The Next Generation: Platform 9 ¾
Scorpius watched as the redheaded man pointed out Scorpius and his mother and father to the black-haired man with glasses. The red-haired woman and the bushy-haired woman turned as well. The five adults stared at each other for a moment, until Draco gave a curt nod of recognition before the steam blocked the larger group from view. Scorpius turned to his father.
"Father, who…?"
"The Potters and the Weasleys," Draco replied shortly, his face expressionless.
Scorpius's eyes grew round. "As in Harry Potter? The Harry Potter?" Draco nodded. "And Ginny Potter? And Ron and Hermione Weasley?" With each nod, Draco's pale face tightened up more and more and his gray eyes turned dangerously steely—even all these years later, he resented admitting he'd been wrong to side with Lord Voldemort. He resented the Potters and Weasleys even more because they—especially Harry—had convinced the Ministry to go easy on the Malfoy family after the Battle of Hogwarts.
"Father?" Draco was startled out of his reverie and looked down into his son's inquisitive expression. Draco shook his head and swallowed the old prejudices he had been about to voice.
"You know how I feel about them, Scorpius—but I want you to make up your own mind about them." There, he'd said it. Woodenly, almost forced, but he'd said it. As if to compensate for his lapse of Potter/Weasley prejudice, he added, attempting to regain his haughty air, "But make sure you beat them at every test—it's a good thing you inherited your mother's brains."
Scorpius grinned at his father, hugged and was kissed by his mother, and scampered onto the Hogwarts Express. Draco watched it chug and grind out of the station, feeling a slender, elegant hand intertwine with his.
"You did well, caro," his wife, Alessandra, murmured. "You almost had me fooled."
Draco snorted and chuckled feebly. "Old enmities die hard," he muttered, running a hand through his white-blond hair. "I don't want Scorpius to make the same mistakes I did. Besides, I don't know Potter's and Weasley's kids—for all I know, they're just as different from them as Scorpius is from me."
"And what is wrong with you, that you would be ashamed if our son was more like his father?" Alessandra wanted to know, looking fierce. Something snapped in Draco's self-control.
"Well, for starters, I was a slimy, bullying, narcissistic git when I was Scorpius's age, I handed out death threats like I actually had the guts to carry them out, and I joined You-Know-Who's side as a Death Eater, all by the time I turned sixteen!" Draco sincerely regretted his past transgressions, although his Malfoy pride forbade him from admitting it to anyone other than his mother and his wife. "And now my son's going to suffer for my idiocy, at the only school in Europe that would accept him! Potter's work, no doubt," he added bitterly.
Alessandra, deciding that they had made quite enough of a spectacle of themselves for one day, and seeing Ronald Weasley frowning in their general direction, grabbed her husband's hand and Apparated back to their London town house. As soon as her feet touched solid ground, she turned to Draco and placed her hands on either side of his face. "Caro, Scorpius is a fair, honest, and highly intelligent boy, with all the courage and magical talent in the world—he can handle himself."
Draco enveloped his wife in a grateful hug, soothing himself with the cinnamon scent of her hair. "I hope you're right," he murmured. "Though with my luck, he'll end up best mates with Potter's and Weasley's kids."