DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
A/N: Just an idea that came to me after seeing the explosion of posts on Tumblr following the final Dr Who episode.
Warning: this is pre-slash. No hot h/d action here, I'm afraid. But I hope you'll give it a go anyway!
At nineteen, Draco Malfoy had had quite enough of being watched.
It started rather naturally with his mother watching him as a baby, which Draco couldn't really begrudge, especially since he had no real recollection of it. Then, as a child, his father would watch him closely, wanting to ensure that Draco was becoming everything that a Malfoy heir was meant to be. Then at school, Severus was always keeping an eye on him for his parents, often covertly lending a hand to keep him out of danger, and later interfering more openly, eventually killing that old coot Dumbledore when Draco was not able to finish the task himself. And then there was the last year of the War, when Draco was watched by a number of the most senior Death Eaters, but by none more closely than Fenrir Greyback, whom Draco knew had been just waiting for the chance to clamp his slobbering jaws around Draco's pale flesh.
And now there was this. Wizengamot-enforced Ministry surveillance for a term of no less than five years, and monitored regularly by none other than MoM poster-boy himself, Potter.
Draco thought the Universe must be having a good laugh at his misery.
You see, said poster-boy was currently in the middle of one of his 'routine inspections', which basically meant that Potter was sitting awkwardly on Draco's antique leather sofa and squirming all over the upholstery while Draco glared at him unwaveringly.
"I still don't understand why they chose you," Draco finally bit out, realising that if he didn't stop making Scarhead squirm soon then he might somehow burrow his way through the sofa entirely.
"As you tell me every time I come by."
"Because I still don't understand why a junior Auror who's been on the force less than a year has been given the task of monitoring an infamous former Death Eater like me."
Potter snorted at that, actually snorted, and Draco wished in no small measure that he could punch the git in the face again, like he did in the days before Potter became the epitome of all-things-Ministry and before Draco had to behave himself or risk a spell in Azkaban with his father.
"You still think far too much of yourself, don't you?"
"You're going to lecture me on being arrogant? That's rich."
"Look, I don't know why you make this so difficult." And now Potter was sighing, and rubbing his hand through his hair, and yes, yes, Draco knew this was meant to make him pity the poor hero and feel ashamed for tormenting him…but in reality Draco couldn't bring himself to give a fuck.
"Because I hate you, and I hate this situation, and I hate the fact that even when I'm sentenced to spend the next four years of my life trapped in my own home I still can't seem to escape you."
"Well maybe you should have thought about the consequences of your actions when you agreed to have that pretty little tattoo branded onto your skin." Now Potter was trying to be witty and self-righteous at the same time. How pathetic.
"Yes, okay, Potter, okay. I know I chose the 'wrong side' in the War and this punishment is meant to make me atone for my sins. I get it. Really, I do. You may leave now." Draco sighed as he reclined against the back of his armchair, closing his eyes in the hopes that Potter would get the hint and sod off back to his weasel-ly nest.
"You know I have to stay for a full hour." Of course, Draco had somehow forgotten how irritatingly obtuse Potter was.
"Seriously, Scarhead, I'm not going anywhere."
"You know, considering I'm the one with the power to send you to Azkaban, you would think you could be a tad more polite."
Draco scoffed at that; Potter would never sacrifice his squeaky-clean Gryffindor morals in such a way.
"Whatever, Potter. We both know you're just being used as a front for this new regime."
"Oh, shut up, Malfoy. You have no idea what you're talking about."
Draco smirked, realising he'd managed to hit a nerve at last. In the last year Potter had become harder and harder to antagonise, but Draco always managed to get to him in the end. He always made sure of that.
"Come on, Potter. You think they would have given this job to Weasley? Or Boot? Or any of your other little Junior Auror buddies? You don't think that if it was really about talent and skill they wouldn't have appointed someone more senior to my case? Someone with more experience? You're barely out of school, after all." Draco smirked as he saw Potter's fists clench, and paused before he delivered his final blow. "No, you know deep down as well as I that this is just about the Ministry's need to show the wizarding world that they have the Man-Who-Lived on their side. Under their thumb."
"Shut up!" Potter was on his feet, eyes dark with anger, and Draco's smirk widened further at the spectacular reaction.
"No, actually, you know what, Potter-"
But Draco didn't manage to finish that thought, because suddenly a loud CRACK echoed around the room and two figures emerged out of thin air, the force of their Apparition causing them to tumble to the ground in a heap.
Draco leapt to his feet in shock as Potter also turned towards the men, his anger seemingly forgotten.
"I told you you'd gone too far!" The dark-haired new arrival shouted as he pulled himself to his feet, and suddenly Draco found himself looking at…Potter?
"I was nervous, okay? It was the first time it's ever been done!" The other man retorted, shaking back his blonde hair to reveal a pale face that was, except for the slightest differences in the shape of his eyes and the curve of his nose, almost the same as Draco's own.
"Potter, what have you done?"
"Me? What, you think I did this?" Potter turned away from the two intruders to stare incredulously at Draco, his open-mouthed expression wide enough to catch koi carp.
"Yes, Potter. In case you'd forgotten I did spend six years at school gaining first-hand experience of just how abysmal your attempts at magic are."
The sound of the other blond snorting in amusement brought both Draco's and Potter's attention back to the two other men, and Draco had his wand trained on them in seconds.
"Who are you?"
The Potter-look-a-like sighed and shook his head, raising his hands placatingly as he said, "we're from the future."
Draco paused a minute, thinking it over, but then reminded himself that the blond on the other side of the room was definitely not his future self. "That's not what I asked." He pointed his wand more steadily at the pair. "Who are you?"
The blond stepped in front of the other man, his confident posture reminding Draco of himself in years gone by, and an ache twisted through his stomach as he thought of how much had changed in so little time. Of how much he had changed.
"We're your sons." The blond smiled widely, as if he found the whole thing incredibly entertaining. Although to be fair, Draco, too, would have laughed at the completely discombobulated expression on Potter's face if he himself had not been so disconcerted by the statement.
"Sons…?" Potter ventured timidly.
