"I hate you" Rose Weasley screamed, slamming the door of the Malfoy Manor and disapparating somewhere else. She had gone to visit her old friend, hoping that this would have finally been the right time for him to notice her as more than a friend and make a move, but she had been wrong, very wrong. She thought he had been close to declare his love, but then his father has come home, and he had just sent her away, and she had realized in that moment that he was ashamed by her. So she had stormed out of the Manor, leaving him alone with his father.
"Was she Granger's daughter?" Draco Malfoy had asked his son, once the girl had left them. His son had looked at him with surprised eyes: he had expected his dad to insult her Weasley origins, but not to know about her mother. He just nodded.
I was once like you are now
And I know that it's not easy
"I went with her at school, and she has her same attitude" he said with a low voice, and he went to the cabinet to get himself a glass of firewhiskey. Then he sat in the armchair in front of the fireplace, now cold and empty; it reminded him of the Manor where had grown up, always so big and at the same time so empty.
"She punched me in the face in our third year" Draco added some moments later remembering the old times, and his son was not sure if that was an actual smile on his face, but it definitely looked like it.
From the moment I could talk
I was ordered to listen
"I despised her for all our years through Hogwarts, because she was a mudblood. But that was what my dad, your grandfather, told me all the time, and that's also what I told myself" his father said, taking a sip out of his glass and looking at one of the pictures on the wall. It was the one with him and his parents, taken before he first entered Hogwarts by an official photographer. Scorpius has never really liked that picture because his granddad was scary even though it was just a portrait, and his dad just seemed to be so sad, but it was supposed to be a very happy day: his first day at school!
"What I am trying to say is, that I hated her because my father told me to, and then she was just so much better at school than everyone else, notwithstanding her muggle parents … her nickname was Know-It-All and she deserved it" his dad added, and it almost sounded like a compliment. Scorpius could recognize his best friend in her mother's description, but he could still not understand where all of this was going.
"Hermione Granger saved our lives together with her two best friends, and she demonstrated to be so much better than many purebloods I knew" his dad finally said, and Scorpius could just look at him in almost complete shock. If it wasn't for all those quidditch practices and his young age, he would have probably gotten a heart attack at this point. He could see the portrait of Lucius Malfoy making faces in disgust of his son's words, but Draco was completely ignoring him. He was looking at some other pictures on the wall. Scorpius stood up and went to have a better look at them.
Other than the picture of his first day at school, there was only another picture of his dad's parents: it showed them later in the years, his dad was probably 16 or 17 years old, and he was sad and afraid. His grandmother, Narcissa, was holding his hand and looking as preoccupied as him, but his grandfather was separated by the two of them, trying to look proudly in the camera with horrible results. All the other pictures were the ones of his parents' marriage, happy faces and smiles all over. And then there was one, made in a hospital room, with his beautiful mother holding him, a little boy a few days old. On the corner of the picture there was also another family, the Potters, holding their babies but that was not what shocked Scorpius. In the moving picture, as in all the wizarding ones, his dad was getting up, and going shaking Harry Potter's hand, smiling at his wife and his newborn. The feeling seemed to be reciprocated, and they were all smiling. It just didn't seem wrong.
"You should invite your friend over more often" Draco said, drinking the last remains of his drink, and making his way towards the kitchen to get the glass to their house-elf.
Scorpius stood there in silence, before quickly turning and going to the main entrance. He opened the door, and shouted his dad:
"Dad, I am going to ask Rose Weasley to be my girlfriend, I might be late" and he did not wait for an answer, he just disapparated away. In this way, he did not notice that his mother has been standing in the corridor, probably listening to their conversation. He did not see his mother, the cold Astoria Greegrass in Malfoy going to hug his father and whispering him: "You did a great job, you are nothing like him".
But more than anything, he did not see his father smiling, like he rarely did.
But these little things were not important to Scorpius, because that day he was too busy convincing Rose Weasley to go out on a date with him.
Find a girl
Settle down
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old but I am happy
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I was listening to Father and Son, by Cat Stevens, which is not his real name anymore, and this came into my mind. And it's a way to keep my English working.