The playdates had become a fixture.
Severus did not call them playdates. Narcissa called them playdates. Severus called them scheduled supervisory obligations, which was accurate and which Narcissa ignored with the serene efficiency she brought to all of his terminology.
They were four. Both of them. Draco had turned four in June with a party at the Manor that involved twelve children and a peacock and what Narcissa described as a "small incident" with the cake that she did not elaborate on. Harry had turned four in July with Hagrid, a lopsided treacle tart, and a hand-knitted hat from Minerva that was green and slightly too large and which Harry wore for three weeks without removing it.
They were four and they had opinions.
Harry's opinions were quiet and structural. He knew what he liked. He liked the potions stool. He liked the lake. He liked Pip. He liked the rug in front of the fire and the way the water-light moved on the ceiling and the specific weight of Severus's arm when Severus carried him, which Severus did less now because Harry was four and four-year-olds walked, but which still happened when Harry was tired or when Harry wanted it or when Harry simply raised his arms without saying anything and Severus picked him up before deciding to.
Draco's opinions were loud and architectural. Draco knew what he wanted. He wanted the best chair. He wanted the first biscuit. He wanted to be the one who decided what game they were playing and in what order and with what rules, and he communicated these desires with the composed authority of a very small person who had been raised in a house with peacocks and a father who confirmed facts rather than asked questions.
The difficulty was that Harry did not care about Draco's opinions.
This was not hostility. Harry was not hostile. Harry was agreeable and patient and warm in the way of a child who had been raised by someone who was none of those things and had arrived at them independently. Harry simply did not recognize Draco's authority over the rug and its contents. Harry occupied the rug the way he occupied the castle: with the total, unconcerned belonging of someone who had been here first and did not intend to negotiate.
"It's my turn," Draco informed Harry, on the rug, at half past eleven, regarding a toy broomstick that Narcissa had brought and which both of them wanted and neither of them was willing to relinquish.
"You had a turn," Harry replied.
Harry looked at him. The look was steady and patient and contained the specific immovable quality that Severus recognised because he saw it in the mirror, the quality of a person who had arrived at a position and was not going to leave it.
Draco's cheeks went pink. This was the Draco tell, the one Severus had catalogued at seven months: the flush that arrived when Draco encountered a wall he could not charm his way through. His chin lifted. His jaw set. His hands, which had been at his sides, moved to the broomstick.
"Draco," Narcissa warned, from the settee, with the measured tone of a mother who had identified the trajectory of the situation and was offering one opportunity for course correction.
Draco did not take the opportunity. Draco was four and the broomstick was in his hands and the boy holding the other end had told him no, and Draco Malfoy at four did not have the infrastructure to process no with grace. He pulled harder. Harry held on. The broomstick, which was a toy and not built for the tensile demands being placed on it, creaked.
Severus set down his tea.
"Harry," he instructed. "Release the—"
Harry released the broomstick. This was not compliance. Severus recognized this immediately because he knew his son, and his son's version of releasing a contested object involved releasing it at the exact moment his opponent was pulling hardest, which meant Draco stumbled backward three steps, hit the edge of the rug, and sat down hard on the stone floor with the broomstick in his lap and an expression of total indignation.
Harry looked at him from across the rug.
His face was not smug. Smugness was not a thing Harry did at four. His face was the neutral, patient, slightly interested face of a boy who had solved a problem using physics and was observing the result.
His cheeks were red. His hair, which was always precise because Narcissa ensured it, was not precise. His chin was up and his hands were in fists and he crossed the rug with the focused velocity of a very small person who had been wronged and intended to address it.
It was not a punch. It was not a shove. It was a full-body commitment, the launch of a four-year-old who had decided that the situation required a physical response and had not considered the logistics of the physical response before initiating it. He hit Harry at approximately chest height and they both went down, a tangle of limbs and robes and indignation, rolling across the rug in a way that was not violent but was deeply committed.
"Draco Lucius Malfoy," Narcissa announced, rising from the settee.
Severus was already standing. Not because he was concerned. He was standing because it was a reflex, the reflex of a man who had spent four years being responsible for a small body and whose legs moved when that body hit the floor regardless of context.