"I'm Albus," the dark-haired one stepped out to look at Potter with such a look of awe that it made Draco want to vomit.
"And I'm Scorpius."
Potter snorted, and even Potter's spawn seemed to be hiding a smirk at the name.
"It's a perfectly acceptable name," Scorpius drawled in a haughty tone that Draco instinctively knew had been copied from his own.
"As touching as this is," Draco broke in, hoping that talking would help him ignore the sudden nausea that had crept up on him. "Why are you actually here?"
"Testing out a brand new method of wizarding transportation." Scorpius beamed.
"Time travel." Albus added at Draco and Potter's non-plussed looks.
"Time travel isn't new." Draco directed his sneer more towards Potter's brat than at Scorpius, for it didn't seem right sneering at someone who looked so strikingly similar to himself.
"Time-Apparition is." Scorpius' face was still glowing with pride at his apparent accomplishment. Draco wondered if his future self would be proud of Scorpius, too. At present, though, Draco had to admit he felt nothing but a small migraine coming on.
"Yes, but we have Time-Turners-"
"No, we don't." Potter interrupted, and Draco shot him an irritated glare. Of course, Potter knew everything. "They were all destroyed when the Death Eaters broke into the Department of Mysteries in fifth year."
Draco narrowed his eyes at the way Potter just glossed over the fact that it was actually he and his cronies who had broken into the Ministry that year; Draco's father had just followed them in.
"Well, maybe if you hadn't gone running after your mutt godfather-"
"Don't you dare talk about Sirius, Malfoy."
"Don't try and tell me what to do in my own home, Potter!" Draco shouted, all the anger over his year of forced house-arrest and being confronted with a reminder of his familial obligations rising to the surface, spurred on by the childish urge to fight that Potter always brought out in him. "Actually, hasn't it been an hour already? Can't you sod off back to you ginger blood-traitor girlfriend yet?"
Potter looked like he was about to lunge at Draco for that comment, but Albus caught him in time, his larger frame and adult muscles able to restrain Potter despite his wriggling.
"Just get out, Potter." Draco spat as he turned to walk towards the sun room. "Both of you."
He didn't stop to look back as he opened the panelled doors to the sun room, but he could tell from the fading pair of footsteps that they had complied. Scorpius however seemed to have other ideas.
"Dad! Dad, wait!" he shouted, jogging after Draco, and that word aimed at him was just too much for Draco to handle at that moment in time.
"Stop it! Just stop, okay? I am not your dad. You are not my son. I don't want a son. I can't have a son." Draco closed his eyes and took a deep breath, easing himself down onto the chaise longue in the shade.
"Pippin!" he called out, forcing his eyes shut once more after he caught a brief glimpse of the hurt look on Scorpius' face. When the house-elf appeared, Draco immediately ordered her to fetch Pansy, under the premise that there was an 'Emergency', which, in Draco's mind, there was.
After a few moments of silence, Scorpius finally spoke, the soft and gentle cadence of his voice reminding Draco so much of his mum, Narcissa, that he felt a sharp stab in his chest at the thought of how much he missed her now that she had moved to France to escape the chaos that had ensued after the War.
"Look, Dad." Draco opened an eye in warning and Scorpius sighed. "Okay, whatever. I know that this is weird for you. I mean, what are you, twenty?"
"Nineteen."
"Shit. We really did come back too far."
Draco opened his eyes to see Scorpius rubbing the back of his neck nervously, and for the first time since meeting the man, Draco wondered who his mother was. That gesture was so unlike Draco, and definitely nothing that Pansy would do, that Draco couldn't help but wonder who had been chosen to be this boy's mother.
"How old are you, anyway?" Draco asked instead.
"Twenty-five."
"And where you're from, I'm…?"
"Fifty-one." Scorpius smirked at the look of abject horror that crept over Draco's face.
"How depressing."
"Don't worry, you're exactly the same."
"Exactly?"
"Maybe less hair." Draco's hands immediately went to clutch his precious hair. "And you're nicer to Harry."
As Scorpius' smirk turned distinctly devious, Draco pulled himself up to face the other man completely.
"What?"
But Scorpius said nothing in return, and Draco was prevented from questioning him further by the sudden return of Pippin, Pansy in tow, with a bottle of (what Draco knew would be) expensive red wine in her gloved hands.
"Oh, darling," she cried as she entered the room. "What have you done this time?"
"Pansy!" Scorpius greeted her cheerfully, and Draco's previous irritation was momentarily forgotten as he watched with amusement as Pansy schooled her features into polite indifference in the face of this apparent stranger.
"I'm sorry, have we met?" she asked as she set down the bottle of wine on the carpet next to Draco, who quickly uncorked the bottle and summoned a glass for himself.
"Yes," Scorpius replied just as Draco said, "no."
"Draco…" Even though Pansy continued to smile as she removed the gloves from her hands and took a seat by the window, Draco knew it was a warning.
"I…he's…" Draco struggled to think of a way to explain this bizarre situation, and in lieu of finding an answer, took a large swig of wine.
"Oh, Merlin, Draco. Have you been messing around with Polyjuice again?" Pansy shot him a disgusted look as she glanced from Scorpius to Draco, and Draco couldn't help feel a little irritated that his oldest friend couldn't spot the differences between the two of them. They weren't that similar.
"Polyjuice…?" Scorpius raised an eyebrow in question, but Draco cut over him before Pansy could share that particular anecdote.
"No, it has nothing to do with Polyjuice. He's from the future."
"The future?" Of course, Pansy was sceptical. Pansy was sceptical about everything.
"I'm Draco's son, Scorpius."
"Scorpius?" Pansy looked between them, as if trying to work out whether they were playing a joke on her, but upon realising that they were telling the truth, she shook her head and sighed. "Oh, Draco. Scorpius? Really?"
"It's a perfectly acceptable name!" Draco shot back with a tangible sense of déjà vu.
"If you say so, darling." She scoffed with a slight shake of her head. "Well, in any case, with a name like that I know you're no child of mine. Who's your mother?"
Even after seventeen years of friendship, Draco was still sometimes amazed by Pansy's directness.
