Draco Lucius Malfoy, husband of Astoria Greengrass-Malfoy and father of Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy, stood rigidly in the doorway of Scorpius's bedroom, staring at what looked like a much smaller replica of himself, from the pointed features to the cloudy eyes to the platinum hair. Please, he thought rather desperately, leaning on the doorframe for support, he can't be like me. He can't. Merlin, whatever power there is up there...please.
"Dada?" asked Scorpius, glancing up at his father in concern.
Draco flashed Scorpius a wan smile, trying to kill the voice in his head—the voice which whispered cruel truths to him almost each day now—with memories: good, happy memories, memories that breathed warmlovesafe, memories of Astoria and her luminous smile and delighted, fluttery laugh that made his breath hitch in his throat. Astoria. Astoria, who had left him to tend Scorpius for a week, flying away on business. Astoria. The madwoman who had agreed to marry Draco Malfoy, who had agreed to condemn herself to this life with him.
"Please," Draco gasped, the small amount of firewhiskey he'd ingested earlier softening the harsher edges of his world.
Scorpius looked up at Draco, fixed him with that solemn, grave gaze so very like his own that he so often wished he could rip his DNA from Scorpius—and yet a gaze so different, so full of that quiet sort of trust and innocence Scorpius had worn about him like a blanket since birth. Much to his humiliation, Draco felt hot tears hiss and sizzle behind his eyelids. He forced them back with his right hand, pressing his fingers into his closed eyes in an attempt to stop the tears from forming. The devilishly determined lacrimal droplets were unfazed, leaking out and catching on his golden lashes. They hung there, glittering liquid baubles that obscured his vision, and slid down his haunted-looking face. The beginnings of horrifying memories flickered to life in Draco's mind, the too-familiar sensation of cold tears triggering their awakening. Flashes of the night he had been bound to the Dark Lord returned to him in sharp-edged shards, revulsion tinting the visions a shade of dark red as he recalled the stark contrast between his marble-pale forearm and the blackness of the Dark Mark tattoo.
"It's your family or whatever pathetic pretense of innocence you might retain if you try and run, little Malfoy," Voldemort had purred. "Make up your mind, or I kill them."
A younger Draco, one not quite so tainted by his own darkness, had swallowed, his Slytherin sense of self-preservation screaming at him to run, its desperate voice telling him he would save others as well if he fled—at only the cost of his cruel family's lives—but that odd little inner Gryffindor the Sorting Hat had missed, the one that was always getting him in deeper and deeper trouble, had overridden the Slytherin.
"All right," Draco had agreed, shaking violently, "all right, I'll j-join you, but only...only if you d-don't hurt my family."
The Dark Mark tattoo had been agony to receive, but that physical pain had been nothing in comparison to the anguish its meaning and power had caused him for the rest of his life.
"Dada," repeated the impossibly tiny Scorpius, his serious voice jolting Draco back to the present.
"Hey, Scorp," Draco whispered, his voice broken. "Love you."
Somehow, those four monosyllabic words were enough—enough to bring the dam of detached, cold dispassion, the dam he had hid behind for protection for so long, crumbling down.
And Draco wept. He cried openly and with the ragged, shaking sobs of a shattered little boy who could not find home. He cried loudly and then quietly and then even silently, and he could not remember how long he had been weeping or how he had become crumpled on the floor like a discarded scrap of parchment, but it didn't matter. Draco cried until he was empty and kept crying; he had no way to stop and no way to heal, not for himself or for Astoria or for the little boy who was staring steadily at him from the center of his ring of toys, this little boy who needed him.
"Dada cry?" asked Scorpius quietly. "Scorp'us help."
Draco opened his eyes, tears unrelenting, and stared in wonder as his infant son crawled over to him and reached out with one minuscule, warm hand, pressing it comfortingly against Draco's cheek. There was no way Scorpius could possibly comprehend the immensity of Draco's pain and regret—and yet, when reflected in the unguarded gray eyes of his son, it all seemed so very simple. In his own way, Scorpius understood. He met his fragmented father's gaze without wavering, without fear or hatred or disgust or judgement, and wholly loved the unlovable man who stared back.
Draco Malfoy could not ever forget his past, nor could he ever go back and change it—but he could heal. He could let the open, scarlet wounds fade to silver scars. He could let the blinding light into the darkness he had hidden in for so long. He would, and he would need all the help of his wife and son, all the help they could give. Healing would take a long time, and it would not be easy, but as he stared, mystified and captivated, into Scorpius's wide eyes, he knew it was possible.
In Draco's own eyes, his son could do no wrong.