother talked him to sleep?

“If you’re in the sky, it means you’re pretty important, right? So that means lots of stories. I’ll tell you all of them, if you’d like. I think you’ll enjoy this room, and you’ll be happy here. I hope so.”

That’s all verging on a ramble, but he thinks it doesn’t matter because Harry is asleep. So Draco gets up gently, patting Harry’s foot over the quilt, shoots the still unnamed dragon a grin, and starts to leave the room.

He stops only when he hears Harry mumble, “Orion. That’s his name,” and curl around the dragon, breathing going smooth and even, arms clutching it tight against his small frame.

Draco smiles at them both. “Goodnight, Harry and Orion.”

tagging @teledild0nix @phoebe-delia and @thehoneybeet, fully randomly chosen so absolutely no pressure!!