"Astoria. Nee Greengrass, now Boot," Scorpius replied, jumping slightly at the cackle that spewed forth from Pansy's lips at that last tidbit of information.
"Boot? As in Terry Boot?"
"Oh, Pansy, shut up will you?" Draco snapped, having no desire to hear about the future love life of a girl he had encountered maybe twice in his whole time at Hogwarts, and whom he definitely had no interest in marrying at that moment in time. "I already have a migraine; there's no need for you to make it worse."
Pansy sighed heavily, glaring at Draco while he stared back at her coolly, sipping his wine.
"You know, Draco, with a personality as lacking in charm as yours, it's a damn good job you have enough money to buy yourself a wife."
"You mean, unlike someone like you who'll be alone forever?" Draco bit back, sneering at the affronted look on her face.
"Actually Pansy has been married the longest out of anyone we know," Scorpius interrupted (unhelpfully, in Draco's opinion.)
"That's probably because she's Imperiused the poor bastard."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Draco. What is your problem?" Pansy snapped, an angry, red tint blossoming across her cheeks.
"Hmm, I don't know." Draco swirled the wine in his glass as he pretended to ponder the answer, knowing that his sarcasm would only serve to further irritate Pansy. "This whole situation, maybe?"
"Being confronted by the fact that your naivety gets you nowhere in the end upsetting for you, is it?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh, come off it, Draco. You didn't honestly think you'd be able to avoid your obligations forever, did you? War or no war, you're a Malfoy, by name and by blood. And that means-"
"I know what it means, Pansy." Draco snapped back, hating her for vocalising the thoughts that had been swirling in his own head daily since the end of the War.
"Well then why don't you act like you do?" Pansy's anger seemed to have fled her by this point, leaving her with a helpless look on her face that Draco knew well from his sixth year, when Pansy had known that Draco was struggling with his task but had had no clue of how to assist him. It was a look that only served to remind Draco that he, too, was helpless. That he was once more caught up in something over which he had no control, despite the monumental consequences it would have on his own life. It was a look that Draco hated.
"Because I don't want to!" Draco shouted, the vehemence behind his words startling even him a little bit. "I don't want to get married. I don't want to sleep with some stupid woman. And I do not. Want. A. Son!"
A pregnant pause followed Draco's outburst, during which time Draco himself did his best to avoid eye contact with the other two inhabitants of the room, knowing that on Pansy's face he would find disapproval for his tactless comment, and on Scorpius' a hurt expression that would remind him too much of the one he himself used to wear when his father told him he had disappointed him in some way.
"Well it looks like you've got one," Pansy said at last. "Whether you like it or not."
"He's not my son!" Draco shouted, but even that seemed muffled in the tense atmosphere of the room. "I'm nineteen and he's twenty five. I've never met him before. He has nothing to do with me!"
Draco felt his eyes begin to well up from frustration and cursed himself for having so much wine that he had lost so much control of his emotions. The last time he'd cried in front of another person had been Potter in sixth year, and he was reminded of the dire consequences of that every single day.
"Scorpius," Pansy's voice was gentle and reassuring. "Could you give us a few moments, please?"
Scorpius nodded, his eyes darting to Draco as he rose to his feet. "Sure. I'll go see where Albus has gotten to."
"Albus?"
"Potter's brat." Draco interrupted, taking a deep swig of his wine to fortify himself for the lecture he was about to receive from his best friend.
"They'll probably be in the orchard." Scorpius brushed down his jeans awkwardly as he stood between Draco and Pansy, one of whom was steadfastly ignoring the pointed glare of the other.
"They? So Potter's here, too?" Pansy asked Scorpius, who nodded, but Draco could feel that her eyes were still fixed on him. "That explains so much."
Draco finally turned back round to face her, his eyes narrowed in warning, but thankfully she said no more while Scorpius was still in the room.
"Yeah, so I'll go find them," Scorpius mumbled as he made his way to the double doors, but upon reaching them he paused, as if debating with himself whether to say what was on his mind.
"Mum wasn't the only one who found someone else, you know," he offered in the end, and Draco forced himself to meet Scorpius' eyes, eyes which, although they shared the speckled colour of Draco's own, held a warmth and a look of inner peace that Draco had not seen reflected in his since early childhood.
"You don't have to fight who you are forever," was all Scorpius said further, and he turned to leave the room before Draco could reply. Not that he could have replied, even if he had stayed, for Draco was such a confused mix of emotions by this point that he barely trusted himself to speak.
Luckily, however, Pansy seemed to have decided that Draco had already said enough.
"Draco, how many times do we have to go over this?" She started, and upon realising that Draco would not turn to look at her, she moved to kneel instead at his feet, tilting his face down towards hers.
"I don't want-"
"I know what you don't want, Draco. Merlin, we all know what you don't want. But you don't have a choice, darling." Pansy sighed and pushed a lock of Draco's hair behind his ear. "Do you really think, given the choice, that your mother would have married your father? That my parents would have gotten married? That Goyle's father really would have chosen Goyle's mother as a bride? Think about it, Draco, out of all our friends the only one whose parents married for reasons other than pure-blood tradition were Blaise's…and look how that turned out."
Draco snorted, thinking of the black widow that was Allegra Zabini.
"It's not exactly ideal, Draco, but it's the way it is." Pansy's eyes were wide and beseeching as she tried once more to get Draco to relent. "It's our culture."
"But what if it's not who I am, Pansy?" Draco whispered, the first time he'd actually managed to vocalise the fear that had been maturing in his mind ever since he'd realised he was gay and the conflict in his personality that it would provoke. "I'm not straight. I'm not meant to get married."
"Draco, your sexuality has nothing to do with it!" Pansy moved her hands from Draco's cheeks to clasp his hands instead. "Have you ever even been in your portrait gallery? Your great-great-great-grandfather has a half-naked man-servant sprawled out on his chaise-longue. I don't think I've seen something so overtly homosexual in this manor since that time you made me wax your legs in the second-floor bathroom."
"I did not 'make you' wax my legs, you did it to me first to test how much it would hurt so that you wouldn't have to suffer unduly," Draco muttered, remembering with a wince just how much it had hurt.
