A/N - this is a companion piece to my story Real. It probably won't make a whole lot of sense unless you read that first.
"So you're my so called 'real father.'" Rorie fixed him with a withering look.
He knew that look. It was the look he had used to intimidate many people over the years.
Lucius had passed The Look down to Draco. And obviously, he had passed it to Aurora.
"I am your biological father." He nodded.
"But not my real father. Because a real father wouldn't have left me." She snapped.
"I didn't leave you. Your mother left me, before you were born. Before I even knew you existed." He answered her evenly.
He raised his hand to indicate he wasn't finished when she began to speak.
"But we were in the middle of a war. My family was holding your mother hostage. If Voldemort had found out that your mother and I were going to have you, he would have killed you and your mother. And very likely me as well. My mother risked her life to get you and your mother away safely."
"So why didn't you come for us once Voldemort was dead?" she asked, her voice no less hostile. "Surely you could have found five minutes over the years. But I guess you got what you wanted from my mother, so damn the consequences, right?"
"Does your mother let you say that word?" he asked before he could stop himself. He did have almost six years of being a father to Scorpius under his belt.
She glared at him but did not answer.
"I had no idea your mother was pregnant. I thought she left because she didn't love me. I wasn't going to go chasing after her just to be rejected again." He felt awkward pouring these things out to a child. "You were almost two years old when I found out your mother had you. I was a week away from getting married to someone else. I thought it was best for everyone if I stayed out of your life at that point."
She rolled her eyes and folded her arms. "Really?"
"Yes, really." He huffed. "You didn't know me. I had never been part of your life, and I thought I would just confuse things if I showed up at that point. It would have hurt my fiancée terribly, and stirred up a lot of things that I hoped your mother was getting over."
"Hoped she was getting over, or praying that she would forget?" she asked cynically.
"I always cared about your mother. I never wanted her to be unhappy. The day I saw her with you in her arms in Diagon Alley, she looked genuinely happy. I didn't want to come from nowhere and ruin it, when I didn't even know what was going on." He kept his voice even, but there was anger, or maybe hurt, in his eyes.
"So you just went home to your little society girlfriend, got married, and had another child without another thought about me." She snarked.
"You obviously don't know how pureblood marriage contracts work." he said softly. "It would have taken something earth shattering to stop that wedding, and finding out that I had a daughter whose mother had not informed me of the fact wouldn't have been enough." He sighed. "I thought about you quite a lot. I checked in on your mother, made sure she had a good place for both of you to live, that she had what she needed monetarily and so forth. I found out she was seeing Rolf Scamander. Everyone said he was a good man. I hoped he would be the father you needed."
Her eyes filled with tears. "He was the best dad. He used to take me with him on his creature removal calls if it wasn't something too dangerous. He got me a pet streeler when I was six and when the twins were babies he took me to Ireland to see a flock of winged horses."
Draco's eyes were suspiciously damp as well. "I'm glad. It was a shame that he died."
The venom was back in Rorie's eyes. "Yeah, because you didn't have anyone to clean up your mess any more."
"No." he shook his head. "Because you and your mother loved him. I was there, you know." She looked at him curiously. "At the funeral."
"I … I never saw you." She stammered, looking positively flustered.
He shrugged. "I did myself up with heavy glamours, sat in the back, didn't speak to anyone. It wasn't my place to be there, and I didn't want to cause a disruption, but I couldn't imagine not being there with the two of you that day."
"But you were there." She blinked and tilted her head. For a moment, he saw her mother in her eyes.
"Yes. It was probably the wrong thing to do, but I didn't have a whole lot of experience in my life doing the right and honourable thing."
She smiled, just for a moment, before her features went to a mask of casual indifference. "You should have let me know you were there. Or, I mean, you should have let Mum know you were there."
He made a face. "Sure, the old flame shows up at the funeral of the husband. That wouldn't exactly have been appropriate."
"So you just went on with your life. You went back to your wife and your son and forgot us again." She pinched her lips together, as if she couldn't decide whether to be angry or cry.
"I didn't forget about you." He promised. "I thought about you all the time. But our lives were … what they were. And they weren't so we could be together."
"What about later?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "Everyone knows how your wife was getting busy with the Quidditch player behind your back. Why didn't you just ditch her and come to us then?"
Draco sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was so not an appropriate conversation to have with a child who hadn't even started Hogwarts yet.
"I didn't know." He finally said. "I didn't know about Astoria and Manny until the baby was born."
"Yeah, well when your wife had a Filipino baby, everyone knew." Rorie rolled her eyes. "You left her straight off. Why didn't you come to us then?"
"I wasn't in any right state to make life decisions at that point." He rubbed both hands over his face. "You're only ten and a half, Rorie. You'll understand better when you're older. But my whole life had just come crashing down around me. I loved your mother all along, but because I couldn't have her, I had really tried to make my marriage work. My wife had betrayed me. I wasn't in love with her, but I did care about her very much, and she had an affair with someone else. I had loved and looked forward to a little boy we were going to name Orion for nine months, only to find out he wasn't my son. I had a lot to get together in my own mind. Then once I started getting a handle on all of it, there was the fact so much had gone on in our lives, between the two of us and separately. I really didn't think your mum would want me any more."
Her eyes filled with tears. She reached over and placed her hand on his as her image began to waver, and he found himself sitting across from Luna instead of Rorie.
"Of course I would still want you." She whispered.
"Why would you?" he asked. "Why did you ever? My family kept you prisoner. There was always a doubt in the back of my mind. That you didn't really have a choice. I was the only one there. That was why we ended up the way we did. How we ended up with Aurora. That once you got out into the world and met other people and had choices, I wouldn't be what you wanted."
"Or maybe we were always meant to be." She squeezed his hand. "You wouldn't have talked to me and treated me as well as you did and we wouldn't have had Rorie if it wasn't meant to be. I would have just been a prisoner in your cellar."
"Why didn't you just talk to me?" he asked. "Why this? Doing yourself up as our daughter?"
"I slipped about the funeral, didn't I?" she smiled through her tears.
"I suspected, but I wasn't sure." He shrugged.
"Because I needed those answers honestly." She raised his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. "What you really felt in your heart, not what you would tell me because that's what you wanted me to hear. And because you needed the practice. When you face Rorie for real, she's going to be even tougher on you than I was then. She is your daughter, after all."