Harry was on his back. Draco was on top of him, pinning him with the determination of someone who had committed to a strategy and was not going to abandon it. Harry's hands were on Draco's shoulders. Not pushing. Holding. His expression was one of mild surprise, the expression of a person who had not anticipated this development and was evaluating it in real time.
"Get off," Harry instructed.
Harry looked up at him. Draco looked down at him. Their faces were six inches apart. Draco's hair had fallen forward and was brushing Harry's forehead and neither of them had registered this because they were four and registering it was nine years away.
The move was fast and efficient and entirely unscripted. He rolled sideways, using Draco's weight against him in a way that Severus would later identify as instinctive and which bore a concerning resemblance to a wrestling technique Harry had no business knowing at four. Draco went over. Harry ended up on top. Draco went pink with outrage. Harry's knee was on Draco's chest, not hard, just present, the calm, definitive weight of someone who had won.
"I was on top," Draco protested.
"Because you dropped me."
"Because you pulled too hard."
They had arrived at a logical loop and neither of them was going to exit it. Severus could see this. Narcissa could see this. Both of them stood at the edges of the rug looking down at two four-year-olds in a deadlock, and the moment held the specific quality of a scene that was simultaneously a discipline issue and the funniest thing that had happened in the quarters in months.
Severus picked Harry up. He lifted him off Draco with one arm, the practised efficiency of a man who had been extracting his son from situations for four years and who had the technique down to a single motion. Harry dangled. He did not resist. He was accustomed to being removed from situations by this method and accepted it with the passive compliance of someone who knew the removal was temporary and the situation would resume later.
Narcissa collected Draco. She did this with the composed grace of a woman who had been managing Draco's outbursts since birth and who could do it in formal robes without creasing them. Draco was upright, brushed off, and repositioned on the settee in under four seconds. His hair was fixed in five.
"We do not tackle," Narcissa informed him, with the level, precise tone that was her version of Severus's classroom voice.
"He did not start it. He released a broomstick. You started it. We will not be discussing this further."
Draco's mouth opened. It closed. He looked at Narcissa and recognized the expression and chose, with the specific tactical wisdom of a Malfoy, not to press the point.
Harry, still in Severus's arm, was looking at Draco across the room. His expression was not triumphant. His expression was the calm, settled expression of someone who had been in a fight and was now out of the fight and was already thinking about the next thing, which appeared to be the biscuits on the table.
"Down," Harry informed Severus.
"You are not in a position to make requests."
"Biscuits are for children who do not instigate wrestling matches."
"You engineered the conditions."
Harry looked at him. The look was steady. The look was four years old and was already doing the thing Harry's look would do for the rest of his life: the quiet, direct, unblinking look of a person who knew exactly what he had done and was waiting to see whether the person holding him was going to pretend otherwise.
Severus set him down. Harry went to the table. He took a biscuit. He took a second biscuit. He carried the second biscuit across the room to the settee where Draco was sitting with his arms crossed and his chin up and his dignity in visible disrepair.
Harry held out the biscuit.
He did not offer it. He held it out in the space between them and waited.
Draco looked at the biscuit. He looked at Harry. He looked at the biscuit again. His arms were still crossed. His chin was still up. His pride was still active and functioning and doing its best to maintain the position that he was wronged and had no intention of accepting concessions from the person who had wronged him.
He took it without uncrossing his arms, which required him to uncross one arm and recross it, which he did with the flustered efficiency of a boy managing a capitulation he did not want to be seen performing.
They ate their biscuits. Side by side. On the settee. Not speaking. Not touching. The distance between them the width of a cushion and the length of a grudge that would last approximately eleven minutes before Draco suggested a different game and Harry agreed.
Narcissa looked at Severus.
"Saturdays," she confirmed.
"Your son tackled my son."
"Your son provoked my son."
"My son released a broomstick. The provocation is an interpretation."
"An accurate interpretation."
Severus looked at the settee. At two four-year-olds eating biscuits in silence. At the broomstick, abandoned on the rug, the cause forgotten before the crumbs were finished.
"Saturdays," he confirmed.