"Well, darling, I am a Slytherin. What did you expect?" Pansy smirked, shoving him to the side playfully, and Draco finally managed to crack a smile for the first time since this whole drama began.
"The point is that none of that matters, not really. Family comes first, Draco. It has to."
"Maybe I don't want a family." Draco pulled his hands free from Pansy's grip to rest his fists underneath his chin, his smile already fading.
"What do you mean, you don't want a family?"
"Exactly that. I don't want to be a father."
There was a long silence after that in which Pansy studied Draco's face, and after a few uncomfortable moments Draco averted his gaze, all the time knowing that Pansy was still staring at him, looking for something, though Draco didn't know what.
"So that's what this is about?" she asked eventually, though Draco wasn't sure if it was meant to be rhetorical.
"What?"
"This is about your issues with your own father."
"I do not have 'issues' with my father." Draco scoffed, combing a hand through his hair as he avoided Pansy's eyes.
"Oh, come on, Draco. I've known you your entire life! I remember all those times as a child when you'd cry-"
"I did not cry!"
"When you'd cry because he told you that you weren't good enough. That you'd dishonoured the family name. That you were a disappointment. And I saw what it did to you; I saw you push yourself, trying to prove yourself to him, and every time you'd never quite manage it, every time you'd fall just a little bit short of the mark. And then eventually you didn't need him to tell you you weren't good enough anymore, because you would beat yourself up enough for both of you."
Draco kept his head down as Pansy went on, her words ringing true, bringing to the fore all of the frustration he felt with himself for never having quite managed to be the 'perfect Malfoy.'
"And I've seen you this year, too. Doing exactly the same thing. Blaming yourself for this situation, telling yourself that it's your fault that you're stuck here. That you failed your father because you couldn't save him from Azkaban. But it was never your mess to solve, Draco. It was he who failed you, not the other way around."
Pansy paused to take a breath, her hand once more reaching to take Draco's own, squeezing reassuringly before she continued.
"You think you can't be a good father because you were never a perfect son. But you're wrong, Draco. You're so wrong. You did everything you could have done. Lucius thought you were a failure because you didn't grow up to be just like him, but that's a good thing."
Pansy reached out with her free hand to cup Draco's chin. "Unlike him, you always did everything you could to save your family. That's all that matters in the end."
"I guess." Draco shrugged, his eyes darting momentarily to look into Pansy's own.
"And that's why you'll be a good father," she said, so earnestly, so resolutely, that Draco couldn't even argue with her.
"Okay?" she asked when he made no move to answer.
"Okay."
Pansy moved from her kneeling position on the floor back to her seat by the window, picking up the almost-drained bottle of wine as she went and pouring the last of it into a glass that she Transfigured from a vase.
"You'll be fine, you know."
"How are you so sure?" Draco sighed, wishing he could feel the same certainty.
"Because I'll be there to help you." Draco snorted at that. "And because Scorpius seems like a good man."
Draco looked across at his best friend, feeling not for the first time incredibly grateful that she had managed to escape the War unharmed and that she'd received only a minor punishment for that blip she'd had when trying to hand Potter over to the Dark Lord (though, really, who could blame her?)
"He does?"
She nodded. "Obviously the fact that he's apparently friends with a Potter is disconcerting," she conceded with a tilt of her head. "But that will go a long way with helping to rebuild the Malfoy reputation and name, and that can only be a good thing. And you know that if he achieves that then you'll have been a better father, a more successful father, than Lucius ever was."
"Spoken like a true Slytherin." Draco smirked.
"Of course." Pansy returned the smirk before draining her glass and banishing the now-empty wine bottle. "Come on; let's go find them before Potter breaks something."
"As long as it's one of his limbs I can't say I mind." Draco drawled as he got to his feet, taking a moment to steady himself against the heady rush that followed the consumption of three-quarters of a bottle of wine.
Pansy giggled in a very non-Pansy way as they both made their way to the doors, but she pulled him up before Draco actually opened them.
"Be nice, Draco."
"Excuse me?"
"To Potter." She smiled in a rather enigmatic way, one eyebrow rising suggestively as the silence stretched on after her statement.
"Whatever for?"
"Many reasons…" Pansy trailed off at Draco's unconvinced look. "To promote unity amongst the wizarding community in this post-war era?"
Draco didn't believe that one for a second.
"To help improve the Malfoy name and reputation?" she suggested next, again to be met with an unimpressed expression.
"Because you want to get into his pants and that's how you have to do it with Gryffindors?"
"Pansy!"
"Oh, don't deny it, Draco." She sighed heavily, rolling her eyes. "It's getting tiresome."
"If it's getting tiresome, maybe you should stop bringing it up," Draco snapped. "Especially since it's not true."
Draco nudged her out of the way to yank the door open, about to walk out to the gardens to tell Potter to bugger off home (and preferably out of his life), before he decided that, really, he'd had too much wine to be able to control his emotions enough around the speccy git to prevent some kind of altercation. All things considered, therefore, he was better leaving Pansy to deal with that while he went to lie down.
The problem was that, upon actually arriving in his room, Draco discovered that Scorpius was already in there.
"Oh," Draco said awkwardly, feeling a strange pang of guilt upon seeing the other man as he remembered his outburst from before. For a bizarre moment, Draco considered apologising to him, before he realised that he had never in his life legitimately wanted to apologise to someone, and the realisation that he would genuinely mean it now was completely disorientating.
"I need to lie down."
Draco moved to sit on the edge of the bed, studying Scorpius who had been standing at the grand bay window looking out over the orchard below.
"What are you looking at?"
"Harry and Albus," Scorpius replied with a smile on his face.
"I wish you wouldn't call him that." Draco grimaced as he let himself fall backwards and be absorbed by the throw pillows beneath him.
"Who? Harry?" Scorpius finally turned away from the window to look at Draco sprawled out on the bed. "What would you rather I call him?" he asked with a bemused expression on his face.
"Potter," Draco replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"But that would get too confusing. Albus, James and Lily are all Potters, too."
"James and Lily?" Draco made a gagging noise. "Excuse me while I vomit."
"It's a nice sentiment!" Scorpius protested, but Draco was sure there was a laughing tone behind his words.
"Sentiment? Who cares about sentiment? What kind of Slytherin are you?" Draco raised himself onto his elbows, a worried expression clouding his face. "You…are a Slytherin, aren't you?"
"Of course."
"Thank Merlin. You know, there hasn't been a Malfoy who wasn't sorted into Slytherin in-"
"Twelve generations," Scorpius interrupted with a smirk on his face. "I know."
"Well if you know so much, what House was he sorted into instead?"
"Ravenclaw." Scorpius folded his arms across his chest and leant against the poster of Draco's bed, his smirk widening as Draco floundered for something to say.
"Hmpfh."
"You drilled that into me, so don't feel too bad," Scorpius offered, pulling away from the poster to perch on the bed instead.
"So, if you're a Slytherin, why are you friends with a Potter? Don't tell me there's inter-House unity in the future?"
Scorpius frowned at the question. "Albus is a Slytherin."
Draco barked out a laugh at that; as if Potter would ever have a son in Slytherin.
"As if Potter would ever have a son in Slytherin!"
"He was. We were sorted together. We've been best friends ever since." Scorpius shrugged, and Draco once more began to feel as if his whole perception of the world was being shifted around him. Potter - self-righteous, Gryffindor-to-the-core Potter - had a son in Slytherin. It was inconceivable.
"I don't believe it."
"You know, that's exactly what you said when I was eleven years old." Scorpius smiled fondly, a nostalgic look passing over his features.
"Because it's preposterous!"
"But it's still true." Scorpius shook his head and turned his face once more towards the window. "He's a great guy. You realise that eventually."
Draco began to feel distinctly as if he had lost track of which Potter they were referring to.
"I doubt that."
"You can doubt it all you want; I'm the one from the future. I know."
Well, Draco couldn't exactly argue that point, could he?
"Speaking of which," Draco said instead, hoping to steer the conversation away from potentially dangerous territory. "You've not yet explained exactly why you're here."
Scorpius turned away from the window to face Draco fully, a proud smile once again spreading across his pale cheeks.
"I'm an Unspeakable," he announced, beaming. "Albus, too. We've been working on Time-Apparition for years now, ever since-" Scorpius broke off suddenly, a dawning realisation creeping into his eyes as he looked at Draco; realisation, followed by sadness, as if he had realised for maybe the first time that day that Draco actually had no memory of any of the events that had taken place in Scorpius' life.
"Since what?"
Scorpius did not answer right away. Instead, he shifted on the bed, picking up a throw pillow and holding it in his lap.
"This is going to get really complicated." He sighed, his eyes drifting to the canopy of Draco's four-poster bed, as though he hoped to find a way of explaining this written on the fabric above.
"Time-Apparition is ridiculously complex, moreso than your average wizard on the street would ever expect it to be. That's why no one has ever done it before today. In fact, some people at the Ministry said that it never could be done." Scorpius paused, a brief glimmer of 'look-how-I-showed-them' crossing his face, and Draco couldn't help thinking it was some form of cosmic karma that his son was the one to stick it to those imbeciles at the Ministry. To make wizarding history.
"I'm not going to pretend I didn't feel like that myself, sometimes. Albus and I have been working on it for years, but it was never our idea. It's not really our work; we've just been trialling and perfecting the ideas and theories that someone else gave us."
"Don't tell me it was Granger?" Draco groaned, his pride at Scorpius' achievement ebbing somewhat in the face of this new revelation.
"Granger?" Scorpius frowned in confusion. "Oh! You mean Hermione?" Draco shuddered at the familiarity of it all. "No, no. I mean, she's brilliant and all, but no. It was…you, actually."
Now that was a statement Draco had not been expecting.
"Me?"
Scorpius nodded, albeit sadly, as he went on to explain. "I don't know how much I'm allowed to tell you. I don't want to ruin anything that comes later. But you always said to me that the big events, the most important ones, could never be changed. They would always happen, no matter what you did in the past. You said that fate would make sure of that."
Scorpius seemed to be trying to justify to himself what he was about to say, and Draco couldn't help but feel another sliver of pride at how he seemed to believe so strongly in what Draco said, and not out of fear, the way he had parroted his own father, but out of trust.
"Grandma." Scorpius took a breath, as if to steady himself, and Draco felt the cold, heavy weight of dread settle in the pit of his stomach. "Grandma died when I was really young, about eighteen months after I was born. I never remembered her and you always felt that that was wrong. You wanted me to know her the way you knew her, and not just from brief conversations with her portrait at the Manor when she was actually in her frame."
Draco nodded in understanding; as much as wizarding portraits aimed to recreate the sense and personality of the person they depicted, they were never much of a substitute for the real thing.
"The thing was there weren't any Time-Turners left, like Harry said earlier. So you tried to think of another way. But researching something so experimental took time and resources that you didn't have and which the Ministry wouldn't allow you."
Scorpius sighed sadly, a pitying look on his face. "I think after a few years of getting nowhere you gave up hope. The Manor's library after the Ministry's intervention was never what it used to be, you said, and you could never find anything relevant in the few books you could get from Knockturn alley without raising any suspicion."
"Then how-"
"I'm getting to it; be patient," Scorpius chastised light-heartedly. "Not that you'll believe it, but it was Harry, actually."
"What was?"
"Harry helped get you the resources and materials you needed."
Scorpius was right, Draco didn't believe it. He couldn't - it made no sense.
"Why on earth would Potter help me, of all people?" Of course, Potter had testified on his and his mother's behalf in the trials that followed the War, but that was just Potter trying to be a hero, as usual. Helping supply Draco with research materials on something like time-travel, however, was definitely not typical hero-business.
Instead of replying, Scorpius just stared at Draco, a pale, blond eyebrow raised.
"Oh."
Draco saw now; Scorpius and Albus were best friends. If Scorpius was as similar to Draco in personality as he was in looks, even as an eleven-year-old boy he would have been able to manipulate Potter and trigger his hero-guilt to make him help Draco. "Because you were friends with his son, of course."
"Maybe at first." Scorpius nodded slowly, as if he wanted to add more but needed to be prodded into giving up that information.
"Well, what else would it be?"
"Harry isn't the person you think he is, you know." Scorpius turned his face to glance out of the window, though Draco doubted he could actually see the orchard from this angle. "And in time he'll realise you're not the person he always thought you were, either."
Draco didn't know what kind of response Scorpius was expecting for that, so instead he waited, hoping the other man would elaborate in his own time.
"During my first year, you and mum decided that it was time for you to separate. Neither of you had been under the illusion that it was a legitimate marriage, anyway; you'd just wanted to wait until it wouldn't be too distressing for me."
Draco nodded, understanding, too, that they would have also been waiting for Lucius to pass away first. As much as Draco resented his father's unwillingness to forego pure-blood tradition, he would never have wanted to disappoint him with something as distasteful as divorce.
"So, after mum had left, and I'd gone to Hogwarts, you decided you wanted to start researching Time-Apparition again. And when you wrote to tell me you still couldn't get the materials, I spoke to Harry and explained."
"And he gave in, just like that?"
"Of course not." Scorpius scoffed. "He's just as stubborn as you are, sometimes even more so. But he'd been through enough by that point that he didn't have the will to fight with you anymore. So he arranged to meet you and talk about what you wanted to do."
"As if I'd just tell him!" Draco rolled his eyes at how pompous and self-important Potter was.
"Actually, you did." Scorpius shrugged somewhat apologetically. "You're not the same person in the future that you are now. You'd lost a lot by that point. You were prepared to do whatever it took, even if it meant being civil to Harry."
"Oh." Draco was starting to wonder how many times one's perspective of the world was allowed to change so drastically in one day.
"He was a bit wary at first, but he understood how it felt to not know your family, to wish you had a way to get to know them. So he got you what you needed. And then he helped you get in touch with the Unspeakables when you'd exhausted all the books."
"My hero," Draco muttered sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
"He didn't do it to be a hero. He did it because he was your friend."
"Was?"
Scorpius smirked here, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "He's much more than a friend now."
Draco was incredibly grateful that he was already sitting on the bed, for if he had been standing his legs definitely would have given way beneath him upon hearing that.
"What?" he croaked weakly.
"I told you, mum wasn't the only one to find someone else."
"Me and…Potter?"
"Don't act so shocked. Pansy says you've always had a thing for him."
Draco narrowed his eyes at that; clearly some things never changed, no matter how much time had elapsed. "Pansy is an interfering bitch who needs to keep her nose out of my love life."
"You admitted it yourself, once."
"Well, I was clearly feeling out of sorts that day."
Scorpius nodded, a dark look passing over his features as he diverted his eyes. "Something like that."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Scorpius sighed heavily as he studied Draco, as if assessing whether he would be able to handle whatever was about to come next.
"Harry was in an accident, about four years ago now. It changed a few things. Quite a few important things, actually."
"Like what? What kind of accident?" Draco couldn't help his natural curiosity, even if it might cause him to find out more disturbing things about his future-self and his obvious lack of sanity.
"He got caught in a Hex-Haze one night when he was on an assignment with the junior Aurors. It messed up his magic completely. He's not a Squib, but he can't really perform magic the way he should be able to. It's too unpredictable, too unrestrained."
"I see." Draco couldn't help but feel slightly sorry for the man. To know that you have magic, to know that you have such powerful magic as Harry Potter, but to not be able to use it, must be such a crushing feeling.
"He's working on it though. With your help. Maybe one day it'll be better again." Scorpius smiled, but Draco could tell it was false, that this was something they must tell each other often as some kind of motivation, while all the time knowing it was a fallacy. Draco couldn't help but wonder just how much he had changed in the future to go along with something so nonsensical and futile, especially for Potter's sake.
"You said it changed a few things, what else changed?" Draco asked, again to avoid any more discussion of his and Potter's apparent future-relationship, though he doubted he had heard the end of it yet.
"Well, like I said, you're helping him to get better. That's a full-time job, really." Scorpius picked at the golden tassel of the throw pillow in his lap. "You gave up working on Time-Apparition to do that."
"But…why? Why would I give up something I had invested so much time and energy in, something I so obviously cared about, something that would change wizarding history?" Draco really felt by this point that his future-self had without a doubt lost his mind.
"Because you love him," was the only explanation Scorpius had to offer and, quite frankly, Draco thought it was a pretty poor one.
"I'm not a Gryffindor. That means nothing to me."
"Maybe it doesn't now because you've only ever hated him. But it's different where I'm from. Here and now you've hated him for what, eight years? But where I'm from you've already been together for ten. Imagine all the intensity of your hatred for him now converted into love. That's how strong this is. Of course you gave up your research for him. You never even questioned it."
"Then in the future I'm clearly a moron." Draco pulled his gaze away from Scorpius' to stare instead at the cloudy sky outside, the desperate intensity of the other man's eyes unnerving him slightly.
"No, in the future you're happy. There's a difference."
"Now you sound like Pansy."
"Well, maybe Pansy's right!" The vehemence of Scorpius' words shocked Draco into turning his gaze back towards him, completely taken aback at how strongly Scorpius seemed to feel about this.
"I know this is weird for you." Scorpius sighed and rubbed at his eyes before continuing. "You don't know the things that I do. But he does make you happy, dad. Happier than I think I've ever seen you. You just have to give him a chance."
Draco couldn't think of a reply to that, too shocked by the onslaught of information that had overloaded his brain in the last few hours to come up with something suitably witty and disdainful. Instead he flopped back down on the bed, staring up at the canopy above him, mulling over Scorpius' words.
After a few minutes he felt a shift in the bed, and Scorpius' voice called out to him from the doorway.
"I'm going to go down to grab Al, and then I think we'll head back. Will you at least come to say goodbye?"
Draco nodded, knowing that Scorpius would be able to see it from where he was standing, and shut his eyes once he heard the soft click of the door closing after him.
As he lay there, Draco tried to imagine this life that Scorpius had described to him, a life without his mother, without his father, a life in which one of the most important people was apparently Harry Potter. It was a life that Draco never would have dreamed of, a life that Draco was still reluctant to accept for himself. But apparently it was a life that would become his in spite of his many reservations and protestations if Scorpius' earlier comment on the fixed nature of fate was anything to go by.
Draco sighed heavily, pulling himself up and onto his feet. He wandered over to the window, looking down onto the orchard where Potter was sitting under a gnarled tree with his son, apparently having a discussion about Quidditch if his detailed gesticulations were any indication. Draco wondered if Potter would ever look so animated in a conversation with him, whether he and Potter would ever manage to have a conversation about Quidditch that didn't end in violence.
When Scorpius reached the pair, Draco noticed that Potter looked upwards, as if trying to find Draco's bedroom, but his eyes seemed to skitter past without noticing that Draco was there. The way they often did. Draco shook his head slightly and turned away, resolving to go downstairs and face Potter once more, hoping that there would be no further awkward conversations about the future.
As Draco approached the orchard, he heard the sound of laughter, noting that Potter and Scorpius seemed to be sharing a joke at Albus' expense. It seemed so natural that it made a part inside of Draco ache to be involved, too, and another part of him hate that he had been worn down so spectacularly by both Pansy and Scorpius in such a short space of time.
Scorpius wiped a tear of laughter from his eye as Draco finally reached them, his laughter winding down to a few final chuckles.
"Anyway, I think maybe we should head back, Al," he said, running a hand through his fine blond hair, and Albus nodded as he got to his feet, stretching his long limbs as he did so.
"Okay."
Scorpius moved closer to Draco as Albus began to say his goodbyes to Potter, and Draco found himself once more at a loss for words. He felt inexplicably upset at the thought that it would be at least thirty years before he met this man again, but, having no idea of how to vocalise that, he simply nodded and held out his hand.
Instead of shaking it, though, Scorpius laughed and pulled Draco into a bear hug, which Draco returned after a few initial moments of shock.
"I'll see you soon." Scorpius smirked as they released each other.
"Yes, you will." Draco nodded awkwardly, placing his hands back in his trouser pockets.
"I've just thought," Albus said as he and Potter finished their goodbyes and moved over to where Draco and Scorpius were standing. "This means you always knew it would be us who came back, not you. You've always known you wouldn't be the one to Time-Apparate, but you put all that effort in anyway. Why would you do that?"
Albus was looking at Draco with something like awe in his eyes, and Scorpius, too, sent Draco an appraising look, as if he had never considered this before.
"It's a good job he did, or we wouldn't have been able to either," he said in the end.
"Maybe because I always knew it was possible." The words left Draco's mouth before he even realised, but as soon as they did, he knew it was true. And he knew that that's why he had also been able to pass the research on to Scorpius in the future – it had never been about the glory of making history, as Draco had initially thought when Scorpius first told him that afternoon; it had always been about Scorpius, about giving Scorpius the chance to prove himself, and to show that Draco trusted him, in a way that Draco's own father had never trusted him.
Draco didn't know how he suddenly knew all of this, but it made complete sense to him, as if his perspective of the world, which had been shifting dramatically all day with each new revelation, had finally come to rest in a way that aligned so perfectly that it all made sense at last.
Scorpius and Albus nodded in understanding, while Potter looked completely baffled at the whole exchange. Draco rolled his eyes, knowing that he was a lost cause, and moved forward to shake Albus' hand so that the two could be on their way, back to receive all the recognition they deserved for accomplishing such a feat.
"It was nice meeting you…however briefly," Draco said as they shook hands, disconcerted by just how strikingly similar to Potter he was.
"You'll get to know me better in future," Albus promised, releasing Draco's hand with a smile.
Draco nodded, stepping back next to Potter and waving goodbye as Scorpius and Albus turned on the spot and disapparated with the loudest crack that Draco had ever heard.
For a few moments, there was an awkward silence between the two, as Draco had no idea how Potter had reacted to the news of their future relationship or whether he should broach the topic at all.
"Well, that was interesting," Potter said at last, and Draco snorted at how much of an understatement that was.
"I guess that's one way of describing it," he drawled. "Myself, I'd go with horrifically disturbing."
"Come on, Malfoy. It wasn't that bad." Potter turned to look at him, and Draco realised in that minute that he had no clue; Albus hadn't told Potter anything about their future, about what would happen, and despite the fact that his logical mind told him this was a good thing, not least because it meant Potter wouldn't try to attack him, Draco couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed by that.
"Maybe for you. I'm sure your future is just peachy." Draco huffed as he sat down on the bench at the entrance to the orchard. This was a total disaster. Draco wondered if he could get Pansy to obliviate him, for he wasn't sure he would be able to retain his sanity if he was the only person in the world to know about what would happen between him and Potter in the future.
"Well, yeah it's pretty good," Potter said, oblivious to Draco's obvious distress. "But I doubt yours is as bad as you're making out, Malfoy." Potter frowned at him in disapproval, and it made Draco want to laugh at the hilarity of the whole thing.
"That's where you're wrong, Potter. You see, I thought my present was pretty shit, but no. My future is somehow worse. My future is a disaster. A complete mess." Draco put his head in his hands, pressing the heels against his eyes as if it would somehow erase this day from his mind.
Upon hearing Potter sitting down on the bench next to him, Draco raised his head to glance at him, noting with faint amusement the way Potter seemed to be warring with himself over whether to offer Draco any words of comfort.
"What was so bad about it?" he asked in the end, and Draco wished he could tell him everything. Everything, not just about what he had learnt today, but everything about Draco himself. Because sitting here, looking into Potter's deep, green, earnest hero-eyes, Draco found himself both unable and unwilling to deny anymore the fact that he had had a crush on Potter at school. No matter how much he protested to Pansy, he'd always been aware of his preoccupation with Potter, and for a while there had been a part of him that had wished that Potter would save him, too, not least during the hell of what was meant to be his seventh year.
But Potter never had. He'd always looked right past him, ignored him in favour of his Gryffindor cronies, left him to suffer. And so Draco had given up.
Except now…now Potter was looking at him as if he was a person for perhaps the first time in eight years of knowing each other. Potter was looking at him as if he might actually want to, might actually be able to save him, and in Draco's mind Scorpius' words echoed loudly, telling him that Potter was the one who would make him happy in the end. And Draco suddenly decided that he really didn't want to fight this anymore.
The fact was, though, that nothing could happen between them. Not now, anyway. Not in the present.
Draco sighed and got to his feet, if only to put some distance between him and Potter lest he lose control of himself.
"It doesn't matter, Potter," Draco said as he wrapped his arms around himself to fend off the October chill. "Not really. Que sera, sera, right?"
Draco glanced back to Potter, who was still sitting on the bench with a confused look in his eyes. Deciding that he best not overload Potter's poor brain by explaining about fixed points and how the fundamental components of his future would always turn out the same, anyway, Draco simply shook his head.
"Go home, Potter." He laughed humourlessly. "I'm sure your girlfriend is missing you."
Potter simply nodded and got to his feet, standing awkwardly before Draco, who rolled his eyes and stuck out his hand, as though after going through such an eye-opening and disorientating experience together was enough of a reason to call a truce on eight years of animosity. Even as Potter shook his hand, Draco doubted it would last long, but the promise and potential that it held for the future was enough to momentarily quash the anguish that Draco felt over Potter going back home to his ginger Weaslette.
"Goodbye, Potter," he said, which was perhaps the most civil farewell the two had ever shared, before Potter disapparated, his Ministry clearance allowing him passage through the Malfoy wards.
In the stillness that followed, Draco felt suddenly bereft and exhausted. He thought about sitting back down on the bench, but the sharp wind convinced him he would be better going back inside the Manor and curling up on one of the sofas by the fire. Maybe with a bottle of Firewhiskey.
As he reached the stone steps, however, Draco noticed a figure in the doorway looking out onto the orchard with a cigarette in her hand.
"Where have you been?" he asked, leaning against the doorframe to face her.
"Oh, around." She smiled enigmatically, waving her cigarette in a circle before taking another drag.
"You know I hate when you do that," he complained, taking the cigarette from her hand for himself, ignoring the way she rolled her eyes in irritation.
"But it's okay for you to do it?"
"I have nothing to live for anyway," Draco told her between drags, watching the progress of the smoke as it drifted away into the orange-tinted sky.
"On the contrary," Pansy said, snatching her cigarette back and tapping the ash from the end, "I'd say you have everything to live for now."
At the smirk in her voice Draco turned back to face her, wondering what that was meant to mean.
"Come again?"
"I heard."
"Heard what?" Draco feigned ignorance, but turned back once more to watch the sunset so that Pansy wouldn't see the anxiety in his eyes.
"Your conversation with Scorpius. About you and Potter."
"You nosy little trollop!" Draco whirled back round to face her, grabbing the cigarette from her hands and stomping it out on the ground out of spite. "What have I told you about-"
"Being an 'interfering bitch who needs to keep her nose out of your love life'?" Pansy asked, calmly plucking another cigarette from her silver cigarette case and lighting it with the tip of her wand.
"Yes."
"Falling on deaf ears, darling. Besides, I'm your best friend; I deserve to know these things." She blew a puff of smoke into his face, which Draco batted away in irritation with his hands.
"That doesn't mean you can spy on me!"
"Draco, we both know you never would have told me otherwise. It was a necessary course of action."
"How so?"
"Because now I know that you are going to end up with Potter, too. And I can do this."
Draco yelped in pain as Pansy used her free hand to pinch him on the arm.
"Stop moping."
"I'm not moping." Draco defended himself automatically, but he knew from Pansy's unconvinced expression that he wasn't fooling her.
"You are, Draco. And I know you, which means I know you will continue to mope. But seriously, stop it." She took a deep drag from her cigarette and handed it to him, exhaling the smoke to the side as she considered her next words.
"You get him, Draco. You do. Not Weasley, not some random fan-girl, you. Today is a gift, because, now you know what's coming, you can spend the years in between enjoying yourself."
Draco eyed her sceptically as he rolled the cigarette between his fingers. "How exactly am I meant to do that when I'm under house arrest?"
"Well, okay, maybe not right away. But afterwards you'll have time, Draco. You can go wherever you want, see whomever you want, sleep with whomever you want."
Draco snorted at that. He wondered if he would really be able to do that without ending up in the gossip column of Witch Weekly.
"You need to have a life first, sweetheart." Pansy raised her hand to cup his cheek, stroking it the way his mother used to do when he was a boy. "Potter will still be there in the end. You know that now."
Draco nodded, finishing the cigarette and stubbing it out under the heel of his boot.
"You're right." He placed his hand over hers and pulled it down between them, squeezing it in gratitude.
"Of course I am. You'll finish these five years and then go out into the world and have a wild and recklessly outrageous time, and tell me all about it, I hope!" They both shared a laugh at that, knowing that Pansy wouldn't stop until she got every last detail from him, whether he wanted to divulge it or not.
"Then you'll get married and have Scorpius, and raise him to be the perfect young man we saw today." Pansy smiled fondly, and Draco had to agree internally that Scorpius had turned out much better than he ever could have hoped for his son.
"And then, finally, when the time is right, you'll shack up with Potter and spend the rest of your happy little homosexual lives together fucking each other's brains out."
Draco rolled his eyes at her crudeness, but couldn't help but love her for her unwavering support through everything. He pulled her into a hug, pressing a delicate kiss against her glossy black hair.
"Thanks, Pans."
She nodded once, never one for big displays of emotion, and made her way back inside towards the Floo.
"Just remember, Draco," she called back to him as she grabbed a handful of powder, a smirk once more on her face. "Always, always remember that I told you so."
And with that she flung the powder into the fire and disappeared in a blaze of green.
Draco shook his head at her theatrics, a fond smile on his face, before he turned to pull the French doors to, catching a last glimpse of the night sky beyond bleeding red and gold as the sun dipped just below the horizon.
"As if I could ever forget."
FIN
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